A Stone Creek Collection Volume 1

by Linda Lael Miller

  “It’s just the wind.”

  This time Rowdy recognized the voice. It might have been his own.

  The pit of his stomach pitched, as if he’d just mounted a bronc set to buck.

  “I’m goin’ out there and see—”

  “I’ll do it.”

  A chair scraped against the floor. The door opened.

  Rowdy, having crept to the corner of the house, watched as the man stepped out, standing in a stream of lantern light. His hair gleamed in it, straw-gold. He paused, lit a cheroot, Pappy-style. Shook the match out and cast it aside.

  “It’s a fine night,” he said easily. “Believe I’ll take a little stroll.”

  Oddly, nobody protested. Thieves, in Rowdy’s experience, were easily distracted.

  He waited.

  His brother turned, looked in Rowdy’s direction.

  The cloud passed, and moonlight poured down on both of them, as sure as if it had been dumped from some celestial bucket.

  Levi.

  His cheek dimpled as he smiled.

  Rowdy didn’t smile back. He just inclined his head toward a copse of spindly cottonwoods, not far from the house.

  Levi nodded, fell into step with Rowdy as he walked toward the trees.

  When they were both safe in the thick shadows, Rowdy turned, grasped Levi by the lapels of his shirt and flung him hard against a tree trunk.

  “You,” he growled.

  Levi’s dimple flashed again. He made no move to retaliate, but simply put his hands between Rowdy’s and broke his hold. “It’s good to see you again, little brother,” he said. “But then, you’re not so little anymore, are you? Taller than me by a good three inches.”

  “Did you shoot Seth Alden, Levi?” Rowdy demanded, in no frame of mind for brotherly reminiscences.

  Levi looked affably regretful. There was a coldness in him Rowdy had never credited before, steely hard. “I had to, Rob,” he said mildly. “He defied my orders. Tried to take a woman off the train, after we robbed it. So I shot him.”

  “Just like that? You shot him, like he was a rabid coyote? God damn it, Levi, he was Chessie’s brother.”

  “He wasn’t the kid you remember,” Levi said reasonably. His gaze, ice-blue even in the shadowed moonlight, slid to Rowdy’s badge. “You ought to cover that thing up or something. I looked out the window twenty minutes ago, and saw a flash of silver. That must have been what it was.”

  “You weren’t worried?”

  Levi grinned. “I might have been, little brother, if I’d known it was you.”

  “Spare me the bullshit,” Rowdy said, once he’d unclamped his jaw again. “I’m pretty sure that one of your men, Willie Moran, shot my—our—brother, Gideon. I don’t give a damn if the rest of you get a start, but I want Willie Moran.”

  Levi raised one eyebrow. “You don’t give a damn if the rest of us get a start on what?”

  Rowdy sighed. “Rangers. Pappy went to get them, and they’re probably headed this way right now.”

  “Suppose I’m weary of running, right down to the soles of my boots?”

  “Run or stand, that’s your choice. But they’re coming. And I’m going to have to take their side, Levi.”

  “Why? Even with that badge pinned to your coat, you’re still a Yarbro. And you’ve got a price on your head, just like I do.”

  “You said it yourself,” Rowdy replied, thinking of Lark and Gideon and Pardner. “I’m fed up with running.”

  Levi half turned with an easy grace and glanced toward the house. “Willie shot Gideon?” he asked. He held a hand at waist level, palm down. “The kid was that high the last time I saw him. There was a little girl, too. Followed him around like a pup.”

  “She died,” Rowdy said. “The little girl, I mean. Her name was Rose.”

  Levi absorbed that. “Damn,” he said, finally.

  Rowdy heard the sound of approaching horses then, traveling fast, and knew Levi had, too.

  “There’s a woman,” Levi said. “Her name’s Polly. I promised I’d get back to her.”

  “Then you’d better ride,” Rowdy replied.

  Levi nodded. Then his face changed. “I’m real sorry, Rob,” he said.

  That was when something struck the back of Rowdy’s head—in the split second before he pitched forward into a pit of darkness, he figured it for either a sledgehammer or a pistol butt.

  When he came to, all hell had broken loose; bullets ripped through the air, all around him.

  Somebody got him by the back of his coat, hauled him roughly to his feet and behind a tree.

  It was Payton. “Damn it, I told you to pay attention!” the old man rasped.

  Rowdy looked around, still a little dazed, saw Sam, Reston, the major and several other rangers, off their horses, returning fire from in front of the house. The horses had scattered, but their riders were trying to mount them, and flame shot from over the saddles.

  “Did he get away?” Payton whispered hoarsely.

  Rowdy touched a hand gingerly to the back of his head, looked at the blood on his fingers. “Yeah,” he said.

  “Which one was it? Ethan or Levi?”

  “Levi,” Rowdy answered, trying to get his eyes to focus. “But Ethan might have been with him. Somebody sure as hell bashed the back of my skull in.” There was a brief cease-fire, as more clouds parted and the moon came out again.

  “Willie!” Pa yelled, and one of the riders stopped, stared at him. The stillness was profound. “Did you shoot my boy, Gideon?”

  “I did!” Willie yelled back, defiant. “And now I’m going to shoot you, you old fool!”

  And all of a sudden, before Rowdy could grab hold of him, his pa ran forward, both .45’s blazing like the fires of hell.

  Sam raced after him.

  Willie took a bullet in the arm, courtesy of Payton’s wild spray of gunfire, but held the saddle and shot back.

  Payton went down, still whooping like a wild Indian racing to glory.

  Willie raised his rifle and took aim at Sam, who was right out in the open, trying to get to the old outlaw sprawled facedown on the ground.

  Before he’d even made sense of it all, Rowdy drew and put a bullet between Willie’s eyes. He flew backward off his horse, arms spread, flailing for balance even as he fell.

  The two remaining outlaws threw down their guns and put up their hands. One was Harlan Speeks, and Rowdy didn’t recognize the other. He knew, in a spark of detached logic, quite apart from everything else that was happening, that Roland Franks had been the one to knock him down from behind and ride out with Levi.

  Sam crouched beside Payton, apparently unaware that he’d almost been shot, and rolled the old man over onto his back.

  Rowdy knelt across from him, at his pa’s side. Watched as blood gurgled up out of his mouth.

  “Damn it,” Payton said, spitting. “I’m hit.”

  “Lie still,” Sam told him gravely, before looking up at Rowdy.

  Rowdy saw pity in the other man’s eyes, and something else, too. Something he’d known was there all along, but had chosen to ignore, because he didn’t want it to be true.

  “I’ll have your gun, Rowdy,” O’Ballivan said.

  Rowdy, having shifted his gaze back to his pa’s face, didn’t look away again. He just handed over his pistol, butt first, to Sam. The barrel was still hot.

  Sam stood, very slowly, and walked away.

  “Why’d you do a stupid thing like that, Pappy?” Rowdy asked, his voice harsh as gravel in his throat.

  “The bastard shot Gideon,” Payton Yarbro choked out. “He shot my boy.”

  Rowdy closed his eyes for a moment, opened them again.

  “I’m dying, I figure,” said the old outlaw. The man Rowdy had loved—and hated—by turns. The man he’d wanted to be other than what he was. A father, like John T. would have been, if he’d ever gotten the chance.

  Rowdy nodded once. “I figure you are,” he agreed.

  Pappy gave a strangled laugh,
groped for Rowdy’s hand. “Damn, if this isn’t a hell of a way to go,” he said. “Thought I’d die in my bed when I was pushing ninety.”

  Rowdy was silent. His eyes burned and the back of his head hurt like a son of a bitch and his stomach threatened to roll right up out of his mouth.

  His pa squeezed his hand, hard. “I was the best man I knew how to be, Rob,” he said.

  “I know, Pa,” Rowdy answered, running the back of his free hand across his face. “I know.”

  Payton stiffened slightly, expelled a last rattling breath, and then closed his eyes. Rowdy didn’t move, just stayed there on one knee, wondering how it was that he could wish things were different, even after it was too late for anything to change.

  Reston approached. Waited.

  Rowdy got to his feet. Put his hands together and lifted them a little.

  Without a word, Reston snapped a pair of cuffs on him.

  Sam brought a blanket out of the farmhouse, laid it over Payton.

  “You knew all along?” Rowdy asked him.

  Sam nodded, taking no discernible pleasure in the triumph. At some signal from him, Reston turned and walked away.

  “When?” Rowdy prompted.

  “After the first robbery I gathered all the posters I could with the name Yarbro printed on them,” Sam said, looking down at Payton’s still, shrouded form with something like regretful admiration. “And there was your face. It was just a sketch, but I knew it was you. So I sent for you. The major and I figured you’d lead us to your pa if we gave you a chance.”

  “And I did,” Rowdy said bleakly. Even Jolene Bell had seen that poster. What had he been thinking, staying in Stone Creek when he knew the danger, could feel it, like the eyes of a stalking panther, raising the small hairs on his nape?

  The answer was simple. He’d been thinking of Lark, and not much else.

  Sam nodded. “I’m sorry,” he said. And he sounded as though he meant it. He looked down at Payton again. “I didn’t expect it to turn out like this.”

  “I need to talk to Lark Morgan,” Rowdy told him.

  Sam gave a second nod. Started to walk away.

  “My pa wasn’t in on any of those robberies,” Rowdy said to Sam’s back.

  Sam stopped. Turned around. “I know,” he said.

  And Rowdy knew then why Sam had run after Pappy the way he had. Payton Yarbro hadn’t been innocent—far from it—but he’d gone for the rangers, at considerable risk to himself, and he’d brought them back. He’d finally done the right thing, the old man had, and he’d paid for it with his life.

  * * *

  LARK STARED through the peeling bars of the cell, brought there by Sam on that Monday morning, unable to credit what she was seeing.

  Rowdy was locked up, a prisoner in his own jail. He looked haggard, his eyes bleak.

  Without a word Sam brought Lark a chair, set it facing the cell, and she slumped onto it, shaking.

  When the outside door shut, she started a little but didn’t look around.

  “My name,” Rowdy said, “is Robert Yarbro.”

  Lark swallowed, blinked back tears. Put a hand over her mouth.

  “I’m sorry, Lark. Sorrier than you’ll ever believe.”

  “You’re…you’re a train robber?”

  “I was,” Rowdy said.

  She swayed, caught hold of the chair seat on both sides, in an effort to steady herself. “And now you’re going to prison?”

  Rowdy nodded. “Probably,” he said.

  Lark thought she’d be sick. “What’s going to happen to Pardner?” she asked.

  “I’m hoping you’ll look after him,” Rowdy answered.

  Lark nodded, began to weep.

  “I love you, Lark.”

  She looked up at him, stunned.

  One side of his mouth quirked upward, but his eyes were filled with sorrow. “I know I picked a hell of a time to tell you that, but it’s true. And there are some other things I have to say, too.”

  Lark waited, dazed.

  Rowdy loved her.

  He was going to prison, if not to the gallows.

  And everything that might have been glowed in Lark’s heart, then dissipated like smoke.

  “I never killed anybody,” he said. “Except for my loving you, that’s the most important thing for you to know.”

  She believed him, believed he’d never ended anyone’s life, maybe because she couldn’t bear not to, but more because she knew killing simply wasn’t in him, and nodded again. Tried to dry her face with the back of one hand, but it was hopeless, because more tears came.

  “I was married once, too,” Rowdy went on. “Her name was Chessie, and I loved her. When she had our son, Wesley, I stopped riding with the Yarbros and tried to settle down. Make a farmer of myself. But then Chessie and the baby both took sick of a fever, and they died. I buried them together, and then—” he paused, swallowed “—and then I went back to robbing trains. After six months or so, I gave it up. Drifted around, punching cattle mostly, until I ended up in Haven, and Sam appointed me marshal.”

  “Not Gideon?” Lark whispered. “He wasn’t—?”

  Rowdy shook his head. “No,” he said quickly. “Gideon never knew. Thought his pa was a saloonkeeper.”

  It was something, at least. Gideon was innocent of any crime; he still had a future. Lark clung to that while the rest of her world collapsed around her, post upon beam, brick upon brick.

  “When…when we made love,” she began miserably, “were you using me, Rowdy?” Things would have been easier if he said yes, whether it was true or not, and they both knew it. If he’d used her, thought she was a whore, the way Autry had, she could hate him.

  And hatred would be a relief in this case, compared to the love that yawned inside Lark like some unfathomable chasm of the soul.

  She saw the struggle in his face.

  “No,” he said, after a long time. “I wasn’t using you, Lark. I’d have asked you to marry me, if my past was different. I’d have given anything to be an ordinary, honest man and have you to come home to every night. I knew I oughtn’t to have touched you, but the truth is, I wanted you so much I couldn’t help it.”

  She stood, faced him through the bars.

  “I love you, Rowdy Rhodes,” she said, “or Robert Yarbro, or whoever you are. And I’d have married you gladly, if you’d asked. I’d have learned to cook and sew and I’d have carried your babies under my heart, and I’d have sung again, too, just because I couldn’t hold it in, for being so happy. But none of that is going to happen, is it?” She leaned forward, pressed her face between the bars, touched her tear-wet mouth to his, lightly and very briefly. “Is it?”

  “Not with me,” Rowdy said. “But you’re a beautiful woman, Lark. You can have all of it—the husband and the songs and the babies, too.”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t want anyone else.”

  Behind her the door opened and closed again.

  The time Sam O’Ballivan had allotted to them was up.

  The world was ending.

  Rowdy looked past Lark, then back at her face, deep into her eyes.

  “Go teach school, Lark,” he said. “Once you walk out of that door, put me out of your mind. Whatever it takes, do it.”

  She couldn’t put him out of her mind, much less her heart, but she nodded anyway, turned away, and dashed past a solemn-faced Sam O’Ballivan into the cold, bright sunlight of the worst day of her life.

  * * *

  HE WAS BACK.

  Sitting right there at her kitchen table.

  She’d known he would come, of course. Sent Mai Lee out on her errands early, sighed with relief when she shut the door behind Lark, off to the jailhouse with Mr. O’Ballivan.

  Now he was pretending they’d never met. Sitting in his own chair again, where he’d always sat. Asking a lot of questions about Lark, trying to confuse her.

  But Ellie Lou Porter wasn’t confused. Not now. The clarity was so keen, in f
act, as to be painful.

  “I made a rum cake for your birthday,” she said.

  He frowned, looked convincingly puzzled. “Where is Lark?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” Mrs. Porter said, for she was “Mrs. Porter” even to herself. She hadn’t been Ellie Lou for ever so long—certainly not since she’d become a wife, when she was just sixteen.

  She’d had such hopes as a young bride. Such hopes, and every reason to entertain them.

  Mr. Porter was prosperous. He’d built this lovely house for her. Founded the Stone Creek Bank. Made a name for himself in the community, hardly more than a cluster of homesteads, when they’d first come here from Chicago.

  She’d waited for babies to come.

  But a year passed, and then another.

  Mr. Porter became anxious. He needed an heir, he said. Couldn’t she give him even one son, after all he’d given her?

  She’d cried.

  He’d slapped her for the first time.

  Started spending his nights at Jolene Bell’s soon after that, not caring who knew.

  Not caring that people whispered and pointed and pitied her.

  Still, she’d brushed his coats and lighted his cigars and made him a rum cake every year on his birthday, because that was his favorite. If she just tried hard enough, she reasoned, he’d love her again. He’d stop hitting her, leaving bruises on her where no one could see.

  But he never loved her, and he never stopped hurting her, either.

  She’d grown to accept his rages. Mr. Porter was an intelligent man, respected in Stone Creek, even though he went awhoring on a regular basis. So did a lot of other husbands, after all, though no one ever talked about it.

  She must have deserved it all, she thought.

  She must have done something very wrong.

  Then one night he’d come home from the bank, very late, and calmly announced, right here in this kitchen, that he was leaving her. Taking up with some tawdry woman he’d met at Jolene Bell’s. She could have the house, he told her grandly—take in boarders to make ends meet.

  She’d be fine.

  And then he’d opened the trapdoor in the floor and gone down to the cellar. He’d kept spare money there, a considerable sum in a metal box with a lock on it, thinking it was a secret.

  But of course she’d known. Hoped he was saving it for that Grand Tour he’d promised her, long before, on their wedding night. It had sustained her, that dream, even though some part of her always held it false.