A Stone Creek Collection Volume 1

by Linda Lael Miller

  Sam got his flask, the one he carried in his saddlebags when he was away from Stone Creek, and dampened a fresh corner of the towel with it. Bird winced when he touched it to the cut over her lip. “It’s a conundrum, all right,” he conceded. “You sure can’t go back to the Rattlesnake. But if you spend the night here, I’ll be out of work by morning.”

  Bird’s shoulders slumped. She clearly expected him to go back on his word, like everybody else in her life had probably done for as long as she could recall.

  She didn’t know Sam O’Ballivan. What he’d go through to keep a promise was fitting stuff for the epic tales in those volumes over there on the table. He’d cut his teeth on Hercules, after all, but at times like this one, he felt like Prometheus, condemned to have his liver fed to an eagle on a continuous basis. It was the price of stealing fire, he supposed.

  He must have voiced at least some of his thoughts, because Bird wrinkled her nose in confusion and asked, “Who?”

  “Prometheus,” he said, resigned to the explanation. “He was a Greek god. Among other things, he stole fire and gave it to humans, so they could keep warm and cook their food. Zeus wasn’t too happy about it and sent this eagle—”

  “I never heard nothin’ like that at the preachin’,” Bird said, confounded.

  “Never mind.” Sam sighed.

  “Who’s this Zeus fella?”

  “Just somebody in a story,” Sam answered. He’d done all he could, in terms of tending Bird’s wounds. The finer points of Greek mythology would have to wait.

  “What are we going to do now?” Bird asked. “I’d as soon take my chances with wolves and bears as go back to the Rattlesnake.”

  Sam strapped on his gun belt, slid his .45 into the holster, draped his coat over Bird’s shoulders. “Only one thing we can do,” he said.

  Five minutes later he was knocking at the back door of the mercantile.

  Maddie answered, bundled in a wrapper and holding a lantern high. He’d have bet the shotgun was leaning against the doorframe, within easy reach. She’d plaited her hair, the single braid resting over her right shoulder like a gleaming length of chestnut-colored rope, reaching past her waist.

  Her eyes widened when she saw Bird, huddled in Sam’s coat, shivering even though it was a warm night.

  “I know it’s late,” Sam began, and then stopped, because he didn’t know where to go from there.

  Maddie’s jaw clamped down visibly. She’d grind down her molars if she kept that up. She ran her gaze over the saloon girl again, then stepped back. “Come in,” she said.

  Sure enough, the shotgun was beside the door. Sam felt a little less flummoxed, having that settled, along with the way Maddie wore her hair when she went to bed. Beyond those two things, though, he seemed to be at a loss.

  “You’re hurt,” Maddie said, taking another look at Bird’s face in the lamplight.

  “Garrett Donagher beat me up,” Bird said, and Sam was thankful. He’d had the impetus to get here, but now that they were in the kitchen behind the mercantile, with Maddie naturally wanting an explanation, he was having a hard time finding words.

  “Sit down,” Maddie told her, pulling back a chair at a round table and setting the lamp in the middle. “Let me have a look.”

  “I can’t go back to the Rattlesnake,” Bird went on nervously, taking a seat and turning her face up for Maddie’s inspection. “And Mr. O’Ballivan says I can’t stay at the schoolhouse, either, or he’ll be out of work by morning.”

  Maddie flung a glance in Sam’s direction. He kept his distance and held his tongue, leaning back against the wall and folding his arms. He hoped the light wasn’t good enough to reveal the flush he felt pulsing in his neck and rising to his ears.

  “So he brought you here,” Maddie said.

  Bird swallowed and lowered her head before she nodded.

  “Why can’t you go back to Oralee’s?”

  “Because I clouted Garrett over the head with a lamp to get away from him,” Bird said, looking up slowly. “He was bleedin’ pretty good when I left him.” She swallowed again, harder this time. “You don’t reckon I kilt him, do you?”

  Maddie sighed. “He’s Mungo Donagher’s son,” she said. “His head is harder than packed dirt.” She set her hands on her hips. “Where was Oralee while all this was happening?”

  “She lit out for Tucson a couple of days ago, and she ain’t come back yet,” Bird answered, squirming a little. “She wouldn’t take my part even if she was here, though. Garrett’s a customer, and I’m just a…just a—”

  Maddie laid a hand on Bird’s shoulder, squeezed. “I could make you a cup of tea,” she said with brisk kindness.

  “I’d rather have whiskey,” Bird replied honestly.

  Sam bit back a grin.

  “Sorry,” Maddie said. “Fresh out.”

  About that time, Terran appeared, through a curtained doorway, sleep-baffled and clad in a long nightshirt. “Is she a dance hall girl?”

  There was a stove in the corner and a sink with a pump. “Yes,” Maddie said, sounding exasperated. She poked some kindling into the stove, along with crumpled newspaper, and lit a match to it. “And if you tell a soul she’s here, Terran Chancelor, you’ll be splitting firewood till your hands blister.”

  Terran came a step closer, peering curiously at Bird. “What’s your name?”

  “Bird of Paradise,” Bird said, smiling a little now that she knew she wasn’t going to be turned away.

  “Tarnation,” Terran said, awed. “You born with that name?”

  Sam pushed away from the wall, took the teakettle from Maddie and pumped water into it at the sink.

  “Nope,” Bird told Terran. “I was Esther Sue before I came to work for Oralee.”

  “I like Bird of Paradise better,” Terran said, dragging back a chair and sitting himself down next to the night visitor. “It’s a pure mouthful, though.”

  “Just call me Bird,” Bird suggested. “Like Mr. O’Ballivan here does.”

  Sam had his back to Terran, but he felt the boy’s gaze boring into his spine.

  “I’d like to know how you and Mr. O’Ballivan became acquainted,” Maddie said. Her tone was cordial, but there was bedrock under it. She wrenched the teakettle out of Sam’s hands and set it on the stovetop with a little bang of metal against metal.

  Sam’s ears burned.

  “I brought him his supper,” Bird said proudly, “first night he was in town. We got to be friends then.”

  “Isn’t that nice?” Maddie responded. She didn’t sound like she thought it was nice, but that seemed to go over both Terran’s and Bird’s heads. Sam wished it had gone over his.

  “Nothing happened,” he told Maddie, and then could have kicked himself, because it was none of her damn business whether anything happened or not.

  Maddie clattered down some cups from a cupboard, along with a tin of tea leaves. Evidently she and Terran had their meals down here and slept upstairs. Sam’s eyes rose to the ceiling, and he was possessed of a powerful wondering where he had no call to wonder.

  “Maddie won’t let me go near the Rattlesnake,” Terran confided to Bird. “Not even to deliver Miss Oralee’s provisions. Not that she buys much from us.”

  “It’s no place for a fine boy like you,” Bird agreed. “You listen to your sister. She knows what’s best for you.”

  “Do you have a sister?” Terran asked, still breathless with amazement at finding a dance hall girl in the family kitchen in the middle of the night.

  “I did once,” Bird said with a note of sorrowful nostalgia. “She wouldn’t speak to me now.”

  Maddie waxed thoughtful. Now that she was over the shock of the encounter, Sam figured, she was sifting for solutions. He blessed her for that, though he knew she’d shoot a few blistering remarks his way the next time they were alone.

  “Where does your sister live?” she asked Bird, measuring orange pekoe into a crockery pot and then adding more wood to the fire in the belly
of the stove.

  “Denver,” Bird replied. The way she said the word, the place might have been on the other side of an ocean, instead of a week’s travel by stagecoach and railroad. “She’s married and lives in a big house with a porch that wraps almost the whole way around.”

  “You’re sure she wouldn’t take you in?” Sam asked, feeling that he ought to say something since he’d been the one to carry the problem to Maddie and drop it at her feet. Which, he noted, were bare under the hem of that wrapper.

  He cleared his throat and looked away, forcing his gaze back to Bird and Terran, sitting close together at Maddie’s table in a spill of lantern light, waiting for the tea water to boil. It might have been a cozy scene, if he hadn’t known Garrett Donagher had probably come to by now and was fixing to turn over every stone in town until he found Bird and exacted vengeance.

  “I don’t know,” Bird mused sadly, having taken so long to answer Sam’s initial question that he’d forgotten what it was and had to do some catching up.

  Maddie had a pencil and a scrap of paper, and sat herself in a third chair at the table. “What’s your sister’s name?” she asked practically.

  Bird hesitated. “Mrs. Zebediah T. Roundtree,” she said. “Her husband’s a lawyer.” She followed with an address, in a good part of Denver.

  Maddie scribbled down the information and thrust it at Sam. “Send a wire, first thing in the morning,” she told him. “If you give the telegraph operator a dollar, he’ll keep it to himself. If you don’t, you might as well print bills and post them all over Haven.”

  Sam nodded, took the paper and tucked it into his vest pocket.

  Heat began to surge through the teakettle on the stove.

  Maddie got up again, brewed the tea, and poured cups for herself and Bird, since Sam declined the offer, made with a raised eyebrow, and wished that, just once, he could get through an uneventful day.

  Terran was sent back to bed, and went unwillingly.

  Bird took a few sips from her tea, laid her head down on the table and went to sleep.

  Maddie glared at Sam over the rim of her steaming cup.

  “Well,” Sam said, compelled to defend himself, “you made me take the dog home.”

  Maddie made a snorting sound, set her cup down and clapped one hand over her mouth. Sam was relieved to see that, one, she wasn’t choking, and two, her eyes were bright with laughter.

  Once she’d swallowed and caught her breath, she actually smiled.

  “You’ll be all right here?” Sam asked, thinking he ought to leave. Trouble was, Bird was still wearing his coat, and he didn’t want to wake her up, given what she’d been through. On the other hand, he’d left most of his belongings up at Stone Creek, and he’d need that coat, if only to cover up his .45.

  Maddie inclined her head toward the shotgun, still leaning against the wall next to the door. “I’ll be just fine,” she said, “provided you don’t rescue anybody else before we can put Bird on the stagecoach come Wednesday.”

  Sam sighed and got to his feet, uneasy with leaving, and not just because Garrett Donagher might get wind of Bird’s hiding place and come after her. Being around Maddie was like drawing close to a fire on a cold night. A man didn’t like going back out into the blizzard.

  “Terran will bring your suit coat to school in the morning,” Maddie said. Evidently, mind reading numbered among her talents. “I’ll wrap it in brown paper, so folks won’t be speculating on how it came to here.”

  Sam nodded and put his hand on the door latch. “Good night, Maddie,” he said. “And thank you.”

  She didn’t smile, and that was probably a good thing, because then he’d have liked leaving even less than he already did. “Good night, Sam O’Ballivan,” she replied.

  He heard the lock snap into place as soon as he’d closed the door behind him, and it gave him a lonely feeling, standing out here on the back step. He didn’t linger and took the long way back to the schoolhouse, passing by the Rattlesnake Saloon. There were plenty of horses tied up out front, including Charlie Wilcox’s old nag, waiting wearily to plod back to the shack.

  Sam resisted an urge to stop and commiserate.

  He’d done enough of that for one night.

  * * *

  TERRAN TURNED UP at the schoolhouse the next morning, even though it was Saturday, and his eyes gleamed with secrets when he shoved a bundle into Sam’s hands, out front by the well. Maddie had returned the suit coat, as promised.

  “How’s Bird faring?” Sam asked, watching as Neptune trundled through the deep, breeze-rippled grass in pursuit of a horsefly.

  The boy looked around secretively, then whispered his answer, even though there was nobody but Sam and the dog around to hear. “She ate four hotcakes this morning,” he confided. “Maddie says the way she’s going, she’ll eat us out of house and home before Wednesday ever gets here. Did you send that wire to Denver?”

  Sam nodded. He’d taken care of that first thing, after feeding Neptune some more jerked venison and swilling enough coffee to get his eyes to stay open. It had cost him a dollar and a half to dispatch that message. His thoughts snagged on the hotcakes, though, and made his stomach rumble.

  Terran fairly swelled with importance. “You think she’ll take Bird in? Mrs. Zebediah T. Roundtree and her lawyer husband, I mean?”

  Sam shrugged. “I hope so,” he said. He frowned. “You don’t miss much, do you?”

  Terran’s smile was smug. “Next to nothin’,” he said.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  AT SUNSET, Vierra roused himself, disentangling his arms and legs from those of the woman whose bed he shared, groping his way upward, out of sleepy satiation, clumsily lighting the lamp on the bedside table and contemplating a cheroot.

  The woman lay with her face hidden beneath a glimmering curtain of honey-colored hair, her body soft and warm from a long afternoon of lovemaking. For one disconcerting moment, he could not recall her name, knew only that she wasn’t Pilar Montoya.

  He shook off the melancholy that realization brought. He’d gone too deep and waded doggedly back to the shallower regions of his mind.

  Oh, yes, he thought, sitting up to rub his face hard with both hands. This was Amadea Rios-Flores, luscious wife of a very old and very wealthy patron, imported from Europe and denied nothing, except lovers. If he was caught with her, he would be bound to a post, stripped of his shirt and lashed until he bled to death.

  Not a pleasant prospect, though at least it would mean he felt something.

  The lovely Amadea stirred on the pillows, turned sleepily onto her back, crooned his name as she stretched.

  Footsteps thumped in the corridor.

  Suddenly alert, Vierra swore, threw back the heavy linen sheet and swung both legs over the side of the bed.

  A loud, husbandly rap sounded at the door.

  Vierra snatched up his clothes and took refuge behind the silk changing screen in the corner, peering through the narrow crack between two artfully painted panels—peacocks, with their tail feathers spread—as he scrambled into his pants. Too late, he realized he’d forgotten his boots, and one of them was sticking out from beneath the bed.

  Vierra held his breath and waited as Amadea sat up, yawned, realized the problem and pulled the sheet up over her breasts with a small gasp of alarm. Her eyes were wide as they sought him.

  Silently he ran through the list of saints, seeking one he hadn’t offended with some promise, hastily made and just as hastily broken.

  “Come in,” Amadea called in her strange Teutonic Spanish. Her gaze darted to the open window, with its lace curtains fluttering on the hot breath of the evening. No doubt she believed Vierra had already ducked out, the same way he’d come in, by way of the hacienda’s sloping, many-leveled roof.

  He crossed himself as Juan Rios-Flores opened the door and strode across the threshold, strutting like the vainglorious little rooster he was. Rios-Flores was barely five feet tall, with a balding head, gray mutton-chop whis
kers, a belly and a wide nose that looked as if it had been flattened by the bristled side of a horse brush.

  He sniffed the air as if scenting Vierra.

  St. Jude, Vierra thought. Perhaps he hadn’t affronted the patron saint of the impossible—at least, not too seriously. I will never again sleep with another man’s wife, he promised silently. He didn’t believe the vow for a moment, of course, and neither, regrettably, would St. Jude.

  “Our guests will be arriving soon,” Rio-Flores told his pink and thoroughly satisfied wife. His suspicion seemed to be abating, but Vierra didn’t breathe or move even the smallest muscle. If he could have willed his heart to stop beating, he would have done so. “Why are you languishing there in bed? The servants require direction.”

  “I had a headache,” Amadea lied prettily. She stretched again, beneath the sheet, and made a kittenish sound of contentment. “I am better now.” Her perfect face crumpled into a frown. On her, even that was attractive. “I thought you were in Refugio until tomorrow,” she added.

  Vierra had thought the same thing, which was why he’d availed himself to the pleasures of Amadea’s sleek, succulent body in the middle of the day.

  I’m getting too old for this, he told himself and the pertinent saint, whom he hoped was bending a kindly ear his way.

  “I finished my business there early,” Rios-Flores said, narrowing his little eyes and scanning the room. As his gaze passed over the changing screen, Vierra shivered. The distinctive scent of passion was subtle, but unmistakable, as well, and it would be a miracle if no one in the hacienda had heard Amadea’s cries of release. Perhaps one of the servants had passed in the corridor at the wrong time, and reported to el patron.

  Vierra closed his eyes and made another empty vow to St. Jude. No more married women, he reiterated. I promise.

  “Get dressed,” Rios-Flores commanded gruffly. And then, mercifully, he was gone, closing the door smartly behind him.