Renegade Most Wanted

by Carol Arens

  “Emma.” His breath washed over her knuckles. “Why would your grief not be the same as Lucy’s?”

  “I’ve become fond of you.” There was no sense in denying what he must see so plainly on her face. “There’s no point in denying that I’ll miss you.”

  “Fond, is it?” He slipped off his chair and onto his knees. Somehow he ended up kneeling between her spread thighs. Yards of fabric and petticoats weren’t enough of a barrier to keep her from feeling the heat of him.

  He dropped her hands and cupped her face in his palms.

  “I suppose fond is what you feel for Red or Billy or a dozen folks in town.” He skimmed his thumb along her lower lip. She closed her eyes against the draw of him. “Since you won’t tell me true, I’ll tell you how I feel.”

  Her eyes flew open.

  “Don’t, Matt, don’t.” She shook her head. “You’ll be leaving in the morning.”

  “Tell me how you feel…about me.”

  She leaned forward, touching her forehead to his, squeezing her eyes shut and hiding the truth. “If I tell you, it might hold you here. You’d be killed.”

  He sighed; his breath warmed her lips. His scent shot straight to her heart. As long as she lived she’d never forget the way of him. Wild prairie and horses combined with leather and a bit of smoke from the fire all overpowered by the knee-weakening scent of male.

  He found her hand, drew it to his mouth and kissed the wedding band. His gaze held her, demanding her soul.

  “I love you,” he whispered, warming the gold. “If that changes what happens tomorrow, so be it… . I love you, Emma.”

  Emma tasted the salt of a tear on her mouth and wondered which one of them it had come from.

  “My grief is that I’ll be losing something precious, and I can’t choose what it will be.” Emma wiped the moisture from her lip. Matt’s eyes welled, but so did hers. “Come tomorrow, whatever happens, my heart will break.”

  She slipped out of the chair. Heart to heart with Matt, she buried her face in his shoulder.

  “I do love you, Matt,” she whispered into his shirt, and then she began to cry.

  Matt rocked her for a moment, then held her at arm’s length. He looked at her a long time, but didn’t speak.

  He unbuttoned his shirt, took her hand and placed it over his heart.

  Fire-burnished hair rustled across his open collar when he reached for the buttons of her dress.

  He popped them open one by one and spread her dress wide. Work-worn fingers plucked the tiny blue bow that fastened her shift. A couple of tugs at the lacy fabric left her breasts exposed.

  The air in her lungs seemed too heavy to breathe. Her heart beat too quickly not to show, but his heart beat the same way. She felt the runaway thrum of it under her fingertips.

  With fingers that could as easily rope a steer as wipe away a tear, he touched her chest. He traced the bottom curve of her breast then brushed his thumb across her nipple, all the while gazing at her bare flesh as though that, too, was a caress.

  At last he pressed his calloused palm over her heart, then lifted his gaze to her eyes.

  “Bone of my bone,” he whispered. “Flesh of my flesh.”

  He kissed her, a slow, deep kiss.

  “Don’t worry, darlin’.” He buttoned her dress, stood up and drew her along with him. “Whatever tomorrow brings, we will face it together. When we’ve got things sorted out, we’ll—” He nodded toward her bedroom.

  This was all wrong. There was nothing to be sorted out except keeping Matt alive until he boarded the train.

  And yet the moment they had just shared was nothing less than a joining of souls. Like wedding vows spoken all over again. And she had given herself over to them; the words Matt had recited were true.

  She touched her lips with trembling fingers and tasted the promise of her future.

  Matt had no more than opened the door to go to his bed in the soddie when a hacking sound came from Lucy’s bedroom. “Papa, Mama! I throwed up!” Lucy’s little voice wept. Whatever that future held, it would have to wait.

  Chapter Twelve

  “My tummy hurts, Papa.”

  “It’ll feel better by morning, baby.” Matt’s stomach turned a flip or two, as well. “Close your eyes now. Try to sleep.”

  “She probably ate something that didn’t agree with her.” Emma stood beside the door with the soiled bedding wadded in her arms. “It isn’t uncommon in children.”

  She gave him an encouraging smile, then continued down the hall. He listened to her footsteps brushing against the floor as she walked.

  They had left important decisions hanging between them. Lucy’s illness would hold things up for a bit.

  One thing was sure, only death would part him from his wife now. That was the vow. Whatever paths he and Emma took, those words would guide him.

  Matt smoothed the blanket across Lucy’s slender shoulders. She looked so tiny in the big bed, so helpless and pale in the lamplight. He touched her cheek, fresh with a frosting of new freckles. Her skin felt dry but not hot. No fever was a good thing, he supposed.

  Emma had come up so quietly in her stocking feet that he hadn’t noticed her light steps crossing the room. She sat down on the bed beside Lucy with a glass of water in her hand. “Stomach complaints are common with children. Likely by morning she’ll be better.” The glass trembled slightly in her hand. She glanced at him. Her worried look said something else. “But there’s the cholera… .”

  “It’s only a stomach complaint. She’s had them before.”

  He wouldn’t let it be anything else. They all had been down with belly issues at one time or another and bounded right back. Morning would put the sparkle right back in Lucy’s eyes.

  “We’ll need to make sure she drinks,” Emma said, touching Lucy’s hair to get her attention. “Sit up, sweetheart. You have to drink this.”

  “No! It hurts to drink.” She burrowed under the blanket until only a blond curl gave away her presence.

  Matt peeled the cover away and lifted Lucy onto his lap. Her toes peeked out from under her nightgown, as pale as her face.

  “This might not stay down, so be ready,” Emma instructed.

  Lucy drank half the water, then squirmed off his lap and burrowed back into her woolen cave.

  A bedspring squeaked when Emma got up. The fabric of her skirt rustled against her legs when she walked across the room.

  Lucy’s breathing seemed slow and even. Since sleep was what she needed most, Matt rose carefully from the bed and followed Emma out of the room.

  He’d thought to find her in the kitchen washing the glass, or maybe running her fingers over her stove with wonder, as she often did. He thought to see her peering out of the window, looking at her land by the glow of the moon with that satisfied smile tugging her lips into a pretty bow, or maybe watching for Pearl.

  Instead, he found her collapsed into a chair at the table with her head buried in her arms. Her hair twisted down her back and over her shoulders.

  He knelt beside her and brushed away enough hair to see the side of her face.

  A gust of wind buffeted the window, rattling the glass.

  Emma sat up straight and pressed her hands to her cheeks as though to brush away tears, but her eyes were dry.

  “Emma, you look worn through.” She tangled her fingers together on the table. He covered them with one of his hands and frowned at the tense cold knot beneath his palm. “Go on to bed. I’ll watch over Lucy.”

  “Tell me about California. Is it really paradise on earth?”

  He studied her face, looking for a spark of eagerness at the thought of moving there. Emma glanced at her stove and spread her fingers on the table where she served the tastiest food in the county. When she glanced at the “Home Sweet Home” frilly that she had crocheted and hung over the kitchen door, her eyes misted.

  “So my mother says, but I’ve never been there. Seems to me this is paradise on earth.”

  She
opened her mouth to answer, but Lucy’s cry whispered down the hall.

  Emma stood up and went ahead of him to her room.

  * * *

  Daylight had just brightened the plains with sunshine. Emma stood beside her laundry pot near the well, stirring Lucy’s sheets, blankets and nightclothes in boiling water and lye. She dropped Matt’s shirt into the pot with the rest.

  Only a few hours from now, the train’s whistle would be blowing. Matt and his family might have been on it, but all through the night Lucy had grown more ill. Her little body seemed to shrink in upon itself. Her skin appeared tissue thin and her robust complexion pasty.

  Emma had never seen a child so taken with a stomach ailment. The strength leached out of her body with each heave of her belly. The poor little mite had quit whimpering about her misery just before sunrise, but clearly her silence didn’t mean she was any better.

  It was time to send for the doctor.

  Red strode across the yard on legs grown longer and ganglier just overnight. He wore a hat, but the red spikes of his hair stuck out from under the brim like straw.

  “I’ll finish up the washing if you want to go inside and tend to Lucy.”

  “You’re a thoughtful boy, Red.” She had to reach up to pat his cheek. At the beginning of summer he’d been no more than half a head taller than she was. “It would do Matt good to get out of that room and get a breath of air.”

  With each step across the yard, she said a prayer that Lucy would be better, that the pink would be restored to her cheeks and the water in the glass beside her bed would be empty.

  “Company’s coming!” Red hollered.

  Emma whirled on the top step of the porch. Company or a killer?

  She shaded her eyes from the glare of the morning sun and squinted at the line of dust approaching the homestead. After a moment the painted wheels of the Sizeloffs’ wagon rolled into view.

  Her heart rolled in her chest. Just behind Rachael, cradling baby Maude in her arms, Charlie jumped and waved.

  Praise and glory! At the back of the wagon, a horse was tethered.

  “Pearl!” Emma shouted. She raced down the steps without feeling them.

  Red dropped his stirring paddle and ran past her. He whooped and whistled, running and waving his arms. His hat blew off his head and bounced in the dirt. The screen door banged closed, but she didn’t look back to see who had come out.

  From a hundred yards off Pearl lifted her nose in the air and whinnied.

  “I’m here, Pearl! I’m coming!” Emma’s skirts tangled about her ankles. She grasped the hem and yanked it up to her knees. Decorum had no claim on her when her beloved Pearl had come back from the dead.

  Charlie untied the lead securing Pearl to the wagon. “Go on girl, you’re home,” he called out.

  Free of the fancy-wheeled wagon, Pearl trotted in a circle. She lifted her nose to scent the air, then pranced toward Emma.

  “Oh, you wonderful horse.” She touched Pearl’s neck with splayed fingers. When she didn’t find any burns or injuries she hugged tight with both arms. “You good, brave friend.”

  “Her mane’s singed a bit,” Billy announced, squeezing between Emma and Red and running his fingers through the dirty mass. “Her tail took the worst of it, but she seems whole enough.”

  “God be praised!” Emma heard Rachael declare, climbing down from the wagon. “We didn’t know what to think when your horse showed up at the livery alone and singed.”

  “It was past dark when she wandered in,” Joseph Sizeloff said, hurrying after his wife. A smile of relief shone out from under his mustache. “Jesse searched every shop and decent place in town.”

  “When Lenore Pendragon told him that her father had left you to perish out on the road we all thought the worst.” Rachael gathered her tight in one arm. Little Maudie squeaked between them. “Praise be is all I can say.”

  “Poor Jesse is out there searching the burned areas right now,” Joseph said. “Woody Vance, too.”

  “The town’s abuzz over the matter, and that’s a fact,” Charlie stated, wiggling and hopping, apparently eager to be a part of Emma being found safe at home.

  Princess and Fluffy bounded out of the corral. They ran in circles barking at one thing, then another. They spotted Charlie, charged and toppled him with their jumping.

  He began to wrestle, rolling on the ground and laughing when suddenly he looked up with a frown. “Where’s Lucy?”

  “She’s inside with Matt,” Emma said. “She’s not feeling well.”

  “Been heaving her stomach all night long.” Red yanked a pup off Charlie and pointed for it to scoot back to the barn.

  “I’ve never tended a child so sick of a stomach complaint.” Pearl chuffed at Emma’s ribs. She stroked the horse’s long jaw. “We’re about to send for the doctor.”

  “Come on, Pearl.” Billy took her tether. “Let’s get you something to eat and give you a good look over while the women see to Lucy.”

  “Would you look at her, Rachael?” Emma asked. “I’m worried that this is no common ailment.”

  “Can I come, too, Ma?”

  “Not this time, son.” Rachael handed the baby to her husband. “You wait here with your pa until we know what ails Lucy.”

  A shiver of unease crept up Emma’s spine. Rachael Sizeloff, an experienced mother who had prayed at the sickbeds of many people, didn’t want Charlie to come near Lucy.

  Oh, mercy! Emma led the way up the steps to the house and across the porch. She prayed that the preacher’s caution was for safety’s sake alone and that she didn’t really believe there was anything to be alarmed about.

  * * *

  Since Lucy likely needed a prayer, Matt got up from the bed and let Preacher Sizeloff sit in the spot he had occupied for the past eight hours straight.

  Emma stood in the doorway with her arms folded tight across her middle. The absence of a smile worried him as much as Rachael Sizeloff’s frown when she bent low over Lucy and murmured into her pale ear.

  Matt walked to the doorway where Emma stood, biting her lower lip. To comfort himself he gathered her up in his arms and rubbed his cheek on top of her head.

  “I’m pleased that Pearl came home,” he whispered. He felt her hair shift under his jaw when she nodded.

  “Lucy’s going to be just fine,” she murmured low. “I’m sure Rachael is going to tell us just that.”

  The preacher cradled Lucy’s cheek in the palm of her hand.

  “Where does it hurt, little Miss Lucy?” She picked up the tiny hand that had seemed to go from plump and pink to thin and blue just overnight.

  “My back and my legs.” Matt had to strain to hear. Her voice had grown faint. “But mostly my tummy.”

  “What about here, on your arms, does this hurt, sweetie?”

  Lucy nodded.

  “I saw your pups outside. My, but they’ve grown half as big as their mother.”

  “Mama won’t let them come in the house.” Emma’s shoulders sagged under his arms.

  “You try and get some rest. I need to have a word with your mama and papa.”

  Before she stood, the preacher bent her lips close to Lucy’s ear and whispered something. Matt couldn’t hear much, but he thought he caught the words pup and house.

  Rachael waved her hands at Emma and Matt, shooing them into the parlor as if they were a pair of wandering chickens. She shut Lucy’s door behind her.

  Red leaned against the front doorjamb with one foot on the porch and one in the parlor. He looked like a shadow against the glow of morning.

  Matt stared at the preacher and knew that Emma and Red did, as well. Even though she didn’t have any medical training beyond motherhood, she had spent hours at the bedsides of the sick, comforting and praying. She would know when someone was deeply ill.

  “I agree, you should send for Doc Brown…right away.” She touched Matt’s elbow and looked at him with worry creasing her eyes. “I can’t be sure, but it could be the infan
tile cholera.”

  The floor shifted beneath his feet. Children died of the cholera! Some lived through it…but some didn’t.

  “Lucy’s strong—she’ll be fine,” Emma said with confidence, but her fingers trembled on his arm.

  “Day before yesterday she was fine. Right now she’s not like I’ve ever seen her… . I’m going for the doctor,” Matt said.

  “You can’t!” Emma leaped for the door. Crowding in beside Red, she set her legs wide and clamped her hands down on her waist. “You can’t go to town!”

  She wouldn’t be much to pick up and set to the side, so he took a step forward.

  Mrs. Sizeloff’s hand, touching his sleeve, halted him. “She’s right. Hawker’s in town.”

  “Hawker doesn’t count for much right now.”

  “Emma’s right, Matt. If that no-good shoots you, how will you bring back the doctor?” Mrs. Sizeloff asked.

  Matt was sick of the threat of Hawker hanging over his every move. Even moving to California was giving in to the man. But Preacher Sizeloff had a valid point. Setting things to right had no place right now. Only Lucy mattered.

  When she was well, Hawker would have to be dealt with. No one that he loved was safe while the man breathed.

  “I’ll go!” Red spun about, but Matt caught the back of his vest.

  “I’ll tie you to the barn door if you try.”

  “Nobody needs to get killed to get the doctor here.” The preacher shook her head. “My Josie has to take the children home, anyway. He can send out Doc Brown.”

  “The wagon will slow your husband down.” Cousin Billy popped his head through the open parlor window. “I’ll take Thunder and have the doc back in no time.”

  “I’d thank you for that, cousin.”

  Billy’s offer gave Matt heart. He wasn’t alone in this trial. Family was worth everything. A man could live in the middle of a field with no shelter at all more easily than trying to face what the world heaped on him without them. They were worth every sacrifice.

  Emma went to the open window and peered out, watching Billy run full speed toward the corral.