The Rustler

by Linda Lael Miller

  A look of respect came into Ephriam’s weary old eyes. He pulled off his spectacles, wiped the lenses with part of his banker’s coat. “She knows you’ve been in prison?”

  “I let her know that right off,” Wyatt said. There wasn’t much about his life he could boast about, but living under his right name and claiming his past with no excuses was a point of pride with him. It was what his ma would have wanted, what she’d prayed for, all those nights, when she’d knelt by her sons’ beds and offered them up to the care of the God she so completely, thoroughly trusted, no matter how hard things got.

  Ephriam slid a stack of papers toward Wyatt. “Read these over, and sign them if you agree with the terms. I made the loan for four hundred and fifty dollars, instead of three hundred and fifty, figuring you’d need lumber and the like to fix up the Henson place.” He chuckled again as Wyatt picked up the papers. “Guess we ought to call it the Yarbro place, once the ink dries.”

  For the first time since he’d set foot in Ephriam’s office, Wyatt smiled. “The Yarbro place. I like the sound of that,” he said. “And I’m obliged for the extra money.” Then, because he was his mother’s son, as well as his father’s, he read every single word in those papers, made sure of his understanding, and then put his signature to the whole works.

  That one hundred dollars, given to him in cash by Mr. Tamlin, meant an extra annual payment, and that was serious business to Wyatt. Still, if he wanted a roof and a floor and clean well water, he had to accept it.

  He and Tamlin shook hands on the deal, and Wyatt left the Stockman’s Bank.

  He didn’t kid himself that he owned that fifty acres and broken house. The bank did; all he owned was the mortgage. But there was a spring in his step, just the same, as he stepped out into the sunshine, looking up and down the street as he crossed, automatically counting horses in front of saloons. Since lumber and tools were sold out of the mercantile, he made his way there.

  SARAH PUT Owen’s new clothes, tablets, pencils and other school equipment on her account, since she hadn’t taken time to cash Charles’s voucher at the bank. They were just leaving when Wyatt stepped up onto the sidewalk from the street.

  Seeing her, he stopped and tugged at the brim of his hat.

  Since Owen’s purchases were to be delivered at the house later in the day, there having been too much for the two of them to carry, Sarah’s hands were empty. Owen clutched a parcel wrapped in brown paper and tied with string, unwilling to let it out of his sight.

  Knowing Wyatt would have offered to carry things home for her, if she’d had any, Sarah almost regretted asking that the order be delivered.

  Owen shoved the package out to show Wyatt. “I’ve got long pants in here,” he said. “Just like yours. And a shirt, too. Aunt Sarah says it looks like it was cut from a flour sack, but I like it!”

  Sarah laughed, rising, once again, on a swell of fragile and very temporary joy. “Lunch is included in your room and board,” she told Wyatt. “If you’re hungry.”

  Wyatt’s white teeth flashed as he grinned. If they had a baby together, would it have Wyatt’s fine, strong teeth, his rugged yet pleasing features?

  She blushed, just to catch herself thinking such a thought, and on Main Street, too. In broad daylight.

  “I’ll be along directly,” he said. “I have some business in the mercantile, but it shouldn’t take long.”

  Hope quickened Sarah’s heart. All morning long, despite helping Owen select his new clothes and grappling with what Kitty had told her, about her daughter’s imminent arrival in Stone Creek to teach school, she’d been recalling breakfast, and the conversation her father and Wyatt had had about the Henson place.

  She wanted to ask if Wyatt had bought the property, but couldn’t quite bring herself to be that forward.

  He must have seen it in her face, the longing to know if he’d be staying or moving on, because he said, “I’ve got a mortgage now. If there’s one thing worse than a former train robber, it’s a former train robber up to his gullet in debt.”

  Sarah wanted to shout, to whirl, right there on the sidewalk, the way she used to do as a child in her mother’s parlor, when Nancy Anne Tamlin sat down at her piano and filled the house with sweet, soaring music, coaxing whole concertos from the time-yellowed keys. Suddenly, she didn’t trust herself to speak.

  Wyatt didn’t say anything, either.

  They just stood there, the two of them, looking into each other’s eyes.

  It was Owen who broke the impasse. “Can I put these pants on when we get home, Aunt Sarah? I look sissified in this getup!”

  Wyatt chuckled. “I wouldn’t go so far as to say ‘sissified,’” he told the boy. “Just—well—Eastern.”

  Owen made a face. “I wanted to put them on inside the store, but Aunt Sarah wouldn’t let me. She said I’d get them dirty.”

  “A boy’s meant to get dirty,” Wyatt said.

  Sarah laughed and steered her son in the direction of home. She cast a look back over one shoulder and saw that Wyatt was still standing outside the mercantile, watching her go.

  A HUNDRED DOLLARS WOULDN’T buy all the lumber Wyatt needed, but it was enough get him started. If things stayed calm in Stone Creek until Rowdy and Sam showed up, he could start replacing the roof out home.

  Home. He hadn’t had one, since his ma had died giving birth to young Gideon. When he’d gone back to pay his respects at Miranda Yarbro’s final resting place, the farm had already been sold to the son of their late neighbor, John T. Rhodes.

  Rhodes had been a friend to Miranda, and to Rowdy, although Wyatt hadn’t approved of his ma associating with an unmarried man, while she had Pappy’s wedding band on her finger. She’d mended John T.’s shirts, darned his socks, and let him drive her to church of a Sunday, too.

  Looking back, Wyatt reckoned he’d taken too harsh a view of John T. Rhodes. The man had surely loved Miranda, but as far as Wyatt knew, he’d never overstepped the bounds of propriety. Unlike Pappy, John T. had been there, and if Miranda had been fond of him, and no doubt grateful, too, who was Wyatt to judge?

  He went inside the mercantile, took off his hat, and ordered a wagon load of lumber, a hammer and saw, and a keg of nails. He could hardly wait to get out of the lawman racket, and get started, though he knew he wouldn’t have much free time once he started riding for Sam O’Ballivan.

  “You’ll be staying on in Stone Creek, then?” asked the storekeeper’s wife, evidently pleased. The question came after she’d introduced herself as Mabel. “Word’s all over town that you’re sweet on Sarah Tamlin, but a body can’t take common gossip as gospel, now can they?”

  “No, ma’am,” Wyatt said, amused and, at the same time, feeling shy. “You can’t trust gossip, I mean. I do mean to stay on, long as I’m welcome, and I’m right fond of Sarah Tamlin.”

  Mabel blinked, probably surprised by his straightforward answer. She was plain, but good-natured, with crooked teeth and eyes that didn’t seem to focus right. She most likely needed spectacles, but a lot of women were too vain to wear them. It was one of the many things Wyatt did not understand about the female gender. They cinched themselves into corsets and pulled the strings so tight, they swooned. They wore shoes in the size they wanted their feet to be, not the size they actually were.

  Strange creatures, but intriguing.

  “We’ll be selling a pile of lumber for the new jailhouse,” Mabel said, once she’d recovered from a good dose of plain talk. “Lucky thing you placed your order right away.”

  “Lucky thing,” Wyatt agreed.

  “Rowdy’s been wanting a new jail for a long time,” the woman ran on. “He always said a town this size needed more than one cell.”

  “Is that right?” Wyatt said idly, counting out payment for his purchases. Maybe he’d been worrying about Rowdy’s reaction to the fate of the old jailhouse for nothing. Could be, if the storekeeper’s wife had it right, he was happy it was gone.

  “He and Lark are planning
to build a new house, too. A big one.” Mabel leaned forward, halfway across the counter, to confide in a loud, carrying whisper, “She has money, you know. Lark, I mean.”

  “So I hear,” Wyatt said, uncomfortable discussing his sister-in-law’s financial situation, anxious to make his departure and see what Sarah was going to serve up for lunch.

  “Lots of money,” the store-mistress prattled on. “When she came to Stone Creek, she pretended to be a schoolteacher. We all thought there was something very peculiar, since her clothes were all so expensive—”

  Wyatt pulled out his pocket watch; it had belonged to his maternal grandfather, T. M. Wyatt, and his ma had given it to him because he was her eldest son and bore her family name. “I’m in sort of a hurry,” he said.

  The woman had the good grace to blush. “Well, of course you are,” she said. “My husband will deliver the lumber tomorrow, or tonight after supper. Where should he take it?”

  “The old Henson place,” Wyatt said, with a rush of pride.

  The woman’s eyes widened. “I’ve heard it’s a hideout for outlaws,” she told him anxiously.

  “Not anymore, it isn’t,” Wyatt replied. Then, after collecting his change, he turned and hurried out of the mercantile. Walked with long strides toward Sarah’s place. The store-mistress hadn’t really said anything untoward about Lark, but he felt a little guilty just for listening to her.

  Idle hands might be the devil’s workshop, his ma used to say, but idle words were even worse. And he’d probably started a large-scale tongue-wagging session by saying straight out that he cared for Sarah Tamlin.

  He was passing the telegraph office when the woman who’d given him a plate of food that first day, outside the revival tent, stepped out onto the sidewalk. She pressed a lace-trimmed hanky to her eyes and sniffled, and seeing Wyatt, made a subtle move to block his way.

  He struggled to recall her name, but came up dry. Stopped and tugged at the brim of his hat.

  “Fiona,” she said, putting out a gloved hand to him.

  “Fiona,” he repeated, to lodge the name in his mind, in case he ever needed it. He glanced at the hanky clasped desperately in her left hand while he shook the right one, being careful not to tighten his grip. “Is something the matter?”

  “My poor aunt Lavinia,” she said. “She’s been ailing for months, and now she’s taken a turn for the worse.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Wyatt said.

  “It’s not widely known,” Fiona confided, leaning in close to Wyatt, “but I’ve tendered my resignation and I won’t be teaching at Stone Creek School when the new term starts next week. I’ve been sure right along that I’d need to go back to Chicago and take care of dear Aunt Lavinia, but it’s still a terrible wrench to leave.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Wyatt said, at a loss.

  “I have so many friends here,” Fiona said.

  “I reckon you probably do.” Did Sarah have lunch on the table? Was she wondering what was keeping him?

  “And it’s only out of pure friendship that I’d say this—”

  Wyatt braced himself, knowing there would be no escape. Waited.

  “I’m convinced,” Fiona told him, “that Sarah Tamlin hasn’t saved herself.”

  For a moment, Wyatt was adrift. Sarah played the organ at revivals and in church. It seemed probable that she would have gotten around to getting saved at some point, not that Wyatt required salvation of a wife. Just fidelity, the truth, and a willingness to bear his children.

  Then he realized what Fiona was really saying. “Those,” he said, “are not the words of a friend.” He started around Fiona, not bothering to tip his hat a second time.

  She chased after him, caught at his arm. “She got into some kind of trouble when she was in college,” she sputtered, “and some folks are even saying that boy she’s keeping for Mr. Langstreet is her son.”

  Wyatt felt as though he’d been kicked by a mule, square in the center of his stomach. The breath went out of him. So that was why she looked at Owen the way she did, why she reached out to muss his hair and then quickly withdrew her hand.

  “And,” Fiona went mercilessly on, “Sarah’s mother’s maiden name was Owen.”

  Wyatt was annoyed—with himself, for not guessing at something so obvious, with Fiona for talking behind Sarah’s back. Once he’d gotten over the initial shock, though, he felt the same nervous jubilation he had signing the papers to buy fifty acres and a shack.

  Sarah’s secrets were unraveling, one after the other.

  Before long, he’d know all about her.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  SARAH HAD BEEN ENJOYING a run of good luck with her cooking, but that day, the tide turned. She’d put a pot of potato soup on the stove to simmer, before going with Owen to the mercantile, and when she and the boy came through the kitchen door, the room was full of scorched-smelling smoke. Lonesome, confined to the spare room during their absence lest he chew a table leg or gnaw on the piano stool cushion, barked frantically.

  Sarah rushed to take the pan off the stove, dumping it into the sink. She flung up the kitchen window and surveyed the room, looking for flames.

  Fortunately, there were none.

  Owen hurried to set Lonesome free.

  The dog hobbled out of confinement and gazed at a coughing Sarah in baleful curiosity.

  Now what was she going to do for food? Wyatt and her father would be along at any minute, probably ravenous, and she would have nothing to give them.

  Owen ducked back into his room, followed by Lonesome, and when he came back, he was wearing his stiff new dungarees and the flour-sack shirt, blue with tiny white dots in the pattern. “Me and Lonesome,” he said solemnly, “could go back to the mercantile and get some bologna.”

  “Good idea,” Sarah said, fanning the room with a dish towel in a fruitless effort to disperse the smoke. She paused in her efforts long enough to take a coin from her handbag. “Buy a loaf of bread, too. If Mabel asks why I haven’t done my baking, tell her I’ve been too busy.”

  Owen accepted the coin.

  “Maybe Lonesome ought to stay here with me,” Sarah suggested, eyeing the dog worriedly.

  “He’ll pine,” Owen objected. “Anyhow, Wyatt told me Lonesome should move around as much as he can.”

  “Very well,” Sarah allowed, distracted, “but if he gets too tired, bring him back home immediately.”

  Owen nodded and left the house, Lonesome padding stoically along behind him.

  Sarah went back to fluttering her dish towel.

  Several minutes had passed, she supposed, when she heard Wyatt’s chuckle and turned to see him standing, hat in hand, in the open doorway leading into the side yard.

  She flushed, oddly mortified. “I’ve burned the soup,” she said.

  He set his hat aside on the old chest beside the door, and entered the room. Crossed to the sink and peered into the kettle still smoldering there.

  “I think that pan’s seen its last,” he said. “What kind of soup was it?”

  It was unlike Sarah to fuss, especially over food. To her, it was just something one had to consume to keep going, like coal shoveled into a boiler in a locomotive. “Potato!” she wailed, and then burst into tears.

  Wyatt turned from the sink, came to her, pulled her into his arms. “There, now,” he said, holding her close, resting his chin on the top of her head. “It was only soup.”

  Sarah sniffled, making a mighty effort to pull herself together. What was it about this man that turned her into a person who cried over soup?

  They were still standing like that when Lonesome joined them.

  “I met up with Owen and the dog at the corner,” Wyatt explained. “Lonesome was getting tuckered, so I brought him home.”

  Glad of something to do, besides stand there in Wyatt’s embrace weeping like the heroine of some silly road-show melodrama, Sarah went to fill the dog’s bowl with fresh water and shut the door. Most of the smoke was gone, but the flies we
re getting in.

  That was life for you, she reflected. You dealt with one problem, only to find that, by doing so, you’d opened the way for another.

  When she glanced over one shoulder at Wyatt’s face, alerted by some new tension in the air, she saw that he was watching her, his eyes somber, and a shade or two darker than usual.

  “I met Fiona, coming out of the telegraph office,” he said, as though this were a thing of portent, and not an ordinary occurrence.

  Sarah wondered at his sudden solemnity; he’d seemed amused over the potato-soup debacle. “She’ll be leaving us soon,” she said mildly, taking butter from the icebox. Due to flies, she didn’t take the lid off the dish, as she normally would have, but set it on the table. Doc said flies carried disease, and she believed him.

  Wyatt started to speak, stopped himself. Clearly, he was in the grip of some dilemma.

  Sarah stopped fidgeting with kitchen things, alarmed now. “Wyatt,” she said quietly, “what’s the matter?”

  “I can’t work out whether it’s right to say what’s on my mind or keep it to myself,” he answered, looking pained.

  Sarah donned an apron, tied it briskly at the small of her back, smoothed it with anxious, damp-palmed hands. “Tell me,” she said.

  “There’s talk, Sarah,” Wyatt said, and he looked miserable.

  “This is a small town,” she said, though her nerves were jittery now. “There’s always talk. Did Fiona find out I took a bath at Rowdy’s place the other night, after we washed down those poor men for burying?”

  Wyatt shook his head. Swallowed. Glanced toward the still-closed door before looking Sarah in the eye again. “According to Fiona, folks are saying that Owen is your boy.”

  The silverware in Sarah’s hands clattered to the floor, and she felt the blood drain out of her face. “What?”

  “Is it true, Sarah?” She could tell nothing of his feelings by his expression, nor did she try. She hauled back a chair at the table and fell into it, windless.

  Wyatt simply waited.

  Sarah’s eyes filled with a fresh wash of tears. She didn’t mind the scandal for herself so much, but she minded for Owen. For her father. And even for Wyatt Yarbro, who would know if she lied, and walk away if she told the truth.