The Bounty Hunter

by Cheryl St. John

  She climbed into her own bed and fell into an exhausted sleep.

  LILY HADN’T BEEN ASLEEP more than an hour when a rap on her door wakened her. It was still dark. Would this night ever end?

  She got up and stumbled to the door to find Rosemary. “Sorry, Lily, but there’s someone at the kitchen door for you. She wouldn’t come in.”

  Lily grabbed her dressing gown and ran. Catherine. She’d gone back home too soon.

  Indeed, Catherine Douglas stood outside the door.

  “Why did you leave?” Lily pulled her into the kitchen, studying her face for additional bruising and cuts.

  Catherine glanced around. “Get dressed quickly, Lily. I need you to come with me.”

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t have time to tell you—just hurry!”

  Lily ran back up and pulled on clothing and shoes and tied her hair back with a scarf. She joined Catherine, and the woman led her along the back alley to the corner, then across the street.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To my house.”

  “Are the children all right?”

  “They’re fine.” Catherine guided her to the Douglas house and in through the rear door. A lamp burned in the kitchen.

  “Isn’t your husband going to be angry if he finds me here with you?” she whispered.

  “He won’t be objecting.”

  “Catherine, I insist you tell me why you brought me here.”

  Catherine pushed her into a room and closed the door behind them. It was a small bedroom, like a servant’s quarters, and it held a narrow bed and a few furnishings.

  Amos Douglas lay on the bed, eerily still. His eyes were closed.

  “Is he sleeping?” Lily whispered.

  “No. He’s dead.”

  “What?” Her heart threatened to stop. “What’s happened to him?”

  “He was gone when I returned from your place. I went up to our bedroom and later I heard him down here. I came down and found him on the kitchen floor.”

  “Dead?”

  “No. Holding his stomach and moaning something terrible. His face was white. He told me to help him get in here to lie down, so I did. He wouldn’t let me go get help. I was going to go for the doctor, but he grabbed my wrist and told me not to leave the house. I got rags and tried to stop the bleeding, but I couldn’t. He got weaker and weaker. I was afraid to leave and afraid to stay. Then—” she pressed her fingers to her mouth and a tearful sob escaped “—it didn’t take very long. He sort of gasped and then he stopped breathing.”

  Lily stared in horror, absorbing Catherine’s description of the recent events.

  The woman clutched at Lily’s arm. “What if someone thinks I did this to him?”

  “Of course they won’t.”

  “Look at me, Lily. I could have shot him for what he did to me.”

  “He’s shot?” At those words, everything became crystal clear. “In the belly?”

  “And he has burns on his hands. Look.”

  Lily didn’t want to look, but she did. She knew without a doubt. “He set fire to the hotel tonight.”

  “What?”

  “The sheriff brought a mother and her children to the hotel,” she explained. “They were staying there when someone came in and set a fire. Naomi surprised him, and he pulled a gun on her. She shot him. Twice.”

  Catherine’s eyes widened. “There are two bullet holes. And he’s wearing a revolver.” Her grasp on Lily’s arm trembled. “Why would Amos do such a thing?”

  “He’d been making me loan offers for the past couple of years,” Lily told her.

  “And those papers I saw on his desk had something to do with it. He wanted you to lose your property to him.”

  “If the hotel burned, I’d have to default on the loans in order to keep all my irons in the fire.”

  Catherine gave Lily a long look, then she picked up a ring of keys on a table and brushed past. Lily followed her to another room. The woman went directly to a set of walnut doors and turned a key in the lock. Inside, she lit a lamp and began a methodical search of the desk.

  “Here,” she said, taking a deed from a ledger book. “Ownership of the hotel. As his widow it belongs to me now, and I’m giving it to you.”

  “Catherine, you might need—”

  “No. I own it all now. It’s mine to do with as I see fit.”

  “You might need it for your children. I’ll pay you a fair price for the hotel.”

  “Whatever he held of yours, you’ll take it back.”

  “All right, Catherine.” She took the piece of paper and placed it in her skirt pocket. “I’d better go get the sheriff now.”

  “No!”

  Lily stared at her. “Why not? He’s not going to think you killed your husband.”

  “If word gets out about what he did, it will destroy my family. My children are already without a father. But a father with a bad name will haunt them their whole lives.”

  Lily understood Catherine’s fear, but she didn’t know what choice they had. “What are you going to do? You have to do something. He’ll have to have a burial.”

  “I don’t want John and the girls to know the kind of man he was. He’s dead now, what does it matter, truly?”

  “Catherine, what do you suggest?”

  She thought a moment. “We can make it look as though he died some other way. Place him at the bottom of the stairs as though he fell.”

  “The undertaker would notice the bullet holes.”

  “What if we changed him ourselves and laid him out?”

  “Wouldn’t that look pretty suspicious? The first thing we should have done was to go for the sheriff.”

  “Then let’s do that. And we’ll tell him a story to make it look as though Amos died some other way.”

  “How?”

  “What kind of description did the woman at the hotel give?”

  “She just said it was a man. That’s all she could make out in the dark.”

  “Then I’ll say a man tried to force his way inside our house.” She ran from the den and Lily followed.

  “What are you doing?”

  Catherine took a hammer from the pantry and struck the knob on the back door.

  Lily stopped her. “You’ll wake your children.”

  Catherine glanced at the ceiling. “We’ll say a man was breaking in and he had a gun. He shot Amos and then he ran away. I only caught a glimpse of him. Who’s to know?”

  Lily took Catherine by the shoulders and turned her to face her. “And you could live with that lie?”

  Catherine let the hand holding the hammer drop to her side. “For my children’s sake—yes.”

  Lily leaned back against a counter, weary and confused. She didn’t have a problem with lying to protect Catherine’s children. But there was another problem that kept her from agreeing. An insurmountable one. “I won’t lie to the sheriff,” she told Catherine.

  The other woman’s lip was swollen and scabbed. Lily’s heart went out to her. Amos Douglas didn’t deserve protecting. But his children did.

  “What, then?” Catherine asked, hopelessness in her eyes now.

  “Let’s tell him the truth. All of it. And let’s trust him to protect your children.”

  “He’s a lawman, Lily.”

  Lily nodded. “But he’s a good man. I trust him.”

  “All right. I don’t have a choice, do I? I’m putting the future of my children in his hands.”

  Lily nodded. “I’ll go get him.”

  She walked the dark street, nearly numb after the shocking events of the night, wishing she could turn back the clock and fix things. Wishing there was some other way.

  His house was dark when she reached it. She turned the bell knob, pounded a few times and waited.

  She heard movement inside, saw a light behind the curtain on the glass, and then Nate opened the door.

  “Lily? What’re you doing out this time of night?”

  He was
bare-chested and barefoot, but he’d strapped on his holster over his trousers.

  “Something has happened. I need your help.”

  “What is it?”

  Just like Catherine had with her, Lily preferred to show him before saying anything. “Come with me.”

  “Let me get my boots and a shirt.”

  A few minutes later they were hurrying along Main Street in the dark of night.

  “Where are we goin’?”

  “To the Douglas house. Many times over the past few years, Catherine Douglas has come to me for help. She’s often been beaten pretty badly.”

  “That son of a bitch,” Nate replied.

  “You’re not getting an argument from me on that one.”

  “Is she hurt badly?”

  “No. Well, he hit her earlier this evening, and she came to me then, but she’s all right. It’s not her I’m taking you to see. Well, not entirely.”

  They reached the house, and Lily led him through the back door to where Catherine waited in the kitchen. Catherine led Nate into the small room where the body of her husband lay.

  Nate looked at him, then at the two women. Finally he stepped forward and touched Amos’s neck, then raised the blanket to look at the wounds. He turned back to the women. “What happened here?”

  “It didn’t happen here,” Catherine explained. She went on to tell him the story of how Amos had arrived home and wouldn’t allow her to go for help. “Then I got Lily and she filled in the rest, so we figured out what happened.”

  “He started both fires,” Nate said. “The livery and the one tonight.”

  “That would be my guess, too,” Lily replied.

  “Do you know why?”

  “He was obsessed with getting his hands on Lily’s property,” Catherine said. “He spoke very strangely about her, and he had papers from the assayers about her real estate.”

  “Burning your property was sure to put you in debt to him eventually,” he said to Lily.

  “Sheriff Harding, I’m pleading with you as a mother,” Catherine said. “Please keep this knowledge from the townspeople and the authorities.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t want my children to know what their father did. I don’t want them to grow up with everyone looking down on them because of him. John will be going to university in a year or so. I can’t let his father’s actions keep him from being accepted. Amos will not be hurting anyone anymore. What difference will it make that no one knows, as long as he’s dead?”

  Catherine explained the story she wanted to tell.

  Nate met Lily’s eyes. She remembered the talks they’d had, the side of him he’d revealed to her in private. “I asked you once if you always saw everything in black-and-white,” she said. “Right or wrong. You told me you were a lawman and that you got paid to sort out the difference.”

  “That hasn’t changed.”

  “Well, I’m asking you to change it right now. I’m asking you to be satisfied in knowing the man is dead and won’t cause any more harm.”

  Lily sensed Nate’s apprehension. The man who’d stared death in the face a hundred times, the man who’d captured and killed wanted men for money, looked as though he was afraid of what she was asking of him.

  Had the request come from anyone else, she knew he’d never even consider it. But she also knew she held an edge.

  “You’re holdin’ an unfair advantage, Lily,” he said finally.

  “All’s fair in love and war, isn’t that what they say?”

  “This isn’t war.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  His jaw muscles bunched. He looked from her to Catherine. “From this moment forward, we will never speak another word regarding this except the story of how the man came to your door to rob you, Mrs. Douglas. The three of us—well, four actually—carry this to our graves. He’s just already there.”

  Catherine stepped forward and flung herself into Nate’s arms. She cried openly against his shirtfront. “Thank you, thank you. Lily said you were a man we could trust.”

  Lily met his eyes, and Nate patted Catherine’s shoulder awkwardly.

  “I’ll go for the undertaker,” he said. “Lily can stay with you.”

  Catherine told her story to a few people who gathered outside the house once the undertaker had been summoned and the news spread. It was dawn when John Douglas woke and came downstairs. Lily sat with them while Catherine told him the story of his father’s death. The young man cried. “He was just trying to protect us! What if that man comes back?”

  “He won’t,” Lily told him. “Men like that are cowards and move on when someone stands up to them.”

  Lily left the family and headed home. She asked Mollie to let her sleep for a few hours and wake her midmorning. Her bed had never felt so good.

  WITHIN TWO DAYS the story of the robber spread, and Amos Douglas was buried in the cemetery north of town. After the funeral, Catherine spoke to Lily. “I’ve found your property deeds and have set them aside to bring to you.”

  “You hang on to them until the hotel loan is paid,” Lily told her. “I’ll feel better about that.”

  Catherine reluctantly agreed.

  Nate sought out Lily that afternoon as she worked in her garden. She was at the end of a section of melons, a distance from Rosemary and Violet, who were tearing out the last of the bean plants.

  “What did you say to Evangeline?”

  Lily straightened at the sheriff’s question and shaded her eyes with one hand. “What do you mean?”

  “I lay awake for two nights planning how I’d approach her and talk to her, and when I got up the nerve I could tell she was relieved. She said the two of you had talked about a lot of things and that not being willing to conform meant she was being true to herself.”

  Lily smiled. “She said that?”

  “Yes. She packed and she’s heading for Denver, where she plans to find work and learn photography. Her mother’s fit to be tied.”

  “Photography. Fascinating.”

  “So you don’t think she’s making a mistake?”

  “I think she’s doing what’s right for her.”

  “She’s wise, you’d say?”

  “I would say that.”

  “Well, she also said you love me. How much wisdom can be found in that statement?”

  Lily’s ears rang for a moment. The sun felt hot, and a trickle of perspiration slid down her back.

  “Cat got your tongue, Lily?”

  “I…um….” Finally she shrugged.

  “You always have something to say,” he prodded. “I’m not always sure if it’s the whole truth, but you’re never at a loss.”

  “I’ve never lied to you. I didn’t lie to you about Amos, did I? I could have kept the secret myself.”

  “I appreciate that. It’s the other things, the more personal things, where you hold back.”

  She’d only held back two things from him ever. The truth of her husband’s death…and the fact that she’d fallen in love with him.

  “I saw gray for you, Lily. Remember?”

  She nodded. He’d done something he’d never done before, because she’d asked him to. He’d looked past right and wrong to the connotation of justice. If he’d been able to see it once, he would again.

  “Let’s meet this evening,” she suggested, glancing at the other two women and the sun overhead.

  “Name the spot.”

  “Pick me up when the Shady Lady closes.”

  He grinned and walked away. Lily watched him for a few minutes, then turned back to her task.

  THAT EVENING she looked at the red dress, then at the green one and an entire armoire full of other costumes, and chose not to hide. She wore the most sensible gray skirt she owned with a pink-and-white-striped blouse.

  Her attire didn’t raise any eyebrows with her staff, and she worked through the evening, waiting for the time when Nate would come for her.

  He’d shown up once during that time
, and with a lift of one curious brow had surveyed her clothing. She’d made him a Buffalo Bill special and seated herself beside him until he moved on.

  Now she stood on the front steps, watching the street.

  A horse came into view and Lily watched Nate approach. He slid his foot from the stirrup and reached for her. They were comfortable with this routine.

  Neither spoke until they’d reached the stream. Lily slid from the horse and Nate untied a roll of blankets and carried them to the bank. “It’s getting cooler, and I didn’t know if you’d want to swim.”

  “For now, let’s just talk.”

  He spread the blankets and she took a seat. Nate’s knee popped as he sat beside her. “Where were we?”

  “Which time?”

  He chuckled. “Today, I reckon. We were talkin’ about honesty. I told you that Evangeline said—”

  “Okay. I remember.”

  He draped both wrists over his bent knees as though he had all night to listen.

  “You told me about your wife,” she said softly, her voice not as strong as she would have liked. She’d had most of the day to think about this and how she’d say it, but her good intentions and pretty words fled. “It was a terrible thing. But you shared it with me. I can’t tell you how much that meant to me.”

  “It wasn’t easy to get the words out.”

  “My words won’t come easy, either.” She took a deep breath. “My father was a miner. My ma and I followed him from camp to camp, living out of a tent all those years. We panned for gold, cooked, did laundry and lived a mean existence. He always had a big dream that someday he’d find a vein and he’d be rich.”

  “That’s what keeps ’em all in these hills, isn’t it?”

  She nodded. “I thought about running away all the time, but I couldn’t leave my mother. She was never strong, and as time passed she got thinner and weaker. Finally she died.”

  “That must have been hard.”

  She nodded. “No sooner was she buried than my father met up with a man who owned a deed to a mine. One night Pa came and told me I was getting married so to pack my things. Like I had anything worth taking. I cried and told him I didn’t want to get married. Too late, he said. He’d traded me for a half share of the man’s mine.”