The Bounty Hunter

by Cheryl St. John

  Lily picked one up and dried it as she glanced around.

  The room held a table and chairs, a stove and an old china hutch, which was empty.

  “I’ll show you the rest of the house if you want to see it. I’ve ordered furniture.”

  She nodded, trying to find the correct words now that she was here.

  Nate washed and rinsed the last fork and then dumped the basin outside the back door. “Sorry if I was out of line earlier,” he said, drying the basin and hanging it on a nail on the wall.

  “No.” She dried a plate and found the shelf where it went. She played with a loose thread on the towel. “You were pretty much right.”

  Nate’s eyebrows lifted in surprise. He hung his towel and propped his hands on his hips.

  “That’s all I’m going to say. You were right about me not being willing to let anybody help me.”

  “Okay.”

  “And I want to take you up on the partnership and let you pay for everything we need to get the hotel running.”

  He smiled then. “All right. We’ll get started tomorrow.”

  She dried the forks and handed him the towel she held, and he hung it behind him. “Show me the rest of your house.”

  He led the way through the downstairs, then gestured for her to go upstairs first. His room was the only one with furniture, and it held a bureau and a bed covered only by a wool blanket. His washstand was a stack of crates with a bucket on top.

  “You said I was right,” he began.

  Lily looked at a comb on the bureau instead of at him.

  “Does that mean you might’ve been wrong about a few things?”

  “A few,” she admitted. There were half a dozen pennies lying beside the comb. She touched one with her fingertip.

  “Think you might’ve been wrong about us?”

  Lily looked over her shoulder. “No, I don’t.”

  When her gaze traveled to the doorway, he backed away so she could make her escape. At the bottom of the stairs she paused. “We can go through the catalogs in the morning, if that suits you. I’ve already started lists.”

  “I’m sure you have.”

  “I’ll probably see you tonight.”

  “Probably.”

  Lily let herself out onto the porch and hurried down the steps and toward the street.

  It was full dark and the saloon was filled with patrons when Celeste came to get Lily.

  “There’s a woman out back. She won’t talk to me. She wants you.”

  “I’ll go, thank you.”

  Lily hurried to the back door and opened it to find Catherine Douglas with her face hidden behind the folds of a scarf.

  “Are you hurt?”

  Catherine lowered the green silk to reveal a swollen and bloody lip.

  When Lily took her arm, Catherine gasped in pain.

  “I’ll get ice and some water. Go on up to my room.”

  A minute later she found Catherine sitting on the end of her bed, sobbing.

  Lily dipped a cloth in warm water and knelt in front of her. “What happened?”

  Catherine took the cloth from her and dabbed at her own mouth. “I burned the letter you sent, but there was a scrap of it remaining in the ashes.”

  “He saw my letter?”

  Catherine shook her head. “No, only a few words remained, nothing readable.”

  “What was the harm?”

  “He accused me of having a lover. Of carrying on a tryst behind his back. I told him it was only a letter from a woman friend.”

  “He didn’t believe you?”

  “He’s not rational when he gets like that.”

  “And you couldn’t tell him it was from me.”

  “He would have beaten me regardless of who it was from.”

  “Not if it had been from another woman and not me, Catherine. It’s all my fault this happened this time. I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault. It’s because he’s unreasonable and doesn’t allow me to have friends.”

  Lily took the cloth from Catherine’s hand and rinsed it. This time she insisted on washing the cuts on her face.

  “Would it make any difference if I told him I wrote the letter?”

  “I don’t think so. And then he’d know where I went on these nights, Lily, and I don’t want him to know. This is where I am safe. You are my place of refuge from him and his outbursts of rage.”

  “Of course. You’re right.” Angrily she wrung out the rag and draped it over the washbowl. She then brought the wrapped ice for Catherine to hold against her lip. “Let me see your arm.”

  Catherine allowed her to roll back her sleeve, and they both looked at the bruises. “We’ll put ice on that, too.” She backed away and sat on an overstuffed chair. “I despise that I had to do business with him to get the hotel.”

  “I wish you hadn’t done it, either.”

  “Why?”

  “I just don’t have a good feeling about it. He doesn’t talk about his work to me, but I’ve heard him mention your holdings and properties several times. I’ve looked at papers on his desk at home, and he makes lists of things. He even had documents from the assayers about your properties.”

  “He probably did that for the loan I just got.”

  She shook her head. “It was months ago. I should have told you, but I didn’t know what it meant. I still don’t.”

  Lily didn’t, either, but she knew she didn’t like Amos Douglas looking into her affairs.

  “It’s going to be all right,” Lily told her. “You’re going to stay here and get a good night’s sleep. We’ll think on it again in the morning.”

  “Thank you, Lily.”

  “You’re welcome. And Catherine, that son John of yours is a fine young man. I watched him during the ball games.”

  “Thank you, Lily.”

  Lily laid out bedclothes and a wrapper for Catherine, then brought her a cup of tea.

  By the time she returned to the dance hall, she’d missed the sheriff’s round.

  SHE SLEPT in her sitting area that night. The chaise longue that had been Antoinette’s was every bit as comfortable as her bed. Her dreams were elusive images of lost and hungry women, and Lily didn’t have enough soup to feed them all. She woke with a start to the muffled sound of a rifle shot.

  Not all that unfamiliar in this town, but unsettling all the same. Someone could have been shooting at a fox getting to their chickens.

  “Did you hear that, Lily?” Catherine called from the other room.

  Lily got up. “I did.”

  She opened the front window and looked down onto the empty street.

  Another shot sounded just then, the sound echoing hollowly.

  An upstairs window at the saloon opened and Old Jess stuck his head out.

  “I’m thinking we should go look,” Lily called.

  Jess’s head ducked back in.

  Lily pulled on her dressing gown and slipped her feet into her shoes. “Stay put,” she told Catherine and took a derringer from a drawer.

  Saul and Jess met her on the boardwalk. They stepped into the silent street and looked up and down.

  “It came from that way,” Lily said.

  They started down the street, and Wade Reed opened his door and stepped out carrying a rifle and pulling up his suspenders.

  “Look, Miss Lily!” Saul pointed to a finger of flame reaching up from the other side of the street and behind the row of buildings.

  “Damned if it ain’t the hotel!” Wade stopped in his tracks, raised his rifle and fired three rapid shots into the air.

  Heart hammering, Lily ran toward the building where Naomi Waldrop and her five children were staying.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  SHE DIDN’T HAVE THE KEY, LILY realized. They couldn’t get in the front door. “Saul, go back. Run up to my room and get my key ring off my bureau. There’s a woman in my bed, don’t frighten her.”

  Saul turned and followed her orders.

  She and J
ess reached the hotel and she beat on the front door. “Check the windows,” Wade called.

  Old Jess ran to do that and Lily took off around the rear of the building.

  Flames were shooting out a window, but the back door stood open. She was a good thirty feet away when she saw a man dash out the back door and stagger away toward the cover of the other buildings in the alley.

  Lily took the derringer out of her pocket, but she couldn’t hit anyone at this distance.

  The Waldrop family was in danger, so she let him go and ran inside. “Naomi! Boone!” she screamed.

  The kitchen window frame and the surrounding cabinets were on fire, and that appeared to be the extent of the threat so far.

  Old Jess entered behind her.

  “Jess, pump water. There’s still pails beside the door there.”

  “Naomi!” Lily tore toward the other rooms and found the woman ushering her children toward the front door.

  “Thank God!” Lily followed them outside, where Wade met them. “There’s a fire in the kitchen,” she told him.

  He ran past her into the hotel.

  “What happened?” Lily asked Naomi.

  The woman took the crying baby from her oldest daughter and comforted him. “I shot him.”

  “Who?”

  “The man who was setting the fire.”

  “You saw someone setting the fire?”

  She nodded. “I heard sounds echoing from the kitchen, and I got my rifle and went to see what it was. He was making a fire along the back wall. He was surprised to see me, and he jumped up and pointed a gun at me. I did what came natural and shot first. Shot him twice.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “It was dark and he had on dark clothing. He was just a man. But I think he’s hurt bad. I didn’t miss with either shot.”

  Several men came running then, among them Harold and George, and Lily directed them to the kitchen.

  Nate showed up a few minutes later. “Everybody all right? What happened?”

  “Naomi surprised someone starting a fire,” Lily told him.

  “Where is he?”

  “He held his belly and ran out the rear door,” Naomi told him.

  “You’re sure it was a man?”

  “Pretty sure. It was dark, but it looked like a man.”

  Several women stood in the street, and Evangeline broke away from them to approach. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  Naomi looked from the young woman to Lily.

  “The children are pretty frightened,” Lily said. “You could comfort them. You could take them to my place so they can go back to sleep. One of the women will show you a room.”

  The women standing a few feet away murmured, but Evangeline ignored them and took the baby from Naomi. “I’d be glad to do that. Come along, sweet-lings, we’re going to find you a nice cozy bed for the night.”

  Lily covered her surprise by nodding her approval.

  “Can I stay here, Ma?” Boone asked.

  Naomi looked from her son to the young woman. “Just the girls and little Ben. Boone will stay with me for now.”

  Evangeline smiled and herded the children toward the Shady Lady.

  George came around the side of the hotel. “Fire’s out. Probably need to keep an eye on it overnight, though, just in case.”

  “Thank you, George,” Lily called. The other men who’d helped soon followed him on their way toward their homes. The women dispersed.

  “Me ’n’ Saul will stay to keep an eye on things,” Old Jess offered.

  “I need to have a look around,” Nate told Lily and Naomi.

  Whoever had set the fire hadn’t been expecting a woman and children on the premises. He’d felt perfectly safe breaking into an empty hotel to set a fire. It was too dark to see much tonight, but the door looked just fine to Nate. The only window broken was the one where the fire’d burned, so it was possible the man had broken it to gain entrance.

  Nate peered at the smelly, soggy mess on the floor, the gaping black opening where the wall had burned around the window, and then inspected the back door. There had been only a few people out after the shots were fired, but tomorrow he’d ask everyone if they’d seen someone running from the hotel.

  First person he’d go check with was Doc Umber. If the man’d been shot badly, he couldn’t get too far.

  LILY AND NAOMI WASHED their faces and hands in the bathing chamber, then Lily led her up the stairs and into a small bedroom that held two beds and a cot. A lamp burned low on the bureau, and Evangeline was sitting in a rocking chair, holding the sleeping baby.

  “I’ve never known people as kind as those in this town,” Naomi said. “Thank you, both of you.”

  “I didn’t do much,” Evangeline told her. “Your children are very sweet and well behaved.”

  “I feel responsible for what happened tonight,” Lily said. “I don’t even want to think about what could have happened if you hadn’t heard that man and caught the fire before it spread. I’ve had way too much experience with the damages of fire recently, but at least it’s all been property lost and not lives.”

  “You’re not responsible,” Naomi assured her. “And God was watching out for us.”

  “You sleep here with the children,” Lily told her. “I should have insisted you didn’t stay alone.”

  They left the Waldrops in their room, and Lily accompanied Evangeline downstairs. “I could use a cup of tea,” Lily said. “How about you?”

  As usual, Lily was dressed inappropriately and her hair was flying askew while Evangeline wore a proper dress and had her hair neatly plaited.

  “I’d love a cup,” she replied, and took a seat at the kitchen table. “Your home is very warm and inviting.”

  “I’ve always felt safe here.” Someone had recently stoked the fire in the stove, so it only took a few minutes for the water to heat. Lily steeped the tea and poured.

  “You’re not what I expected,” Evangeline said.

  Lily looked into the clear-blue eyes of the woman she’d urged Nate to court. “Neither are you.”

  “I admire you, Miss Divine.”

  “You do?”

  She nodded. “You don’t live your life by what others expect of you.”

  “Sadly enough, in a way I do.”

  “How’s that?”

  “I know you’re thinking I don’t bend to society’s mores or conform to what people think is proper and acceptable.”

  “Isn’t that so?”

  “It is so. But people do expect particular dress and behavior from me because of the mistaken conclusions they’ve drawn. Not only do I live up to those expectations, I go above and beyond.”

  “Like wearing your red dress to the base ball game.”

  “Like that.”

  “It was a sight to behold,” Evangeline told her. “I can see why Nathaniel admires you so.”

  Lily paused with her cup halfway to her lips. “Nathaniel?”

  She nodded. “I’ve heard the sheriff when he speaks of you.” She kept her hands in her lap. “I’ve seen the way he looks at you.”

  “I assure you I don’t have any claim or designs on the man,” Lily told her. “My hope was for him to endear himself to you and for you to return his devotion.”

  “When we’re together, I sense the guarded reactions of a trapped animal,” Evangeline told her. “And to be quite frank, he makes me feel the same way.”

  “You don’t have feelings for him?” Lily couldn’t bear it if this girl broke Nate’s heart.

  “I have affection for him,” she answered. “But not the kind of feelings that make me want to sacrifice. Not the kind of feelings that the great poets write about when they pen sonnets of enduring love. I could love him…” She paused and seemed to be gathering her thoughts. “But I would never hold the passion for a marriage that I hold for discovering what other avenues await me.”

  “I underestimated you,” Lily said. “I did something I abhor others doi
ng. I assumed. Because you’re a young lady of privilege and you’re pretty and bright and just so…feminine and perfect, I assumed you were looking for a husband. He would make a fine one.”

  “My doubt isn’t regarding Nathaniel’s suitability as a husband. It’s about my own fulfillment. I’ve been confused. My parents want exactly what you’ve assumed. I’ve been tutored and trained and taught until my head swims with the knowledge of what society demands I should be and do.

  “I’ve never spoken about this to another soul, Miss Lily. It’s just that I know you’re a free-thinking woman and you inspire me to follow my own drummer.”

  Lily listened with growing trepidation and hard-won understanding. “I’m a big phony.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “It’s true. I’ve exhausted my energies making sure I’m independent and owing nothing to any man. But when the smoke has cleared, when I dare to look into that secret corner of my heart—I want the same thing that everyone wants. I want to love and be loved.” A tear dropped from Lily’s cheek to her hand on the cup.

  “That’s not fake,” Evangeline said. “That’s real. It doesn’t mean you have to give up anything, any bit of your independence. A love like that shouldn’t mean taking away from who you are, but rather adding to. I want that one day, too. One day when I know I’m all I want to be before I let someone make me something else.”

  “I’m sorry I underestimated you,” Lily said.

  Evangeline smiled. “I’m sorry I never had the courage to speak to you like this before. Or to befriend you openly.”

  “We’re quite a pair, aren’t we? What will your parents say when they know you don’t want to marry the sheriff?”

  Evangeline spread her fingers on the tabletop. “I’m sure I’ll find out soon enough.” She stood. “It’s quite late—or early, I’m not sure which anymore. I’d better get a few hours’ sleep before morning.”

  “Thanks for your help.”

  Lily walked her to the front of the house and stood on the boardwalk to watch Evangeline make her way home. She locked up the house and made her way upstairs.

  She entered her room to find that Catherine was not in her bed. Nor was she anywhere else in the room or the house. Lily thought sadly that Nate had been right about more than one thing. She couldn’t take in and care for the whole world. She couldn’t even help all of those who came to her. All she could do was give it her best.