Wyatt wheeled the dog across Doc’s overgrown yard and inside. Sarah came right along, murmuring soft words to Lonesome. It almost made Wyatt wish he were the one being hauled in a wheelbarrow and in need of copious female sympathy.
Venable’s office was cluttered, but there was an odd order to the chaos. He patted the examination table, with its worn leather top. Light streamed in through a side window in a wide, convenient shaft. “Set him here where I can get a good look,” he said.
As careful as Wyatt tried to be, Lonesome gave a whine of pain when he was lifted out of the wheelbarrow.
Doc Venable waved Wyatt and Sarah aside. “Give us some room,” he said brusquely, fitting his stethoscope into his ears as he spoke.
Wyatt stood nervously by while the doctor listened to Lonesome’s insides, poked and prodded here and there with gentle fingers. Sarah remained beside him, so close their arms were touching.
“I’d say he’s sound on the inside,” Doc finally said, and Wyatt let out a long breath. “He’ll be sore for a while, though.” The old man frowned at the lash marks on the dog’s back, glistening with the salve Wyatt had applied the night before, and stroked him lightly. Crossing to a cabinet, Doc took out a small brown bottle and brought it to Wyatt. “Laudanum,” he said. “Put a drop or so on his tongue, three times a day. It’ll make him sleep, and that’s what he needs to heal up. If he bleeds or goes into convulsions, send for me right away.”
Wyatt gulped. He’d squared off with a score of ill-intentioned men just that morning, but the possibility of a medical emergency involving a dog almost undid him. God only knew how he’d react if his horse ever took sick. “Convulsions?” he asked.
Doc smiled. “Not very likely that’ll happen,” he assured Wyatt. “But he’ll be in no fit state to ride in a wheelbarrow if it does.”
Wyatt dropped the vial of laudanum into his pocket, where the cell key rested. “What do I owe you, Doc?”
“On the house,” Doc said, with a dismissive wave. “Way I heard it, my life savings, such as they are, might have gone down the road with that bunch whooping it up in the saloons if it hadn’t been for you.”
Sarah stiffened. “They weren’t going to rob the bank,” she said.
Wyatt and Doc exchanged glances.
“Sarah always believes the best of folks,” Doc said.
“If Deputy Yarbro runs off every bunch of cowboys that come into my—the bank, we’ll soon be closing our doors for good!”
Doc chuckled, but the expression in his eyes was serious when he turned to Wyatt. “You be careful,” he said. “Might be in your best interests, in fact, to wire Rowdy and Sam and tell them to hightail it back here and tend to home business instead of gallivanting after a pack of vigilantes.”
Wyatt missed Rowdy, since their reunion had been so brief, and he was looking forward to handing in his badge and going to work for Sam out at Stone Creek Ranch, provided he didn’t wind up in jail for rustling first, but he wasn’t ready to run a white flag up the pole just yet.
“I’ll send for Rowdy if I see the need,” Wyatt said.
Doc took back the laudanum, opened the bottle, wet the tip of his finger with the stuff, and put the droplet on Lonesome’s tongue. “Like that,” he said. “Better give you a tin of salve, too, for these welts of his.”
Since Wyatt had been using Lark’s salve, as well as her canned milk and preserves, he accepted Doc’s generous offer.
“I’ll fetch us some coffee while we wait for that laudanum to take effect,” Doc went on, heading for an inside staircase. “You wait here and see that he doesn’t fall off the exam table.”
Wyatt nodded, conscious of Sarah and the tender way she comforted the dog. If he hadn’t left his hat behind at the jail, he’d have been able to turn the brim in his hands, give himself something to do. Because all of a sudden, despite taking supper at her table and kissing her in the broad light of day, he felt shy as a smitten schoolboy in the presence of this woman.
She wasn’t looking at him, but he could see that she felt almost as uncomfortable as he did. “Kitty says she knew you in Kansas City,” she ventured quietly, “and whatever you tell me is probably a lie.”
Wyatt felt as if somebody had struck him behind the knees.
Kitty Steel.
She’d niggled at his recollection, watching him from the back door of the Spit Bucket the way she had. Now that the image had had time to percolate a while, he remembered her.
“I guess you must have been one of her—customers,” Sarah said, when Wyatt didn’t answer right away.
Wyatt shook his head. “I’ve been with women like Kitty,” he said. He wasn’t a talker, but words were spilling out of him now, like beans through a hole in a burlap sack. “I don’t deny that. But all Kitty and I did was play poker. She was working at a saloon called the Last Dollar, dealing cards when she wasn’t upstairs, and I was living high off the proceeds from a train robbery.”
Sarah turned slightly, and he saw hope in her eyes, mingled with the fear of believing too readily. “That doesn’t explain why she called you a liar.”
Wyatt sighed. “She kept talking about her daughters. She’d lost them, some way, and then found them again, she said, and she could get them back if she had a husband. She wanted me to marry her—said I wouldn’t have to do anything but say the words in front of a preacher and sign the papers. I told her I already had a wife—hell, I was on the run. I guess Levi or Ethan—my brothers—must have told her the truth.”
Sarah absorbed his answer, seemed to resolve something in her own mind. She gave a little nod.
Doc returned before they could pursue the matter further, carrying a tray in both hands, with three cups of coffee steaming on top. Lonesome began to snore.
Doc, Wyatt and Sarah sat down in hard wooden chairs.
The coffee was downright awful, stout and bitter as axle grease, but Wyatt figured the least he could do, after Doc had been so kind to Lonesome, was act as if he liked the stuff. The old man seemed a little down-hearted, there in his cramped office. Eager for company.
Wyatt, for his part, felt restless. He had a town full of potential trouble, and a sick dog to take care of. He needed to be on the street, making sure things stayed peaceful.
As long as those guns were locked up, though, he had no reason to expect a disturbance.
So he drank his coffee and chatted with the doc, and didn’t notice for a long time that the old man’s questions weren’t idle ones. He was sizing Wyatt up, deciding whether he was friend or foe. Most of all, Venable wanted to know what his intentions were toward Sarah, his best friend’s daughter.
Already high in Wyatt’s private estimation, Doc went up a notch or so. He was looking out for Sarah, pure and simple.
As things turned out, it was Sarah who ended the festivities. “I’d better get home and see to Papa and Owen,” she said, rising from her chair and causing both Doc and Wyatt to leap immediately from their own. “They’ll be wanting supper soon enough. Will you join us, Doc?” She paused and colored up, probably thinking she’d just roped herself into extending an invitation to Wyatt, too.
“Not tonight,” Doc said. “There’s a baby due out at the Starcross Ranch and I’m betting on twins. The mother’s a little gal, and she’ll need some help, I reckon. I was all set to hitch up my buggy and drive out there when you and the deputy here showed up with the dog.”
Sarah nodded, embarrassed, and turned to Wyatt. “You’re welcome to eat with us,” she said quietly. “It’s just leftover trout, but there’s plenty.”
Wyatt wanted to accept, but he wouldn’t, because he knew Sarah hadn’t planned on including him in the invitation to Doc. He shook his head, muttered, “No thanks.” He had work to do, and he needed to get Lonesome settled down back at the jail so he could tend to his job.
With D
oc’s help, he put a still-snoring Lonesome back in the wheelbarrow and made for the door.
Sarah followed him, but instead of turning in the direction of her house when they reached Main Street, she stayed right on his heels.
“Wait,” she said.
He stopped, turned around, pretending he was surprised to see her there. Actually, though, he’d been aware of her in every part of his mind and body, and maybe the outskirts of his soul, too.
“I think Lonesome ought to stay with us for a few days,” Sarah told him. “Papa and Owen could mind him, while I’m at the bank.”
Sorrow balled itself up and rolled over inside Wyatt, to think of giving up that mutt, even considering the critter’s sorry state of health. Still, he couldn’t hang around the jailhouse all the time, playing dog-nurse. Stone Creek wasn’t quite the quiet, peaceful place Rowdy had made it out to be.
“I don’t like parting with him,” Wyatt admitted, his voice hoarse.
Sarah’s face softened. “It’s only temporary, Wyatt,” she said. “And you can visit him whenever you want.”
An excuse to call on Sarah made the idea a sight more palatable.
“All right,” he said. “But don’t you reckon the boy might get attached to Lonesome and find it hard to turn him loose when the time comes?”
Sadness moved in Sarah’s eyes, like a shadow under sky-blue water. “Owen’s only visiting,” she said. “His father will be back for him.”
Something ached inside Wyatt, and it had nothing whatsoever to do with the dog. “Oh,” he said, because nothing else came to mind.
Together, Wyatt and Sarah headed for the Tamlin house, Wyatt swerving to avoid ruts in the street, so Lonesome could snooze on. While they walked, Wyatt wondered what he was going to have for supper.
He had thirty dollars in his pocket, thanks to Rowdy. He decided he’d visit the mercantile, stock up on sardines and crackers and maybe some canned peaches. While he was in prison, he’d so craved sweet fruit that he hadn’t been able to get enough of it since.
Soon as they reached the front gate, Owen burst out of the house and came running down the walk.
“A dog!” he shouted, overjoyed. Then a frown crossed his face as he took in Lonesome’s mode of conveyance, and the well-greased welts striping his hide. “Is he hurt?”
“He’ll be all right,” Wyatt said. The boy’s pleasure, like Sarah’s presence, lifted his spirits. “Just needs to rest up a bit.”
“He can’t chase sticks or anything?” Owen asked, disappointed.
“Not for the time being,” Sarah told the boy, moving to ruffle his hair, then drawing her hand back just short of it. “But you can feed him, and make sure he has fresh water to drink, and help him go outside when he needs to.”
Owen squared his small shoulders manfully. “I can do that stuff,” he said. “What does he eat?”
“Table scraps ought to do,” Wyatt said. “And he likes some canned milk, now and then, if you have it.”
“Do we have canned milk?” Owen demanded of Sarah, his voice urgent.
She smiled. “Yes,” she said. “His name is Lonesome.”
Wyatt stood pondering on why she’d held herself back from touching the boy, when it was plain that she wanted to so badly.
With Owen getting in the way a lot, Wyatt left the wheelbarrow on the sidewalk and carried Lonesome into the house. Sarah hurried to fetch a quilt from upstairs, and made a bed for him, right in the kitchen, precisely where Wyatt would have put him—next to the stove.
“Well, now,” Ephriam Tamlin said, coming through the doorway to the dining room, “what do we have here?”
“A dog!” Owen crowed. He was on his knees next to Lonesome, pouring milk from a can into a dish that was probably too pretty for the purpose.
Ephriam laughed heartily.
Deftly, Sarah replaced the china bowl with an old pie tin. She looked happy, with the boy and the dog and her father there. In fact, she might have been a different person from the matter-of-fact, briskly efficient woman she was at the bank.
Wyatt was confounded by the things he felt, watching her bustle around that kitchen, making coffee, putting the laudanum and salve he gave her on a handy shelf, planning supper.
He missed his ma and the homeplace. They’d kept a dog when he was a youngster, and Ma had let it live in the house, sleep on an old blanket near the stove. Back then, he’d been part of a real family.
“I reckon I’d better go,” he said, thinking nobody would hear him in all the hubbub.
But Sarah did hear, though he’d spoken softly. She paused and looked at him with wide, knowing eyes. “Won’t you stay for supper?” she asked.
“Another time,” Wyatt said. And then, finding himself unable to bid the dog farewell, he turned and headed for the back door. Let himself out.
He knew looking back wasn’t smart, but he did it anyway.
Sarah was standing on the small porch off the kitchen, watching him go.
* * *
SUPPER WAS OVER, and Sarah had assigned her father the task of heating water so Owen could take a bath. Owen had protested that he was “clean enough,” and anyhow he wanted to sleep on the quilt with Lonesome that night, so he’d just get dirty again.
Sarah replied that he wasn’t sleeping with Lonesome, but if he agreed to the bath, she’d let him spend the night in the spare room in back of the kitchen. That way, he’d be close by if the dog needed him.
Owen had agreed, none too graciously, and Sarah had gone out for a walk, so the bath could be endured in private.
Sarah often walked at night, and she had an accustomed route—down to the schoolhouse, around past Doc Venable’s, then home.
Tonight, she took Main Street. The saloons were swelling with gaslight, bawdy music and noise, as if their very walls might burst. Horses lined every hitching rail, and there were lights burning in the jailhouse, too.
Sarah headed straight for it, lifting her skirts to keep them out of the horse manure littering the street. She’d been purposeful enough—until she reached the open doorway of Rowdy’s office. Then she hesitated on the sidewalk.
Would Wyatt think her forward for paying an unexpected call on him, after dark?
He’d kissed her twice that day.
What if he got the impression that she wanted him to do it again?
Her face burned in the warm darkness. She was about to turn and hurry away when he came to the door and caught her standing there, like a fool.
He grinned, and all of Stone Creek went on the tilt for just a moment.
“Evening, Sarah,” he said.
“Owen is taking a bath,” she explained, and then felt all the more idiotic for making such an inane remark. It wasn’t as if the town deputy had to be informed of people’s personal hygiene habits, after all.
“Come in, if you think it’s proper,” Wyatt drawled. He’d rolled up his shirtsleeves, and his forearms were sun-browned and muscular.
Sarah had never actually been inside the jailhouse. She told herself it was mere curiosity that sent her over that threshold.
Wyatt stepped back so she could pass, but not far enough that they could avoid brushing against each other.
“How’s Lonesome?” he asked.
“He’s fine,” Sarah said, looking around. She saw a desk, chairs, an old potbellied stove, and a single cell with rusted bars and two cots inside, but, thankfully, no prisoner. “I gave him milk toast for supper, and more laudanum, like Doc said, and he was sleeping when I left.”
“Good,” Wyatt said, watching her.
Sarah approached the cell, saw the stockpile of guns and rifles inside. Turned to face Wyatt and found him standing directly behind her, but at a decent distance.
“Kitty told you she’d found her children?” she a
sked, realizing only as she spoke the words that she’d come here to say them. She and Maddie and Lark had written letters into the wee-small hours, searching for Kitty’s daughters. Had Kitty known where they were the whole time?
Wyatt looked blank for a moment, then remembered their exchange in Doc’s office, while he was upstairs getting the coffee. “Yes,” he said. “She had a letter from some lawyer. They were living someplace in Illinois, I think. Why?”
Sarah sighed, looked away from his face, looked back. “I’d have to speak with Kitty before I answered that,” she said. Five years ago, in Kansas City, Kitty had been willing to marry a stranger to recover her children. She’d apparently known exactly where to find them. Yet when she’d roused Sarah and the others to such a state of righteous indignation that they’d begun to search for little Leona and Davina, through the mails and every other means they could think of, she’d called a halt to it. Had something happened to change her mind, in the years and places between Kansas City and Stone Creek? Or did Kitty’s daughters actually exist at all? Perhaps it had just been a story, a ploy for sympathy, and nothing more.
It was all too confusing. And Sarah felt stung, even betrayed. She lived in the figurative glass house and certainly couldn’t afford to throw stones at Kitty for lying, but the discovery hurt, just the same.
Wyatt pulled a chair into the center of the room and gently lowered Sarah into it. “Don’t they get heavy? All those secrets you’re carrying around, I mean?” he asked quietly, his face close to hers.
“I don’t have any secrets,” Sarah said.
Wyatt straightened, took a seat behind the desk. “Langstreet sure took off in a hurry,” he said, after a few moments had passed. “It’s almost as if he came here meaning to leave the boy with you.”
Sarah’s throat hurt. She swallowed, but it didn’t help, and her eyes suddenly burned. Wyatt, she knew, was a hairsbreadth from guessing that Owen was her child, and she wished she could tell him he was right. It would be like laying down a heavy burden, one she’d been carrying for too long.
A Stone Creek Collection Volume 1 Page 73