by Sharon Ihle
"She's right, Zachariah." Oda, never one to waste a lot of words, wiped her hands on a towel and shot a wary glance toward the back door of the medicine wagon. "There's only one thing we got to worry about if we keep him with us, and that's her." She pointed a pudgy finger at her daughter.
Knowing exactly what his wife was referring to, Zack sighed. "That's something else we got to think about, baby. What if you can't fend the man off, should he take it in his head to have carnival ideas about you the way that crazy Buck Christman did a while back?"
"That's carnal ideas, Dad."
"Carnal, carnival—it don't make much difference what you call it if'n he takes it in his head to pin you down and have his way with you, now does it?"
Mariah thought back to the pawings she'd endured while Buck was in their employ, the constant hassles she and Zack had put up with until they'd decided keeping the banjo player with the troupe simply wasn't worth the trouble. Those memories, coupled with the possible results her potion might bring, almost made Mariah change her impulsive plans for the marshal. Then an extraordinarily simple solution struck her.
"I have it," she said, louder than was wise under the circumstances. Whispering again, she went on. "As long as he doesn't know who he is or what his past was all about, it's up to us to tell him, isn't it?"
Zack gave her an uneasy nod. "Ayuh."
"Then why not make him a blood relative?" She paused, trying to think of the perfect family connection, one that would keep the marshal at arm's length but would also prove the potency of her love potion. A cousin, perhaps. Yes. If a man like Slater were to take a liking to her, if he could accept her as his kin and even show a little more interest in her than he ought to, that would be proof enough that her potion worked.
"Why don't we make him my good old cousin, Cain, who joined us to learn the business. How do you like it?"
Zack pursed his thin lips and frowned.
Oda shook her head, grumbling to herself.
"It'll work," Mariah insisted, addressing her mother. "We'll just tell him he belongs to your brother Thomas. He's believed everything else. Why not that?"
Oda stiffened at the mention of her family.
Sliding his arm across her shoulders, Zack gave his wife a little squeeze as he said to Mariah, "Go on."
"There's nothing to go on about. If he's my cousin, he'll just naturally have to leave me be."
Zack glanced at Oda. "That gonna be all right with you?"
She shrugged. "I expect."
Zack gave her a short nod, and sighed in surrender. He never denied Mariah anything if he could possibly help it. "I reckon it might just work at that, but you'd best understand that I'm a-leaving the care and feeding of that man up to you, young lady. If he don't fit in or makes more trouble than he's worth, we'll just be getting rid of him any ole way we have to. Agreed?"
Mariah beamed. "Agreed. Mother?"
"Agreed. Now that we got that all settled, I'd like to get out of these wet clothes." Oda cocked her thumb, inviting her husband and daughter to give her some privacy.
Zack headed for the entrance of the tent. "I'll go on outside and secure that sorrel for the night. Guess while I'm at it I'd best check the saddlebags to make sure I found all the marshaling papers that fellah had on him." He reached into his shirt pocket, withdrew the shiny badge, and tossed it to his wife. "Find a good place to hide this, will you, woman?" Then he stepped out through the flap and into the tail end of the latest cloudburst.
Alerted by the sudden blast of cold air, Daisy got up from her warm bed, yawned loudly, then shook herself off and trotted out the flap behind Zack.
Mariah started up the back steps of the medicine wagon. "I'm going to check on the marsh—" She corrected herself, "—dear Cousin Cain to see if he needs any more salve or a fresh bandage."
"Careful in there." Oda warned her daughter before Mariah disappeared from her sight.
Once inside the wagon, Mariah stood very still in the darkness, listening to the lawman breathe, and picked out his strong masculine scent in the normally floral aroma of her tiny quarters. Although the wooden walls stretched to accommodate a ceiling of just over six feet, the actual bed of the wagon was ten feet long, the width not quite seven, and every inch of space had to be used in the most efficient manner possible.
A narrow aisle only wide enough to allow one person to pass split the room in half. On one side, the wall was a checkerboard of shelving fashioned with high "thresholds" to keep the contents from toppling down to the floorboards as the wagon bounced from town to town. These shelves were laden with Kickapoo Wizard Oil, Princess Tanacoa's Special Vegetable Compound, Sagwa Worm Syrup, and every manner of salve and tonic imaginable.
Across from the medical supplies, Mariah's narrow bed filled just over six feet of wall space. The area beneath it served as storage for the kettles, vats, ingredients, and empty bottles used in the preparation of the medicines. The remaining space between the bed and the back wall was taken up by a built-in combination dresser/water closet.
Mariah lit a candle sitting in a saucer on top of the dresser and glanced down at her new "cousin." His head was butted up against the back wall of the wagon, and his feet were pressed against her dresser. The marshal's big body wasn't so much lying on her bed as filling it, consuming every square inch of a space she'd always thought of as quite adequate, until now. That he was a man of the law, added to the fact that no other man had ever known the softness of her mattress, made the sight startling, if not downright... arresting.
Stimulated by the thought and all it implied, Mariah moved on down the narrow aisle, and then eased her hip onto the edge of the railing which supported the mattress. Finally, she thought, grumbling to herself, a man between her sheets, and look who it turned out to be. A self-righteous, arrogant marshal who would just as soon hang her as bed her. It was yet another obstacle for her potion to overcome in order to gain the fame it so richly deserved. To get this mean-spirited, hardheaded bastard to so much as smile at her would be testimony enough to sell her product worldwide.
The lawman stirred then, groaning noisily, painfully. Mariah brushed her hand across his forehead. He was warm, but not hot or feverish. She took his pulse. It was strong and regular. She slid farther up the railing, nudging his big body aside with her right knee and thigh as she moved, and when she was able to reach his head, she carefully lifted him off of her pillow and removed the bandage. The linen came away fairly clean, suggesting that he had stopped bleeding. He began to moan as she laid him back down on her pillow, tossing his head from side to side, and Mariah caught his face between her hands to keep him from thrashing about and splitting the wound open again.
"Take it easy," she whispered, staring down at him as he quieted, really looking at him for the first time. The marshal was not what she would call a handsome man. He was masculine, certainly, virile and powerful, but too cruel of mouth and narrow of thought for her to consider him attractive. Although he looked to be less than ten years her senior, he bore the ruts of a deep and unrelenting anger beneath his high cheekbones, and the fine lines etched into his brow suggested that he was a man who never went out of his way to smile, much less laugh. Even his otherwise classic and aristocratic nose looked angry, the smooth, straight lines marred by a few knots and bumps, evidence of his many fights.
Mariah remembered the way he'd spoken to her and her family back in Bucksnort. Cain Law had an evil look about him, a malevolence of eye and viciousness of tongue to be feared by both men and women alike. What would he do when he regained his memory? What manner of vengeance would he seek against the Pennys' for fooling him so blatantly?
Suddenly questioning her plans to use this man, she worried not for herself but for her family.
When she started to rise up from the railing, the marshal's hand suddenly shot up from his side, encircling her wrist. Then, before she could break free or even cry out, he jerked her back down onto the edge of the bed.
His green eyes frant
ic with uncertainty, he said, "What do you think you're doing?"
Mariah opened her mouth, but all she could manage at first was a tiny gasp of surprise. She'd been aggravated by this man since she'd first laid eyes on him, but now she knew a little fear—and it was mind-chilling. She gulped and then said, "Why Cain, honey, it's just me... Cousin Mariah. Now let go of my arm. You're hurting me."
Although he continued to hold her, something rang familiar in her words. Cain. Yes, now he remembered. That was his name: Cain Law. Yes. And this was his... cousin? "Did you say we're related?"
Mariah offered a sweet, innocent grin along with a coquettish nod. "First cousins on my mama's side. Now be a good boy and turn me loose." Her confidence growing as his faded, she jerked out of his grasp. "I swear if you aren't acting like a madman, Cousin Cain. That wagon must have plum rolled over your fool head instead of up against it."
He chuckled a little, but he wasn't really listening to her prattle. Cain was studying this woman who claimed to be his kin, trying to understand why she didn't look the least bit familiar to him. "First cousins, huh? Then you're Mariah Law?"
"Mariah Penny. I told you, we're related on my mother's side. You belong to her brother, Thomas Law. Well," she said, amending the story with a dollop of truth. "That is, you belonged to him until he was killed at the battle of Vicksburg some twenty or so years ago."
The War Between the States. Yes, he'd heard of that. He knew the battle had pitted Confederate soldier against Union soldier, brother against brother in some cases, but that was all he knew. He had no recollection of his father, or the name Thomas Law. Where had his mind gone?
"I—I'm so confused," he said, closing his eyes. "I don't know who I am or what I'm saying. I hope you're not offended, but to tell the truth... I don't even remember you."
Mariah smiled. "No offense taken. I'm here to help you in any way that I can. Just ask me anything, and if I know the answers, I'll fill in the blanks."
Overwhelmed with gratitude and the first sense of hope he'd had since the accident, Cain reached out blindly and patted his cousin's knee. "Where are we?"
"In New Mexico Territory. We'll be heading for the Colorado border as soon as the weather clears." She removed his hand from her knee, surprised by the burst of warmth it had generated there. "Maybe you ought to go back to sleep now and ask your questions later. You've had quite a blow to the head, you know."
But Cain didn't want to sleep. At least, not until he could make a little better sense of his surroundings—of himself. If all this was true, and he really had no cause to doubt any of Mariah's claims, why couldn't he remember any of it? Why couldn't he remember her?
Or... did he? Cain peered into her unusual eyes, knowing instantly that, yes, he had gazed into them before. They were beautiful, exotic eyes, but the name Mariah didn't sound the least bit familiar.
He glanced around the inside of the wagon, his attention snagging on the rows of medicine bottles. These he recognized for what they were in an instant, and something about them disturbed him. But that was all they told him.
His stomach rumbled, and Cain suddenly realized he had no idea how long it had been since he'd last eaten. What had he eaten, and why couldn't he remember even that much? Panic raced through his veins, riding the coattails of his suddenly raging pulse, and he struggled into a sitting position.
Mariah tried to caution him. "Don't try to move yet."
But it was too late. Cain was sitting up, grinding his teeth against the blinding pain and terrific ache at the back of his skull. "Food," he said thickly. "Would you please get me some food?"
"Sure." But she hesitated. "Will you be all right if I leave you alone? You won't try to get out of bed, will you?"
If he could have, Cain would simply have shaken his head, but he couldn't manage the task. Instead, he whispered, "I'll be fine. Just get me some food. And coffee, too."
"Coming right up."
As Mariah rose and started for the door, she could hear Daisy barking through the thin wooden walls of the wagon and her father shouting for the animal to quiet. She descended the portable steps and walked into the tent, thinking of going outside to check on her pet, but Zack and the dog pushed through the opening flap at that moment, saving her the trouble.
"Get on over there," Zack said irritably, driving Daisy with the "toe" of his wooden leg. "Mariah—tie that danged mutt to the back of the wagon a while and see if she can't learn a lesson or two. Her yapping just run off the marshal's horse."
Mariah put her finger to her lips. "Cousin Cain is finally awake."
Zack's gaze shot to the back of the medicine wagon. "Is he now? Well, maybe you ought to stick your head in the door and tell him he don't have a horse no more. Dumber-than-dirt Daisy just seen to that. The minute that deucedly stupid dog of yours started yipping, the mar—Cain's sorrel took off like the devil was at his heels."
All the better as far as Mariah was concerned, and one less familiar object which might jar the marshal's memory. She whispered, "Maybe it's just as well." Then louder, "Cousin Cain is hungry. He sent me out here to get him some food."
Oda, who'd changed into a plain wool wrapper of gunmetal gray and now stood at the stove stirring a pot of leftover stew, said, "I just started warming supper. If he wants a hot meal and biscuits to go with it, he's just gonna have to wait a spell like the rest of us."
"How about coffee?"
"Ought to be done in a minute or so."
The rain started up again, pounding fat drops against the canvas roof. Deciding to use the noise of the sudden downpour to cloak a little family conference, Mariah motioned Zack to come join her and Oda over near the stove.
"I told Cain we're cousins and all, and he seemed to believe me." Keeping one eye on the wagon's back door, she asked her father, "Did you get time to look through his things before the horse ran off?"
"Ayuh." Zack reached into his back pocket and withdrew a gold pocket watch and a thin wallet which contained the marshal's identification papers. "Except for some extra clothes and his mess gear, this and a little better than two hundred dollars was all he had with him."
"Two hundred dollars?" Oda peered down into her husband's palm. "I'd say that about covers what he cost us back in Bucksnort."
Zack raised his eyebrows. "Now, missus—you know we can't think about taking his money. That'd be outright thieving, no question about it."
Oda remained firm. "He owes us. Ain't nothing wrong with taking what's rightfully ours."
"Mother's right about him owing us, Zack, and near as I can figure, it'll take a lot more than two hundred dollars to square things. Why, don't you remember what he said to me back in town? He's lucky I'm not a real Kickapoo, Comanche, or Apache—I might have scalped him right then and there."
Zack hemmed and hawed, weighing his innate honesty against the injustices done to his family. Instead of putting a complete kibosh on the idea of keeping the man's money, he said, "I suppose it wouldn't hurt to keep a little of that money, maybe fifty dollars or so, but I've got to tell you—it feels like it'd still be flat-out stealing. No other word for it."
"I didn't exactly say that we should keep his money, Zack." Mariah glanced at her mother, assuming she felt the same way. "Oda didn't mean that either. What I propose is that we pretend it's ours—get it?"
At her father's frown, she explained. "Just stuff those bills in your pocket and dole it out to him like you're doing him a big favor." She punched his arm playfully. "Use it to buy him some new clothes when we hit Pagosa Springs, offer him a few bucks to spend on himself in the mercantile, make him feel beholding to us. That ought to keep him under our thumbs."
Zack's scrawny mustache formed a narrow crescent over his upper lip as he said, "Oh-h-h. Now I get you." He glanced at Oda, nudging her with his elbow. "That little girl of ours has really got herself a head on her shoulders, don't she?"
Oda chuckled and turned back to the stove. "Ain't no surprise about that. The girl has my brain. Her plan s
ounds fine to me. I like it."
Mariah gave Zack a triumphant smile, and then removed the watch from his hand. Surprised to find that a man like the marshal even owned such a finely crafted timepiece, she studied the delicately etched gold case and then flipped it open. Opposite the dials was a frame containing a cameo photograph of a fragile, golden-haired woman. Shocked to find the image of anyone so genteel in the lawman's possession, she showed it to her father and said, "Who do you suppose this is?"
Zack studied the photo a moment, and then shrugged. "Could be anyone. His mother, sister, intended... wife, even."
Oda whirled around, and the trio exchanged stunned glances, each one weighing the new evidence against their own conscience. None of them had considered that the lawman might have a family somewhere, a wife who might wonder what had happened to him.
After a long, uncomfortable moment, Zack said, "It's most likely his mother. He didn't hardly strike me as the marrying kind." Then he took the watch from Mariah and handed it to Oda along with the wallet. "Hide these away with his badge, missus."
Oda had just pushed the items inside her dress pocket, when Daisy started barking and straining at the rope securing her beneath the stairs at the back of the wagon.
Alarmed, all three Pennys turned in unison, and found the newest member of their family standing on the top step, hanging on to the door frame as if it were a life preserver.
Zack found his voice first. "How'ya doing, son? Mariah tells me you don't remember us much."
Cain slowly made his way down the stairs, swaying as he fought for control of his balance.
Zack met him halfway across the tent and offered his hand. "I'm your uncle, Zachariah Penny."
Feeling like a complete idiot, Cain accepted his greeting. "Sorry, sir, but I'm still having some trouble remembering things." He searched his brain for just the slightest memory of this kind-faced old man, but nothing registered. "People, too, I'm afraid."
