A Touch of Frost

by Jo Goodman

  “Not a whit,” Brewer said. He waved a lantern over the table where the guests who had been carrying had put down their gun belts. “It’s like an armory. We’re trying to find a tooled leather belt and a Colt with a pearl grip. We have plenty of ivory grips, but not one of the other. Mr. Doyle Putty says it belongs to him, but I don’t see it.”

  The judge leaned forward and poked his head around Willet so he could see Doyle. “Is that right, Doyle? You own something like that? Or could it be that you saw it earlier and thought you’d like to leave with something different than you carried in? We’ve talked about this sort of thing before, haven’t we? At least that’s my recollection.” He felt Willet try to shrug him off. Instead of removing his arm, he tightened his grip under the guise of another friendly squeeze.

  Jackson Brewer’s gaze shifted from the table to the Putty brothers. “You familiar with these men, Judge?”

  “We have a nodding acquaintance. Isn’t that right? Doyle? Willet?” When neither man spoke, the judge added, “I know their daddy a mite better, but these two have passed in front of my bench now and again. Just passed, mind you. Slippery. The pair of them. What was it last time, boys? Something about welshing on a bet. Or was it about a missing side of beef? I had to throw it out because the man who brought the complaint didn’t show for court.”

  “Interesting,” said Brewer. “So, Doyle, do you see your gun on the table or not?”

  Doyle shifted his weight from side to side. “No, sir, I guess I don’t see it. Come to think of it, I left my gun behind.”

  Judge Miner nodded. “There you go, Sheriff. No gun. What about you, Willet? Were you carrying?”

  Willet pointed to a scarred brown leather belt with an ivory grip six-shooter in the holster. “That’s mine.”

  Sheriff Brewer picked it up, examined it, and returned it to the table. “I’m not comfortable passing it to you right now, but if no one else claims it by the end of the night, I’ll have it for you tomorrow in my office. You can come by and pick it up. How’s that suit?”

  “That’d be fine,” said Willet.

  “Excellent.” Judge Miner removed his arm from around Willet’s shoulders and patted him on the back. “You boys go along now, and make sure you’re riding out on what you rode in.”

  Jackson watched them go. “Is it my imagination, or do they look like they’re struggling not to run?”

  “Probably not your imagination. They have what you’d call a natural inhibition when it comes to the law.”

  “You sure? Doyle Putty talked to me for quite a spell earlier.”

  “Huh. First I heard of a Putty doing that. Mostly they try to steer clear. I probably only see them a quarter of the time I should, but on the other hand, they’re probably only guilty of about half the things folks credit them with. You’ll have to figure out how that adds up. I was never good with fractions.”

  • • •

  Inside the barn, Remington and Phoebe were making no headway against the fire. They extinguished flames blanketing two of the bales, but while they worked, the fire spread to more stalls.

  Remington circled Phoebe’s waist with an arm and dragged her away from the heat and billowing smoke. When they were close to the door, he released her waist and set his hands on her shoulders. Her face was streaked with soot and beaded with sweat. Her eyes were awash in bitterly angry tears. She held the smoldering blanket she had been using to fight the fire in front her, one corner in each blackened fist.

  Remington lowered his head, met her eyes. “Listen to me. We can’t win this. We’re going to lose the barn, but that’s all we’ve been fighting to save. The fire is our escape, Phoebe. We just have to keep it from reaching us until someone on the outside recognizes what’s happened. We’ll be in the most danger after they remove the bar and open the door. The fire will leap this way. We won’t be able to stop it. It will beat our rescuers back, and you and I will have to move quickly and be ready to take Ellie and Ben with us.”

  “Mr. Shoulders?”

  “Ellie and Ben first.”

  Phoebe nodded. “I can drag Ellie out.”

  Remington took the blanket from her hands. “You get under the smoke. Stay beside the door, not in front of it. It won’t be long.” He pointed to the loft. Floating embers had ignited some of the bales forming the barricade. “The roof’s next. We want the fire to break through there.”

  Remington waited until Phoebe crouched below the smoke before he left her side. He wrapped the blanket he took from her around his shoulders and grabbed a second one to pull over his head. Without a word of his intentions, Remington ran headlong into the wall of fire. He heard Phoebe cry out and recognized it as a cry for him not as sign that she was in danger. He ignored it.

  His goal was the ladder on the other side of the dancing, crackling flames. He threw off his blankets, grabbed hold of a slat, and began to climb. When he reached the loft, he shoved several of the burning bales out of his way, and then raised the ladder to use like a battering ram against the roof. He struck again and again. His arms trembled with the weight of the ladder and the jarring force he was using to punch a hole. Wood cracked and creaked but it was impossible to know if the cause was his relentless effort or the work of the equally insistent fire.

  None of it was as welcome to his ears as the sound of Phoebe heaping curses on his head. Apparently she had a list of them.

  • • •

  Thaddeus opened his arms to Fiona and invited her to sit on his lap. He expelled a breath when she collapsed heavily on the seat he made for her.

  “Did you just oof?” she asked, leaning backward to get a better look at his face.

  He pretended ignorance. Sometimes it was a husband’s only defense. “Hmm?”

  Fiona patted his cheek. “I’m going to let that go.” She slipped off his lap and onto the bench beside him and promptly rested her head against his shoulder. “I am exhausted, Thaddeus, and replete, and I cannot remember when I have enjoyed myself more. Judge Miner would not release me. I had to beg him for a drink so I could sneak away.”

  Thaddeus chuckled. “He was resting his legs under a poker table most of the day.”

  “Ah, so that’s where he disappeared after the ceremony. Have you seen Remington? Phoebe? They shouldn’t leave without saying farewell to their guests.”

  Thaddeus looked around. “I don’t think they’ve actually gone anywhere. More likely they wanted a little time away.”

  “That’s what the honeymoon is for. Will you at least tell me where they’re going?”

  “After they’ve left. I promise.”

  Fiona sighed. “I don’t understand why people don’t trust me with their secrets when I’ve proven that I know how to keep them.”

  “You know I’d tell—” He stopped because Fiona sat up abruptly. She lifted her head and sniffed the air.

  “Thaddeus? I smell—”

  “Smoke,” he said. “I do, too. The wind’s shifted. It’s coming from the bonfires.”

  She frowned. A sharp crease appeared between her eyebrows. “I don’t think so.” She jumped to her feet and began to turn. “This smells more like . . .” Fiona grabbed Thaddeus’s shoulder. “Thad! The barn’s on—” She didn’t finish her sentence. She didn’t have to. At least four people shouted it out for her.

  “Fire!”

  The music stopped. The band threw down their instruments, jumped off the porch, and ran full tilt toward the barn. Guests abandoned the tables, left the circle of the bonfires, and dropped their drinks. The men in the bunkhouse were moved to leave it as soon as the shouting reached them, and when they recognized the cause of the commotion, they directed people to the watering troughs and the well. Women joined the men to start a brigade.

  Thaddeus caught Scooter Banks by the sleeve. “Where’s Remington? Is he with you? I don’t see him!”

  Fiona
jammed a fist against her mouth as spindles of fire arose from a hole in the roof. “Phoebe! Has anyone seen Phoebe?” She grabbed Jackson Brewer’s arm as he was hurrying past and pulled him up short. “I can’t find Phoebe! She would have come running if she could. Remington, too. I’m afraid they’re—” She couldn’t say her fear aloud and accepted that Jackson would nevertheless understand.

  “I’ll see to it,” he promised, and then he was running again.

  • • •

  Remington dropped the ladder over the side of the loft once he had opened the roof. The blankets he had used to protect himself earlier were now ablaze. Descending the ladder would be like choosing to enter one of the circles of hell. Before he took that path, he began pushing bales of hay off the lip of the loft. Although some of them were burning when he dropped them, none of them exploded into flames. Just the opposite, in fact, the thick bales smothered a swath of fire. The unfortunate consequence was impenetrable clouds of smoke.

  Remington could no longer draw a breath without coughing. He grabbed the top of the ladder, swung around, and lowered himself four rungs before he surrendered to the inevitable and jumped. Phoebe might have screamed. He couldn’t be sure. They were both choking on the smoke.

  The bales cushioned his fall. The sleeve of his coat smoldered. He slapped at it as he scrambled over the hay bales and charged forward. He was gratified to see that Phoebe hadn’t moved from where he left her. He dove for her, tunneling under the heavy layer of smoke. She kept him from banging his head against the wall.

  “They have to be close,” he said between coughs. “The fire’s through the roof. Can you shout? Curse? Bang the walls?”

  She did all of that. He rose to his knees and joined her. Behind them, the fire continued to creep in their direction. Occupied with attracting attention, neither of them saw the man they knew only as Mr. Shoulders heave himself off the barn floor and climb the wall hand over hand until he was standing on his feet.

  It was when Mr. Shoulders began to cough that Remington became aware of him. “Get down! You can’t breathe up there.”

  “Can’t . . . breathe . . . down . . . there.” He pounded his fists against the wall. “Got . . . to . . . get . . . out.”

  Phoebe tried to make herself heard over the hand she was using to cover her mouth and nose. “Do what he says. Get down! I think I can hear them. They’re coming.” Her intention was to keep pleading but she did not have the breath for it. She gave up and went back to pounding the wall.

  Natty Rahway inched sideways and tripped over the unconscious bodies of Ellie and Ben. He sprawled on the ground, picked himself up to his knees, and crawled toward the barn door.

  Remington made a grab for him and missed. He also called out a warning. It was ignored. “Get ready, Phoebe. I think you’re right. They’re close.” He crawled sideways, found Ellie, and rolled her toward Phoebe. “Take her wrist. You’ll have to move fast.”

  “Worry about yourself.”

  Remington cupped the back of her head in his palm. What he did then could hardly be called a kiss, not when his mouth was as hot, hard, and sooty as a branding iron. “Sweet Jesus, but I love you.”

  The door opened then. They sheltered their heads while Natty Rahway was consumed in a tornado of fire.

  Epilogue

  The honeymoon was postponed. Twice. Once for their convalescence, which Fiona and Thaddeus insisted on supervising at Twin Star, no matter the inconvenience to Dr. Dunlop, who had to make the journey from town daily in the beginning and then three times a week after he was able to convince Thaddeus that it was sufficient to monitor their progress. The second delay was forced on them when the Putty brothers proved to be every bit as slippery as Judge Miner had once named them. The posse was seven men strong and included experienced deputies from neighboring counties, but the brothers eluded capture for six weeks by doing something no one suspected they would do. They split up. There was talk of dividing the posse at that point, but Jackson Brewer was of the opinion that concentrating on one would eventually lead them to the other. They identified Doyle as their priority. The posse numbered eight men by then because Remington left Twin Star to join the search as soon as Doc Dunlop pronounced Phoebe fit. His residual cough kept him from receiving the same clean bill of health, but he’d had enough of everyone’s hovering and coddling by then, and with Phoebe’s blessing—some would say insistence—he left Twin Star to join Sheriff Brewer.

  They tracked Doyle to a whorehouse in Harmony, then to a saloon in Jupiter, from there to a hotel in Lansing managed by a distant cousin who didn’t hold with his nonsense, and finally found him in a Denver jail sleeping off a drunk and disorderly charge after losing at the card table in the Palladium.

  Willet may well have been the cleverer of the brothers, but as it happened, he was also a creature of habit. Doyle had no compunction about telling them that, although in fairness, Remington questioned him while he was still under the influence of Rocky Mountain moonshine. Willet, they learned, returned to what was familiar, and what he knew best was the protection of the family. Although they had been to several of the Putty households previously, Willet was too well hidden. Now they changed tactics and staked out the old homestead. They ran him to earth in his mother’s house just as he was sitting down to Sunday dinner. They were graciously offered to partake in chicken and gravy over hot biscuits—which they did—and as good as that meal was, it didn’t sway them from taking Willet into custody once their plates were clean.

  The brothers were now safely behind bars in the Frost Falls jail although not in separate cells. There was some talk that maybe one of them would kill the other out of sheer annoyance and save the town the trouble of separate trials, which their lawyers were insisting was their right since they were brothers, not Siamese twins. Judge Miner had yet to rule.

  Ben and Ellie recovered more slowly. Thaddeus paid for Ellie to stay at the Butterworth, where Dr. Dunlop could attend her. Phoebe vacated her room to be with Remington, and Ben was moved back in. Ben had burns on his scalp and neck that required frequent dressing changes and the application of specially made ointments. His cough was deeper and raspier than either Phoebe’s or Remington’s, and for a time they all feared his lungs would not heal. Fiona stayed at his bedside for long hours. She changed his bandages, applied the ointments, read to him, performed scenes in which she occupied all the characters, and sometimes she simply sat.

  No charges were being brought against either Ellie or Ben. Phoebe put forth the argument that Ellie’s plan was merely an abduction for ransom. Remington quibbled with the modifier “merely,” but he let it go in the interest of reaching consensus. It was Phoebe’s position that if the plan had been executed as intended, she would have been the only victim, and because she was reasonably well treated and returned unharmed, which was also Ellie’s plan, she felt it was her prerogative not to pursue action against Ellie. She further argued that Ellie had not hired the Putty brothers or Natty Rahway. What she had done, through her son, was make them aware of an opportunity. She did not advance them any money. On the contrary, Natty Rahway delivered money to her, again through Ben.

  When she was done, Jackson Brewer regarded Remington with a jaundiced expression and asked who exactly was the lawyer in the family.

  Thaddeus had slightly different reasons for not seeking a full reckoning in court. The fact that he had been wholly unaware of Ellie’s deep and abiding feelings troubled him. That his ignorance might have contributed to her actions troubled him even more, and then there was the question of Ben’s parentage, which he was only now beginning to wrestle with. It pained him to admit aloud that he had suspected Fiona of concocting the plot to take Phoebe hostage. Oddly enough, or perhaps not, Fiona was flattered that he thought her capable of so much scheming, and further moved by his desire not to see her exposed for it.

  Phoebe could only shake her head at this line of reasoning, and when she lo
oked askance at Remington, it was to find him similarly confounded.

  Northeast Rail was satisfied to have the Putty brothers in custody for destroying company property when they tore up the tracks and for stealing from the passengers. Some of the jewelry had already been recovered thanks to Willet and Doyle’s mostly accurate report of where they had sold it. Representatives from the railroad offered to plead with the judge for a lighter sentence if the brothers cooperated, and the Puttys accepted that offer.

  The brothers neglected to account for Jackson Brewer, though, and the sheriff had definite ideas about what he thought was appropriate justice. The murders of Blue Armstrong and Caroline Carolina had but one outcome as far as he was concerned. The Putty brothers could hear the construction of the gallows from their jail cells.

  Phoebe and Remington were thinking about none of that at the moment. Their concerns were very much in the present. Phoebe was trying to hold on to Remington after being swept off her feet and then being ordered to close her eyes. Remington was occupied with all of Phoebe’s wriggling while making sure she wasn’t peeking.

  They had yet to cross the threshold of Old Man McCauley’s ramshackle cabin because someone had taken it upon himself to lock the door. Remington adjusted Phoebe’s weight in his arms as he grappled with the door handle.

  “Who the hell thought this was a good idea?” he muttered. “I swear . . .”

  Phoebe chuckled, but she didn’t open her eyes. “I didn’t know the door had a lock.”

  “It didn’t.”

  “Oh, then who’s been here? Are we trespassing?”

  “Hardly. I bought the place. Can you reach above the door frame and see if the idiot who put a lock on the door thought he should leave a key? Just feel around for it.”

  This news of ownership was surprising and actually quite pleasing. “Really? You bought it?”

  “Wedding gift. Please, Phoebe, the key.”