Peter slipped one of the large chunks of pork meat that he’d prepared for breakfast into his mouth, chewing on it thoughtfully. He glanced back at the young assistant, who was shivering where he stood in place. “Take us to your mistress.”
He almost choked on the remainder of his breakfast when he suddenly inhaled at the sight of the beautiful woman that stood before him. Bearing the tan skin of an Italian woman, her green eyes blazed like emeralds. She wore a lovely blue dress, and when she turned to face him, he was able to see that her skin was smooth and gleaming with youth. Peter silently noted that there were some hardly noticeable frown lines on her forehead and in the corners of her eyes. She must have been through some hard times; being robbed would have done little to improve her mood.
“Are you the sheriff around here?” she asked him immediately, storming toward him and standing directly in his path, forcing him to come to a somewhat awkward and abrupt halt. “I’m Melanie Thompson, the new schoolteacher, and I have just been the victim of a crime.”
“I am the purveyor of law around these parts. My name is Peter Matherson. Now, why don’t we start at the beginning?” he asked, doing his best not to come off as aloof or disinterested.
“These spineless cowards just stood by and did nothing as some good-for-nothing outlaws held up my wagon and robbed me of all of my possessions that weren’t inside of the carriage with me,” she huffed, visibly seething.
“I can certainly empathize, miss. Unfortunately, you aren’t the first to have this happen to them, and unless your drivers have some kind of lead we can go on, I’m afraid there isn’t much I’ll be able to do to help immediately,” Peter replied apologetically. “All I can do is try.”
“Try? That’s the best you can tell me? That you’ll try? Do you understand what sort of trouble I am in if my belongings aren’t recovered? Important paperwork and precious family heirlooms were among my luggage,” she said, her expression showing that her mood was only worsening by the minute.
“I assure you that we are going to do everything in our power to return your items to you. In the meantime, is there someplace that we can take you? Somewhere you’ve arranged to be? I’d be happy to escort you there to ensure that no further misfortune befalls you. We wouldn’t want you getting robbed again.” Peter smirked.
“I am glad this is all just some big joke to you! How am I supposed to take care of my expenses? I had my purse sitting inside my carpet bag, and they took that too! That held all the money I had to my name as well as my checkbooks!” she barked, tears now glittering in her eyes. He could tell she was about to start yelling again, so he took the preemptive approach and cut her off.
“Worst comes to worst, I’ll pay for you to stay in the town inn for a couple of days,” Peter said, tilting his hat to cover his eyes.
“How very generous,” she replied, her tone dripping with sarcasm. “And if you cannot figure out who took my possessions and retrieve them in those couple of days, what am I to do? The generosity of people only goes so far, and I am not willing to debase myself just for a place to live.”
“I promise you that you will not be required to debase yourself,” Peter said, casting a sideways glance over at Chris. “You are being truly ridiculous. Your fears are unfounded at best. We aren’t a bunch of slack jaws around here. We take our work very seriously, don’t we, Chris?”
“I hope for both of our sakes that is true, Sheriff,” she said shortly, turning her head away from him.
“Chris, could you be so kind as to escort Miss Thompson here to the local eatery? Tell Hank it’s on me, she can have what she likes. Also, see if you can get in touch with Miranda Daisley and see if she would be willing to put her up a couple of days. I’ve got an investigation to do,” Peter said, walking away before the woman had a chance to say anything else.
Chapter 3
This is all just great! It was bad enough that she was sore and exhausted from the lengthy trip and she hadn’t been able to even enter the city limits before being robbed. Then, to make matters worse, the sheriff didn’t seem all that interested in solving the crime. How exactly was he planning on handling it? How could she calm down when robbed of literally everything of value she owned?
Those robbers could have gotten a good distance away, so tracks would be sparse. The few tracks that they would be able to find would be hard to distinguish from the tracks left by the general coming and going of wagons and horses. For all she knew, her luggage was already being divided up amongst the robbers and was on its way to be hawked at the nearest general store for whatever they could get for it.
I couldn’t be more frazzled from the whole ordeal if I tried. I’ve already given my driver enough of an earful that his head will be ringing for weeks, and I made it very clear that I was hell-bent on complaining to the carriage company about this.
“I truly am sorry for all of this, Miss Thompson.” The coachman had made his way back from giving his side of the story to the deputy, his hat held tightly and nervously in his right hand. “I was outnumbered ten to one. If I had so much as reached for my pistol, they would have pumped me and the boy full of lead. With us out of the way, they probably would have taken their time to search the carriage. I can only imagine what they would have done had they found you alone.”
“Next time, you should be armed with a little more than a six-shooter when you are carrying hundreds of dollars’ worth of property with you,” she said coldly. “This all happened because of you and your assistant’s cowardice.”
“I understand your anger, Miss Thompson,” the old black carriage driver said softly, his eyes staring down at the ground. “We can help the sheriff find your things if you’d like.”
“No, I don’t think you’ll be able to offer much help. Just make sure that you don’t leave town for the next couple of days. I want time to pen the letter that I will be sending back with you to the owner,” she snapped, noting how deflated the older man seemed to be.
She begrudgingly allowed herself to be shepherded by the young deputy into the nearby diner, where a stout, brown-haired man with a wild and unkempt beard was standing behind the front counter. He was in the middle of wiping a stack of wet glasses dry with a dishrag that was beginning to grow threadbare, whistling tunelessly all the while. His simple black vest looked like it would burst open any moment around his massive gut, and when one of his fellow workers whispered something in his ear that made him laugh, it looked like someone was shaking a platter of gelatin.
“I got a new customer here for you, Hank. Sheriff says you are supposed to treat this one real nice and have her tab combined with his. He’ll pay for whatever she has,” he said with a smile, turning in Melanie’s direction. “Miss Thompson, I really am sorry that you have been subjected to such a terrible event here in our own beloved little slice of home. But I can guarantee you this: we take what happened today very seriously, and we will not rest until we can give you some sort of closure to this whole mess.”
“What mess?” Hank’s voice was deep with a distinct Texan drawl; a few of his top front teeth were missing. “Not another stagecoach robbery, I hope.”
“Are you telling me this is a common occurrence?” Melanie asked, rage slowly welling up inside of her once more.
“Oh, not at all. If anything, this is highly unusual for these parts. However, this town has been no stranger to crime in the past, and people have memories that are a lot longer than they would like you to believe,” he said simply, rolling his shoulders. “I’ll keep a helpful ear out, and if anyone happens to mention something questionable, I’ll get in touch with you.”
“You seem to have eyes and ears all around this town, so having your help would truly be of great assistance,” Chris said, unable to conceal his goofy grin. “I’ll go reconvene with the sheriff. In the meantime, please attend to Miss Thompson here.”
“Oh, come on now, gents,” a voice said from behind Melanie, causing her to turn her head to look. She was greeted with the sight
of a cheerful-looking woman in what looked to be her early thirties, her stomach swollen in the telltale signs of a late pregnancy. She had curly brown hair that fell in graceful swirls down to her shoulders, her amber-brown eyes twinkling with genuine warmth. She looked to be white, albeit with the distinctive tan that came from living in such a hot climate. “A town diner is no place for a young woman to sit all on her own.”
“Ah, Iris. It is good to see that you and the baby seem healthy,” Chris said pleasantly. “How much longer?”
“I feel as though it's a matter of weeks now,” Iris replied, rubbing her belly absently.
“How many is this now?” Hank asked from behind the counter, setting down his dry glass and picking up a wet one.
“This will be John and mine’s seventh,” Iris said proudly.
“And here is to our continued good fortune and family’s good health,” said a clean-shaven man with dark brown hair and blue eyes as he stepped forward, resting his hand on Iris’ shoulder. “I don’t know what I would do without this wonderful woman at my side.”
“Oh, John, you flatterer,” Iris said playfully, smacking her hand softly against her husband’s chest. He was dressed in a three-piece suit, a faint sheen of sweat visible on his forehead until he wiped it away with the handkerchief from his front pocket.
“Flatterers speak lies rather than truth. I speak truth rather than lies, and my compliments are genuine,” John shot back with a grin before turning his attention to Melanie.
“My wife is absolutely right. Having you sit around bored in a shop like a child whose parents have left it unattended would be a poor welcoming from a hospitable town such as ours. Why don’t you come with my wife and me to our house? You can stay with us for a bit until the sheriff has a chance to try to retrieve your belongings, and then we can get you where you need to go. What brings you to town?”
“I answered an ad in the newspaper that said there was a teaching position open here that needed to be filled immediately. As I had no prior obligations that kept me tethered to where I was, I figured making a new life for myself wouldn’t be too bad of a decision,” Melanie said slowly, choosing her words carefully.
“That is all the more reason why you should come stay with us. Iris here is the schoolmarm that you are going to be replacing,” John said, noting the look of surprise that managed to splash across Melanie’s features for a brief instant.
“I wouldn’t want to make myself a burden,” Melanie replied with uncertainty. “I don’t know how long it will take to reclaim my things. And with how large your family sounds, I wouldn’t want to add to your stresses.”
“Nonsense,” John said with a booming laugh. “We have more than what our family needs; I made sure of that. You’ll come home with us, and we won’t hear another word to the contrary.”
“But what if I never find the money to be able to pay you back?” Melanie choked out, the overwhelming kindness she was being faced with nearly bringing her to tears. She hadn’t been treated this well by anyone since her father had passed on.
John looked her directly in the eyes, the seriousness in his tone matching the expression on his face. “It is a favor, not a loan. I expect no repayment. Now, enough of this talk of debts. Let’s get some food in your belly, and then we’ll take you back to the house to get settled in.”
Chapter 4
After he’d left Chris to escort the beautiful spitfire off to the eatery, he’d made his way with both the stagecoach driver and his assistant back to the spot where the robbery had taken place. He could make out five pairs of tracks side by side on either side of the road, which somewhat corroborated the driver’s report that there had been ten robbers. Taking care not to disturb the hoof prints, Peter carefully walked around the tracks and inspected the dirt on either side of the road.
He noticed that both the driver and assistant were strangely quiet as he worked, and when he glanced over in their direction, both were looking downtrodden.
“I know how you feel, fellas, but this isn’t your fault. Despite how much Miss Thompson hollered at you, I understand that it must have been a frightening situation,” Peter said as he knelt in the dirt.
“It simply surprised us to hear her yelling so loudly, is all,” the assistant said sheepishly. “She was such a quiet and polite little thing for the majority of the ride here.”
“How long have you two known Miss Thompson?” Peter asked, his finger tracing along the deep ruts on the dirt road that their carriage had made.
“Only for a month or so. We met her the day she chartered our coach, and we hadn’t heard of her beforehand. Our proprietor told us that we were to take care of her like she was royalty, and we did our best to do that,” Charlie replied.
“How old did the men sound?” Peter took a couple of steps out into the sandy dirt nearby and halted when he felt his boot tap against something hard.
“They sounded relatively young, but I would have no way to know for certain. His face was covered by a bandana, but there was no mistaking the look in his eye. He probably wouldn’t have even pulled the trigger, but I didn’t want to take that chance,” Charlie added, rubbing the back of his head.
“I imagine that would be rather hard to have to explain to a future employer,” Peter said dryly, his fingers brushing against something cold and metallic. When he picked the object up, he realized he was looking at a pocket watch. “What have we here?”
“What did you find, Peter?” Chris asked as he rode up on horseback, coming to a halt on the road beside where the carriage was stopped. The brown stallion beneath him whinnied softly, quieting when the deputy leaned forward and held a carrot out for him. “Is it a clue?”
“Looks like someone dropped their watch,” Peter said, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips. “Initials of D.W.J. on it, and I don’t know many people with those initials that live in this area, do you?
“I sure don’t,” Chris said with a small smile. “In fact, I think I only know one person whose initials match those, and that would be old Donald Johnson.”
“He has a son, doesn’t he? Just turned fifteen a few months ago?” Peter asked, clicking open the watch and checking the inside for anything that might help pinpoint who it belonged to. He could make out an engraving on the inside of the cover that said, “Happy fifteenth birthday, son.”
“I think this might be his.”
“What makes you think that?” Chris asked, watching as Peter walked to his horse and quickly leaped up onto the saddle.
“Call it a hunch,” Peter said, glancing over at where Charlie and his young assistant, Daniel, were sitting. “You two can head back to town and get yourselves situated somewhere. My deputy and I are going to go have a chat with a possible suspect.”
The two men rode down the dusty road side by side, the gentle clopping of their horses’ hooves the only sound they heard. Don Johnson and his family lived in a brand-new house that had been built on the plot of land he’d acquired four years prior in a card game. He was a nasty individual, and his son was shaping up to be a chip right off the old block. When they rode up to the house and the front porch came into view, Peter was unsurprised to find it covered in stolen goods.
“Why’d you do it, boy?” Peter roared, spooking the group of young men that were sitting around Donald Johnson’s front porch. One of the boys tried to run, but Peter tossed a bola at him, which wrapped around his legs and tripped him up, putting an end to his escape attempt right there. The rest of the youths all eyed him warily as he dismounted his horse, his gun belt clanking quietly against his side with every step. “You fellas think it is funny to hold up honest people and take their things?”
“It was just some innocent fun against some out-of-towner, Sheriff,” a blond-haired boy said from the front of the group.
“That out-of-towner happens to be the new schoolteacher,” Peter snarled, closing the distance between him and the other boys and pressing his finger into the blond boy’s chest. “Where is
Donald Junior?”
“I am Donald Junior,” the blond he was poking replied, causing Peter’s eyes to blaze brighter. “How did you know that it was us who did it, anyway? There could have been any number of folks who would have been willing to rob that coach. What sort of rich person travels with just an old man and a teenager to guard their things?”
“They weren’t hired guns; they were just drivers,” Peter said, cuffing the boy upside the head. “And she isn’t rich. Even if she was, that doesn’t make you robbing her any better. Now, you boys have exactly ten minutes to bring all the things that you stole in front of me pronto. Otherwise I am hauling every last one of you down to the station until all your fathers come to collect you, and I’ll turn a blind eye while they beat each of your hides raw!”
The boys quickly scattered, and soon Peter was looking at the majority of the items that he’d received complaints about in the last few months. He sent Chris back to the station to grab a few more deputies to help return the stolen goods while he chose to drive the cart. I’d love to see someone try to hold me up for this stuff. I wouldn’t be nearly as passive as that old man was.
A Bride to Melt the Sheriff’s Iron Heart Page 2