Renegade Most Wanted

by Carol Arens

  Was she thinking the same thing? That hearts bound in loyalty were the best part of life.

  “I’ll go sit with Lucy and pray. We don’t need to wait on Doc Brown for that,” Rachael Sizeloff declared.

  Matt expected Emma to follow the preacher into the sickroom, but instead, she pushed past Red and out onto the front porch.

  “Princess!” she called. “Fluffy!”

  The dogs came bounding toward the front door, stirring up a small twister’s worth of dirt in the process. It collected on their fur like a second coat.

  Emma stood aside when they gamboled past.

  “Go on, go to Lucy,” she murmured, but the pups were already on their way. Princess left four scratches on the floor scrambling for footing on the smooth wood. Fluffy bounded over the back of the couch, rolled on the cushions and deposited a mat of black fur before she tumbled off and drooled on the floor.

  “Go on, you two, get in there and make Lucy feel better,” Emma said.

  She ought to be angry as a hornet now that the dogs had left their mark on her precious house. It more than frightened him that she allowed it.

  Lord, how he loved the woman.

  * * *

  Emma stood beside the corral fence. Clouds rode low over the earth, painted orange and crimson by the setting sun. She watched the changing hues ride over the land—her land, every weed and piece of gravel. She breathed in a lungful of twilight air. It felt fresh and cleansing.

  Fall was pushing summer into the past. Each night grew a little cooler than the one before. Time had run out so quickly and now her life balanced on a pinhead. Her beloved land, or the man she loved?

  She couldn’t think of that now. There was only Lucy, her baby, to be considered.

  “Come over here, Pearl!” she called.

  Thunder twitched his ears. He sauntered behind Pearl, nudging her flank with his nose when they reached the fence.

  “I have both of you to thank for my life.”

  Pearl snorted. “All right, Matt, too.” She stroked a brown face and then a black one. She reached into the pocket of her apron, pulled out a pair of apples and fed one to Pearl and one to Thunder.

  Emma nuzzled her nose into Pearl’s singed mane. No matter how she longed to have the summer back and spend it loving her husband, fall was at hand and Lucy needed tending.

  “Doc Brown is spending the night. He’s going to show me what to do for Lucy.”

  Boisterous wind caught her skirt and whipped it about. Chilly fingers pinched her arms when the gust pierced the sleeves of her dress. She shivered and rubbed her hands over her arms.

  As if by magic, her shawl settled over her shoulders. Matt’s big body stood close behind her and blocked the draft. He wrapped his arms about her and drew her against his chest.

  “How many children survive this, do you think?” His voice rumbled next to her back, deep and worried. “Half?”

  “Maybe, but Lucy’s strong and that will go in her favor.” A shiver traced through Matt’s body. Emma felt it and patted his hands where they crossed over her ribs. “I’ve heard of children recovering.”

  But none of those children had overtaken her defenses so completely. None of them had laid claim to her heart. None of them had been allowed to call her Mama.

  “She’ll be fine.” Her voice would sound more convincing if it weren’t shaking. “You’ll sing to her to keep her spirits up and I’ll make her drink broth and keep her bedding clean. Mrs. Sizeloff will pray.”

  “She’ll be on the mend in no time. We might have to sit on her to keep her from running off to play in the creek before she’s ready,” Matt said.

  “Oh, yes. She’ll be down there searching for Mr. Hopp—” All of a sudden the thought of Lucy never getting out of the sickbed swelled a lump in her throat that she couldn’t speak over.

  She turned in Matt’s arms, pressed her face into his shirt and gripped his vest with tight fists. How many tears could eyes shed in only a few days?

  Matt buried his face in her hair. He rocked her, his breath warm against her scalp.

  The very seconds ticking by seemed to ache. Minutes, heavy with foreboding, stretched out forever.

  Matt drew in a deep, steadying breath.

  “Lucy’s going to be fine.” His voice, suddenly firm, was a lasso strung about her. She grasped it and pulled away from the black imaginings consuming her.

  She glanced up. His eyes looked like troubled pools, flooded but contained.

  “Of course she will. We won’t let it be any other way.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  The teapot whistling on the stove woke Emma from a brief doze at the kitchen table. She lifted her head and gazed out the window. Dawn would be more than an hour away, judging by the deep hue of the sky.

  She arched her back to ease the crick that had settled in it from her awkward nap in the chair.

  All through the long night it had seemed that she’d done nothing but make tea in hopes that Lucy would swallow a gulp or two. According to the doctor, not getting enough to drink was the main threat to her weakening body. Her survival depended upon keeping her hydrated.

  The doctor had done what he could, applying cold compresses to Lucy’s stomach to keep the vomiting down and whispering words of encouragement to his tiny patient.

  He’d shown Emma how to wrap Lucy in warm wet sheets and then rub her with cold towels. But the main thing was to get her to drink and keep it down.

  Peppermint had always relieved the little ones she’d tended, so that’s what she had been brewing all night long. The house smelled like the candy counter at Rath and Wright’s.

  She stood up and walked to the stove. Her legs felt cramped from the short nap at the table. What wouldn’t she give to fill her copper tub with hot water and melt into it? That’s just what she would do at the first sign of Lucy’s recovery.

  The kitchen door opened. Cold predawn air rushed in with Cousin Billy.

  “Morning, Billy. I haven’t got the coffee brewed yet, but it will only take a few minutes.”

  “Don’t trouble yourself. I just wanted to see how Lucy’s doing before I check the fences.”

  “No change. Matt’s in the bedroom with her. Dr. Brown is resting in my room. The poor man hasn’t had a break since you brought him here.”

  “I’ll check back in a few hours.”

  Billy tugged on the brim of his hat. He closed the door and stepped onto the porch. Emma set down the teapot and rushed outside after him.

  “Billy, wait.” She closed the back door but still spoke only half a note above a whisper. “Did you see Hawker in town? Did anybody say anything about…well, you know?”

  “I took a peek at him.” Billy squeezed her elbow with his leather glove. “No need to worry, Emma. He’s nothing more than any other mortal man.”

  “I saw him catch his hat right out of the air. He’s fast with his hands. What if he comes out here? Matt’s so tired and worn through he wouldn’t stand a chance.”

  “Matt would have caught his hat before it ever let fly off his head. If you’re worried about Hawker coming here, don’t be. My cousin protects what is his own.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  A rooster crowed in the barn. In another hour the sun would pop over the horizon. Billy let go of her elbow and started down the steps as though the bird had been his signal to get to work.

  “Emma.” Billy turned at the bottom step, looking up. “I apologize for Woody.”

  “For Woody? Why on earth would you?”

  “It was me that set you up to pair with him.” Billy picked at a splinter in the handrail of the steps. “Any fool can see that it was you and Matt all along.”

  “Maybe you were right about me needing a man.” Emma came down the steps, stopping on the last one so that she was eye to eye with Billy. She kissed his cheek. “You only misjudged the one I needed.”

  “I’m glad of that, cousin.” He grinned, then strode toward the barn.

/>   Matt was a lucky man to have a cousin as devoted as Billy. They had grown up as close as brothers. She’d never spent much thought or regret on her past, but watching Matt’s family over the summer made her wonder. What might it have been like to grow up with someone of her own?

  Mercy, but this was no time for fanciful yearnings. She had tea to force down a resisting child’s throat. She’d think about those things later, when Lucy was well and she had an hour to soak in her big brass tub.

  * * *

  It felt like a betrayal to leave Lucy’s sickroom. The only reason Matt did it was that Emma had forced a cup of coffee into his hand and told him he was making Doc Brown nervous.

  “He can take better care of Lucy without you hanging over the bed.” She’d gently herded him and his steaming cup from the room. “Go outside and breathe some fresh air before the doctor has another patient to tend to.”

  In the parlor Matt was surprised to see the preacher sitting on the couch with her hands folded in her lap, her head bent low in either sleep or prayer. She looked up when his boots scraped the floor.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Sizeloff,” his mouth said out of habit, but this was far from a good morning. Even though the sun shone brightly on the prairie grass and streamed in through the windows it might as well have been midnight. “You haven’t been here all night, have you?”

  Since he hadn’t been out of Lucy’s room in…how many hours, he’d lost track. It had been light when he’d last seen her and it was light again, with a night passing in between.

  “Lands, no. Wouldn’t Josie have a time trying to care for little Maudie by himself? Infants aren’t the most agreeable folks if they’re hungry.”

  He remembered that. Lucy used to raise a fuss if her bottle wasn’t at her lips the moment she needed to eat. Mrs. Sizeloff would be even more tied to her infant, since the baby was likely a nursling.

  “It was good of you to come back. Looks like we need all the prayers the good Lord will listen to.”

  “He’s got a wonderfully big ear. So do I.” She got up from the couch in a rustle of brown plaid. “Let’s take a walk in the sunshine and you can tell me what the doc thinks.”

  Morning light was blinding after having spent so much time in a darkened sickroom. Without his hat to shade his eyes, he had to stare at the ground.

  That suited him fine, since the happy blue of the sky looked too much like Lucy’s eyes had only days ago, alive with laughter and health. It felt as if a stone weighted his heart when he looked into her eyes now.

  He led the preacher toward the well where the shade under the roof would give his vision some relief.

  “Doc says there’s not much change since last night, but I think Lucy’s getting weaker. He’s trying to keep her from going into decline. If that happens—” Some words just shouldn’t be said—they hurt worse than physical pain. “There won’t be much hope.”

  “There’s always hope.”

  Matt looked at the preacher’s face. A blaze of white hair cut through the darker strands, streaking from her forehead to the bun tucked in a proper roll at her neck.

  Folks in town said the streak had come from God. She’d asked him for it as a sign that a sick friend would recover from a terrible illness. According to the story, she’d got the streak and the friend had gotten well. He’d like to think the tale was true. Maybe she knew more about hope than he did.

  “Sometimes things that seem bad turn around to be something wonderful,” she said.

  He didn’t know what to say about that. He’d seen things that started bad get even worse.

  “Take your own life, for example.” The doubt must have shown on his face. She smiled and patted his arm where it crossed his chest. “It’s not often a man goes from robbing a bank to falling in love and legally wed in the space of an hour.”

  He sputtered, or gasped. He must have gone red as sunset, maybe pale as the moon. He sure couldn’t think of a blessed thing to say. A man couldn’t very well lie to the person who had spent untold hours praying for his daughter.

  “It wasn’t so hard to figure out.” A chuckle shook her shoulders. She planted her hands at her waist and shuffled the dirt with the toe of her shoe. “I believe in hope, Matt. I also believe that love can happen in a minute.”

  The woman might be a dove in God’s service, but she had the eyes and instincts of a hawk. He still couldn’t figure out what to say, so he offered her water.

  “No, thank you,” she said, her eyes lighting with laughter. “There’s no call to look so green about the ears. Since I haven’t let on to the law about it by now, I suppose you are safe from me…and Josie, too. There are a few things I don’t understand, though, like why you only took ten percent. It’s a subject that’s kept my husband and me in conversation for many a night beside the fire. And then there’s Emma, of course. I would guess there’s an interesting story to be told there, if you had a mind to tell it.”

  “Since you got the half of it, you might as well know the whole thing, so you don’t go believing I’m a common thief.”

  He sat on the well and invited the preacher to do the same. Even though she had claimed not to need a drink, he could use a long one to tell what was more of a confession than a story.

  He told her about the ten percent for Lucy. That easing of his conscience hadn’t stunned her one bit. She’d only nodded and stated that the sin had been on Lawrence Pendragon’s soul, not Matt’s.

  That had always been his belief, but it was a comfort to have it confirmed by someone who was a professional in the wrongs and rights of spiritual matters.

  As far as love in an hour? He shrugged his shoulders. “Emma didn’t love me when you married us. We’d only just met.”

  “Mercy, Matt. I suppose everyone in the land office figured that.”

  “The sheriff must have believed us. Otherwise, he’d have strung me up.”

  “I imagine that’s what he thought he did. But then with you and your bride looking so lovesick at each other, and that kiss…! Well, no one could say otherwise.”

  “My wife is quite a woman.”

  “Whether you loved each other then or not, I’d say you love each other now.”

  How much did a man reveal to his wife’s friend, preacher or not?

  “We do.” Matt stood up. He liked speaking with Mrs. Sizeloff. It was a comfort to be able to say some things out loud. But maybe he’d been away from Lucy for too long. “But there are some issues with Hawker that need to be set straight.”

  “By violence?” she asked, a deep frown creasing her brow.

  “Shoot, Mrs. Sizeloff, maybe. Right now, with things the way they are, my family is in danger.” He felt the threat to his bones. Even though he wasn’t wearing his gun his hand touched the spot where it would be.

  “You could pack up your family and go away.”

  “I thought so at one time. I had hoped to convince Emma to come to California with me, but this land and her house mean the world to her. I can’t ask her to leave it behind.”

  “Emma would love California, as well. I hear it’s paradise on earth.”

  “I’ve heard the same, but as far as my wife is concerned, this hundred and sixty acres is paradise on earth. I can’t say I disagree.” Matt glanced toward the house, nervous that something might change while he was chatting.

  “As wonderful as home can be, paradise isn’t a spot on a map. No sir, what I believe is that it is a place in the heart.”

  “Family ties?” He believed the same.

  The preacher stood up. She smoothed her palm over the streak in her hair, then fluffed out her skirt.

  “Yes, exactly so,” she said with a pivot toward the house. “Don’t you give up hope. You’ll find a way out of this mess.”

  * * *

  A sulking mass of clouds gathered on the western horizon and obscured the first sunset of autumn.

  The long day finally ended with Lucy getting no better. The good doctor, with great reluctance, had gone
back to Dodge to set a cowboy’s broken arm.

  Emma stood on the porch and gazed across the darkening prairie, watching for his return. Cold wind snapped the hem of her skirt. She drew her shawl tight against the chill. Dr. Brown had expected to return near nightfall and she had made sure to keep a plate of supper warming on the stove for him.

  Inside, the house was too quiet. Outside, the land stretched away dim and ominous. When the doctor had departed, Rachael had tied her horse to the back of his buggy and ridden back to Dodge beside him. She, too, had been hesitant to return to town, but the demands of an infant had first claim on her time.

  “I’ll be back in the morning…sooner if I’m needed,” she had vowed.

  Emma shivered when a nippy gust pressed her backward a step on the porch, but she wasn’t sure that the trembling was due to the draft.

  Needing the preacher sooner than dawn didn’t bear thinking of. To hear those words spoken had been nearly more than she could stand. The only reason she hadn’t collapsed in a weeping heap when she had heard them was that Matt had been standing beside her.

  He’d barely breathed. His shoulders had straightened, then stiffened. Standing so close, she’d felt a shiver run over his body. Even though his jaw had clenched and flexed, he hadn’t cried out at the grievous thought.

  That thought haunted everyone’s mind, for sure, but until noon today, no one had spoken the words aloud.

  What nearly made her knees buckle seemed to leave Matt unshaken. She knew he must be terrified, but he had stood taller and acted braver than any man she’d ever met.

  The long hours between noon and now had been bearable only because of Matt’s strength. She’d show him the same grit of spirit even though she felt fragile.

  Since the doc wouldn’t appear on the road for all her staring at it, she went back inside the house. The teapot whistled for her attention, so she brewed up one more cup of peppermint tea that Lucy would not drink.

  Earlier in the day the poor child would drink what was put in front of her lips then promptly lose it into a pan. Over the aching hours of the afternoon she had stopped doing even that. She’d turned her pale face toward the pillow and refused even the tiniest of sips.