The Bridegroom

by Linda Lael Miller

  “Whiskey for me,” Hildebrand said.

  “Same,” Gideon agreed easily, drawing back a chair at one of the tables. “Some of that special stuff, though. The bourbon you keep locked up in the storeroom.”

  Ruby nodded, slipped out through the doorway behind the bar. It led into her office, Gideon knew, and from there, to the street. He hoped Ruby would heed what he’d been trying to tell her and get the hell out of there, but with her, there was no telling.

  Hildebrand sat down, and so did Gideon.

  They might have been acquaintances, meeting up again after a long separation, given the air of reserved cordiality they both assumed. Gideon shifted, on the pretense of settling back in his chair, and used his thumb to unsnap the narrow strip of leather that kept his .45 from riding up in its holster.

  Ruby returned with the whiskey Gideon had asked for, ignoring an irritated glance from her stepson, and filled two spotlessly clean shot glasses, brought them and the bottle to the table.

  Hildebrand looked up at her, and Gideon glimpsed a predatory glint in the other man’s eyes before he reached for his glass.

  Gideon left his own untouched, as if to savor the anticipation for a while. “Ruby,” he said casually, when she lingered next to the table just a little too long, “this is a private conversation.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Hildebrand agreed, solemnly reluctant. “It is.”

  Ruby hesitated for another heartbeat or two, and then turned in a swirl of costly skirts and lace-trimmed petticoats to head back behind the bar again. Maybe she hoped distance would suffice—in any case, she busied herself taking glasses from the shelf under that fancy imported bar and wiping each one until it gleamed.

  “Women,” Hildebrand said, with an amused shake of his head. “Nowhere around when you want one, and can’t blast ’em out of a room when you don’t.”

  Gideon made no comment; out of the corner of his eye, he was watching Ruby, wondering why she hadn’t taken the hint, gotten out of the saloon and stayed gone.

  She hummed a little ditty as she worked, but Gideon wasn’t fooled. Though she was a good twenty yards away, she could hear everything they said. Years in a rough and potentially dangerous business had honed her eyesight and hearing to a sharpness seldom seen, even among railroad detectives and Wells Fargo agents.

  So why wasn’t she following the dictates of those senses?

  The wondering was rhetorical; Gideon knew the answer only too well. Ruby kept a shotgun behind that bar, and sometimes a pistol, in case she needed more range. And she was sticking close to one or both.

  “You got anything to prove you’re the man my employers sent?” Gideon asked, still with easy affability, every bit as aware of Hildebrand’s every move, as he was of Ruby’s.

  “You doubt that I am?” Hildebrand countered, sounding unconcerned as he tossed back the contents of his shot glass.

  “I guess you could say that,” Gideon said.

  Hildebrand scowled, handed over a packet of documents, glanced once more at Ruby—earlier, Gideon had seen him scanning the back of the saloon several times, as though looking for a way out—and shook his head.

  Gideon did not trouble himself to read the papers; his instincts had already told him what he needed to know.

  “I do not fancy,” the stranger said sadly, “killing a woman.”

  The remark was incendiary, like a spark striking a pocket of gas in the depths of a mine.

  Things happened fast.

  Hildebrand drew a knife, brandishing it a couple of times, perhaps to show his prowess.

  Gideon overturned the table to put a momentary barrier between himself and the other man, drawing his .45 and rising in almost the same move.

  A shot boomed through the otherwise quiet saloon.

  Hildebrand’s eyes widened and, the knife falling soundlessly to the sawdust floor, he clasped his bleeding midsection with both hands.

  Gideon watched, his finger still on the trigger of his pistol, as the man dropped to his knees and pitched face-first into the sawdust.

  “Christ, Ruby,” Gideon gasped, after letting out the breath he’d been holding. “You just shot a man.”

  Ruby laid a rifle down on the bar with a heavy thump, smoke still wafting from its barrel. “Well, hell,” she said, “I couldn’t wait all day for you to get around to it.”

  “Better get a doctor,” Gideon said, reholstering the .45 he hadn’t fired. His shirt, he realized numbly, was soaked with the other man’s blood, still warm and sticky. It made him queasy. “Just in case.”

  “No ‘just in case’ about it,” Ruby answered, approaching but keeping her skirts clear of the pooling blood while Gideon crouched to check Hildebrand for a pulse. She glanced up at Gideon’s drenched shirt, frowned. “If I go to all the trouble of putting a bullet in somebody, I shoot to kill.”

  Ruby’s philosophy held true; the man who’d called himself Matthew Hildebrand was definitely dead.

  Gideon drew several deep breaths. The gun-blast had stirred up a ruckus out on the street; the law would be there any minute now. But there’d be no need for a doctor.

  “Better open the front doors, Ruby,” Gideon said.

  She nodded, got her keys, unlocked and drew back the heavy inside doors, leaving the swinging ones open to the daylight.

  And the first one through them was Rowdy. Seeing the dead man sprawled on the saloon floor and noting that Ruby and Gideon were the only other people in sight, he shoved his pistol back into his holster and crouched beside the body, just the way Ruby had done.

  “What are you doing here?” Gideon asked his brother. It was a stupid question, he knew, but after all, he’d just witnessed a shooting. The smell of blood was coppery in the heavy air, his shirt clung to his flesh in a way that made him half-sick, and tiny specks of sawdust were still settling.

  Maybe he was a little addled.

  “I’ll ask the questions, Gideon,” Rowdy said, straightening. “If you don’t mind.” He paused and a muscle bunched in his right cheek, unbunched again. “Matter of fact, I don’t give a damn if you do mind.” As Ruby had, Rowdy frowned at the mess on Gideon’s shirt.

  Flagstaff’s marshal, badge gleaming on his Sunday coat, banged through the swinging doors before Gideon could think of an answer that would set Rowdy back a pace or two. A thin-faced man, sparely built, the lawman wore a shoulder holster, with the pistol resting square in the middle of his solar plexus.

  “Rowdy?” he said, in a tone of surprised recognition. “Rowdy Yarbro?”

  “Chester,” Rowdy greeted the other man, with a nod. “It would seem we’ve had an incident here.”

  Chester approached, looking down at the corpse. Townspeople crowded in through the doorway behind him, like a flock of chickens set on pecking breadcrumbs off the floor of a farmhouse kitchen, but Ruby shooed them all right out again.

  “Don’t you damn fools know it’s against the law to set foot in here on a Sunday?” she scolded.

  “Our brother, Wyatt, and Sam O’Ballivan will be along soon, Ruby,” Rowdy said quietly, though his gaze was still boring right into Gideon’s hide. “I’d appreciate it if you’d let them in.”

  “Somebody want to tell me why there’s a dead man layin’ on the floor of a saloon that ought to be closed for business?” Chester inquired mildly, and after a long sigh, deftly turned the body over for a better look. “I got up from the Sunday dinner table to come here, and my Lucille’s roast beef is gettin’ colder by the minute on my plate.”

  “There’s a dead man on my floor, Chester Perkins,” Ruby said, “because I shot the sorry son of a bitch with that rifle over there on the bar. Barrel’s probably still hot.”

  Chester stood, looked Gideon over thoughtfully, then wandered to the bar, tested the barrel of Ruby’s rifle with a touch of his fingers, and drew them away quickly, wincing a little.

  That was when Wyatt and Sam shouldered their way through the curious crowd outside and strode into the saloon, Wyatt in the lea
d.

  “Are the wives and kids along, too?” Gideon asked dryly, shoving a hand through his hair, resting the other across his middle.

  “Shut up, Gideon,” Rowdy said grimly. “You may or may not be in trouble with Marshal Perkins here, but you are sure as hell up to your neck in shit with me.”

  “You want to whup him, Rowdy?” Wyatt drawled easily, wincing with distaste when he caught a look at poor, gut-shot Hildebrand lying there on the floor with his eyes wide-open, staring upward into eternity now that Perkins had rolled him onto his back. “Or shall I?”

  Gideon took a threatening step forward. After all he’d been through that morning, his temper was frayed, and he was in no mood to put up with any “big brother” crap. “You’re welcome to try—either one—or both—of you.”

  Sam O’Ballivan stepped between the two men. “Rowdy,” he said, “stand down until you can get a grip on your good sense. Gideon, you’d do well to take your brother’s advice and shut up.”

  Gideon colored up, bit back a response.

  Sam’s gaze dropped to Gideon’s shirtfront, and his eyebrows drew together.

  “We got to sort this out,” Chester said. “Might be, Lucille’s keeping my plate warm and I can get back to that fine dinner before it all dries out.”

  “I told you what happened, Chester,” Ruby said impatiently. “I shot him.”

  “The events leading up to that,” Chester answered, “are of some interest to me.” His gaze shifted back to Gideon, and for all the folksy talk and the lamentations over his Sunday dinner, Gideon saw a formidable intelligence in the marshal’s eyes. “What was your part in this, young fella?”

  Drawing a deep breath and letting it out slowly, Gideon recounted meeting Hildebrand in the graveyard, coming to Ruby’s to talk in private, and how the other man had suddenly pulled a knife. He’d turned the table onto its side and drawn his .45, fully intending to fire it, but—and he flushed at this part—Ruby had been faster.

  Chester listened to all that, the tip of his tongue making a bulge in his right cheek. When Gideon had finished, he sighed and shook his head.

  “You say he called himself Hildebrand?” Chester asked.

  “Matthew Hildebrand,” Gideon confirmed.

  Chester bent, gingerly folded back the sides of the dead man’s gore-splattered coat, felt the pockets, probably looking for some kind of identification. He didn’t find anything, and for some reason, Gideon didn’t tell him about the documents, which must have been lying there in the sawdust someplace close by.

  The lawman didn’t speak until he’d straightened up again. “There was a man by the name of Matthew Hildebrand murdered down in Phoenix last night,” he said. “I got a wire about it before Lucille and I went to church this morning—said I ought to be on the lookout for a fella matchin’ this man’s description. I guess I can wire the federal marshal back and tell him we got his suspect right here in Flagstaff.”

  Sam put a hand on Rowdy’s shoulder, and a hand on Gideon’s, and pressed them into chairs at the next table. Wyatt joined them, and Ruby got out the good whiskey and poured a round for everybody.

  Chester Perkins made no arrests owing to the blatant violation of the Sunday liquor law.

  The undertaker arrived, word of the killing having spread on its own, with two helpers and an old wooden door. “Chester,” the mortician said, patting at his sweating forehead with a wadded handkerchief, “you’d better disperse that crowd out there. This fella ain’t a fit sight for the ladies, and we didn’t bring a blanket.”

  Chester nodded, went over to the swinging doors, and ordered the gathering to move on.

  Ruby, meanwhile, disappeared into the back of the saloon, where the living quarters were, and returned with an old quilt.

  “I just had this sawdust put down fresh,” she said, shaking her head at the mess as she offered up the covering.

  The mortician and his youthful assistants hoisted the corpse onto the door and draped it with the quilt.

  “Much obliged, Ruby,” the mortician said. “You won’t be wanting this coverlet back, I reckon?”

  Ruby wrinkled her nose, shook her head.

  Chester appeared to be ready to go back to his roast beef dinner, but he paused by Gideon’s chair, laid a hand on his shoulder. Squeezed with vice-strong fingers. “I’ll have no trouble keeping track of Ruby,” he said quietly, “but where would I find you, young fella, if I should happen to get a yen to jaw a while?”

  Gideon sighed. “Stone Creek,” he said. A sudden chill overtook him, rattled his bones.

  “Chester,” Rowdy said wearily, “he’s my brother—Gideon Yarbro. Wyatt and I will see that he’s available if you have any more questions—but we surely do mean to take him home.”

  Gideon’s mind flashed on another saloon, down in Phoenix, when two big men had come in to take their pa home, so their ma could attend a pie social, and he sighed again. He didn’t have it in him, at the moment, to fight being taken away like old Horace had, but the way Rowdy was talking made his back molars grind together just the same.

  He might have been sixteen again, to hear Rowdy tell it.

  “Are you finally ready to admit you’ve been working for the greedy sons of bitches who own that copper mine?” Rowdy demanded of Gideon, when Chester had gone and the undertaker and his helpers had hauled the dead man out on the door they’d brought along for the purpose.

  Gideon leaned forward in his chair, thinking maybe he had some fight left in him after all, but Wyatt put a hand on his chest and prevented further bloodshed.

  “I meant to resign,” Gideon allowed grudgingly, but only after letting Rowdy’s question dangle in the dust-flecked air for a while. “Would have, too, if that rounder had really been who he said he was.”

  Rowdy let out a sigh, and Gideon heard relief in it. And something else, too. Tensed as Rowdy’s gaze shifted from Gideon’s face to Wyatt’s, and then back again.

  “Gideon, since you didn’t know our brother Nick, I don’t expect you’ll do any grieving,” Rowdy said, very quietly. Then his eyes connected with their elder brother’s. “Wyatt, Nick died a couple of weeks ago. Consumption. I found out this morning.”

  Nick was, just as Rowdy had said, little more than a name to Gideon. Same with Ethan and Levi, the twins, though all three men were as much his brothers as Rowdy and Wyatt. It seemed a damn strange thing, not to know such close kin.

  Wyatt’s broad shoulders lowered a little, and he resettled his hat. “Reckon he’s been prayed over and buried by now,” he said in a voice Gideon had never heard him use before. “No sense heading back there to pay our respects.”

  “No,” Rowdy said, low and quiet. “No sense in that.”

  Gideon looked from Rowdy to Wyatt and back again. Nick was a real person to them, not just a name. A brother. And for a moment, he hated being so much younger, and not having the same memories they did. Even when those memories could only spawn sorrow.

  “What kind of man was he?” Gideon asked. “Nick, I mean?”

  “Never got the hang of outlawing,” Wyatt recalled, as if Gideon hadn’t spoken, wasn’t even there at all. “Pappy used to say Nick was so bad at it, he’d rather he stayed back to keep the campfire burning.”

  “Nick didn’t have the knack,” Rowdy agreed fondly, but he was talking to Wyatt, leaving Gideon on the outside. “You suppose he ever got married? Had kids and the like?”

  “I doubt Nick could have stayed sober long enough to walk down the aisle,” Wyatt said.

  “He was my brother, too,” Gideon put in. And after blurting that out, he did feel like a kid—again. One that had spoken out of turn, in a situation where silence was golden. His silence, at least.

  Rowdy turned to him then, with a combination of sadness and amusement in his face and in his voice. “Yes, he was. Nick was blood kin to you, Gideon. Same as Ethan and Levi are. But families are strange sometimes and, all in all, I’d say you were better off not to have made Nick’s acquaintance, nor Et
han’s and Levi’s, either.”

  “Amen,” Wyatt said quietly.

  Rowdy leaned a little closer to Gideon. “Where’s my horse?” he asked. “The one you borrowed to come here and damn near get yourself killed?”

  Evidently, the brotherly talk, which had spanned all of a sentence or two, was at an end. “At the livery stable,” Gideon said, after releasing his jaw. “I’ll get him and we’ll start for home.”

  “Sam’s and my horses need to rest a while,” Wyatt put in. “We rode ’em pretty hard, trying to get here and save your skin.”

  Ruby had beaten them to it, that was the implication, though neither Wyatt nor Rowdy said so outright.

  Which was a damn good thing, from Gideon’s point of view.

  “Guess I’ll just ride back on my own, then,” Gideon said stiffly, pushing back his chair to stand.

  “Not looking like that, you won’t,” Rowdy said. “You’ll scare the women into next week if you do.”

  Gideon glanced down at himself, realized his clothes were stained with the stranger’s blood. Or was it his own?

  Ruby, who had been holding court out on the sidewalk, probably explaining to all and sundry how Gideon Yarbro would surely have been in a grave next to his sister, Rose, as soon as the arrangements had been made if it hadn’t been for her, reentered the saloon.

  Wyatt frowned, leaning to get a closer look at Gideon’s shirtfront. “I thought that dead fella must have spurted on you when Ruby blasted a hole in him, but now, I’m not so sure.”

  Gideon stood there, thinking he couldn’t have been cut. He’d seen the flash of the other man’s knife, but he’d been on his feet with his gun drawn in practically the next moment. There was no pain, either—he was just numb.

  Everywhere.

  “I’m all right,” he said, without his usual certainty.

  Rowdy and Wyatt and Sam were all on their feet by then.

  “Open your shirt,” Wyatt told him.

  Gideon pulled his shirttails out—if they wanted proof that he hadn’t sprung a leak, he’d give it—and worked the buttons. Felt a draft through the fabric of the garment where there shouldn’t have been one.