Outlaw’s Bride

by Johnston, Joan

  He froze when he heard a twig snap behind him. Too late, he remembered the gunman who had been hired to kill him.

  “Lucky for you I’m not Calloway. You’d be dead now.”

  Ethan heaved a sigh of relief. He turned to find Frank lounging against a backyard fence. “Is that his name? Calloway?”

  “Yep. Brought him out to the ranch last night myself,” Frank said. “Meant to come find you earlier this morning to warn you about him, but I guess it wasn’t necessary after all. According to Slim, the two of you already met at the Silver Buckle.”

  “We did.”

  “Thought sure you would already have drawn on each other. What’s the holdup?”

  Ethan grinned. “I’m not ready to die, and I guess he isn’t, either.”

  Frank laughed. “I’ve been following your trail all morning. Boyd sent me out here from the barn to find you. What’s going on?”

  “Walk with me while we talk.”

  Frank slipped into step with Ethan as he stalked—long step, halting step—the streets and alleys of Oakville, searching for his quarry.

  “I’m looking for Chester Felber and his mother,” Ethan explained. “If I had to guess, I’d say Mrs. Felber ducked into a friend’s house somewhere around here. I just wish I knew whether she has Chester with her, and if not, where the hell he is.”

  “Why are you hunting Chester?”

  “I suspect he’s the one who’s been putting arsenic in Ma’s milk. Maybe in the whiskey Pa drank, too. At least, Mrs. Felber acted awful damn suspicious when I started asking questions. She was ranting and raving about how poor Chester doesn’t know what he’s doing, and how he can’t be held responsible. Well, if he isn’t responsible, I damn well know who is!”

  “Your ma was poisoned? Your pa, too? I can’t believe it!”

  “Everything points in that direction. I sent some samples off on the stage this morning to a chemist in San Antonio.” Ethan stopped. “Hell, I won’t find him now unless I start knocking on doors. And I’m not ready to do that. Yet.”

  He headed back toward the barn as fast as his hitching gait would allow. “Come on, if you’re coming.”

  Frank did a hop-skip to catch up, then matched Ethan’s stride as best he could. “Where are we going?”

  “I want to see if Boyd found anything in the Felbers’ barn. Then I’m going to pay a visit to the sheriff.”

  “Surely you’re not expecting any help from Careless,” Frank said. “I mean, not if you’re going to accuse who I think you’re going to accuse.”

  “Careless can keep an eye out for Chester. And he can question Horace and his wife.”

  “What good will that do you?”

  “Maybe none,” Ethan conceded. “But at least it’ll put everyone on notice that I’m through running.”

  Frank eyed Ethan sideways. “I don’t understand.”

  Ethan paused for a moment and met Frank’s glance. “I’m through running from Trahern. From now on, he’s the one who’d better watch his back.”

  Ethan walked through the open barn door, and Frank followed him inside.

  The barn was quiet. “Boyd? You in here somewhere?” Ethan called.

  “Up here,” Boyd said.

  “You find anything worth mentioning?”

  Boyd came down the ladder from the loft. “I found this.” He handed Ethan a small cloth bag that contained a powdery white substance.

  “What is it?”

  “I’d guess it’s arsenic,” Boyd said.

  Frank whistled. “So Chester really was putting poison in your ma’s milk.”

  “We’d have to get someone to confirm that this is arsenic,” Ethan said as he hefted the bag in his hand.

  “Even then, you don’t have proof it was Chester who did it. Someone else might have kept the poison here and slipped it into the milk when Chester wasn’t looking,” Boyd suggested.

  “I’m sticking with Chester as the guilty party until I get a better suspect,” Ethan said. “But even if Chester did put the poison in the milk, I’m betting he didn’t act on his own. He doesn’t have the brains to think out something like that. Or the motive to do it. Someone told Chester what to do. Someone gave him the poison.”

  “Trahern?” Boyd asked.

  “Who else?” Ethan replied in a harsh voice. “He blames me for Dorne’s death. He blames me for what happened to Merielle. He hated my father for helping me get away. He wants me to suffer the way he’s suffered all these years. Killing my father and mother would accomplish that.

  “Give me another suspect,” Ethan demanded of his friends. “Tell me who else has a motive to attack me and my family.”

  Ethan’s two friends remained silent.

  At last Frank said, “You need to find Chester. He could tell you who asked him to put the poison in the milk. That way you’d know for sure.”

  Ethan took off his hat, shoved his fingers through his hair in agitation, and pulled his hat back down. “I can’t help thinking he won’t go far. Not on his own, anyway.”

  Frank grinned. “I wonder who Horace will find to milk his cows now. Do you think he’ll do it himself?”

  The three men looked at each other and broke out laughing at the thought of Horace Felber sitting on a milkstool with his hands on a pair of udders. Their common dislike of the man ran long and deep. Horace hadn’t been the kind of shopkeeper who offered free licorice to penniless eight- and nine-year-old kids. The three inseparable friends had each taken a turn distracting Horace while the others stole candy from the jars on the counter. Their sugary loot was relished all the more for the fact it had been taken from beneath Horace Felber’s nose.

  Boyd sobered first, recalling the day when they had finally been discovered in the act. Horace had caught Boyd red-handed with his fingers in the jar of licorice. Boyd would never forget the humiliation of being seized by the ear and yanked all the way across the street to the sheriff’s office. He was thrown into a cell with Cyrus McFee, the town drunk.

  The cell stank of vomit and urine, and Boyd gagged trying to breathe. Even worse was the knowledge of what his father would do when he came to get him out. Boyd had known he was going to get a licking. The anticipation of that beating was making his stomach roll.

  What he hadn’t expected was that his father would just leave him there. He spent three days in that cell, the second two alone, before Clete Stuckey showed up to claim him. Boyd had felt relief when he first saw his father’s face. It lasted no longer than the first blow of his drunken father’s fist on his back. He had fled the jail—and his father—as fast as his legs could carry him.

  Boyd had learned later that when he didn’t get out of jail the first day, Ethan had begged his father to do something to help. Alex Hawk had gone hunting Clete. It had taken a day to find him and a day to sober him up enough to sit on a horse. Clete hadn’t thanked either Alex or Ethan for the favor. Boyd had done it himself. Boyd had had no use for his father after that. He had resolutely and thoroughly killed what little love he’d had for him.

  He hadn’t mourned when Clete Stuckey had fallen off his horse drunk one rainy winter night and died of exposure. Despite the fact that by then Boyd was comfortably well off, he had allowed his father to be buried in an unmarked pauper’s grave. He had given back to his father exactly what he had gotten from him—nothing.

  Boyd jerked reflexively when Ethan put an arm around his shoulder. He forced himself to relax. They had no way of knowing that the wounds of the past still had the power to hurt him. He hid his bitterness, his anger, and his regret in a charming smile.

  “Come on,” he said to his friends, throwing his free arm around Frank’s shoulder. “Let’s go see the sheriff.”

  Frank excused himself before they got to the main street of town. “Considering Trahern’s my boss, I think maybe I’d better leave you two here. Remember to watch out for Calloway,” he said to Ethan in parting.

  “Who’s Calloway?” Boyd asked once Frank was gone.

&
nbsp; “The gunfighter Trahern has hired to put me six feet under.”

  “Calloway. Sounds familiar.” Boyd repeated the name several times to himself, then snapped his fingers as he recollected where he had heard it before. “I remember now. Calloway’s a bounty hunter. Goes after outlaws with a price on their heads, men wanted dead or alive. Rumor is, Calloway brings them back dead. All done legal, of course.”

  “Of course.” Ethan frowned as he considered what Boyd had revealed. “I’m not wanted by the law anymore. I wonder what Trahern told Calloway about me when he hired him on. Especially if Calloway likes his killing to be legal.”

  “You can bet he made it look like the fact you’re not a wanted man is just a technicality,” Boyd said. “And I’m sure he put the price high enough for Calloway to ignore the small print.”

  “Still, it might be worth having a talk with Calloway sometime.”

  Boyd grinned and shook his head. “You never cease to amaze me, Ethan. What makes you think that bounty hunter is going to let you get two words out of your mouth before he shoots you?”

  “You’ve been living on the right side of the law too long, Boyd. There is such a thing as honor among thieves.”

  Boyd grinned his charming grin. “I’ll take your word for it.”

  They stepped out of an alley onto Main Street a few doors down from the jail. And saw Jefferson Trahern leaving the sheriff’s office.

  Ethan froze. Here was the man who had murdered his father. Poisoned his mother. Put him in prison for seven long, nightmarish years. Here was the man who wanted his sister orphaned. Who wanted him dead.

  “Trahern!” he shouted. “I’m going to kill you!”

  The whole of Main Street stood frozen in tableau as Ethan made his threat.

  Ethan had reached the middle of the street by the time Boyd caught up to him. Boyd grabbed Ethan around the chest from behind and pinned his arms so he couldn’t reach his gun. “Have you lost your wits, Ethan?” he hissed in his friend’s ear. “Do you want to end up swinging from a rope for murder?”

  “Let me go, Boyd. I’m going to kill him.”

  Trahern had opened the jailhouse door and called inside to the sheriff. Careless immediately appeared on the boardwalk beside him. It was clear the sheriff didn’t want any part of what was happening, but Trahern gave him a shove and he headed toward Ethan.

  “Now, Ethan,” Careless said, shoving his gunbelt down under his belly where it was more comfortable. “What’s all this about?”

  “Trahern killed my father. He poisoned my mother. He deserves to die.”

  “What are you ranting about?” Trahern demanded from where he stood on the boardwalk. “I did no such thing.”

  “No sense lying,” Ethan said. “We found the arsenic you used to do the job.”

  “You’re insane! stark raving crazy!”

  The townsfolk listened with big ears. No one had ever challenged Trahern. Not until now.

  “It’s your turn to watch your back, Trahern,” Ethan shouted across to Trahern. “You won’t know when the bullet’s coming, or where it’ll happen. But if it’s the last thing I do, I’m going to kill you.”

  Trahern didn’t dignify Ethan’s final threat with a response. He simply called to Careless, “Sheriff, arrest that man.”

  Careless felt like a worm in a bed of ants. If he wasn’t careful, he’d get eaten alive. “Hell, Mr. Trahern. What’m I goin’ to arrest him for? Ain’t no law ‘gainst talkin’ like a jackass.”

  “Ethan Hawk just threatened to kill me,” Trahern said, exasperated with the lack of response from the sheriff.

  “Well, he ain’t committed no crime till he does!” Careless snapped back.

  The flush shot up Trahern’s neck and left his cheeks ruddy with rage. “Do something, Careless, or you’ll find yourself looking for a new job.”

  Careless swore up one side and down the other. He turned to Ethan and said, “Go on home ‘fore I arrest you for loiterin’.”

  When Ethan began to back away, Boyd released him.

  “I’m going,” Ethan said. “But don’t forget what I said. Soon, Trahern. Someday soon.”

  Ethan untangled the reins of his horse from the post in front of the saloon where he was tied, mounted, and rode out of town, leaving several nervous people behind him.

  One man knew what had to be done now and set his plans in motion.

  Ever since Patch had kissed Ethan in the barn, he had kept his distance. She wasn’t sure what it was that made him stay away. She had the sneaking suspicion that Ethan thought he had to treat the lady she had become with kid gloves, and that his leather ones weren’t a good enough substitute.

  Patch wrinkled her nose in disgust. She had gone to a lot of trouble to become a lady because that was what she thought Ethan wanted her to be. But it seemed there wasn’t much use for a lady on a ranch like the Double Diamond. More often than not, the work was backbreaking, grueling. It couldn’t be done in a corset. Velvet and satin had no place on the prairie. Cotton and wool absorbed sweat better and could be cleaned easier.

  Because being a lady hadn’t seemed as important on the ranch, Patch had slipped back into a few old habits. A garn here and a durn it there hadn’t seemed so bad. Sometimes the occasion demanded it. Like when she had found that hawk with a wing broken, flapping around in the chicken house, and Ethan had wanted to kill it.

  “Durn it, Ethan! This bird wouldn’t be caught dead chasing chickens if he could fly!” she had shouted.

  “Well, he can’t fly! I’ve got enough things to do on this ranch without running a refuge for chicken-stealing hawks!”

  “I can fix its wing!” she had protested. “I know I can.”

  “Then what? Once you tame an animal like that, it won’t want to fly free again.”

  “Garn! Who said I plan to tame it? I just want to help it get well! Then it’s free to go whatever way it wants.”

  “What if it doesn’t want to leave you? Then you’ll be stuck with it!” he yelled.

  “So I’ll be stuck with it!” she shouted back. “I happen to love the poor, dumb animals that cross my path—and I don’t feel stuck when they love me back!”

  She had thought he was going to explode, he was so mad. He bit out, “Suit yourself!” and marched off in high dudgeon.

  She had named the hawk Penny, because his feathers had a coppery sheen like a new Indian head penny. She kept him tied by one foot to a perch in the kitchen, and he had learned to take raw meat from her gloved hand. She had seen him eyeing the kittens and moved their basket to safety in the bedroom she shared with Leah. The raccoon, Bandit, knew enough to keep himself out of harm’s way.

  Leah had been fascinated by the hawk, and Patch had let the girl take over his feeding as she had with Dearie. In this particular respect, the love of wild animals, the two of them were in perfect accord. So when Leah found a rabbit caught in one of the rat traps Ethan had set around the barn, she brought it directly to Patch.

  Patch took one look at Leah’s white face and asked, “What’s wrong?”

  “His foot is cut nearly in two.”

  Patch hadn’t been able to save the rabbit’s left front paw. She had done some quick surgery and stopped the bleeding, and the rabbit seemed to be healing fine.

  Ethan laughed when he heard Leah had named her new pet Lucky. “What’s lucky about losing a foot? Especially a rabbit’s foot.”

  “Don’t you see?” Leah said as she cuddled the small brown rabbit close to her chest. “If I hadn’t found him when I did, some coyote or hawk or snake might have come along and eaten him. I rescued him, instead. Wasn’t that lucky?”

  Ethan had protested that between Patch and Leah his home would soon be overrun by animals. In fact, since that night the menagerie had grown by a horned toad and a jar that contained a leafy stem upon which a caterpillar had spun itself into a chrysalis.

  The kitchen door grated open, and Ethan leaned in to say, “Patch? Are you ready to go?”

 
“I’ll be with you in a minute, Ethan.”

  She had begged Ethan to show her the cave he and Boyd and Frank had used as a secret hideout, and he was finally taking her there today. She had talked Grandpa Corwin into coming to the house to keep Leah and Nell—who was feeling better every day—company while they were gone.

  Patch put down her pen and blew on the letter she was writing to her parents, to make sure it was dry before she folded it. She would get Grandpa Corwin to take it to the post office when he went back to town today. She stood and stretched out the kinks from sitting so long at the kitchen table writing.

  Ethan was staring at her strangely, so she asked, “Is anything wrong?”

  “Those are the pants you’re wearing?”

  Patch turned in a circle for him. “What do you think?”

  He swallowed hard. “You look … fine. Hurry up. I’ll wait for you at the barn.”

  Patch looked down and tried to figure out what it was Ethan didn’t like about the way she was dressed. He was the one who had insisted she wear pants. She had put on the jeans she had bought in town her first day in Oakville. While they were a little snug in the hips, she couldn’t see anything wrong with them. She certainly wasn’t about to change now.

  Once they were on the trail, Patch could barely contain her excitement. “I’ve been wanting to see this cave ever since Frank first mentioned it.”

  “Why?”

  “I guess because I’ve pictured the three of you there in my mind, and I wanted to see the real thing.”

  “Don’t get your hopes up. It’s not much to look at.”

  “Are you sure you don’t mind taking the time to do this with me?”

  Actually, Ethan had a dozen other things that should have claimed his attention. But at breakfast, when Patch had asked, he hadn’t been able to say no. She had looked so beautiful, her eyes radiant, freckles scattered across her freshly washed face, that the thought of spending the morning with her had been too much to resist. He had agreed that, once his chores were done, he would show her the cave.

  Ethan didn’t regret his decision. But he could see he had underestimated the temptation he would face, alone with her like this, especially with her dressed in those pants.