The Gunman's Bride

by Catherine Palmer

  She shivered. “It wouldn’t do you a bit of good. Your skin is as brown as a berry, Bart. The sheriff said he’d be on the lookout for a man with a face like yours.”

  “Would you cut my hair anyway, Rosie? I want to give the straight life a chance.”

  “But here in Raton? Why, Bart?”

  Raising his head, he covered her fingers with his big hands. “Once upon a time, all it took was a few harsh words to send me scampering. But I’ve changed in six years. I learned to do things. If I set out to break a horse, I’ll have him gentle as a kitten in no time flat. If I aim to rob a train, I’ll rob it plumb dry.”

  “Bart!”

  “That’s the facts. I came to Raton to find you and make a new life. So if you’ll give me a haircut, darlin’, I’ll get on with it.”

  As she combed and snipped away at Bart’s coal-black mane, Rosie berated herself over and over again. Crazy. She was just crazy, that’s all! She should have sent him off long ago. Instead, she’d let him hold her hand, whisper in her ear, rub her foot. And now she was actually cutting the man’s hair so he could stay in Raton and make her miserable!

  “Reckon there’s any chance I could pass for a gentleman dandy just off the train from Chicago?” He studied himself in her silver hand mirror.

  “Bart, you look just like what you are—an outlaw. A big, brawny gunslinger.”

  “I’d better leave my six-shooter and holster with you.”

  “Don’t you dare! Bad enough I have to hide a bloody rug and a pile of chopped-off black hair.”

  He chuckled. “You’ve done me a good turn, Rosie. Much as my side still hurts, I wouldn’t have made it this far without your kindness.”

  Softening, she ran her brush through his hair. Now that it stopped just above his collar, she could see the tremendous breadth of his shoulders. “In spite of the haircut, you still look like an Apache to me.”

  “Does my blood make a difference to you now, Rosie?”

  “I always told you to be proud of who you are, Bart. It’s what’s inside a man—what he chooses to do with himself—that makes him who he is.”

  “And I chose to be an outlaw. I’m a no-good half-breed outlaw.”

  Rosie stepped around his chair. As she gazed into his green eyes, she saw that he had become the little boy again, wounded by the cruelty of others. “When I knew you on the farm, you never hurt anything. What happened to you? What changed you?”

  He stood suddenly. “Aw, why does it matter anyhow? I can’t turn back time. I’ve dug myself a grave and I’m just one foot out of it. All my life I’ve been searching for something, but I don’t know what. The only thing I’m sure of, Rosie, is that when I’m near you, I’m close to the answer.”

  “Oh, Bart, I can’t mean so much to you! I have to get on with my own life and find what I’m searching for.”

  “What are you looking for, Rosie?”

  “Freedom,” she whispered. “I want freedom.”

  “Don’t tell me that, girl,” he groaned, his face twisting with pain. In one step, he took her hand, lifted her from the floor and drew her into his arms.

  “Oh, Bart, why did you run off and leave me?” she murmured. “And why did you ever come back?”

  “Hush, girl. Stop your frettin’ now and let me hold you the way I used to.”

  Rosie slipped her arms around Bart and laid her cheek against his chest. A wash of memory soothed her heart. Let me hold you the way I used to, he had said. Between these two who had loved so young, there had been only kisses and avowals of devotion, passion tempered by moral restraint.

  But who was this Bart, this gunman? She drew back and searched his face. As his fingertips trailed down her neck, she realized that they were no longer children.

  “I remember so well how we used to hold each other close—and how much I liked it,” she said. “But you never touched me. Not the way married people do. And, Bart, I don’t want that now either.”

  “It’s all right, Rosie. This is enough for me. More than enough.”

  The touch of a hand on her shoulder woke Rosie. “Laurie, wake up! You’re going to miss uniform inspection.”

  Sitting bolt upright, Rosie stared at her friend’s wide blue eyes. “Etta?”

  “Well, who did you expect?” Etta shook her head. “Come on, lazybones. You’ve got ten minutes before Mrs. Jensen gives you what for.”

  Unable to speak, Rosie glanced at the empty chair Bart had slept in the night before. She surveyed her room. His buckskin jacket was gone. His holsters and six-shooters had vanished from the shelf. There were no boots on the floor and no trousers hanging on a line overhead. Rosie’s white curtains danced in the breeze at her open window.

  “Look at you,” Etta exclaimed. “You slept in your uniform!”

  Rosie slid out of bed and brushed past her friend. Bart must have climbed out the window during the night.

  “Hurry,” Etta cried. “Mr. Gable will have a hissy fit if he sees you looking like that!”

  “Etta, give me a minute alone.” Rosie ushered her friend into the hall. She shut the door and leaned against it as the inspection bell began to ring. “Dear Lord, Bart’s gone,” she murmured in heartbroken prayer. “He left me again. How can I go through this another time?”

  But she had little time to mourn, Rosie realized as she pinned her bun in place and tossed a clean apron over her wrinkled black dress. She buttoned the bib while wiggling her bare feet into her shoes. Bolting through the door, she snapped to attention just as Mrs. Jensen approached.

  “Miss Laura, you’re late.” The elderly woman scanned her up and down. “Mr. Gable will not be pleased.”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am,” she mouthed.

  Mrs. Jensen gave a cluck. “That dress is dirty. Change it at once. You haven’t even laced your boots. You’ll scrub the hallway after the breakfast trains.”

  “After breakfast?” She was to meet with Mr. Kilgore at that time. “But I can’t! I have to—”

  “Have you found another occupation more interesting than Fred Harvey’s restaurant, Miss Laura? If so, I’ll inform Mr. Gable that he may hire your replacement from the long line of young women waiting in Kansas City and Chicago for just such an opportunity.”

  Rosie lowered her head. “No, ma’am. It won’t happen again.”

  Soapy water dampening her cuffs, Rosie sniffled back tears as she scrubbed the dormitory walls. Bart was gone. When she had returned to her room to change into an ironed dress, she searched every nook and cranny of the little place. Bart was gone, along with his boots, guns, jacket, britches and even the shirt she had bought him.

  Her heart fluttered a little every time she thought that he might actually have gone into town to look for work. But the spark of hope was quickly quelled by the reminder that for six long years Bart had not been a working man. He’d been an outlaw. And for all his talk about haircuts and new shirts, he still looked like an Indian. She had no doubt he had either left town or been shot.

  The sheriff didn’t come in for breakfast, and neither did Mr. Adams of the Comet. It was all Rosie could do to keep from approaching her minister. But Reverend Cullen was visiting with another preacher, and none of the other locals said a word about town news.

  The time passed when Rosie should have been at Mr. Kilgore’s school, and her heart sank even further. Such a responsible man would never hire a teacher who couldn’t bother to show up when she had promised. What kind of an example was that? The lunch trains started through the depot just as Mrs. Jensen approved Rosie’s newly scrubbed walls, and she rushed down the stairs to her station. Swallowing the knot in her throat, she served up sandwiches and soups and plates of fresh fruit by the score. She scooped tips into her pockets, scrubbed countertops, and pasted the Harvey smile on her face.

  But as she stood with her hands locked behind her back and her eyes scanning her station, she felt sick with unhappiness. Bart had kissed her last night and made her feel things she’d never even imagined. The memory
of his touch was so strong that it rocked her off balance every time she allowed it to creep through her thoughts.

  Then he had gone away. Sometime in the night, he must have strapped on his guns and climbed out her window to start his new life without her.

  Buttery afternoon sunlight gilded Rosie’s hand as she knocked on the schoolroom door. From inside the small frame building she could hear high-pitched voices lifted in song. When the accompanying guitar hit a discordant twang, the choir dissolved into giggles.

  “Good afternoon, Miss Kingsley,” Mr. Kilgore said, none too warmly. “You are late for our meeting.”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” Rosie replied. “My services were unexpectedly required at Harvey House.”

  He pondered for a moment. “I’m afraid a meeting is no longer necessary. After discussing your request with my wife, I concluded that your services will not be required here.”

  “But why not? I’m qualified, and you need a teacher.”

  Mr. Kilgore stepped outside and spoke in a low voice. “Miss Kingsley, you have neither a teaching license nor any professional recommendations. You have no training and no experience at all.”

  “But I shall obtain the license as soon as possible. As for experience, how am I to acquire it unless someone like you is willing to employ me? I have the education, the dedication and above all the sincere desire to become a teacher.”

  His face softening, Mr. Kilgore tipped his head. “I appreciate your enthusiasm, Miss Kingsley, but you lack one other attribute I have decided to insist on for any teacher in the town of Raton, New Mexico. A husband.”

  “A husband?”

  “A local man with steady employment. In the short time since I opened this school, I’ve lost both my teachers to the lure of matrimony. With all the railway men, homesteaders and cowboys in town—each one eager to find a wife—I wager every Harvey Girl will be wed within the year. Wed and gone.”

  “I have no intention of marrying, sir,” Rosie responded hotly. “I can assure you of that.”

  “A woman as fetching as you? With those big brown eyes, I daresay you’ll have your choice of husbands. I’m sorry, Miss Kingsley, but you’re too great a risk. Good afternoon.”

  He bowed, backed into his classroom and shut the door on Rosie’s dreams.

  For a long time she stood on the porch and listened to the children reciting multiplication tables. She could never admit she already had a husband. And a fiancé, for that matter. Of course Dr. Lowell would be loath to marry her now. Her desertion would have placed him in a perilous social position. It may even have endangered his professional standing. But she had never loved him or any other man…except Bart.

  Plenty of men in Raton had made passes at Rosie, asked her to dance and escorted her to picnics. Wanting to seem like the other girls, she had gone along with these attentions to some degree. But she had always pushed away any serious advances with the excuse that eventually she wanted to become a teacher—and good teachers were always single!

  Perhaps if she truly wanted a husband, she could bat her eyelashes and secure one in no time flat. But what a price to pay for a teaching position. Not for anything in the world would Rosie trade away her freedom.

  As she headed for the Harvey House, she studied the townsmen delivering goods to the mercentiles, swabbing saloon floors, marching in and out of banks and driving cattle to the stock corrals by the depot. None of them had the broad-shouldered, rugged physique of the one man Rosie actually might have considered allowing on the fringes of her life.

  Bart Kingsley was gone. She had no doubt of it. The town felt empty to her, devoid of the presence she felt sure she would sense were he there.

  With a sigh she climbed onto the porch of the Harvey House and fixed her eyes on the distant blue mesas. She didn’t want Dr. Lowell for a husband. She didn’t want a cowboy or a railwayman either. Even if she wanted Bart, she couldn’t have him, and she might as well accept that she never would. Now she had lost her chance at the teaching job.

  As the first dinner train whistled through the distant pass, Rosie molded her lips into the Harvey smile and hurried to her station in the dining room.

  Chapter Six

  Any small hope Rosie might have held that Bart was in town faded as the days turned into weeks, and the month of April headed for May. Raton came to life with sweet wild grasses that greened the patchy yards around newly white-washed clapboard houses. Lilacs, roses and violets brought from the east blossomed among budding native piñon, aspen, juniper and cottonwood trees.

  True to Mr. Kilgore’s prediction, spring fever took its toll. One of the girls up and married a cowboy from the J. R. Jones ranch, and she moved out of the Harvey House to take up her new job raising hogs. Another fell in love with a brakeman from Chicago who wanted to marry her and take her back to the big city. But she was also crazy about a welder from C. A. Fox’s hardware and tin shop, who aimed to make her his wife and settle her in a quaint little house in town. Etta and Stefan Braun failed to keep their romance a secret, and Mrs. Jensen was in favor of firing them both. It was only Tom Gable—who knew he couldn’t find a better chef than the young German—who kept them employed at the house.

  Rosie dragged herself to town picnics, horse races and egg hunts with the rest of the Harvey Girls, but it was all she could do to keep her chin up. One afternoon, the sheriff dropped by with some news for the coffee drinkers in the Harvey House lunchroom. The Pinkerton agency had sent word that Bart Kingsley had been rounded up in Albuquerque and carted back to Missouri to face the judge. He’d be hanged, Sheriff Bowman assured anyone who asked him. A man with a record as black as that outlaw’s would be left gargling on a rope for sure.

  So that was the end of that. Rosie had to accept it. Bart Kingsley really was no good after all. He had come into her life twice, toyed with her twice and left her twice. Not only that, but she had also been fool enough to believe everything he had told her—twice. All his sweet words and gentle ways had been a sham. His tender touch had served his own selfish aims. How she had managed to fall for such a man twice, Rosie would never understand. She certainly wouldn’t let herself act so harebrained ever again.

  In fact, as April wound to a close, Rosie decided she would pursue her goal of teaching just as she had planned. She had heard rumors that Mr. Kilgore had not yet filled his vacant position. If the resolution to extend the school year passed during the coming election, he would be in need of a teacher.

  And if not Mr. Kilgore, one of the other school owners in town might be looking for a determined young spinster, though her inquiries at the other schools had come to nothing.

  Still hopeful, Rosie scheduled an appointment with the district school board in Springer, hours away by rail. One Friday, she used her free vacation train pass to travel south to Springer where she sat for examination.

  “You have passed with distinction, Miss Kingsley,” the commissioner announced as he handed her a crisp certificate that afternoon after she had sat through five hours of grueling questions. “Any school in the district would be proud to employ you.”

  All the way back to Raton on the train, those words curled through Rosie’s thoughts. As the engine struggled up the mountains, her determination grew. She would not think about Bart any longer—no matter that he was locked away in a Missouri jail. No, she would set her sights on that teaching job. Mr. Kilgore’s school had the finest reputation in the area, and with her exemplary performance on the exam, she would secure a position there.

  The moment the train whistled into town, Rosie smoothed and dusted her city skirts, descended onto the depot platform and marched straight to First Street. By the time she turned onto Second Street, her heart was pumping harder than it had the whole time she’d been facing the school board. She climbed the schoolhouse steps, tucked stray wisps of hair into her knot and knocked on the front door.

  “Ah, Miss Kingsley,” Mr. Kilgore said at the door. “Again.”

  “Yes, sir.” Rosie handed him
the document. “I passed the examination.”

  “My goodness, these are high marks,” he commented as he studied the certificate. “Mathematics, Latin, history, geography, grammar. Even French. Well done.”

  “Mr. Kilgore, will you please reconsider my application for a teaching position?”

  He chuckled lightly. “Persistence is indeed a virtue. But, Miss Kingsley, I am assailed by doubts. I simply won’t hire another unmarried woman. Why don’t you take your certificate back to Kansas City and teach there?”

  “I’ve made my home here,” she protested. “I belong to a church, I have friends, I’m part of a community I love. I’ve put my savings in Raton’s bank and I’ve proven myself a reliable worker here. Why do you ask me to start all over when you need a teacher?”

  “I don’t know that the school election will pass, Miss Kingsley. I’m sorry, my dear. Truly, I am.”

  Once again, he shut the door on Rosie. She stood outside, fingers gripping her skirt and jaw clenched against threatening tears.

  “I will have that job, Mr. Kilgore,” she whispered over the lump in her throat. “I will have it.”

  Discouraged but undaunted, Rosie hurried back to the Harvey House and climbed the stairs to her room. Having taken the day off for her trip to Springer, she still had several hours to herself while the other girls waited on the dinner-train passengers. Even though she had thought the free time would be a blessing, she discovered that her mind insisted on traveling down a wayward track.

  As she sat on her chair by the window, Rosie couldn’t keep back the memories of those hours she had spent with Bart. How badly she had been fooled! He had told her he’d come to Raton to find her, that she had been the one bright spot in his life. And so she had doctored his wound, fed him, boarded him and clothed him. Then he had taken his new haircut and his new shirt and gone away again.

  They had spent such a short time together, but Rosie knew she would never be the same. In those brief hours with Bart, she had fallen under his old spell. She had trusted every word from his lying lips. She had trembled at the sight of his now-so-masculine physique.