The Rustler

by Linda Lael Miller

  The jailhouse was in smoking ruins.

  He had some outlaw-chasing to do, and no posse.

  First off, he stopped at the telegraph office. From there, he sent a wire to Rowdy in Haven, in the hope that somebody would track him down to deliver it. It was simple and to the point, that telegram:

  Jailhouse blew up. Nothing left of it. Wyatt.

  If Rowdy and Sam chose to come back to Stone Creek upon receipt of the message, so be it. He’d have to help them round up the galoots who’d dynamited the jail, that was only right, but beyond that, the responsibility for the safety of the people and property hereabouts would be theirs, Rowdy’s and Sam’s, not his.

  After sending the telegram, Wyatt looked up Kitty Steel. He found her drinking coffee in the still-closed Spit Bucket Saloon, with a flock of other faded whores, all of whom fled when he came through the swinging doors.

  All except for Kitty, that is. She watched him approach with dull, stoic eyes. She was used to enduring things, Kitty was.

  “No whiskey before we open at ten,” she told him. “But I can serve you some coffee.”

  A battered metal pot stood cooling on the bar. Wyatt took a mug that looked reasonably clean and filled it with coffee. Joined her at the table.

  “If you know who blew up the jailhouse,” he said companionably, “you’d better tell me.”

  Kitty let out a scoffing huff of a laugh. “It was Paddy Paudeen,” she said. “And you know it.”

  Wyatt had known, but he’d played no-holds-barred, cutthroat poker with Kitty Steel, out in Kansas City, and he was sure she hadn’t laid down all her cards. “They were in here? Paudeen and his bunch?”

  She gave a slight nod, leaned back comfortably in her chair. Let one side of her faded silk wrapper slide down to reveal a bare shoulder. “Yes,” she said. “They made the rounds of all the saloons, but Paddy was here, all right. He likes Nola—” She cocked a thumb toward the stairs. Upon Wyatt’s arrival, most of the fleeing whores had headed that way. “Pays her well and never actually gets around to the actual deed, if you know what I mean. He’s always too drunk by that time, and just passes out in her bed.”

  “I’d like to talk to her,” Wyatt said. “Ask her some questions.”

  “Second door on the right,” Kitty replied, with a shrug and a sly little smile. “Though I must admit, I was hoping you’d take a fancy to me instead.”

  Wyatt had taken a fancy, all right—to Sarah Tamlin. He flat-out wasn’t interested in anybody else, be they saint or sinner. “Get her down here for me,” he said.

  Kitty sighed, threw her head back, and bellowed, “Nola!”

  Wyatt jumped.

  Kitty chuckled.

  And a small blond woman appeared on the upper landing and crept down the stairs, clutching the rail in both hands like a sailor about to blow off the deck of a ship in a typhoon.

  “I’m twenty-one,” Nola said, her eyes fixed, fearful and huge, on Wyatt’s face. Or was it his badge she was looking at? “It ain’t against the law for me to work here.”

  Wyatt pushed back his chair and stood. Nola surely wasn’t a lady, but she was female, and therefore entitled to the normal courtesies. “I’m not here to give you trouble,” he told the girl, who probably wasn’t a day over sixteen. “I just want to talk to you about Paddy Paudeen.”

  The girl’s eyes grew even wider. She’d reached the bottom of the stairs, but she didn’t come a step closer. “What about him?”

  “I figure he was the one who blew up the jailhouse last night,” Wyatt said. He felt Kitty’s gaze on him, assessing, measuring, but he ignored her. “Did he say anything when he was with you, Nola? About where he and the others are holed up?”

  Nola bit her plump lower lip. She was a pretty little thing, for all the war paint and the come-hither clothes. Wyatt wondered how she’d wound up in the business of laying down for men. It was one of the things he couldn’t afford to dwell on, and usually pushed to a back burner.

  “He’d kill me if he ever knew I told,” she said, plenty fearful.

  “I won’t let that happen,” Wyatt said.

  “Don’t trust him,” Kitty warned the girl.

  Wyatt looked down at her, sidelong. “Shut up,” he told her.

  Kitty smirked. “They usually set up camp out on the old Henson place. It’s been abandoned for years. If Paddy asks who told you where to find him, you tell him it was Kitty Steel.”

  “They come to town often? Paudeen and his outfit, I mean?”

  Nola slunk back up the stairs and disappeared.

  “Every couple of years,” Kitty said. “The bunch changes, but Paudeen is always heading it up. He’s steered clear, of late, because of Rowdy and Sam. I’m not so sure he’s scairt of you, though.”

  “If he isn’t,” Wyatt said, “he will be.”

  “You talk tough, Deputy Yarbro, but you’re only one man. And the way I heard it, you’re an outlaw yourself, with a prison term behind you.”

  Wyatt nodded. “It gives me a certain advantage,” he said, “over the law-abiding types like Sam O’Ballivan. I know how outlaws think.”

  “Sarah’s taken with you,” Kitty said, surprising him. “For her sake, I’d like to see you stay alive. Don’t go after Paudeen. Wait till Sam and Rowdy get back, and raise a posse. Stone Creek needed a new jailhouse, anyhow. They’ll pony up the money to rebuild.”

  Wyatt’s pride stung a little. First Doc, now Kitty. Why did everybody think he needed Rowdy and Sam’s help to get anything done—including bringing in Paddy Paudeen and his band? “You think I’m scared of those yahoos?”

  Kitty chuckled, shaking her head. “That would be giving you too much credit. You don’t have the good sense to be scared, I’m guessing.”

  “Sarah knows you found your daughters,” Wyatt heard himself say. He hadn’t planned on bringing the subject up, since it was none of his business. “I told her about Kansas City. How you wanted me to marry you, so you could get the little girls back.”

  Kitty paled, but quickly recovered. Said nothing.

  “Why did you lie about it, Kitty? To Sarah, I mean.”

  “Sarah’s a lot more comfortable with lies than the truth,” Kitty said. The remark was calculated to get under Wyatt’s hide, and it did. In fact, it burrowed in and commenced to festering.

  “Don’t you want to see them? You were so all-fired determined to get them back, out in Kansas City—”

  “My girls are young women now,” Kitty answered. “Leona was married last year, to a man who built her a house and wears a suit to work every day. Davina is about to graduate from normal school. I’d like to see them, sure, but I don’t kid myself that the feeling is mutual. What would two fine ladies want with a whoring mother?”

  Wyatt set his hands on the back of the chair he’d been sitting in. “If you’re so friendly with Sarah,” he began, “then why did you say what you did a few minutes ago, about hoping I’d choose you over Nola?”

  Kitty smiled, sat back, and lit a long brown cigar. Drew on it and blew a smoke ring that floated up over Wyatt’s head, like a passing halo. “When it comes to plying my trade,” she said, in a crooning drawl, “friendship has its limits.”

  Wyatt turned to leave. He was still hoping to find his hat, lost when he’d gone to investigate the gunshots that left Carl Justice and two other men dead, and then he’d saddle up Sugarfoot and go find the Henson place. They’d tied one on for sure, the night before, Paudeen and his crew. The chances were good they’d still be passed out from celebrating the destruction they’d wrought in Stone Creek. Even if they were up and around, they’d be hung over, and that might make it one hell of a lot easier to get the drop on them.

  “Wyatt?” Kitty called after him, when he was almost to the swinging doors.

  He stopped, turned his head, waited.

  “The Henson place is three miles east of town, in a little valley. If you stick to the trail, they’ll see you. Go overland, and leave your horse in the stand of cottonw
oods on the ridge.”

  He nodded, and then left.

  He found his hat at the base of a streetlamp, near Doc’s place. It was some the worse for wear, but the sun was blazing hot in a clear blue sky, and he’d need to cover his noggin if he didn’t want a temple-pounder of a headache.

  When he got to the livery stable, a few of the cowboys from local ranches were hanging around, like they had nothing better to do, chewing the fat.

  One of them, a young fella with curly brown hair and greenish eyes full of affable goodwill, came forward as Wyatt approached.

  “You goin’ out to look for the men who blew up the jail and shot those poor bastards laid out over at Doc’s, Deputy?”

  Wyatt nodded. Went inside to saddle Sugarfoot. Reb and Lark’s mare were in stalls on either side of Rowdy’s gelding, munching grass-hay.

  The kid followed him. “Me and the boys, we thought we’d go along to help, if you don’t mind.” He grinned, cocky and confident, probably a great favorite with the girls. “Name’s Jody Wexler,” he said, putting out a hand. “My pa owns the Starcross Ranch.”

  The ranch name was familiar—Doc had mentioned it the day before. “Your ma just give birth to twins?” Wyatt asked, leading Sugarfoot out of his stall.

  “My stepmother,” Jody said. “Pa wears out his women—put three in the ground so far, from having babies. There are seven of us, counting the new ones. The last wife died having my three-year-old brother, Harry.”

  “You don’t look old enough to track outlaws,” Wyatt said, throwing a blanket and then a saddle, also Rowdy’s, onto Sugarfoot’s back. Buckling and tightening the cinch.

  “I’m twenty-two,” Jody replied, unruffled. “Do you want company, or not?”

  Wyatt paused, patted Sugarfoot’s golden neck before putting the bridle on. Jody Wexler was wearing a six-gun, low on his left hip, and he was probably just a shade too fast for his own good. Not entirely sure Wexler and his pals weren’t up to something, maybe planning to jump him outside of town, Wyatt figured he had to take the chance, nonetheless. Kitty had been right—he didn’t have the common sense to be scared—but the odds of rounding up Paudeen and the rest would be better if he had a posse.

  “All right,” he said. “Long as you and your friends understand that this is serious business. You could get shot, among other things.”

  “I could get shot any day of the week,” Jody answered, unfazed. “Look what happened when that gunfight broke out in front of Jolene’s yesterday.” With that, the boy sprinted out of the barn, calling to his friends to mount up, they were going after some outlaws.

  Wyatt shook his head, led Sugarfoot out into the dazzling sun, and swung up into the saddle. Jody introduced his four companions as they all rode east, out of town. Wyatt didn’t even try to remember their names; his head was full of things that could go wrong, and what he’d do if they did.

  Turning at the top of the little hill on the sunrise side of Stone Creek, Wyatt looked down at what was left of Rowdy’s jailhouse. It was pure luck and hard work on the part of the whole town that the house and barn hadn’t gone up, too.

  A pang of guilt struck Wyatt, square in his middle, strong as the blow of a fist.

  Rowdy had entrusted the town to him.

  And there, still smoldering a little, was the proof that his brother’s trust had been sorely misplaced.

  CHAPTER TEN

  ALL DURING THE LAST mile of the ride to the old Henson place, Wyatt knew he wouldn’t find Paudeen there. It was something about the silence, undisturbed and longstanding. Contrary to the dime novels, the average outlaw was neither brave nor honorable, let alone heroic, but flat-out stupid and usually vicious. Still, even the idiots among them occasionally got things right.

  Wexler and the other members of the posse, all of them still wet behind the ears, for all their bold confidence, were plainly disappointed when they drew up on the ridge Kitty had mentioned to look down on the homestead.

  The roof of the house was caving in, and the barn had fallen long ago. Old wagon wheels, rotted harnesses and broken barrels littered the ground. Wyatt had a strange feeling, looking at it. He wanted to dismount, push up his sleeves, and set the place to rights.

  He even imagined Sarah inside that tumbledown hut, walls and roof restored, and real glass in the windows, and himself chopping wood in the dooryard, Lonesome near at hand, too, playing tag with Owen.

  He shook his head, but the pictures stuck in his mind.

  “Damn,” Jody Wexler said. “They’re gone.”

  “They were never here,” Wyatt said, wondering if Kitty had sent him on a wild-goose chase, as a favor to Paudeen, or if she’d really been trying to help. With a woman like Kitty, practiced at playing situations to her best advantage, it was hard to know.

  Wyatt reined his horse around to head back to Stone Creek. The town was unguarded, and there were three men to bury. Paudeen might be long gone, but then again, he could just be lying low up in the hills somewhere.

  “You just going to give up?” Wexler asked, catching up with Wyatt and Sugarfoot on his own sure-footed pinto pony. The kid wore a blue corduroy jacket, and his hat was set at a jaunty angle. He’d been looking forward to wrangling outlaws, that was clear.

  “We’ll find them,” Wyatt said. “Maybe not today, though.”

  “Me and the boys could go looking on our own,” the boy said.

  “No,” Wyatt answered, a little sharply. “The last thing I want is to ride out and tell all your mamas that you’re laid out on a slab at Doc’s place because you ran into something you couldn’t handle.” Paudeen and his men were no geniuses, having destroyed their own guns, as well as the jailhouse, in an effort to reclaim them. But they were hardened and bitter and probably drunked-up good, and they wouldn’t hesitate to pick off five kids on cow ponies and field horses, likely to ride right into their midst.

  Wexler sat up straighter in the saddle, clearly affronted. “I’m a fair hand with a gun,” he said. “And so are my friends.”

  “If you’re smart,” Wyatt said, feeling weary and a lot older than his thirty-five years, “you’ll hang those guns up for good and live by your wits instead.”

  Wexler’s gaze dropped to the Colt on Wyatt’s hip. “Like you did?”

  “If I had my life to live over again, I’d do things differently,” Wyatt replied, and grinned a little, though it felt more like a grimace from the inside. Now there was an understatement, if he’d ever uttered one.

  If. What a useless, empty word that was.

  “A man needs a gun out here,” Wexler insisted.

  Wyatt wondered how long the kid had been shaving. A few years at most, if not a few months. Wexler and the others thought they were men, because they could shoot, swill whiskey and perform well upstairs in a whorehouse. In Wyatt’s mind, being a man meant hard work, facing down trouble when it came, no matter how bad the odds were, loving one woman, protecting and providing for a family.

  Once, though, his definition would have been about the same as young Jody’s. Raise hell, chase women, and delude himself that he was safe in a dangerous world because he had a pistol on his hip and knew how to use it.

  “I reckon hard experience will bring you around to my way of thinking, eventually,” Wyatt said. “I just hope you live long enough to figure out what really matters.”

  “Rowdy wouldn’t just let those outlaws ride free,” Jody protested, reddening up a little. It was meant as a jibe, and it found its mark, just as Kitty’s remark about Sarah being more comfortable with lies than the truth had done. The thing about jibes was, they hurt, but they didn’t do any lasting damage.

  “Maybe not,” Wyatt agreed. “But he sure as hell wouldn’t let you and your friends go off beating the brush for Paudeen on your own, either. If you want to be of some real help, Doc and I could use grave diggers right at the moment.”

  Jody sighed. “We’ll help,” he said, and Wyatt silently put a mark in a mental column, under character.

&n
bsp; “While you’re digging,” Wyatt advised, “keep in mind that it was packing a gun that brought those men low.”

  Grudgingly, Jody nodded. He didn’t think death could happen to him—though if challenged, he would have claimed that any fool knew it could. He was too young, too full of sap and piss and vinegar to truly understand that all that could stop with one bullet.

  When they got back to Stone Creek, Wyatt led the way straight to Doc’s house. He tried not to look at the ruins of the jail as he passed them, but the smell of burned wood was acrid in his nostrils and the place itself seemed to tug at him, demanding his attention.

  The bodies were laid out in coffins, in Doc’s office, all wearing donated clothes. Doc had stitched their eyelids down, and they all had a blue-gray pallor. Wyatt would have sworn they were breathing.

  “Fast work building those caskets,” Wyatt remarked to Doc, who was signing papers at his cluttered desk, taking off his hat because he was in the presence of the dead. Wexler and the others, crowding in behind him, followed suit.

  “I keep a few on hand out in the shed,” Doc answered, turning around, his smudged spectacles barely clinging to the tip of his long nose. He took in Jody Wexler and the boys. “Somebody sick?”

  Jody and his chums gathered round the coffins, swallowing and silent, fidgeting with their hats.

  “Nobody’s sick, Doc,” Wyatt said. “I recruited them to dig graves.”

  Doc nodded, huffed out a sigh. “Good,” he said. “I’m not up to the job myself, and most of the townsfolk are probably tucked up in their beds, spent from fighting the fire.” He turned to the boys. “Grave digging will pay a dollar apiece. You’ll find shovels in my shed, and I’ll show you where the holes ought to be.”

  None of the boys spoke. They were staring at the stitched-up eyes and the hard, waxen skin of the dead men.

  “Look your fill,” Wyatt told them quietly, after exchanging a glance with Doc. “That’s what comes of living by the gun.”

  Doc’s glance slipped to Wyatt’s .45, just as Jody’s had earlier.

  “Isn’t there going to be a funeral?” one of Jody’s friends asked. He was a redheaded kid, skinny and freckled, probably no older than Carl Justice. His name, if Wyatt recalled it correctly, was Clarence.