by E. Walsh
What really did it for her, however, was when he returned early from his ride to Breckenridge.
“I thought that you were going to be gone a couple of days,” she mentioned as she was preparing supper.
Tommy was out back by the ditch that flowed across the place and irrigated the garden that some of the town folk tended.
“I got to missin’ your company,” he laughed.
“I hardly believe that,” she replied with a grin. “I’m pretty sure that you could use a break from Tommy and I. No doubt, we cramp your style some.”
“You got another man to drag in her or something?” he teased.
“What? Why would you say that?” she was shocked by the question.
“On account of you tryin’ to get rid of me for a couple of days,” he laughed.
Holly caught onto the joke that he was making, but she didn’t continue with it.
In fact, to her, it seemed a little too soon for him to be teasing her the way he was.
She turned away and focused on fixing supper while she tried to sort out the thoughts and emotions that were fighting with each other in her head.
“Truth is,” Rance began after several minutes of silence. “Someone took a shot at me and he never should have missed.”
“What?” she said, whirling back to face him. “Are you hurt?”
“He missed,” Rance repeated. “I’m fine.”
Holly stared at him with her eyes wide and her heart rate picking up its pace, and waited for an explanation.
“The thing is,” Cutler began again. “When I was ridin’ back to town, I realized that if Will hadn’t missed, nobody would have had a second thought about me.”
The admission wasn’t exactly what she had been expecting and Holly had no ready response.
“I haven’t heard from my kin back east more than half a dozen times in the last ten years. Like as not, they think I’m dead already.”
She had a response for that. “Why don’t you write and tell them where you are and that you’re okay?”
“Well, I reckon I ought to,” he answered.
“I insist,” she said with some force. “There is no reason to keep them wondering about your fate.”
“It’d just be to my sisters. I doubt my ma and pa are still alive. Like as not, they killed each other.”
Holly pondered the information, but didn’t press what he meant by the last of it. Trying not to lecture him like she had done before, she took a gentler approach.
“Your sisters deserve to hear from you, don’t you think?”
“I suppose they do,” he said.
She watched him for a while longer, expecting him to continue, but he didn’t.
In spite of the fact that she had plenty of things to say on the subject and lots of questions for which she wanted answers, she turned back to the counter and continued her work.
“I’ve got a new nickname for you,” he said cheerfully after a few minutes.
He had a nickname for her? Did her name not work just fine? He ought to just be calling her Missus McBride anyway. It was a bit presumptuous of him to be coming up with a nickname.
She decided to act like she didn’t hear him rather than give him the pleasure of a response.
It was something that her mother had taught her to do whenever her older brothers teased her.
“I decided that since I’ve been here you’ve brought me plenty of luck. Lord knows that shot whipping by my head instead of into it was because of it. Will Barnes don’t miss when he shoots at somethin’.”
Though what he said certainly took a dig inside of her soul, hearing that someone had nearly had a bullet put in his head was enough to do that, she forced herself to avoid turning toward him.
“So, I decided to start calling you Charm, as in Good Luck Charm.”
“You’re already tired of Missus McBride?” she muttered, unable to keep herself from a response.
“It’s a bit formal, don’t you think?” he chuckled.
“Yes it is formal!” she snapped whirling about and shaking the wooden spoon in her hand at him.
She had to put a stop to his advances before he got the wrong idea about her.
“We are not sweethearts. I cook and keep house for you. At times we have some conversation to drive out the loneliness, but we are not shaking up together and there is no call for you to be giving me a nickname. Is that understood, Sheriff Cutler?”
“You’re awful pretty when you pretend to be mad,” he said, taking a step closer and wrapping his fingers around her hand that was holding the spoon. Her skin was warm, smooth, soft; so unlike his own, or any other woman he’d ever been this close to.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Holly asked, taken aback. Her entire body tensed, but she made no attempt to pull her hand from his grasp. Her lips parted as she gazed into his eyes.
“I’m doing what I’ve wanted to do since the day I set eyes on you,” Rance said quietly. He leaned in and gently pressed his lips to hers.
It was a long, deep, sweet kiss that made them both sigh. When Rance withdrew, the look in Holly’s eyes made him smile.
“Was that alright?” he asked.
Holly pulled her hand away and clutched the wooden spoon to her chest. “Sheriff Cutler…”
“If you don’t want me to do it again you better so so quick,” Rance said. “I’m pretty fast on the draw.”
The sound of Tommy bounding up the porch steps coming home from school shocked them both back into reality.
“You need to go,” she said quickly, turning away and fussing with her hair.
“What are y’all doing?” Tommy asked, coming in like a twister blowing off the prairie. He threw his books on the table and plopped in a chair. He looked at them with wide eyes.
“I was just helping your mama with the cooking,” Rance said with a smile. “How was school?”
“It was okay,” Tommy said, eyeing them suspiciously. “Ma, you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Holly said, though she was anything but. There was a heat in her belly that she hadn’t felt in a long time. She could feel it burning all the way up her neck and into her cheeks. Beneath the thick folds of her skirt her knees were shaking.
“We gonna eat soon?” Tommy asked.
“Yes, go out back and wash up.” She turned to Rance and shook the wooden spoon at him. “And you, Sheriff Cutler…”
“Me what, Mrs. McBride?” He was grinning like a cat watching a bird.
Holly waited until Tommy was out the door, then she quietly said, “You behave. I’m not that kind of woman.”
“What kind of woman would that be?”
“The kind that repays room and board with favors.”
“I’m not looking for favors,” Rance said. “It was just a kiss, Mrs. McBride. Don’t go all getting a bee in your bonnet.”
As Holly watched him go through the door to wash up at the well out back, she knew it was too late. Rance Cutler had not put a bee in her bonnet. He’d set off an entire hive.
*
Holly’s cheeks were still flushed when she called Rance and Tommy back in for supper a half hour later.
Conversation was at a minimum throughout the meal, though she caught Rance watching her a couple of times, which meant he caught her watching him.
He dismissed himself earlier than usual, sensing that she was in no mood to put up with him that evening and she and Tommy spent a quiet evening alone before she sent him up the ladder to the loft.
In her own bed, a little over an hour later, she finally allowed the truth to push past the irritation that had bullied her throughout the evening.
The truth was that she didn’t mind that he considered that she was bringing him good luck.
She didn’t even mind that he wanted to start calling her charm. He’d filled an emptiness and had allowed her to remain an honest woman.
Besides, when she got past the fear, she’d begun to fall for that dangerous charm and the wildness
that was in him.
He was wild, true, but he made her feel safe too. She drifted off to sleep wondering what it would be like to be in his arms.
* * *
Chapter Seven
Lying on his bedroll in the barn loft that night, Rance couldn’t sleep. Thoughts of Holly McBride’s lips on his kept running through his mind like a cool mountain stream.
The only thing that could make him stop thinking about the woman sleeping in the house just twenty yards away were thoughts of facing down Skip Hutto. That’s when a plan formed in his mind.
Rather than taking a chance at being dry-gultched by an unseen gunman, it would be better to bring Hutto right out into the open where he could see him and get an even break.
He knew that the outlaw was arrogant, so he decided to play to that. His plan went into motion the next afternoon.
Rance had taken a couple of shots of whiskey and waited inside the saloon until it was packed to the gills with miners before he started talking like he was drunk.
“Skip Hutto is a coward!” he’d shouted, drawing the attention of every ear in the place. “He shoots down Bill McBride in cold blood and then runs off into the hills to hide. If he was a man, he’d come down to town and face me.”
To punctuate the statement, he slammed the glass against the bar and stormed out. He could feel every eye on him as he strolled out the door..
With any luck, something which he’d had a great bit of lately, Hutto would hear the challenge and come running into town for a showdown.
Rance wasn’t sure if he could beat Hutto in a fair fight, not that Hutto had ever fought fair in his entire life.
He’d heard from plenty of people that the man was almighty fast at pulling a pistol, but Cutler was no nag when it came to both speed and nerve. It took a little of both to shoot straight against a man like Hutto.
Stretched out on his bed for the two nights that followed, he couldn’t get Holly off his mind.
She had already become a distraction to him and he’d struggled mightily with what he ought to do about it.
He regretted having invited her and the boy to stay on, especially since he still had Hutto to face and his future was uncertain, but he wouldn’t have missed the precious moments in the mornings and evenings when he and Holly had been alone together.
“You’re a damned fool,” he’d muttered to himself. “You don’t have a chance with the likes of her.”
He chuckled at the way she’d responded to his teasing a few nights before.
She hadn’t said another thing about his new nickname for her, though he’d used it several time since just to gauge her reaction. He’d not gotten a rise out of her.
Maybe she wasn’t for him after all.
* * *
Chapter Eight
He knew that his plan to draw Cutler out had worked when he strolled down Main Street a few minutes after ten the next morning. He noticed the uncomfortable glances that came his way as he passed people that usually spoke to him.
“Hutto must be in town,” he mumbled as he pushed open the door to the hotel and turned into the dining room.
Maggie, the cook and wife of the hotel’s owner saw him coming and disappeared into the kitchen as he went to a table in the corner to have a cup of coffee.
Holly McBride was a fine cook, but her coffee was as black as printer’s ink and tasted just as bad.
From where he sat, he could see the street, but no one could come up on him from behind. It had been a habit he’d formed after the first time someone had threatened to put a bullet in him.
“I guess you know Skip Hutto’s in town,” Maggie said as she appeared from the kitchen with a ceramic mug and a coffee pot. She placed the mug on the table and filled it.
“Guess my challenge worked,” he said before taking a sip of the strong coffee.
“Crazy Ike was with them when they rode in, but they separated. Hutto’s in the saloon.”
How Maggie knew everything that was going on in town was somewhat baffling to him.
She seemed to have a little bird somewhere. Of course, Hutto’s arrival wouldn’t have been much of a secret to anyone in town.
Since becoming the sheriff in Alma, Cutler had gone into Maggie’s restaurant and had a cup of coffee at about the same time every day.
He went at that time because the place was always empty and Maggie was always eager to fill him in.
It had become the best way for him to know what was going on around town.
“Crazy Ike won’t be far off,” he began to picture all of the different hiding places along the street that Ike might use to back up his partner.
Facing Hutto alone was bad enough, but to have to worry about Ike had Rance on edge.
Maggie sensed that he wasn’t in the mood to talk and drew away from him, returning to the kitchen.
Ten minutes later, Rance had taken his last gulp of the coffee and chewed up the bitter dregs as they washed into his mouth.
“Might as well get this over with,” he’d mumbled as he slid his chair back and started toward the door.
He’d barely taken a three steps along the boardwalk when Hutto had called out his challenge to him from in front of the saloon.
“You think hidin’ behind that tin star will make me afraid of you, Cutler?” Skip Hutto challenged.
Rance calmly stepped off the board walkway and took several steps out into the dirt path that served as Main Street.
He knew that Crazy Ike was in some location where he could back up Hutto.
Without turning away from the outlaw in the street, his eyes searched for the other, hidden one.
Those residents of Alma who were left lingering around town and saw what was about to happen, moved to a position where they wouldn’t be caught in a crossfire, though they were unwilling to miss the action.
A laid back mining town like Alma didn’t usually have much excitement; not nearly as much as its wilder sister down the road.
He pushed Crazy Ike from his mind. He had to focus on Hutto and trust to luck when it came to whatever else was coming his way.
For a fraction of a second, the image of Holly McBride flashed through his mind; his good luck charm.
“This star puts me on the right side of the law and you on the other. Gunning down McBride just made it worse.” He added something that he’d never even thought of before meeting Holly. “You drop that gun belt, call out to Crazy Ike to do the same and the two of you come along quiet. Ain’t no sense in spoiling a peaceful morning.”
Hutto laughed. “That’s quite a change from what I’ve heard about you, Cutler. You gettin’ soft?”
“The country’s changing, killin’ ain’t as proper as it once was.”
“Well, I ain’t changin’,” Hutto laughed. “Killin’ is still proper where I’m concerned.”
“Suit yourself,” Rance replied. He hadn’t expected Hutto to give in, but he’d felt obligated to offer him the choice.
“I think shackin’ up with the sheriff’s widow has made you yellow…”
The last word went unheard as Cutler’s colt roared in his hand. Hutto had seen the move and had brought his own weapon up, but he was a fraction of a second too late and caught Cutler’s slug in the center of his chest.
Just as he shot, Rance caught sight of Crazy Ike raising a gun from between two buildings a little ways down the street and he turned to fire, but his bullet went straight up into the air and the pistol started to tumble away as he felt something heavy strike his chest and he started to fall backward.
In the same instance that he felt his back come in contact with the ground, he heard the deep roar of both barrels of a shotgun speaking their piece.
Dazed, but still alive, though having some difficulty catching his breath. After a moment, Cutler sat up. He looked down at his chest and saw the mangled star still pinned to his vest.
He came out of his sudden shock, remembering that Crazy Ike was still there and would soon finish him off.
Before he could rise up off of the ground, Holly McBride appeared and wrapped her arms around him. “Rance, Rance,” she cried. “Are you okay?”
“I’m alright,” he responded, returning her unexpected embrace. He pulled back and glanced down at his chest. “This star stopped the bullet. Guess my good luck charm is still working.”
Holly’s mouth dropped as she looked at the mangled star. “I guess it is,” she said with tears in her eyes.
Rance grunted and held out his hand. “Help me to my feet, would ya?”
Holly helped him to stand. He put an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. Her face flushed red.
She gave him a sheepish smile. “Sheriff Cutler, isn’t that a little improper?”
“What’s improper is you still calling me, Sheriff Cutler,” he said with a grin. “And me still calling you Mrs. McBride.”
“What else would you call me?” she asked, looking up into his eyes.
“How about Missus Cutler?” he said as they started moving slowly toward home.
“Goodness, Sheriff Cutler, you move fast,” she said, smiling up at him. “I mean, Rance.”
“In my line of work you have to be fast,” he said, pulling her closer. “Besides, I’m getting pretty tired of sleeping in that old barn.”
* * *
Epilogue
Rance and Holly were married in the spring with Tommy’s blessing and the whole town in attendance.
A week later, Rance gave up his star and they bought a little place outside of town. The house wasn’t much, just a shack, really, but it was home. They had ten acres to farm and a rickety barn for their livestock.
Slowly, the crops took hold and new folds and calves were born and everything grew right along with their love for one another.
“Thank you, ma’am,” Rance said as Holly handed him a cup of coffee and joined him on the porch steps after dinner. The sun was setting in the west, setting the sky ablaze with shades of blue and yellow and red.