The Rustler

by Linda Lael Miller

  Sarah was aware of noise outside, men’s voices, shooting. She was bleeding, and though she did try to rise, she couldn’t move.

  The door crashed open with such noise that Sarah thought the dynamite under the floor had been detonated.

  Then she heard a familiar voice. Dimly, through a pounding haze of pain and fear.

  “Get him out of here!” Wyatt yelled, probably referring to Charles.

  Sarah felt herself dragged up from the floor by her waist. “Owen,” she whispered. “Owen—”

  “I’ve got him,” she heard Wyatt say. Her eyes were blurred with blood from her aching temple; she couldn’t see him. “I’ve got him, Sarah.”

  She felt cool air next, and hands reaching for her.

  Voices, calling her name, calling Owen’s.

  And then the world exploded with a roar. There was a flash of terrible heat, and more shouting.

  Sarah opened her eyes, cleared them. She was lying on the sidewalk, on the opposite side of the street. Mr. Smith had been right, she thought dizzily. Money rained down from the sky.

  But Owen was beside her, sitting up, clutching her hand.

  Owen was alive, and that, for the moment, was all that mattered.

  THE NEXT TIME SHE CAME AROUND, Sarah found herself lying on the examining table in Doc’s office. Wyatt bent over her, his face sooty, like the night the jailhouse blew up and burned. He held one of her hands in both of his.

  “Am I dead?” she asked.

  He chuckled, but his eyes glistened with tears. “No,” he said. “Thank God.”

  “Owen?”

  “Upstairs with Doc. Had to give that boy a dose of medicine, just like Lonesome, to keep him down.”

  “How did—how did you know—?”

  “One of the girls at the Spit Bucket heard some bragging about how the bank was about to be robbed, and she told Rowdy. He came and found me, then we both went hunting for Sam. Soon as we got back to town, Lark told me you’d been by, asking for Rowdy. I thought about where you’d go, and figured you’d head for the Stockman’s Bank to wait.” He leaned in, kissed her forehead. “Damn, Sarah, when I realized you and Owen were in there—”

  “Charles—that man shot Charles—”

  Sorrow moved in Wyatt’s eyes. “He didn’t make it, Sarah,” he said. “Doc tried to pull him through, but the bullet nicked his heart.”

  “Owen saw it,” Sarah whispered brokenly. “Owen saw his father die. What will that do to him?”

  “We’ll get him through it, Sarah. You and me.”

  Her heart warmed and sweetened, as though a thin stream of honey flowed into it. Charles was dead, and as much as Owen had wanted to stay in Stone Creek with her and with Wyatt, with Lonesome and the grandfather he loved, he would mourn the father he wished Charles had been, perhaps always.

  “Would you have shot Charles yourself, Wyatt?” The answer would be painful to hear, something to grapple with, inside herself, for a long time. But she had to know.

  “If it had come to that,” Wyatt replied, “yes.”

  Sarah closed her eyes. Opened them again. “Mr. Smith, and the other robbers—?”

  “Got them all,” Wyatt said. “Sam and Rowdy and me, and a few of the townsmen. They’re all tied up and stowed in a back room, over at Jolene Bell’s. Did you know she had a meat locker?”

  “No,” Sarah said drowsily. “I don’t frequent Jolene Bell’s Saloon.”

  Wyatt laughed. “Only because she hasn’t got a ladies’ poker game running,” he said. “Sarah Yarbro, do you really smoke cigars?”

  “Once,” she admitted. The pain in her head was receding, but so was waking consciousness. “It made me throw up.”

  “Rest now, Sarah.”

  “You won’t leave me?”

  “Hell itself and a whole crew of demons couldn’t make me do that.”

  “I love you, Wyatt Yarbro,” she murmured, going under. Owen wasn’t the only one Doc had medicated.

  “And I love you,” she heard Wyatt say before the darkness surrounded her, lowered her into blessed oblivion.

  EPILOGUE

  Three months later

  SNOW DRIFTED PAST the kitchen windows as Sarah sat at the table, reading her book of lies. She wasn’t going to need it, ever again, she thought, smiling, remembering the woman she had been before. Before Wyatt, before Owen’s arrival in Stone Creek, before her father’s illness.

  Doc came down the kitchen stairway, and he was holding Kitty’s hand. She blushed like a debutante about to dance at her first cotillion.

  Sarah studied them, smiled. She’d had her suspicions, of course. Her father had been rapidly improving over the past few weeks—he was confined to an invalid’s chair, but he could say a few words and even play halting games of checkers with Owen or Wyatt. Still, Doc had spent a lot of time in that sickroom, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out that it wasn’t just Ephriam he’d come to see. It was Kitty.

  Sarah got up from her chair, carried her book of lies to the stove, and shoved it into the hot winter fire. Wyatt had gone to Flagstaff with Rowdy on some sort of business, but it was Friday. He’d be back on the evening train. Owen had begged a day out of school and gone with them.

  Turning to face Doc and Kitty, Sarah set her hands on her hips and tilted her head to one side. Lonesome, lying on his quilt and all mended now, looked up at her curiously.

  “All right,” she said, “what’s going on here?”

  Doc flushed. “Kitty and I—”

  “We’re in love,” Kitty finished for him, her scrubbed face shining. She’d heartened, lately, and she and Davina, though still not a doting mother and daughter, had established the bare beginnings of a truce. Davina, as Sarah had predicted, was engaged. Jody Wexler was the lucky man.

  Sarah laughed for joy. Hugged Kitty, hugged Doc.

  “I can still sit with Ephriam every day,” Kitty said, teary-eyed. “But as soon as Judge Harvey hitches us up proper, I’ll be moving out.”

  Sarah nodded, teary-eyed herself.

  Outside, familiar voices carried through the crisp winter night.

  Wyatt was back, and Owen.

  “Stay for supper,” Sarah said to Doc. “I’ve made stew—”

  “I’m taking my future bride to the hotel dining room for an engagement supper,” Doc said, with a shake of his head. He took Kitty’s plain woolen cloak down from the peg next to the door and draped it gently over her shoulders just as Wyatt and Owen came in, stomping snow off their boots, their faces glowing.

  Lonesome gave a yelp of joy and rushed to greet them.

  Doc and Kitty slipped out.

  “Wyatt’s rich now!” Owen piped, peeling himself out of scarf and coat and mittens.

  “Not rich,” Wyatt said, ruffling the boy’s hair, then bending to do the same with the dog’s ears. He’d been working out at Sam’s, and coming back to the house at night, because Owen needed to go to school and Sarah, without the bank to occupy her time, had been developing her homemaking skills.

  “What is all this talk about being rich?” Sarah asked, turning to stir the stew. She wanted to fling herself into Wyatt’s arms, but that would have been unseemly, in front of a child. Besides, there would be plenty of time for holding each other later, when they were alone in their room.

  “There was a reward on Billy Justice’s head,” Wyatt answered. “Fifteen hundred dollars. It’s enough to pay off that mortgage, fix the house and barn, even buy a few head of cattle, come spring.”

  He drew her into his arms, kissed her lightly on the mouth. A thrill went through her.

  “Wyatt bought us all presents,” Owen said. “Even Lonesome.”

  Sarah noticed the bundle, wrapped in brown paper and string, resting snow-dampened just inside the door.

  “Presents? It’s not even Christmas,” Sarah said.

  “It will be,” Owen pointed out. “Next week. We don’t have to wait to get our presents, do we, Wyatt?”

  Wyatt laughed. “No, boy,�
�� he said. “You don’t have to wait. But we’d better be rustling ourselves up a tree, if you want Saint Nick to pay you a visit.”

  Owen beamed. “There isn’t any Saint Nick. Just you and Mama.”

  Mama. Sarah loved the sound of that word.

  Somewhat shyly, Wyatt fetched the bundle, set it in the middle of the table, and carefully untied the string. There was a blush in his neck as he worked, and Sarah felt her already fathomless love for him deepen.

  Lonesome got a bone, fresh from a Flagstaff butcher shop.

  Owen received a book, finely bound, with gold lettering. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

  There was a fine wooden pipe and tobacco for Ephriam.

  And, lastly, a little box for Sarah.

  Wyatt’s hand trembled, ever so slightly, as he offered it to her.

  She opened it.

  A golden locket lay inside, gleaming in the light of a warm, sturdy home on a snowy winter’s night.

  Fumbling a little, Wyatt removed the locket, opened the little catch. There were two tiny pictures inside, one of her and Wyatt on their wedding day, and one of Owen with his arms spread as wide as his smile, cavorting in front of the marriage cake.

  “Oh,” Sarah whispered. “Oh, Wyatt.”

  He moved behind her, to clasp the delicate chain at the back of her neck. Kissed her nape, with just the barest touch of his tongue.

  Sarah turned in his embrace, smiled tearfully up into his eyes.

  “Jupiter and spit,” Owen said to Lonesome, with mock disgust. He considered this swearing. Sarah considered it better than a lot of other words he’d probably learned on the school grounds. “Now they’re going to start spooning again.”

  “Get used to it,” Wyatt said, without breaking the hold of Sarah’s gaze.

  “I’ll never get used to it,” Owen replied.

  “Hard luck for you,” Wyatt answered. “Go work on your arithmetic or something.”

  “You just want to get rid of me. So you and Mama can spoon.”

  “Smart kid,” Wyatt said. “Go.”

  Owen went, taking Lonesome with him. A few moments later, he began to pound industriously on the keys of Sarah’s piano. He had no musical talent whatsoever.

  “I have a present for you, too, Wyatt Yarbro,” Sarah said, holding on to Wyatt’s shoulders so she wouldn’t tumble right into his eyes.

  He chuckled. “I can hardly wait,” he said.

  Sarah blushed. “Besides that,” she told him.

  He looked puzzled then, even a little concerned. “What?”

  With one finger, Sarah smoothed the crease in his forehead. “You’re going to be a father,” she said, very softly.

  He was in the process of adopting Owen, with help from Judge Harvey. “I’m already—” Then the realization struck him. His face transformed in an instant, full of disbelief and joy. “A baby, Sarah? We’re having a baby? When?”

  She stood on tiptoe and kissed the cleft in his chin. How she adored that cleft, and everything else about him. His strength, his integrity, his lovemaking, by turns passionate and tender, and the soft words he spoke afterward, when he held her very close.

  She beamed. “About nine months and ten minutes from the day we were married,” she replied.

  He threw back his head and laughed with joy.

  And Sarah loved that, too.

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-2247-6

  THE RUSTLER: A STONE CREEK NOVEL

  Copyright © 2008 by Linda Lael Miller

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario M3B 3K9, Canada.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

  ® and TM are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and in other countries.

  www.HQNBooks.com