A Stone Creek Collection Volume 1

by Linda Lael Miller

  Something quickened inside Payton, a combination of hope and alarm. “I reckon you’d better send him in,” he said.

  Ruby nodded, but she looked thoughtful. “How do you suppose he knew where to find you, Jack?”

  Payton spread his hands. “No idea,” he answered, wondering which one of his elder sons was about to walk through that doorway. “Did Gideon see him?”

  “No,” Ruby replied, still frowning. “I sent him to fetch the mail a little while ago. I could say you’re not here—”

  Payton shook his head. “No,” he said.

  Ruby took a last long, worried look at him, then opened the door and went out, closing it crisply behind her.

  Payton drew a deep breath, let it out slow and easy, and straightened his string tie. Tugged at the bottom of his gray silk vest, too.

  There was a light rap at the door, and then it swung inward on its hinges.

  Payton squared his shoulders, regretted that he hadn’t taken the time to throw back a slug of whiskey, just to steady himself.

  “Well, Rob,” he said, when his next-youngest son stood on the threshold, “it’s good to see you again.”

  * * *

  “I’LL JUST BET IT IS,” Rowdy replied dryly, setting his hat aside on a table just inside the room. “It’s been a few years.” He’d left Pardner back in Stone Creek, in Mrs. Porter’s care, and bought new clothes for the occasion.

  Fact was, though, he’d looked forward to several funerals more than he had to this meeting.

  “Come in and sit down,” Payton Yarbro said, as if he meant it. But his ice-blue eyes were shrewd and watchful, and a muscle ticked in his jaw, under the stubble of a new beard. He still cut a fine figure, Pa did. He must have been pushing sixty, but he looked younger, despite the gray in his hair and the meager promise of an expanding middle.

  And he still wore a .45 on his right hip.

  Rowdy hesitated a moment, then steeled himself and walked full into the room, waited until his pa sat down in one of the chairs facing the cold brick fireplace before taking the other.

  “What are you doing in this part of the country?” Payton asked, settling back and resting the side of one foot on the opposite knee. “Last I knew, there was a price on your head. You still wanted?”

  “Still wanted,” Rowdy said. “Thanks to you.”

  “I didn’t force you to help rob those trains,” the old man argued, taking a cheroot from a silver box on a side table, clamping it between his teeth and striking a match on the sole of his boot to light it. “You were hell-bent to join up, as I recall.”

  Rowdy didn’t reply.

  “How’d you find me?” Payton wanted to know, and though he put the question casually, the look in his eyes belied his easy tone. Shaking out the match, he leaned forward to toss it into the grate.

  “I had a letter from Wyatt while I was still down in Haven. That’s—”

  “I know where Haven is,” Payton said, sounding exasperated. “Little shit hole of a place just this side of the Mexican border. And what the hell was Wyatt thinking, to put news like that down on paper for anybody to see?”

  “He didn’t use your real name, nor his. And he wrote to say he was in prison. He mentioned that someone he knew had seen you in Flagstaff, running a faro table at Ruby’s Saloon.” Rowdy paused, solemn at the mention of Wyatt. He’d been the brother Rowdy’d looked up to, the one he’d wanted to be like. “The letter must have been forwarded four or five times before it caught up to me.”

  “What were you doing in Haven?”

  “Passing through,” Rowdy said, reining in his temper. Whenever he got within shouting distance of his pa, he always wanted to fight.

  “Wyatt’s in prison?”

  “Last I heard,” Rowdy replied. “The letter was dated two years back, so he might be out by now.”

  “Or dead,” Payton mused, and he had the decency to look troubled by the possibility, though he probably didn’t give a rat’s ass what happened to Wyatt or any of the rest of them. He’d never cared much about anybody but himself.

  “If Wyatt was dead,” Rowdy said evenly, “I’d know it.”

  “How?”

  Rowdy’s jaw was clenched. He released it by conscious effort. “I just would.”

  “You ever hear from Nick or Levi or Ethan?”

  “No,” Rowdy said. “I guess Gideon’s still at home.” He looked around. “If you can call the back end of a brothel home,” he added.

  “Don’t you get smart with me, boy,” Payton warned.

  “I can still whup you and three others like you without breaking a sweat. Anyhow, this ain’t a brothel. Ruby and me, we’re honest saloonkeepers.”

  An involuntary grin tilted one side of Rowdy’s mouth. “Whatever you say, old man.”

  “You look fit,” Payton allowed, though grudgingly. He was a stubborn old rooster, and sparing with his approval. “You ever get hitched? Sire me a grandbaby or two?”

  Rowdy wanted to avert his eyes, but he didn’t. He waited a moment or two, letting his silence serve as all the answer he was willing to give, then countered with a question of his own. “You still robbing trains, Pappy?”

  Payton hated to be called Pappy, which was why Rowdy had addressed him that way, but he had to give the old bastard credit for self-control. The only reaction was a reddening above the collar of his tidy white shirt. “Now why would you make a rude inquiry like that?”

  Rowdy thought before he spoke, even though he’d planned what he would say all during the two-hour ride over from Stone Creek. He’d left Haven, where he’d drifted into a job as town marshal, for two main reasons—first, because he’d gotten that cryptic telegram from Sam O’Ballivan and Major Blackstone, summoning him north for a meeting in the lobby of the Territorial Hotel, and second, because a Wanted poster had landed on his desk with his real name and description printed on it.

  He was taking a chance, continuing his acquaintance with O’Ballivan. Rowdy believed in hiding in plain sight, moving on when his feet itched, with most folks none the wiser for knowing him.

  Sam O’Ballivan wasn’t most folks.

  “I need to know if you’re still robbing trains, Pa,” Rowdy reiterated. “The railroad’s laying tracks from here to Stone Creek, and then all the way down to Phoenix. I’m hoping it’s a coincidence that you’re here in Flagstaff and two trains have been boarded and looted, not ten miles from here, in the past six months.”

  Payton drew on his cheroot and blew a smoke ring. “You find religion or something?” he hedged. “Or maybe you’re just looking to make an extra dollar or two by riding my coattails.”

  Rowdy leaned forward in his chair, lowered his voice. “Listen to me, Pa,” he said. “I came to Stone Creek because I was asked to, by two Arizona Rangers. I don’t know for sure what they want with me, but I’ve got a hunch it has to do with the railroad coming in. Most likely the territorial governor is putting some pressure on them to put an end to the robberies. If folks don’t feel it’s safe to settle and do business here, the men back in Washington might not be willing to grant statehood.”

  Payton’s eyes widened slightly, then narrowed. “What the hell do you care if Arizona ever becomes a state? You’re an outlaw. There’s a price on your head, Rob. You can’t afford to cozy up with rangers!”

  “If Sam O’Ballivan had me figured for an outlaw, he’d have tried to arrest me by now.”

  Payton went pale as limestone in a creek-bed. “Sam O’Ballivan?”

  “I see you know him,” Rowdy observed.

  “Hell, everybody in the territory knows him!”

  “He’s a good man,” Rowdy said.

  “He’s a ranger,” Payton returned. His hands tightened like talons on the arms of his chair, and he looked as though he might bolt out of it, crash through the window and hit the ground running. “First, last and always, Sam O’Ballivan is an Arizona Ranger. You have truck with him, and you’re likely to find yourself dangling at the end of a rope!”
<
br />   Rowdy looked around, spotted a decanter half-filled with liquor, and got up to pour a dose for the old man.

  “Drink this,” he ordered, holding out the squat glass.

  “And calm down. Otherwise, you’re likely to bust a blood vessel or something.”

  Payton clutched the glass, and his hand shook a little as he raised it to his lips, closing his eyes almost reverently, like a man taking a sacrament. He swallowed, shuddered, opened his eyes again.

  “You bring the rangers down on me, boy,” Payton said, when he’d recovered enough to speak, “and I’ll die in a jail cell. It’ll be on your head.”

  “I came here to warn you,” Rowdy replied, hooking his thumbs under his gun belt. “That’s more than you would have done for me. From here on out, you’re on your own—Pappy.”

  With that, Rowdy figured his business was concluded. He turned and made for the door. Took his hat from the fancy three-legged table, held it in one hand.

  Payton hoisted himself out of his chair and turned to face Rowdy. “You don’t owe me any favors, boy. I won’t argue that you do. But if you have an honorable bone in your body, you’ll ride out of here and keep on going, without a parting word to Sam O’Ballivan or anybody else.”

  Rowdy put his hat on, laid a hand on the fancy glass doorknob. “You’re right, Pa. I don’t owe you any favors. And I’m not going anyplace until I’ve heard Sam out. If you don’t want him coming after you, don’t rob any more trains.”

  “I gave that up a long time ago.”

  All of a sudden, the backs of Rowdy’s eyes burned, and his throat drew in tight. He didn’t know what he’d expected—it had been five years since he’d ridden with his pa’s gang—but it wasn’t this, whatever this was.

  “For your sake, I hope that’s the gospel truth. At the same time, your word and two cents would buy me a cheap cigar.”

  “I guess we understand each other then.”

  Rowdy nodded glumly. “One more thing,” he said, his voice coming out hoarse. He oughtn’t to linger, he knew that, but he did it just the same. “Is Gideon all right?”

  “He’s fine.”

  “You haven’t brought him into the family business, then?”

  “He’s only sixteen, Rob.”

  “I was fourteen, the first time I rode with you.”

  “I’m a different man than I was then,” Payton said. Now that the whiskey had hit his bloodstream, he was his familiar, cocky self. “Older. Wiser. And one hell of a lot sadder.”

  Rowdy didn’t reply to that. He simply nodded, opened the door and went out. He looked neither to the right nor the left as he strode through the saloon beyond. The swinging doors crashed against the outside walls when he struck them hard with the palms of both hands.

  * * *

  GIDEON PAYTON CROUCHED beside the small grave outside the picket fence surrounding the churchyard. The monument was white marble, the finest to be had, and there were no dates, no Bible verses or lines of mournful poetry—only two plain words, chiseled into Gideon’s heart as well as the stone.

  “Our Rose.”

  In the ten years since his sister had died, Gideon had visited this spot under the spreading limbs of an oak tree on all but a handful of days. He’d been a child himself when Rose was killed, only six, but the memory was as vivid as the town surrounding him now, the people coming and going in wagons and on horseback out there in the street, the bell tolling in the little steeple of yonder church.

  In spring and summer he brought her flowers, usually stolen from someone’s garden. In the fall the leaves of the great oak blanketed the long-since-sunken mound in glorious shades of crimson and russet and yellow and gold. In winter he offered trinkets—a bright bottle cap, a woman’s ear bob found on a sidewalk, a colorful stone from the banks of Oak Creek. Sometimes he read to her out loud from a story book.

  Rose had loved stories, but he hadn’t known how to read yet when she was living.

  He supposed he ought to have gotten over the loss of her by now, since he was sixteen and almost a man, but some wounds never heal, no matter what the preachers said.

  Today Gideon laid a letter at the base of Rose’s headstone.

  “It’s from a college back east,” he told her quietly. “Pa went and signed me up for it.” He paused, frowned. “I don’t even like school that much, but I guess I’m good at it. Pa and Ruby say nothing worthwhile can come of my staying here, once I finish up my lesson-work this spring.”

  A flicker of motion at the edge of Gideon’s vision interrupted his speech before he could get to the part that sorrowed him most—he knew he’d have to go, and that would mean he couldn’t pay Rose any visits for a long time.

  A rider sat watching him from the road. His horse was a gelded pinto, and his boots were good, probably handmade in Mexico. He wore a hat pulled down low over his brow, and a pistol, butt forward, showed where he’d pushed back one side of his long black coat, so it caught behind the holster.

  Gideon took in all those things in the space of an instant, but they weren’t what caught his attention. Something in the stranger’s countenance sent a thrill through Gideon, made him rise slowly to his full height.

  The man resettled his hat, briefly revealing a head of straw-colored hair. Then he nudged the horse into motion with the heels of his boots and rode along the length of the picket fence.

  “Strange place for a grave,” he said, drawing up close to where Gideon stood. His eyes were almost the same shade of blue as Pa’s were, Gideon noted, and his mouth was like his ma’s had been—still, but ready to smile. Not that Gideon rightly recollected his mother; she’d died when he was born, and he’d only seen one likeness of her, a faded old picture tucked between the pages of a Bible.

  Gideon stiffened, gestured toward the cemetery flanking the small church. “Nobody in there’s got a better marker than my sister, Rose,” he told the rider. His heart was beating fast and, cold as it was, sweat tickled the skin between his shoulder blades.

  “I didn’t know you had a sister,” the stranger said quietly.

  Gideon straightened his spine. He wasn’t afraid of the man. Standing on the ground, not sitting a horse, he’d be no taller than Gideon, but he was older, and seasoned, if the easy way he wore his gun was any indication. “I reckon there’s a lot you don’t know about me, mister,” he said, intrigued.

  The rider grinned. “I know a little more than you probably think I do,” he said, shifting in the saddle, standing briefly in the stirrups as if to stretch his legs. “Your name is Gideon…Payton. You’re sixteen years old. Ponder it a bit, and you’ll realize that you’ve seen me before.”

  That little hesitation before he said “Payton”—what did that mean?

  And Gideon did recall a previous encounter, a shadowy glimpse that teased at the edges of his memory but wouldn’t show itself.

  “Who are you?” he asked bluntly.

  “I call myself Rowdy Rhodes,” the man answered.

  “And I’m your brother.”

  Gideon had known he had brothers, but he hadn’t been able to get much more than that out of his pa. They were all older than he was, but he couldn’t have said how many of them there were, or recited their names with any certainty. Now one of them was sitting right in front of him.

  “You call yourself Rowdy Rhodes? If you’re my brother, you ought to be a Payton, not a Rhodes. And what the hell kind of name is Rowdy, anyhow?”

  Rhodes chuckled and leaned forward in the saddle, resting one forearm on the pommel. “One that suits me just fine,” he said. “Are you still in school, Gideon?”

  Gideon glanced at the letter lying in front of Rose’s gravestone, and wished he hadn’t. Rhodes made him uneasy, with his watchful, knowing eyes, and yet Gideon wanted to know all about him. “I’ll be going away to college, come autumn.” He swallowed. “I mean to be an engineer. Maybe work for the railroad.”

  “Now, that’s ironic,” Rhodes said wryly.

  Gideon was affronted,
though he didn’t know why. Felt like a rooster with its feathers ruffled. “I’m smart,” he said.

  “I don’t doubt it,” Rhodes replied. He looked down at Rose’s grave, maybe noticed the letter, and the bottle caps, some of them rusting now, and the ear bobs and bits of frayed ribbon, with all the color weathered out of them. “How come they buried your sister out here, instead of in the churchyard, with the others?”

  An old rage, all the worse for being helpless, surged up inside Gideon, stung the back of his throat like gall. “Because Ruby Hollister is her mother,” he said.

  Again, Rhodes adjusted his hat. “But not yours.”

  Gideon shook his head. “No, sir,” he said. And he waited. If Rhodes was his brother, like he claimed, let him prove it. Let him say Ma’s name.

  He did, just as surely as if Gideon had demanded it of him aloud. “Your mother was Miranda Wyatt…Payton.”

  There it was again, that little hitch between words, subtle but sharp as a tug on reins already drawn tight.

  Gideon wanted to ask about it, but his audacity didn’t stretch quite that far. Rhodes’s manner was kindly enough, yet there was an invisible fence line behind it, enclosing places where it wouldn’t be wise to tread.

  “You ever need any help,” Rhodes went on, when Gideon didn’t speak, “you’ll find me boarding at Mrs. Porter’s, over in Stone Creek.”

  Gideon nodded. Stone Creek was a fair distance from Flagstaff, and he didn’t own a horse. Still, it was good knowing he could go there and expect some kind of welcome when he arrived.

  Rhodes moved to rein his horse away, toward the road.

  “Wait!” Gideon heard himself say.

  The familiar stranger turned in the saddle, looked down at him.

  “How many of you are there? Brothers, I mean?” Gideon blurted.

  Rhodes smiled. “Five,” he answered. “Wyatt, Nick, Ethan, Levi and me.”

  Gideon drew a step closer. “Are they Paytons?”

  The answer was slow in coming. “No,” Rhodes said.

  Gideon frowned. It was bad enough that he hadn’t known his own brothers’ Christian names. Now he wasn’t sure he knew who he was, either.

  With a nod for a goodbye, Rhodes took to the road headed in the direction of Stone Creek.