“Yeah, you pulled the trigger on Jesse. That sets you real high in some people’s books.”
Bob frowned. “For your information, Injun, I am famous. I’m makin’ a name for myself as the man who shot the most wanted outlaw in the United States of America. Once I get rollin’, folks will line up and pay good money just to get a gander at me. I’m fixin’ to get plumb rich off my reputation.”
“Well, why don’t you get your famous hide out of Raton and take it someplace where people care.”
“Now, watch how you talk in front of the lady, Injun.” At this, Bob guffawed, and his two companions joined in the laughter. Sobering after a moment, the outlaw nodded at Rosie. “Don’t worry, Miz Kingsley. We ain’t gonna cause you no trouble. We just got tired of Las Vegas and thought we’d head over your way to visit a spell. Ain’t that right, boys?”
“Tired of gettin’ run out of places on account of your famous reputation, Ford,” one of them countered. Then he tipped his grimy hat at Rosie. “They call me Snort, and this here’s Fancy. Pleased to meet ya, Miz Kingsley.”
Rosie gave the two men a quick scrutiny. Snort, a skinny, brown-haired fellow with a big nose and an enormous walrus mustache, wore a pair of six-shooters strapped to his thighs and cradled a rifle in his arms. Fancy, the dirtiest, greasiest, smelliest man Rosie had ever laid eyes on, had a mane of thick black hair and a stomach twice the size of his hips.
“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” she greeted them in as polite a tone as she could muster. “Bart, I’d like to speak with you a moment, please.”
“Better do what the lady says, Injun,” Bob admonished.
Accompanied by derisive laughter, Bart took Rosie by the elbow. As soon as he had propelled her outside, he placed his big hands on her shoulders.
“I want you to stay away from the homestead, Rosie,” he said firmly. “Don’t even think about going anywhere near it. Ford’s not having much success at cashing in on killing Jesse, and he may be on the dodge from the law. I suspect the boys want to hide out at our place a few days, but I’ll run ’em off as quick as I can.”
“Bart, that man could ruin you!”
“My reputation’s the least of it, girl. No telling what these fellows have up their sleeves.”
“But what if the law finds you? They’ll take you away to Missouri and they’ll hang you.”
“Rosie, don’t you remember what we said about Jesus? He said we’re not to worry. Now I want you to stop frettin’. I know how Ford operates, so let me handle this. Go back to the school and act like nothing’s going on. I’ll let the boys ride out to the homestead and stay with me for a couple of days. I’ll feed ’em and let ’em rest, and then I’ll send ’em packing. It’ll be all right. But I don’t want you around, hear? They’re rough men. Killers.”
“Oh, Bart!”
“They’re not going to kill me, Rosie. I’m their pal.” He shook his head and studied the cloudless sky for a moment. “God help me, I’m their pal.”
“Bart, there are things I need to talk to you about. Important things. I need to tell you—”
“We’ll talk later, darlin’. Now go on, before Ford and his sidewinder buddies get itchy feet.”
He gave her a little push that sent her down the ramp. On the platform she turned to call him, but he had vanished back inside the stable. Breathless, she stood immobilized for a moment as passengers and baggage boys scurried around her. As she stepped onto the street, the stable’s side door slid open, and four men on horseback thundered down the ramp. As they galloped out of town in a cloud of dust, Rosie realized that one of them was Bart.
Having blamed her tardy return on the doctor visit, Rosie managed to get through the rest of the school day. She claimed an illness she truly felt, and the Kilgores were more than happy to put her up for the night. The next few days, however, were an endless torment.
Rosie couldn’t concentrate on the lessons she was teaching. Bart promised to come for her, but he didn’t, and she feared the cause of his absence. Each day, Rosie went to the livery to see if Bart had been at work there. The stable owner told her he hadn’t seen or heard from her husband. As much as the man hated to lose Bart, he’d been forced to hire a replacement.
If Rosie had briefly dreamed of a happy family—herself, Bart and their baby—she squelched that image the moment she realized the seriousness of her situation. The men who had invaded her life were outlaws. Killers, Bart had said.
And although Bart had denied it, Bob Ford was famous. There wasn’t a soul in the territory who hadn’t heard of the killing of Jesse James by a member of his own gang. If Bob Ford made Bart’s true identity known in town, that would be the end of everything the two of them had worked so hard to build.
Sick at heart, Rosie drew the curtains in her classroom on a hot Friday afternoon after the children had gone home for the weekend. The blue light dampened the usual cheer that seemed to settle in the quiet room at the end of every day. After putting away her texts, she drew her summer shawl around her shoulders and tried once again to figure out what Bart was doing and why he had not come for her.
Had he been too worried about exposing himself to return to town? She knew he wouldn’t easily give up the livery stable job that had supported them so well, not when the sugar beets were still so many weeks from harvest. What if he had been kidnapped by those outlaws and forced to participate in some heinous crime—a bank robbery or train holdup? What if he’d been obliged to shoot someone? Straightening desks as she circled the room, Rosie made her way to the door.
What if Bart wasn’t even at their homestead anymore? Maybe the lure of the old life had drawn him away. What if he’d gone off and left the cows swollen with milk and the chickens unfed?
Bart wouldn’t do a thing like that…would he? As she locked the schoolroom door, Rosie tried to swallow down her greatest fear. What if Bob Ford had killed Bart? He might have shot Bart to get the money they’d buried beneath the cottonwood tree by the stream…or lynched him for refusing to go along with him and his boys on some outlaw scheme…or stabbed him in an argument.
If Bob Ford would shoot Jesse James in the back of the head for reward money, what would keep him from doing the same to Bart? Dead or alive, Bart was worth fifty dollars!
“Dear God, please don’t let him be dead,” Rosie prayed as she left the school yard. “Please keep him alive, and show me how to reach him. And please help me to stop worrying!”
She had been so preoccupied—with the baby, the effort to conduct her lessons with some semblance of normalcy and her anxiety about Bart—that she hadn’t sorted through everything clearly. Now as she stepped onto the porch of the Kilgores’ home, Rosie felt a sudden certainty stab her heart.
Bart was dead—killed for the fifty-dollar reward!
Propelled by dread, she rushed into the kitchen and grabbed Mr. Kilgore’s rifle from the top of the cupboard. Just as Mrs. Kilgore was descending the stairs, Rosie ran out the back door. In minutes, she hitched up her buggy, climbed onto the seat and urged the horse into a trot.
“Mrs. Springfield!” Mrs. Kilgore called from the kitchen door. “What’s the matter? Where are you going?”
Rosie turned briefly and gave the kind woman a wave. “I’m going home, Mrs. Kilgore! If I’m not back Monday morning, send a deputy out to the homestead.”
“A deputy? Oh, my!”
But Rosie’s buggy was already rounding the corner and rolling out of town. The mild-mannered mare couldn’t know what had gotten into her mistress as Rosie worked the reins like a madwoman along the rutted trail. The buggy bounced and jounced into ruts and over hummocks. Rosie’s hair tumbled from its knot, fell around her shoulders and slid down her back. Her stomach began to ache, tighten and cramp.
Unwilling to slow her pace, she urged the horse up the bumpy track. The buggy seat swayed, its springs tossing her this way and that. Perspiration streamed down Rosie’s temples. Her dress dampened and her corset poked her ribs and pelvis. The cramping in he
r stomach increased, but she couldn’t stop.
“Bart,” she cried as she guided the mare up the last hill toward the dugout. “Bart, please, please don’t be dead!”
When the buggy crested the rise, she could see lamplight through the paper window panes. The sight calmed her a little, but she kept the horse at a canter until the buggy was almost to the dugout.
At the sound of the wagon and the mare’s hooves, the front door swung open and three men emerged. “Rosie!”
She recognized him right away, although the slanting late-evening sunlight revealed only his silhouette. “Bart, thank God! You’re alive!”
Pulling back on the reins, she drew the buggy to a halt and set the brake.
“Rosie, why are you here? I told you to stay away.” Even though his words admonished her, Bart’s voice was soft with relief. He held out his arms, and Rosie slipped down into them.
“I was so worried about you, Bart,” she said as she hugged him close. “You told me you would come back to town, but you didn’t. Your boss gave your job away to somebody else. I’ve been sick with fear.”
“Aw, Rosie.” He held her away and studied her face. “I told you not to worry. Everything’s going to be all right.”
“How can you say that? Those men are still here. You’ve lost your job. And I’m…I’m…” Convulsing with a sudden sharp pain, she bent over double.
“Rosie? What is it?”
“Bart, I’m sick. I…I need to lie down. Take me inside.”
“Oh, darlin’, not again.” He picked her up in his arms and pushed past Fancy and Snort, who had been gawking. “Get your lousy hides down there and put a clean blanket on the bed,” Bart barked at the two men, who shuffled into the house.
“Well, if it ain’t the missus.” Bob Ford rose from the little table Bart had built. Swaying, he held up a half-empty whiskey bottle. “’Bout time we had a woman to entertain us.”
“Shut up, Ford,” Bart growled. “Rosie’s sick.”
“Sick? How’re we gonna have a fandango with a sick woman? I’m in the mood to kick up my heels and I sure ain’t gonna do it with you, Injun.”
Bart ignored him and laid Rosie gently on the rumpled blanket. He knelt beside her and took her hand in his. “What’s ailing you, Rosie?”
“Oh, Bart,” she whispered. “My stomach hurts. It really hurts. You may have to fetch Dr. Kohlhouser.”
His green eyes narrowed. “Fetch the doc? Rosie, what’s wrong?”
Biting her lip against the pain, she looked away. How could she tell him about their baby in the midst of such chaos? In the past three days, their tidy little home had been turned upside down. The table was littered with empty whiskey bottles. The floor was buried under an inch of dust and trash. The room smelled of rotting food, liquor and unwashed men.
“Rosie?” Bart repeated as he laid a hand on her shoulder.
When she looked at him again, what she saw startled her. Gone was the clean-shaven man whose broad shoulders haunted her dreams. Bart looked almost as bad as he had the day he’d crawled out from under her bed at the Harvey House dormitory. His chambray shirt and denims were stained. His hair hadn’t been washed or combed, and he couldn’t have had a bath in days.
“Bart, what’s happened to you?”
“Me? I’m fine. It’s you I’m worried about.” He rubbed the backs of her hands with his thumbs. “Listen, you just rest now. I’ll brew you a pot of tea. How’s that?”
“I don’t want tea, Bart. Why haven’t you shaved?”
He frowned. “I haven’t been thinking about shaving, Rosie. That’s the last thing on my mind.”
“How many of those empty bottles are you responsible for?”
He turned his head, as if seeing the mess for the first time. “None. The boys have been here three days, and they…well, this is how it always is. This is how we live.”
“But not you,” she murmured. “Not anymore. Right? Have you milked the cows and fed my chickens?”
“Yes, Rosie.”
“What about the sugar beets?”
Smoothing a hand over her damp brow, he gazed down at her. “Why don’t you get some rest, darlin’? It’s plain you’re overwrought.”
“I am not overwrought!” She rose up on her elbows. “Just look at my house. You and those criminals have made a pigsty of it.”
“Now, Rosie,” he whispered, attempting to calm her. “I’ve been working as hard as I can to…um…get along with Bob and the fellers. Would you just settle back until they’re ready to leave?”
“I’ll run them off myself. Hand me that rifle.”
Before she could climb out of bed, Bart took her shoulders and pressed her back onto the pillow. “Rest, Rosie,” he commanded. “We’ll work things out in the morning.”
Cramping again, she curled up into a ball of pain as he returned to the table where the others were engaged in a hand of poker. Rosie buried her face in the pillow to keep from crying out. What if she lost the baby? How awful to feel the tiny life torn from her body!
Forcing herself to breathe deeply, Rosie tried to find peace in her misery. Bart was alive, she reminded herself. The house was still standing. The crops were in the field, and the stock had been cared for. Maybe things weren’t so bad.
But just look at her home. Rosie gave the room another quick study before shutting her eyes again in dismay. If the house was disturbing, the conversation that drifted her way was worse.
“I reckon we’re about two jumps ahead of that low-down Las Vegas sheriff,” Bob Ford was saying. “Whatcha think, Snort?”
“That posse was campin’ on our trail till we had saddle sores.” He took a swig of whiskey, then struck a match on his boot and lit up a cheroot. “Anyhow, I suspect we lost ‘em. Nobody’s gonna guess we came thisaway.”
“Who’d ever want to wet his whistle in this rat’s nest?”
“Hey, watch what you say about my abode,” Bart put in as he slapped a card onto the table. “Raton may have been named for a varmint with yellow teeth and a hankering for cheese, but it’s been comfort to me.”
“Sure,” Fancy said with a laugh. “You got yerself a female to warm yer blanket. I’d settle down for a while, too, if I had me some purty lips to kiss at the end of the day.”
The men chuckled, and Bart glanced over his shoulder. “That little gal is as sweet as barnyard milk, if you want the truth, boys. We’re making a home here, and I aim to live the rest of my life inside the law.”
“Aw, sure you are,” Bob chuckled. “Injun, you wouldn’t know the law if it hit you upside the head. Your name don’t exactly tally with the Bible, and I reckon you’re just wastin’ the talents the Devil gave you, sittin’ out here on this mesa.”
“Quit your jawing, Ford.” Scowling, Bart glanced at Rosie again, then lowered his voice. “Anybody ever told you you’re mouthy?”
“I reckon Jesse might have, and look what it got him.”
The room fell silent. As the pain in her stomach gradually subsided, Rosie listened to the sound of cards being flipped onto the table and the swish of liquor in the bottles as the men swilled it. Finally Fancy gave a loud, gusty belch as if to announce that he was ready to change the subject.
“So, what about the Sante Fe line, Injun?” he asked. “You reckon we could pull us off a good one?”
“What? You’re joshing me.”
“No, I ain’t. The minute Bob heard you was in Raton, he says, ‘Injun’ll have what we need to know about the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe, and we’ll make us some dineros. Let’s head on over there and find Injun and have us a good time.’ Ain’t that right, Bob?”
“Now that you mention it, I did say something like that. So why don’t you tell us what you know, Injun? With the trains hauling passenger cars up the pass, we ought to have an easy time pulling off a job on one of them slow movers.”
Rosie watched through a cloud of gray smoke as Bart tossed his cards on the table and leaned back in his chair. “I’m not a train
robber anymore, fellers. You might as well get that set in your noggins right off. I’m not going to get myself strung up for aiding and abetting neither.”
“You gone yeller on us, Injun?” Snort jeered.
“I’m no coward. I just made up my mind to go straight.”
“Straight as a snake in a cactus patch. What’s the matter? You plannin’ a deal on yer own, Injun? Don’t you want to cut us in?”
“I’m telling you, Snort. I’m not interested.”
“You tryin’ to say yer plannin’ to dig sugar beets till yer gray and wrinkled?”
“Naw, he’s just airin’ his lungs,” Fancy said. “Come on, Injun. Yer the best gunman this side of the Mississippi. What you got up yer sleeve?”
Bart gave a yawn and scooted his chair back from the table. “What I got up my sleeve is a good woman and one hundred sixty acres of land so quiet I can hear daylight coming.”
“Can’t hardly beat that,” Snort said.
“To add to it, I got decent food to eat, a sturdy horse and enough religion to set my soul at ease. No sheriff’s breathing down my back, no posse’s licking at my trail and my tail’s not saddle sore from churning up the dust for weeks at a time. I got honest work, honest pay and a warm bed to come home to at night. And if you boys will excuse me, I’m aiming to settle myself in with my lady right now.”
“I’ll be cussed if I don’t think he means it,” Fancy declared as he watched Bart head for the dressing screen.
“He’s a little addlepated is all,” Ford said, gathering up the playing cards. “A female will ruin a good man ever’ time if she gets half a chance. Leave it to me to set him straight. Come on, fellers, let’s roll out and get some sleep.”
Rosie watched as the men kicked aside whiskey bottles and tossed saddle blankets on the bare floor. In a moment Bart pulled back the edge of the quilt, slipped into the bed beside her and drew his hands up her arms and over her shoulders.
“I missed you, Rosie-girl,” he whispered in her ear. “If you’re still awake, I want you to know I’m sorry you got scared and rushed out here looking for me. I couldn’t come back to town. I couldn’t get away from them, see?” He let out a deep sigh. “I wish you weren’t so sick over things all the time. You’ve got to trust God that it’ll turn out okay, hear?”
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