Secondhand Bride

by Linda Lael Miller

  “Sam,” Jeb said easily, “let her see your badge.”

  Sam stepped into view, the nickel star gleaming on his coat. “He’s telling the truth, child,” he said, in his taciturn way. “Put down that gun, now, before you hurt yourself.”

  She took her time deciding the matter, but she finally lowered the .45—she’d needed both hands to hold it— and worked the latch on the door. “If you hurt me, my papa will skin you,” she said, climbing down the steps.

  “What happened here?” Sam wanted to know.

  “What’s your name?” Jeb asked, talking right over the marshal.

  “Lizzie,” she said, and her gaze dropped to the dead woman on the ground, then shot back to Jeb’s face. “What’s yours?”

  “Jeb McKettrick. This is Sam Fee.”

  “He shot my aunt,” Lizzie said. A tear trickled down her cheek.

  “Who?” Sam asked.

  “The outlaw, of course,” Lizzie answered, a little testily. “He took all our money, too.”

  Sam and Jeb exchanged glances.

  “We’re going to look after you,” Jeb said. “Find your papa. Everything will be all right.”

  She didn’t look convinced and kept her distance. Little wonder, after what she’d been through.

  “You must be cold and hungry,” Jeb went on.

  “Scared, mostly,” the child answered.

  “How old are you?” Jeb asked, while Sam went to unhitch the team from the stagecoach.

  “Ten,” Lizzie answered, with a sniffle, squaring her small shoulders. “How old are you?”

  Under any other circumstances, he would have laughed, but there were two people dead, and a little girl had seen the whole thing. She’d spent the night by herself, most likely expecting the gunman to come back. “Twenty-eight,” he said, and took a careful step toward her.

  She looked him up and down, but when he fetched a lap robe from inside the coach, she let him put it around her. Sam, leaving the freed horses to forage for grass alongside the road, took the bedroll from behind his saddle and covered the woman’s body with it.

  “I’ve got some jerky in my saddlebags,” Jeb said, to distract her from the process. “You want some?”

  “I reckon I do,” Lizzie allowed. “I wouldn’t mind a little water, either, if you’ve got it.”

  Jeb fetched the jerky, along with his canteen, and brought them to her. “You mentioned your papa a little while ago,” he said, sitting on the running board of the stagecoach beside her. “We’re going to need his name.”

  She had a mouthful of jerky and chewed it thoroughly before swallowing. Washed it down with some water, too. Finally, she replied. “Holt Cavanagh.”

  Jeb’s mouth dropped open. He closed it again. Waited.

  Tears welled in the child’s eyes, and he was hard put not to lay an arm around her shoulders, but she was a bristly little thing, full of pride, and he didn’t want to scare her, either. “He didn’t know we were coming,” she said staunchly. “He might not even want me.”

  Jeb felt his gut grind. “Where’s your mama?” he asked, after a quiet interval had passed. Now that he was getting over the shock, he noticed her resemblance to Holt.

  “She’s dead,” Lizzie said, without looking at him. “She caught a fever last winter, in San Antonio. Aunt Geneva brought me here, soon as she could.”

  “You’ve had a hard time,” Jeb said, but his brain was reeling. If Cavanagh was Lizzie’s father, then she was flesh and blood, a niece. A McKettrick. Damned if the old man hadn’t gotten his grandchild after all, and God knew what the ramifications of that would be.

  She gave him a disdainful look. Of course she’d had a hard time, her expression said. She’d lost her mother and seen her aunt and the stagecoach driver shot down. She’d spent the night hiding in the stagecoach, cold, hungry, and scared.

  “If you saw the man—the outlaw—again, could you recognize him?”

  Her expression was doubtful, and her lower lip wobbled forlornly. “It was nighttime, and he had a bandanna over his face.”

  Sam had rolled the bodies up in blankets. “We’d best get the child and these poor folks to town,” he said.

  Jeb nodded, rose with a sigh, and he and Sam caught a couple of the team horses. They rigged halters and lead ropes from the stagecoach reins, laid the bodies over the animals’ backs, and secured them with rope from their own saddles.

  “Mister?” Lizzie said.

  Jeb turned to see the child standing close by, waited for her to go on.

  “Can I ride with you?”

  He smiled, for the first time in what seemed like days. “Sure,” he said. He scooped her up and set her in his saddle, then climbed up behind her and took the reins in one hand. Sam handed him one end of a lead rope, mounted his own horse, and they started back toward Indian Rock, the two team horses trotting behind them, bearing their grim burdens.

  Lizzie turned in the saddle. “Do I have to call you Mr. McKettrick?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “Uncle Jeb will do,” he replied.

  12

  Naturally, their arrival in town drew a lot of attention.

  Chloe, Becky, and Emmeline were among the first to approach them.

  “Good heavens,” Becky blurted. “What happened?”

  “Stagecoach was robbed,” Sam answered. “Two people shot to death. This little girl here, she saw it all.”

  Becky stepped forward, extended her arms to the child. Lizzie stiffened, took a grip on Jeb’s coat sleeve, and wouldn’t let go.

  “Poor little thing,” Emmeline whispered, shading her eyes from the sun as she looked up. “You must be frightened half to death.”

  Jeb’s gaze met Chloe’s and locked with it. “She’s a brave one,” he said. “And she’s a McKettrick.”

  “I’m not a McKettrick,” Lizzie said, turning a challenging look on him, even as she clutched his coat for dear life. “My name is Cavanagh.”

  “Land sakes,” Becky exclaimed.

  “Holt’s?” Emmeline wanted to know.

  “Evidently so,” Jeb said, tearing his gaze from Chloe. “You’d better send somebody to fetch him.”

  Emmeline nodded and turned away to recruit a bystander for the job, and Becky stepped forward again, speaking quietly to the child.

  “Come along now, sweetheart. Nobody’s going to hurt you.”

  Lizzie consulted Jeb with another glance, and, “Is she a straight shooter?”

  Jeb chuckled. “Yes,” he said.

  She deliberated, then let go of his arm and allowed Becky to help her down from the horse. They were already inside the hotel, with Emmeline right behind them, having dispatched her messenger, before it came to Jeb that he ought to dismount himself. When he did, he just stood there, feeling sad for Lizzie and envious of Holt.

  Chloe laid a tentative hand to his cheek, and it scared him, how good it felt. “Was it bad?” she asked.

  “Worse than bad,” he admitted. He didn’t want to leave her, but the work wasn’t finished. “I’ve got to help Sam get these bodies over to Doc Boylen’s office,” he said.

  She nodded, studied his face for a long moment, and turned to follow the others into the hotel.

  Word traveled fast in a place like Indian Rock, and by noon, Angus and Concepcion rolled into town in a buckboard, driving the horses hard. They’d barely stepped into the hotel when Holt rode in at a gallop and left his gelding with its reins dangling.

  Jeb, seeing the whole show from the bench out front, got to his feet and went inside.

  “Where,” Angus demanded, in a Zeus-like voice, “is my grandchild?”

  “She’s upstairs, sleeping,” Becky said calmly, stationed like a sentry at the foot of the stairs, “and you will not disturb her, Angus McKettrick.”

  Holt, it appeared, would not be so easy to dissuade. He strode right over to Becky and stood toe-to-toe with her. “Which room?”

  To everybody’s surprise, Becky stepped aside. “Number seven,” sh
e said. “But don’t wake her up. She’s been through enough for one day.”

  Holt took the stairs two at a time. Angus looked like he wanted to follow, but Concepcion gripped his arm, and he let himself be restrained.

  Five minutes passed, then ten. The only sound in the room, as far as Jeb noticed, was the ticking of the long-case clock on the lower landing.

  Finally, Holt appeared at the top of the stairs, looking like a man who’d just been dragged over rough ground behind a fast horse.

  “Well?” Angus half bellowed.

  Holt gripped the rail with one hand as he came down the steps. He was pale, and there was a fevered light in his eyes.

  “I didn’t know,” he said, without looking straight at any of them. “Goddammit, I didn’t know.”

  “She’s yours, then?” Angus pressed.

  Holt shook his head, a man in a daze, but he finally looked the old man in the eye. “Yes,” he said. “She’s mine, all right.”

  13

  Chloe was drawn to the schoolhouse, against her better judgment, and made her way there soon after little Lizzie Cavanagh, attended by Becky and Emmeline, had been fed, soothed, and tucked into bed at the Arizona Hotel. Had she stayed, Chloe feared she would have been sucked into a whirlpool of caring, and that was an indulgence she couldn’t afford. Whatever the words on her marriage license, she was not a McKettrick, and could have no real part in the drama.

  The school was small, a one-room affair, perhaps twenty-by-twenty, with log walls and a sturdy shingle roof. The windows were new, and there were two swings affixed to the limbs of a giant oak tree in the grassy yard. The fence was picketed, and freshly whitewashed.

  Chloe walked around the perimeter once, noting the raw-lumber privy and the small shed where horses could be stabled during the schoolday. There was also a tiny cottage, covered in white clapboard, and someone had planted rosebushes on either side of the small porch. A few valiant, bright red blooms still clung to the stems.

  Leave Indian Rock, Chloe warned herself. Go back to Sacramento.

  But she couldn’t do it.

  She tried the cottage door and found it unlatched. Inside were a gleaming brass bedstead, a potbellied stove with a supply of mesquite wood laid in beside it, a washstand, boasting a pretty pitcher and bowl and damask towels. There was a bookshelf, too, bare and waiting, it seemed, for her treasured volumes, and a hooked rug graced the floor. The furnishings were completed by a sturdy table, so new that it still smelled of pine sap.

  The people of Indian Rock might not have snared themselves a teacher, just yet, but they obviously intended to do so, and they expected to make him or her welcome.

  Chloe ached to live there, to unpack her treasures and settle in. She glanced at the bed, imagined herself there, with Jeb, and looked away quickly.

  Fool, she thought. He doesn’t trust you. He doesn’t want you. Put him out of your mind, or you’ll go insane.

  She let herself out of the cottage, closing the door almost reverently, and proceeded across the yard to the front of the schoolhouse itself. Since she’d already trespassed, she might as well go the whole way.

  The main building, like the cottage, was open to anyone who might choose to step inside, and Chloe’s heart raced when she saw the interior. There were two blackboards, three long tables with benches for the students, a whole stack of textbooks, unused, their spines gleaming with newness. A globe stood beside the teacher’s desk, promising worlds to explore, and the supply cabinet was stocked with drawing paper, pencils, bottles of India ink and nibbed pens, chalk and slates. If Chloe had been enamored of the cottage, she was transported now.

  She sat down in the chair behind the desk, reached out to give the globe a spin. Don’t get your hopes up, insisted a voice in her head, even as she dreamed of conducting lively classes in this cozy space, opening little minds to the vast vistas of the written word, of mathematics and science. Perhaps she might send to Sacramento for her telescope, gathering dust in the attic of her stepfather’s home.

  Her doubts brought her up short. You were involved in a scandal. Besides, this is McKettrick territory. If there are sides to be taken, and there always are, the townspeople will line up behind Jeb.

  With a sigh, Chloe stood and smoothed her skirts. Maybe she would be hired, and maybe she wouldn’t. All she could do was try, and keep her expectations as modest as possible.

  She went to the door, stepped out onto the porch, and came face-to-face with a small, red-haired boy in clean but ragged clothes. He sported a constellation of freckles and an eager smile.

  “Are you the new teacher?” he asked, almost breathless with suspense.

  Chloe couldn’t be sure what he hoped her answer would be. “No,” she said honestly, putting out a hand. There was no sense in putting the cart before the horse. “My name is Chloe Wakefield. What’s yours?”

  The boy’s exuberant expression collapsed into disappointment, but he took her hand in his grubby one and gave it a shake. “Harry Sussex,” he said, in a deflated tone. “You sure you’re not the teacher?”

  “Fairly certain, yes,” Chloe said, wanting to ruffle his thick hair and forbearing to do so. She sat down on the front step, and Harry took a place beside her.

  “That’s a shame,” Harry sighed companionably. “The way things are going around here, it’ll be a wonder if I ever learn anything.”

  Chloe suppressed a smile. “You are an unusual boy, Harry Sussex,” she said. “I should think you’d rather be fishing or catching frogs or playing kickball than ciphering and reading lessons.”

  His thin shoulders were stooped with discouragement. “I want to be like Kade McKettrick when I grow up,” he said disconsolately. “He’s real smart. He reads books, and he can add up all kinds of numbers in his head. He knows the names of all the stars, too. Says there are probably people out there, living on other worlds, some of them just like ours.”

  “He must be quite a Renaissance man,” Chloe observed. She’d had very little time to form an impression of Jeb’s older brother, but Harry’s description had raised her estimation of him by several notches. Where Jeb’s whole credo seemed to be a resounding Yippee!, Kade obviously lived from his intellect.

  Harry screwed up his face, puzzled. “What kind of man?”

  “A smart one,” Chloe clarified.

  “I already said that,” Harry pointed out, quite justly. His attention was deflected by a movement at the schoolyard gate, and his smile was instantaneous.

  Following his gaze, Chloe saw a middle-aged man with a crop of messy hair, wearing a rumpled suit and carrying a battered medical kit in one hand.

  The doctor opened the gate, smiling, and came toward them.

  “This is Doc Boylen,” Harry told Chloe. She recognized the name immediately, from the advertisement for a teacher in the Epitaph. “Doc, this here’s Miss Chloe Wakefield, but she says she ain’t the schoolmarm.”

  Doc favored Chloe with a cordial nod and a discerning once-over. “I received a letter from you,” he said mildly. She wondered if he’d contacted the school in Tombstone, or heard about her disputed marriage to Jeb.

  Chloe wanted to sigh, but she didn’t. “I’m a good teacher,” she said; she had confidence in that much, at least. “But I’ve got a history.”

  Doc chuckled. “Don’t we all?” he said.

  Chloe glanced uncomfortably at Harry; she didn’t want to go into details about her past in front of him. “The school is certainly wonderful,” she said carefully. “And so is the cottage.”

  “Then I don’t see the problem,” Doc said easily. “As the head of the school board, I have the authority to offer you the position, here and now. The pay is downright pitiful—thirty dollars a month and meals. I’m afraid we spent most of our money on the buildings and the books.”

  Chloe’s heart started beating its wings, wanting her to say yes, to run the risk, and devil take the consequences. “You might change your mind when you know the whole truth,” she said carefu
lly, trying hard not to care too much and failing miserably. She was filled with yearning.

  Doc’s smile remained steady. “Harry, why don’t you run on home and ask your mother what’s for supper?” he said, without looking away from Chloe’s face.

  Reluctantly, Harry rose to obey. He’d clearly taken in every word of the conversation up until then, and his eagerness to secure an education, and thus become more like Kade, had been mounting visibly the whole while. “It’ll probably be beans again,” he warned, with a note of stalwart pragmatism.

  “I certainly hope not,” Doc replied smoothly. “I’m in the mood for corned beef hash.” He took a few coins from his pocket and gave them to the boy. “Stop by the mercantile on the way and see if they’ve got any canned meat. There ought to be enough for a piece of penny candy, too.”

  His enthusiasm renewed, Harry leaped off the porch and raced to the gate, pausing there to look back at Chloe, all bright countenance and good cheer. “You won’t go anywhere, will you, Miss Wakefield? Before I learn the names of some stars, I mean, and how to add numbers in my head?”

  Chloe couldn’t bring herself to answer; a lump of longing had risen in her throat. Her gaze shifted back to Doc Boylen’s kindly face, and Harry went on about his business.

  “I’m married,” she said straightforwardly, “and not for the first time.” Most female teachers were single; working wives were frowned upon. Any hint of scandal was cause for prompt dismissal. “My references may be less than glowing, as well.”

  Doc Boylen set one foot on the step Harry had vacated and rested a forearm on his knee. “Are you a good teacher, Chloe Wakefield?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “I certainly am.”

  A mischievous light danced in his eyes. “Just how many husbands do you have?”

  She smiled, albeit sadly. “I’ve had two. I divorced the first one when I found out he was a paid gunslinger, and the second one isn’t too sure he wants to claim me.”

  “Why’s that?”

  She sighed. “He didn’t know about the first one.”

  “Ah,” said Doc, with a sage nod of his head. “I see. And where is this confused fellow now?”