The Marshal's Surrender (Holidays in Mountain Home Book 3)
Page 2
On his second knock, Luke Finlay opened up. “Gus. Come in.”
Gus shoved aside every uncomfortable thought Luke spurred. Business. Nothin’ more.
The warm kitchen smelled of roasting meat and freshly baked bread. Coffee, too. Hunger gnawed at his middle—breakfast a distant memory. He’d heard Finlay had hired a cook and housekeeper. She had to be around here somewhere. So did Noelle.
…and Effie.
“Find them?” The aroma of Arbuckle’s coffee intensified as Luke poured a steaming cup, wordlessly indicated it was for Gus, and set it on the table.
Gus shook his head. He pried off his frozen boots with Luke’s boot jack and left them on a mat. He resorted to pulling off his gloves with his teeth. He’d be jiggered if he’d ask Finlay for help unbuttoning his coat.
He sipped scalding Arbuckle’s. “Lost their tracks.” Giving up and turning back had galled him. Rankled worse to know by nightfall, the whole town would hear ‘bout it. He didn’t like the idea of everyone jawing about what he had or hadn’t accomplished.
He’d been a hero when he’d taken this job. He intended to stay in the town’s good graces.
It was all he had left.
Footfalls sounded from the second story. Light, feminine.
Luke Finlay was one lucky man.
Gus rattled around his big cavern of a house, with rarely another soul about. Not what he’d wanted, not his plan, but there it was anyway.
He sipped coffee and shoved the longing away. All the wishing in the world wouldn’t change things.
Upstairs, the baby cried. Soothing, motherly tones trickled down the staircase and more footsteps sounded directly above, as if the nursery were situated overhead. Made sense, given the rising heat from the stove flue.
What, the baby would be a week old now? Maybe two?
Images of blonde peach fuzz on the tiny bundle’s head intruded so Gus concentrated on the heat pouring from the stove and seeping through the porcelain of his mug. “I figure Noelle came here. I need to see her, ask what she saw.”
“Of course.” Luke paused in the kitchen doorway. “I’ll get her. You’ll join us for dinner.”
He wanted to sit at this table with Luke and Effie about as bad as he wanted to ride another twenty miles in a blizzard, chasing his own tail. But he nodded anyhow.
“Noelle?” Luke called from the bottom of the stairs.
An exchange of ladies’ voices above, more baby fussing, and the housekeeper, Mrs. Turner entered, busying herself setting the table.
Gus had just drained his Arbuckle’s when Noelle joined him in the kitchen.
Her plum suit, trimmed in black piping and black buttons looked mighty pretty on her. Would complement her naturally rosy color—but something was off. The Noelle he knew would’ve had plenty to say already. “You O.K.?”
She lifted one shoulder.
The woman’s pluck had run off. As if the bandits had stolen her vinegar, her posture seemed to curl in on herself, like spring corn frozen in the fields, turning black and dying.
Always was a tiny little mite, but the girl looked like a stiff wind would knock her on her backside.
He hated heaping questions on her when she looked so fragile, but this couldn’t wait. “I need details of all you saw. Nothing’s too small. Nothing’s insignificant.”
“I know.”
“Let’s pray,” Luke said, holding Effie’s chair, “then talk business.”
Gus found his attention straying to Effie’s familiar features. A pang of loneliness sliced through him every time he caught a glimpse of her—and this was worse, far worse. To be here, in her house, their house, with Finlay living the life Gus had planned and waited for.
“Amen.” Luke reached for the platter of roast beef, took up the carving knife and fork. He served his wife a slice.
Wife.
“I saw his face clearly,” Noelle said in a watered-down shadow of her own voice.
Gus could’ve kissed Noelle for the ease and completeness in which she captured his attention and put it right where it belonged.
“Whose face?”
“The man with the knife.”
Anticipation zinged through him. “Recognize him?”
“No. I know everyone in the valley, and many from surrounding areas. I’ve never seen him before.” She sounded certain and oddly settled. For a woman who looked like she’d seen a ghost, she was awful calm. Maybe things were starting to go right.
“Describe him.” A big scoop of potatoes—his mouth watered in anticipation. Hunger made his stomach burn. He snagged two thick slices of warm bread off another plate.
Noelle pulled a folded paper from her skirt pocket, opened it, and spread it flat on the table between them. A pencil-sketched likeness stared back at him, stocking cap pulled low against the cold. Prominent brow, deep-set and dark eyes, a nose that had been broken, and a pointy chin mostly disguised by a curly beard.
He picked up the drawing, stunned at his good fortune. “You drew this?”
She nodded. Without another word, she ladled gravy onto her potatoes and passed him the boat.
“You got a good look at him.” This likeness would make the search so much easier. Somebody, somewhere, would identify the criminal from this picture. He’d show it around, commit the man’s face to memory, get the deputies in on the search—
Luke put his arm around his younger sister’s shoulders and squeezed her little fist where it lay beside her plate. “Yes, she did. She got a real good look at him.”
Gus’s stomach fell. Hard. Like he’d been thrown from a horse. His brains must still be frozen solid, ‘cause the impact hadn’t hit him, not until now. He clenched his jaw, swallowed a string of profanity.
Noelle’s big, golden-brown eyes snared him fast. “And he—” She swallowed and closed her eyes. “He can identify me.”
“Whatever it takes, Noelle, I swear I’ll protect you.” No matter what.
“You’re done working in town. Finished.”
“Excuse me?” August Rose was not her father nor brother. He had no right to tell her what she could or couldn’t do, yet he ordered her about. If Luke hadn’t left to escort Effie through the lot to the shop, and if the housekeeper hadn’t gone upstairs with the baby, Noelle doubted Gus would speak to her like this.
He sat on a stool before Luke and Effie’s blazing parlor hearth, his hands and feet extended to the flames. He hadn’t so much as glanced over his shoulder, oh, but he’d definitely noticed her dissatisfaction. His broad, steady shoulders tightened.
“You’ll stay at home. Where it’s safe.”
“I’ll do no such thing. If I do anything, I’ll stay here with my brother and walk all of, what, fifty feet? The shop is no more than twenty steps through the back lot.”
In one fluid motion, he pushed to his feet, spun to face her. Tall. So very tall…and far too near. Heat blazed in the storm-cloud gray of his eyes.
She stumbled back a step or two before she caught herself in full retreat and held her ground. He might be the law, but he didn’t scare her.
“You realize,” he whispered, “they got a good look at you, as you said. You’ll lead them straight to Pettingill’s. To this house. To Effie…”
The timbre of his whisper constricted. He loved Effie, still loved Effie. Probably always would.
“…and the baby.”
The barb sunk deep. The urge to remind him he wasn’t her keeper melted like ice too close to flame.
He was right. Blast him. The baby… Effie… Neither stood a chance against the bandits.
Noelle loved her sister-in-law, and loved the baby. She couldn’t blame Gus for considering their safety.
Her posture sagged, matching her deflating determination. “What, I’m supposed to lure them into showing up at my home, instead?”
“Yes.”
“My parents, my little brothers—”
“And a passel of hired hands. Lots of eyes and ears. Trained guns.”
“I’ll talk to my dad about this.” Despite enjoying the idea of Gus giving two shakes about her safety, noticing her, it still rankled to find him so bossy. This wasn’t at all the way she’d dreamed of him looking at her.
“Don’t think I won’t have a talk with him myself.”
“If you must. Keep in mind, my parents support my decision to work in town. Effie needs reliable help. Christmas is around the corner. We have orders backed up—”
“As soon as I’m warmed up and dry, I’m taking you home.”
He made her sound like a wayward child. “They won’t expect me in weather like this. They won’t worry—”
He took a step nearer, so close he loomed. His shoulders seemed to bunch as if he intended to spring.
“—they know I stay here when conditions are at their worst.”
His big hands gripped her shoulders. Her knees nearly turned to water. His hold tightened and her heart kicked in response. This wasn’t how she’d imagined it would feel to have his hands on her. She’d anticipated this moment far too often. His gray eyes, alight with passion of a different kind. As if he’d throttle her.
This near, the damp wool of his vest carried a lingering scent of tobacco. Despite the reason he stood so close, she wanted to touch him. She wanted to push up on her toes and thread her fingers through the curls so long they brushed his collar.
“Do they know the Ruffian Gang slaughtered a milk cow not two miles from their house? Do they know the Ruffian Gang got a good, long look at their daughter?”
She gasped. “You didn’t go by the ranch, check on my parents?”
“We rode past immediately. No sign of trouble, so we pursued.” He clenched his jaw, frustration hardening the lines on his too-handsome face. “I sent Deputy Murphy to your parents an hour ago, and he’s likely still there.”
“So my parents will know I’m perfectly fine.”
He held her gaze. “It won’t take much for them Ruffians to guess which direction you came from this morning.”
Her fists clenched. Every bit of air disappeared from her lungs.
That house contained her family.
“If they decide you’re a witness and can identify them—I want your family, the hired hands, everyone on that ranch to know trouble’s a-brewin’.”
With the stark realization came a wash of dread, sharp and quick. “I have to get home.” She tried to pull away but his grip tightened.
“We ride together, Noelle. From now on, you don’t go anywhere alone.”
CHAPTER THREE
An hour later, Gus faced Noelle’s parents in the room they used as a ranch office. Small, tidy, and sparsely furnished, it provided privacy for their conversation.
Phil and Caroline Finlay already knew the details from Deputy Sheriff Elias Murphy. Their fears had percolated a good while.
They wanted Gus under their roof. Day and night.
“Two days,” Phil repeated, “that’s all I’m asking. Two days. Make sure we’ve done all we can to safeguard our daughter. We need you, Sheriff.”
“You realize I’m responsible for the whole town, the whole valley. I’m as obligated to each of them as I am to you.” He’d said so once already.
“Far as we know, no one in town has seen the bandits up close.” Old man Finlay’s attention rested on Noelle. Phil loved his daughter. Plain as day on his face, the way he softened and radiated affection, concern, and worry. He’d die for this girl. No doubt.
Gus fought the urge to rub both burning eyeballs. Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat. Might as well tie his hankie to a stick and wave the white flag over his head. “I’ll stay.”
Both Mr. and Mrs. Finlay, maybe Noelle too, sighed in the kind of relief that made chills walk icy footprints up Gus’s spine. “Me being here doesn’t guarantee nothing’s going to happen.”
“But this is what you did as a Marshal, right?” Noelle slid forward, out of her mother’s embrace. The two women had bundled together on the sofa before the hearth. Firelight warmed her flawless skin and danced a fiery reflection in her eyes. “You guarded people. Judges. Their families.”
In his former life, that’s precisely what he’d done. But this was different.
“You were good at it.”
“Yes. I was.”
But now, the Ruffian gang—well, shoot. Gus was in way over his head with those varmints running loose.
Noelle’s smile struck him with the force of a baseball bat to the chest. Disorienting.
“Sir—” Gus cleared his throat and focused wholly on Mr. Finlay. “We’ll work up rotations of men to guard the house, inside and out. Do what we can to protect your property, your herd.”
“Very good.”
Somebody knocked on the door and pushed inside without waiting for a response. Elias Murphy, who’d left for town thirty minutes ago.
What now? Gus pushed to his feet. “Deputy Murphy.”
“Gus—we got us another attack. A bad one.”
“Deputy Murphy,” he emphasized, “Let’s you and me talk about this outside.”
“Doc Cheney’s tending to Widow Boczowski.” The kid’s mouth ran, pell-mell. “No saying if she’ll live.”
Mrs. Boczowski? Just yesterday the widow had sent for Gus. He’d ridden out to her place, found her hale and hardy. Presumptuous, but hale and hardy.
“Irene Boczowski is my friend.” Caroline Finlay stood. “I want to know what those miscreants have done.”
“She’s hurt real bad, ma’am.” Elias seemed to recall his Stetson, for he yanked it off and spun it between chapped hands.
“What on earth happened?” Noelle clung to her mother. Firelight reflected off Noelle’s dark hair and the graying strands of the older woman’s.
“Them bandits burned down her house, ma’am.”
Caroline gasped. “Was Irene burned? Is that why she’s at Doc’s?”
“Nah. She weren’t in the house.” Elias shifted from foot to foot. “Them varmints knocked her about. Broke her arm too. Gus, you gotta come on back to town.”
“Sheriff Rose has agreed to remain.” Phil Finlay stood, arthritic pains evident in slowed movements. “You two deputies have things in town under control, don’t you?”
“Well, I figure we might.”
“That’s good. Thank you for delivering the message, Deputy Murphy.”
The Murphy kid, barely twenty, took Finlay’s statement as a dismissal, for he shoved his Stetson over straw-colored hair. “Yes sir.”
The Ruffian Gang might terrorize Mrs. Boczowski again. At least one bandit had been near enough to break her arm. She’d likely seen his face. “You keep a close eye on Doc’s place tonight,” he ordered the deputy. “Doc and Mrs. Cheney’d appreciate it.”
“I can do that.”
“See you do.”
Just as quick as he burst in, Murphy yanked open the door and whipped it shut behind himself. Footfalls sounded in rapid cadence down the floorboards of the hallway. Mere seconds later, the front door slammed.
Phil held Gus’s eye. “The kid going to be all right out by himself?”
Gus considered all he knew about the bandits’ patterns, pictured the crude map he’d tacked up on the wall in the jail. A sea of blue X’s, dates, and penciled question marks swam but stayed put. He mentally added the cow at Kennedys’ and the burn-out at Boczowski’s. Like a snow-globe, bits and pieces swirled and caught the light, drifting in meaningless eddies.
“He’ll be fine. The deputy’s the best shot in two counties.” He’d bet his reputation on it.
“What do we do now?” Caroline hugged her daughter close, the desperation in her question focused on Gus.
“Anywhere you go,” he told Noelle, “I’m there.” He held her gaze, recognized the temptation her nearness would pose. “You stay in my sight as much as is proper. When you need privacy, you have your mother or sisters with you.”
She winced.
Noelle shouldn’t have been surprised to see Luke and Effie arrive shortly before supper, but she was.
When Luke had hugged her goodbye shortly after dinner and wished her a safe journey home to the ranch, he’d entrusted her into the sheriff’s care.
Luke had said nothing about leaving the safety of town. He’d yet to take the new baby out of the house, much less all the way to the ranch.
Through the frosted windowpane, Noelle watched Luke leap from his sleigh to the snowy yard. He waved to three mounted riders. Bundled against the cold, she didn’t recognize the men or their horses, but assumed they were friends from town. All three carried rifles.
An armed escort, a new baby out in the winter chill, a sleigh loaded with satchels, bedding, crates and trunks, and arrival just before dark. It all added up to a long visit.
Noelle loved her brother and sister-in-law. Truly she did.
But must they arrive now?
If Gus weren’t still wrapped up in Effie, if he hadn’t loved her half his life, Noelle might have had a chance.
The meeting with the hired hands apparently finished, because Gus and Pa came out of the bunkhouse, followed by her two youngest brothers, Dallas and Timothy.
Luke raised a hand in greeting then helped Effie down from the sleigh, the babe bundled tightly in her arms.
Noises in the house dimmed the conversation in the yard, so she saw rather than heard the exchange between Luke and Gus. Luke brought out a tube…paper?…from the sleigh and handed it to Gus. Luke said something to Effie, who headed for the house on Pa’s arm.
But it was Gus who captured Noelle’s attention.
She watched Gus trail Effie with his eyes.
Pain squeezed her heart a little tighter.
Despite the condensation and frost on the window panes, despite the distance between Gus and the house, she fancied she saw more than longing on his face.
He didn’t seem happy Luke and his family had arrived.