Jodi Thomas

by When a Texan Gambles

  “Bailee and Lacy?”

  “The two women kicked off the wagon train with me. Broken-Hand thought I had a fever that would spread, so he didn’t want anyone around me, but Bailee let me ride in her wagon after people from the train burned mine.” Her words slowed as she warmed beneath the blankets. “Everyone figured Lacy for a witch just because all the folks she nursed died, except me. Some said she danced with the moon, but I never saw her do that. She is little more than a child, but when they left Bailee and me, they left her, also.”

  Sam watched his wife lean her head against the pillow and close her eyes. The sheriff mentioned something about her feeling better since she’d had regular meals, but she looked as fragile as cottonwood seed blowing in the wind.

  “What about the one named Bailee?” he said louder than he’d intended. “Why did Broken-Hand Harrison kick her off with you?

  Sarah jerked, as if in the moment while she paused, she’d fallen asleep. “The wagon master thought Bailee killed someone back East. But she’s a real nice person, even if she does have this habit of clubbing men when she’s angry. Maybe whoever she killed needed killing as bad as Zeb Whitaker did.”

  The angel closed her eyes again. Sam watched her grip on the gun relax. He waited a few minutes, then stood and carefully lifted the weapon from her hand and pulled the covers over her shoulder.

  For a moment, he thought of returning to the chair. But the empty space beside her invited him.

  He spread his blanket atop her and moved to the other side of the bed. When he slipped beneath the covers, he smiled for the first time in a long while.

  Come morning, he would probably face the wrath of Sarah for taking up half of her bed. He almost looked forward to the clash. But right now, in the cold dampness of the tiny room with music filtering from the saloon across the street, he felt almost at peace lying by her side.

  Sam turned his head and studied her in the shadows. She was too beautiful to be real. The lady had no idea yet that she didn’t have a chance of bending him around her finger. No woman ever had, no woman ever would. Within a few days he would let her know how their marriage was going to be. He would set the rules and she’d follow. She’d give him a home to come to, a place to rest between battles, and he’d keep her safe. She’d do his cooking and cleaning, and he’d see that she had enough to eat. What more could either of them want from the other?

  Sarah shifted, moving toward his warmth. In sleep she laid her hand atop his heart.

  All thought drained from his mind as frail, slender fingers slid through the hair on his chest and then relaxed as though her touch had found a home.

  Breathe, he reminded himself. Breathe.

  TWO

  SARAH ANDREWS STRETCHED BENEATH THE LAYERS OF blankets and opened her eyes to sunshine filtered through ragged curtains. For a moment she had no idea where she was. Shadows dominated the room. The air smelled musty and damp, as though the place had been shut away for a time.

  She listened as she had all her life. Listened for the day’s approach. “Be still,” she told herself. “Don’t move. Don’t make a sound and you might hear dawn tiptoe in.”

  Granny Vee, an old woman who finished raising her, used to whisper that if Sarah sat still long enough, she could hear the changes in the world, the changes in her life. And Sarah tried. She always tried, yet she could never hear them. She sensed change coming, sometimes she swore she almost tasted it, but she never heard anything. Not dawn tiptoeing, or spring yawning, or age lurking.

  Granny Vee was a crazy old fool for believing such things. She’d made her living helping with the birthing of babies and watching the dying pass on to the hereafter. She always told Sarah she knew things other folks would never know, just because she paid attention. Sarah wasn’t sure she always believed Granny, but listening became a habit just the same.

  She stretched, enjoying the silence. Yesterday had been endless. First, she endured being raffled off in the sheriff’s lottery. Then a strange man with dark hair and black eyes swept her away. The sheriff, her friends, even the town melted in the rain.

  Sarah glanced around the room, just in case the dark haired man hid somewhere in the shadowy corners. “No,” she said to herself. “I’m alone. Probably abandoned again.”

  It had become a way of life for her. When she was only a few days old, someone left her on Harriet Rainy’s steps. Sarah imagined her mother had been the one and how she must have held her close one last time before she disappeared. Her mother might have prayed that whoever lived inside the farmhouse would open their hearts to a child, not knowing that Harriet Rainy didn’t have a heart.

  By Sarah’s sixth year Harriet had defined her as “too frail to bother to feed” and passed her along to a neighbor everyone called Granny Vee. The old woman was kind, but so poor Sarah often said she wasn’t hungry because she knew there was not enough food for two. Granny Vee never made Sarah feel like family, but more like a stray cat she let live with her.

  Years later Sarah thought she finally found a place to belong when she married Mitchell Andrews. She dreamed of a family and the possibility of a home of her own. Within a year he sold his farm for the adventure of heading west.

  Sarah fought back a tear. Mitchell hadn’t even asked her. After all, he’d said, it wasn’t her place.

  Once on the trail Mitchell succumbed to a fever before they reached the Rockies.

  Even the baby she delivered shortly before his death hadn’t stayed with her on this earth. Her tiny daughter died before Sarah had the strength to give her child a name.

  A few weeks later Broken-Hand Harrison deposited her, and two other women, in the middle of the wagon trail to find their way back to civilization. However, after being in Texas several weeks, Sarah felt sure she was nowhere near finding a civilized world.

  Now her new husband, a man named Sam Gatlin, had abandoned her in a shabby hotel room.

  It had been raining when they stopped last night, but she’d seen what little there was to see of the town. A few stores, a two-story hotel, a saloon, and a livery. When she asked the clerk the name of the place, he’d said no one had bothered with a name. The local resident added that the mercantile had once been a trading post for buffalo hunters and the first cattle drives. Back then everyone called it the Scot’s Stash, but no one thought that was a proper name.

  Slipping from the bed, Sarah searched the room. Her husband had taken everything, even the wet dress she’d dropped on the floor beside the bed. Only her tattered, muddy shoes remained and her small bundle of “necessities” she kept tightly wrapped in an old handkerchief of Mitchell’s. A sliver of honeysuckle soap. A comb. A pack of herbs Granny always claimed would lessen pain.

  It wasn’t much, she realized, but all the things in the bundle were hers. She tied her belongings to a string sewn to the waist of her undergarments.

  Sarah didn’t have to be still and listen to life’s changes. They shouted at her this morning. Her situation would have to get better before she could die. She wasn’t about to be buried in her worn petticoat with so many patched holes the hem looked like cheap lace.

  “I should just kill myself,” she mumbled old Harriet Rainy’s favorite refrain. But without a gun or a knife, Sarah would have to jump out the second-floor window and drag herself back upstairs, over and over, before the ten-foot fall finally broke her neck.

  Harriet Rainy would sometimes add, “But if I killed myself, who would take care of you?” as if giving Sarah an old quilt in the comer of the room were a great burden.

  Sarah paced the room. Last night she should have shot the cowboy who married her while she held his Colt in her hand. What kind of man chooses a wife from a jail cell? He either had something seriously wrong with him, or he was as dumb as kindling. If she had shot him during the storm, folks might have thought it was thunder. Maybe she could have escaped with his guns and sold them. Or robbed a bank, assuming she could find one in this town named Used-to-be-called-the-Scot‘s-Stash. Now that
she found herself on the path to a life of crime, Sarah saw no need to stop.

  She tried to remember what Sam Gatlin looked like. Tall, very tall. And strong. He’d carried her as though she were made of straw. And mean, she decided. He definitely had a mean look about him. Eyes so dark they looked black when he watched her. Though he couldn’t be thirty yet, his jaw was square and set. She’d bet a smile never crawled across his face.

  Sarah fell back on the bed. She’d married the devil. It was her punishment for marrying Mitchell Andrews when she didn’t love him. Granny always told her never to marry a man unless you love him something fierce and can’t help yourself, ‘cause men are like apples, they don’t do nothing but rot once you take them home.

  Since Granny had never married, Sarah wondered about her advice. When Mitchell took her back to his farm after Granny died, Sarah thought she’d grow to love him. But it hadn’t happened. She didn’t even cry when he died. What kind of heartless woman doesn’t cry when her husband dies?

  Sarah shook her head. “Me!” She answered her own question as she continued analyzing her crimes.

  “Then I clubbed Zeb Whitaker,” she mumbled. Killing a man, even a worthless one like Whitaker, couldn’t be a good thing to do. Now her sentence would be spending the rest of her life married to a cold, heartless man who stole her one dress. With her luck she’d live a long life.

  There was no choice for Sarah other than to believe that Harriet Rainy had been right. Maybe she was a worthless nothing who washed up on the porch one night during a storm.

  Someone shouted from down the hall.

  Sarah listened. A woman swore and ordered a man out of her room. Footsteps suddenly thundered toward Sarah’s door.

  She panicked and pulled the covers over her head. Maybe he wouldn’t get into her room. Maybe, if he did, he wouldn’t notice her beneath the covers.

  The door creaked open. Someone stomped in.

  Sarah tried to be perfectly still. Maybe if she didn’t breathe, the intruder would simply go away.

  “Mrs. Gatlin?” came a man’s voice that sounded vaguely familiar. “I hope this is the right place and that lump in the bed is my wife. I forgot to look at the room number when I left, and guessing which door is not the healthiest game to play around this place.”

  Sarah peeked out from under the covers. Sure enough, there he was, the demon she’d married. He didn’t look any less frightening in daylight than he had last night. So big, she could cut him in half and still have two fair-sized husbands.

  When she didn’t say a word, he tossed her the bundle he carried.

  “Your dress was ruined, so I got you another one.” He watched her closely with his black eyes.

  “Thank you,” she whispered as she glared down at the plain brown dress with not even a touch of lace at the collar. It reminded her of old Harriet Rainy’s clothes, simply cut, made of coarse linsey-woolsey. Harriet always combined cotton for the warp yarns in the loom and wool for the weft. Serviceable fabric. Warm. Scratchy. Ugly.

  Sarah didn’t want to put it on. Afraid that if she did, she might somehow come an inch closer to sharing old Harriet’s hatred of life.

  “They didn’t have much of a selection.” Her new husband waited for her to respond. “It’ll be warm. We need to get going. I’ve ordered a wagon and supplies. With the rain last night, the road may make the journey longer than I’d planned.”

  She couldn’t bring herself to touch the material. Somehow, an inch at a time, she’d finally sunk to the bottom. She had nothing, not even her own clothes to wear.

  A tear slid down her cheek. She still had her pride. What little belongings she’d gathered for her first marriage had been burned when the people on the wagon train thought Mitchell sick with the fever. The dress she’d worn last night was all she owned, and it was little more than a rag. But it was better than this.

  “Thank you for the offer, but please bring me back my dress. I’ll wash it. My dress will do fine.”

  Sam Gatlin raised an eyebrow and looked like he might argue. “I can afford to buy my wife a new dress. I wanted a wife and I plan to provide for you.”

  “Not this one,” Sarah whispered. “I won’t wear this one.” How could she ever tell him about the woman who raised her until she’d found someone else to pass her along to? She barely knew his name. She’d never be able to describe memories of running to Harriet Rainy and folding into the skirt of her scratchy dress, only to have the woman jerk her up by the arm and slap her. “I’ll give you something to cry about!” Harriet would shout. “I’ll show you fear.”

  Sarah steadied herself, bracing for a blow. He looked like the kind of man who would beat his wife. If so, she might as well find out right now.

  To her surprise, he turned and walked out of the room without another word. Sarah pulled a blanket over her shoulders and ran to the window in time to watch him go into the saloon across the street.

  He’s a drunk, my mean husband, she thought. That was plain. What kind of man goes into a place like that when the sun isn’t even high in the sky? Mitchell Andrews might have bored her to death some days with his silence, but he never drank before noon.

  She stared at the dress still spread across the bed. If she put it on now, she could run. Who knew how many miles she could be away before he sobered up enough to notice? The wagon he had rented in Cedar Point was probably at the livery, and she could drive a team as good as anyone. She could ask which way she could go to get back to Cedar Point. Maybe Bailee or Lacy married a kind man who’d let her stay for a while. Or maybe the sheriff would help her. He said it was her choice to marry. She would just tell him she changed her mind. She didn’t want to marry Sam Gatlin.

  Moving closer to the bed, she stared at the dress. It had been handmade by someone without skill. She was foolish not to put the garment on with the room freezing. But she couldn’t. If she did, she’d disappear.

  Curling into a blanket, Sarah sat on the uneven window ledge watching clouds crowd out the sun. Noises from the other rooms drifted around her, but she paid them no mind. She didn’t care what happened in this no-name town.

  Sarah drifted to sleep, leaning her head against the rain-cooled windowpane.

  She longed for the dreams that took her away as they always had. Dreams of color and light. Dreams Harriet Rainy’s cruelty or Granny Vee’s poverty could not touch.

  A rap on the door startled her. When she jerked, she almost toppled off the window ledge.

  Stumbling, Sarah hurried to the door. “Who is it?” She knew it wasn’t her husband; he would have just turned the knob and entered. That is, if he remembered the room number. Maybe alcohol had already rusted his brain.

  “Let me in, hon,” a female voice whispered from the other side of the door. “It’s Denver Delany. I’m the owner of the saloon across the street.”

  Sarah knew no Denver Delany, but she opened the door a few inches. “Yes ...” Sarah managed to say before a huge woman shoved the door wide and hurried in.

  “There ain’t no time for introductions.” Denver was large enough to be named after several cities, with hair the color of a harvest moon and eyes rimmed in black paint. “You’ll just have to trust that I’m a friend of your husband’s and you got to get him out of town fast.” She pushed her sleeves up to her elbows, as if thinking she was about to have her work cut out for her.

  Sarah stared as Denver grabbed the ugly brown dress and headed toward her. “Your man’s been stabbed by a no-good, low-life, cattle-stealing, worthless ...”

  The dress went over Sarah’s head, blocking out the rest of Denver’s description.

  When Sarah fought her way through to the neck opening, she asked, “Is he dead?”

  Denver snorted a laugh. “If he were dead, hon, we wouldn’t need to be getting him out of town, now would we?”

  Sarah nodded, as if seeing the logic. “Shouldn’t we be taking him to a doctor?”

  “Ain’t no doctor for fifty miles. You’ll have to tak
e care of him. Phil, the bartender, is rearranging the supplies in the wagon Sam ordered from over at Mr. Moon’s place.” The huge woman stared directly into Sarah’s eyes. “Can you drive a wagon, girl? You don’t look strong enough to carry a half-full bucket.”

  “I can manage.”

  Denver pulled her along as Sarah frantically tried to slip into her shoes. “Good. Don’t worry about the doctoring. Just plug up the hole as best you can and give him whiskey until he stops complaining. That’s always been my method of treating gunshots or stabbings. It seems to work about half the time.”

  The woman glanced back at the room. “You got any luggage, hon?”

  Sarah held her head high. “No,” she answered, daring Denver to say anything. Her bundle of belongings was now hidden beneath the folds of the brown dress.

  Sarah changed the subject. “Shouldn’t we doctor him before we try to move him?”

  “Hon, if he’s not out of town fast, he’ll be dead for sure in an hour. There’s probably men strapping on their six-shooters right now itching for a chance to gun down Sam Gatlin, and they don’t give a twit that he’s bleeding a river.” Denver paused at the bottom of the stairs and patted her ample bosom in an effort to breathe easier. “Don’t you know? Your man is famous in these parts.”

  Sarah wasn’t sure she wanted to know. Her gut feeling told her that whatever his claim to fame, it wouldn’t be good.

  Denver towed Sarah out the hotel door as panic flooded Sarah’s brain. “But where will I take him?” She didn’t even know the man, or like him, for that matter. How could his life suddenly rest on her shoulders? She wasn’t sure which way was north from here much less how to take him to safety.

  Denver stopped so quickly Sarah bumped into her back. The strange woman turned around and whispered, “You’ll take him to Satan’s Canyon. No one will find you there.” Denver stared at Sarah as though gauging her bravery. “If you can’t get him there, we might as well bury him now, for he’s a dead man if he stays here.”