His hand crept under the pillow for his Colt before recognizing Tuck Moon's voice. Then he sat up, head swimming with the remnants of bad dreams, before the two reached the apartment.
Seeing him awake, Delight smiled at him, saying gaily, "Look who's here!" before peeling off toward the kitchen. Moon came forward, his hand outstretched.
"Had some trouble, I hear." Moon's handshake, though firm, did not try to overpower Pel's weakened grip.
Pelham nodded. "We did. Fortunately, my wife is a fighter. Between us, we handled the situation, but Moon, I'm glad you're back. I don't know how much longer this quiet is going to last."
Moon sat on the edge of the chair next to the couch, an obviously ill-at-ease guest in the sheriff's house. His ramshackle hat twirled between his fingers. "Not long, I expect. I already had word Monroe has plans for Endurance. Another day or two, then look out." He fell silent.
"Had word?" Pel asked. "At the ranch?"
"Nah. Feller I know overtook me on the way out to your ranch. He figured I was leaving town, and I didn't tell him any different." Moon shifted in the hard-seated chair. "Mrs. Sheriff, she was telling me how she come to be all banged up. Diggett Monroe won't be happy, you shooting a couple of his men. He's got a temper, and he don't give up. Losing a man, it'll just make him mad, more determined to bring you down. Sooner or later, he'll try to get you."
"That's about what I figured," Pel said. "You know him. Think we've got time to call in the U.S. Marshals before he moves on us?"
Tuck rubbed a hand through his sand-colored hair, pausing at a knob left there from his beating. "Doubt it. Can try, I reckon, but he's had time to gather his gang. I expect he's ready, just waiting for Friday."
"Friday? What the hell does Friday have to do with it?"
"Monroe's superstitious. If you check his record, you'll see he always pulls his stunts on Friday--in the evening usually."
How did Moon know? Pel wondered, just as Moon added, "Sheriff, if you've got any favors due, this would be a good time to call 'em in."
Pel considered. Who else was there but the U.S. Marshals? Plenty of men might owe him a favor, but nobody he could reach before Monroe's probable attack. The closest lawman was Hood Barnes up near Colville, and it would take him a couple days to get here unless train service had rolled into town by now. He huffed out a breath and shook his head.
"You and me, Moon. That's all. My missus tells me a couple of men stepped up the other night and helped out, but I think the consequences, what happened with those two yesterday, scared some of them into having second thoughts. A man don't want his wife treated like Mrs. Birdsall."
"I don't blame them," Tuck said.
Pel grimaced. "So we can't trust the townsfolk to be so bold another time. It helped that the men here yesterday were drunk. Made them more vicious, maybe, but the rotgut slowed them down some, too. Doubt we'll get that lucky again."
"Most of them will be sober when they come next time," Tuck agreed. "And all the more dangerous because of it."
"A sober man thinks strategy. A drunk just blunders in, come what may." A brief grin curled the corner of Pel's mouth. "Think Monroe'd take a case of whiskey with my compliments if I sent it to him?"
Tuck snorted. "Might be worth a try."
The moment of levity passed. "You noticed my missus' face, and she probably told you how Monroe's men slapped her around, threatened her with a knife. One of the men, Luke Filmore, is dead; the other one, Wheatly, has a crippled leg. We don't need to worry about either of them. But the rest of the gang--" Pel's mouth tightened and his low murmur quieted further. Delight had sharp ears, and she was tuned to his voice. He didn't want her overhearing this next part. "You have some acquaintance with Monroe. Tell me the truth. Does this make Mrs. Birdsall more of a target or less?"
His deputy sat there, gazing at the floor, still on the edge of his seat with his battered old hat hanging from a hooked finger. At last he met Pel's eyes. "More," he said, almost whispering. "Monroe, he don't let any advantage pass and, Sheriff, he knows by now that if he has her, he has you."
It was just what Pel had been thinking.
"Well, then," he said. "I reckon it's up to me to make sure Monroe can't get at her. We need to carry the fight to Monroe. Choose our ground. Found out the other day when Monroe's men shot the place up that two of us can't defend the jail. Walls might as well be built of paper." The corner of his mouth twitched. "Wish we had a fort--and a company of trained soldiers."
"Send your missus away," Tuck advised.
Pel grimaced. "That's what I was thinking. I just wish it was that easy."
* * * *
Delight, straining her ears, listened to the men talk. Only a word here and parts of a sentence there reached her, but enough to know her name came up. She moved back and forth from the stove to the kitchen table, stirring leftover stew as it reheated, cutting bread, setting out a bowl of applesauce laced with cardamom. What were they saying that they didn't want her to hear?
Men! Annoyance shot through her. It wasn't as though she could go back and be the innocent Pel wanted her to be, the prim, respectable lady she'd been two weeks ago. Truth be known, she'd learned a whole lot more about the sheriffing business when she was a little girl hanging around her dad's office than Pel wanted to give her credit for. She was in the middle of this fight now. There was no going back, and surely they were all safer if she knew what to watch for.
Meanwhile, she didn't want Pelham getting too excited or worried. That sort of thing would delay his recovery. Even Doctor Miller, slurring his words as he spoke, had said on his last visit Pel shouldn't be bothered. She sighed, scattering silverware at the side of yellow flowered crockery plates. Too late for that as well. Pelham would do as his principles dictated, no matter the cost to himself. And so would she.
Pasting on another of those smiles that were beginning to feel like someone had drawn half-circles on her face with chalk, she made a production of stepping out of the kitchen and calling, "Dinner is on the table. Mr. Moon, you may wash up at the kitchen sink. Pelham, let me give you a hand."
A drawn--no--a guilty silence fell before Tuck Moon lurched to his feet. Did they think she hadn't noticed? Well, she had. They were making a mistake, leaving her out of the planning, whether they acknowledged it or not. Irritation jerked at her again.
And then Tuck Moon acted so off-handed about stepping in and assisting Pel from the couch it was almost funny, while her husband did his utmost to pretend he didn't need it. He hated showing weakness, even to his deputy. Even to her. But that was Pel.
Her smile, which she'd allowed to fade, came back, real this time. "I hope you're hungry," she said. "Stew is always best the second day, so this should be just right."
She had the satisfaction of knowing it was.
* * * *
"What were you and Tuck Moon talking about today before dinner? Whispering, so I wouldn't hear. I swear, you two were like a pair of schoolgirls hatching a plot of some kind."
Delight's question came out of the darkness. She was stretched beside him, careful to keep to her own side of the bed where she couldn't inadvertently roll too close and hurt him somehow. Pel felt her, lying stiff and tense, and longed to pull her into his arms. He resisted the impulse, knowing he wasn't ready for that. Neither was she. She needed a whole man, not an invalid.
Realizing she was waiting for an answer, he sighed, the rise and fall of his chest painful.
"You," he said, when the silence had dragged on a little too long. "We were talking about you." He was pretty sure he wasn't telling her anything she didn't already know; a surmise proved when she felt around under the blankets until she found his hand and gripped it hard.
"I'm not going anywhere," she whispered, her fingernails digging into his palm. "That's what you and Mr. Moon were talking about, wasn't it? You want to send me away?"
Pel grunted. "Got big ears, don't you?"
"I read the signs. The pair of you were really quite obvi
ous. Every time I mentioned something I could do to help, you and he looked at each other and avoided my eyes. Guilt if ever I saw it!" From the schoolmarm tone of her voice, Delight felt a little snippy.
Pel smiled under cover of the night. Snippy, indeed. "I wouldn't say I want to send you away, honey. Sure would make things easier, though, if Moon and I don't have to spend our time worrying about you."
"You don't need to worry about me. I can take care of myself."
Though he figured he was treading water in danger of going under, Pel said, "Like you took care of yourself yesterday?"
Her breath caught. "I wasn't expecting to be cornered in the sheriff's office. Now I know to watch everywhere. They won't catch me unaware again. And if there is a next time," she added, "I won't worry a mite about waking you up. I'll scream my head off and shoot them down like the rabid animals they are."
This time, his chuckle rolled warm and loud. "That's my girl."
Her grip on his hand relaxed. "I can help, Pelham. You know I can."
"I do know. You already have. You're the reason I'm alive right now, honey."
Delight's voice turned very soft. "I'm too young to be a widow. Keep that in mind, please."
"I will. I most surely will." Blast this damnable weakness. "Come here," he said roughly and, ignoring the painful twinges it caused him, pulled her into his arms.
"I'll hurt you," she protested.
He caressed her, reveling in the feel of her skin under his hand. "I don't care."
* * * *
They were running low on tincture of iodine and carbolic, Delight noticed as she changed Pelham's bandages. He, having reached a point in his recovery where he insisted he didn't need the medication, said there was no rush to resupply. He caught her hand as she tied off the soft bandage strip, shaking his head when she argued.
"I want you to stay off the street, honey," he said. "Moon says there's talk going around."
"Talk? About what?" What now? What more awful thing? She knew from Pelham's expression the news meant nothing good.
Pel shrugged, an uncomfortable lift of his shoulders. "About Schoefield mostly. The fact it was you who arrested him. Monroe's men are blaming you for the shooting of Wheatly and Filmore."
"Hmph! As if their own actions counted for nothing. Anyway, I thought we were keeping that quiet. Who let the cat out of the bag?"
"Don't know, but Moon says it's common knowledge." He let her go to finish knotting the bandage. "I don't want you going out for a while unless Moon or I are with you."
She knew he thought her stymied since he sure wasn't going anywhere, and Tuck Moon had been making a point of keeping his battered face out of sight.
"I see," she said, which was neither argument nor agreement. Pelham, as she thought he would, took it as agreement. She, however, considered her husband wrong about the need for medical supplies with which to treat him. That's why, once she'd settled him on the couch for one of his frequent naps, she removed her apron and dusted her nose with rice powder, determined on a trip to the drugstore. She'd be right in plain sight, for goodness sake. How dangerous could it be?
Waiting until Pel's whistling breaths told her he'd fallen asleep, she tiptoed from the room.
Tuck Moon, his hat pulled low to hide his face from chance visitors, was sitting at the office desk playing a game of solitaire with a ratty deck of cards when Delight came downstairs, her purse swinging from her hand. He looked up at the sound of her light footsteps.
"Ma'am, are you thinking of going out on the street?" he asked with the same kind of alarm in his voice she'd heard from Pel.
"Not thinking of it. I am going out." She touched her brown hair, swept back into a bun from which, to her disgust, small straggles were already falling, and kept on walking toward the door.
"Does the sheriff know?" He held a card poised in mid-air. "Ma'am, I don't think you should go where you might come face-to-face with some of them hooligans. It ain't safe."
"Nonsense. You're here, aren't you? They won't try anything with you around."
Tuck's shoulders twitched, an unconscious repeat of Pel's action earlier. "Some of those fellers will try anything, anyplace, at any time," he said. "They ain't scared of nobody."
Delight's chin jerked up. "I've got my pistol. After Filmore..." She stopped. "I'll shoot if I have to."
"Ma'am," Tuck said, standing up like he had the intention of physically stopping her, "you don't want to have to shoot anybody. Trust me. You can take that to the bank. Be best if you stayed to home. We can send a boy if there's something you just got to have."
Doggone men. Always telling her what to do--what not to do.
"I think not, Mr. Moon," she said crisply. "I will not be a prisoner in my own home. I'll only be fifteen minutes." And before he could move, she swept past him and out the door.
Once outside, sensitive to the deputy's eyes on her back, she almost turned around, except giving in to Pel and Moon's kid-glove treatment set her temper on end. She'd proved herself plenty tough, hadn't she?
But in truth, when she gazed about, it was to find she was the only woman on the street when generally half the ladies in town would be going about their afternoon shopping. An itch between her shoulder blades nagged as she passed two men standing outside the post office, each with a foot braced in casual attitude against the building's wall. Their eyes followed her, hot and avid. The distance to Thomas's Drugstore had never seemed so long, not even when she was trying to find Doc Miller on the day Pelham fell. Safe arrival on the building's doorstep brought a distinct feeling of relief.
The strip of sleigh bells attached to the door jingled merrily as Delight entered the store. Sweat beaded her temples, trickled under her arms. Disgusted, she dabbed at her forehead. The weather was hot, all right, but not that hot. Breathing in the sharp, chemical odors prevalent in the store, she blamed her nervous dithers on Pel and Tuck and their pessimistic warnings.
It was always cool in the little corner store. Dark, too, a condition Mr. Thomas encouraged because he said it helped preserve the powders and herbs necessary to his profession. Therefore, Delight was halfway down the center aisle, walking between rows of ladylike necessaries, shaving goods for men, and shelves of books, newspapers and magazines--the drugstore also being the supplier of what passed for cultivated society in Endurance--when she noticed the odd silence.
She stopped cold. Of its own accord, her hand went to her pocket and gripped the butt of her little pistol, hidden there.
"Mr. Thomas?" she called.
A mouse walking across the floor, not that a mouse would dare show its whiskery little face in Thomas's drugstore, would've sounded like a dinosaur.
And Mr. Thomas would never--never--leave his store unattended.
"Mr. Thomas, are you here?"
She took one step backward, caught herself, and took two forward. "Millie?" In the afternoon, Mrs. Thomas often helped her husband.
Heart pounding, Delight took a couple more steps, and a couple more, until the counter barring shoppers from reaching the cubicle where Mr. Thomas compounded Doc's prescriptions brought her to a halt.
There was an odor in the air. Or a blend of odors. One caustic, like chemicals. One unexpected, like rough tobacco smoke. Another sweet and metallic, like...blood. Like the blood, bright red and liquid, trickling from beneath the gate under the counter.
Silence thick enough to cut, air thick enough to eat, settled around Delight, making her dizzy. "Oh, no," she whispered. "No." Drawing the pistol from her pocket, she drew the counter up on its hinges and pushed through the gate into Thomas's private territory.
She found the pharmacist on the floor, just inside the gate. His head, she saw in a whirling kaleidoscope of raw color, had been bashed in by something heavy and hard, no doubt the fist-sized, horridly smeared marble pestle lying beside him. She knelt, touching her unsteady fingers to the side of his neck. Warm, but she felt nothing. Not that she expected anything different after seeing his eyes, on
e open, one half-closed, already bore the vacancy of the dead.
Stomach heaving, she stood up. Robbery, she thought. Murder. The cash register drawer hung open, the compartments empty. A couple dimes lay on the floor, dropped in the robber's--the murderer's--haste. Several bottles and tins used in dispensing medical concoctions were overturned, some smashed.
And then something, a stirring, cut through Delight's shock. The floor in the room beyond the dispensary creaked. Footsteps--she was certain they were footsteps--tapped. She heard the distinct jingle of spurs, the click of a door latch.
Grip tightening on the butt of the derringer, she slipped around the corner into the back room, almost falling over the woman's body lying there. Millie Thomas. At her touch, the woman's arm twitched and she groaned.
A flash of daylight showed at the back, shadowed, then the door slammed. Someone ran.
"Millie!" Dropping to her knees, Delight gathered the woman's cold hand in her own. "Millie. Oh, Lord, Millie."
Millie's eyes opened. "Henry," she whispered, that being her husband's first name. She tried to sit up and, like a rag doll, fell back. "Help. Henry is hurt. That man... "
"Yes," Delight said. Tears flowed down her cheeks, not the cool appearance she wanted to present, but she couldn't seem to stop them. "I'll get help. Don't move, Mrs. Thomas. Lie still."
Getting up, she dodged around Mr. Thomas's body and raced to the front of the store where she pointed her little pistol toward the ground and pulled the trigger twice. In seconds, from a block away, she saw Tuck Moon appear in the door of the sheriff's office and head toward her, running. From the other direction, O'Hanlon's swamper ceased his sweeping and gawked toward her.
"Fetch Doc Miller," she yelled to the swamper so harshly he jumped to obey.
In front of the Bucket of Sudz, two or three of Monroe's men, in town, no doubt, to keep an eye on things, stood as if frozen. As if waiting. As if ridden by a kind of guilt.
In minutes, enough people had defied their fears to gather around, dispensing Mrs. Thomas to Doc's surgery, and Mr. Thomas to the undertaker. Delight, after finding a key and locking the pharmacy's door, under Tuck Moon's escort went home to face the wrath of her husband.
Letter Of The Law Page 14