“Bailey, don’t you dare leave me in this cell.”
“I’m going out to talk to Coulter and put a stop to this right now.”
“Oh, no you’re not, Miss Wilde.”
Bailey scowled at Aaron, and he could see mistaking her for a man. The woman had the right attitude and the right toughness. But Aaron hadn’t made that mistake, and he had a feeling Coulter wouldn’t either. Then Bailey would be in big trouble, because a woman shouldn’t stay out on a holding alone, and how was she going to keep her homestead claim if she couldn’t live on it?
Her scowl deepened into a sneer. “I’d like to see someone try and stop me.”
The jail door clanked shut with Bailey on the business side of it and Aaron on the free side. Kylie would have just as soon been locked up with a rabid wolverine.
“You’re not going to get away with this. When I get out of here, I’m turning the law on you. I haven’t done a thing to deserve this!”
Aaron had managed to drag Kylie all the way in from her cabin. He’d had a fight on his hands getting Bailey the five feet from outside the cell to inside it with the door shut and locked. And Kylie thought Aaron might have a black eye developing.
“It’s too late to go out tonight,” Aaron said in a reasonable tone, completely wasted over Bailey’s furious threats. Then he raised his voice until the roof shook. “And you should both thank me.”
That shut Bailey up, probably because she couldn’t imagine such a stupid statement. Kylie was wondering what Aaron could possibly mean by it.
“I don’t know what kind of half-wits you two served with in the war, but I promise you, Bailey Wilde, Gage Coulter will figure out you’re a woman ten seconds after you start talking.”
Kylie didn’t believe it. Bailey played her role well.
“Does that mean you’re not going to tell the whole world I’m a woman?” Bailey got the implications before Kylie did. Bailey had always been fast.
“I think living like a man is a blamed fool idea. But no, I’m not going to tell. I don’t like the idea of any of you living alone, but you seem like a mighty tough cowpoke, Bailey. Maybe you can convince folks.” Aaron paused, then shook his head. “I doubt it, but maybe. And definitely not Coulter. He’ll see through those britches in a few minutes.”
Aaron quit talking all sudden-like.
Kylie realized what he’d said and blushed.
Bailey might’ve blushed a bit too, and she never did much blushing.
“I mean he’ll know you’re a woman,” Aaron forged on, clearly wanting to leave his last statement far behind. “Some might be fooled by you just because you’ve got a tough way about you, not because of how you look. You’re a mighty pretty woman, but you’ve got the act right. Kylie doesn’t. She would never fool anyone for long. Look at her. She got away with her masquerade in the Army, because folks thought she was a real young boy and some of them have a look like hers. I’ll bet you even told them you were young, didn’t you?”
Kylie would have admitted it, except she was never speaking to Aaron again.
“But now she’s got to say she’s at least twenty-one to claim a homestead, so she’s trying to pass herself off as an adult man. No one will believe it. So she’s either got to find someone to stay out there with her or get off that land, because she’ll never spend another night alone out there—not while I’m alive. Now, I’m going to go get some supper, and once I’ve enjoyed a peaceful meal with no females nagging me, I’ll be back with food for the two of you.”
10
Aaron had been gone about ten minutes when Shannon stuck her head in the jailhouse. “I can’t believe both of you are locked up.”
Bailey erupted from where she sat slumped on the cot. Kylie quit her pacing. “He took the key too,” Bailey said, “or I swear I’d have you break us out.”
“A jailbreak. That’s got to be bad.” Shannon settled in the wooden chair by the marshal’s desk. “I don’t want a posse coming after us. I have sheep to tend. How am I supposed to do that if I’m runnin’ from the law?”
“He’s figured out we’re all women.” Bailey gave Shannon a dour look.
Shannon shrugged and leaned back in the chair.
Kylie stepped forward. “Aaron sounded like he was willing to keep his mouth shut about you being a woman, Bailey. He’ll do that for Shannon, too.” She looked at Shannon’s pretty face. “The only reason we’ve gotten away with it as long as we have is because we never come to town. We settled on our homesteads and we spent the fall building cabins and the winter snowed inside. We’ve avoided town. We all know no one will be fooled. The war was different. We were supposed to be young then.”
The three of them looked at each other, silent. Finally, Kylie said, “You’re going to have to accept sometime that you’re both women, and both pretty. You don’t look like men at all. This was all Pa’s idea, and he doesn’t see us as pretty women, only as the sons he could have had. I like dresses and long hair and making my cabin look nice. Aaron says I can’t stay alone, but he can’t tell me what to do. I’m going to lose my homestead exemption. He can enforce that, but he’s got no real power over me. I’ll let him talk to Coulter and try to get to the bottom of the attack. After that, I’m going home.”
Shannon sat up in the chair. “What attack?”
Kylie told the story again. By the end, Shannon and Bailey were both frowning.
“He’s right, Kylie.” Shannon had always had a mothering streak. “You can’t stay out there alone.”
“Then neither of you can stay alone, either.” Kylie glared at her stubborn sisters, knowing they’d never give up their land. Bailey was too ambitious. Shannon was too in love with her sheep.
“Sure we can,” Bailey said. “I can hold my own land.”
“Against a band of armed men shooting flaming arrows from cover?”
“Yep.”
Bailey was probably right. Her sister was mighty tough.
Then Kylie added her real worry—not that flaming arrows didn’t worry her. “I told Pa I’d stay out the five years, but I don’t know if I can stand it.”
“You’ll be twenty-five, Kylie.” Bailey waved a hand as if dismissing Kylie’s worries. “Plenty of time to go back East and find some blamed-fool man to marry.”
A blamed-fool man who’d do all the roof climbing, Kylie thought wistfully, while she ran a house and shopped for bonnets and planted flowers. Why was that such a terrible dream?
And speaking of blamed-fool men, Cudgel Wilde picked that moment to crash open the jailhouse door and storm inside, looking at his three daughters with contempt.
As if this was all their fault.
Kylie, possibly emboldened by the bars, muttered so only Bailey could hear, “I’ve just decided I can’t stand it anymore.”
Aaron had a family reunion in the jail. If he’d’ve known, he’d’ve brought more food.
Erica Langley and her daughter, Myra, ran the diner. She had two grown-up sons, who helped out some, but seemed mostly like layabouts.
Erica told him that the marshal, her husband, was transporting a prisoner and might be gone a full week. Considering that Erica was expecting baby number five at any time, she probably wished her husband spent more time on the trail.
Now here Aaron stood in the midst of the Wilde family. This was Aaron’s mess, and he was going to have to clean it up. A simple solution wouldn’t work, because all four Wildes wouldn’t fit in that one cell.
Which was a dirty shame. A few days behind bars might set their thinking straight.
Cudgel had both hands grasping the bars, as if the old coot could bend them apart and set his “sons” free.
“It’s about time you got back here, Masterson.” Cudgel Wilde turned on him like a hungry lobo wolf.
Shannon was sitting in Aaron’s chair. Well, Marshal Langley’s chair, but Aaron figured he had claim on it while Langley was gone.
Setting the two plates of food on the desk, he figured he might as well ju
mp into this mess with both feet, since no one seemed interested in being reasonable.
“You three are about the prettiest women I’ve ever seen.” He was telling the truth. Shannon Wilde was a stunning beauty. He could see her hair was short, but a few dark curls peeked out from under her broad-brimmed hat. Bailey Wilde had a subdued kind of beauty with her skin more burned red than tan because she was so fair. She had a more fiery version of Kylie’s eyes, with blond lashes and brows, where Kylie’s were dark, yet her face had the delicate look of a woman. Only an idiot would have mistaken her for a man.
And Kylie, well, she was the prettiest of them all. How had anyone believed she could pass herself off as a man? How had she gotten away with it during the war, even if she did claim to be young?
Of course, her hair was long and she wore a dress, so she wasn’t trying to disguise herself. But he’d seen her in britches, her hair tucked away, and he’d figured it out in a matter of minutes, and that was in poor light with her hat brim pulled down low. There was nothing that was one speck manly about her.
Cudgel strode straight for him, almost foaming at the mouth. “You let my . . . ” His words halted.
“The word you’re looking for is daughters.” Aaron turned furious. What kind of father let this nonsense go on? “Daughters. You have daughters, Mr. Wilde. You might want to practice that word. Accept it. They’re all adult women. Women. A woman is a wonderful thing. She should be cherished and respected and admired, not put in some pathetic disguise.”
“My children never told a lie.”
Aaron closed the space between himself and Wilde. “You lie with every breath you take.” Towering over the old man, Aaron leaned down until his nose almost touched Wilde’s. “Don’t stand there and act like you’re an honorable man. Every word you speak dishonors your beautiful daughters. Every paper you sign defrauds the United States government.”
Cudgel backed up to the cell door. “My children are under arrest for no good reason, Masterson. From what I understand, you’re trying to get to the bottom of an Indian attack and using that as an excuse to break the law. Let them out. Now.”
“Until I believe your daughters have enough sense not to go riding out to face a man who might be trying to kill them, they stay locked up.” He looked at the only Wilde sister walking around free. “What about you? Aren’t you going to offer to charge out to Coulter’s place?”
Shannon raised her hands as if in surrender. “I’ve a good suspicion that if I said yes, I’d spend the night in jail. And I’ve got sheep to tend.”
“You raise sheep?” Aaron felt his brows arch nearly to his hairline. “They ruin the grazing. They’re always looking for some excuse to die. They’re prime wolf food. On top of all that, they stink.”
“I’ll say they stink,” Bailey said.
Aaron had the odd feeling that Bailey Wilde could have been a good friend if she hadn’t been a woman . . . and a fraud.
Shannon smiled at him. “My sheep are fine-smelling critters, my grass is holding up well, and I haven’t lost one to the wolves yet.”
“Promise me you’ll go home and not to Coulter’s place, and you can stay on the outside of this cell.”
“You’ve got my word,” Shannon said, still smiling. Every inch a woman’s smile.
It made Aaron want to bang his head on something hard. “Well, there’s still some fried venison steaks over at Erica’s Diner if you’re hungry,” Aaron said, feeling a very natural manly need to take care of all these women. What was the matter with their father that he’d stick them each alone on her land, miles from help? He remembered Kylie dangling from that roof and suppressed a shudder.
“I think I’ll head on home. I don’t eat a lot of meat.” Shannon rose in a way so graceful and ladylike, Aaron wanted to punch Cudgel Wilde right in the face.
She left the room in her pathetic manly disguise that didn’t disguise anything. In fact, now that Aaron knew she was a woman, those britches were downright indecent.
He turned to Cudgel. “Get on out of here, unless you want to sleep on the floor. A decent man might think he needed to stay with his girls. Or he might take his daughter home instead of letting her go off alone in this wild country. Especially since there’s someone out there shooting flaming arrows.”
“Shannon’s tough. All my young’uns are.” Cudgel stalked out of the jail and slammed the door so hard that dust drifted down from the ceiling.
Aaron wondered if the girls, or Cudgel himself, realized that he had never referred to his daughters as women. He’d called them young’uns and children, being careful not to attach a female word to them. Just how deeply was Cudgel obsessed with making men out of his girls?
“Aaron?” Kylie said his name in such a sweet voice, he almost apologized and let her go.
“What?”
“Is there a second cot?” The little woman fluttered her lashes in a way that made Aaron want to get closer and see the streaks of gold and green and brown in her eyes and tease a smile out of her. Which didn’t match with his arresting her at all.
“And more blankets? It’s going to be so uncomfortable here overnight.” That one pretty dimple popped out when she smiled.
Bailey snorted. Aaron arched a brow at her. That one, he’d have no trouble keeping locked up a while.
“I can get more blankets.” He’d give her his own from his room in the boardinghouse if he had to. “But there’s no other cot.” His bed didn’t have the look of something to be easily torn apart and reassembled in here. He wasn’t sure his landlady would allow it anyway. “Leastways none I know of. We’ve never arrested two people at once before. Well, not in the month I’ve been here.”
Aaron had never arrested anyone. Privately he admitted he wasn’t really sure he had the right to. A land agent wasn’t exactly a lawman.
“Thank you, Aaron.” Kylie gave him that smile that made him itchy, made him want to do anything to see it again.
“I won’t be gone long.” Aaron left at a fast pace. He only realized how he was hurrying to do Kylie’s bidding when the vision of her pretty face faded from his head. It took quite a while.
“I don’t know how you can live with yourself,” Bailey said dryly.
“I don’t have one speck of trouble.” Kylie relaxed on the stupid cot. “I’m a sight more normal than you, Bailey Wilde.”
Shrugging one shoulder, Bailey said, “Probably right.”
“So what am I going to do?” Kylie really couldn’t stay at her place again.
They had a plan by the time Aaron got back.
“Hired help?” Aaron sputtered. “You can’t live out there alone with a cowhand.”
“She’ll hire a housekeeper, too.”
“We don’t have any of those in Aspen Ridge.”
“We’ll find one before she goes home.” Bailey sounded so confident, Kylie figured she probably would find one.
“And we’ve decided to let you handle Coulter. So you can let us go now. Kylie will come home with me for the night, and we’ll set about making her home safe for her.” Bailey smiled.
Kylie had never seen Bailey try to be polite and ladylike before. She was really bad at it.
“She’s not safe with you, either. All you’ve done is put two women alone against a band of back-shooters.”
“There’s a difference,” Bailey said, leaning one bent arm against the bars and staring him straight in the eye, as tough and forthright as any man.
“No there isn’t.”
“I chose my land so no one could come up behind me. I built my cabin with windows so narrow all they’re good for is giving me a field of fire. I cut back the woods so no one can get close without me seeing them. I’ve got food stored up and a spring behind my house so no one can starve me out. I built the cabin of rock so no one can burn me out. I keep a loaded rifle right by the door, and I have enough bullets to start a war, and win it.”
“That shows good sense.” Aaron jerked one shoulder.
Ba
iley tilted her head toward her little sister. “Kylie picked her claim because it was pretty.”
Kylie narrowed her eyes at both of them when they looked at her.
“You’re both still female.”
“No one knows that but you, Mr. Masterson. I’m trusting you to keep it that way. All anyone will know is that Kylie is staying with her big brother until she makes her place more secure.”
“It’d probably be better if she stayed with her pa.”
“No!” Bailey and Kylie said it together at a near shout.
“She’s staying with me, and the fact that I’m her sister instead of her brother is something no one will even know if you keep your mouth shut. And right now no one knows she’s been attacked but you, her family, and the attackers. Her family will keep quiet. You keep your mouth shut about it, then if word gets out, we’ll know exactly who to hunt by who started the talk.”
“Coulter will know about it after tomorrow. I don’t see how to question him without telling him what happened.”
“You claim he’s an honorable man and you doubt he’s behind this. See if he’ll keep his mouth shut, too. It’ll help us catch . . .” Bailey cleared her throat. “I mean it will help you catch the varmints who shot at Kylie.”
Aaron glared at Bailey for a long time, and then with clear misgivings he set the blankets on the desk and unlocked the cell door. “You can go.”
Bailey marched out of the jail and headed for the outside without a backward glance.
Kylie waved goodbye and smiled sweetly. “Thank you, Aaron.”
He smiled back.
11
Aaron rode up to Coulter’s ranch house, impressed. The man had prospered. There was proof of that everywhere.
The house was log and stone like most everyone’s house. But Coulter’s place was much larger, with a second floor and real glass windows. Aaron wondered if Kylie would count this as civilized.
And the place sat in one of the most picturesque settings Aaron had ever seen. A mountain rose up behind it on the west. To the south, a broad meadow was dotted with red Hereford cattle in equal parts with the longhorns, placidly cropping grass as their calves gamboled around their mamas. Beyond that a wide stream created a natural barrier to keep the cattle from straying. Aaron heard the rush of water over stone as the creek twisted and bent into thick woodland. A broad porch stretched across the front of Coulter’s house, though there wasn’t a rocking chair to be seen anywhere. A big log barn stood to the south of the house, with a corral of horses grazing on lush grass. Nearby was a bunkhouse, a hitching post along its front.
Tried and True (Wild at Heart Book #1) Page 9