by Linda Broday
“Yes, you simply must tell us all about life in New Orleans. We hear it’s quite sinful. And we packed the most scrumptious fried chicken you’ve ever eaten.”
Glory moved down the church steps and watched Bess tug Dr. Dalton in the direction of a shady elm her family had staked out.
During the summer months, Sundays were always dinner on the ground, literally. Custom dictated everyone bring plenty of food, and once the sermon ended, spread cloths on the grass. The gala occasion to eat and socialize broke the monotony of their mundane lives.
The varied shapes and colors reminded Glory of the friendship patchwork quilt Grandmother Day left behind when she took up residence on the other side.
Except the friendship part would’ve been misleading. The social circle shunned the Day family.
Glory hurried to their spot, apart from the others to help her mother unfold their best damask tablecloth. A lump stuck in her throat to watch her mother take great pains in hiding the hole at one end. Apart from the others, her mother unfolded her best damask tablecloth, taking great pains to hide the hole. Hope carried the lunch basket from the wagon while Squirt bossed. Glory had much more pressing things in mind than feeding her stomach. Besides, with panic whipping up a froth inside, nothing would stay put anyway. She headed down Santa Anna’s main street.
“Where you going?” Patience caught her arm. “Ain’t you gonna have lunch? Mama’s got it all spread.”
‘“Ain’t’ isn’t a word. You know that. You’re getting too big to keep spouting poor English.” She deliberately lengthened her stride.
“Other people say it.” Patience skipped happily along.
“Mama doesn’t allow it. You should know better.”
“You’re just being a meanie or you’d come sit with us.”
Goodness gracious. She ground her teeth to keep from saying something she’d regret. “I’m not interested in eating.”
“But where you going?”
“Crazy, that’s where I’m headed if you don’t quit pestering me. Now get your little self back to Mama and Hope.”
“I bet you’re gonna go see Mr. Luke. I saw him ride by the church. You’re sweet on him. I know you are.”
She froze in her tracks, glaring at the pigtailed pest.
“Why you would think that, I’ve no idea. I’m merely taking a walk and it’s none of your business where.” Anger that Patience hit on the truth made her lash out. “For the last time, please do as you’re told. I’ll see you later.”
There went that pout.
“I’ll tell Mama on you.”
“I don’t care. Just scat.”
Tears sparkled in her baby sister’s eyes. Darn! She’d only meant to be insistent. She draped an arm around Patience’s neck and kissed her cheek.
“I’m sorry. Hey, you know what? I’ll bet that new girl, Josephine, would love to be your friend. Why don’t you invite her to eat with you? Maybe she’ll come play sometime if you tell her all about Miss Minnie, Mr. George, and the babies.”
“You really think so?” The girl wiped her face.
“Sure do. She’ll see what a fun playmate you are.”
“But will you be back soon?”
“I promise.” She kissed the freckled cheek. “I won’t take long.”
Truth to tell, it would take only a few seconds to have their hopes and dreams turn into a wisp of smoke. One glimpse of Perkins’s dead body and everything would crash around them.
Patience skipped toward the church. The poor darling was starved for a friend her age. Glory hoped the new girl took to her. Being an older sister, in addition to mother and father, sure carried a lot of responsibility—most of which she failed miserably at.
Unease clutched her when she turned back down the street.
How did Patience know she had feelings for McClain?
She’d dared write those secrets in her journal only after everyone went to bed. Her heart skipped a beat.
Come to think of it, she hadn’t seen the book since getting home at daybreak yesterday morning. The chores hadn’t given her a chance to look though.
Sweet on him? She had fought tooth and toenail against leaving Luke. She could help him if he’d let her. If he couldn’t rejoin the Rangers soon…
You take away a man’s purpose, you take his soul, leaving an empty shell. Purpose and soul went together.
Even though she told herself he hadn’t meant to kiss her, she couldn’t stop the glow the remembrance brought.
The moonlight.
The man of her dreams.
The magic of his touch.
Then, as now, her lips ached for more. He’d almost given in a second before he helped her onto Caesar’s back. Temptation lingered in his eyes until his good sense took over and he realized whose favors he’d sampled. Didn’t take a genius or the light of day to see the mistake on his face. Night couldn’t hide that.
Good heavens! She couldn’t believe she had kicked him.
She groaned aloud. Despite ignorance of the fine art of courting—not that she’d call what happened courting, mind you, and not having knowledge of the etiquette involved in such—kicking the suitor had to rank close to the top of the list of worst possible blunders.
He must’ve thought her the most priggish woman ever born. Blast! A second chance might never come again.
If it didn’t? How could she make that one kiss last for a lifetime? And how could she pretend it hadn’t meant so much?
At that moment, she spied Luke’s horse. Worry multiplied. She set a pace to match her pulse.
* * *
Luke squinted into the bright sun. It figured Glory would waste no time.
Stabbing pain returned with the knowledge she’d trailed him to the campsite for monetary reasons alone. Nothing else. She’d made it clear. Even so, he understood. Desperation tended to harden the softest heart.
She now marched as if Glory-bound and daring Satan to step into her path.
Dread swelled in his belly until it squeezed out room for hope or dreaming. The taste in his mouth reminded him of the nasty doses of Professor Low’s Liniment and Worm Syrup his mother used to poke down him. Only that would be an improvement over this.
Damn! He’d rather face the business end of a forty-five than the bitter pill he had to force her to swallow.
It didn’t matter what this had done to his plans. He reckoned he could live without the job he’d give his right arm for. Glory and her family’s needs far outweighed his. And on the bright side, at least Max could rest easier in his grave.
By the time he entertained the notion of hiding, she’d already reached the stables. The sharp snap of her skirt against those long legs mimicked the sound of gunshots.
He prayed for a whizzing, deadly bullet to fly out of the air and end his misery. He wasn’t that lucky. Suddenly, the honeysuckle-and-deep-regret posse surrounded him. No escape.
“I watched you ride past the church.” Raw fear probably made her voice husky, her words cracked.
Just like his heart.
Glory glanced toward the body on the barn floor and clutched her mouth. “Who? What?”
“Howdy, Miss Glory.” George Simon waved from a stall near the back. Rarely did Horace’s father, the town’s blacksmith, darken church doors. The man worked seven days a week.
“Afternoon, George.”
She turned a sickly green.
Luke took her elbow. “Let’s go outside.”
The shade of a live oak beckoned. A breeze cleared his nostrils of manure and decaying flesh. Of course, that merely left him open to the fresh assault of a different nature.
“That’s Perkins in there…isn’t it?”
He worked his tongue, hoping for a bit of moisture. Sweet-smelling flowers and stonewashed eyes. A lethal combination.
The panic sitting in them now made them more blue than the deepest ocean. And a thousand times more unsafe. A fellow could drown in them if he didn’t watch out. There had to be worse things that could happen.
“McClain?”
He hauled his thoughts from the danger.
“I wish… Damn!” He stared miserably at the toes of his boots.
“You didn’t have to kill him. You knew we had to bring him in alive to collect the reward. How could you?” The quiver in her voice amplified her disappointment.
Reproach sat heavily between them. He couldn’t look at her, couldn’t bear to see the defeat in her pretty eyes.
“If you think I’d do that, then you don’t know me very well.” Luke lifted his hat and ran his fingers through his hair before jamming the sweat-stained Stetson back on his head. “Found him hanging from a tree, the body still warm. He hadn’t been there long when I cut him down.”
“I didn’t mean what I said. I’m just so tired of carrying this load.”
“If only I’d gotten there a few minutes earlier.” He jammed a hand into his pocket and gripped Max’s tin star. Though he tried, he couldn’t keep the anger or the sarcasm from charging in. “That’s the story of my life. Always too late. Never there when it counts.”
Doomed to be second best. Not only to his big brother, Duel, not only to law work, but second to love as well.
Glory touched his arm. He dared a glance and found the forlorn sadness he’d expected. But not defeat. Pride and more than a glimmer of determination blazed. A marvelous thing had the situation not been so grim.
“Seems I’m forever accusing.” She swung away.
The soft swish of her faded Sunday dress and the brilliant gold of her hair caressed by the sun’s rays worsened the ache that ran all the way down to his boots. What he wouldn’t give to make her his own. But what could he ask her to share? Disgrace and poverty didn’t entice too many ladies.
“What do we do now?”
Her murmur almost got lost before it reached him.
He left the hunk of metal in his pocket when he withdrew his hand. He shrugged his shoulders, afraid to trust his voice.
Glory answered her own question. “You know, we’ll survive. Don’t have an inkling how, but we will. It’s you I’m worried about. How can you go on without your North Star to guide you?”
His North Star? That she would be more concerned about him than where her family laid their heads renewed his faith.
If Glory could see a speck of hope in the situation, he could rise above despair as well. One man had the information he needed; surely there were others.
And he didn’t quite know how, but he’d darn well make sure she kept her home. Some way.
“Reckon I’ll just follow the sun and the moon until I find it again. Shouldn’t be too hard. Besides, I’m used to things not being the way they should. Wouldn’t know any other way.”
He edged toward her until his boots brushed the hem of her dress. Her eyes widened, yet she didn’t move a muscle. The heady scent of her might as well have been hot lead. Her nearness rendered him incapable of hearing the warning his heart tried to send.
This light-headed, woozy sensation mystified him. Not possible. He didn’t love anyone but Jessie. He’d sworn it beneath a moonlit Texas sky after he’d carved her name on a tree trunk.
But yet, he had this strange yearning to taste another’s lips. The pestering thought held on, refusing to let go. He lowered his head into the scented, silky web.
Never had he thought he’d fall into a snare so willingly or with such pleasure.
Patience hollered from across the street. “Glory! Mama said for you to get your fanny back to the church.”
Twelve
Glory silently cussed a blue streak. A fly in the ointment again. Patience couldn’t find an end to her meddling.
“Yoo-hoo, Mr. Luke!”
Squirt skipped toward them, her arms flapping. A thousand wonders she didn’t take flight. It wasn’t from lack of trying. Glory decided the girl with glossy brown curls keeping pace beside her had to be none other than Josephine Sagen.
Luke’s breath tickled her ear.
Mere inches away, a wry grin flitted across his features, revealing his white teeth, before vanishing. The day-old stubble and the smell of campfire lingered much too close for comfort. Her stomach lurched with the same bittersweet pain.
“A smudge on your face.”
He brushed her jaw with the lightest of fingertips before stepping away.
Embarrassment crawled up her spine. His sole interest appeared relegated to a blob of dirt she’d managed to collect. Simple as that. Humiliation penetrated her poor befuddled brain. She must’ve sat through church with a grimy spot shining away. Proud as punch. Folks probably thought she hadn’t washed in God knows when.
Heat stung her cheeks. No wonder Bess and Amelia had given her a shove. An inward groan rumbled in her throat.
Hellfire and damnation!
The new doctor probably thought her the town’s poor chimney sweep. What an impression she’d made, including just now.
Remembering the tears her hasty words had brought to her sister’s eyes earlier, Glory softened her admonishment. “I asked you to leave me be, honey.”
Patience shrugged. “Just doing what Mama said. Cain’t blame me.”
“Hey there, Punkin. Who you got with you?” If Luke wasn’t so friendly to the chatterbox, she’d quit being a bother. Didn’t he know Patience took his warm smile as encouragement?
“This is Josie. She’s my new best friend.”
“Glad to meet you, Josie.” He offered his hand to Patience’s friend. “You just move here?”
“Yessir.”
Just when Glory thought the emotions twisting this way and that couldn’t get any worse, a glow slowly rose from her chest. That Luke could make even small, lonely girls believe he’d been waiting in this spot just to speak with them complemented his character. How could she have thought ill of him?
Sudden tears hovered. She would never let him know she misinterpreted his friendly nature as anything else. She turned to take her battered dignity back to the church and ran into Charlie Gimble. The rumpled tablet in his hand played tag with the wind.
“Afternoon, Glory. Young ladies.” The man cast them an ink-stained smile. Glory grimly thought if he’d arrived a few minutes earlier, they could’ve compared smudges.
With pencil poised, Charlie turned to Luke. “Are you McClain?”
“Could be.” Luke walked toward the stable.
“Wait. I heard you have a story.”
“News travels faster’n a herd of young cow ponies. Reckon you’d be the local newsmonger.”
Charlie remained unfazed. “In the flesh. This ol’ nose can smell a headline a mile away.”
“Do tell.” Luke arched an eyebrow. “I’d hate like heck to disappoint you. Nothing to report.”
Patience giggled. “Oh, Mr. Luke. It’s all over town how you brought in Mad Dog Perkins.” The girl favored Charlie with elevated importance. “I know it’s true, Mr. Gimble. He told me he’s a lawman. Mr. Luke could’ve captured Perkins a lot sooner if Glory hadn’t shot him in the leg.”
Glory dodged the startled glance her longtime friend lobbed her way by finding that her shoes needed a good dusting and couldn’t wait another second.
Murdering would be too good. The meddling child stuck out her tongue, completely unconcerned.
No doubt Charlie would want full details of her accidental debacle at the earliest opportunity. Something she wasn’t ready to divulge. If those facts came out, she didn’t see how she could keep Luke’s secret. The newspaperman had the skills of a bloodhound.
“Mad Dog Perkins, eh?” Charlie eyeballed Luke over the top of the horn-rims perched on the end of his nose and scribbled something on t
he pad. “You kill him, McClain? And for the record, what kind of lawman are you?”
Luke’s anger flashed. “You tell me, since everyone seems to know more than I do.”
That sister of hers had opened a can of worms. How to put the lid back on without spilling them would take fancy footwork.
“Just doing my job. Folks look to me for information.”
“Charlie, all you need to know is that McClain found Mad Dog Perkins strung up in a tree. As the Christian thing to do, he cut him down and brought him in. That’s every bit of his involvement.” She accepted Luke’s silent thanks for attempting to lure the editor down another path.
“Kinda cut-and-dried, isn’t it?”
“That’s the way of it. I hope you’re not one who shades the truth to peddle your papers.”
Luke had added flint to this warning.
Charlie blustered. “I take offense to that, mister. I’m an honest newsman. Don’t have any need to print lies.”
“He didn’t mean you’d stoop to that, Charlie,” Glory said hurriedly to soothe his ruffled feathers. “Whoever helped Perkins meet his Maker is a mystery to us. Not that it should shock a body. Half the folks in the county would love to take credit. The rotten man gave skunks a bad name.”
“I agree. No one should raise objections to making sure thanks go to the right person.” Like a dog after a bone, Charlie wouldn’t let go. “What kind of lawman are you?”
Patience opened her mouth, but before a word could spew forth, Glory gripped her arm.
“Ow!”
“He’s the sort you don’t want to mess with.” Glory slipped her arm through Charlie’s, ignoring the fact that her dress swished against a streak of ink on his britches leg. A little more dirt wouldn’t hurt her, she reckoned. She’d already ruined what little reputation she had. “It’s not important. You know, I’ll bet you haven’t eaten lunch. Mama and Hope have brought a whole basket of food.”
Gimble tried to swivel back to Luke. “McClain, would you know anything about the rash of stage robberies?”
Glory tugged him toward the throng at the church. “I know you’re dying for a piece of Hope’s mince pie.”