The Rustler

by Linda Lael Miller

  “Yes,” she said brokenly. “Yes, it’s true.”

  Wyatt did not walk away. He came over, pulled back the chair next to hers, and sat down, turning himself and the chair with him to look into her face. “And the boy doesn’t know?”

  Sarah shook her head.

  Wyatt handed her a table napkin, and she swabbed at her eyes. Owen would be back at any moment with the bread and bologna for their lunch, and he mustn’t see her like this.

  “Langstreet?” Wyatt asked.

  Sarah nodded. “I was such a fool,” she said. “Young and far from home—”

  Wyatt took her hand. Squeezed it lightly. “By my reckoning,” he answered, “Langstreet’s the fool. Why didn’t he marry you?”

  Sarah heard the side gate open, creaking on its hinges. Either Ephriam or Owen would come inside in a moment or so. She hastened to the sink, pumped cold water onto the table napkin, and pressed it to her burning eyes.

  “Sarah?”

  She turned. Footsteps sounded on the porch.

  “Not now,” she said.

  Wyatt nodded, and Owen burst in, carrying a package, Ephriam directly behind him. For a while, Sarah was blessedly busy slicing bread and bologna for sandwiches, though at one point Ephriam asked if she’d been crying.

  Owen had spared her from answering by announcing, his little face radiant with delight over the adventure, “She made soup and it caught fire!”

  “It did not catch fire,” Sarah protested.

  “Almost,” Owen avowed.

  “There’ll be no saving the kettle,” Wyatt added.

  Ephriam laughed, but the look of sadness in his eyes troubled Sarah. Silently, she scolded herself for not noticing earlier.

  “Is everything all right at the bank, Papa?” she asked.

  “Things are fine at the bank,” Ephriam replied.

  She had been bustling around the kitchen, too unnerved over her earlier conversation with Wyatt to eat. Now, she went to stand beside her father’s chair, laid a hand on his shoulder, then checked his forehead for fever. His skin felt cool, taking the very warm weather into consideration.

  “You don’t look well,” she murmured. “Perhaps you should lie down.”

  “Sarah, don’t fuss,” Ephriam said, pushing away his plate. He usually had a good appetite, but today he’d eaten less than half of his sandwich. Lonesome waited politely for the leftovers, sitting on the quilt over by the stove.

  “I’ll go over to the bank and finish out the day for you,” Sarah said. “Maybe have Doc stop by and look you over.”

  “I’m fine, Sarah!” her father barked.

  It was so unusual for him to raise his voice that Sarah started a little.

  Owen looked on with wide eyes, and Wyatt was clearly wishing he’d gone somewhere else to have his lunch.

  Ephriam gave a great sigh. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Maybe I am a little tired. There was a lot of excitement last night, what with the fire—”

  “If Ephriam takes a nap,” Owen said, “do I have to, too?”

  Sarah smiled, ruffled the boy’s hair with one hand. Over his head, her gaze collided with Wyatt’s.

  Is it true, Sarah?

  “No,” she said. “You can stay and look after Lonesome, or come to the bank with me.”

  Owen, apparently concerned about Ephriam, since his eyes kept straying in the old man’s direction, elected to stay.

  Wyatt helped Sarah clear the table.

  Ephriam wandered off to his study, on the other side of the house, and when Sarah looked in on him, he was asleep with a newspaper lying across his chest. She bent next to his chair and planted a soft kiss on the top of his head.

  After that, she and Wyatt left the house together, walking slowly along the tree-shaded street.

  “Why didn’t Langstreet marry you?” Wyatt asked again, once he was sure no one would overhear.

  “He was already married,” Sarah said, straightening her spine, forcing herself to look up into Wyatt’s face. “I didn’t know that—until it was too late.”

  She saw one of his fists clench, but he showed no other reaction. Did he believe her? she wondered. And why was it so important that he did?

  “Wyatt?”

  “You needn’t explain anything to me, Sarah,” he said. “Your past is your own business.”

  “I don’t want Owen to find out,” she told him. “He won’t understand. He’s too young—”

  “He’ll find out, Sarah,” Wyatt interrupted. “Most likely, from another kid in the school yard.”

  Sarah’s stomach jumped at the notion. If Fiona had guessed the truth, so had everyone else in town. It was only a matter if days, if not hours, before Owen knew, too. “You think I should tell him—before that happens?”

  “That’s up to you.”

  “Charles—”

  “Damn Charles,” Wyatt broke in. “He took advantage of you, Sarah. He brought that boy all the way out here from Pennsylvania and left him with strangers. What kind of man does a thing like that?”

  Sarah pondered, a little stung. Wyatt had been calm before, in the kitchen, even gentle. Now, she knew he was angry. Now, or one day soon, he would walk away. Sure, he’d bought the Henson place, and like as not he’d settle down at Stone Creek. In six months or a year, he’d take a wife—some woman with no book of lies in her pocket—and given the size of the community, Sarah wouldn’t be able to avoid seeing them together. Seeing the woman’s belly swelling with Wyatt’s child. They’d join the church, too, because married folks always did, and every single Sunday for the rest of her natural life, she’d be up there playing the organ while Wyatt and the missus sat close together in a pew, each holding the other’s hand.

  It was unbearable even to contemplate. How much harder would it be to endure the incessant reality?

  “If I tell Owen I’m his mother,” Sarah reasoned tonelessly, like someone talking in her sleep, “Charles will be furious. He’ll never let me see my son again.”

  “Then you ought to get a lawyer.”

  “That would be a waste of time and money. I’m not on any official record as Owen’s mother. Marjory Langstreet is.”

  “The one who calls him a bastard?” Wyatt asked tightly.

  Sarah felt sick. What other abuses and humiliation had Owen suffered at that woman’s hand? And how could Sarah bear sending him back to such a creature? It was small comfort that he’d be shuffled off to some new boarding school as soon as one could be found. He’d been expelled several times, apparently, but Charles would have no real trouble bribing some other headmaster, in some other town.

  “What would you suggest I do, Wyatt?” she inquired, angry herself now, though not with Wyatt. No, she was furious with Charles and Marjory and all the bullies and coldhearted headmasters Owen had already encountered in his short life, and would again, if she didn’t do something.

  “Get married. Go before a judge and tell him the truth. With a husband, you might be able to keep Owen.”

  Sarah’s heart, fluttering before, nearly quit. Her feet certainly did. She stepped in front of Wyatt, right there on the sidewalk, and stopped, staring up at him. “Get married? Where am I supposed to find a man willing to cooperate?”

  “Right here, Sarah,” Wyatt said gravely. “That man is standing right here, in front of you.”

  Heat suffused Sarah’s face, while hope flooded her heart. “You’d marry me, just so I could get Owen back?”

  “I’d planned on doing that anyhow, at some point,” he said.

  Sarah blinked. Although he’d said he meant to court her, she hadn’t taken him seriously. “But we’ve only known each other for a few days—”

  “Sometimes, a few days is all it takes to know you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody. When I saw you sitting up there in the bed of Brother Hickey’s buckboard, playing ‘What a Friend We Have in Jesus’ on that old organ for all you were worth, I knew, Sarah. I knew.”

  Sarah couldn’t speak at all for a fe
w moments.

  Wyatt took hold of her shoulders, grinned down at her, though his eyes were serious. “I figured on being able to support you in a fitting manner before I put a ring on your finger, though. I don’t own anything, Sarah, except a worn-out old horse and this six-gun on my hip. I served hard time. I’ve got twenty-six dollars and thirty-four cents in my pocket, and the promise of a job out at Stone Creek Ranch once Sam O’Ballivan gets back, but it might fall through, so I’m not counting on it and you shouldn’t, either.”

  “Is this a proposal?” Sarah asked, ruefully amused and oddly dizzy.

  “I guess it is,” Wyatt allowed. “Nothing ever goes the way I plan it to. I was going to save up, buy you a ring, gather up some flowers, and get down on one knee to ask you to be my wife. Instead, here we stand on the street, with folks going by in buggies and wondering what we’re up to.”

  Sarah hadn’t noticed the buggies. The world had seemed empty of all sound, save her own voice and Wyatt’s. It was jarring to come back to the normal stir and noise of Stone Creek.

  “Don’t you think we ought to talk to Judge Harvey, first?” she asked. “What if we get married and then find out we can’t keep Owen anyway? We’ll be—well—stuck with each other.”

  “I’d get the best of the bargain, if that happened,” Wyatt said, a corner of his mouth hitched up in a smile so faint it broke Sarah’s heart to see it. “You’d be the one who lost out.”

  “This is insane,” Sarah said, staggered to realize how much she wanted to take Wyatt Yarbro by the hand, drag him before a preacher, and become his wife.

  “Folks get married for crazier reasons,” Wyatt said.

  “I suppose they do,” Sarah agreed, blushing again. “Mama and Papa’s marriage was arranged, and they were happy together.”

  “My ma and pa got married because Ma was expecting me,” Wyatt told her. “I can’t exactly say they were happy, but I can’t say they weren’t, either. They had six kids together, and as much as Pappy was away from home, Ma always ran to meet him with her hems flying as soon as she recognized his horse coming down the road.”

  “I guess being happy isn’t everything,” Sarah said.

  Wyatt arched an eyebrow. “What else is there?”

  Sarah didn’t have an answer, so she didn’t address the question. “I can’t cook very well. I just got lucky with supper the other night.”

  He laughed. “You’re hard on pots and pans, I’ll say that.”

  “It doesn’t bother you that I’m—I’m not—pure?”

  “Not if it doesn’t bother you that I mean to have you every chance I get.”

  “Wyatt Yarbro!” she whispered, giving him a little push with both hands. But a thrill sang through her at the prospect of making love with him. She couldn’t help imagining lying naked on a bed they shared while he kissed and caressed her.…

  “Shouldn’t we get on about our business before folks start stopping to join in the conversation?” Wyatt’s words were sobering.

  Sarah drew in a sharp breath, almost a gasp, as embarrassed as if he’d seen directly into her mind and read her thoughts.

  Maybe, if the way his eyes danced meant anything, he had.

  In any case, Stone Creek, a mere misty void only moments before, solidified around them. Streets. Houses. Trees. The everyday sounds of a small community.

  “I’ve got some horse-counting to do,” Wyatt said, walking again. Sarah hurried to keep up. “But I mean to go back out to my place tonight after supper. Put away my tools and inspect the lumber I bought. If you want to go along, I could hire a buggy from the livery stable.”

  “That,” Sarah said, the banker in her surging to the fore, “would be an unnecessary expense. I do ride, you know.”

  “You’ll go?” Wyatt asked. At her nod, he looked less enthusiastic than before.

  “Unless you’d rather I didn’t, of course.”

  He glanced down at her. “It’s a shack, Sarah. Even after I rebuild the roof and the floor, it’s still going to be a shack.”

  Sarah wanted to say that if they got married, they could live in her father’s house for as long as necessary, but she sensed that Wyatt would get his back up if she did. She decided to broach the subject after the wedding.

  If indeed there was a wedding. Sarah still couldn’t believe it would actually happen. This was all a daydream, wasn’t it? She’d come out of it at any moment, find herself at the bank, mooning at her father’s desk.

  “Why are you willing to do this?” she asked, keeping her voice down because they’d reached Main Street by then, and there were more people around. “When Kitty asked you to marry her in Kansas City, you refused.”

  “You’re not Kitty,” Wyatt said simply. He escorted her as far as the front door of the Stockman’s Bank, tugged at his hat brim, and said he’d see her at supper.

  THERE WERE TOO MANY HORSES in front of the Spit Bucket, so Wyatt went inside to look around. Things seemed peaceable enough, at least on the surface, and there was no one he recognized, beyond Kitty and one or two of the other soiled doves. Ever since he’d run into Carl Justice, in some part of his mind, he’d been on the lookout for Billy.

  The quiver in the pit of his stomach, one of anticipation rather than fear, told him the outlaw would show himself in or around Stone Creek, sooner rather than later.

  In the meantime, he’d be watchful.

  Kitty, standing at the bar, chumming up to a cowpoke, saw him and came his way, hips swaying. She was under some strain—he could see that in her face.

  “Buy you a drink?” she asked, running a painted fingernail from the base of his throat to his belt buckle.

  Wyatt shook his head. “I’m just making the rounds,” he said.

  “I heard Rowdy and Sam were on their way back,” Kitty observed, after executing a fetching little pout when he didn’t respond to the finger stroke. If Sarah had done that, he thought ruefully, he’d have given himself up to lust.

  “That’s right,” Wyatt said, turning to leave.

  Kitty caught his arm. “I still need a husband,” she said. “Bad.”

  “I can’t help you,” he answered.

  “It’s Sarah, isn’t it?” she asked, something jaded rising in her face, behind the paint and the weariness. “Sarah, with her banker father and her fine house and her fancy ways.”

  “She’s made some poor choices when it comes to friends,” Wyatt said, removing Kitty’s hand from his arm. “I’d hate to have to tell her that.”

  “She won’t know what to do in bed.”

  “I reckon I’ll have to show her, then.”

  Kitty’s face tightened.

  Wyatt turned and walked out of the saloon. It gouged him, deep, to know Sarah trusted Kitty, and Fiona, too. Neither one of them would spit on her if she caught fire.

  He progressed to the jailhouse, found the charred beams still warm to the touch. Shook his head. Jody Wexler had raised a solid question the day before—if he did manage, by some miracle, to round up Paddy Paudeen and his bunch, where would he put them?

  As soon as tomorrow, when the train came in, Paudeen would cease to be his problem. Still, it stuck under his hide like a nettle dug in deep that they’d gotten away with dynamiting the jailhouse.

  And had he actually proposed to Sarah Tamlin on the street? Just flat out offered to marry her, without a ring or flowers, never mind a bended knee?

  She hadn’t said yes.

  But she hadn’t said no, either.

  Basically, she’d said, “if.”

  If she had a chance of keeping Owen.

  So maybe she’d marry him, but maybe not.

  Wyatt braced one foot on a blackened beam and contemplated his situation. He craved Sarah the way some men craved whiskey. Her shapely body wasn’t the least of it, or the most, either. Same with her mind.

  Just the sound of her voice was something to celebrate.

  The touch of her hand awakened everything inside him.

  But did he love her
?

  He didn’t know. He’d never been in love before, had no frame of reference for it, beyond what he’d seen of Rowdy and Lark and a few others like them.

  Unable to stand still, with no hard work readily at hand to distract him, he visited all the other saloons in town. In each one, he was offered a drink, and in most of them, a woman, too.

  He was passing the mercantile when Doc came out, carrying his medical kit in one hand and looking a little peaky.

  “I’m wanting a drink something fierce,” Doc told him.

  “I’m wanting to keep moving,” Wyatt replied. “You just walk along beside me and we’ll steer clear of the bottle.”

  Doc smiled, but his eyes looked haunted.

  Wyatt remembered Sarah’s concern for Ephriam, earlier in the day. He related this to Doc.

  “Best take a gander at the old coot,” Doc said. “And I could use a cup of Sarah’s coffee.”

  “She’s at the bank,” Wyatt said, “but I know how to make coffee.”

  They headed for the Tamlin house.

  “What’s troubling you, Doc?” Wyatt asked, as they approached the kitchen door, after entering by the side gate. “That you’d be wanting whiskey after staying dry so long, I mean?”

  Doc stopped, sighed, wiped his forehead with a wadded handkerchief. “There’re days when I feel older than dirt,” he said. “Older than God and the devil put together.”

  “Trying times lately,” Wyatt said, referring to the shooting and the fire at the jail.

  Instead of going inside, Doc sat down heavily on the top step of the little porch. Wyatt perched beside him.

  He could hear Owen inside the kitchen, carrying on a one-sided conversation with the dog. It made him smile, though sadly. Charles Langstreet had something in mind—he wouldn’t have brought the boy all that way if he hadn’t wanted to get under Sarah’s skin—but he wasn’t likely to hand Owen over to be raised by Sarah and her train-robbing husband out of the goodness of his heart.

  The boy was a pawn to Langstreet, part of some strategy.

  Wyatt’s opinion of the man, already low, took a significant dip.