A Stone Creek Collection Volume 1

by Linda Lael Miller

  “I wasn’t worried about myself,” she said with spirit and no little defiance.

  “Then who—?” The words fell away, like pebbles from a limp slingshot, as the answer came to him, out of nowhere. “Me?” he asked, and for a moment or two, there was no sound save the birds, the rustle of cottonwood leaves and that damn dog slurping up the drinking water.

  Maddie clamped her jaw down tight again, looked away and gave one unwilling nod.

  Exultation swept through Sam, but he contained it. He had no right or reason to feel that way—he’d be riding back up north to Stone Creek, to Abigail, as soon as he’d completed his business in that part of the Territory, and like as not, he’d never lay eyes on Maddie Chancelor again. He’d set his course, tacitly promised to marry the major’s daughter, and he couldn’t go back on his word, even when it was only implied.

  Neptune backed away from the water bucket, belched and ran off to chase a butterfly flickering yellow and crimson over the thirsty grass. Sam bent, emptied the pail, put the hook through the handle, and reeled it back down into the well as if it were the most important thing he’d do all day.

  It seemed that even the birds and the trees went still.

  “Where’s Terran?” Maddie asked when Sam had the bucket clear down and on the way back up again.

  “I sent him for the eggs,” he said. “I buy them from Violet’s mama. Fifty cents a basket.”

  She touched his arm and he stiffened as surely as if she’d laid a hot poker to his flesh. Felt a flush of embarrassment heat the back of his neck. Damnation, he was acting like a besotted boy, not a full-grown man.

  “Sam—” she began, but he never knew what she’d meant to say because just then Terran came bursting through the brush, egg basket in one hand, face contorted with excited horror.

  “Sam!” he whooped. “Maddie! Come quick!”

  Maddie took the egg basket from Terran, set it down and caught him firmly by the shoulders. Gave him a little shake. “What’s happened?”

  Terran’s eyes were huge in his pale face. He made a few false starts before he managed to choke out the news. “Mungo Donagher just showed up at the jailhouse, driving a wagon—” He pulled free of Maddie’s hold and gagged a couple of times before he could go on. “He’s awash in blood. I’ve never seen so much blood. He said it’s Garrett under the tarp in the bed of that buckboard—”

  “Dear God,” Maddie gasped.

  “Both of you stay right here,” Sam ordered, and headed for the main part of town. Neptune tried to follow, but he sent the dog back with a stern command, and when he glanced over his shoulder, he saw Maddie and Terran staring after him, Maddie with one arm around her brother, as though she was holding him upright.

  A crowd had gathered in front of the abandoned jailhouse and, sure enough, there was a team and wagon out front. Sam looked into the bed, saw a bloody tarpaulin with a man’s shape sprawled beneath it. He reached in, tossed back a corner of the canvas covering, steeled himself against the sight. The body was unrecognizable, a ludicrous tangle of gore where the head should have been. He’d seen that kind of carnage before, but he’d never reconciled himself to it, the way some men did.

  He covered the corpse again and made his way through the gathering of whispering townsfolk to the open doorway of Warren Debney’s office.

  Mungo Donagher sat square in front of the desk, splashed from head to foot with blood and other matter, hands resting crimson-streaked on his thighs, staring bleakly into the maw of hell itself.

  The yellow dog was there, the one Sam had seen often, lying outside on the sidewalk, taking the sun, but there was no one to take charge. Donagher sat alone, motionless. He’d gotten himself this far, confessed his crime in the street and hunkered down to await his fate.

  Sam rounded the desk, opened drawers until he found a forgotten pint of whiskey, dusty and three-quarters full, brought it to Mungo. “Take a swig of this,” he said, gruffly kind.

  The man didn’t reach for the vessel or even raise his eyes. He was watching the devil dance, it seemed to Sam, and could not look away from the performance. “I killed him. Killed my own boy,” he told Sam.

  Sam put the bottle in Mungo’s right hand. “Drink,” he said. “It’ll steady your nerves.”

  “Caught him with my wife,” Mungo said. His stained fingers trembled, but he took the whiskey, steered it to his mouth, took a deep draught.

  “Did you kill her, too?” Sam asked, thinking of the feckless, pretty Undine.

  Mungo shook his head, took another gulp of whiskey and shuddered as it went down. “I should have married Maddie,” he said, like a man talking in his sleep. “She wouldn’t have wanted to go to California. She wouldn’t have spread her legs for another man.”

  Sam felt his back molars clamp together at the mention of Maddie, especially in that context, but he swallowed the furious protest that swelled in his throat. A figure moved into the doorway, from the street, and he recognized Oralee Pringle.

  “Who’s the law in this town?” Sam demanded.

  Oralee made a contemptuous sound. “Ain’t any,” she said, watching him speculatively as she approached, laid a plump, beringed hand on Donagher’s shoulder. “Is it true, Mungo?” she asked with a gentleness Sam wouldn’t have imagined she was capable of. “Did you shoot Garrett? Truly?”

  Mungo didn’t look at her, but he nodded. “I shot him, all right.”

  Oralee’s gaze collided with Sam’s over Mungo’s head. “If you ain’t a lawman,” she said calmly, “what are you doing in here?” She cocked a thumb toward the road. “Half the men in town are out there gawking in that street, but not a one of them had the guts to come in and see what was what. My guess is, they’re afraid old Mungo will put a hole in them, too, the way he did his boy.”

  Mungo drained the whiskey bottle. “I’d do it again, too,” he said.

  “Is there a doctor around here?” Sam asked Oralee.

  “You must not have taken a look at what’s left of Garrett,” Oralee replied. “I did. Ain’t no doctor can help him. What he wants is the undertaker, and a whole slew of prayers said for his rotten soul.”

  “Reckon I’ll hang for this?” Mungo inquired, but he was still watching the devil dance. From his rapt expression, it was quite the show.

  “Could be,” Oralee said matter-of-factly. She looked around the musty office, like she was familiar with it, even a little nostalgic, and marched over to take a ring of keys down off a peg. “You’d better lock Mungo up, Mr. Schoolmaster. Once he comes out of this stupor, a castrated bull would be easier to wrestle.”

  Sam took the keys. “Send somebody for the doctor,” he told Oralee. “If there is one.”

  “Have to ride all the way to Tucson, unless you want a Mexican.”

  Sam’s sigh came through his teeth. “Send somebody,” he repeated.

  Her tiny eyes widened as best they could, given their obvious limits. “For him?” she asked, cocking a thumb at Mungo.

  “Yes.” Sam bit the word off like the tip of a cigar, spat it out. Hooked a hand under Mungo’s elbow and urged him to his feet. For a big man, Donagher was docile, but Oralee was likely right to claim he’d be a sight less cordial when he came out of his daze. “Come along,” he told the old man.

  Mungo let himself be led to the single cell at the back of the long, narrow room. He took a seat on the cot wedged up against the wall and clasped his hands loosely between his knees.

  Sam’s stomach churned, watching Mungo, sitting there with his son’s blood dried in streaks on his flesh, splashed like red paint over his clothes.

  “He’ll be wild when he realizes what he’s done,” he said, aware that Oralee was standing close behind him.

  “Mungo?” Oralee scoffed. “He’d do it all over again. Just like he said before.”

  Sam turned to stare down into Oralee’s round, upturned face. He’d never seen a colder woman, and given some of the places he’d frequented before he’d wound up at Stone Creek, that
was saying something. “Get a doctor,” he said, hoping the third request would be the charm. “And somebody with the backbone to stand guard while I’m gone, if you can find them.”

  Oralee didn’t blink. “You sure give orders real easy-like, for a schoolmaster.”

  “Do it,” Sam said, and pushed past her. He took the cell keys with him, just in case someone took it into their head to let Mungo go in his absence.

  Townspeople milled and churned in the street, shaking their heads and muttering, one to another.

  Sam scanned them, picked out a trail-worn cowpuncher with a go-to-hell look in his eyes and a .44 riding low on his left hip. “You ever guarded a prisoner?” he asked.

  The cowpoke shook his head.

  Sam tossed him the cell keys. “You’ve just been deputized,” he said.

  The man caught the keys deftly, nodded, and went inside the jailhouse without a word.

  Maddie made her way through the throng and stood facing Sam.

  “The undertaker’s on his way,” she said quietly, her eyes searching his face.

  “I’ve got to ride out to the Donagher place,” Sam told her. “I’d appreciate it if you’d look after Neptune while I’m gone.”

  She caught hold of his arm when he would have walked past her, headed for the schoolhouse to saddle his nameless horse. “I’d better go with you,” she said.

  Sam shook his head. “No telling what I’m going to find out there.”

  “All the more reason you shouldn’t go alone,” she insisted. “Undine will need a woman. And—” She paused, swallowed. “There’s Ben to think about.”

  The boy. Sweet Jesus, he’d forgotten all about him.

  “There’s no time to hitch up your buckboard,” Sam argued when he’d swallowed a throatful of sick dread and a wash of ugly memories from his own boyhood.

  “I can ride,” Maddie said. She turned to face the gathering of onlookers. “Who will make me the loan of a horse?”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  UNDINE STOOD at the gate when Sam and Maddie rode up, one delicate hand shading her eyes from the midday sun. She looked so pristinely fresh in her white-eyelet dress that, for one marrow-chilling moment, Maddie thought she was seeing the specter of Mungo Donagher’s young wife rather than the flesh-and-blood woman herself.

  “I guess you’ve come about Garrett,” Undine sang out in the tone she might have used to indicate that tea was about to be served in the formal garden.

  Maddie stared so long that Sam had dismounted and come to help her off her borrowed horse before she managed to shepherd her scattered thoughts back into a flock. “We have,” she said, avoiding Sam’s upraised arms to put her left foot into the stirrup and get down on her own. Lord, how she despised riding sidesaddle, but her skirts and petticoats precluded the more sensible way.

  “Anna Deerhorn is cleaning up the mess,” Undine said with the merest wince of distaste. She was waxen, and her smile seemed a bit fixed, as though it rightly belonged on some other woman’s face. She added, a bit hastily, “Mungo was only defending my virtue, you know. I told him he oughtn’t to turn himself in like a criminal, but he wouldn’t listen.”

  Maddie, who had seen Mungo as well as what remained of Garrett, was not inclined to discuss Undine’s virtue. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Sam set his jaw. He’d related Mungo’s story on the way out from town, and it differed considerably from Undine’s.

  “Where is Ben?” he asked.

  Undine’s eyelashes fluttered, as though she thought she should recognize the boy’s name, but couldn’t quite catch hold of it. “I’ll ask Anna,” she said, and swayed a little. Maddie reached out, took a firm hold on the other woman’s elbow.

  Sam was already headed up the walk. He disappeared into the shadowy interior of the ranch house, leaving the door ajar behind him. “Ben!” he called.

  If there was an answer, Maddie didn’t hear it.

  Undine put a hand over her mouth, leaned on Maddie and let herself be led toward the front door. “It was awful,” she whispered. “Garrett barged right into our bedroom—Mungo’s and mine—and forced himself upon me.”

  Maddie slipped an arm around Undine’s waist. “What happened then?” she asked very quietly.

  “Mungo came back, just in time to save me,” Undine said, and fetching tears brimmed in her eyes. “He…he put a gun to the back of Garrett’s head and…and—”

  “Maybe you should sit down before you finish,” Maddie said, and eased Undine into one of the two rocking chairs on the front porch before taking the other for herself.

  Undine began to rock, back and forth, back and forth, staring wildly into what must have been a truly horrible memory, whatever her own part in the making of it. “How will we go to California now?” she murmured.

  Maddie drew and released a long, slow, deep breath before replying. “Mungo is in serious trouble, Undine. He has confessed to murder. He’ll be tried, and he could be hanged, if he’s convicted.”

  Undine’s gaze shot to Maddie’s face, heated and defiant. “But it wasn’t murder! Mungo was only protecting me!”

  It was not the time to point out, as the Territorial attorney surely would, if there was a trial, that Mungo had employed excessive force in freeing his wife from the unwanted attentions of his eldest son. Mungo might have been elderly, by some standards, but he was bull-strong, and even Garrett, for all his youth, would have found him a formidable foe.

  Before Maddie could find words to state any of those things, Anna appeared in the open doorway. Her gaze skittered off Undine, who was back to rocking again, to land fierce on Maddie’s face.

  “Mr. O’Ballivan wants you,” she said. “He said I shouldn’t have took to cleaning that room.”

  Maddie rose from her chair, smoothed her skirts uneasily. Although her first instinct was to avoid the scene of Garrett’s death, she would not give in to it. If Sam could stand the sight, so could she. “Will you sit with Mrs. Donagher?” she asked.

  “No, ma’am,” Anna Deerhorn replied.

  Undine did not seem to hear her. She was rocking harder and muttering under her breath about California.

  Maddie nodded, straightened her shoulders and marched into the house.

  “Through the kitchen,” Anna said, behind her.

  Maddie’s nerves leaped under her skin, and she felt perspiration gather between her breasts and shoulder blades, but she made her way toward the master bedroom. Toward Sam.

  A mound of blood-soaked sheets and blankets marked the doorway. Maddie swallowed a rush of bile, stiffened her backbone, and proceeded.

  A ludicrously graceful spray of crimson patterned the wall above the bed. Sam was digging, with one finger, in a hole in the equally grisly mattress. He brought out a spent bullet, held it up to the light pouring in through the nearby window. “It must have gone right through his head,” he mused in a detached voice, entirely devoid of emotion. “Undine’s lucky it didn’t hit her.”

  Maddie’s stomach roiled and she thrust out one hand to steady herself against the framework of the door. The smell of death was rife in the room, dense and cloying, with an edge of coppery sweetness. It seemed to seep into her very flesh, become a part of her. Where in God’s name was Ben? Had he heard the shot or, worse yet, witnessed the tragedy firsthand?

  “Undine claims Mungo was defending her,” she said, feeling light-headed, struggling not to disgrace herself by vomiting or even swooning.

  Sam didn’t answer. He was still intent on studying the bullet.

  “I’m—I’m going looking for Ben,” Maddie went on.

  At last Sam met her gaze and, for the briefest of moments, she glimpsed an old and elemental horror there, something that had nothing to do with the grim events of that dreadful morning. “Look behind the cookstove,” he said. “Then in the barn and the chicken coop.”

  “There’s no need to search,” Anna Deerhorn said, and Maddie flinched, for she hadn’t realized that the woman was standing almost at her elbow.
“He’s at my cabin.”

  Maddie nodded and turned, perhaps too quickly, to make for the kitchen door. She half expected Anna to accompany her, but the housekeeper went instead to the sink to pump water for the round washtub at her feet. There was explanation forthcoming, but Maddie didn’t require one. Once the tub was filled, Anna would soak Garrett’s lifeblood from the sheets.

  The cabin stood well back of the main house, sturdy and small.

  Maddie lifted her skirts in both hands as she climbed the plank steps and entered without knocking.

  “Ben?” she called gently. There were two windows, with heavy burlap curtains, tightly drawn. She waited for her eyes to adjust to the change. “Ben, it’s me, Maddie Chancelor. Terran’s sister.”

  Nothing.

  She squinted, and Sam’s oddly knowing words came back to her. Look behind the cookstove.

  Anna’s stove was huge, taking up fully a quarter of the space in the single room. Maddie approached at a slow pace and said Ben’s name again, gently.

  Sure enough, he was there, huddled against the wall behind that stove, his arms wrapped tightly around his skinny knees.

  Maddie crouched, reached out tentatively to touch his cap of fair hair. He jerked away from her and let out a small, despairing whimper.

  Her eyes burned and her throat constricted. “It’s all right, Ben,” she said, very gently. “You’re safe now. I’m here, and so is Mr. O’Ballivan.”

  Ben raised his head, stared at her with enormous, panicked eyes. Then, to her surprise, he grasped her arm and tried to pull her behind the stove. “There’s been some shootin’!” he rasped, clawing at her in desperation. “You’ve got to hide, Maddie! You’ve got to hide!”

  A raw sob escaped Maddie. She shifted to her knees and hauled the child into her arms, holding him close and then closer still. He clung, his hands knotted in the fabric of her dress.

  “It’s over now,” she promised. “It’s all over.”

  “Pa shot Garrett,” Ben cried, burying his face in Maddie’s bodice. “He dragged him through the kitchen, put him in a wagon. There was so much blood—”

  Maddie held on to the boy as tightly as he held to her. “Shh,” she whispered against his fever-moist temple. He had heard the shot. He had seen his father hauling his brother’s decimated body out of the house and loading it into the back of the buckboard. What else had the poor child seen? It wouldn’t do to ask him, not yet. “Shh.”