Renegade Most Wanted

chapter Sixteen



Nighttime in Dodge seemed the same in any weather. Rowdy tunes plinked out of open saloon doors, men laughed and argued, cards shuffled and chips chinked on tables. Driving rain or sweltering night made no difference in the buzz of activity.

Life on Front Street seemed as normal as peas even though the tension in Matt’s gut nearly doubled him up.

During the charge from the homestead to town the rain had slowed to a steady drizzle, but the wind howled and swirled.

Cold mist covered his face in a clammy sheet. Lanterns squeaked on hooks up and down the boardwalk. Their sway shot beams of light over the muddy street, then twisted them back to stab jumpy lines on the boardwalk again.

“I’ll ride toward the livery,” Billy said, rising in the stirrups then resettling his weight. “We could use Jesse’s help.”

Matt settled his soggy hat on his head. It wasn’t much cover, but it helped to slow the trickle of rain seeping under his shirt.

“Cousin, if we part ways tonight, take care of my family.” Emma would be grieved to hear that kind of talk, but the ride to town had turned his fingers stiff with cold. If he were forced to face Hawker like this, he would lose.

“Hey now, it won’t come to that. But if it sets your mind at ease, I’ve got your back.” Billy turned his horse toward the livery. Its hooves sucked at the muddy street, slowing what needed to be quick action.

Everything about tonight seemed slowed by the weather. Hawker was likely inside somewhere, keeping his shooting finger warm and swift.

“Where are you, Red?” Matt whispered even though he wanted to shout.

Thoughts of Emma crowded his brain, filled his senses. He closed his eyes, breathed in the moist night air and looked at the images of her behind his eyelids for the length of a sigh. Then he put her away.

Without success, he tried to call up the rash young man he had been, with no ties but the one between his hand and his weapon. That boy was gone, and in his place a husband and father, dead set on protecting what was his own.

He felt his determination swell, but also his vulnerability.

“Come on, boy,” he murmured to Thunder. “Not enough ruckus in the saloon to let on that a green kid is inside calling out a gunfighter. Chances are Red is hiding out behind one of these buildings watching for Hawker.”

Matt hunched his shoulders against the chill and rode a block to the land office. Red knew of the hiding place behind it from their bank-robbery days. It was a logical place for him to be now.

Nothing seemed amiss at first sight. Matt slid off the saddle and tied Thunder’s reins to a bush.

He strode a few steps away from the horse, then stopped to listen. The night sounds that used to strike him as lively and exciting during his trail days now seemed tawdry.

Over the whiskey-primed laughter and the shuffle of the wind he strained to hear the voice of a boy who was too young to know that courage was not enough to triumph over a bullet. Red’s adolescent sense of honor would plant him in the grave unless Matt found him soon.

He tucked his right hand under his armpit and hurried in the direction of the mercantile, his breathing shallow so that the hiss wouldn’t cover the sound of trouble he was listening for.

Slowly his fingers warmed under his arm. Not enough to give him an advantage over a man who had been inside all evening, but with any luck, Hawker had been drinking.

“Punk—” The single word barked out from the south, the direction he was headed. The rest of what the voice said blew away in the wind.

Matt took three long strides with mud slick beneath his boots and then heard, “I’m not too young to put a hole through you!”

Damn! Red’s voice, high-pitched and flushed with excitement, came from a few buildings down. He’d never get there in time.

Matt raced for the boardwalk. Mud-caked footwear slid on the wet wood. He scrambled for balance, then ran past the bank. His boots sounded slow and muffled.

His heart whomped against his ribs in anticipation of a gunshot.

The shot cracked the instant he scooted into the alley that bordered the mercantile. He saw Red standing at the rear of the building. Smoke circled the tip of his gun.

Matt reached for his weapon on the run.

“It’s a fool thing to want to die so young,” an unseen stranger’s voice said.

Reaching the corner of the building, Matt spotted the man who must be Hawker, shaking his head, looking almost sorrowful. In spite of the regret, he lifted his firearm, taking aim at Red’s chest.

Red should have fired again but he stood still, paralyzed by fear.

“Hawker!” Matt yelled, skidding in the mud a few feet in front of Red. Fingers that needed to be flexible felt like frozen twigs.

Hawker fired his gun.

The impact of the bullet knocked Matt back and to his knees. Fire flashed through his arm, from shoulder to wrist. His hand turned useless. Stiff fingers dumped his Colt into the mud.

He glanced behind him, but Red was dazed and continued to stand as he was, his gun fallen nose-first into the muck at his feet.

“Run, boy!” Even Matt’s voice felt on fire.

“Whoa here!” Hawker strode forward, his posture confident with easy victory. “Looks like I’ve got me two for the price of one.”

He kicked Matt’s gun away with his muddy boot toe.

“Let the boy go, Hawker. He’s just a kid.”

“Your kid, is he?” Hawker wiped the rain off his nose with his sleeve. “Seems to me I’ll kill him first, just so you know what it feels like to lose someone.”

He lifted the gun and sighted it, dead center on Red’s chest.

Red’s piece was only two feet behind Matt, but it might have been a mile.

Hawker gave an ugly half-faced smile. Matt lunged aiming his wounded shoulder, the one closest to the killer, at the man’s knees.

Hawker’s arm swung down. Matt felt the scrape of cold metal against his neck. His shoulder exploded in pain when it slammed into Hawker’s leg.

A shot echoed between the buildings.

Hawker’s knees hit the ground. His gun rocked in the crook of his finger before it smacked into the mud. With blank eyes, he crumpled on top of it.

Rain crashed down as though someone had sliced open a cloud.

Matt crawled toward the dead man. He knelt beside him, cradling his own wounded arm and feeling the warm rush of blood.

Water blended with blood under Hawker’s chest. One lifeless eye filled with mud. The other stared out at the night, no longer seeing it.

Matt took off his hat and covered Hawker’s face. He glanced about, searching the dark for the person who had fired the shot. There was only silence and rain.

Matt tried to stand but couldn’t. He felt sick to his stomach and growing weak.

It was Red, though, coming out of his shock, who knelt on the ground retching his guts out.

There seemed to be voices gathering, coming from high and low, swimming around his head in excited exclamations. Darkness weighted his limbs. It smothered his thoughts and choked out the light until he was nothing.

* * *

The hours of dark stretched longer than the hours of light. Every horror that a body imagined seemed true.

The steady pelt of rain made it that much worse.

Emma paced in front of the parlor window. She wore the shine off the hallway floor. She cracked open Lucy’s bedroom door for the fifth time that evening. She forced her bottom down into the rocking chair, but sat with her feet flat and her spine straight. She stared at the front door, willing it to open.

And she listened. This house was full of unsettling sounds that she had never noticed before. Wood creaked. Hot metal from the stove popped as it cooled. Wolves on the prairie howled their wet misery, making the horses whinny in the barn.

But the one sound that she strained to hear would not come. Listen as she might, hoofbeats returning home seemed as far from her ears as town itself.

At eleven o’clock her stomach ached over the danger Matt was riding into. At midnight she felt he was dead. The certainty of it made her weep against the parlor window.

At one o’clock Lucy got out of bed looking for a drink of water.

Now with sunrise only a couple of hours away, she’d give anything to get on Pearl and go to town. The reality of what might be going on could hardly be worse than what she imagined.

Only the promise that she had made Matt kept her here. The promise and the fact that she couldn’t leave Lucy alone.

Heartsick at watching for the door to open, Emma got out of the rocking chair and sat back down on the sofa.

She faced the window in the dress she had put on as soon as Matt had left, needing to be ready for any emergency. She watched for sunrise even though she wouldn’t be able to see it with the bank of rain clouds riding low over the land. Hopefully, daybreak would make her fears manageable.

Everyday chores would be her salvation. She ought to get some sleep in the next couple of hours, but every time she closed her eyes, she saw Matt drawing his gun, but too slowly because she had gotten angry with him during his practice.

Matt’s draw was quick. She’d seen his hands, swift as anything, aiming his Colt and shooting cans off the fence. She’d also seen Hawker catch his hat right out of the wind.

If the worst had happened to Matt or to Red, surely Billy would have raced home to tell her.

That thought made such sense that she hung on to it. She thought it over and over until it didn’t hurt to sit and breathe.

After a while her eyes felt as heavy as her heart. She must have slept for a moment, for when the front door crashed open and Red stumbled in, she bounded off the couch, startled and disoriented.

Only a second before, her dream had put her in Matt’s arms, giving him a welcome-home kiss.

“What’s happened?” she cried.

Through the open front door she saw Thunder standing beside the front porch, winded from an obviously difficult run. His head hung low and steam curled up from his damp hide.

Red was alone. “Where’s Matt?”

The boy looked everywhere but in her eyes.

“Say something!” She turned his face. “Where is he?”

A sudden gasp seemed to come out of Red’s gut rather than his lungs. He covered his face with dripping hands, then collapsed to his knees.

“It’s all my fault!” he wailed. “This never would have happened except for me!”

“Oh, my Lord!” Emma’s knees went weak. She slipped down beside Red. She touched his hair where the rain had matted it to his forehead.

She touched his fists. He resisted her attempt to gently draw them down, so she yanked.

His face, a mass of crimson blotches, showed his misery. His eyes peered out at her through bloodshot slits, made puffy from apparent weeping.

“He’s dead?”

“Not yet.” He hiccupped. “Just shot in the shoulder. But Pendragon and Bart both claim that Matt killed Hawker in cold blood. Say they witnessed it firsthand. That Matt plugged him while he was on the ground pleading for his life.”

Once again Red covered his face and sobbed. Emma shook him by the shoulders.

Screaming and weeping would feel fine right now. How she longed to toss her head back and howl her despair like the wolves on the prairie did, but such a scene would only throw the situation out of control.

“You tell me everything that happened, young man, and don’t leave anything out.” Her voice, at least, sounded composed. That would do for a start.

“I found Hawker coming out of the saloon. I followed him. Then, when nobody was about but me and him, I called him out.” Red’s voice steadied. He straightened his shoulders. “He laughed at first, but then I called him a yellow coward. We went around back of the mercantile. He called me a fool, punk, kid and I got so hot-mad that I drew my gun.”

Red wiped his face with his sleeve. “Guess I am a fool kid. I got so riled that I shot wide. Hawker stood there with his shot unfired, aiming his gun at me and I…I couldn’t even move!

“He meant to kill me, even though he seemed like maybe he didn’t want to. Just then Matt came running between the buildings and yelled. He stood in front of me, saving my life while I just stood there too scared to move.

“Matt could have taken him easy, but he was off balance from slipping in the mud. That’s when Hawker got him in the shoulder. Hawker thought to kill me first to make Matt suffer, but Matt knocked him with his hurt shoulder and then a shot came out of somewhere and killed Hawker on the spot.”

“Praise be, Matt’s safe and so are you. Only Hawker’s dead.”

“For now. Pendragon’s pushing the marshal to yank Matt out of Doc Brown’s office and hang him right after sunup.”

“They won’t hang him for defending you.” Emma took a deep breath and closed her eyes, trying to sort things out in her mind. Matt was alive and Hawker was not. For the moment that’s all that mattered.

“Not in a regular town, maybe. But you know how the marshal sits in Pendragon’s pocket.”

She’d think of a way out of this as soon as her insides quit spinning.

“Where’s Billy?” She had nearly forgotten about Matt’s cousin in all the upheaval.

“He’s with Matt at the doc’s.”

“I’m going to town.” She stood up, pressing her palm against Red’s shoulder. “I need you to care for Lucy.”

“I’m sorry, Emma.” He snuffled. “I only thought I could make everything right.”

“Everything will be all right.” Emma kissed the top of his head. “See if I don’t bring Matt home.”

She rushed outside and grabbed Thunder’s reins. Steam still curled up from his neck and back. The poor beast had barely caught his breath.

She stared up at his tall back and firmed her resolve. The horse was much too big for her. She’d ridden him only sitting securely in front of Matt.

“Come on over here to the step, boy. I can’t quite reach the stirrup.”

It was a stretch, but she made it up onto his broad saddle. She leaned forward, toward his flicking ear. “I wouldn’t ask this of you, but it’s Matt’s life.”

The horse lunged forward. It was all Emma could do to hold on. Maybe Thunder understood the urgency. Pearl would have. Even without knowing words, she felt things.

“Good horse,” she whispered, hanging tight to a bolt of lightning.