The Rustler

by Linda Lael Miller

  “I think he wants Wyatt,” Owen said wisely. “He’s homesick.”

  “He can’t be,” Sarah said, stroking the dog, trying to calm him. What should she do? She couldn’t wake Doc—he was exhausted. He’d delivered twins today, and then attended to the gruesome business of preparing three bodies for burial.

  Tears shimmered in Owen’s eyes. “Do something,” he pleaded.

  Sarah turned her head, expecting to see Ephriam in the doorway. “Papa—”

  But he wasn’t there.

  “Papa?”

  “Bet he went to get Wyatt,” Owen said, with such hope that Sarah prayed it was true, for the boy’s sake as much as Lonesome’s. In the next instant, though, she remembered that her father had been wearing a nightshirt and nothing else.

  “Stay with Lonesome,” she said, rushing for the kitchen.

  Ephriam was gone, and the back door stood open. Outside, in the grass, crickets chorused.

  Not wanting to rouse the neighbors and have them looking out their windows to see Ephriam Tamlin, president and chief stockholder of the Stockman’s Bank, marching down the street in his nightshirt, Sarah called out softly. “Papa! Papa, please come back.”

  He was nowhere in sight.

  Suppose he’d gotten befuddled again? What if he ended up wandering around out there in the dark countryside, where all manner of terrible things could happen to him, a defenseless old man, alone?

  Panic clutched at the inside of Sarah’s throat. She couldn’t leave Owen by himself to go chasing off after her father, especially when he was so worried about Lonesome.

  Offering a prayer that Ephriam would be kept safe and, if possible, unseen crossing town in his bedclothes, Sarah closed the door and went back to the spare room.

  Lonesome had settled down a little, but his grief was heartrending. Great, shuddering tremors went through him. Was he dying? Had she given him too much medicine?

  Tears slipped down Owen’s cheeks. “Help him, Aunt Sarah. Please, help him.”

  Both of them were kneeling now, beside the dog. Sarah put one arm around her son’s shoulders and used the opposite hand to stroke Lonesome’s quivering back, hoping to soothe him.

  She couldn’t have said how much time passed—ten minutes? A half hour? Longer?

  Her heart leapt when the back door opened and she heard her father say, “In there.”

  And then Wyatt was in the room.

  Lonesome tried to get up and go to him, but he was too weak.

  “Lie still, now,” Wyatt told the dog, with gruff tenderness. He crossed and crouched, opposite Sarah, and stroked Lonesome’s head. Lonesome licked Wyatt’s hand and fell silent.

  “I told you he wanted Wyatt,” Owen said, sinking against Sarah’s side. “Will you stay with him, Wyatt? So he doesn’t cry? You can sleep here in the spare room, and I’ll go upstairs—”

  Wyatt started to speak, stopped himself. Looked directly into Sarah’s eyes. He’d had a bath, and he was wearing clean clothes. His hair was still damp, and smelled of hard soap.

  “I think that’s a fine idea,” Ephriam said. Bless him, he’d gone all the way to the other end of town, found Wyatt, and brought him back.

  Sarah offered a silent prayer of gratitude.

  “So do I,” Sarah said, gazing at Wyatt.

  “Then let’s all get ourselves bedded down for the night,” Ephriam suggested. “Do you people have any idea what time it is?”

  Sarah stood, ushered Owen out of the spare room with as much dignity as she could manage. Ephriam and Owen went upstairs together.

  And Sarah stopped cold. A small volume lay in plain sight on the kitchen table, next to the lantern.

  It was the book of lies.

  CHAPTER NINE

  WYATT SAT ON THE EDGE of the narrow cot in Sarah’s spare room, looking down at Lonesome, who lay contentedly at his feet, staring up at him with a kind of adoring devotion he’d never experienced before.

  “I can’t stay here,” Wyatt told the dog, keeping his voice low. “Folks will see me leave the house in the morning, and think the worse of Sarah because I spent the night.”

  Lonesome gave a companionable sigh and laid his ugly muzzle on his forelegs, perfectly contented now that he had things just the way he wanted them.

  “And I’ve got things I ought to be doing,” Wyatt went on. Out on the trail, he’d sometimes carried on long conversations with his horse. Old Reb was a compassionate listener. “Guarding those guns locked up at the jail, for one thing. For another, tracking those men who tore out of town tonight, after the shooting. But here I sit, playing nursemaid to a damn dog.”

  A light rap sounded at the spare room door.

  Wyatt got up, crossed to open it. Sarah stood on the other side, still clad in Lark’s dress, though she’d plaited her damp hair so it rested in a thick ebony rope over her right shoulder. The little horse-tail rigging at the bottom, tied off with a pink ribbon, touched her waist.

  “You brought back my book of—my diary,” she said, watching his face closely. “I found it on the kitchen table.”

  Wyatt nodded, a little confused. “I burned your other dress in the kitchen stove at Rowdy’s place, along with my own gear. No amount of laundering was going to save those duds. When I felt something in the pocket, I took it out.”

  She drew a deep, slow breath, and let it out again just as slowly. “You didn’t read it?”

  “Sarah, of course I didn’t.”

  She sighed, relaxed a little. “Well, then,” she said. “Thank you.”

  “For bringing the book back, or not reading it?”

  She managed a sparse little smile. “Both.”

  “You’re welcome,” Wyatt said. “Sarah, I can’t stay here overnight. Is that wheelbarrow around here someplace? I’ll load Lonesome up and haul him on back to Rowdy’s.”

  “It’s in the shed out back,” Sarah said, but now she was looking troubled again. “Why can’t you stay?”

  “If I do, the whole town will say we—well—” he paused, felt his neck heat up. “It just wouldn’t be good, that’s all.”

  “Nonsense,” Sarah said. “Unmarried men rent rooms in private houses all the time. You said yourself that you don’t want to sleep in the jail cell, or Rowdy and Lark’s bed, so you bunk in the hayloft. Room and board is two dollars a week, twice that if you eat second helpings at supper.”

  Wyatt considered the idea. It was common for single men—and women, too—to take rooms in other people’s homes. He’d be under the same roof with Sarah, at least part of the time, and so far, he’d deemed her cooking passable, if not something to write home about.

  Not that he actually had a home, with his ma gone all these years.

  “When Sam O’Ballivan gets back, I’ll be going to work for him on Stone Creek Ranch,” he said, fumbling in his pocket for his money. He’d spent some at the mercantile, buying the sardines, crackers and canned peaches, but he had plenty left, since he didn’t use tobacco and rarely took a drink. “The job comes with living quarters.”

  Sarah simply held out her hand, palm up, smiling a little.

  Wyatt counted out eight dollars. “Two weeks,” he said. “With second helpings.”

  She laughed.

  “Are you going to wash and iron my shirts?”

  “No,” she told him. “I am not. And since you’re a boarder in this house now, I’d better go back to calling you ‘Mr. Yarbro.’”

  “Fair enough,” Wyatt said. He kind of liked the sound of that. Paradoxically, the very formality of it lent a certain intimate spark to their exchanges.

  “I’ll say good-night, then,” Sarah replied, turning to go.

  Wyatt watched her cross the kitchen and start up the back stairs, wanting to follow her, knowing he couldn’t. Like her calling him Mr. Yarbro, being in such close quarters gave a sort of festive little quiver to the whole situation.

  Wyatt closed the door quietly, went back to the cot, sat down on its edge, and pulled off his boots. Lon
esome was already dead to the world, snoring away on his folded-quilt bed.

  “Don’t get used to all this luxury,” Wyatt warned the sleeping dog. “Once you’re fit for it, you’ll be herding cattle right alongside me.”

  With that, he turned down the wick in the kerosene lamp on the bedside table, stretched out on top of the covers in his clothes, and went to sleep.

  THE EXPLOSION RATTLED the windows and sent Sarah shooting bolt upright in bed. Somewhere, though whether from inside the house or the street, she couldn’t say, someone shouted, “Fire!”

  Dear God, she thought, scrambling into a wrapper. Papa had finally tipped over a lantern and set the place ablaze. She had to get Owen out, and her father, and Wyatt and his dog were sleeping in the spare room.

  Frantically, she sniffed the air for smoke. Wrenching open the bedroom door, she stepped into the corridor and found Owen and Ephriam already there, sleepy-eyed and blinking.

  She heard the back door slam, and knew Wyatt had gone. For a moment, she was stung, thinking he’d left them behind in a burning house, bent on saving himself.

  She stared at her son and her father, momentarily paralyzed, incapable even of speech.

  “Something blew up,” Owen said cheerfully, breaking the silence.

  Ephriam nodded, and they all scuttled down the stairs.

  No smoke.

  No flames.

  Sarah calmed down a little.

  “I’m going after Wyatt,” Ephriam announced, and headed for the door.

  “Me, too,” Owen agreed.

  And they both dashed out, in their nightshirts, ignoring Sarah’s startled, “Come back!”

  Muttering, she paused only long enough to look in on Lonesome, who, remarkably, was still sound asleep. “You’re on your own,” she told him, and hurried after her son and father.

  People seemed to fill the streets, all rushing toward the center of town. Since everyone else was wearing their nightclothes, too, Sarah stopped fretting about her own state of dress. For once, Ephriam wouldn’t look out of place, with the hem of his long flannel nightshirt flapping in the breeze.

  Smoke and flames billowed from the windows and eaves of the jailhouse, and a series of deadly pops filled the night air.

  “Everybody stay back!” Sarah heard Doc yell, from somewhere in the surging crowd.

  Sarah recalled the guns Wyatt had locked up in the jail cell. Oh, Lord, she thought. They must have been the cause of the explosion. Had someone set the jail afire on purpose? Or was it simply an accident?

  Wyatt.

  Where was Wyatt?

  Sarah began fighting and flailing her way through throngs of neighbors and friends, standing on tiptoe trying to catch some glimpse of him, however brief.

  But he was nowhere to be seen.

  Sarah saw Owen and Ephriam up ahead, and pushed through to reach them. Doc was there with them, as comical a figure as Ephriam in his night garments, with his graying brown hair all a-tousle.

  “Have you seen Wyatt?” Sarah asked, grasping his arm.

  “He and some other men went around back to get the horses out of Rowdy’s barn, in case it catches.”

  The fire-wagon arrived, with its great tank always kept full of water, and a hose was unfurled. Buckets were taken from the livery stable and even the mercantile, and everyone, man, woman and child, fought the fire.

  It was a threat to all of them.

  If the blaze spread, it could devour the town, with all its wood-frame buildings, in a matter of minutes. Even Kitty and the other saloon women came, and a long bucket-brigade line was established, stretching all the way from the creek to the jailhouse.

  The fight was long, hot and hard, but there were no more exploding bullets from inside, and the townspeople managed, though barely, to keep the blaze confined to the jailhouse.

  It was almost dawn when the battle was won.

  Exhausted, Sarah looked around her at all the sodden, soot-covered faces. Ephriam had long since taken Owen home, to her profound relief, but she doubted that either of them had slept.

  When Wyatt found Sarah, his clothes were singed and blackened, and there were blisters on his hands. He looked all done in, yet ready to fight fire, or any other threat, for another six to eight hours, if it proved necessary.

  It was in that moment, both of them standing there, blackened by greasy smoke, that Sarah came to an equally heartbreaking and joyous realization.

  She loved Wyatt Yarbro. Deeply, truly and forever.

  Tears stung her already burning eyes.

  Oh, no, she thought. Oh, no.

  “Your hands—” she whispered.

  “I’m all right,” Wyatt said. “You?”

  “Fine,” she replied. Except that a whole new landscape, filled with darkness and light, deep valleys and high mountains, had just opened up within her, forcing out so many of the things she’d always believed about herself.

  That she’d never love again, after Charles.

  That if she married, it would be for companionship and convenience, not because her very soul seemed to crave the passion of one man in particular.

  Well, that man was standing before her, soot-stained and blistered and bleakly resigned to a fresh disaster.

  “How did the fire start?” she heard herself ask. “Do you know?”

  Wyatt’s jawline tightened, and he nodded once, sharply. “Dynamite,” he said. “Somebody figured on getting at those guns I locked up in there.” He let out a grim chuckle, entirely void of amusement. “Stupid bastards. Now the guns are gone, and so is my brother’s jail.”

  Sarah touched Wyatt’s arm, but tentatively, because all that she was feeling was so new, a fierce and fragile flame, burning inside her. “There’s nothing more you can do right now,” she told him. “Let’s go home.”

  Home.

  The word seemed to tremble between them.

  He nodded.

  Folks were already dispersing, heading wearily for their houses, talking in relieved whispers.

  Stone Creek was still standing.

  For the moment, it was enough reason to keep going.

  At home, Owen and Ephriam were both up and dressed. They’d moved Lonesome’s bed out into the kitchen, and he was lying on it, lapping from a pie tin of canned milk.

  There was coffee, too.

  “Sit down,” Ephriam told Sarah and Wyatt. He gave them coffee and served up a platter of biscuits and a bowl of gravy lumpy with sausage, heretofore stashed in the warming oven over the stove.

  Sarah was ravenous, but she fetched Lonesome’s salve first, and asked Owen for a basin, water and a clean washcloth.

  Wide-eyed, the child rushed to do her bidding. He kept stealing glances at Wyatt, his eyes full of hero worship.

  Wyatt winced a few times while Sarah washed his hands and treated the blisters with salve, and his eyes never left her face. For Sarah, the experience was deeply sensual—just touching Wyatt in this innocent, practical way aroused yearnings within her that she’d never experienced before, even at the height of her romantic, whirlwind affair with Charles Langstreet.

  Now, she wished she’d saved herself, in true Victorian fashion. She’d wished that often, over the years, but not in the same way. Before, she’d only regretted her foolishness, her gullibility, and the terrible emotional price she’d had to pay: giving up her baby. This new and poignant regret ran much deeper. When she lay with Wyatt Yarbro—and she knew she would, once or a thousand times—he would know she’d given her most precious gift to some other man, long before.

  Desolation clenched at her heart, forced fresh tears to her eyes.

  “Sarah?” Wyatt said quietly. He missed no nuance, this man. He would be hard to lie to, if not impossible. And Sarah, having lied so long, had forgotten how to tell the truth.

  “I’m just tired,” she said. I love you, said her heart.

  “Eat,” Ephriam ordered. “Both of you.”

  “Where are you going to put outlaws?” Owen asked Wyatt, almost
breathless with interest. “Now that there isn’t any jail?”

  Wyatt winced again, the way he had when Sarah was doctoring his hands, but this time, the motion was accompanied by a dry grin. “Got to catch some, before I worry about where to put them,” he answered. “This is good food, Mr. Tamlin,” he added, turning to look at Ephriam, now seated directly opposite of him. “Maybe you ought to work as a cook, rather than a banker.”

  Sarah stiffened at the reminder that she had more problems than just being hopelessly in love with an outlaw deputy who’d served two years in prison. There was the bank to think about, and she constantly dreaded Charles’s return to Stone Creek, because of that and even more because of Owen. When Charles came back, he would take the boy away from her as easily as he’d handed him over.

  She could feasibly survive, if Wyatt left town for good. Oh, she’d grieve and pine, and become more spinsterish with every passing day, but she’d live on.

  When it came to parting with Owen, though, she wasn’t so confident. Losing him the first time had been hard enough; losing him again might be more than she could bear.

  The pain of these prospects—Owen’s going, and Wyatt’s—all but doubled her over. She sat rigidly in her chair, unable to force down another bite of the delicious breakfast her father had served.

  Wyatt saw it all, though of course he had no way of knowing what was tormenting her so. “Get some rest today, Sarah,” he said. “You’ve got dark circles under your eyes.”

  “Probably soot,” she said, trying to make a joke and failing miserably.

  “Just the same,” Wyatt said.

  “I’ll attend to the bank,” Ephriam added.

  “And Lonesome and I will be really, really quiet,” Owen promised.

  “You’re all ganging up on me,” Sarah protested, touched.

  She wasn’t even allowed to clear the table and wash the dishes.

  Finally, Sarah gave up. She went upstairs, fell face-first onto her bed, and was asleep within moments.

  LONESOME TOOK HIS MEDICINE and seemed affably resigned to staying at the house with Owen, so Wyatt cleaned up and headed into a day that was bound to be difficult.

  There were the three dead men to bury.