The Man from Stone Creek

by Linda Lael Miller

  Maddie felt regret. She liked Anna, and rarely got to see her.

  “Sure thing, Pa,” Garrett said, and waited until his father had risen and turned his back before dragging his eyes slowly over Undine.

  Sam and Maddie took their leave. They had gone a mile up the river road before Sam stopped the team, got down and inspected the rigging. Up until then, he and Maddie hadn’t spoken.

  “What are you doing?” Maddie asked. She was fitful, anxious to get home to Terran, lock the doors behind her and forget she’d ever gone to supper at the Donagher ranch.

  Sam didn’t answer. He just tightened everything and climbed back up to take the reins. Maddie figured he hadn’t trusted the Donaghers’ hitching job, and didn’t pursue the subject.

  “You know them,” she said when they’d been rolling again for several minutes. “Rex and Landry, I mean.”

  Sam chuckled. “Not as well as I plan to,” he replied, and left Maddie to go right on wondering who Sam O’Ballivan really was, and what he wanted with Mungo Donagher’s outlaw sons.

  CHAPTER

  SIX

  A LOW, MEWLING SOUND caught Sam’s ear as he rounded the back of the buckboard, out behind the mercantile, hoping to help Maddie down before she went ahead and made the leap herself. He paused and peered into the wagon bed, waiting for a cloud to pass over the skinny moon so he could see more than a shadowy shape huddled in the corner behind the seat.

  Just as the moon was unveiled—the side lanterns had winked out, one and then the other, halfway back to town—Maddie turned from her perch to look down. “Land sakes,” she said, “it’s Ben’s puppy.”

  Sam sighed, resettled his hat, and reached over the side of the wagon to hoist the little critter out. He’d been nestled on a pile of empty burlap bags the whole way, without making a sound until now.

  “Sure enough,” he agreed, setting the mutt on the ground and watching dubiously as it sniffed the rear wheel and then lifted a hind leg.

  Maddie gathered her skirts and clambered deftly over the board backrest to stand on the floorboards, her hands resting on her hips. “Somebody must have put him in the wagon. He couldn’t have gotten there on his own.”

  “Ben, I reckon,” Sam said. The dog had finished his business and was now smelling his pant leg. He hoped the lop-eared little creature hadn’t mistaken him for a wagon wheel.

  “Looks like you’ve been gifted with a dog,” Maddie said with a degree of satisfaction that was wholly unbecoming.

  Sam rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. “Now what would I do with a dog?” he countered.

  She sat on the side-rail and swung her legs over with a swish of skirts. Sam caught her around the waist just before she would have made the jump, and stumbled a bit at the unexpected solidity of that deceptively slender frame. The contact between their two torsos roused something inside him that made him set her away from him abruptly.

  Remember Abigail, he told himself. Damned if he could bring her face to mind, though, right at that moment.

  “You’re heavier than I would have guessed,” he said, and then wished he could suck the words back in and swallow them.

  Maddie seemed flustered. She straightened her skirts and patted her hair and took her time looking up into his face. “I can think of a thousand things you could have said,” she told him peevishly, “that would have been better than that.”

  Sam felt the fool, and that always made him testy. He cleared his throat and tried again. “I didn’t mean—”

  Maddie put up a hand to silence him. In the sparse moonlight, he saw that she was amused, not insulted, and his relief was profound. She stooped, all of a sudden, and swept the little yellow dog up into her arms. Smiled, instead of making a face, when the pup gave her cheek a tentative lap.

  Something shifted inside Sam, watching her. Made him wonder what she’d look like holding a baby. He took an unconscious step backward. “I’d best unhitch this team for you,” he said. He didn’t see a barn, but there was plenty of grass for the horses, and a trough.

  “No need,” she answered, still cuddling the pup. “Terran can do it.”

  With that, she gave a shrill whistle through her teeth.

  Sam grinned, in spite of himself. He’d always admired people who could whistle like that, and he’d never run across the talent in a woman before. There were lots of things about Maddie Chancelor, he suspected, that he’d never come across before.

  Before he could ask how she’d acquired the skill, the back door of the mercantile slammed open and Terran bounded out. Catching sight of the pup in his sister’s arms, he stopped short.

  “That’s Neptune,” he said. “What’s he doing here?”

  “I’m not sure,” Maddie answered, stroking the dog’s back in a way that made Sam widen his stance slightly. “We just found him in the back of the wagon. Unhitch the team and see that they get a little grain, please.”

  Terran nodded, but he approached and put out a hand to touch Neptune’s wriggly little body. “I reckon Ben was worried one of his brothers would drown him in the creek,” he speculated. He looked up at Maddie with hope clearly visible in his eyes, even in that poor light. “Can we keep him?”

  “You know we can’t,” Maddie said with some regret. “Mr. James would have a fit.”

  Terran looked so dejected that Sam almost reached out and ruffled his hair, the way a man does when he wants to reassure a boy. He refrained, because the truce between him and Terran was new, like a naked and fragile bird just hatched from the egg.

  “I guess I could take him back to the schoolhouse,” he said with considerable reluctance. Sam was trying to break the habit of taking in lost critters; he’d left them scattered all over the Arizona Territory and half of Texas and New Mexico, as well, always in a good home, and at some point, it had to stop. “Just until we get the straight of the matter. I’ll ask Ben about it Monday, before school takes up.”

  Maddie smiled a little and shoved the dog into his arms. “That’s a splendid idea,” she said.

  Terran gazed at Neptune with a longing that made Sam feel bruised on the inside, then sighed and went to work releasing the harness fittings.

  Sam stood there for a long moment, as confounded as if he were suddenly thirteen again, while the pup chewed on the collar of his one good suit coat. “What am I supposed to feed him?” he asked.

  Maddie indulged in another smile. “You’re a schoolmaster,” she said. “You’ll reason it out.” With that, she gave a little curtsy—there was something of mockery in it—and raised her chin a notch. “Good night, Mr. O’Ballivan. And thank you for a very…interesting evening.”

  Before he could shuffle the pup and tug at his hat brim, she was gone, disappearing into the mercantile through the same door Terran had just come out of.

  While Sam was still standing there, oddly befuddled, Terran finished his work, hung the harnesses on a fence post and dusted his hands together. “He’d probably favor some jerked venison, being a dog,” the boy said. He ran into the store and came out again, quick as the proverbial wink, and held out two hands full of dried meat, obviously purloined from a crock or a bin in the mercantile.

  Sam had to shuffle again, to take the jerky. He stuffed it into his pockets and looked up just as Maddie’s shadow moved back from a second-floor window. “Obliged,” he said.

  “You need something else?” Terran asked reasonably.

  Sam told his feet to move, but they didn’t comply right away. “No,” he said, still looking up at that lighted window, where Maddie had been standing only moments before. “I’ll be going now.”

  Terran waited for him to follow through. “You taken a shine to my sister?” he asked when Sam stood stock-still for another minute or so.

  That broke the spell. “No,” Sam lied, and thrust himself into motion. He felt Terran’s gaze on his back as he walked away.

  Back at the schoolhouse, he went inside, set the pup on the floor, lit a lantern and assessed the situation w
hile Neptune gnawed on a strip of dried meat from his pocket. Coming to no ready conclusion, he checked on the nameless horse, out there in the grass-scented darkness, found it sound, and returned to his quarters, which suddenly seemed lonely, even with Neptune curled up in front of the cold stove.

  “I don’t have any good reason to keep a dog,” he said solemnly.

  Neptune laid his muzzle on his paws, closed his eyes and fell asleep.

  Sam kicked off his boots, shrugged out of his suit coat and loosened his collar. He unbuckled his gun belt, set the .45 within easy reach on the bedside stand. His eyes wandered to the stacks of books, teetering in piles and taking up most of the tabletop. He crossed to the middle of the room, selected a favorite, sat in the solitary wooden chair and flipped through the thin leaves, but his mind wouldn’t settle on the familiar words. It kept straying, like a calf separated from the herd, to the mercantile on the main street of town and thence to the woman he’d glimpsed at that upstairs window.

  Like as not, Maddie was getting ready to turn in right about now. Taking off her clothes, putting on a nightgown, maybe letting down her hair. He wondered if it reached to her waist, and if she plaited it before getting into bed.

  Sam’s throat constricted, and his groin ached.

  He slammed The Odyssey shut, rousing the pup from its slumbers, and set the volume aside, to rest beside his .45.

  Neptune let out a little whimper of concern.

  “It’s all right, boy,” he told the dog. It was a pitiful thing, when a man was glad for the company of a pup that had been foisted off on him.

  Usually, reading settled Sam’s mind and made it easier to sleep. Tonight, the time-worn way of corralling his thoughts was not going to work, so with a sigh, he left his chair, ladled some water into a basin and washed up for the night. He used his toothbrush and powder, spitting out the back door, turned down the wick on the lamp, stripped to the skin and crawled under the covers of his narrow, lumpy schoolmaster’s bed.

  It didn’t surprise him much when the pup jumped onto the foot of the mattress and settled himself, with a dog sigh, between Sam’s feet. He cupped his hands behind his head and stared up at the dark ceiling, reviewing the events of the evening in his mind.

  It took some doing to get past Maddie—the way she’d looked in her go-to-supper dress, the gleam of her hair when it caught a stray glint of moonlight, the way she’d told him about Warren Debney’s death and her suspicion that one or all of the Donagher brothers had been behind it, or even Mungo himself.

  Maybe, Sam thought, not for the first time, the old man had ordered the killing, out of spite. He’d wanted Maddie for a wife, and even now, when all danger of that was past, the mere idea turned Sam’s stomach sour. Come to that, he didn’t care much for the idea of that Debney fellow touching her, either, God rest his soul.

  Deliberately he shifted his mind back to the Donaghers, where it belonged.

  Garrett was a charmer, and perhaps a little too fond of his stepmother, if appearances were to be credited. Mungo’s eldest might or might not be part of the gang Sam and Vierra wanted to rein in; dishonorable as it was, outlawry was rough, dirty work, requiring some hard riding and a modicum of grit. Garrett seemed the kind to take the easy route. His kind weren’t usually good for much when it came to ranching, either, in Sam’s experience. They always had one eye out for a lady and one ear cocked for the dinner bell.

  Landry and Rex, now, they were different. Tear off those homespun, misbuttoned shirts they’d been wearing at Undine’s elegant supper and you’d probably find a mean streak painted down their backs. They’d recognized Sam, sure enough, as the man they’d meant to harass the night before, over on the Mexican side of the river, and he’d kept his coat pushed back, so his .45 would be handy, all the way back to Haven.

  He figured it was Maddie that had kept them from coming after him, as soon as supper was ended and he’d driven out of sight of the ranch house. If her company hadn’t been so downright pleasant, he might have regretted having her along for just that reason. He wouldn’t have minded a little set-to with one or both of the Donaghers, but he was a patient man.

  He could wait.

  Neptune gave a low growl and got to his feet.

  Sam reached for the .45.

  Maybe he wouldn’t have to wait.

  The door latch rattled.

  The dog let out a sharp bark. His hackles were standing straight up.

  Sam cursed under his breath, cocked the .45 and reached for his pants. Got into them one-handed and fastened the top button.

  “Mr. O’Ballivan?” a familiar female voice called.

  “Hush,” he told the dog.

  Sam opened the door, the revolver still in his hand, and found Bird standing on the step, looking up at him. Even in the pale light of the moon, he could see that one of her eyes was blackened and her chin was wobbling.

  He reached out, caught hold of her arm and pulled her inside.

  Neptune growled once more, then subsided, settling himself on the mattress again, satisfied that he’d done his duty.

  “What happened?” Sam demanded, setting the .45 on the nightstand again and groping to light the lantern. In the glow of the lamp, he saw that Bird’s face was streaked with kohl, her dress torn, and the shiner was worse than any he’d ever seen.

  “Somebody got rough,” she said, and sank into his chair as if her knees wouldn’t hold her up for another moment.

  Sam found a basin and emptied the water bucket into it, then reached for the one towel he owned. He and Violet Perkins had both used it, so it wasn’t as clean as he’d have liked, but they’d have to make do.

  “Who?” Sam asked, wetting a corner of the towel in the basin and dabbing at her upper lip with it. She’d been punched at least twice, and it would be a wonder if she still had all her teeth.

  Bird shivered, and when she looked up into his eyes, it seemed like he could see the bruises on her soul. “Garrett Donagher,” she whispered. “He came in a little while ago, in a real state. I don’t mind liftin’ my skirt, that’s my job, but—”

  A tremor of rage went through Sam and it took a few moments to ride it out. Donagher must have set out for town as soon as he and Maddie had left the ranch house, riding overland at a hard pace.

  “You told me to come to you if I had trouble,” Bird reminded him in a small, shamed voice.

  “What brought this on?” he asked, and went on cleaning up her face. The answer wouldn’t matter in the vast scheme of things, but he needed something to keep his mind on the task at hand, keep him from hunting Donagher down and taking his fists to him.

  A tear slipped down Bird’s cheek, trickling its windy way through rouge as thick as a coat of whitewash. “I don’t know,” she said miserably. “I went over it and over it in my mind, after I got loose of him and come running for your place, but I can’t come up with a reason for what he did, ’cept simple meanness.” She stopped, swallowed miserably. “I hit Garrett over the head with a lamp,” she confessed. “Oralee ain’t going to like that, my breaking her lamp. Least of all, on a customer’s head. Knocked him clean out, too.”

  Sam smiled at the image of a Donagher prostrate on the floor of a whorehouse, though it probably looked more like a grimace to Bird. “Good,” he said.

  “Good?” Bird asked, blinking again. “Garrett’s going to kill me when he comes around, if one of his brothers doesn’t do it first.” Another fleeting, brave little smile. “You said you’d help me, if I got myself into trouble, but right now, I can’t for the life of me reckon how you’ll go about it.”

  Sam got his flask, the one he carried in his saddlebags when he was away from Stone Creek, and dampened a fresh corner of the towel with it. Bird winced when he touched it to the cut over her lip. “It’s a conundrum, all right,” he conceded. “You sure can’t go back to the Rattlesnake. But if you spend the night here, I’ll be out of work by morning.”

  Bird’s shoulders slumped. She clearly expected him to go
back on his word, like everybody else in her life had probably done for as long as she could recall.

  She didn’t know Sam O’Ballivan. What he’d go through to keep a promise was fitting stuff for the epic tales in those volumes over there on the table. He’d cut his teeth on Hercules, after all, but at times like this one, he felt like Prometheus, condemned to have his liver fed to an eagle on a continuous basis. It was the price of stealing fire, he supposed.

  He must have voiced at least some of his thoughts, because Bird wrinkled her nose in confusion and asked, “Who?”

  “Prometheus,” he said, resigned to the explanation. “He was a Greek god. Among other things, he stole fire and gave it to humans, so they could keep warm and cook their food. Zeus wasn’t too happy about it and sent this eagle—”

  “I never heard nothin’ like that at the preachin’,” Bird said, confounded.

  “Never mind.” Sam sighed.

  “Who’s this Zeus fella?”

  “Just somebody in a story,” Sam answered. He’d done all he could, in terms of tending Bird’s wounds. The finer points of Greek mythology would have to wait.

  “What are we going to do now?” Bird asked. “I’d as soon take my chances with wolves and bears as go back to the Rattlesnake.”

  Sam strapped on his gun belt, slid his .45 into the holster, draped his coat over Bird’s shoulders. “Only one thing we can do,” he said.

  Five minutes later he was knocking at the back door of the mercantile.

  Maddie answered, bundled in a wrapper and holding a lantern high. He’d have bet the shotgun was leaning against the doorframe, within easy reach. She’d plaited her hair, the single braid resting over her right shoulder like a gleaming length of chestnut-colored rope, reaching past her waist.

  Her eyes widened when she saw Bird, huddled in Sam’s coat, shivering even though it was a warm night.

  “I know it’s late,” Sam began, and then stopped, because he didn’t know where to go from there.

  Maddie’s jaw clamped down visibly. She’d grind down her molars if she kept that up. She ran her gaze over the saloon girl again, then stepped back. “Come in,” she said.