Renegade Most Wanted

chapter Three



Moments before sunrise, Matt opened his eyes. As a cowboy he was accustomed to waking early. He enjoyed night shifts watching over the herd, as well. Trail dust and cowhide were perfume to him.

Spring had been his last roundup, but he had set enough money aside to last for some time. With Hawker getting out of prison, he’d be moving to California and fall roundup would go on without him.

Apparently Emma was an early riser. The horses had been taken out of the dugout. Her gown lay folded in a corner of the sod cube with his hat set on top of it.

Matt stood, smoothed out his clothes and grabbed his hat. Morning light could be bright as the dickens, so he tugged the brim low and went outside. No doubt his bride was waiting for him to hitch up the team for the ride back to town. He felt her sorrow. Dreams had a way of dying hard.

At some point on the long ride back, he’d have to tell her about Lucy and the boys.

He didn’t see Emma or the horses, but he noticed that she’d been going through the boxes in the wagon. A few of them lay open on the ground beside the wheel.

A horse whickered near the creek. He couldn’t see it beyond the brush, but he figured Emma must be there, as well.

Near the water, a whiff of coffee teased his nose. The things a mind could conjure way out here. First thing back in town, he’d take Emma for a late breakfast, and then over a cup, he’d break the news about Lucy. That seemed safe enough. In a public place she might not make a scene.

Matt stepped through the shrubbery. He froze with his mouth half-open in greeting.

Emma sat on a wood crate beside the creek wearing only her underclothes.

“Considering everything, Pearl, I believe we’ll make out just fine,” she said.

She twisted a hank of wet hair in her hands. Water dribbled over her chemise and sucked it to her skin. She might as well have left the frilly thing off for all that it shielded her well-favored curves from his gaze.

She picked up a brush and tugged it through the mass of soaking hair.

Because he was standing stiff as a stick, she didn’t notice him at first. When she did, she smiled up through a beam of sunshine.

“Morning, Matt.” She set down her brush and pointed to a pot of coffee that she had heating on a small fire beside the crate. “If that marriage license is as genuine as you claim it is, sit here with me and have a cup.”

He took the pot and poured a mugful. He sat across from her, but blamed if he could keep his eyes from darting to the sweet pink nipples poking at the thin fabric of her chemise.

“Your face is blushing. Don’t tell me you’re embarrassed to see your wife in her shift?” Emma picked up her own cup of coffee and took a deep swallow. Her damp throat muscles constricted.

“I’ve seen a shift or two in the past, but darlin’, yours is soaked right through.”

Emma plucked at the fabric. “If it troubles you, you can turn your back, but with the way the day is heating up, it’ll be dry by the time we finish this pot.”

Matt grinned. So far married life didn’t seem so bad.

“I’ve been wondering about that right pretty gown you had on yesterday. You must have planned it special for some man.”

Emma set the brush in her lap and sighed. The drying fabric of her shift tightened over curves that a man could fill his hands with. “Not so long ago I thought I could find contentment with a Mr. Fredrick Winn. Just in time, I realized that all he wanted was a wife to do for him. He figured he’d get for free what others had paid me for. Just in time, I got Mrs. Harkins’s letter and knew I had another choice.”

Hoofbeats pounded the earth. Matt stood and peered through the brush. Hell, if it didn’t look like the boys coming on fast, and there was Lucy, her blond curls bouncing like springs, riding in the saddle in front of Jesse.

He sure wouldn’t be able to explain their existence to Emma gently now.

“Company’s coming,” he announced.

“Blast!” Emma jumped up beside him to peer through the brush. “My first guests and I’m half naked!”

Emma plucked her calico dress from its resting place on a bush and wriggled it over her head. In her haste she had some trouble with the buttons, so he helped, starting with the ones just over her breasts.

“You seem to have some experience with buttons, Matt.”

Just when the last little button slipped into place the visitors reined in before the dugout. Matt took his wife by the elbow and led her out into the open.

With Jesse’s help, Lucy slid off the horse.

“Papa!” She ran to him as fast as her four-year-old legs could go. “Papa!”

* * *

Matt squatted low and opened his arms to the little girl. He scooped her up and swung her in a circle. Emma’s mind reeled.

The girl had called Matt Papa…twice. Her small hands hugged his neck while she smacked kisses all over his beard-shadowed face.

What had she gotten herself into?

The three men who had ridden in with the little girl dismounted their horses, grinning as wide as faces would allow.

“Good to see you again, ma’am.” This was the redheaded boy from the land office. He took off his hat and covered his heart with it. “I’m Red, Texas Red.”

“Mrs. Suede.” A man about Matt’s age with a heavy black mustache and curly hair to match extended his gloved hand in greeting. Warm leather folded over Emma’s fingers. “Name’s Cousin Billy.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Emma murmured to be polite, but “astounded” would be a more honest thing to say.

Who were these men and why did they feel a need to show up at her doorstep, or what would be her doorstep, an hour after sunup? Surely it didn’t take three men to deliver one little girl.

“Congratulations, ma’am.” Emma recognized the third man, grinning and slapping his thigh with his hat, as Jesse, the owner of the livery in Dodge.

“Papa.” The little girl’s voice grew suddenly shy. She tucked her blond curly head under Matt’s chin and peered at Emma with shining blue eyes. “Is that my new ma?”

Matt’s mouth tugged down at the corners. He looked tense.

“Lucy, baby, we talked about your ma, remember?” He rocked her while he spoke in a voice so soothing it made Emma wonder what it would be like to be held up in those big strong arms, safe from all the troubles going on down below.

Lucy nodded her head.

“Your mama loved you so much. I recall how she held you close and kissed your little bald head on the day you were born. The last thing she said before the angels came to take her was that we should call you Lucy.” Lucy stuck her thumb in her mouth and began to suck. While Matt spoke, she gazed at Emma with wide eyes, her expression a mixture of hope and doubt. “Your mama sees you every day from heaven.”

Lucy glanced up at her father. She plucked her thumb from her mouth.

“But I don’t see her. I want a mama that I can see. I want that lady to be my mama.”

“Darlin’, you can’t just pick out a ma like you pick out candy in the mercantile.”

“Silly Papa, I know that. Red said since you married that lady, she’s my ma.”

“For now, let’s just call her Emma.”

Lucy frowned, then wiggled down out of her father’s arms. She looked up at Emma.

“Mama, can I go to the creek and look for frogs?”

“Don’t go into the water and stay away from the horses,” she said without thinking. How many times had she given such an answer to a child? “And stay out in the open where we can see you.”

“You’d make a fine mother if you had a mind to do it.” Matt had stepped close, whispering while she watched Lucy skip toward the creek.

“Well, I don’t have a mind to.” She grabbed her drying hair and twisted it in a bun at her neck. “I’ve done all the raising of children that I intend to do.”

“Excuse me, Mrs. Suede.” Cousin Billy’s boots crunched across the dirt. He stood before her twisting his hat in his leather gloves. Red and Jesse peeked out from behind his tall, broad back. “The boys and I wonder if we’ve come too late and missed breakfast.”

“Breakfast!” Why, her life hadn’t changed a bit! Now it was worse. Strangers wanted to be fed instead of employers.

“Whoa there, boys.” Only a blind man would miss the red-hot temper flaring in her cheeks. Matt grimaced. “Take a look around and tell me where you’d expect my wife to fix you a meal. There’s nothing here but a flea-bitten dugout.”

Matt stepped between her and the three offended-looking men, and just in time. If they’d stood there a second longer, gaping at her as though she’d betrayed her womanly calling, she’d have done something regrettable.

With an arm slung about Red’s shoulders Matt pointed the half-famished trio toward the creek.

“Just because Emma married me doesn’t oblige her to keep your bellies filled. There’s coffee down by the creek. After you’ve had your fill, get the horses hitched up for the trip back to town.”

Relief kicked the breath back into her lungs. Her heart slid out of her throat and back into her bosom. For one heart-fluttering moment she had feared that these men intended to stay. As soon as they unloaded the goods remaining in her wagon, it would be just Emma and Pearl.

Down by the creek Emma heard Lucy’s laughter. Red hopped about in the water, apparently hot on the trail of the little girl’s frog.

“He’s a fat one!” Emma heard Red call out.

She watched Lucy hop up and down, clapping her hands in delight. If the men hadn’t eaten before they rode out this morning, odds were that they hadn’t thought to feed Lucy, either.

She could certainly spare a can of peaches and some crackers for the child. A bite or two for Texas Red wouldn’t be out of line, since he wasn’t yet fully a man.

The others didn’t deserve anything, since grown men should have thought to tend to their own needs. All except Matt, who hadn’t had time for even a bite since they’d left Dodge last night.

“Oh, drat!” If she was going to feed some, she had to feed all. This hungry gang would use up a fair portion of her supplies. She’d have to go back to town to make up for it, but she needed a new front door before nightfall, anyway.

“Matt!” Emma picked up the hem of her skirt and hurried after him as he strode toward the creek. “Tell your friends I’ll cook them breakfast, but just this once.”

* * *

The breakfast that Emma had rustled up was as good as Matt had ever tasted, but it hit his stomach uneasily.

From a quarter mile across the blowing grass, he watched Emma astride her blind horse. She rode about gazing at land that looked pretty much the same one direction as another.

She would be saying goodbye to it and the dream that had brought her so many miles from home. Matt knew about giving up land that lay so deep in the soul that the tramp of the beeves’ hooves upon the soil felt like a heartbeat.

“Papa, can I keep Mr. Hoppety?”

Matt snapped his gaze back to his circle of family seated on the ground, absorbed in Emma’s fine vittles. He swallowed his melancholy and smiled at his daughter.

“Mr. Hoppety wouldn’t take to town living. Frogs need to be near the creek.”

Lucy climbed onto his lap and opened her palms, revealing the frog. “But I’d take some creek water along.”

“Some things can’t take to a new home, darlin’. Hoppety would be one of them.” He thought of his mother—she had been another. “You take him on back to the creek, now. We’ve got to load things up and get back to town.”

“I’ll come and visit you some day,” Lucy crooned into the frog’s ear. She sighed, deep and resigned, but turned and with slow steps walked toward the creek.

“Speaking of keeping things,” Billy said, wiping a crumb from his mustache, “what are you going to do with a wife?”

Last night in the dark he’d had an idea of what to do with her, but now, in the practical light of day, he wasn’t so sure.

He’d made a vow to protect her, but a nagging voice deep in his gut warned him that his bride didn’t want protecting.

“For now, I’m going to take her back to town.” Matt stood. He watched Emma riding back with a sunny smile on her face. Maybe she had a better idea of where they were going than he did. “Let’s load up that wagon and head on back to Dodge, boys.”

Emma’s pretty face lifted his spirits enough to let him sing while he walked down to the stream to get the rented team.

Lucy plopped the frog into the water. Her lower lip trembled when she glanced up, so Matt made his song a funny one about Mr. Hoppety being crowned king of the creek.

“Mr. Hoppety thinks you sing silly, Papa,” she said, but her lips stopped quivering and turned into a laugh.

Matt glanced up when he heard hoofbeats splashing across the creek. For a blind horse, Pearl trotted forward with amazing confidence. She didn’t see him or Lucy as she cantered up the bank of the stream, but Emma did.

The lovely smile that had reached him over the waving grass had turned into a frown that made poor Mr. Hoppety squeeze under a rock.

“Lucy, there’s a tin of cookies in the wagon. Ask Red to get one for you,” Emma said, her lips looking as tight as a string on a fiddle.

“Red!” Lucy called, half running, half skipping toward the wagon. “Mama said to find me a cookie!”

Whatever had gotten under Emma’s bustle must be something he wanted to keep clear of if she didn’t want to discuss it in front of Lucy.

“Guess I’ll get a cookie, too.” Matt hurried after his daughter, hoping to be halfway to the wagon before Emma had a chance to speak so that he could pretend he didn’t hear her.

“Unload my wagon while you’re doing it.” For a small woman, her voice carried like a trail boss’s.

It was hard to pretend not to hear insanity. Matt stopped and pivoted on his boot heel. He studied her face, praying that the determination settling in didn’t really mean that she intended to stay here.

“We’re going back to town, darlin’. Unloading that wagon would be purely foolish.”

“The five of you are free as can be to take the wagon and go back to town, but my goods are staying here with me.”

What had ever made him think this woman favored a delicate flower? She might be tiny, her skin might resemble petals and her scent nectar, but her roots were stubborn as weeds.

Apparently, once she had her mind set on a course, it was roped and tied. He’d have to do some mighty fine convincing to show her how wrong she was.

Matt pressed two fingers to his lips and let out a shrill whistle. Thunder, faithful as the best of dogs, trotted up from the creek shaking his full glossy mane. If only women could be more like horses.

He leaped up on Thunder’s back, bringing him close to Emma and Pearl.

“I believe we need to ride a bit, Mrs. Suede. We have a few matters to work through.”

“I believe we do, Mr. Suede.”

Emma urged her horse to take the lead, but Pearl, being a proper female, seemed happy to trail along after Thunder.

* * *

They had ridden well away from the dugout and still Matt hadn’t spoken a single word. Hopefully, he wouldn’t. It would be ever so easy if he kept quiet while she convinced him that he and his child should return to town while she remained here.

“I’m sure, since you have nothing to say, you’ve come to see that the only fitting thing is for you and Lucy to go home to Dodge. You can tell the marshal that I turned out to be as foul tempered as the number two-rooster in the barnyard.” Since she was not well acquainted with the man, he couldn’t say otherwise.

“I could tell him that.”

Was that a grin playing at the corners of his mouth? “You could tell him that Lucy didn’t take to me.”

“Now, that would be a lie.”

“If you’re going to tell one, you might as well tell two.”

Matt barked out a laugh.

“I’m not much for lying.” He reined Thunder to a stop, then leaned forward in the saddle with his elbow resting on the horn. “And I do keep my vows.”

“You can rob all the banks you’ve a mind to, if it will keep your friend happy, but go away and leave me in peace.”

All of a sudden it felt as if bees buzzed inside her. She didn’t want to say anything cruel to him—after all, he’d made her dream come true, or what there was of it. She swung off the saddle. A good stroll over her land should calm her down.

Imagine him believing that she had the temper of a second rooster! She’d taken only two steps when she heard the click of a gun’s hammer.

“Get back in the saddle…now.” His voice had become as hard as the metal he gripped in his fist. “Don’t argue, just do it.”

She took another step away from Pearl. “Why you low-down w—”

The mouth of the gun flashed orange. A puff of earth exploded near her foot. The blast sent Pearl on a run back over the creek.

Emma felt a scream gathering in her throat, but she turned it into a foul word.

“Rattlers sometimes travel in pairs.” He scooted back in the saddle as far as he could. “If I were you I’d climb up here on Thunder.”

She glanced down. Lordy! Only the fact that Matt had shot the viper’s head off had kept her from stepping on it. It took only a second for her to reach Thunder’s side and lift a trembling hand to Matt. He pulled her up into the saddle ahead of him, then turned the horse to follow the river, south, away from the homestead.

“Darlin’, you just might be the death of me. Let me have a look at your shoes.”

Since he seemed so determined that they were truly married, she yanked her skirt nearly to her knee. She turned the shoe, one half of her prettiest pair, this way and that.

“Any woman who goes homesteading in dancing slippers needs to be watched out for.”

The nerve of him, pointing out the error of her footwear! She’d put them on only because she had been thinking of the way she and Matt had fit together so easily under that canvas last night.

“What kind of a man brings a little girl to a place where snakes look the same as the dirt?”

“Lucy just turned four years old, but she’s known how to keep clear of snakes since she hit the ground walking.”

Holding on to a temper against someone who had just saved her life proved purely difficult.

“I don’t know why it is, Matt, but every now and then you bring out the pickle in me.” Why was that? Most of her life she’d been the soul of kindness to nearly everyone she’d met. “Well, once again I’m sorry I called you that name.”

“Wasn’t such a bad name, considering I’d just fired a gun at your feet for no good reason that you knew of.” His words rustled the top of her hair when he spoke. The hard, shifting muscles of his chest grazed her back with each clip-clop of Thunder’s hooves.

If she let herself believe that they were truly wed, there would be some things about marriage that she would like to explore. Things to do with the fact that Matt’s abdomen was no longer flat where her backside rocked against him to the sway of the horse’s stride.

In the past, she’d tried not to wonder about such things. When they popped into her mind she dismissed them by focusing her thoughts on some task that needed doing. It didn’t take long to learn that curiosity had a will of its own.

Now that she was a married woman, it might not hurt to let her imagination dwell on Matt’s anatomy. Especially that part that had suddenly sprung to life behind her.

The problem with letting her mind roam free was that it did some troubling things to her body. She had to wiggle in the saddle to ease the strange twisting in her belly.

All at once Matt slipped off Thunder’s back to walk alongside the horse. He’d turned quiet again, but it was easy to see that thoughts ran wild in his mind. Maybe the stirrings going on between them reminded him of Lucy’s mother.

It shouldn’t trouble Emma to be the second wife. Indeed, yesterday afternoon she’d have been happy to be anyone’s tenth.

“Matt…what was your first wife like?”

“You’d be the one to know that, darlin’.” He glanced up at her with his hat shading his face. She’d been a fool to leave her bonnet behind with the sun beating down, even as early as it was. “Until you came upon me in the livery, I’d never given matrimony more than a passing thought.”

Matt led Thunder to the creek and let his reins fall free. He gave Emma a hand down from the horse.

“Let’s sit here for a spell. There are some things you need to know about the boys and me.”

Emma sat down beside the water. This July morning was a blister. She took off her shoes, rolled off her stockings, then hiked up her skirt to her knees. If this talk was leading to her sharing her homestead, she’d need cool water on her feet to put out her temper. It would be a humiliation to have to apologize a third time for calling her husband an ugly name.

“The water’s as cool as can be.” Emma scooped up a handful and let it run over her face and down her neck. “Take off those boots and see.”

He followed her example, even to the scoop of water, then he took off his hat and put it on her head. He might have scolded her about forgetting something so important, but he only tugged the brim down so that her eyes were shaded against the glare of the sun on the water.

“When I was a kid, Emma, I was as wild as they come. Wasn’t a soul in town would bet a quarter that I’d grow to be a man. Just in time, I found out life was a fine thing and I wanted to live as much of it as I could.

“During those years I had a friend. No…he was more like a brother. Utah’s the one who made me give a lick for myself. He convinced me to put away my quick guns and take up with him on the roundups. Jesse, Utah, Cousin Billy and I all signed up to cowboy Pendragon’s herds, and some others around Dodge.

“It was a fine life, the four of us so young and full of adventure. One day, Utah went sweet on a gal from town. I think all of us went sweet on her. But Utah’s the one who married her. She died the next year giving birth to Lucy. After a time, Mrs. Conner over at the boardinghouse minded Lucy while Utah went back to herding cows with Billy, Jesse and me.

“It wasn’t like old times, though. We’d all grown up over the pain. Then it wasn’t six months later that we lost Utah, too.”

Tears itched at the back of Emma’s eyes. Matt’s face looked full of sorrow, as if he had gone back to those days and the old pain had turned fresh again.

“We were rounding up one afternoon. Utah was on the far side of the herd from the rest of us. He was talking to little Lenore, Pendragon’s twelve-year-old daughter. He thought she’d be more comfortable with a blanket under her saddle. That’s how Utah was, always looking out for others. Well, he tied that red blanket, but it came loose sometime later and was dragging on the ground behind her. For some reason, that spooked the cattle and they started running. Little Lenore saw what was happening and reached around to tie the blanket behind her. She lost her balance and fell off with the cows coming right at her. We couldn’t get across to her, but Utah was already on that side of the herd.

“He called out for her to stay still. He got to her in time, but the cinch on his saddle gave under the weight of lifting her. Lenore’s horse, not being properly trained for cattle work, had run off. By then Utah’s horse was too skittish to recall his training and took off after the other horse. That left the pair of them standing in the way of the panicked herd with no way to escape.

“Billy and I were halfway through the herd when Utah picked up the blanket and headed off across the prairie. Somehow he managed to turn the stampede away from Lenore. He saved her life, but there was nothing left for Utah but to turn and face the cattle. His six-gun rang out. We all heard five shots. The leading steer went down and the one after, but we couldn’t get to Utah until it was too late.”

Emma wanted to say how sorry she was, but mere words seemed so pitiful. She reached out and covered his hand where he fingered little circles in the water sliding by. He glanced sideways and seemed surprised, but he slipped his calloused fingers through hers and squeezed them.

“The three of us made it over to him before he passed. He asked me to take Lucy as my own and bring her up right. I made a vow as though I was doing something for Utah, but the truth is that raising his little girl became a blessing.

“It’s for Lucy that The Ghost robs the bank. Pendragon never felt responsible for providing for her, even though Utah died to rescue his own Lenore. If there’s one thing that man values, it’s a dollar.”

Emma remembered the careless dropping of ashes on the sidewalk and how they had dirtied the hem of her dress. The smug set of his face when he had stepped out of the land office had confirmed that he had high regard for his own position. Apparently no one else mattered. Her original dislike of him was now confirmed.

“As I see it, Matt, The Ghost is only taking what is Lucy’s due without a bit of crime involved.” What a relief to know that she hadn’t hitched up with a villain. “I’m proud to know The Ghost.”

“If that’s the case, there are four of us to be proud to know. My cousin, Billy, sets things up with the costume and such, and Jesse provides a horse then hides it while I get out of my disguise. Young Red does his part well away from the actual crime. He keeps the rumors flying about The Ghost.”

And a very good job he did. Emma couldn’t help a quiet laugh when she remembered Red’s sincerity while he told her to watch for The Ghost.

“I’ll keep your secret.” Emma laughed again and splashed up some water with her toes.

All of a sudden Matt grabbed her by the shoulders and pressed her back against the bank. He rolled on top of her and kissed her. The world seemed to drift away while his mouth moved over hers, just the way it had done during their wedding vows.

Nothing existed but the nuzzle of Matt’s lips, firm and prickly on top, since he needed a shave. The world narrowed to the scent of his skin. The weight of his body, sprawled on top of her, twisted and tickled her belly way down low. She wished he would touch her in places she had never been touched. Was it a sin to become one flesh in a marriage that would last only a day?

“Darlin’.” Matt lifted his head enough to gaze down at her. “I told you before, I keep my vows. Those we took before Mrs. Sizeloff were as binding as any I’ve ever made.”

Emma figured he was probably lying on top of her so she wouldn’t have the air to speak, but somehow she didn’t mind that, just now.

“You are my wife in every way I ever heard of but one. Now, I’d like to make you come back to town with me…hold on, before you call me a mean name, just hear me out. Coming back to town would be the sensible thing, but I know you’re set on putting down roots out here.”

His brown eyes warmed to amber. Lordy, if she wasn’t about to melt away into the creek!

“Would you be willing to stay married to me until summer’s end? We’d live here with Lucy, Red and Billy instead of in town. That way, I’d be safe from the marshal and you won’t be out here alone. Before autumn we’ll ride on out of your life like we were never there.”

“Why would I want to take on the care of grown men?”

“Because you wouldn’t last the week out here by yourself. Like as not, you’ll be snakebit by nightfall. As for the grown men, cattle aren’t all we know. We’ll build you a house, Emma, and a barn for Pearl.”

Emma bit her bottom lip trying to ground herself. A woman could forget to breathe if she gazed into those golden-amber eyes long enough.

“A proper house out of wood?”

“I took a vow to keep and protect you. That house will see to it once I’ve gone.”

A woman never did know when a venomous snake might slither into sight, and Matt did offer a fair trade.

“I believe you’ve got yourself a bargain. Now let me up before summer’s over and nothing gets done.”

And before she could dwell on the sudden hitch in her heart. The man was a temptation she would struggle with. The last thing she wanted was to finally have a home of her own, only to pine away for the man who had built it.