Renegade Most Wanted

chapter Thirteen



The teapot whistling on the stove woke Emma from a brief doze at the kitchen table. She lifted her head and gazed out the window. Dawn would be more than an hour away, judging by the deep hue of the sky.

She arched her back to ease the crick that had settled in it from her awkward nap in the chair.

All through the long night it had seemed that she’d done nothing but make tea in hopes that Lucy would swallow a gulp or two. According to the doctor, not getting enough to drink was the main threat to her weakening body. Her survival depended upon keeping her hydrated.

The doctor had done what he could, applying cold compresses to Lucy’s stomach to keep the vomiting down and whispering words of encouragement to his tiny patient.

He’d shown Emma how to wrap Lucy in warm wet sheets and then rub her with cold towels. But the main thing was to get her to drink and keep it down.

Peppermint had always relieved the little ones she’d tended, so that’s what she had been brewing all night long. The house smelled like the candy counter at Rath and Wright’s.

She stood up and walked to the stove. Her legs felt cramped from the short nap at the table. What wouldn’t she give to fill her copper tub with hot water and melt into it? That’s just what she would do at the first sign of Lucy’s recovery.

The kitchen door opened. Cold predawn air rushed in with Cousin Billy.

“Morning, Billy. I haven’t got the coffee brewed yet, but it will only take a few minutes.”

“Don’t trouble yourself. I just wanted to see how Lucy’s doing before I check the fences.”

“No change. Matt’s in the bedroom with her. Dr. Brown is resting in my room. The poor man hasn’t had a break since you brought him here.”

“I’ll check back in a few hours.”

Billy tugged on the brim of his hat. He closed the door and stepped onto the porch. Emma set down the teapot and rushed outside after him.

“Billy, wait.” She closed the back door but still spoke only half a note above a whisper. “Did you see Hawker in town? Did anybody say anything about…well, you know?”

“I took a peek at him.” Billy squeezed her elbow with his leather glove. “No need to worry, Emma. He’s nothing more than any other mortal man.”

“I saw him catch his hat right out of the air. He’s fast with his hands. What if he comes out here? Matt’s so tired and worn through he wouldn’t stand a chance.”

“Matt would have caught his hat before it ever let fly off his head. If you’re worried about Hawker coming here, don’t be. My cousin protects what is his own.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.”

A rooster crowed in the barn. In another hour the sun would pop over the horizon. Billy let go of her elbow and started down the steps as though the bird had been his signal to get to work.

“Emma.” Billy turned at the bottom step, looking up. “I apologize for Woody.”

“For Woody? Why on earth would you?”

“It was me that set you up to pair with him.” Billy picked at a splinter in the handrail of the steps. “Any fool can see that it was you and Matt all along.”

“Maybe you were right about me needing a man.” Emma came down the steps, stopping on the last one so that she was eye to eye with Billy. She kissed his cheek. “You only misjudged the one I needed.”

“I’m glad of that, cousin.” He grinned, then strode toward the barn.

Matt was a lucky man to have a cousin as devoted as Billy. They had grown up as close as brothers. She’d never spent much thought or regret on her past, but watching Matt’s family over the summer made her wonder. What might it have been like to grow up with someone of her own?

Mercy, but this was no time for fanciful yearnings. She had tea to force down a resisting child’s throat. She’d think about those things later, when Lucy was well and she had an hour to soak in her big brass tub.

* * *

It felt like a betrayal to leave Lucy’s sickroom. The only reason Matt did it was that Emma had forced a cup of coffee into his hand and told him he was making Doc Brown nervous.

“He can take better care of Lucy without you hanging over the bed.” She’d gently herded him and his steaming cup from the room. “Go outside and breathe some fresh air before the doctor has another patient to tend to.”

In the parlor Matt was surprised to see the preacher sitting on the couch with her hands folded in her lap, her head bent low in either sleep or prayer. She looked up when his boots scraped the floor.

“Good morning, Mrs. Sizeloff,” his mouth said out of habit, but this was far from a good morning. Even though the sun shone brightly on the prairie grass and streamed in through the windows it might as well have been midnight. “You haven’t been here all night, have you?”

Since he hadn’t been out of Lucy’s room in…how many hours, he’d lost track. It had been light when he’d last seen her and it was light again, with a night passing in between.

“Lands, no. Wouldn’t Josie have a time trying to care for little Maudie by himself? Infants aren’t the most agreeable folks if they’re hungry.”

He remembered that. Lucy used to raise a fuss if her bottle wasn’t at her lips the moment she needed to eat. Mrs. Sizeloff would be even more tied to her infant, since the baby was likely a nursling.

“It was good of you to come back. Looks like we need all the prayers the good Lord will listen to.”

“He’s got a wonderfully big ear. So do I.” She got up from the couch in a rustle of brown plaid. “Let’s take a walk in the sunshine and you can tell me what the doc thinks.”

Morning light was blinding after having spent so much time in a darkened sickroom. Without his hat to shade his eyes, he had to stare at the ground.

That suited him fine, since the happy blue of the sky looked too much like Lucy’s eyes had only days ago, alive with laughter and health. It felt as if a stone weighted his heart when he looked into her eyes now.

He led the preacher toward the well where the shade under the roof would give his vision some relief.

“Doc says there’s not much change since last night, but I think Lucy’s getting weaker. He’s trying to keep her from going into decline. If that happens—” Some words just shouldn’t be said—they hurt worse than physical pain. “There won’t be much hope.”

“There’s always hope.”

Matt looked at the preacher’s face. A blaze of white hair cut through the darker strands, streaking from her forehead to the bun tucked in a proper roll at her neck.

Folks in town said the streak had come from God. She’d asked him for it as a sign that a sick friend would recover from a terrible illness. According to the story, she’d got the streak and the friend had gotten well. He’d like to think the tale was true. Maybe she knew more about hope than he did.

“Sometimes things that seem bad turn around to be something wonderful,” she said.

He didn’t know what to say about that. He’d seen things that started bad get even worse.

“Take your own life, for example.” The doubt must have shown on his face. She smiled and patted his arm where it crossed his chest. “It’s not often a man goes from robbing a bank to falling in love and legally wed in the space of an hour.”

He sputtered, or gasped. He must have gone red as sunset, maybe pale as the moon. He sure couldn’t think of a blessed thing to say. A man couldn’t very well lie to the person who had spent untold hours praying for his daughter.

“It wasn’t so hard to figure out.” A chuckle shook her shoulders. She planted her hands at her waist and shuffled the dirt with the toe of her shoe. “I believe in hope, Matt. I also believe that love can happen in a minute.”

The woman might be a dove in God’s service, but she had the eyes and instincts of a hawk. He still couldn’t figure out what to say, so he offered her water.

“No, thank you,” she said, her eyes lighting with laughter. “There’s no call to look so green about the ears. Since I haven’t let on to the law about it by now, I suppose you are safe from me…and Josie, too. There are a few things I don’t understand, though, like why you only took ten percent. It’s a subject that’s kept my husband and me in conversation for many a night beside the fire. And then there’s Emma, of course. I would guess there’s an interesting story to be told there, if you had a mind to tell it.”

“Since you got the half of it, you might as well know the whole thing, so you don’t go believing I’m a common thief.”

He sat on the well and invited the preacher to do the same. Even though she had claimed not to need a drink, he could use a long one to tell what was more of a confession than a story.

He told her about the ten percent for Lucy. That easing of his conscience hadn’t stunned her one bit. She’d only nodded and stated that the sin had been on Lawrence Pendragon’s soul, not Matt’s.

That had always been his belief, but it was a comfort to have it confirmed by someone who was a professional in the wrongs and rights of spiritual matters.

As far as love in an hour? He shrugged his shoulders. “Emma didn’t love me when you married us. We’d only just met.”

“Mercy, Matt. I suppose everyone in the land office figured that.”

“The sheriff must have believed us. Otherwise, he’d have strung me up.”

“I imagine that’s what he thought he did. But then with you and your bride looking so lovesick at each other, and that kiss…! Well, no one could say otherwise.”

“My wife is quite a woman.”

“Whether you loved each other then or not, I’d say you love each other now.”

How much did a man reveal to his wife’s friend, preacher or not?

“We do.” Matt stood up. He liked speaking with Mrs. Sizeloff. It was a comfort to be able to say some things out loud. But maybe he’d been away from Lucy for too long. “But there are some issues with Hawker that need to be set straight.”

“By violence?” she asked, a deep frown creasing her brow.

“Shoot, Mrs. Sizeloff, maybe. Right now, with things the way they are, my family is in danger.” He felt the threat to his bones. Even though he wasn’t wearing his gun his hand touched the spot where it would be.

“You could pack up your family and go away.”

“I thought so at one time. I had hoped to convince Emma to come to California with me, but this land and her house mean the world to her. I can’t ask her to leave it behind.”

“Emma would love California, as well. I hear it’s paradise on earth.”

“I’ve heard the same, but as far as my wife is concerned, this hundred and sixty acres is paradise on earth. I can’t say I disagree.” Matt glanced toward the house, nervous that something might change while he was chatting.

“As wonderful as home can be, paradise isn’t a spot on a map. No sir, what I believe is that it is a place in the heart.”

“Family ties?” He believed the same.

The preacher stood up. She smoothed her palm over the streak in her hair, then fluffed out her skirt.

“Yes, exactly so,” she said with a pivot toward the house. “Don’t you give up hope. You’ll find a way out of this mess.”

* * *

A sulking mass of clouds gathered on the western horizon and obscured the first sunset of autumn.

The long day finally ended with Lucy getting no better. The good doctor, with great reluctance, had gone back to Dodge to set a cowboy’s broken arm.

Emma stood on the porch and gazed across the darkening prairie, watching for his return. Cold wind snapped the hem of her skirt. She drew her shawl tight against the chill. Dr. Brown had expected to return near nightfall and she had made sure to keep a plate of supper warming on the stove for him.

Inside, the house was too quiet. Outside, the land stretched away dim and ominous. When the doctor had departed, Rachael had tied her horse to the back of his buggy and ridden back to Dodge beside him. She, too, had been hesitant to return to town, but the demands of an infant had first claim on her time.

“I’ll be back in the morning…sooner if I’m needed,” she had vowed.

Emma shivered when a nippy gust pressed her backward a step on the porch, but she wasn’t sure that the trembling was due to the draft.

Needing the preacher sooner than dawn didn’t bear thinking of. To hear those words spoken had been nearly more than she could stand. The only reason she hadn’t collapsed in a weeping heap when she had heard them was that Matt had been standing beside her.

He’d barely breathed. His shoulders had straightened, then stiffened. Standing so close, she’d felt a shiver run over his body. Even though his jaw had clenched and flexed, he hadn’t cried out at the grievous thought.

That thought haunted everyone’s mind, for sure, but until noon today, no one had spoken the words aloud.

What nearly made her knees buckle seemed to leave Matt unshaken. She knew he must be terrified, but he had stood taller and acted braver than any man she’d ever met.

The long hours between noon and now had been bearable only because of Matt’s strength. She’d show him the same grit of spirit even though she felt fragile.

Since the doc wouldn’t appear on the road for all her staring at it, she went back inside the house. The teapot whistled for her attention, so she brewed up one more cup of peppermint tea that Lucy would not drink.

Earlier in the day the poor child would drink what was put in front of her lips then promptly lose it into a pan. Over the aching hours of the afternoon she had stopped doing even that. She’d turned her pale face toward the pillow and refused even the tiniest of sips.

Since liquid was what Lucy needed to stay alive, Emma carried the steaming mug into the bedroom with a smile of confidence. Unfortunately, the smile would soothe only Matt, since Lucy rarely opened her eyes anymore.

He sat in a rocking chair beside the window holding Lucy. His arms looked part strength, part tenderness drawing her close to his heart. The color of his shirt had deepened to a dark blue plaid where it had become soaked from the warm wet sheet tucked about her.

The chair rocked against the floor with a creak. Matt sang the song about Utah Carl saving the life of little Lenore. Emma remembered the song from that not so long ago night that Matt had driven her out to her homestead. Emma understood now that the song had been about Lucy’s father.

Did Matt sing it to Lucy because he believed that father and daughter would be together soon? Emma choked back a groan. She wasn’t ready to say goodbye to Lucy in such a way.

Waving goodbye from the station platform would have been sorrow enough. To lose Lucy to the grave would be unbearable.

Matt hummed for a moment, then looked up.

“I can’t tell if she hears me or not.”

Emma sat on the bed, shoving aside Princess to make room. The dog stood up, followed its tail in a circle, then settled beside Fluffy.

“I hear you, Papa.”

Lucy’s voice sounded thin and dry. Matt dipped his ear close to her tiny cracked lips. When she said no more he thumped his head against the back of the rocker with a long slow sigh.

Emma slipped to the floor in front of the rocker.

“Its Mama, baby. You’ve got to try and drink some of this tea.” She stroked the damp curls off Lucy’s forehead and wished that the moisture had not come from the sheet, but from sweet healthy sweat. “Please, take just a sip.”

Lucy shook her head once, weakly.

Emma took a small square of clean cotton from the pocket of her apron. She dipped it in the tea.

“Open her mouth and see if she’ll suck on this. Maybe enough will trickle down her throat to do her some good.” She sat back on her heels and watched Matt press the dripping cloth to Lucy’s lips. He dabbed her mouth to moisten it then slipped the peppermint rag into her mouth

“She’s taking it.” The first smile she’d seen in more hours than she wanted to count tipped the corners of Matt’s lips.

“Let’s try it again,” she said.

She dipped the rag into the tea three more times and Lucy sucked like a baby with her bottle.

“We’d better make that enough for now.”

“Pray God it stays down,” Matt said.

She touched his knee and nodded. “It will. This time it will.”

There was no way of knowing that, but sounding sure made her spine a little stiffer and her voice a bit firmer.

“Rachael wonders if it’s water that makes the children come down with this infantile cholera.” She stood up, moved Princess’s tail out of the way and sat once more upon the bed.

Thunder clapped in the distance. The sudden bang rattled the shutters at the window.

“The water looks clean enough. I wonder what would cause it to make folks sick.” Matt resettled Lucy in his arms, then drew her limp little body closer in the sodden sheet. A shiver caught his shoulders. He would be cold with his own clothing getting wet. Maybe in his concern for Lucy he didn’t notice it, or maybe he didn’t feel it worth the mention.

“I can’t figure it, but Rachael says the Chinese don’t get cholera and they don’t drink water, only tea,” she said.

Rain pelted the window, driven by sidelong wind.

Princess laid her warm black head on Emma’s lap and whined. The dogs had grown as listless as their young mistress. Emma traced a line with her finger from the tip of the pup’s nose to the gentle slope of her head. “Good pup.”

“Rachael has lived all over the place.” Lightning blanched the inside of the room in stark light for an instant before thunder crashed over the house. Emma felt the dog tense and whine until the room once again glowed with the soft light of the oil lamp. “She says whenever her husband gets the call to move on, they pack up the family and go.”

“They’ve been in Dodge for some years now.” Matt slowed his rocking to a creakless tilt. “I expect there’s plenty of souls need saving right here without having to move on.”

“That must be a relief to her.” Emma listened to heavy rain pulse and ripple across the roof. “Getting to put down roots someplace.”

“I reckon she’d tell you her roots aren’t in any kind of soil, but in her family’s heart.”

There was a good chance that was the very thing Rachael would say.

What good did those kinds of roots do Emma, now? As soon as Lucy was well, and she would be, heartache in one form or another would shatter her.

Buggy wheels crunched outside, passing the window.

Emma shooed the dogs away from the bed. “That must be Doc Brown.”

Matt laid Lucy down in the center of the mattress and trailed his finger over her sunken cheek before he straightened.

“I’ll go see to his horse.”

“He’ll want to dry off and have a bite to eat.” Emma took a step toward the door, but Matt caught her arm.

“Whatever happens…” Emma’s shoulder grazed his chest. She felt his damp shirt brush against her arm with his breathing. “I’m not sorry you caught me in the livery that day.”

“I’m not sorry, either.”

He kissed her.

One and a half heartbeats later he dashed out to meet the doctor.

* * *

Piano music, jangling out of the open door of the Long Branch, wasn’t a whit muffled by the rain pounding Front Street to mud.

Red pressed his back against the wall of the store on the opposite side of the street. Anyone gazing out of the saloon would not notice him standing under the porch overhang with rain sluicing off the roof and pelting the toes of his boots.

Blamed if the rectangle of light coming out of the saloon’s door did anything but let fresh air in and smoke rings out. For observing what went on inside, it wasn’t much. How was he to get a glimpse of Hawker if he didn’t get any closer than this?

Matt had forbidden him to go inside any of the saloons in town. He’d forbidden him to come to town at all. Next thing, Matt would forbid him to even think a wicked thought.

There would be hell to pay if he got caught standing here, so why not move a little closer, as long as he might have to pay for the crime, anyway?

Since he was near the size of a grown man, he could stand outside the door with his hat pulled low, as if he was a gambler taking a break from his winning streak. That way, he’d be able to see most of what went on inside.

Odds were against anyone in there recognizing him. Since respectable folk were cozied up in their homes at this hour, he wasn’t likely to get caught.

With the chances of being found out slim, Red took long bold steps through the muck and up the steps to the Long Branch.

Sure was a party going on inside there. It would be a fine thing to be able to join in if he was of a mood, but celebrating wasn’t much in his heart. With Lucy sick near to death and Matt and Emma near lovesick to death, a frolicking time didn’t seem fitting.

With a deep tug on the brim of his hat he took up his bored-gambler stance beside the door. A steady drip of water from his Stetson ticked against his vest. He took off his gloves and shoved them into his rear pocket. That made his fingers cold, but a gambler wouldn’t likely be standing about wearing homestead gloves.

He’d heard enough descriptions of Hawker to know that the killer was of medium height and bald as a doorknob. He might be the man sitting face toward the door no more than twenty feet in.

The fellow was thick around the middle, just as Emma had described him, and shifted the cards in his hands as quickly as Red’s eyes could follow.

He’d be a match for Matt if it ever came to it.

Red blew on his chilly fingers. A man of cards would do that so as not to let his luck run cold. Someday, if he lived through the thing he had to do, he’d try his luck at a game or two.

He didn’t hear the footsteps coming up the steps, but he heard the voice whispering in his ear clearly enough.

“You young saphead, what are you doing hanging outside the saloon in the rain?”

“You’re out here, too, Jesse, so I guess I’m no more of a saphead than you are.”

“I’ve got a legitimate reason to be out.” Jesse tugged on his elbow, pulling him out of eyesight of the saloon door. “You’re here looking for trouble.”

“That’s not exactly so. I’m looking to end trouble, is all.” How would he do that now, with Jesse showing up to make sure he didn’t?

“Any fool can see that you’re peeking in at Hawker. No wonder Matt worries about you so.”

“No one needs to worry about me. I’m near grown and fast as any man.”

“You’re too dumb to know just how dumb you sound.” Jesse took three steps down the boardwalk, then turned back. “You going to come to the livery and spend the night with me or just stand there and let the rain turn you into a drowned pup?”

“Ain’t no pup.” But the wetter he got, the colder he got. The stove in the livery sounded inviting. Besides, if he called out Hawker tonight, as he wanted to, his trigger finger would be too stiff to do the job.

He fell in step beside Jesse, eager for the warmth of the stove and maybe even some dry clothes.

“How’s Lucy faring?”

“Not good. Doc Brown is doing what he can, but I can’t hardly stand to see her looking so weak and pitiful.”

That was half the reason he had sneaked off. To see Lucy looking like a ghost broke his heart. Nothing was the same without her making things lively.

“Matt must be in a state,” Jesse said.

“He tries to act like he isn’t, but he was in a state before Lucy ever got sick.”

“All this business with Hawker’s got to be a strain.”

Jesse glanced over his shoulder at the saloon a block back.

“That’s part of it, for sure. The rest is that he wants Emma to go with us to California, but she won’t leave her house… . Jesse, you got anything to eat in the livery—for folks, I mean?”

“I can keep you fed and warm, just so long as you agree to stay put. I won’t have you hunting down Hawker during the night.”

A block away, a yellow light shone from Jesse’s room inside the livery. A full belly and a warm pile of straw to bed down on seemed more fitting at the moment than icy rain and justice.

“I’ll stay put for now, but Jess, I’m the one who ought to be facing Hawker.” He could do it, too. With just a little practice he would be a faster draw than even Matt, and that was saying something. “Matt’s only in this scrape because of me. If it hadn’t been for me, he wouldn’t have to go to California. He could stay here with Emma and be happy.”

Rain pelted his face so hard that it stung. He bent his head and lengthened his strides toward the livery.

“You were even more of a child then than you are now. Matt made his choice, Red. He never regretted it and doesn’t now.”

That didn’t change a thing. This was his fight. Once he took care of Hawker, Matt would be able to live the life he wanted with the woman he loved. He owed his stand-in father at least that much, likely a great deal more.

Besides, being young didn’t mean being slow. Lots of boys made a name with their gun. Billy the Kid, for one.

Red ignored Matt’s voice in his mind reminding him that The Kid was dead.

He would not end up dead. He would be the one to make everything come out right.