A Stone Creek Collection Volume 1

by Linda Lael Miller

  What could he do with an acre of ground?

  And, anyhow, he planned to move on, once he’d gotten the truth of the train-robbing situation and unraveled the secrets behind Lark Morgan’s brown eyes.

  Still, with the railroad headed in that direction, the land might make a good investment. He’d need something to fill his free time, since Stone Creek didn’t appear to be a hotbed of crime or social activity, and putting that shack to rights seemed like a sensible occupation.

  Resolved, he went back to the jailhouse and built a fire in the potbelly stove. By the time he’d adjusted the damper and shifted the chimney pipe to close the gaps issuing little scallops of dusty smoke, the supplies had arrived from the general store.

  He put a pot of coffee on to brew.

  Pardner, meanwhile, padded into the single jail cell, jumped up on the cot inside and settled himself for a snooze.

  Jolene Bell showed up before the coffee was through perking.

  “I hope you’ll be a better lawman than old Pete Quincy was,” she said.

  “I guess that remains to be seen,” Rowdy replied. He’d have offered her some of the coffee, but it was still raw and he only had one cup.

  “I run a clean place,” Jolene told him, after working up her mettle for a few seconds. “My girls are all of legal age, and my whiskey ain’t watered down, neither.”

  Rowdy bit the inside of his lip, so he wouldn’t grin. Obviously, Jolene was there on serious business. He’d learned a long time ago that if a woman had something to say, it was best to listen, whether she was the preacher’s wife or the local madam.

  “Am I gonna have trouble with you?” she asked, frowning.

  Rowdy hooked his thumbs in his gun belt. “Not unless any of your ‘girls’ are there against their will,” he said. “And I’ll be by to collect pistols, if I see more than a dozen horses tied up at your hitching rail.”

  Jolene’s gaze slipped to the .44 on his left hip. “Might be some as protest a rule like that one,” she asserted.

  “I don’t give a damn whether they protest or not,” Rowdy replied.

  “Since when is there a law on the books that says cowboys got to surrender their sidearms afore they can do any drinkin’?”

  “Since now,” Rowdy said. “They’ll get the guns back when they’re ready to ride out, sober.”

  “I’d be interested to see how you plan to make that stick,” Jolene told him. “There’s a lot of big spreads around here. The cowboys work long, hard hours, and when they get paid, they like to come into town and have themselves a good time. They get pretty lively, sometimes—especially if there’s a dance down at the Cattleman’s Meeting Hall, like there is next Saturday night.”

  “All the more reason,” Rowdy said, “to enforce the Rhodes Ordinance.”

  “The Rhodes Ordinance? I ain’t never heard of it.” Her tiny eyes widened as revelation struck. “Say—that’s your name, ain’t it? Rhodes?”

  “Yep,” Rowdy said.

  “You can’t just go around makin’ laws and expectin’ the rest of us to abide by ’em,” Jolene protested, drawing herself up in righteous indignation.

  “I imagine the town council will support it,” Rowdy replied.

  “If that don’t beat all,” Jolene marveled. “Ol’Quincy was a piece of work—I had to pay him fifty cents a week just to stay clear of my place—but I figure you just might be worse.”

  Rowdy smiled. “I won’t be staying clear of your place,” he said. “I might even sit in on a hand of poker now and then.”

  Jolene narrowed her eyes. “You gonna put any kind of nick in my pocketbook, Mr. Rowdy Rhodes-Ordinance?”

  “Nope,” Rowdy said.

  A slow grin spread across Jolene’s pockmarked, sallow face. “Well, now,” she said. “Looks like we’re all in for a time of it.”

  “Looks that way,” Rowdy agreed affably. He cocked a thumb over his right shoulder. “Who do I talk to about buying the place on the other side of the back fence?”

  Jolene told him, and half an hour later, he was a man of property.

  CHAPTER 5

  PA’D SADDLED UP and gone off someplace, in the middle of the night. Bent over a book at his desk in the back of the big schoolroom, Gideon couldn’t take in the words he was supposed to be reading. He just kept remembering.

  He’d awakened out of a sound sleep, hearing noises he thought were coming from the shed out behind the saloon, gotten up out of his bed, pulled on his clothes and boots, and headed out there to investigate.

  And there was Pa, dressed to ride a distance, fastening his rifle scabbard to the saddle. His gelding, Samson, snorted and tossed his big head, eager to be away.

  “You go on back inside, Gideon,” Pa’d said. He wore his round-brimmed hat, and there was a bandana tied loosely around his neck. Under his long coat, he wore a gun belt, with a holster on either side. The pearl handle of one of his .45s flashed in the gloom as he swung up onto the horse.

  “Let me go along, Pa,” Gideon had said, at the edge of pleading. “I can get a horse over at the livery stable—”

  “You stay here and look after Ruby,” Pa replied. He’d clamped an unlit cheroot between his strong, white teeth, and he shifted it from one side of his mouth to the other, looking as though he might ride Gideon down if he didn’t get out of the way.

  If there’d ever been a woman who didn’t need looking after, it was Ruby Hollister. She kept a loaded shotgun behind the bar, and everybody in Flagstaff knew she wouldn’t hesitate to use it. No, sir. She would not be requiring Gideon’s protection.

  “At least tell me where you’re off to, Pa,” Gideon had argued.

  “That’s none of your never-mind,” Pa had answered, narrowing his chilly blue eyes with impatience. “Now, step aside.”

  Gideon stood his ground for a long moment, but in the end, he couldn’t prevail against his pa’s hard stare. “When’ll you be back?” he’d asked.

  Pa hadn’t said anything in response. He’d just nudged the gelding into motion with the heels of his boots—not the fancy ones he usually wore, Gideon noticed, but the light, supple kind, made for moving fast, but soled for hard going.

  Gideon had moved out of the shed doorway, lest he be trampled, and Pa had bent low over the saddle to avoid knocking his head as he passed through.

  He’d vanished into the darkness, the hooves of his horse beating on the hard dirt, the sound growing fainter as he gained the road.

  When the cold of that winter night finally penetrated Gideon’s awareness, he’d gone inside. Shed his boots and lay down on top of his bed in his clothes, staring up at the ceiling, knowing he wasn’t going to sleep.

  At breakfast, Ruby had been pale and unusually fidgety.

  Gideon had been bursting with questions, but he hadn’t dared put a one of them to her. When Ruby didn’t want to talk, the devil and ten red-hot pitchforks couldn’t make her do it.

  Now, sitting in the schoolroom, he felt restless, as though there were something else he ought to be doing, and wasn’t.

  He thought about Rowdy, the brother he barely knew.

  You ever need any help, you’ll find me boarding at Mrs. Porter’s, over in Stone Creek.

  A hand came to rest on Gideon’s shoulder just as he was recalling that conversation for the hundredth time, nearly scaring him right out of his hide. He wasn’t commonly the jumpy sort, and it embarrassed him mightily, the way he’d started. He felt his neck and face go warm.

  “You’re not concentrating, Gideon,” Miss Langston said good-naturedly, smiling down at him. She was about a thousand years old, short and square of build, a phenomenon that had confounded him until Ruby had explained the mysteries of a lady’s corset. “It’s too early for spring fever, but I’ll vow, you’re already afflicted.”

  Gideon tried to smile, because he liked Miss Langston. She was briskly cordial, and never made sly remarks about Ruby or his pa, like a lot of folks did. And she’d attended Rose’s funeral, too, he remember
ed. Cried into a starched hanky with lace trim around the edges.

  “I’ve got some trouble at home,” he confided, keeping his voice down so he wouldn’t have to fight later, out in the schoolyard. He’d never lost a one of those battles, but, as his pa liked to say, there was no shortage of idiots in the world. There was always somebody ready to take him on.

  Pa’d had things to say about that, too.

  Pa.

  “You’d best go and see to things there, then,” Miss Langston said, kindly and quietly. When he hesitated, she prodded him with, “You’re excused, Gideon.”

  He fairly knocked his chair over backwards, getting to his feet.

  You ever need help—

  Did he need help? He didn’t know.

  He couldn’t have explained why he felt so nervous and scared. Something was bad wrong, though. He was sure of it. The knowledge stung in his blood and buzzed in his brain.

  He ignored the quizzical stares of the other pupils—they ranged from tiny girls in pigtails to farm boys strong as the mules they rode to town—and shot out of the schoolhouse, down the steps, across the yard. He vaulted over the picket fence and sprinted for the livery stable four streets over.

  * * *

  ROWDY PLACED AN ORDER down at the sawmill, bought a hammer, a keg of nails, and some other tools at the mercantile, paid extra to have them delivered, Pardner tagging along behind him. Then, figuring he ought to do some marshaling, since he was getting paid for it, he walked the length of Center Street, speaking quietly to folks as he passed, touching the brim of his hat to the ladies.

  He looked in at the bank and the telegraph office, introduced himself and Pardner.

  He counted the horses in front of the town’s three saloons, and went inside the last one, which happened to be Jolene Bell’s place.

  “That your deputy?” a grizzled old-timer asked, leaning against the bar and grinning sparse-toothed down at Pardner, who was sniffing at the spittoon.

  “Leave it,” Rowdy told the dog.

  Pardner sighed and sat down in the filthy sawdust.

  “Don’t see no badge on him,” quipped another of the local wits.

  Rowdy smiled. “This is Pardner,” he said. “Guess he is my deputy.”

  “He bite?” asked the skinny piano player, looking worried.

  “Not unless he has just cause,” Rowdy answered.

  The old-timer’s gaze went to Rowdy’s badge, then shifted to his .44. “You a southpaw, Marshal?”

  “Nope,” Rowdy said, looking straight at the old man, but noticing everything and everybody at the far edges of his vision, too.

  Always know what’s going on around you, boy. Ignorance ain’t bliss. It can be fatal. He’d been raised on those words of Pappy’s, drilled on them, the way some kids were made to learn verses from the Good Book.

  “Gun’s backward in the holster,” the piano player pointed out helpfully.

  Rowdy glanced down at it, as if surprised to find it such. In the same moment, he drew.

  The old-timer whistled.

  The piano player spun around on his seat and pounded out the first bars of a funeral march.

  Rowdy shoved his .44 back in the holster.

  “Come, dog,” he told Pardner, and they went back out, into the bright, silvery cold of the morning.

  From there, Rowdy and Pardner proceeded to the Stone Creek schoolhouse. He didn’t have any official business there, but he thought he ought to familiarize himself with the place, just the same.

  And he wouldn’t be averse to a glimpse of Lark, either.

  The kids were out for recess, running in every direction and screaming their heads off in a frenzy of brief freedom, while Lark watched from the step, wrapped tightly in her cloak, her cheeks and the end of her nose red in the bitter weather.

  She didn’t see Rowdy right away, so he took his time sizing things up.

  The building itself was painted bright red, and it had a belfry with a heavy bronze bell inside, sending out the occasional faint metallic vibration as it contracted in the cold. There was a well near the front door, and an outhouse off to one side. A few horses and mules foraged at what was left of last summer’s grass—come the end of the school day, they’d be carrying Lark’s students back home to farms and ranches scattered hither and yon.

  Pardner lifted himself onto his hind legs and put his forepaws against the whitewashed fence, probably wishing he could join in a running game or two.

  “Sit,” Rowdy told him quietly.

  He sat.

  The dog’s movement must have caught Lark’s attention, because she spotted them then. Made an awning of one hand to shade her eyes from the bright, cool sun.

  Rowdy grinned, waited there, on the outside of the fence, while she hesitated, made up her mind and swept toward him, her heavy black skirts trailing over the winter-bitten grass.

  “Good morning, Marshal Rhodes,” she said formally.

  Marshal Rhodes? The woman had sat in his lap the night before, wrapped in a blanket and not much else, and settled herself against him with a little sigh of resigned surrender that still echoed in his bloodstream.

  Rowdy remembered their present whereabouts—a schoolyard, in the bright light of day—and touched the brim of his hat respectfully. “Miss Morgan,” he said. He let the look in his eyes say the rest.

  Lark blushed, so he figured she’d understood.

  “Surely you don’t have business here,” she said, taking in the shiny star-shaped badge pinned to his coat.

  “No, ma’am,” he replied. “Pardner and I, we were just making our rounds. Keeping the peace, you might say.”

  Lark tried mightily to smile, but she didn’t quite succeed.

  He realized, with a start, that she’d expected him to deliver some kind of dire news or maybe even arrest her.

  Damnation. He’d figured she was running from a man, but now it struck him that he might have been wrong. Could be she was wanted by the law.

  The thought of that gave Rowdy serious pause.

  He recalled the way she’d glanced at his badge, and he searched the recollection, as well as her face, for any sign of anxiety.

  Meanwhile, a little girl with blond pigtails approached the fence, stuck a hand through to stroke Pardner’s head.

  “Lydia,” Lark said immediately, “you should not touch strange dogs.” Her gaze moved briefly to Rowdy’s face. “Some of them bite.”

  Reluctantly Lydia withdrew her hand.

  “Does he?” the child asked, looking solemnly up at Rowdy. “Bite, I mean?”

  Pardner tried to force his head between the fence pickets, looking for another pat.

  “Sit,” Rowdy told him.

  Pardner sat, but he looked as forlorn as a martyr in a piece of bad religious art.

  “No,” Rowdy said to Lydia. “Pardner doesn’t bite. He’s a good dog.”

  “I wish I had a dog,” Lydia said. “If I did, he could walk me home, and Beaver Franks wouldn’t chase after me and pull my hair.”

  Rowdy crouched, well aware that Lark was watching him, and looked through the fence at Lydia. “My name is Mr. Rhodes,” he said. “I’m the new marshal. Which one of those yahoos is Beaver Franks?”

  “That’s him over there, in the overalls and the plaid shirt,” Lydia answered, in a whisper, not willing to risk pointing. “With the freckles and the red hair and the big front teeth.”

  Hence the nickname, Rowdy thought. He spotted Franks and narrowed his gaze on him before shifting his gaze back to Lydia. “You want me to talk to him?”

  Lydia shook her head. “I only live just a little ways from here,” she said, pointing out the general direction of home. “And, anyhow, I can outrun Beaver Franks.”

  “Lydia,” Lark said mildly, “go and tell the others recess is over. It’s time for arithmetic.”

  Rowdy raised himself off his haunches.

  Lydia stood still for a moment, then reached through the fence again to give Pardner a parting pat on the n
oggin before turning to scamper away.

  Rowdy watched the child join the others, gesturing importantly as she explained, no doubt, that the fun was over and arithmetic was about to descend on them all like a plague. Beaver Franks, meanwhile, watched Rowdy, his broad face reddening a little, his fists tightening at his sides.

  Rowdy felt his hackles rise.

  Franks might be a schoolboy, but he had the body of a man.

  “I can manage Roland Franks,” Lark said, apparently reading Rowdy’s thoughts as clearly as if they’d been written on her blackboard in big letters.

  “Can you?” Rowdy asked. “How old is he, anyway?”

  “Twenty-two,” Lark answered crisply. “He might not be so troublesome of the children wouldn’t call him ‘Beaver.’”

  “Twenty-two?” Rowdy echoed.

  “He’s in third grade,” Lark said, with a strange combination of pride and defensive conviction.

  Rowdy stared at her, at a loss for words.

  “He’s been working on his father’s ranch since he was a little boy,” Lark explained. “He didn’t get a chance to attend school until this year.”

  Rowdy opened his mouth, then closed it.

  Lark smiled, plainly enjoying his consternation. “Roland’s best subject is reading, believe it or not. He’s really quite intelligent.”

  “Twenty-two?” Rowdy repeated.

  Lark folded her arms, tapped one foot on the frozen ground. Waited for Rowdy to take the hint and leave.

  Pardner gave a sad moan as all the kids trooped back inside the schoolhouse, with Roland “Beaver” Franks bringing up the rear and casting sour looks back at Rowdy over one meaty shoulder.

  “It doesn’t bother you that he chases Lydia home and pulls her hair?” Rowdy asked, shoving his hat to the back of his head, peeved.

  “I spoke to him about it,” Lark said. “And he stopped immediately.”

  “Not according to Lydia, he didn’t,” Rowdy said. He took his grandfather Wyatt’s watch out of his inside coat pocket, popped the lid with a practiced motion of one thumb and checked the hour. Ten forty-five. “What time does school let out?”

  “Three o’clock,” Lark answered, already turning to go. “Why?”