Hearts and Spurs

by Linda Broday

  Keith poured another and tried to be agreeable. Folks who diverged from Slim Billy always regretted it. “Must be how they raise ’em in Philadelphia.”

  “Indeed. Pantywaists. Out here, we dig mines and herd cattle and fell big trees. Get our legs and shoulders to match up.” Slim Billy showed teeth but it wasn’t a smile.

  Keith nearly choked on sudden anger. Eight years back, Pa had lost the ranch to Slim Billy Quicksilver. A tomfool more dishonest than the never-ending width around his belly.

  But Keith was a good lawman, took to it like sugar to coffee. Good he was, rooting out clues and finding crooks and killers. Only to get ’em let off by the likes of Batchelor Audiss. Badge, or whatever the hell he called himself. Keith slammed the whiskey down his throat, then gritted his teeth so hard he heard one crack.

  Speak of the devil. The worst jurist west of Kentucky slid into the saloon like his feet hurt and asked for coffee.

  “Wha-?” The chin of Hiram the barkeep came to rest on his chest.

  “Yes, coffee. The dining room at my hotel is closed until supper.”

  “Damn, if Badge don’t sound like a girl,” Slim Billy whispered. “And the dimwit needs a better shave. Looks like he’s been mothered by a bear. Too much fur for that perky nose. Probably too namby pamby to get his face reshaped by a fist fight.”

  Keith snorted but felt a flash of pity for a man with a pert nose. Leastwise, the judge wore denim dungarees under his frock coat instead of East Coast trousers, but Keith’s mood didn’t improve much.

  Truth was, Keith didn’t care much for the hooligan Moosejaw Boyle had killed. No loss at all with Jonas Peabody six feet under. But damn, he loved Widow Borchers like the ma he’d never gotten to know. And, as for the judge disbelieving her eyewitness evidence—well, to hell with him and back again. An honest woman needed to be believed. Enough said.

  He drank another, this time to drench his mind against memories of Patrice Marie McGhee, or Patty Mae as he’d called her. She’d been schoolmarm before…before it all happened, and entering the schoolroom always discomposed him. No matter Badge Audiss called it a courtroom.

  Patty Mae never went away, not entirely. Keith’d wronged her, disbelieved her when she’d spoken the truth. And afterward, he’d vowed to set things right, whenever, however he could. With whatever female he could. He’d defend ’em, hell or high water.

  Thought once in a while about hightailing it to Wyoming. The fair gender got to vote there, and maybe it was Patty Mae who’d got Keith thinking on the rightness of it. But Colorado was good to him.

  “You ought to leave town,” he warned Badge, low. “Not waste time on coffee. You got plenty of decent folks mad at you.”

  Badge looked him square on with awfully long eyelashes. “I won’t be sticking around. I just finished the necessary affidavits. You’ll find them on your desk.”

  “Where you bound, Badge?” asked Slim Billy in such a friendly way Keith threw him a glare.

  “My next docket is Leadville a week from today, Mr. Quicksilver.” The judge tossed out glares now, and Keith reckoned he hadn’t much liked Slim Billy’s first-naming him. “But I’m leaving within the hour.”

  “The Denver and Rio Grande won’t leave until the morning.” Keith said in the lawman tone that usually set folks obeying.

  “I’ve…got friends in Turkey Creek where I’ll pass the time.” Badge lit up a long nine, waited until the barkeep set a tin cup of some smoldering black brew in front of him. “Not my first trip.”

  “Lookin’ to snow,” Slim Billy kept on. “Big storm, I predict.”

  “Then I’ll hurry.”

  Keith sighed, long, hard. He knew what he had to do and sure didn’t want to. “I’ll tag along. The man Moosejaw killed—you know, Moosejaw Boyle? The murderer you set free?”

  Badge nodded, eyes big.

  “Anyway, the man he killed wasn’t anything to admire. But the Peabodys miss Jonas something awful. They’re mighty unhappy with you. Wouldn’t like finding you dead in a ditch somewhere. You even carry a gun?”

  The judge rolled eyes too bright blue for a man. Keith felt another dash of pity.

  “Sheriff, Deputy.” His Honor took turns nodding at each of them. Nose in the air, but he still wasn’t all that tall. “I hit my target five of six times, my first outing with my new Colt. My seventh birthday. So yes, sheriff, I not only carry a gun, but I also know how to use it.”

  “Still, two’s better than one with the Peabodys afoot. It’s a big clan. Even better, my long rifle. Better luck against a sniper hiding in the trees.” Keith didn’t care to escort His Honor across the street, much less across a mountain, but he took his responsibilities as a safety and peace officer mighty seriously. “Let’s head out in a half hour.”

  Badge Audiss hesitated long enough for Keith to understand. A man, especially one of insignificant stature, didn’t hold well at being told what to do.

  “All right.” Badge’s blue gaze boiled. “I want to finish this coffee to warm up. Then I have to pack. Wait for me outside the Mountain House.”

  “Nobody keeps me waiting.” Keith knew men, knew their pride. Last thing Badge Audiss would do is wait for an unwanted companion. But he forced himself to swallow his last drink, slow.

  Then Keith hightailed it to his quarters, grabbed the yannigan he always kept ready with survival rations, his bedroll and a wool henskin blanket, and rushed to saddle his horse.

  Aha.

  Keith hid behind a post at the livery as the judge snuck out the hotel like a shadow and mounted up. Silent as dawn, Keith and Cinch, the best horse in the west, followed Badge Audiss out of town.

  Smacking his thigh, Keith grunted with grudging respect. Latigo was some damn good horseflesh, and the judge an uncommon rider. However, Keith didn’t spur Cinch ahead fast. They followed at a decent distance. He had no worries. As a kid, Keith Rakestraw had learned how to track from Chief Dee, an old Army scout turned miner. Badge didn’t stand a chance at outsmarting him, outmaneuvering him.

  And Keith would have the last laugh, saving the milk-sop’s life when the Peabodys had him tied up and helpless.

  But what? Judge Audiss made a turn not leading anywhere toward Turkey Creek.

  A shiver, not from the cold, roughed the hair across the back of Keith’s neck. It wasn’t a shiver he felt often, and he always respected it.

  What was His Honor up to? And why had he lied?

  Chapter Three

  Barbara snorted the whole way to the Eagle River. Good heavens, how barbaric they grew men in the Wild West. Quicksilver was bad enough.

  But the sheriff, imagining she needed a keeper. Who imagined Badge Audiss needed a keeper, that is. Didn’t men have a mutual admiration society? And weren’t they both on the same side of the law?

  She couldn’t stop her next question. Would Keith Rakestraw have liked her if she’d allowed herself to be a woman? The thought blossomed in her mind for a quick second before withering like a weed. Mama had always declared any man in Philadelphia would have courted Barbara in a second if only she hadn’t ruined her prospects by battling to attend Union College of Law. Papa had pooh-poohed her ambition, too, patted her head like a puppy.

  But her great-aunt Henrietta had left Barbara her very own trust fund. To do with as she chose.

  Regret slid across her while a chill wind lifted the edges of Badge’s long coat. Not at matriculating Union College, not at the law, but regret at the masquerade. Regret that her attraction for the tantalizing sheriff could never bear fruit. And guilt, oh goodness, guilt raged worse than regret. She was a fraud, that’s what she was. Indeed, she upheld the letter of the law.

  Except the law that said females couldn’t be judges, a law she broke every single day. Sometimes the hypocrisy, righteous though she might be, took her breath away.

  If she was found out, wouldn’t all her verdicts be laid invalid?

  And wouldn’t she spend the rest of her life in jail?

  Sheriff Rakestraw
already loathed her. It wouldn’t take much at all for him to drag her to retribution if he found her out.

  Oh, Badge. What have we done? What have I done?

  Yet, a deathbed promise was an impossible vow to break.

  The wind froze her bones even through thick wool and the padding she’d sewn into Badge’s shirts to fit her sloping, girlish shoulders. As she urged Latigo across the bridge, the sky turned gray as a goose wing. The river beneath gurgled heavy with wind rushing down Mountain of the Snow Cross. Her stalwart, surefooted Medicine Hat gelding never failed her. Nor she him. She’d been born riding sidesaddle but had taken to the Western saddle like moth to flame, and Latigo recognized her talents. And she respected his.

  They took the trail up the creekside, still slushy from the last snow. Barbara let Latigo’s sure feet hug the sides so as not to leave fresh tracks down the middle. Every so often, she doubled back a few yards. She wouldn’t make it easy on the Peabodys if, in truth, they were after her.

  Something crunched in the trees to her left. Ice fingers ran up her spine. Sheriff Rakestraw’s mention of long rifles sniping at her wasn’t easy to forget. She fingered her Colt, but truth to tell, she had no experiences with ambush. Most everything she knew, including the law and the Wild West, she’d learned from books.

  Reining in Latigo, she decided to wait it out near a clutch of juniper. If it’s going to happen, Lord, please, let it happen now. The same prayer Badge had prayed, dying of a sudden sickness in Nebraska.

  Babby, take my place. We’re twins, one and the same. I had my chance. Now it’s your chance. Do this for me. Promise me…

  And so she had, burying him in the churchyard under a false name, vowing to complete his legacy. Which she had done.

  His legacy strengthened her. And no bullet plowed into her head. Into the dusky shadows, she tossed one of the unholy gestures she’d learned as a man. Hoped the Peabodys watched. Hoped they realized she wasn’t afraid.

  Even though she was. No matter the cold, sweat soaked her armpits. Her bones tightened against the saddle as she kneed Latigo to start up the trail. Good night and good morning, too. Her beloved brother in a false grave. Her crimes, her lies, her frauds had mounted fast.

  Saddlebags full of female clothes bounced against her legs. She relaxed a little. Out here, alone at the worn-out Mud Puddle mine, miles away from what little civilization Red Cliff offered, she could hide out, be a woman, Badge’s true sister, for a full seven days. Use perfumed soap and sip elderberry wine instead of whiskey. Lay Badge’s boots to rest for a while, and defer to her silk slippers.

  Badge hadn’t been wrong. He’d known she would do a good job, and so she had done. Still did, and planned to do. But these next days were hers. She smiled against the wind. Perhaps she’d go daredevil in six days time, return to Red Cliff in feminine regalia and catch the train to Leadville like a normal woman.

  In front of Keith Rakestraw and everyone.

  Then she laughed out loud. Chief Dee’s ramshackle claim was sure no place to lay out her femininity. But it was her claim and hers alone. Everything was legal. Until… She gulped. Until the world found out what a hoax she was. And she would be found out, someday. The guilty almost always were. Oh, those with a twin might recognize and respect the bond, take pity on what she’d done. And those who’d kept deathbed vows. But most people would want her neck.

  Nonetheless, now was now, and no one suspected her a woman.

  Wind whipped through her clothes as she and Latigo plowed through a thicket to get home. Such as the shack was. For the past two years, she’d worked hard in secret to hide the skinny path with deadwood and new plantings, cover the tailings with gravel and boulders. All of her childhood, keeping up with Badge’s endeavors had endowed her muscles and sinews with a strength uncommon to the delicacies of the modern female.

  She looked up to the gray sky and thanked her brother one more time.

  In Chief Dee’s old shed, she tended Latigo like a mama might her newborn, pampering him with hay and oats, water and blankets. For her bones told her the storm coming was a big one. Herself, she had food and firewood to last for days and days. Then she headed into the log shanty. Just last August, she’d filled the chinks with her own concoction of straw, mud and the plaster of Paris she’d managed to lug in from Leadville.

  Yes. Survival tactics she’d learned about in the books she now kept on hand for kindling.

  The cold from inside knocked into her chest when she opened the door. No matter. She’d laid the old stove before she left last month. Just a match light…

  Home. An iron bedstead in the corner big enough for two— Chief Dee had once had a wife—piled with a half dozen woolen blankets. Seeing them, her body cried out for warmth. The incongruous copper hipbath. An old spatterware pot ready to boil tea. Hot, sweet tea. Her mouth watered despite the primitive meals ahead. Tins of oysters and sardines, jars of pickles and brandied peaches. Oatmeal, dried beans, and a stash of raisins and walnuts.

  Desperate for release from her masculinity, she scrambled out of the overcoat, the wool frock coat. The thick dungarees and foolish padded shirt. The dreadful boots.

  Shivering, almost bare, she rushed to unbind her sore breasts.

  With the last binding unwrapped, she raised the treasure from her tender flesh and kissed it. The locket Great Aunt Hetty had given her. Two hearts hinged together, hiding tintype faces of Badge, taken on their twenty-first birthday almost ten years ago, and the aunt who had made so much possible.

  Aunt Hetty, thank you again. But oh, Badge.

  Babby, do this for me…in my memory.

  Eyes teared up for a brand new reason. The tight strips had somehow bent the hinge, for the locket wouldn’t open.

  Something crashed through the door.

  Her heart stopped, pounded. The locket crashed against the red gouges it had made in her flesh. She screamed.

  “What the hell? Who the hell?” A man’s voice shook the rafters of the puny cabin. “You’re a girl!”

  Bigger than Mount Massive and madder than a gamecock, Sheriff Keith Rakestraw yelled from the threshold of the miserable little hut.

  She caught one single breath, then found prudence enough to grab for a blanket. But it took him only two steps to get to her side and tear the henskin from her hands.

  “I said, who the hell are you?”

  Barbara managed to swallow her fear. “I’m not a girl. I’m a woman.”

  Without a reply, Keith Rakestraw ripped the false whiskers from her face, and her skin screamed along with her tongue.

  Chapter Four

  “Don’t you dare cover up,” Keith ordered, his confusion laid to rest at last. “Seeing it first hand, you being a female, comforts me somewhat. Been wondering about your pert nose. Those girlish blue eyes. Your overgrown face, yet tender white skin. Damn, now I know. You’re a fraud, Badge. A stinking, disgusting fake. We believed you a man. You…”

  “You followed me?” The voice still wore a burr, but it sounded more sweet and female, now he knew.

  “Told you up front I’d go along with you. The Peabodys…”

  “Well, I made it here just fine by myself, didn’t I?” She tightened arms across her chest. “The Peabodys obviously bear me no ill will.”

  “Obviously, I did need to follow you. Else I’d never find out our righteous judge was, is a…a…pettifogger.” Suspicion rolled through him. “Just what did you do to Badge Audiss? I know for a fact the Colorado Judicial System never hires females. Besides which…”

  He had no choice but to point his Colt at her head and throw her onto the bed. She shuddered but remained quiet, which both surprised and impressed him. Tiny pinpoints of blood rose on the cheeks where he’d torn away the whiskers. Ripping off his gun belt, he tucked the Colt in a pocket, buckled her hands to the iron bed frame. Damn, she was beautiful, lying there. He focused his mind on what he wanted to say.

  “This was Chief Dee’s place,” Keith spit out. “You turned it into
an outlaw’s hideout. You concealed it so good I’d not have found it without following you. What the hell are you doing in his claim?”

  “It’s not what you think.”

  The female yowled like a baby bobcat caught in a trap. Nothing like the heavy scrape of a voice that gave out verdicts. He kicked at a pile of clothes on the floor and the rank smell of stale cigar floated in the room like a foul cloud. Ah, he understood the raspy voice now: her constant smoking.

  “Things are always what I think.” He tossed a blanket across her. Not to comfort her gooseflesh, for sure. To douse his desire. Then he bent close and clicked his gun right at her ear. “Had some doubts about your pansy eyes. Never expected a female, though.” For a flash, the blue orbs sparkled at him, and he found himself not minding. “Now, who the he—ck are you?” Her being female, he disguised his cuss. “Where is our judge Henry Batchelor Audiss?”

  Her legs started to thrash, so he sat on them. “You better have some answers. I’m the law around here. You got a bounty on you, I got the right to bring you in alive. Or dead.”

  This time, blue eyes bloomed like columbine. “I am not an outlaw. I’ve a law degree. And this claim is legally mine. I concealed it like this, for privacy. Chief Dee passed it on to me before he died.”

  Keith narrowed his eyes. “He and a claim jumper shot each other to death after a long night of likker in Eagle County.”

  “But he lived long enough to pass me the title. Witnessed by three men. You see…” Her voice trailed off into the shadows.

  “What more foolery you gonna speak now?” he asked, turning his gaze from her lovely lips and threw another blanket at her.

  She didn’t look at him. “He was grateful to me. I settled the land dispute for him. He’d been gone a long time to see his dying mother…”

  “Yep. Missouri. And came back to a claim jumper squatting here. You were the judge? You?”

  “Yes.” She shrugged. “It was my first case.”