by Natalie Dean
There was no reason, she thought, that she could not go to the barn. Even if someone were watching the house, they would not find it peculiar for a housewife to go to the barn. She’d already milked the cows and gathered the eggs from the chickens, but she could still go to the barn. It was her barn, this was her home, and she wasn’t going to quaver at the thought that the Townsends might be watching her every move. She had a rifle, and she knew how to shoot it. Besides, if anyone came into the barn, she had a pitchfork handy to take care of them.
Buoyed by her own aggressive rationalization, Mary-Lee headed out the door and down the dirt path that led to the outbuildings where the horses were stabled and the livestock were kept. Benjamin wanted to expand the farm, but he had said that he didn’t want to burden Mary-Lee with too much labor. She had scoffed at that. She wanted a farm that provided a living for them and the family she hoped to have. She wasn’t afraid of hard work, she had told Benjamin, as if that were the reason for his reluctance.
Mary-Lee opened the barn door and, upon entering, called out a greeting to the cows so that her father would hear her voice and know that she was not an intruder.
“Hey, Bilgah,” she crooned as she entered. She could smell the hay and the reassuring, homey scent of the animals. It was strangely comforting, those earthy, everyday odors that might have been offensive to some.
There was silence. The animals, accustomed to her, ignored her. She knew that her father was up in the loft, but not a sound gave away his presence. She checked over the animals, which of course did not need checking. They were in for the night. Benjamin would be home soon, and Jack and Carson would be with him. She needed to talk to her father of their own private family concerns before he was engaged in the broader, more pressing matter of the Townsend threat.
She headed to the hayloft and began to climb up the ladder.
“I’ll come down, pet,” her father said from above. “No sense in two of us being trapped up here if trouble comes.”
He came down the ladder swiftly. She supposed that he’d rested during the afternoon. The barn was comfortable, although not impervious to the Texas heat. But there was water in the barn to drink, and she realized that eight years on the run would have made him very adept at developing tactics to stay alive.
“I’m sorry,” she said immediately when he was standing before her. “I shouldn’t have been so disagreeable this afternoon.” The apology had to come out before she thought it over; if she had taken more time, she knew that her anger would have rekindled. “When you left that night, I didn’t understand . . .”
“It was a lot to put on a child,” he said. “If there had been any way to avoid it, you know I’d have done it. But I couldn’t trust Augustus; he’s been trying to have me killed all these years. Sometimes, I’ve just been a step ahead of him.” Aurelius grinned. “But I’m alive.”
Mary-Lee flung herself into his arms. “And I’m so grateful to God that you are,” she breathed. “I didn’t even dare hope that you were still alive. I was sure that you were dead. When I received Benjamin’s answer to my advertisement, and I learned that he was a deputy marshal, I knew he was the one to marry. He would be able to get vengeance for me.”
“Marriage is about more than vengeance, Mary-Lee,” her father said, sounding troubled.
“Oh, I know that, Papa!” she answered, impatient with his reasoning. She wasn’t going to go into detail about how she had fallen in love with her husband. “I didn’t know what else to do. Lance Townsend wanted to marry me—I know it was for the deeds; they suspected that I had them, but they couldn’t ask directly, and I certainly wasn’t going to divulge my hiding place—and Uncle Augustus was going to make sure that it happened. Lance Townsend threatened me—“
“That blackguard!” her father responded. “I’ll see that he regrets those words.”
“There’s no need. I left. Besides, if I had been forced to marry him, I’d have stabbed him in his sleep rather than put up with any violence against me,” Mary-Lee assured him.
Despite himself, Aurelius laughed softly. “I believe you would have, pet,” he said.
“Of course I would have,” she replied. “Wouldn’t you have expected me to?”
“I reckon you’ll do what you have to do, same as a man,” he answered. “I’m sorry your mama didn’t live long enough to teach you the softer things. You only had me, and Nanny and Mrs. Abbot.”
“Softer things wouldn’t have done for me, Papa. I had to get away from Uncle Augustus, and that meant leaving for school. When I finished school and had to return to Abilene, I boarded with the family of one of my students rather than live with him. Then Lance Townsend said he was marrying me, and there was no chance that I’d stay around to let that happen, so I left.”
“Benjamin . . . he seems a good man,” her father said, carefully scrutinizing her face as he spoke. “He’s good to you?”
At first she hesitated, not wanting to confess the depth of her feelings for her patient, handsome, determined husband. “He’s good to me,” she said at last.
Her father nodded slowly as if he saw something in her features that gave him assurance. “Good.”
“Will you stay, Papa?” she said, unable to keep a note of entreaty from her voice. “Now that I’ve found you, I don’t want to lose you again. Knox Mills isn’t as big as Abilene, but it’s growing. You’d be happy here. You could buy land close by and farm or ranch, if you wanted. Benjamin says the day will come when ranching is big in Texas. He’s thinking of buying more cattle. If you stayed here, you’d . . . we’d be a family, Papa.”
“Is that what you want?” he asked. “Can you find it in your heart to forgive me for leaving you?”
“I don’t know if I forgive you,” she said honestly, raising her head to meet his gaze. “But I know that if you leave, I sure as certain will never forgive you!”
They both grinned at that. “Then I reckon I’d best put down roots in Knox Mills, Texas,” he said, hugging her. “If I’m going to be a father and maybe, someday, a grandfather, I ought to get to know this town.”
“I’d like that. There’s plenty of land here. You could settle a spread near us. The Kennesaws own a lot of land; they’d sell you a parcel, I’m sure they would. I haven’t met them yet, but I haven’t been here that long. I’m sure they’re fine people. Piper Walker, she’s Jack Walker’s wife, she speaks highly of them. You could still investigate the gold mines, even if they’re somewhere else, but you could have a home here.”
“You never looked at the deeds?” he asked in surprise.
“I have the deeds,” she said. “I’ve kept them safe all these years. I kept them in a hatbox,” she said in triumph. “Then, later, when I got here, I kept them right in my favorite blue hat.”
“Good place to hide them,” he said. “No man would think of looking in a hat for deeds to a gold mine. Well . . . the gold mines are right here in Texas, not so far from Knox Mills. So they aren’t on Kennesaw land. It’s your land. Not your husband’s land, yours.”
“Now that you’re back, you can have them.”
Aurelius shook his head. “Time for that later, pet. Gold mining takes some work. I’ll tend to that later, but first, we need to tend to the Townsends and Augustus.”
Chapter 16
Nighttime, July 5, 1852, Knox Mills, Texas
Benjamin wasn’t quite sure how he managed it, but within fifteen minutes after he, Jack, and Carson, along with Mayor Winslow, arrived, Aurelius Jameson appeared in the kitchen.
“What are you a conjurer?” Carson demanded. “How’d you get in?”
“Shadows and an open window,” Aurelius answered. “Good to see you again. Sir, I don’t believe we’re acquainted,” he said to Abe Winslow.
“Abe, this is Aurelius Jameson, my father-in-law. Mr. Jameson, this is Abraham Winslow, the mayor of Knox Mills.”
The two men shook hands with a somberness that gave the handshake a ceremonial aspect, as if they were agreeing
to a pact.
“Gentlemen, please sit down,” Benjamin said. “My wife has cooked a fine meal for us, and we’ll plan better on a full stomach.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Graves,” Abe Winslow said. “As a bachelor, I do not sit down to such fine fare at my own table.”
“Then you must eat hearty, Mayor Winslow,” Mary-Lee said with a smile. “There’s plenty for all.”
She poured coffee, as the men passed the platters; she was surprised when Carson accepted lemonade instead, smiling his thanks. “There’s nothing like a fine cool glass of lemonade on a hot Texas day,” he declared, drinking a long draft of the beverage to prove his point. “It’s beyond me why anyone would pour more heat down his gullet when there’s already heat to spare.”
“It’s cooling down now that it’s night,” Jack said mildly. “The lemonade-sipping deputy . . . I don’t know. It doesn’t sound like the kind of moniker that would strike fear in the hearts of evil men.” He was grinning as he spoke, knowing well that the young deputy was able to take care of himself and that a lady’s beverage did not diminish his abilities.
Carson grinned back, his irrepressible spirits undaunted by the grave task the men faced in their determination to subdue the Townsend gang and bring Augustus Jameson to justice. For Carson, the challenge of his work as a lawman was part of the zest of doing it.
“It’s fine lemonade, Mrs. Graves,” he said. “And this is a fine-looking meal. Me and Mayor Winslow have something in common, it seems; when we sit down to eat, it’s either at the hotel dining room or it’s beans.”
Mayor Winslow nodded gloomily.
Mary-Lee returned the deputy’s smile. He was a charmer. She wondered if he had a string of girls he was courting in Knox Mills. It would be hard for a young girl to resist that black hair and those devilish eyes. Her gaze fell upon Benjamin, who was smiling indulgently at Carson as he would have at a mischievous younger brother, although the two men were near in age.
Benjamin had told her earlier that, although this was a meeting for the lawmen, she was not to leave. Her insights would be useful, he said, and out of all of them, she had the most recent contact with Lance Townsend and with her uncle. So she sat at the table, at the opposite end from where Benjamin sat, keeping the plates filled and the platters moving.
“I don’t see any reason to give up the advantage of surprise,” Jack began the conversation after the meal was finished and Mary-Lee was dishing out pieces of peach pie. “They don’t know that we’re aware of their camp. My thought is that we ride in, armed, and order them to clear out.”
“We’ll have to back it up with intent,” Benjamin said. “I want the ones who attacked my home. They can’t clear out; they’re going to be tried and jailed when Judge Drury comes to town.”
“Fair enough,” Jack agreed. “I don’t much fancy to have a group of men hunkered down in the jail, attracting sympathy from the Townsends though. A jail break-out isn’t going to happen while I’m U.S. marshal.”
“We can send word that we’ll need the judge to come this way sooner than his schedule,” Carson offered. “If Judge Drury can get evidence against the Townsends before the election in November, he’ll make haste to come to Knox Mills.”
Abe Winslow nodded. “He’s mighty concerned about the way the Townsends are overstepping boundaries. He said that old Abel Townsend offered him a bribe a few months back to go lightly on Graham Boone. Old Abel said that it was grief that made Boone start that saloon brawl where one of the girls ended up with a broken wrist. He said Boone’s a doctor and could fix it, all taken care of. He said a lot more than that, too,” Abe said, his eyes flashing. “He seemed to think that, because the girl worked in a saloon, she didn’t have any right to lodge a complaint with the law.”
“I don’t know anyone in Knox Mills who would let Boone give them medical advice,” Carson said. “He says he’s a doctor and a missionary, but if he does any doctoring or preaching, he’s doing it inside the saloon. And him with those four kids, motherless now that Mrs. Boone died back in the winter.”
“Smallpox,” Benjamin said to Mary-Lee, who looked concerned. “It struck the town hard. Luckily, we do have a real doctor now. Dr. Darnley knows his business, and he doesn’t spend time in the saloon.”
“Why would the Townsends want the judge to be sympathetic to this Mr. Boone?”
“I’m not sure it’s just the Townsends,” her father said. “My brother likes to have people owe him favors. It paves his path.”
“What could a drunken lush of an ex-missionary possibly provide for a man like Augustus Jameson?”
“Graham Boone comes from a wealthy family,” Aurelius said. “Families will do a lot to keep their scandals under wraps. I’ve been hearing that his family back East wants him to marry up with a mail-order bride, so those children will have a mother.”
Mary-Lee stared at her father. “How do you get word of all of this?” she wanted to know. “You’ve been away for eight years.”
“I’ve been here and there,” her father said, disclosing nothing. “But if something has a connection to the Townsends or to my brother, I’ve found that it’s worth following up on.”
“That’s all speculation,” Jack said, bringing the conversation back to its point. “We agree that the judge will come to hear the case of the men who shot up your land. Carson, you’ll see that the message is sent?
Carson nodded. “First thing tomorrow morning, as soon as the telegraph office opens, right after I get off my shift.”
“Good. I want those men tried and out of my jail before they have time to stir up more trouble. Old Abel Townsend, he’ll have a plan or an offer, you can count on it. But I want them out of Knox Mills.”
“What about the bigger problem?” Aurelius Jameson asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Political corruption aimed at putting the Townsends in positions of power wherever they can buy votes and curry favor. Exposing my brother for his part in coordinating the bank robberies that fund the Townsend political machine.”
“One thing at a time,” Jack said, and he held up his hand when Benjamin protested. “I know. And I agree. But you’re talking about a campaign; I’m talking about a straightforward criminal act. Rousting those no-accounts out of the camp isn’t going to change the Townsend power structure.”
“It’ll lose them a few men with guns.”
“Maybe. This is Texas. If old Abel wants gunfighters, he’ll be able to get them. We start with the first item of business. We clear out the camp. Lance Townsend isn’t as wily as his uncle. He likes having an entourage, but if they’re gone, he’ll skedaddle back to his uncle’s to cower. If we can discredit him, he loses standing as a mayoral candidate in the election. One less Townsend in political office is fine by me.”
The other men nodded agreement. Abe Winslow’s dark eyes darted back and forth while he listened to the plan that would make sure the election was a fair one. He felt that he was a good mayor, and if he were to lose in a fair election, that was one thing. But to lose to Townsend corruption, that was quite another. “You’re riding out to the camp again tomorrow?” he asked.
Jack nodded. “We won’t hide this time.”
“You’ll still need a posse. I’ll let the men know to be saddled up and ready to ride out. Where do we meet?”
“Might as well meet here,” Jack said. “Aurelius, you’re riding with us.”
It wasn’t a question. Mary-Lee’s father nodded. “I’ll be with you. How many men have you deputized?”
“We need more,” Benjamin said. “They’re good men, many with military service in Mexico or against the tribes, but they aren’t lawmen by profession. Abe?”
“I can round up some more,” the mayor said. “What time should we be here?”
“Let’s go for dawn,” Jack said. “Even if they have a sentry, they aren’t expecting anyone to know where they are or to be going out after them. They’ll bluster when we show up. Benjamin, will you reco
gnize any of the men that came here?”
Benjamin nodded briefly. He’d remember the arrogant leader for a long time. “What’s to say that, after we ride them out of town, they stay out?” he asked.
Carson was smiling. “Maybe we don’t ride them out of town,” he said with a wicked laugh. “Maybe we take their horses and send them walking.”
Jack eyed his deputy with speculation. “Walking’s hard on a man in July,” he said.
“Hanging’s harder,” was Carson’s answer. “We ride them to the boundaries of Felix Junction, and we introduce them to the sheriff so that he can welcome them. If the law knows to keep an eye on them, the gang can’t get into too much trouble. They’re likely to split up and go their separate ways.”
“To get in trouble somewhere else,” Abe Winslow said.
“If we break up the gang, and they go off on their way,” Carson pointed out, “they’re less likely to come riding back to Knox Mills.”
“Maybe they’ll steal a horse and hang for it,” Jack said optimistically. He stood up, and the others followed suit. “Mary-Lee, thank you for your hospitality,” he said courteously, as he took his hat. “I promise you that by tomorrow afternoon, when Benjamin returns, you won’t have to worry about the Townsends troubling you anymore.”
“I’m going with you,” she said abruptly.
“Mary-Lee—" Jack tried to be diplomatic. “This is serious business. I know you were out there today—"
“And I didn’t swoon, or yell in fear, or give our location away,” she said. “I can ride, and I can shoot. Lance Townsend is as much my enemy as he is yours, and you’re telling me that I can’t be part of the force that brings him to justice?”
Jack glanced at Benjamin. His deputy marshal met his gaze evenly. “I already told her everything you’re likely to say,” Benjamin told him. “I can tie her up and leave her here, or throw her in a sack and bring her to your house and have Piper watch her. I can’t lock her in the jail,” he said as if he had considered it, “because it’s occupied at the moment with those men we took today.”