by Marie Piper
Haven noted the dusty windows. Matthew had worked so hard on the house, and she’d been so selfish and off cavorting with a rascal, she hadn’t done a thing yet. She found a cloth and a basin of water, and began to wipe down the windows. The afternoon sun shone in more brightly, washing the room with warmth. She scrubbed the windows as if she could wash away her sins and start anew.
Maybe they could have it all. They could be the people who had lives full of passion and love, as well as hard work, vegetables, and children. Maybe she and Matthew could be among the lucky few who lived that kind of life.
Inspiration struck her. She’d make some new curtains for the windows, she thought. Blue ones. Sky blue like Matthew’s eyes. In her trunk at home, she’d packed the white lace tablecloth she had made with her mother. There would always be wildflowers on the table. Bluebonnets, as long as they were in season. Her mind began to race with all the things she would do to make it a true and beautiful home.
Never in her life had her heart felt so full of happiness.
Haven washed, and she cleaned, and she dreamed. They’d have a garden, a baby or two, and chickens. Maybe some pigs. In the summer, the windows would always be open to allow in the fresh air and the welcome breeze. In the chillier months of the year, they’d have each other, and a wood fire, and quilts she’d make to keep them warm.
Hours passed.
As she reached up to get the very top of the tall front windows, she felt herself watched. Matthew stood naked in the doorway to the bedroom, a sly smile on his face. “I remember when you used to wear my shirts. Lucy’d go off to the Women’s Society meetings, and as soon as she was out of the house, you’d duck in your room and come out wearing pants and one of my shirts.”
“I loved those days.”
“Me too.”
“If we have a little girl, I’ll let her wear whatever she wants, as long as she wants.”
Matthew walked over to her and grabbed her bare legs in his hands, running his thumbs over her knees. “You want to wear my shirt and nothing else for the rest of your life, that’s fine by me.”
The sun shone through the windows onto his gloriously naked form. He stood in the middle of the room like it was a perfectly ordinary thing to do. Perhaps, once they were married, it would be. The idea of spending entire days naked and loving him made Haven want to touch him all over again.
“Can you ever forgive me?”
“You didn’t hardly do much that needs forgiving.” He kissed her arm. “We ain’t neither of us angels, you know.”
Looking down at him, she felt shy again. They’d made love only hours earlier, but when he looked at her that way, she felt like he wanted her again. “I should head back soon. Papa will wonder where I’ve gone.”
Matthew grinned and brought his face forward to touch her bare thigh with his lips. “I won’t keep you too long.”
As he ran his hands up under the shirt and pushed the fabric out of the way, Haven melted for him, and let time and everything else slip away.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Matthew
Three tense days passed in Cricket Bend. Everyone in town cast glances back over their shoulders and jumped at every creak of a floorboard. Formerly rational men and women were flocking to the jail to tell Luke and Matthew about every shadow they saw, and the lawmen quickly grew frustrated with the collective panic. Just because a mouse squeaked in a barn didn’t mean a murderer was ready to attack, but no one knew what would happen next, and everything needed to be looked into.
On Sunday, Reverend Evans spoke about their fears and urged them to put their faith in the Lord and their lawmen. He urged diligence and safety over blind terror, and Matthew was grateful for his words. He hoped they’d calm the crowd.
Laura Harper took to talking loud in public places about how this kind of danger was surely brought to Cricket Bend as a result of the sin and depravity that took place at Porter’s Saloon. For her part, Callie just smiled and waved sweetly at the townspeople who snuck glances up at her on her balcony and took to wearing even smaller outfits. Matthew and Luke gave up giving her warnings about ordinances.
In between his shifts at the jail, which were practically around the clock, Matthew found fleeting moments to spend time with Haven. She was never left unattended, and when she wasn’t working at the clinic with Doc—or delivering Lizzie Wedgewood’s babies, two little girls—Haven could often be found sitting on the steps of the jail reading a Dickens volume with her shotgun by her side. Matthew did a daily check of the new home, and he spent some time fixing the fence of the pen. But he took to sleeping in town at the jail, so as to not be far from everyone, in case he was needed.
Word came to Matthew that Hank Porter had vanished. The rascal had slipped away like a thief in the night, and he'd taken his things with him. When Luke inquired further, it turned out that Callie didn’t know where he’d gone, and hadn’t heard he was leaving. Though there was no crime in Hank’s departure, it seemed just another thing to stress the town’s collective nerves.
Matthew noticed that Haven was quiet about Hank’s leaving. He wanted to ask her about it, but decided against it. She’d tell him if he needed to know. They kept what had transpired between Haven and Hank close and guarded. Neither wanted to bring a scandal where one wasn’t needed.
Things were tense. People were quiet. In a strange way, the town had never been so peaceful.
“I almost wish some drunk and hollering cowboys would ride in and start some trouble.” Doc was twitchy as he talked. “For God’s sake, the wind’s not even blowing.”
“Maybe Walker isn’t coming,” Haven suggested.
Matthew glanced toward Braxton, who wasn’t listening.
The bounty hunter had gone inside himself over the past few days, and Matthew knew he was feeling like a rattlesnake coiled and ready to strike. After chasing the man for years, Braxton could clearly only focus on bringing him in for good. He wasn’t going to let a chance slip him by.
“You ready to head home?” Luke asked Haven. “The Ainslie boys will be arriving soon to take night patrol.”
“How are they?” Doc asked.
Luke shrugged. “Big and dedicated, even if they do fancy themselves something out of a dime store novel.”
Haven stood up and gave Matthew a quick kiss. “Be safe,” she pleaded. “Don’t you go and get killed before I get to marry you,” she teased. Matthew knew she meant what she said, and he understood. Each day they grew closer increased his fear of losing her.
Matthew gave her a tight squeeze in return. The heaviness of her sweet head resting on his shoulder made him think of taking her and running away from all the dangers of the world. Instead, he made her a promise. “Nothing on this earth will stop me from marrying you, you hear me?”
“We’ll be in town early,” Luke announced to the assembled men. They rode out of town, armed and alert.
“I’m going to grab some grub.” Braxton stood up and adjusted his belt. “Might also swing in to see Callie. Find me if you need me, boys.”
As the bounty hunter strode away, Doc spoke secretly to Matthew. “They make a nice pair.”
“Him and Miss Lee?”
“Yes indeed,” Doc answered. “It takes a special woman to put a hook in the heart of a man like that. Can’t say I blame him, though. She’s mighty nice to look at.”
Matthew had assumed Braxton only stopped by Callie’s room for carnal reasons, but as he thought about it, he realized there’d been a change in the bounty hunter. It had started almost immediately upon his arrival in town. He’d cleaned himself up, become less gruff, and though he’d only been in Cricket Bend a short time, he was working harder than most to protect the town.
As Matthew thought, he brought out the pocket watch and began to fiddle with it. Twirling it in his fingers had become a soothing habit, occupying his hands so his mind could drift. “Haven says Callie caused quite a stir at the Women’s Society meeting.”
Doc laughed heartily
. “I can only imagine. Laura Harper has been a blowhard, long as I’ve known her. It’s good for her to face off with someone from time to time.”
“Haven likes Callie.”
“You worried about that?”
“I’m still not sure it’s proper.”
“Blast proper, Matthew. She’s happier than I’ve seen her in a long time. And Callie Lee is a part of that, and for good reason. So what if Haven likes her? I like her too. I hear Callie is thinkin’ of buying the saloon and running it by herself, now that Porter is gone, and I hope she does.”
The two men listened to the crickets that chirped in the night. Matthew wound the chain of the pocket watch around his finger and unwound it again. He found the action calming and repeated it.
“Where’d you find that?” Doc reached to touch the swinging silver.
Matthew handed it over. He’d been carrying it around for days without telling anyone, and still wasn’t sure why. “You seen it before?”
“You don’t recognize it?” As if he was trying to lessen a blow, Doc chose his words carefully. “Haven came running home one day, crying and carrying on. She had this watch in her tiny little hands. She couldn’t have been more than six. Your father had thrown it at her when she’d gone over to see if you could come out. Left a bruise on her arm where it hit her. Luke was fit to be tied, and marched over to Philip and let him have it. They almost came to blows, but Matilda and Lucy stopped them, as they usually did. I remember the flower on the side.”
Confused, Matthew shook his head. Doc ran a finger over the design, his jaw working around words he clearly didn’t want to say.
“Doc?”
“It’s your father’s watch, Matthew.”
The haze of memory around the pocket watch began to clear. Matthew remembered the silver hanging from his father’s side, reflecting the light as Philip Frank had brought down his fists and his fury on Matthew and his mother. He’d been so young, and the pocket watch had fallen right at his eye level. Matthew swallowed a flood of terrible memories that tried to burst from the recesses of his mind: beatings and cusses, the smell of liquor, and cowering in the corner of the Frank home.
Matthew swallowed the bile he could taste. “The man in the barn…he dropped it.”
“The man in the—you mean Walker?”
“I don’t think that’s his name.”
The two men looked at each other with mutual confusion. Matthew’s father was dead. It was a truth they'd believed for over a decade. How would the man known as Walker have gotten a hold of Philip Frank’s pocket watch? Matthew remembered his father being a big man, but his hair hadn’t been gray, and he hadn’t worn glasses, and he certainly hadn’t been a murderer. Yet it had been seventeen years since he’d seen him. But if it was him, what was he doing back in Cricket Bend? Question after question raced through Matthew’s head, and he raised his eyes to Doc's. He immediately wished he hadn’t.
Never had Matthew seen Doc look so terrified. He’d never seen Doc look scared of anything at all, but the older man’s face paled. He pointed toward the saloon. “You go, right now, and you get Braxton.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Haven
Pounding on the door, and the sound of men hollering, woke Haven from a restless sleep. Reaching for the gun on the floor, she jumped out of her bed and peered from her room. Luke was already approaching the door.
“Stay put,” he whispered to her.
Haven lifted her gun, ready for anything.
“Open up, Luke!”
The sound of Doc’s familiar voice broke the tension.
Any hint of sleepiness vanished at the sight of Matthew, Doc, and Braxton standing on their porch, looking like they’d seen a whole army of ghosts. Haven grabbed her dressing gown, tying it before stepping into the main room. She went to the stove and began to heat water for coffee, trying to be helpful.
“I assume you have a good reason for scaring the daylights out of me,” Luke said. As the men stepped inside, they gathered around the table where Matthew also lit and set a lantern.
“It’s a reason, though I wouldn’t call it good by any means.” Doc tossed something to Luke. “Look familiar?”
Luke held the item up to the flame from the lantern. He exhaled long and loud. “You bet it does.”
“It was lying next to Theo McKenzie’s body,” Matthew confessed.
“You didn’t think to mention it?”
Matthew shook his head. “And there’s something else. In the brawl, I was fighting Theo, and there was a man, a big man with glasses, who came out of nowhere and knocked him flat. I didn’t get a good look at him, but now…It’s the same man. I know it. He’s been here the whole time.”
Haven heard the trouble in Matthew’s voice and went to his side. “What’s going on?”
Matthew kept his eyes on Luke. “My father is dead, isn’t he?”
“That’s what we thought,” Luke answered. “You didn’t recognize the man in the barn, though, or in the fight.”
“It has been a long time. I was just a kid.”
Haven looked around, troubled by the late night talk of the dead and dangerous. “Will someone tell me what’s going on?”
Luke put a silver pocket watch in her hand. “It belonged to Philip Frank. You remember it?”
Haven turned the watch over in her hand. The flower engraving on the back seemed familiar, and she had a quick memory of running hard through the fields to get away from Matthew’s drunk, angry father. A six year old girl who knew her way around the area could easily outsmart an inebriated man, and she had. More than once. “Of course I do.”
Braxton jumped in and looked around at everyone. “You mind tellin’ me how no one in this whole town knows if this man is dead?”
“Philip walked off one night, drunk as a skunk,” Luke recalled. “Lucy and me confronted him after he beat Matilda real bad.”
“Nearly killed her,” Doc said as he sat down in a chair at the table.
Haven slipped her hand into Matthew’s. She knew that hearing all this information had to be jarring. One peek at his face, and she saw how troubled he was. She squeezed his hand tightly between hers.
Luke sat down and continued. “I told him he could either go to jail and likely wind up in a prison camp, or leave and never come back. So he walked off, and we watched him go. Never heard another word. I figured, being drunk and broke, and liking to fight as much as he did, he’d been killed by something or someone at some point.” He looked up at Matthew and Haven. “It was easier to tell you kids that he’d died. You were both so young. I never thought for a second he might still be alive somewhere, and I certainly never thought we’d see him again.”
Doc looked at Braxton. “Philip was a big man, over six feet. He didn’t have gray hair or glasses when he left town, but that was years ago.”
“Seventeen years,” Matthew said quietly.
“Seventeen years of hard living will gray a man and take his eyesight,” Braxton agreed. “You all right, Deputy?”
Matthew ignored the question, pushing onward. “But why would he come back here?”
“All sorts of things drive a man. You’re the only family he’s got.” Everyone could tell Braxton’s mind was working. “If he’s come back, it’s likely for you.”
“To kill me?”
“Maybe not.” Braxton glanced around and settled his eyes on Haven. “Hank Porter up and left town three days ago without saying a thing to anyone. Even Callie didn’t know he was going. You know anything about that?”
Surprised, Haven started to protest. Then it dawned on her that Braxton knew more about her than he’d told anyone, and she remembered how he’d whisked her away from the saloon that night. It was time to come clean. “He told me he was leaving, and he said bad things were coming.”
“What kind of bad things?”
“That was all he said.” Haven gulped. “He tried to get me to leave with him.”
At her confession, all eyes t
urned to her. Matthew looked horrified, and Doc put his head in his hands and sighed deeply. Haven kept her eyes on Braxton, who didn’t seem surprised at all. The bounty hunter’s gaze took in everything, and Haven wondered what else he knew.
“Porter did what?” Luke had no inkling that she’d been involved with Porter, and Haven felt sinking dread. Disappointing her father was one of her worst fears, and it appeared all secrets were about to be known.
“He told me I had to come with him.”
“To where?”
“New Orleans, by way of Galveston.”
“That son of a bitch.” Braxton’s hands were in fists.
“What does Hank Porter have to do with Philip?” Luke asked.
“Who knows?” Matthew shrugged. “He showed up three months ago out of nowhere.”
“Doesn’t mean anything. Men come and go all the time.”
The wretched truth coming together in her mind, Haven spoke up. “No one knows anything about him. Not even Callie.”
“She could be covering for him,” Matthew suggested.
“She’s not,” Haven answered. “They met right before they came here, and she didn’t know anything about him. She told me not to trust him.”
“You shouldn’t have,” Braxton replied.
Haven ignored him. “The last time I talked to him, he was a completely different man. He wasn’t charming at all. He was angry, and scared of something, real scared. I had to get a shotgun to get him to leave.” She heard Matthew sigh next to her.
“When was this?”
“He came to the clinic while you two were with the McKenzies.”
“He came into my clinic?” Never had she seen Doc turn so red.
She nodded. “You were upstairs sleeping. I locked the door. I swear I did. He found a way…” The feeling of Matthew’s hand slipping around her waist stopped her words, and she leaned against him.
Braxton leaned on the table and exhaled for a long moment. “I can’t imagine Porter gets scared of much. Maybe he was working for Walker, or Philip Frank, or whoever the hell he is. Maybe things didn’t go as planned.”