by Lily Wilspur
Then they were outside, getting into the buggy, and riding back to the hotel.
Chapter 7
“Are you all right?”
Lou Ann looked around her. She was standing on the porch of the hotel, alone with the young gunfighter standing next to her.
“Are you all right?” he asked again.
Lou Ann stared at him. Who was he? He could only be one person—David McGee.
Lou Ann shook her head to clear her mind. “I’m fine.”
“Are you ready to go inside?” he asked. “You look like you’re going to be sick.”
Lou Ann’s eyes darted first one direction, then the other, seeking out something to look at other than him. “I do?” Had she said those words any time recently?
“You’re as white as chalk,” David told her. “You look like you’re about to fall over. Let’s get you inside and give you something cool to drink.”
Lou Ann felt something press her hand. She realized he’d taken her by the hand and was leading her into the hotel. The relative darkness of the lobby temporarily blinded her, but she stumbled after him. She heard him speaking to the clerk, and then she followed him up the stairs to her old room.
He closed the door behind them. “Here. Sit down before you fall down.”
Lou Ann obeyed. So this was her husband. She still didn’t understand how it happened. She sat perfectly motionless as he took off her veil and unbuttoned her shoes. Then he sat next to her on the bed and unbuttoned the back of her dress. He didn’t take the dress off, but untied the laces of her corset underneath the dress.
The pressure on her ribs lifted with the slackening of the laces, and Lou Ann took a deep breath. The breath came out as a sigh.
“Are you all right now?” David asked.
Lou Ann gazed toward the bright square of light coming through the window. Anything to avoid looking at him. “I’ll be all right.”
A knock sounded at the door. David answered it and then closed it. He returned to the bed and wrapped her lifeless fingers around a dewy glass. “Drink this. You’ll feel better.”
He lifted her arm to bring the glass to her lips. She tasted clear water, but mingled with the refreshing liquid she thought she tasted the dust of the streets of Ogden. It sifted into everything.
The moment the water touched Lou Ann’s lips, she felt the scorching thirst in her throat for the first time. She gulped the water down and drained the cup. Then she gasped for air.
David put the glass on the table. “There. I told you you’d feel better.”
She finally rallied her strength to look at him. “Are we…are we married?”
He grinned. “Yep. Don’t you remember? We just came from the church.”
“I don’t remember very much,” she admitted. “Did I…you know…did I say ‘I do’?”
“Don’t you remember that part?” David knit his brows. “I heard you plain as day. You said it all right. But if you don’t remember it, there might be some problem about it. I wonder what Tony would say if he knew about that.”
“Tony?” she asked.
“The minister,” he explained. “His name is Anthony. But we all call him Tony. Anyway, you said ‘I do’, so we’re married. Can you live with that?”
Lou Ann stared at the window. “I guess I’ll have to.”
David sat down on the bed next to her. “Is it as bad as all that? You said in your letter that you wanted to get married.”
“I didn’t know…” She paused. “I didn’t know when I wrote to you what you…were. I didn’t know what you were.”
“What am I?” he asked.
Lou Ann turned her sharp eyes on him for the first time. “I saw you yesterday. I saw you from the train. I saw you kill that man.”
David’s gaze penetrated deep into her eyes. “You don’t understand. You don’t know what that man was.”
“The sheriff told me all about it,” Lou Ann told him. “He told me all about Earnest Shipler, and how he wreaked havoc on the town, and how he killed everyone who tried to stop him. He told me all about it.”
“Then you understand why I had to kill him,” David returned.
“No, I don’t,” Lou Ann shot back. “Where I come from—at least, the way I was raised—there’s never any excuse for violence. No one has the right to kill anyone else. If he committed all those crimes, then it’s for the law to punish him. No one person has the right to take the law into his own hands.”
“And if the law does nothing?” David asked. “What if they law can’t do anything? What if the law is either corrupt or impotent, and criminals hold more power over the lives of the innocent than the law has? Then what?”
“That’s still no excuse to take up a gun and kill someone.” Lou Ann stopped herself. “At least, that’s what I was taught.”
“I was taught the same thing,” David replied. “Did the sheriff tell you why I came back to this town?”
“No,” Lou Ann answered.
“About a year ago,” David told her. “that man, Earnest Shipler, came to my father’s farm. He killed my mother and kidnapped my sister. As you can imagine, my father went to that pathetic excuse for a sheriff but he wouldn’t do anything. My father accused him of taking money from Shipler, of being on his payroll. But after a while, he figured out the sheriff was just plain scared of Shipler—just like everyone else around here.”
“I didn’t know that,” Lou Ann murmured.
“You couldn’t know if you weren’t from around here,” David replied. “But pretty much every family around here has a story like ours. Shipler’s been running wild for forty years.”
“That’s what the sheriff told me,” Lou Ann told him.
“By the time my father finished messing around trying to get the sheriff to do something,” David continued. “Shipler was gone and my sister was dead. When he told me what happened, I came back to Ogden. I made up my mind that if no one else would stop Shipler, I would do it myself. And that’s what I did.”
David turned and gazed into Lou Ann’s eyes.
“I’m sorry you had to see that,” he told her. “I wish I didn’t have to do it. But I just couldn’t let the same thing happen to someone else. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t do something to stop it. Most people around here have long since given up on anyone stopping Shipler. They had no choice but to wait for him to die.”
Lou Ann felt her eyes stinging with tears. “I’ve never seen anyone killed before.”
David took her hand. “It’s over now. You can forget all about it.”
Lou Ann looked up at him. His eyes hung just inches away from her. “Could you forget it?”
David looked down at their hands. “No. I’ll never forget it. I’ll see his face every time I close my eyes.”
Lou Ann blinked her tears away. She shook the agitation off of herself and dragged her mind clear of the fog of confusion. “Never mind. We’re married now.”
Chapter 8
“Your father mentioned that you planned to take us home tomorrow,” Lou Ann told David.
“Is that all right with you?” David asked. “I hope you don’t think me too forward. I thought we might have at least one night before we go home.”
“I don’t mind,” Lou Ann replied. “Where is home, anyway? Your father didn’t mention it.”
David chuckled. “That’s Dad for ya. He’d lose his head if it wasn’t attached. Ever since I came home, half my job has been keeping him out of trouble.”
“He seems very nice to me,” Lou Ann observed. “He came here on his own initiative and offered to escort me to the church. I was very grateful to him for that.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” David replied. “But to answer your question, home is my father’s farm. That’s where we’ll go tomorrow.”
“Won’t we be alone there?” Lou Ann asked. “I guess your father’s there.”
“Him,” David told her. “and my two brothers, too. We all live together in one house. You and I will
have one room to ourselves at the back of the house. But it’s still not the same as being alone together.”
Lou Ann covered her lips with the fingers of her free hand. “I guess not.”
David studied her movements. “We don’t have to do anything if you don’t want to. I won’t make you do anything that makes you uncomfortable. I just thought it would be nice to have at least one night to ourselves away from the rest of the family.”
Lou Ann shuddered. Alone in a house with four men! He hadn’t mentioned that in his letters. But would it really have made a difference? Would she have changed her mind if she knew?
And here she was, alone in a hotel room with a man for the first time in her life—and that man her lawfully married husband. He could do what he liked with her. She’d relinquished all right to say no to his requests. Could she really do this? Could she really give herself to a stranger, body and soul?
She straightened up. “No. We’re married now. We’ll do everything married people do.”
“You don’t have to,” David replied. “There’s plenty of time. We don’t have to rush into anything.”
“No,” Lou Ann repeated. “I’m determined to go through with this—with everything. We’ll do it. I’m not here to give myself any free rides.”
“I’m not giving you a free ride,” David told her. “I want you to be happy and comfortable. I don’t want you to be scared of me, and I don’t want to see you jump out of your skin every time I come into the room.”
“That’s very kind of you,” Lou Ann replied. “But it isn’t necessary. I’m your wife. I belong to you now. I’m prepared to do my duty as a wife.”
“I don’t want it to be a duty for you,” David maintained. “I want you to be happy, and I want you to love me. If it’s a duty for you, then I don’t want you to do it.”
“But it is a duty,” Lou Ann declared. “It’s my duty as a wife. That’s what marriage is all about.”
“I don’t think so,” David replied. “We ought to at least get to know each other a little bit before we do it. We’re strangers to each other now.”
“That shouldn’t make any difference,” Lou Ann returned. “We’re married. We’ll get to know each other in time. Right now, we can concentrate on business.”
David straightened up, towering over her and, in doing so, pulled away from her. “I don’t want to do business with you. This isn’t business to me.”
“Nonsense!” Lou Ann shot back. “Here. Come here.” She took hold of his hand again. “Let me kiss you.”
David let her pull him closer to her but when his face came near hers, she lost her nerve. She brought her mouth up to his lips, but the closer she came, the more confused she became about how to go about it. Had he experienced this bewilderment when he had to kiss her in front of the whole congregation at the church? How had he done it?
She couldn’t remember anything about that kiss. She couldn’t even remember his face that close to her. Now, his sparkling black eyes watched her from the end of her nose. She felt his breath on her skin, and she smelled the oil in his hair.
A scorching flame of fear shot through her. She couldn’t go through with it. Yet she must. She’d set herself up to do this, and go through with it she would if she accomplished nothing else in her life.
She darted out, pecked him on the lips, and immediately retreated. David laughed at her. “You see what I mean? Don’t push it too hard. We’ll just make it more uncomfortable for both of us if you do.”
Lou Ann wilted back onto the bed. “All right. What would you like to do instead?”
“I’m hungry,” David replied. “Let’s have some food sent up. I’ll go down to the kitchen and order the food. You change your clothes. You look like a stuffed toy in that dress.”
Lou Ann looked down at her wedding dress. “This? It’s the finest dress my aunt and uncle could afford.”
“It’s very nice,” David told her. “but you look very uncomfortable in it. Change into something comfortable. I’ll be back in a minute.”
David left the room and Lou Ann heaved a sigh. He was right. Even with the laces of her corset loosened, she still couldn’t breathe properly in her dress. And she wouldn’t be able to do anything without worrying about soiling it.
She peeled off the layers and laid them back in the trunk in the place where she stowed her everyday dress that morning. Could it really be that only an hour or so had passed since she put those clothes away? It seemed like a week or more. And now here she was, putting her everyday dress back on and her wedding dress away. Her wedding was over, and it would never come again. It survived in her mind as a distant memory. It would never be anything more.
Just as she finished buttoning up her shoes, she heard a tap at the door. She jumped up to let David back in, but she cried out in surprise when she met the sheriff at the door instead.
Chapter 9
The sheriff tipped his hat to her. “Good morning, Mrs. McGee.”
Lou Ann took a moment to realize he was talking to her. She wasn’t prepared to answer to that name. “Good morning, Sheriff.”
“Is your husband in?” the sheriff asked. “I’d like a word with him, if you don’t mind.”
“He just stepped down to the kitchen,” Lou Ann told him. “He’ll be back in a minute. Would you like to wait?”
The sheriff’s eyes slid around her, trying to see into the room. “I guess I will, if it won’t be too long.”
Lou Ann stepped aside to make room for the sheriff to enter the room. “It won’t be.”
He jiggled his podgy body into the room and peered around. Lou Ann busied herself putting the rest of her things in her trunk. “Did you manage to dispose of Shipler?”
The sheriff snorted. “Oh, I got rid of him all right. Don’t ask me what I did with him. But you can be certain it was better than he deserved.”
“I don’t want to know what you did with him,” Lou Ann replied. “So what do you want with David? What’s all this about?”
The sheriff shot an awkward glance toward the door. “As a matter of fact, it’s you I came to talk to.”
“Me?” Lou Ann gasped. “What do you want to talk to me for?”
The sheriff glanced toward the door. He didn’t like talking to her without her husband present. Maybe they’d better wait to talk any further. But Lou Ann had opened that can of worms by asking him his business. She couldn’t close it now.
“Well, you see, Miss,” he began, “I mean, Mrs. McGee. You see, it’s like this. It seems that you were the only real witness to the gun fight yesterday. I’ve asked around. Everyone in town was hiding under their beds until it was over.”
“I noticed that,” Lou Ann recalled. “The street was deserted except for David and Shipler.”
“That’s right,” the sheriff confirmed. “That leaves the people on the train. I can’t really question the people who left with it, but I’ve talked to just about everyone else who got off the train here. They all agree that you were the only one in a position to see the fight clearly.”
“That makes sense,” Lou Ann told him. “They shoved me into the doorway of the car. I didn’t want to be there but there were too many people behind me and I couldn’t get away.”
“So you saw the fight?” the sheriff asked.
Lou Ann nodded. “I saw the whole thing. I wish I hadn’t.”
“So you can tell me,” the sheriff continued, “which one of them—McGee or Shipler—which one of them shot first. Which one of them first pulled a gun on the other?”
Lou Ann waved the question away with her hand. “Oh, I don’t know. It was all a blur to me. What’s this all about anyway?”
Just then, David appeared in the doorway with a tray loaded with food. He stopped in the doorway when he saw the sheriff in the room. “What are you doing here?”
The sheriff fidgeted. “I was just explaining to your wife here…”
David stalked into the room and set the tray down on the table with a
clatter. “You aren’t welcome here. You’ve done my family enough harm already. I’ll thank you to get out of here now.” He stood back, leaving a clear pathway between the sheriff and the door.
The sheriff shifted from foot to foot. “I can’t do that. You see, as I was just explaining to your wife here, some people are complaining about you killing Shipler.”
“Complaining about it?” David shot back. “Who would complain about me killing that viper?”
The sheriff waved his hand toward the window. “Oh, you know, people from out of state. I guess they’re people he was working with. That’s the only people I can think of who would care one way or the other. I don’t know. Maybe he owned them money. Anyway, they’re powerful people with influence at the governor’s office. So I’ve got to investigate his death all official-like, you see.”
“I see.” David clenched his jaw. “So what? He’s dead. I killed him in a fair fight. End of story.”
“I’m afraid it isn’t quite as simple as that,” the sheriff told him. “You see, I have to question the available witnesses.”
“Witnesses!” David guffawed. “There were no witnesses. Everyone had their heads buried under their pillows.”
“That’s what I thought,” the sheriff replied. “But when I started asking questions, I found out there was a witness.”
“Who?” David demanded.
The sheriff turned back to Lou Ann. “Your bride here. She saw the whole thing from the door of the train. I was just asking her about it.”
David scowled at Lou Ann. Then he turned on the sheriff with a look as black as thunder. “You’re not questioning her in connection with this? Not after we just got married less than two hours ago. You’re not using her to incriminate me!”
“I have to,” the sheriff replied. “I have to investigate Shipler’s death. It’s my job.”
“Your job!” David bellowed. “When were you ever concerned about doing your job before?”
The sheriff sagged under the weight of David’s accusations. “I have to.”