A Stone Creek Collection Volume 1

by Linda Lael Miller

  Lydia’s throat tightened. She was going to miss Terran and Ben, and especially Lark. Not Beaver Franks, though. She hoped she’d never see him again.

  “I hope my niece hasn’t been a bother,” Aunt Nell said, taking Lydia’s hand, starting toward the big staircase.

  “Marshal Rhodes?” the man muttered, as though Aunt Nell had not spoken to him at all.

  Lydia looked back at him. “His name is Rowdy,” she called. “Not ‘Marshal.’”

  Mr. Railroad Whitman looked even more consternated than before. “Wait,” he blustered, hastening across the room.

  Aunt Nell paused, and her hand tightened around Lydia’s, fair crushing the bones.

  “This woman—your teacher—where does she live?” He said to Lydia. “Here in Stone Creek?”

  Lydia nodded. Perhaps he had children who needed a school to go to and someone kind to teach them. She was eager to help. “She lives at Mrs. Porter’s house,” she said. “But she was at Rowdy’s since clear last night. I’d have had to sleep by myself if Mai Lee hadn’t put a cot in my room. Lark missed my papa’s funeral, and I almost didn’t get to say goodbye to her.”

  “Lydia,” Aunt Nell said. “Do stop prattling.” Her voice was cool as buttermilk fresh from the springhouse when she spoke to the railroad man. “My niece is recovering from a very serious illness, Mr. Whitman, and she has had a trying day. We’ll bid you a good evening, now.” With that, she turned and started up the stairs in earnest, and Lydia had no choice but to follow, since her hand was still locked inside Aunt Nell’s.

  She looked back once, though, over her shoulder, and saw Mr. Whitman turn to his companion, the one dressed like Mr. Evans. The two men conferred, in voices Lydia couldn’t hear, and then Mr. Whitman turned right around and went outside, pushing the hotel doors open hard with his outstretched hands.

  * * *

  ESAU HURRIED AFTER HIM. “Mr. Whitman, sir,” he said hastily. “What is it?”

  “She’s here,” Autry said, the knowledge buzzing through his middle like a steam-powered mill saw, fit to cut him clean in half.

  Esau blinked, glanced nervously up and down the cold, empty Sunday-night street. “Who is here, sir?”

  Autry drew a deep breath, suddenly famished for air. He filled his lungs, felt revived. Even exhilarated. “My wife, Esau. My wife is right here, in Stone Creek.”

  “How do you know that?” Esau asked, moving as though he wanted to take hold of Autry’s arm and pull him back into the hotel.

  Autry jabbed a thumb toward the building. “That little girl I was just talking to in there happened to mention that her teacher’s name is Lark.”

  Esau had been jittery ever since the robbery yesterday morning. “At least come up onto the sidewalk, sir,” he fretted. “We could be run down by some passing horseman.”

  “Esau,” Autry said, “do you see a horseman? Or a horse, for that matter? This is Stone Creek, not Denver.”

  Esau appeared willing to concede that they were in no immediate danger of being trampled, but he was still jumpy as a frog in a frying pan. “It’s probably just a coincidence,” he said. “That the little girl’s teacher is called Lark, I mean.”

  “How many Larks do you know, Esau?”

  Esau gulped.

  Autry began to pace in front of a horse trough. There was a green scum floating on top of the water. Lark. The kid had clearly said Lark. And she’d mentioned another name Autry knew, too—Rowdy Rhodes.

  The marshal who’d come to Flagstaff with Sam O’Ballivan and the major the day before.

  She lives at Mrs. Porter’s house, he heard the child say. But she was at Rowdy’s since clear last night—

  Autry seethed, wanting to tear at his hair, wanting to rip the doors off houses, one by one, until he found the Porter place. Until he found Lark.

  So she’d spent the night with the lawman, had she? The one with the train-robber eyes. Damn, but he’d seen those eyes—above the mask of the man who’d entered his railroad car and stripped it of everything valuable.

  “Mr. Whitman,” Esau pleaded. “Please come inside, before you catch the pneumonia.”

  Images rushed into Autry’s beleaguered mind.

  He saw the contemptuous amusement in the azure eyes of the train robber.

  He saw Lark—his Lark—naked, with her golden hair down, whoring with that marshal.

  And his blood seared its way through his veins, thumped in his temples, turned his vision to a fiery haze. He put his hands to the sides of his head, sure it would burst open.

  “Mr. Whitman,” Esau pleaded. “Please come inside.”

  Autry forced himself to breathe slowly and deeply.

  It was dark out.

  He was overwrought.

  He wanted to be clearheaded when he found Lark. He’d looked for her for so long, spent so much money, suffered an agony of humiliation every time some Denver matron patted his arm and made some pitying remark. He wanted to see her face clearly when she realized he’d caught up to her—not in the glow of a lamp. Not in a stray beam of moonlight. No, he wanted to see her in the clear dazzle of a winter sun.

  He would wait until morning.

  And when the morning came, he would head for Mrs. Porter’s first, then the schoolhouse. If he didn’t find her in either of those places, he’d head straight for the marshal’s place, damned if he wouldn’t.

  Turn over Rowdy Rhodes’s bed and see who fell out of it.

  * * *

  MRS. PORTER SAT ALONE at the kitchen table, her hands folded prayerfully, gazing into empty space. Lark hung up her cloak, went to the stove for the teakettle and pumped water into it. Mai Lee was at Rowdy’s, looking after Gideon, and Hon Sing was probably still at the saloon. The house seemed hollow without them.

  “I’ll miss Lydia,” Lark said, because it was true, and because she wanted to get a conversation started. The change in Mrs. Porter was disturbing, if not alarming. When had it begun?

  “He’s going to kill me,” Mrs. Porter murmured.

  Lark set the teakettle on the stove with a bang and hurried to the table. “Who, Mrs. Porter?” she asked.

  “I saw him today. After Dr. Fairmont’s funeral. He was standing in front of the Territorial Hotel, smoking a cigar. I know he thinks I didn’t recognize him, but I did.”

  A chill danced down Lark’s spine. She pulled a chair close to Mrs. Porter’s and gripped the other woman’s hand. It felt cold as a corpse’s. “Who, Mrs. Porter? Who did you see?”

  Mrs. Porter looked at Lark, blinked, and her eyes cleared a little. “Why, Mr. Porter, of course,” she said. “My husband.”

  “You saw your husband at the Territorial Hotel?” Lark spoke calmly, but she wished Hon Sing would come home. On the other hand, there probably weren’t enough needles in the whole of China to fix what ailed Mrs. Porter.

  The landlady nodded. Tears welled in her eyes. “He looked so handsome,” she said. “In spite of all of it, I must admit my heart skipped a beat.”

  The teakettle began to rattle slightly on top of the stove.

  “Didn’t you speak to him?” Lark asked. The cozy kitchen seemed eerie all of the sudden, and she stopped wishing for Hon Sing’s return and longed for Rowdy’s instead. Rowdy would know what to do. He’d be able to charm Mrs. Porter out of whatever reverie she’d tumbled into.

  “Speak to him?” Mrs. Porter echoed, befuddled.

  Lark smiled determinedly. “You could have told him about the rum cake you made for his birthday.”

  “But I told you, dear,” Mrs. Porter argued, her voice light with pleasant indulgence now. “He means to kill me. Anyway, the rum cake’s all gone.”

  “Surely not,” Lark said gently, meaning that Mr. Porter could not possibly intend to commit murder. Especially when the victim would be his own wife.

  “Of course it is,” Mrs. Porter said. “Gideon ate three pieces, and that Mr. Evans, the one who came to get little Lydia, finished off the rest.”

  Lark took a breath
. “So much has happened,” she said, in her most soothing voice. “Lydia being so sick. Gideon getting shot. You’re exhausted, that’s all. You’ll feel ever so much better in the morning.”

  “Wait and see,” Mrs. Porter replied. “He’ll crush my head with a shovel. Splatter my blood all over the walls.” She paused, smiled brightly. “Is the tea ready?”

  * * *

  IT WAS AFTER NINE when the Franks place came into view, a run-down, hardscrabble dirt farm that would probably look worse in the daylight than it did under the moon. Seeing a cluster of horses out front, Rowdy drew rein under a shadow-draped oak tree to consider the situation.

  Wished he’d asked for more than directions, when he stopped at the livery stable on the way out of Stone Creek. He’d only met one Franks, and that was Roland. Now he wondered how many of them there were, and if the shack was some kind of watering hole for other drifters besides Speeks and Moran.

  He’d been so busy thinking about Lark, he’d let some things slip.

  He shifted, stood in the stirrups to stretch his legs and nearly jumped out of his hide when somebody landed behind his saddle, clasped a rock-hard arm around his middle for balance. He was still trying to control the startled horse when a pistol barrel was pressed into the base of his skull.

  “God damn it, Pappy,” he growled, hoping the riders at Franks’s hadn’t heard Paint whinny in alarm. “I hate it when you do shit like that!”

  Payton laughed and lowered the pistol. “You’d better wake up, boy,” he said. “Stop mooning over that schoolmarm and pay attention to business, before you get yourself killed.”

  “What are you doing here?” Rowdy demanded. “I thought you were headed for Mexico.”

  “I was waylaid by a discovery,” Pa said. He nudged Rowdy’s foot back out of the stirrup and used it to dismount. Stood grinning up at him, the usual unlit cheroot poking out of one side of his mouth, caught between his white teeth.

  “What kind of discovery?” Rowdy asked tersely. What was the penalty for trampling your own pa? Would it make a difference that he was wanted in four states besides the Arizona Territory? Was there a reward?

  “I found out who’s been robbing those trains.”

  “That should have been easy enough. All you had to do was look in a mirror.”

  Pa looked hurt. Even laid a hand to his chest, fingers splayed. “It grieves me sorely that my own son, my own flesh and blood, doesn’t believe a single word that comes out of my mouth. I told you, Rob. I didn’t hold up those trains. But I know who did.”

  “Who?” Rowdy asked testily. And how had Pappy known about him and Lark? Damnation. He’d been back to Stone Creek, of course, and talked to Gideon.

  “Never mind that now. Where the hell were you when that yahoo shot your little brother?”

  “I was in Flagstaff,” Rowdy said, swinging down from the saddle to face his pa. “Sam and the major and I went because of the holdup on Saturday morning.” He paused. “You were right about the rangers. Ruby’s place is full of them.”

  “You hate admitting I’m right about anything,” Pa said, jabbing at Rowdy’s chest with an angry forefinger.

  “Pappy,” Rowdy said, “I don’t have time to talk about this now. The ‘yahoo’ who shot Gideon is probably inside that farmhouse over there, right now.”

  “Of course he is,” Pa replied, like it was old news.

  “How many horses do you see in front of that place?”

  “Five,” Rowdy said, without looking. “Why?”

  “How many riders were waiting when that train stopped for twenty feet of dynamited track?”

  “Six,” Rowdy answered, annoyed. Then some of the steam went out of him. “One of them was Seth Alden.”

  “Chessie’s brother,” Pa said. He didn’t sound anywhere near surprised enough to suit Rowdy.

  “He took a bullet in the forehead.”

  Pa heaved out a sigh. “Never figured that kid for an outlaw,” he said. “I thought he’d turn out to be a circuit preacher or something.”

  Rowdy changed the subject, because Seth was at the end of a long line of things he had to think about. “There were a lot of witnesses this time, Pa. One of them was Autry Whitman, the railroad magnate. And he said the man who held him at gunpoint and stripped his car of everything worth a plugged nickel had blue eyes. Real blue eyes.”

  “So you just automatically decided I was guilty.” Pappy threw out his arms and slapped them against his sides, disgruntled.

  “Go figure. You’re a famous train robber. Three trains have been stopped and stripped in six months. And God help me, you’re my pa, so I’ve got the bad luck to have your eyes.”

  “They thought it was you, didn’t they? Those rangers? But Ruby got you out of it, didn’t she?”

  “Damn it, you haven’t just been to Stone Creek to see Gideon, you’ve been to Flagstaff, too. Are you crazy?”

  Pa shrugged. “There’s been some debate about that—my sanity, I mean—for as long as I can remember,” he said. “Anyhow, I needed money and a decent horse. So, yes, I went to see Ruby. What the hell business is it of yours, anyhow?”

  “I’m trying to keep you from spending the rest of your natural life in the prison at Yuma, you cussed old bastard.” Rowdy grabbed his pa by the front of his coat, yanked him up close. “Who robbed the trains?”

  Pa inclined his head toward the farmhouse. “They did.”

  Rowdy let go of his pa. “How do you know that?”

  “I just do. For once in your life, you’re just going to have to take my word for something.”

  Rowdy shoved a foot in the stirrup, pulled himself back up into the saddle.

  “You can’t go in there by yourself,” Pa protested, catching hold of the reins. “Go get Sam O’Ballivan and the major and whoever else you can find.”

  Since he couldn’t pull the reins out of his pa’s hand without the bit hurting Paint’s mouth, Rowdy sat still. “That’s a hell of an idea, Pappy,” he scoffed. “And, in the meantime, of course, you’ll warn them and they’ll be up in the hills in some hideout before I get back.”

  “I might warn one of them,” Payton said.

  Rowdy’s heart missed a beat, started up again with a painful thud. “What are you trying to tell me, Pappy?” he asked.

  But he already knew.

  “It’s Levi,” Pa answered, after a long silence and a sad look toward the farmhouse. “Or Ethan. One of the twins. Hellfire and spit, I never could tell those two apart.”

  Rowdy closed his eyes. No, he thought.

  And inside the farmhouse, a gun went off.

  CHAPTER 19

  PAYTON HELD FAST to Paint’s bridle, even as the report of the gunshot reverberated in Rowdy’s ears. “Don’t do it, boy,” he said. “Don’t ride into that nest of outlaws by yourself. Go get Sam O’Ballivan. He doesn’t live but a few miles from here, and he’s been palavering with a whole pack of rangers ever since this afternoon.”

  Rowdy leaned in the saddle, broke his pa’s hold on the bridle strap.

  Shouting erupted inside the farmhouse—or the barn.

  He couldn’t tell which.

  He wondered, feeling strangely detached, if the shot he’d just heard had gone into Levi or Ethan, stopped one of their hearts. Wondered if either one of them wouldn’t be better off dead than held to account for three train robberies—and whatever else they might have been up to lately.

  “Think about Gideon,” Payton persisted, his voice quiet, but urgent, too. “Think about that pretty schoolmarm. Hell, think about the damn dog. All three of them need you, in their own ways. And they need you alive.”

  The hinges of Rowdy’s jawbones ached. “You must have a horse around here somewhere,” he said evenly. “Why don’t you make the ride to the O’Ballivan place, since you know right where it is?”

  “Because I’m Payton Yarbro, that’s why!”

  Rowdy shrugged. Waited.

  “All right,” his pa said, forcing the words between hi
s teeth. He whistled softly, and the black gelding trotted out of the darkness, reins dangling. “But if they shoot me on sight, it will be your fault.”

  “Get out of here,” Rowdy said. He took his pocket watch from the inside pocket of his coat, flipped open the case, checked the time. “You have an hour,” he told Pappy, watching as he mounted the gelding and gathered the reins. Through all that, the old man still had the cheroot poking out of the side of his mouth. “Unless they try to ride out—or there’s more shooting—I’ll wait that long. No longer, though.”

  Pappy glared at him, reined the horse around and rode for Sam’s.

  The shouting had died down inside the farmhouse, but there was a charge in the air, the kind that precedes a deafening roll of thunder.

  Rowdy considered climbing onto the roof and stuffing something into the chimney pipe to smoke them out. Discounted the idea, because they’d hear him tromping around over their heads for sure, and probably pepper the ceiling with bullets.

  So he waited.

  And then he waited some more.

  He consulted his watch again. Barely ten minutes had gone by.

  A cloud drifted across the moon, casting the world into darkness, except for the wavering lantern light shining from the windows of the farmhouse.

  Rowdy decided two things in that moment. One, that he couldn’t just sit there for another minute; and two, if he or the horse had to get shot, it wasn’t going to be the horse.

  He got down from the saddle, left Paint to graze on what grass he could forage from the hard, winter-ravaged ground. He made sure the .44 was loose in his holster, then headed for the farmhouse, staying wide of the windows in case the clouds didn’t cooperate.

  The walls of the farmhouse were thin, and Rowdy leaned lightly against the one closest to the barn.

  “You hear something?” an unfamiliar voice asked.

  “Hell, who could hear anything?” somebody else replied. “My ears are still ringin’ from you shootin’ that rat!”

  Rowdy let out his breath. Wanted to shut his eyes for a moment, too, but he didn’t dare.

  “I’m tellin’ you, I heard something!”