Two Brothers

by Linda Lael Miller

  “Are you all alone in the world?”

  Aislinn shook her head. She’d lost her appetite by then, ravenous as it had been, but she was forcing herself to finish her food. She would need her strength in the days to come. “No, I have two younger brothers, Thomas and Mark. They’re in school, back in Maine.”

  “What about your folks?”

  She took a steadying gulp of tea. “They’re gone.”

  “And you have no aunts or uncles or grandparents?” Dorrie’s narrow, homely face was the picture of sympathy and shared suffering. Ironic, Aislinn thought, given the woman’s scandalous reputation; she was a far better person than the much-respected Cornelia, pillar of the church in general and the community at large, for all that she’d run away with a peddler, Dorrie had, and been dragged home in disgrace by her outraged father.

  Again, Aislinn shook her head. “We’ll make a family, my brothers and me, when we’re all together.” That day certainly seemed more distant than ever now, despite her small bank account, her intelligence and determination, and her good, strong back. She might well have to spend her savings just to survive, and that of course would leave nothing for buying the cabin and land, let alone for tools or seed or food for the winter, nothing for a milk cow and the boys’ train and stagecoach fare from the East, and the many meals they’d need along the way.

  “You must stay here, then. You can work with us, in the store.”

  Aislinn didn’t allow herself to hope for that for so much as a moment. “Cornelia would never allow it,” she said. “Why, she wouldn’t even have let me sleep here last night if she’d had a choice.”

  “Cornelia gets above herself, now and then. Papa used to say she was like a stubborn mare, taking the bit in her teeth and running. All the same, in the eyes of the law, that store is mine and Shamus’s, as well as hers. Same as this house. We’ve let her bully us, Shamus and I, each for our own reasons.” Splotches of red conviction appeared on Dorrie’s otherwise gaunt cheeks, and her eyes practically threw sparks. “I reckon neither of us cared enough about the store and the house to fight back—I was grieving for Leander and Shamus never wanted to be anything but a lawman. Wasn’t worth a plug nickel after Grace died, either.” She regarded Aislinn speculatively for a moment. “Things are different now, though. One of these days, my Leander will come back to collect me, just you wait, and I’ll be gone from here forever. And Shamus seems to be putting his sorrows behind him. Before I leave this town, I mean to put a stop to Cornie’s tyranny. Shamus will have his rightful share, and so will I. Leander and I will need a good stake to start over someplace else.”

  Aislinn leaned forward slightly, intrigued. “Leander is coming back?” If the story was true, and not merely the far-fetched fantasy of an aging spinster, it was far and away the most romantic thing she had ever heard. “Have you had word from him?”

  Dorrie’s eyes, snapping with ire only a moment before, went all soft and dreamy. “I have his solemn promise to return. Soon as he’s out of jail, he’s coming here to fetch me. That’s what he said the day Papa had him arrested for kidnapping, and I know he was telling the truth.”

  Aislinn’s mouth dropped open. And she’d thought she had problems. It just went to show that there was always somebody with a better reason to feel sorry for herself. “He’s been in prison all this time? And your own father put him there?”

  Dorrie nodded. “But I send him letters right along. In secret, of course.”

  A memory flicked at the edge of Aislinn’s mind: Eugenie, passing fat envelopes to the stagecoach driver, having slipped them from her apron pocket. Making for the general store when there was a lull in the round of hard work that was her lot.

  “Eugenie!” she said, smiling. “Why that old darling!”

  Dorrie looked surprised, then pleased. “You mustn’t tell anyone. Cornelia would probably have me locked up if she knew, and I can’t be sure what Shamus might do. He’s very like Papa, for all that we adopted him on the Oregon trail.” She paused, plainly sorry for betraying a family secret, then went hastily on. “I don’t mind going over to get your things for you. We’ll put them in your room, and then the two of us will go to the store and I’ll show you how to stock shelves and measure out sugar and flour and the like.”

  Aislinn dreaded any further dealings with Cornelia, but she was too desperate to refuse the chance Dorrie was offering. If she could just stay out of the elder sister’s way, and work hard, as she had always done, she might still be able to send for her brothers and proceed with her plan to make a home for them and for herself. At last.

  “I can’t thank you enough,” she said, seeing that Dorrie had finished her breakfast and rising quickly to begin clearing the table. “If it weren’t for you—”

  “Here, now,” Dorrie interrupted, blushing. “I might just need your help one day. When Leander comes back, I mean. Cornie will fuss like a Philistine when she sees him ride into town.”

  Impulsively, Aislinn gave Dorrie a brief hug. “When the time comes,” she promised, “we’ll find a way to deal with Cornelia, and Shay too if need be. I promise you that.”

  Dorrie beamed, her eyes glittering with tears. “Friends,” she said, exuberantly, putting out her hand.

  Aislinn took the other woman’s hand and shook it energetically. “Friends,” she agreed.

  William Kyle, Sr., made an impressive sight, with his formidable height, dark hair, muttonchop whiskers and apparently inexhaustible supply of money, and he looked fit to pull up railroad spikes with his teeth as he stood facing Shay across the desk in the jailhouse.

  “What do you mean by arresting my boy?” he demanded, in that low, thunderous voice of his. He didn’t need to raise it; Zeus-like, it caused the mountains and the valleys to tremble just as it was.

  Shay stood his ground. “I’ve had no end of trouble with Billy lately,” he said. “Last night, I told O’Sullivan to take him home. Instead, the two of them sneaked over here and broke in through the back door, planning to abduct a prisoner I was holding. I just plain ran out of patience then.”

  Kyle tried to stare him down for a few moments then, when that failed, took his billfold out of the inside pocket of his fancy Eastern-style waistcoat. “How much?” he asked.

  “No bail’s been set,” Shay said, well aware that the offer had been intended as a bribe, not an honest bond. “It’s the circuit judge’s place to decide the matter, not mine.”

  “We don’t need the circuit judge, unless you refuse to drop the charges.” Kyle’s thick eyebrows bobbed in plain consternation; he wasn’t used to people turning down his requests, whether he considered them to be reasonable or not. He appeared to think this one was eminently just.

  Shay hoped his smile seemed sympathetic. “That’s right,” he said. “Trouble is, this wasn’t ordinary mischief. Billy and O’Sullivan there entered an official agency, the office of a U.S. marshal, unlawfully. They planned to carry out a kidnapping, and that’s a serious matter; I personally know of more than one man doing time in the penitentiary right now because of it.”

  Kyle’s rugged, time-beaten face went crimson, then pale as milk, beneath the leathery bronze of his flesh. “The boy meant no harm,” he insisted, through ill-fitting teeth that he’d probably ordered from some mail-order company back East. “Maybe the reason you have it in for my Billy is that you wanted that saloon woman all to yourself.”

  It never ceased to amaze Shay how fast news got around in that part of the countryside; the Powder Creek spread was a good ten miles outside of town, he hadn’t even worked up a good appetite for breakfast yet, and already the old man knew about Aislinn. Since Kyle hadn’t had a chance to discuss the situation with his son, someone had either met him at the edge of town with the details, or carried them out to the ranch before the sun came up.

  Shay polished his badge with the cuff of his shirt. The action always calmed him a little, when his mood was leaning toward the testy side. “And if I didn’t have an interest in this
‘saloon woman,’ as you put it, I’d just have let Billy take her out of here, is that it? Boys will be boys?”

  Kyle didn’t answer, but the muscles in his bull neck were corded.

  “You gotta get me out of here, Pap!” Billy wailed from the cell. He looked as pitiful as a shaved dog, peering through the bars that way. His thin beard was coming out in patches and there were big circles under his eyes. “He’s gone loco since he sobered up—handcuffed me to the boot rail over at the Yellow Garter last night and left me there practically the whole night.”

  The rancher turned to regard his son, and Shay would have sworn he felt a chill coming off the man, as cold and dank as the breath of a cave. “Be quiet,” he said, and though the words were spoken softly, they conveyed an unmistakable warning. “If I have to speak to you again, I swear I’ll horsewhip you myself.”

  Billy gave up his sweaty grip on the bars and shrank back, gulping as though he’d just swallowed the slippery skin of a raw chicken. O’Sullivan looked nervous enough to skitter up the wall like a spider dodging high water.

  Shay kept one eye on the prisoners, but the better part of his mind was occupied with Kyle’s reasons for rushing into town, bright and early, to fetch home his baby boy. He was clearly worried that Billy might say something he shouldn’t; a distinct possibility, given the fact that the boy had all the grace, intelligence and discernment of a horse turd.

  “If you want to send somebody out looking for the circuit judge, that’s your affair,” he told Kyle. “When he sets bail and you pay it, I’ll release your son. In the meantime, I’m holding both these men for breaking into this office with the clear intention of kidnapping one Miss Aislinn Lethaby. God knows what the charge would be if I hadn’t been here to stop them.”

  Kyle just glared at him for a few moments. The alarming tide of color receded from his face, but he was still agitated. The muscle jumping just beneath his jawbone was proof enough of that, even without the feverish glint in his eyes. “I would like a private word with my son,” he said, paying dear for every word. “You can grant me that, I suppose?”

  Shay rubbed the back of his neck. He was fighting a battle of his own, to keep himself from diving over that desk and throttling the truth—the whole truth and nothing but—out of Billy and his daddy. One hand for each throat would have sufficed. “Go ahead,” he said.

  “He’ll kill me, Pap!” Billy cried. “You leave me here, and he’ll kill me for sure!” He had a very short memory, Billy did. He even looked startled when his father reached through the bars, grabbed him by the shirtfront, and slammed him hard into the iron rods that stood between them.

  “Shut up,” the old man growled. Or, at least, Shay was pretty sure that was what he said. Kyle had dropped his voice down low, but it was too late for secrecy.

  Shay perched on the edge of his desk, arms folded, head lowered. He’d been a damn fool, he reflected, with new bitterness. A whiskey-fogged idiot. The slowest kid in the schoolhouse could have figured out who was responsible for the explosion that killed Grace and the others on that stagecoach eighteen months before. He would still have to prove his theory, because knowing in his gut what had happened wasn’t enough to get the guilty parties tried and hanged. While Billy might blow up a bridge, murder five people and carry off the contents of a strongbox out of pure meanness and stupidity, the old man probably hadn’t made an impulsive move in thirty years. Either he’d known in advance and supplied the dynamite and the plan, with some end of his own in mind, or he’d found out right after the fact, and made up his mind to protect Billy from the law.

  Shay was placing his bets on the second of those two possibilities. Kyle had given his boy practically everything a young man could want, and looked the other way when he did wrong. In some people’s minds, that was fatherly love. To Shay, raised by a decent, honest man who praised him when he was in the right and made him accountable for his mistakes, it was something else entirely: plain disinterest seemed the most likely.

  To his amazement, he felt a degree of pity for Billy Kyle, which didn’t mean he wouldn’t make him pay for what he’d done.

  The old man finally finished his conversation with Billy and turned back to Shay. He approached, stood in the middle of the floor, his gaze direct, his hands relaxed at his sides.

  “You won’t reconsider.” The words were probably meant as a question, but they came out sounding more like a statement. Even an accusation.

  Shay shook his head. “No, sir,” he said, and knew that nobody in that room, not Billy or his father or Jim O’Sullivan, was under the misapprehension that the term conveyed respect. “They stay right here, both of them, until a judge says different.”

  Aislinn was in the general store, sitting on the floor behind two large barrels full of nails and unpacking a crate of new books, when she saw the elder Mr. Kyle stride across the street, looking neither to the left nor the right, but straight ahead. Which was fortunate, because he might have seen Aislinn through the window otherwise. He mounted the steps and came over the threshold in a pace or two, and his face looked hard as granite. Without removing his black, round-brimmed hat, he made his way directly to the rear counter, where Cornelia was measuring out lengths of ribbon for a special order from the milliner.

  After warning Aislinn to steer clear of her sister until she’d had a chance to prepare her for the news that they’d acquired an assistant, Dorrie had headed over to the hotel to see Eugenie. She’d gone after Aislinn’s belongings, left behind in the dormitory, and carried messages for Liza Sue and Eugenie, but of course she was hoping for a letter from her Leander as well.

  Mr. Kyle must have struck the counter with his fist, or even the butt of his pistol, for there came a sharp and sudden sound that made Aislinn jump and catch her breath. She pressed a much-coveted leather-bound copy of The Lady of the Lake to her heart, as if to keep that organ from bursting through her ribs in fright.

  “Do you know what he’s done, that brother of yours?”

  Cornelia gave a sniff. “He’s no relation of mine.”

  Afraid to breathe, let alone move, Aislinn was nonetheless possessed of such a sense of urgency that she took the risk of peering around one of the barrels. Mr. Kyle was leaning halfway over the counter, and he looked as though he might grab Cornelia by the hair.

  “Shamus took him in, gave him a name, raised him as a son. As far as the law’s concerned, he’s as much your brother as if he’d been born into the family. If you know what’s good for you, Miss McQuillan, you’ll have a change of heart where young Shay is concerned. You’ll press him to your bosom, forgive him for who he is and for every wayward action he’s ever taken in his miserable life, and then you’ll make him see reason and let Billy go before there’s more killing than you can even imagine!”

  Aislinn bit her lower lip and sat tight, waiting. She didn’t know Shay well—there hadn’t been time for that—but she would have wagered her small savings and all her prospects, such as they were, that nobody, least of all Cornelia, could turn the marshal from the course he’d set.

  “He’s not stupid,” Cornelia admitted, in a grudging whisper. “He knows I have no use for him, and he’d see right through any attempt I made to mend fences at this late date!”

  Kyle cupped Cornelia’s chin in one hand, but the gesture was anything but tender. “Be persuasive,” he said, with a softness that made Aislinn shiver. Then he released Cornelia with an angry flick of his powerful wrist, turned and walked away, leaving her staring mutely after him. Fear, fury and helpless frustration played in her face.

  Aislinn ducked behind the barrels just in time to see Dorrie through the window, hurrying along with a bundle in her arms. Aislinn closed her eyes for a moment, offering a silent prayer that her friend would not reveal her presence by speaking to her or bringing up the subject of her hiring with Cornelia.

  She did not fully understand the exchange between Cornelia and Mr. Kyle, but she was well aware that it was important. As soon as she was fin
ished with her day’s work, she would find Shay and tell him what had been said; it was up to him to decide what to do with the information, if anything.

  Dorrie paused in front of the window, looked straight into Aislinn’s eyes and winked. Then she waggled an envelope—a letter from the imprisoned Leander, no doubt—in one hand and went on by.

  Aislinn held her breath again, awaiting discovery, but apparently Cornelia had not seen the exchange. Probably ten minutes had passed before Aislinn got up the courage to look around the nail barrel again, and when she did, she saw that the object of her dread was nowhere in sight.

  Hastily, Aislinn got to her feet and took herself outside, where she stood on the wooden sidewalk, wondering what to do. She saw Shay come out of his office, sporting a gunbelt and an expression so grim that even the distance and the brim of his hat didn’t hide it, and knew instantly that the time wasn’t right for reporting that Mr. Kyle had practically ordered Cornelia to find a way into his good graces and talk him into letting Billy out of jail. She wasn’t afraid of him—she knew he’d never hurt her, at least not physically—but he was obviously not in a receptive mood.

  He stopped a man passing by, and they talked, though she was too far away to hear what was said. The man listened intently, then nodded and went inside the marshal’s office, leaving the door open behind him. Shay looked up and down the street, then headed toward the livery stable. Aislinn was still standing in exactly the same spot, as undecided as ever, when he came out again, leading his horse.

  If Shay had seen her, he’d given no indication. He swung up into the saddle and reined the gelding around. In the next moment, it seemed, he was beside her, looking down into her face.

  “Did you sleep well?” he asked.

  It was an improper question, but Aislinn had already let him kiss her in the dark, thrown away a perfectly good job, worn a prostitute’s dress in public, marched into the Yellow Garter Saloon and spent a good part of the night in jail. Her reputation was beyond mending, so there was no sense in fussing over a point of etiquette. “Did you?” she countered, shading her eyes with one hand as she gazed up at him.