Carson's Christmas Bride (Hero Hearts; Lawmen's Brides Book 3)

by Natalie Dean

  He didn’t see Jack coming up behind him and didn’t realize that he was handcuffed until the bottle fell from his grip to the table and his arms were behind him.

  “All right now, Doc,” Jack said in a normal tone of voice, nothing of belligerence in his voice to incite the drunken man to aggression. “Let’s walk it off. You don’t want to be hung over when that bride of yours arrives, do you? When’s she coming in? On the next stagecoach?” He was tugging Boone along as they walked and the drunken doctor, too puzzled by the turn of events to resist, was obediently accompanying him. “That’s not far away. Have you got that cabin cleaned up and ready for her?”

  “Lucy,” Boone said, “Lucy and Ruby are taking care of that.”

  By Jack’s estimation, Lucy and Ruby were hardly old enough to take on the maintenance of household tasks, but that wasn’t a matter for a lawman to determine. “What about the boys?”

  “They see . . . where we goin’?”

  “What do the boys do? Help around the farm?”

  “Yeah, they’re good kids. I’m all alone now, since Hannah died.” A quiver entered Boone’s voice. “She died and left me with four young ones to care for.”

  The smallpox epidemic that had broken out in August had claimed more than Hannah Boone’s life. Some had survived, some had not. It was a merciless disease. But Jack Walker had no compassion for a self-pitying drunk.

  “If you’re ready to marry again, I reckon you’re recovering from your grief,” he said.

  “What else can I do?” Boone sobbed. “Hannah, she left me, we did missionary work together, and with her gone, I don’t have anyone to help me. I’m alone in the world—where are we going?” he asked suspiciously, as the sheriff’s office came into view when they turned the corner.

  “Somewhere where you can do your missionary work,” Jack said, deftly opening the office door with one hand as he prodded Boone forward with the others who were already behind bars.

  Benjamin looked up from the sheriff’s desk. “Evening, Dr. Boone,” he said pleasantly. “I’m afraid you’re not going to have the cell to yourself tonight. However, you will be in the company of your fellow inebriates.”

  Boone drew himself up to his full height, which was not particularly momentous in comparison to the tall U.S. Marshal and Deputy at his sides. “I am not inebriated,” he said. “I am grieving for my dead wife.”

  “Like I said, Doc,” Jack continued as he urged him toward the cell. Benjamin tossed him the keys and Jack caught them expertly with his free hand. “You can practice that missionary work in here.”

  “Don’t wake them up,” Benjamin warned. “They’re sleeping it off.”

  As Jack returned to the office, with Boone’s lamentations proceeding from the cell, he sat down and exhaled a weary sigh. “Elections are rough,” he said.

  “At least Abe won,” Benjamin observed. “I was surprised that old Abel ran a candidate.”

  “The Townsends aren’t out of power yet,” Jack warned. “They’re worth keeping an eye on, and old Abel is as canny as Beelzebub himself.”

  “What about the other election?” Benjamin asked in ironic tones, knowing that for most voters, the election of a president would have surpassed interest in a local mayoral election.

  “Knox County went for Pierce,” Jack said. “The Whigs are tarred as abolitionist and that won’t fly in Texas.”

  There was silence for a time as the two men, both from other parts of the country and the world and both opposed to slavery, considered the direction of the country.

  “You think there’s any way to avoid war?” Benjamin asked. Irish and foreign born, his familiarity with American politics was not as ingrained as was Jack’s, who had grown up in the United States.

  Jack sighed again. “No,” he said finally. “Eventually, it’s a boil and it has to be lanced. You know what it was like, the fight over Texas joining the Union.”

  “It never made a lot of sense to me,” Benjamin admitted. “But slavery was abolished in Europe years ago.”

  “You don’t have cotton and sugar and tobacco plantations in Europe,” Jack reminded him. “It’s never going to make sense, but it’s going to split this country. Maybe not this election, maybe not the next. The Whigs are done for; they’re branded as anti-slavery and the South won’t countenance that.”

  “There’s not much we can do about that,” Benjamin said. “We uphold the law.”

  “The law says that if a slave escapes to a free state, he has to be returned to his master if he’s caught.” Jack’s eyes were troubled by the thought. “Texas is a slave state. If a slave escapes here, he’d have to be sent back as well.”

  “Only if he’s known to be a slave.”

  Jack’s gaze went to the board on the wall. Amidst the wanted posters were two advertisements for the capture of two runaway slaves from sugar plantations in Louisiana.

  “I hope they’ve got a map,” he said, “and they head to Kansas. It’s a free state. The law says they have to be returned, but . . . “

  Benjamin stood up. “I’ll make rounds,” he said. “You can play nanny for this lot,” he pointed his thumb toward the jail cells. “It’ll take your mind off politics.”

  “Why don’t you take a ride up to the Boone cabin and check on the kids?”

  “I was joking when I said play nanny,” Benjamin protested as he put on his hat. “Why am I checking on the kids?”

  “I have a feeling they might need it,” Jack said, explaining in a low voice that Boone seemed to be leaving his children to fend for themselves while he spent his days drinking and brawling.

  “Maybe the best thing to do is to get Boone sober and cleaned up for this bride,” Benjamin said. “Maybe, if he starts to look like he did before he became the town souse, he’ll be able to reform.”

  “Not a bad idea. Fetch a suit of clothes while you’re there, and let’s see if we can turn this sow’s ear into a silk purse.”

  Chapter 2

  It had seemed like a good plan. When Benjamin went to the Boone cabin and saw the children, who ranged in ages from five to nine, working like grown-ups cleaning the cabin, tending to the livestock, and going about their tasks with a dogged attention to duty that made them appear as if they were shrunken adults, he was moved. He’d dismounted from Sal and, as he explained to his wife Mary-Lee at supper that night, next thing he knew he was mopping the floor.

  “That little thing, she was doing her best, but mopping’s not a chore for a child who’s the size of a twig,” he said.

  “What about meals?” Mary-Lee asked.

  “The oldest girl, Lucy, does the cooking. She seems proud of that. She says her mother taught her.”

  “Maybe I’ll bring some of this stew over,” Mary-Lee said. “We always have plenty and we can surely share what we have, especially with children. This bride . . .does she know about Doctor Boone?”

  “Would you have come if I’d told you that I was a drunk? Odds are he told her he’s a God-fearing doctor and that’s what she thinks she’s marrying. I brought his suit to the jail cell and Carson shaved him. Boone’s hands shake so that he couldn’t be trusted to wield a razor. He’s being kept in the cell until the stagecoach rides in tomorrow.”

  “If he can’t shave himself, how can he do any doctoring?” Mary-Lee demanded.

  “I’ve never heard of anyone going to Graham Boone for medical care,” Benjamin said as he accepted a second bowl of stew. “Maybe before I got here, but now Dr. Darnley has the only practice in Knox Mills.”

  “What does Mr. Boone do, then, for a living?”

  Benjamin noticed how quickly Mary-Lee had abandoned the title of doctor in reference to Graham Boone. That was Mary-Lee, she didn’t dally when it came time to make a judgment, he thought with amusement. For Mary-Lee Jameson Graves, something was black or it was white. A doctor who couldn’t be trusted to hold a razor was no longer a doctor.

  “I don’t know as he does anything. He used to do missionary work, h
e says, and I suppose he preached and got paid for it. They grow what they eat on the farm and they have pigs and cows and chickens.”

  “It’s going to be a lot for a woman to take care of,” Mary-Lee said thoughtfully. “Piper does missionary work; I shall ask her if she knows anything about the children. The new Mrs. Boone is going to need all the help she can get.”

  * * *

  The plan to clean up Graham Boone so that he was presentable to his mail-order bride looked as though it was going to work. On the morning of the day that the stage was due in, Graham Boone stood in the sheriff’s office, clean-shaven, respectably garbed in a sober black suit and a clean white shirt. Carson Harlow, the deputy who had taken charge of the shaving and had held Boone’s upper body under the water pump until he was sufficiently soaked in a facsimile of a bath, surveyed his handiwork.

  “Well, Boone,” he said. “I reckon you’ll pass for a gentleman.”

  “I am a gentleman,” Boone replied with asperity. “And you are an insolent puppy.”

  “You’ll make me regret buying you that bay rum cologne,” Carson said genially, unperturbed by Boone’s insult.

  “You could at least give me the bottle so that I may maintain the fragrance,” Boone grumbled.

  “It’s cologne, it’s for smelling good, not for drinking.”

  Carson handed Boone his hat. “The stage is due in at noon. It’s eleven o’clock now. You go and you wait for your bride to come, you hear? When she gets off the stagecoach, you take her to the parson and do it proper before you take her to your cabin. You got all that?”

  “I am perfectly aware of how a man marries,” Boone said haughtily. “I have been married before.”

  Carson decided that it was better not to respond to that comment, although he wondered if Hannah Boone was better off in her grave than she had been as a wife. It wasn’t a matter for him to bother with. He was never getting married. He sent Boone on his way with a bouquet of late autumn flowers that he’d managed to put together by artful filching from the gardens in town.

  It felt good to be working in daylight. Now that this new deputy had started, he was the one consigned to working at night. Cocky, quick-tempered Justin Ward was a Texan through and through, but despite his swagger, he was a likeable sort and there was no denying his skills. He could track like an Indian, Jack had told them admiringly, and he could shoot like his bullets wouldn’t miss.

  Although he was a Texan, he was a stranger to Knox Mills and unknown to the local folks. Carson hoped Ward could keep that temper of his in check when he was working nights. Sometimes, what was needed to bring a brawl to a halt or end a fight that threatened to turn into a gunfight was a calm head, not a quick gun. He trusted Jack Walker’s intuition when it came to hiring. Carson grinned to himself; Jack had hired him, hadn’t he, and wasn’t that just about the smartest decision a U.S. Marshal could make?

  His smile faded as he studied the messages that had been delivered from the telegraph office. Although winter was approaching, there seemed to be activity among the Comanche; the soldiers at the fort had sent warnings to all the local law enforcement officers in the north Texas region. There was a reward being offered for a runaway slave who went by the name of Lazarus. And a town fifty miles west of Knox Mills was reporting a case of smallpox.

  Carson frowned. The smallpox that had broken out in town over the late summer had been bad. Sometimes smallpox just left people scarred, but this outbreak had been lethal; the town had lost twenty-five citizens. He knew the number because one of his duties had been to help the undertaker build the coffins. Jack Walker wanted all the deputies to get vaccinated so that they would be immune to the disease, but most people were still suspicious of the inoculation process which infected people with a mild dose of the smallpox. Dr. Darnley had tried to convince people that the process was safe and the reaction a much milder version than what they would suffer if they actually were infected, but his persuasion had fallen on deaf ears and the cemetery was proof. Still, Carson reasoned, fifty miles away was a good distance. Knox Mills should be safe from another round of smallpox. One of these days, he’d get around to that vaccination business. It sounded a bit suspect to him, if the truth be told, even if Darnley swore that it was effective. For now, he’d trust in the distance of fifty miles and his own youth and good health to keep him well. It had worked over the summer and there was no reason to fear that it wouldn’t work again if the disease came back.

  A runaway slave from Louisiana. Carson was from Tennessee and his father had owned slaves, but Carson didn’t hold with the practice. There was a community of freed black men and women in Knox Mills; they were hard-working men and women who had their own school and their own church. They interacted with the townspeople but mainly, they kept to themselves. If a slave came to Knox Mills, he’d find safety there, Carson guessed, and who was to know if he were slave or free? He didn’t see that as posing a problem for the law as long as no one could prove anything.

  The Comanche, now, that could pose a problem. The West was being settled by pioneers who crossed the country in covered wagons to start new lives in the lands that had been added to the United States after the war with Mexico. But no one had consulted the Comanche about the new arrivals and the Indians, who were masterful horsemen, ruled over much of the land that the settlers were crossing. It took courage, Carson thought, to come here and take the risk of dying for it.

  At least Fort Worth was aware and on the alert. They’d be quick to respond if trouble got underway.

  The door opened and Justin Ward walked in.

  “You ought to be home sleeping,” Carson told him. “You’re on for tonight.”

  “I don’t need much sleep,” Justin said, sounding as if only a weak man needed to rest.

  “No? Remember that when it’s three o’clock in the morning and Aldous Babbage sends word to come over right away because a poker game has gotten out of hand.”

  Justin’s hand rested on the gun in his holster, hanging within easy grabbing range. “I reckon I can take care of it,” he said.

  “You planning to shoot first before you know who’s at fault?”

  “I’m planning on stopping any fighting before it gets out of hand. That’s how things are in Texas.”

  It was a tad irritating the way Deputy Ward made frequent reference to his knowledge of Texas as if anyone not born there was somehow ignorant of the Lone Star State’s ways.

  “No wonder the graveyards are so full,” Carson said.

  Justin’s green eyes flashed. “This isn’t Tennessee,” he said.

  “No,” Carson agreed, “no, it’s not Tennessee.”

  His response seemed to mollify the firebrand deputy. “What’ve you got there?” he asked, referring to the messages on the desk.

  “Smallpox in Clinton; runaway slave; Comanche movement up north.”

  “Comanche?” Justin repeated. “What are they up to now?”

  “Nothing, so far. The soldiers just sent word, so we’d be aware.”

  “Best thing to do is stop it now,” Justin said. “Stop it before it starts.”

  “They aren’t doing anything yet,” Carson said. “Right now, it’s the soldiers’ problem and they know how to handle it.”

  “So we’re just going to sit idly by while they attack?”

  “They haven’t attacked,” Carson told him. “The soldiers just want us to be aware.”

  “So we’re aware, and next thing you know, there’s a Comanche raid and the women are carried off and the men are killed.”

  “Look, Justin, you might know Texas better than anyone and you might know the Comanche more than the rest of us—"

  “What do you mean by that?” Justin demanded. His hand hovered over his gun.

  Carson stared. “You aiming to shoot me?”

  “I want to know what you mean by saying I know the Comanche better than anyone, that’s what I want to know!”

  “You’re the one ready to ride north and kill them
before anything has happened to warrant it!”

  “I reckon if you mean anything, you’d better come out and say so, because I’ll not be insulted by a—"

  When the door opened to admit Jack Walker and Benjamin Graves, both deputies fell silent. The tension in the office was palpable. Benjamin looked curiously from one man to the other.

  Jack, however, pinned Carson with a steely gaze. “Where’s Boone?”

  “He’s waiting for the stagecoach to bring in his mail-order bride,” Carson said, surprised by the question.

  “No, he’s not,” Jack said. “He’s getting drunk in Aldous Babbage’s saloon. I thought I told you to get him ready to meet that stagecoach.”

  “I did!” Carson defended himself, aware of Justin’s amused expression as he witnessed Carson on the receiving end of a dressing down from Jack Walker. “I made sure he was clean and shaved and sober, and I even picked a bouquet of flowers for him to give to the girl when she gets off the stage.”

  “Well, you shouldn’t have let him out of your sight!”

  “I didn’t sign up as a Deputy Marshal to nurse a drunken sot who doesn’t know enough to stay sober long enough to say his ‘I do’s’” Carson flared. “Since when does being a lawman mean that we have to get a man to the altar when he’s too drunk to get there on his own?”

  “You get over to the saloon now,” Jack ordered in a voice that would tolerate no dispute. “And you make sure that Graham Boone is in decent shape to meet that girl on the stagecoach.”

  Carson began to protest, but Jack cut him short. “Do it,” he said, “or you’ll be back on night work.”

  Justin’s smile grew wider, a cocksure, brash demeanor of confidence in his ability to best Carson at whatever task Carson was set to.

  Carson put on his hat and strode angrily to the door, and although he knew it was childish, he slammed the door behind him. He was a deputy, not a nursemaid.