A Stone Creek Collection Volume 1

by Linda Lael Miller

  And now he meant to spend the whole of it on a saloon whore.

  She’d crept after him, picked up the shovel she used to turn over the soil for her garden every spring. He’d laughed—laughed—when he turned around, with the box in his hands…his big hands that he’d closed into fists so many times to pummel her spirit, as well as her body.

  She’d swung the shovel then, hard.

  And he’d looked so surprised when blood spouted from his broken nose. He’d called her a name, and started toward her, and she’d bashed in the top of his head with the edge of the shovel. Heard it crack like a melon under a cleaving knife.

  It had taken her almost three days to dig a hole in the cellar floor big enough to bury him in, working frantically whenever Mai Lee was out of the house.

  And now, here he was back.

  She’d known he would come.

  Oh, yes, she’d known.

  * * *

  LARK RUSHED through Mrs. Porter’s back door, her eyes glazed with fresh tears, and stopped when she saw Autry Whitman rise slowly out of the chair no one ever sat in.

  He smiled. “Your hair is different,” he said. “But that’s what whores do, isn’t it, Lark? They dye their hair and paint their faces.”

  Instinctively she turned to run, then stopped.

  Mrs. Porter was sitting calmly at the kitchen table, murmuring to herself.

  “What have you done to her?” she demanded, turning back and finding Autry standing directly behind her.

  “Not a thing, Miss Morgan,” Autry said. “But I plan to do plenty to you, you little slut.” He reached out, grasped her hard by the hair.

  Lark cried out from the pain.

  “Did you really think you could get away from me?” Autry snarled, flinging spittle into her face.

  “Let me go,” Lark said.

  He backhanded her so hard that she would have fallen through the open doorway if his fingers hadn’t still been deep in her hair, the nails tearing at her scalp.

  “You gave yourself to that marshal, didn’t you?” He tightened his grasp, shook her. “Didn’t you?”

  Still recovering from the blow, Lark gasped at a new rush of pain.

  She tried to kick him, bite him. Flailed at him uselessly with both hands.

  He hit her again, nearly rendering her unconscious.

  He was going to kill her.

  She spat in his face. Screamed at Mrs. Porter to run.

  Autry shoved her against the door frame with an impact that forced the breath from her lungs in a single whoosh of air. Her knees gave out, but he wouldn’t let her fall.

  “You liked spreading your legs for the marshal, didn’t you, Lark?” he growled.

  She nodded, fiercely, proudly. It was the only way she could hope to hurt him, and by God she wanted to do that.

  Autry’s voice turned to a croon. “You’d be with him right now, if you could, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yes!” she cried out. “Yes!”

  He drew back his hand, and Lark waited for the blow to land.

  But it never did.

  There was a loud boom, thundering against the very walls like a blast of dynamite, and Autry’s eyes went blank. He let go of Lark, his hand opening slowly, with a peculiar languor, and crumpled heavily to the floor.

  Mrs. Porter stood behind him, holding Mr. Porter’s shotgun—usually stored in the broom cabinet—in a tremulous grip. “Quickly,” she said, looking at Lark but not seeming to see her. “We’ve got to bury him again. This time we’ll put the flour barrel on top of him, and he’ll stay put.”

  Lark closed her eyes, leaning against the door frame, drawing in one quick, shallow breath after another. The cold from outside revived her a little, and she straightened, looked down at Autry.

  There was no question that he was dead. The shotgun blast had ripped through his back and splintered his chest from the inside.

  Lark whirled out onto the step, gripped the edge of the door with one hand and vomited until her stomach was empty. She heard excited voices—blessed voices—in the distance, and then pounding of horses’ hooves.

  Help was coming.

  Lark turned, stared at her landlady in disbelief. Mrs. Porter had set the gun aside and raised the cellar door, and she was dragging Autry’s body toward it.

  CHAPTER 20

  IT WAS GIDEON who let Rowdy out of the cell, when the blast of a shotgun disturbed the peace of that Stone Creek morning, threw the door open wide and stood back. Gideon, with a sling supporting his left arm and a look of hollow desolation in his eyes.

  “Ride, Rowdy,” he said. “Paint’s saddled and ready out back.”

  Rowdy stared at him. “Did you—?”

  Gideon shook his head. “I didn’t fire the shot,” he said. A wan, Pappylike grin stretched his mouth. “I just took advantage of the opportunity.”

  Rowdy laid a hand on Gideon’s good shoulder, in no hurry to grab his chance and leave. “If you didn’t shoot that gun,” he asked, “who did?”

  The Yarbro muscle bunched in Gideon’s jaw. “It came from somewhere around Mrs. Porter’s place,” he said. “At least, that’s where everybody headed. Get out of here, Rowdy. I’ll see to Pardner and look after Miss Morgan, too, as best I can.”

  It came from somewhere around Mrs. Porter’s place.

  Rowdy rasped a curse and bolted. Autry Whitman. Good God, with Pappy dying and all the rest of it, he’d forgotten all about him and the threat he represented to Lark.

  “Not that way!” Gideon yelled. “Out the back!”

  Ignoring his brother’s protests, Rowdy hit the sidewalk at a dead run. Pardner, lying a few feet to the side of the door, leaped up and streaked ahead.

  The rooming house looked as though it were under siege when Rowdy reached it, what with all the horses outside.

  Lark, Rowdy thought, vaulting over the picket fence after Pardner, who had bunched his haunches and made the jump without so much as a pause.

  Reston was blocking the doorway, Sam just inside.

  “What the—?” Reston gasped, when Pardner shot between them, closely followed by Rowdy.

  Lark sat in a chair in the kitchen, staring blankly at nothing.

  Rowdy stepped over Whitman’s body with no more than a downward glance and went to her. Crouched in front of her chair, took her hands in his.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  She blinked, evidently startled to see him there.

  “Mrs. Porter shot him,” she said. “She shot Autry. She thought he was Mr. Porter—”

  Rowdy looked around, his gaze briefly connecting with Sam’s before swinging back to Lark’s face. “Were you hurt?”

  “Autry was going to kill me,” she told him. “Mrs. Porter saved my life. And now she’s…she’s…” Tears rose in her eyes, eyes that were already red-rimmed and swollen. Of all the things he regretted, and there were many, giving Lark reason to cry was the greatest. If he could take back only one thing, of all the things he’d done, it would be that. “She collapsed, Rowdy. Mai Lee and Hon Sing are with her, but I think…I think—”

  He stood, pulled Lark into his arms, held her with the fierce closeness of those who must soon let go. “It’ll be all right,” he murmured into her mussed, fragrant hair. “Everything will be all right.”

  She clung to him, shook her head against his chest. “Not without you,” she said. “Not without you.” She stopped then, looked up into his face. “How did you get out of jail?”

  “I was about to ask that same question myself,” Sam put in, from somewhere nearby, “though I’m pretty sure I know the answer.”

  Gideon.

  He’d been willing to risk his own freedom, risk college and possibly years of his life, just to turn Rowdy loose.

  “I’m right here, Sam,” Rowdy said, still holding tightly to Lark. “No harm done.”

  “We’d better move this body,” Reston put in. He was one of those restless sorts, the kind who always had to be doing something, setting th
ings right. No doubt he’d rather have thrown Rowdy back in the cell, personally, with Gideon for company, but failing that, he’d settle for loading a bloody corpse in the back of a wagon.

  Sam ignored Reston, spoke to Rowdy instead. Rowdy and, by proximity, Lark. “The major sent for a territorial judge,” he said. “He’ll decide your fate when he gets here, after consulting with the governor, but meanwhile you’ve got to stay behind bars.”

  Rowdy sighed. Nodded.

  There was no undoing his past. It was as real and as deeply carved as letters chiseled into a tombstone.

  “You could have been clear of Stone Creek by now,” Sam went on quietly, speaking to Rowdy though his gaze touched on Lark once or twice, pondering. “I guess I don’t need to ask why you stayed.”

  Lark gripped the front of Rowdy’s shirt as if she was never going to let go. “Rowdy saved your life, Sam O’Ballivan,” she said, with sudden spirit. “I heard you say so to Mr. Reston, just a few minutes ago.”

  Sam nodded. “That’s true,” he replied. “Under the circumstances Mr. Robert Yarbro here might have shot me himself, out there at the Franks’ place. Thrown in with the outlaws, instead of the rangers, and ridden out with the others. A lot of men in his position would have done just that.”

  Lark sagged a little, pressed her cheek into Rowdy’s chest.

  He eased her into a chair, prepared to go willingly back to jail now that he knew what he’d come to find out—that she was safe. Still whole. Still Lark.

  “Stay right here where I can keep an eye on you,” Sam told Rowdy, waving Reston away when he came forward with his trusty handcuffs. “I’ve got enough to think about, with a dead man on the floor and another one buried in the cellar. I can’t be chasing after you on top of it.”

  Rowdy grinned slightly. The matter of Levi’s escape still lay between them, perhaps never to be resolved. He hadn’t tried to stop his brother from getting away, he’d even encouraged him to run. He’d been wrong to do that and he knew it, but short of shooting Levi, he hadn’t had a choice. And much as he hated the idea of doing a stretch in Yuma, maybe it was a chance to do penance not only for himself, but for Levi, too.

  Gideon appeared in the open doorway just then, swallowed hard after assessing the scene. Stepped over Autry Whitman’s body to come inside, weaving his way between a half-dozen milling rangers and townsmen.

  He came face-to-face with Sam O’Ballivan, almost first thing.

  Sam thumped a forefinger in the middle of Gideon’s chest. “Don’t you ever do a damn fool thing like releasing a prisoner again, boy. Even if he is your brother.”

  Gideon swallowed visibly, but stiffened his Yarbro backbone. His chin jutted out. “I’d do it again,” he said stubbornly, with all the conviction of youth. It was because of that, because of his inherent strength, that he was up and around so soon after taking Willie Moran’s bullet. Just looking at him gave Rowdy a strange, throbbing hope that one Yarbro, at least, might amount to something. Might serve as the living answer to all those prayers their ma had offered, always believing, against all evidence. “If I had my way, Rowdy would be a long ways from here by now.”

  Sam simply shook his head, gave a rueful chuckle and went back to the bloody business of rangering.

  “Where’s Mrs. Porter?” Gideon asked, drawing near the table. In the short time Rowdy had been acquainted with his younger brother, Rowdy had sized him up for an attendance taker, among other things. He liked everybody accounted for, and if somebody was missing, he’d probably turn over the whole territory looking for them.

  Lark answered the question. “Mai Lee and Hon Sing took her upstairs,” she said. “She’s…she’s not well, Gideon.”

  It was then that Hon Sing appeared on the back stairway. He paused, midway down, looked at Lark and shook his head.

  She began to cry.

  And Rowdy, not giving a damn that half the population of Stone Creek seemed to have crowded into that kitchen, pulled her onto his lap and pressed her head gently to his shoulder. She trembled in his arms, and he grieved for the parting that would surely come.

  * * *

  One Week Later

  A BITTER WIND HOWLED through the streets of Stone Creek, as well as Lark’s own raw and wounded heart, heralding the imminent arrival of another snowstorm.

  The schoolhouse was temporarily closed.

  Autry’s body, accompanied by Esau, had been placed in a pine box the day before and freighted to Flagstaff in the back of a wagon, there to board a train bound for Denver.

  Ruby Hollister had come, in grand style, to retrieve Payton Yarbro’s remains, and Gideon had gone with her when she left, though he vowed to return, finish the school year and take up his duties as deputy again. He did not seem to register that Rowdy would be going away, no longer the marshal of Stone Creek.

  That very morning, Lark had received a long telegram from Autry’s lawyers—“Darned if you don’t own a railroad, Miss Morgan!” the clerk had beamed, upon delivering the message—but sudden wealth was the furthest thing from her mind as she waited, with Mai Lee and Hon Sing, in front of a blazing fire in Mr. Porter’s study.

  She couldn’t even think about Mrs. Porter’s funeral, from which the three of them had just returned. Mr. Porter had been laid to rest beside her, a skeleton stacked and sealed into a wooden box, hastily constructed by the undertaker’s son, almost as an afterthought.

  No, there was no room in Lark’s mind for anyone or anything, save Rowdy. He was still in jail, and Sam and the major and the territorial judge, just arrived from Phoenix, were meeting at that very hour, at the Cattleman’s Hall, to decide what would happen to him.

  Lark listened to the ponderous ticking of the mantel clock, felt her heartbeat adjust itself to the rhythm. Pardner lay at her feet, or more properly, on them. He hadn’t been far from her side since the day Mrs. Porter had shot Autry. Every time she looked into his eyes, she saw the same question.

  Where is he?

  “I get you tea?” Mai Lee asked, breaking the silence.

  Lark smiled, shook her head. “You’re the mistress of the house now,” she reminded the other woman. “You don’t have to wait on anyone.”

  Incomprehensibly, considering her blithe prejudice, Mrs. Porter, having no living relatives, had left her house and property to Mai Lee and Hon Sing. They’d probably made plans—to sell out and move away on the proceeds, or stay and take in boarders, as Mrs. Porter had done—but they had yet to share them with Lark.

  “I get tea,” Mai Lee insisted, and hurried off to the kitchen.

  A moment later she was back.

  Pardner was instantly on his feet. He gave an uncertain woof.

  “Someone to see you,” Mai Lee said to Lark, a smile shining in her eyes. “In kitchen.”

  Lark stood slowly, her heart outstripping the pace of the mantel clock now, racing.

  Pardner barked and ran for the back of the house.

  Lark followed, wringing her hands. She dared not hope—the price of disappointment was too high.

  And he was there.

  Rowdy stood in the kitchen. He’d hung his hat and coat on the pegs beside the back door, bent to ruffle Pardner’s ears in greeting.

  He straightened at Lark’s entrance, and his gaze caressed her, summer-sky blue.

  She stopped, afraid to go any closer. Afraid he wasn’t real.

  She’d had so many dreams in which he came to her, and awakening to reality was like dying, over and over again.

  “Did you escape?” she finally asked, befuddled.

  He chuckled. “No,” he said. “I’ve been pardoned, thanks to Sam O’Ballivan and the governor of the territory.”

  “P-pardoned?”

  “And I can keep the marshal’s job, if I want it,” Rowdy said.

  Lark started toward him, stopped again. If I want it. Had he come to get Pardner, and say goodbye?

  “Do you?” she dared to ask, because everything depended on the answer. “Do you want to stay?”r />
  “That depends, Miss Morgan.”

  Lark could barely hear, for the pounding in her ears. For the silent hope clambering and scrambling in her heart, groping its way into her mind. “On what?”

  “On whether or not you’d be willing to marry a former outlaw, live in a house behind the jail and be called Mrs. Yarbro.”

  Lark swallowed painfully. For a moment the kitchen floor seemed to tilt beneath her feet. She fully expected to awaken in her bed upstairs, rummy from the rigors of her dreams. “Oh, Rowdy—”

  He waited, hooked his thumbs under his gun belt.

  “Or is it Rob?”

  He chuckled, shook his head once. “I’ve always been called Rowdy,” he said. Sadness rested briefly in his clear eyes. “Pa figured it suited me.”

  “Yes,” Lark said.

  “Yes, it suits me, or yes, you’ll marry me?”

  She let out a joyous sob. “Yes, I’ll marry you.” She laughed. “And yes, it suits you.”

  He still didn’t close the space between them, but there was a tender watchfulness in his eyes. “Right now? Today? Because I’m bound to bed you, well and truly, before the sun goes down. And I want it to be honorable this time. I want it to be right. And that means we have to be hitched first.”

  Lark flung herself into his arms then—barely touched the floor but flew to him, threw her arms around his neck and held on. “Right now,” she agreed, weeping and laughing at the same time. “Today.”

  He kissed her, a deep, celebratory kiss, full of all that had so nearly been lost. “Good,” he said, when he let her go, and she stood, breathless, within the circle of his embrace. “Because the major is right behind me, with a Bible in one hand and a marriage license in the other. Sam’ll be a witness, and Mai Lee and Hon Sing, too.”

  Lark smiled up at him. “You were pretty certain of my answer, weren’t you, Mr. Yarbro?”

  He grinned. “Pretty certain,” he admitted. “But you never can tell with a woman. I figured you might have changed your mind about me, with all that time to think.”