The Vigilante's Bride

by Yvonne Harris

He looked over at Emily and shook his head. “Bart’s too old for her.”

  “I agree, but he’s a wealthy man. She could do worse. A man gets lonely out here. He’s been a widower for five years.”

  Luke’s mouth set. “Have you forgotten why?”

  Molly’s hands fluttered a denial. “Rumors. Just ugly talk. There’s no truth to that.”

  “Aw, Molly, everyone knows Elizabeth Axel wasn’t dragged by her horse, not the way that woman could ride. No wonder he left town the next day.”

  “The same day. Said he was too upset to face people. He left right after the funeral.”

  Luke lowered his voice. “For Chicago. I was there with Stuart selling beef, and your grieving husband walked into the Stockmen’s Club with a prostitute on each arm and both hands bandaged. Told Stuart he’d busted his knuckles in a fight back home. It was months before I heard about his wife and connected up the dates. He’s always had a mean temper. My guess is he hit her one time too many. Emily McCarthy needs to know what she’s getting into if she marries Axel. You have to tell her, Molly.”

  “I live next to him. I’d rather you told her.”

  Hands shoved into his pockets, Luke frowned across at Emily, then down at Molly. “I tried on the way here. She doesn’t believe me.”

  Molly sighed and turned to leave. “Then she probably won’t listen to me, either.”

  She crossed the room, said something to Emily, and they left the dining room together.

  Ten minutes later, Molly returned alone. As soon as her gaze caught his, she shook her head. Grim faced, she beckoned Luke to a corner.

  He followed, uneasy about what she must have learned.

  “Her parents were from back east,” Molly said. “Her father died in a mine explosion when she was an infant; her mother killed herself six months later. And you were right. She can read. She can also cipher, typewrite, play the piano, and speak a little French. She’s been teaching at Aldersgate in Chicago, run by a big fancy church out there. The school has a hundred Cherokee girls signed up, funded by the government under this new law. The school let her go because they needed her room for new students.”

  “She told me about the Indian girls coming, but marrying Bart Axel – ”

  Molly gave him a sad little smile. “That was the kind director’s attempt to help Emily start a life of her own. Emily could have turned it down, said she would have if she could have found any kind of job.”

  “So what does she plan to do?”

  “Marry him.”

  “After what you told her?”

  “Says she has no choice.”

  Luke scrubbed his fist up and down the back of his neck, spun around, and started for the kitchen.

  She reached her hand out and held Luke’s arm. “I’m as upset as you are. I talked till I was blue in there with her,” Molly said quietly, her face solemn. “I’m not surprised at what you saw in Chicago. Elizabeth told me once that Bart had lady friends. She was also afraid of him.” Molly’s eyes filled. “Take Emily to the library, where you can talk alone. I’ll back you up. Elizabeth was my friend.”

  Emily looked up a few minutes later when Luke finished talking. A wave of dizziness swirled behind her eyes, leaving her half sick at her stomach. “The Society would never send me to a man like that,” she whispered.

  “They didn’t know,” he said gently.

  Emily sat at a long yellow oak table in the library, twisting her hands together and trying to pull her thoughts in line. There was a way. There was always a way. She’d postpone the wedding until she could telegraph Aldersgate for advice. In the end, however, it would still be her decision. Her mind was a jumble of thoughts stumbling around, bumping into each other.

  She’d been stunned when Molly told her Luke had grown up here, that he and a little brother who later died had been the only survivors of an Indian attack on his family.

  She never would’ve guessed it. He just oozed self-confidence. It showed in the way he moved, the way he talked. If she’d met him under other circumstances, she’d have taken him for a rancher. Not at all like a man who grew up the way he did, the way she did.

  She looked up at him. “Why didn’t you tell me you came from an orphanage like me? Instead, you deliberately let me think – ”

  “You were in no mood to listen last night.” Arms folded, Luke sat in a chair tipped back against a wall.

  “Because I thought you were an outlaw.” Her cheeks heated with embarrassment. “If I hadn’t told you I was marrying Mr. Axel, you’d have left me at the stagecoach. That’s why you took me, isn’t it? You felt sorry for me.” She drew a shaky breath and looked at him.

  Gray eyes met hers.

  “Didn’t you?”

  Their gazes held. “So what if I did? Does it surprise you I did something decent?”

  She rose from the chair, her back as stiff as a mop handle. “I don’t need your pity. It wouldn’t have changed anything anyway – ”

  “I knew that.”

  “What you did was wrong,” she flared, a hand braced on her hip. “I don’t care why you did it, it was wrong. For all I know, you’re lying right now about Mr. Axel.”

  “You are the most muleheaded woman I ever met in my life.” The chair legs came down with a thump. Luke stood, took a step around the table toward her.

  She swallowed. The man was huge. He hadn’t looked that big last night in the dark. And he looked angry. She backed up, careful to keep the table between them.

  Luke raised his hands, then let them fall heavily to his sides. “It’s Bart Axel you have to be afraid of. Not me.”

  Back and forth he paced the length of the room. His heavy boot heels rapped the wood floor alongside the bookcases. He muttered as much to himself as to her, “That’s the thanks I get for trying to do you a favor – to keep you from making the biggest mistake of your life.”

  “And what kind of favor was that?” she snapped. “You ruined my wedding.”

  “I didn’t have time to explain,” he said with a wry smile.

  “Because you were too busy shooting up the world.”

  He spun around, his face tight. “Once! I shot in the air one time to get their attention. I didn’t plan on hurting anyone – and I didn’t.” He paced the length of the room again, wheeled around at the piano by the windows, and shook his index finger at her. “Bart Axel is dangerous.”

  She smacked her palm on the tabletop and flounced across her end of the room. “I’ll tell you what’s dangerous – anywhere you are.” She glared at him.

  He made an ominous little growling sound in his throat and glared right back.

  “Still, I’m not a fool, not with both you and Molly telling me this. So I won’t marry Mr. Axel until I determine for myself what kind of man he is. Me. I decide. Not you.”

  She jerked to a stop, as if remembering something, and looked up. “I have another problem. You see, Mr. Axel paid the Society a lot of money for me – ”

  “Slavery went out twenty years ago.”

  “Plus my railroad fare. Add that in.” Her voice edged at the interruption. “If I don’t marry him, I have to pay that back, and I don’t have the money.”

  “Molly said – ”

  “Said I could work here for a little salary and room and board for a while.” She looked down at her hands. “I can teach and I play the piano. I’ll find work somewhere.”

  “Doing what? It’s worse for women out here than in Chicago. There’s no work anywhere. No jobs for men, except range work. Maybe you could get on as someone’s hired girl, if you’re lucky.”

  A thought streaked across her brain. “The piano! I read music. Maybe I can get a job in a saloon or a dance hall.”

  His jaw dropped. “You in a short skirt, kicking up your legs and showing your drawers? Don’t be ridiculous.”

  Emily stiffened. “Don’t be evil-minded. The other girls would dance. I’d just play the piano for them.”

  Those pale eyes now looked like wolf eyes
, and they bored holes into her.

  “Somehow, I believe you’d have other duties upstairs,” he said. From her hair to her shoes, his eyes swept down her. “And you, Miss McCarthy, you wouldn’t . . . last . . . an . . . hour.” He threw his hands up. “You don’t even know what I’m talking about.”

  “I do so. Girls talk. I know all about . . . such things.”

  He shot her a skeptical look.

  “I’ll lend you the money, and you can go back to Chicago.” His tone of voice and fixed expression said the matter was settled.

  “No, I am not going back there. I vowed never to set foot inside another orphanage.” She let out a long, shaky breath. “I’ll work at New Hope for a while if I have to, but only till I find a teaching job in a regular school.”

  “Now you’re being sensible.”

  She pinched her eyes into little slits. “But as for you, Mr. Know-It-All-Sullivan, I’ll thank you to stay out of my affairs in the future.”

  Luke stared at her; his face flushed an angry, dusky red. “Taking you off that stage was the dumbest thing I ever did.”

  He spun around, left the library, and slammed the door behind him.

  Four miles away, at the X-Bar-L ranch, Clete Wade, ranch foreman, noted the nearly empty McBryan’s whiskey bottle on Bart Axel’s desk. He gave his boss a wary nod. When Bart tippled more whiskey into the glass, Clete shot a warning look to Wes Huggins, the wiry range rider he’d brought in with him. Boss was back on the booze. Bad sign.

  Clete lifted his head at the whiff of roast chicken coming from the kitchen. Bart’s Chinese cook had also baked a tall, spicy wedding cake. For the first time Clete could remember, the X-Bar-L was decorated for Christmas. A little tree, hung with a string of tinsel and a few colored balls, stood in the corner, and a pine wreath graced the wall. Fancy candles burned on all the tables, and a preacher napped in the spare room upstairs.

  On the sofa, red-eyed from a sleepless night, sat Axel’s banker, Phineas Martin, whose duty was to give the bride away.

  Only there was no bride.

  “Got some news, boss. She’s over to New Hope,” Clete said.

  “New Hope? How in blazes she wind up there?” Bart ran a hand through his gray hair.

  Clete turned his hat around in his hands and shifted his feet. “It’s a puzzle, that’s for sure, but there’s only one set of tracks out there,” Clete said slowly, drawling the words out, his eyes slipping to the glass of whiskey in Axel’s hand, then back to Axel’s stormy expression. Bart had been drinking heavily ever since he’d learned of the stage holdup and the disappearance of Miss McCarthy. Every man on his ranch had spent the night combing the stage route from Billings to Repton, the closest town. They found nothing.

  “Who told you she’s at New Hope?” Bart demanded.

  “We tracked them. Whoever robbed the stage cut down into the Crow reservation. We lost them when – ”

  Bart leaned forward and slapped his palm on the desk. “Not what I asked. Who told you she’s at New Hope?”

  “Wes knows a woman who works there,” Clete rushed on. Sooner or later, the liquor would fire the fuse to Bart’s temper, and he didn’t want to be around when it did. “She said Sullivan rode in with a girl last night, said Miss Molly told the help that Sullivan found her standing in the road after the stage was robbed.”

  “Sullivan – Luke Sullivan?” Axel looked up. Quick anger flared in his eyes. “What’s he doing back here? Last I heard, he was making good money managing Granville Stuart’s place up at Lewistown.”

  Clete fell silent at Stuart’s name.

  Axel leaned back in his chair again and squared his legs, propping an ankle on the other knee. The silver spurs on his boots were Mexican and held oversized rowels, their spines honed to wicked points. He took no nonsense from a horse. Frowning, he twirled the little wheel with a finger. Well-oiled, the rowel spun with a faint clicking noise.

  “What’s the matter with you two? Don’t tell me you believe the nonsense about him being one of Stuart’s Stranglers?”

  Clete frowned. “Maybe – maybe not. They never say if they are, but he does work for Stuart.”

  Bart flicked the rowel again and waited for it to stop spinning. When it did, he uncrossed his legs and sat up.

  “Kind of a coincidence, wouldn’t you say, Sullivan coming back the same night my girl is kidnapped, same night the stage is robbed?” He swiped the back of his hand down each side of a drooping salt-and-pepper mustache.

  “Still, don’t see how it could’ve been Sullivan. There’s no way in this world Luke Sullivan would ride into the Crow reservation, not the way that man hates Injuns. You’re sure it was him who took Miss Emily to New Hope?”

  Clete nodded. “Had to be. No other tracks out there.”

  “And those tracks went right through the reservation, not around it?”

  Again, Clete nodded.

  “Well, then, our Mr. Sullivan better have a mighty good reason for that,” Bart said, slurring the words. “Otherwise, we just might stretch his neck a little. See how he likes it.”

  Wes Huggins spoke for the first time. “Not me. I ain’t messing with him.”

  “Wes is right,” Clete joined in. “He’s trouble, boss. Fellow I know in Lewistown says Sullivan wears his guns to church.

  What kind of man does that?”

  Wes broke in. “A vigilante, that’s who!”

  Bart snorted and waved a hand in dismissal. “Vigilantes don’t go to church.”

  “This one does. He goes to funerals – funerals he’s caused. Makes me squirm inside just to think it.” Wes turned to Clete, forgetting Axel for a moment. “You ever see him draw?”

  Clete shook his head.

  Wes talked faster. “I did once, up in Miles City when he got jumped – and that’s plenty for me. One minute he was just a-standing in the street, arms at his sides; the next minute, his gun’s smoking, and the other man’s down. And I swear, I never saw Sullivan move.”

  Axel waved a hand and snorted. “Watch yourselves and you won’t have no trouble with him. Stuart and his gang go after horse thieves and rustlers.”

  “Maybe you better watch yourself, boss,” Wesley blurted. “From what I hear, he’s as fast with the ladies as he is with guns, and right now the lady he’s got is yours.”

  “Shut up, Wes,” Clete muttered.

  Bart’s face turned a deep, dark red. With a thin smile he said, “I hadn’t looked at it quite like that, Wes.” He picked up a nickel-plated revolver lying on his desk, a handsome Smith &Wesson Schofield with a carved ivory handle, monogrammed and engraved. Opening a desk drawer, he took out a box of .45 Schofield ammunition. Slowly, he thumbed cartridges into each empty chamber except the one under the hammer. He scraped his chair back and stood up, shoving the revolver into the empty holster as he did.

  Adjusting the belt, he let it out a notch over his belly and worked the gun a shade lower on his hip. Spurs chinking, he crossed the room toward a rack of elk horns hanging on the wall.

  He lifted off a black felt Stetson studded with a row of silver stars around the brim and turned to Clete. “Get some of the men together,” he said, putting on the hat that cost more than some men’s horses. “And bring the buggy around. We’re going over to New Hope and get me my bride back.”

  CHAPTER

  4

  CHRISTMAS DAY, 1884

  Four o’clock. Dark in half an hour. Emily reached for another oil lamp on the sideboard and lit it, trying to do something to be helpful, anything to keep her mind off what had happened with Luke in the library. Her face burned. She was fuming inside, and from the way he’d slammed the door, so was he.

  She lit the wick, let the glass chimney clink down onto the base, then set the lamp on one of the long tables in the dining room. A little amazed, she stared at it. In Chicago, they had gaslights, not these old things.

  As she reached for another kerosene lamp, her gaze held on the large painting hanging alongside the dish cupboard:
The Good Shepherd. Jesus carrying a baby lamb. Molly Ebenezer must have chosen it. It was a perfect choice for children, much better than the one at Aldersgate.

  There, a large painting of da Vinci’s The Last Supper dominated the end of the dining room. Jesus and the apostles at their final meal together might be beautiful, but it was too adult for children and a little scary for some. Besides Jesus, she never could figure out who was who in the painting.

  “Hi, Miss McCarthy.” Wearing a Christmas red blouse and a swishy green skirt, a girl in her early teens carried a tray in from the kitchen and began collecting salt and pepper shakers from the four tables in the dining room.

  Emily smiled. “You fit right in with Christmas,” she said, and walked the length of her table, scooping up the shakers as she went. Setting them on the tray, she looked at the girl’s green skirt again. If this were the dining room at Alders-gate, both of them would be wearing loose gray and white uniforms.

  But at New Hope, not a uniform in sight. She’d hated those ugly gray things and didn’t miss them a bit.

  Everything here was different. Aldersgate had ninety-six residents, all girls; New Hope, only two dozen, boys and girls combined. And Molly knew every one of their names. She’d lined them up and introduced them to Miss McCarthy.

  As Emily set the last shaker on the tray, the hard clatter of hooves and the rattle of wheels on brick sounded in the courtyard.

  She hurried to the window and brushed the curtain aside. A man in a big black hat with stars on it climbed down from a big-wheeled green buggy. Five cowboys accompanying him swung off their horses. As a group they followed the barrel-chested buggy driver up the walk. Her stomach clenched and she struggled to suck in air. Without being told, she knew who he was: Mr. Axel. He’d come after her. She hurried to the dining room doorway and peeped into the hall.

  Axel threw the front door open. “Molly! Miss Molly!”

  Drying her hands on her apron, Molly appeared in the kitchen doorway at the far end of the long hall. “Evening, Bart. Guess I didn’t hear the bell,” she said, her voice crisp with sarcasm.

  Emily shrank back, listening to the voices in the hall.