The Outlaw Takes a Bride Read online

  “Yeah, I saw them, too. Come on.” Johnny left Reckless ground-tied and walked toward the house. He was bone tired, and he didn’t want to sleep on the ground again tonight.

  The cabin door was shut, and he knocked on it. “Mark?” Silence greeted him, so he knocked again. “Anybody home?”

  Cam sidled up to him and reached for the latch. The door opened under his touch. “H’lo, the house!”

  They looked at each other.

  Cam hopped over the threshold, and Johnny hesitated only a moment before following him.

  Lying facedown on the floor of the one-room cabin was a man dressed in twill pants and a frayed chambray shirt. Johnny’s stomach flipped.

  “Well, you said it,” Cam said. “Somethin’ ain’t right.”

  Johnny stooped and grasped the man’s shoulder and rolled him over. Staring sightless up at the ceiling was his brother, Mark Paynter.

  CHAPTER 2

  Sally trudged to the post office through the rain, holding her black umbrella over her head. On most days, Effie or the pastor went for the mail, but on miserable cold winter days or ones where a body could drown by stepping off the sidewalk into a pothole, Sally had the privilege.

  She didn’t mind going out in the rain, though it meant she would have to change her entire outfit on her return. The umbrella did little to protect her black bombazine skirt as it billowed in the wind. However, making the unpleasant trek herself meant she would see the letters before Effie and the Reverend Mr. Winters did.

  She had received only one additional letter from Mark since his proposal. It arrived a fortnight past, and in it he had said he would await her response before writing more about their future. He sounded as though he wasn’t confident that she would accept his offer.

  Sally prayed that he had received her answer soon after penning his doubtful thoughts. She had sat down as soon as possible and answered that hesitant missive, of course, and assured Mark that he possessed her heart and she now waited only for his word to leave St. Louis and join him in Beaumont, Texas.

  At the post office, she opened the door, stepped into the doorway, and turned so she could stand inside while collapsing her umbrella. She slid it into the holder inside the door and glanced about. Two people stood at the counter, awaiting their mail. When they had finished their business and left, she smiled at the postmaster.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Beamus.”

  “Hello, Mrs. Golding. It’s a pleasure to see you, though I suspect getting here was not very pleasurable.”

  Sally laughed. “You’re right. It’s coming down pretty hard out there.”

  “Let’s see.…” He turned to the rack of cubbyholes behind him. “I know there’s something for the minister. Oh, and here’s one of those Texas letters for you.”

  Sally schooled her features so that she wouldn’t show her elation when Mr. Beamus turned back toward her and held out the two envelopes.

  She glanced at them just long enough to assure her that her own letter was from Mark, not her mother, and tucked the letters into the deep pocket of her cloak.

  “Thank you very much.”

  “Anytime.”

  The door opened behind her, and she left with a nod to the newcomer, plucking her umbrella from the stand as she passed it. She opened it and plunged into the downpour again, after closing the door firmly behind her.

  When she got back to the parsonage and slipped in the back door, the kitchen was empty. She had time to slip her own letter into her dress pocket and was hanging up her cloak when Effie entered.

  “Heavens, that umbrella is dripping all over the floor, and your tracks—why, your shoes must be soaked.”

  “I’m afraid you’re right,” Sally said serenely. “I’ll mop the floor after I’ve had a chance to put on some dry clothing.” She held out the reverend’s letter. “Here you go, for Mr. Winters.”

  “Hmpf.” Effie eyed her shrewdly. “Is that all?”

  “I’ve nothing more for you.” Sally positioned her open umbrella the right distance from the cookstove, so it would dry out while she dashed up to her room but would have no chance of being singed.

  “Nothing from Texas today?” Effie persisted.

  “My mother seems not to have written this week. They’re probably busy with the garden and the livestock. Excuse me.” Sally made a beeline for the stairs before Effie could press her on the issue.

  In her attic room, she sat down near the window. With trembling fingers, she tore open Mark’s letter. Folded inside his message was a bank check. Sally’s heart raced. She held it up near the window and looked at the amount. It was more than she had earned in the past year.

  She turned to the letter.

  My dear Sally,

  It was with great joy that I read yours of the 3rd. I trust the enclosed funds will cover your expenses to get here. Please write as soon as you know when you expect to arrive, or if there is no time for mail, send a telegram. I will be getting things spruced up at the ranch. I cannot tell you how happy I am that you have agreed to come and be my bride.

  With great anticipation,

  Mark Paynter

  She clutched the letter to her heart and blinked back the tears that welled in her eyes.

  “Oh, thank You, Lord! Thank You!”

  She sat another minute, reveling in her boon, then quickly pulled off her damp clothing and put on her only other dress, a faded calico. She always wore the black outside the house since David’s death, but she donned the older dress often while doing Effie’s housework.

  An unpleasant task awaited her. She would have to tell the minister and Effie that she was leaving. She wished she could go and buy her train ticket before telling them, but she didn’t see how that would be possible. Effie would be angry if she left the house without telling them.

  Sally smoothed her hair and turned to the stairs. Maybe she should just tell them that “friends in Texas” had sent her the money for the trip. Perhaps they would assume the gift was from her family.

  No, Effie would never think that.

  Sally raised her chin. She would proudly tell them that she was leaving them to marry a respectable Christian rancher. She sent up a prayer for strength and walked down to the parlor.

  “Somebody shot him.” Johnny stared down at his brother’s body. For weeks he’d tried to imagine what his meeting with Mark would be like, but this had never occurred to him.

  “I’m sorry,” Cam said. He crouched on the opposite side of Mark’s body and studied his face. “He looks like you.”

  “Cam, who would do this?”

  “How should I know?”

  Johnny sat back on his heels and wiped his sleeve across his brow. “I can’t believe it. Mark was always the steady one. Everybody liked him.”

  “You don’t know that,” Cam said. “You haven’t been around him for a long time.”

  Slowly, Johnny stood and walked to the open door. “Whoever did it took his horse.”

  “We oughta look around the corral and see if there are hoofprints. He mighta had more than one horse. And there could be other people. Did he have any ranch hands?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Cam got up and stepped over the body. “We’d better check the barn.”

  “Yeah. And we need to bury Mark.” Johnny’s throat was dry, and he swallowed hard. “I reckon we need to get the law out here, too.”

  “No!” Cam whirled and glared at him. “How do you think it would look if you got a lawman to come here?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’d think we did this.”

  Johnny shook his head. “Cam, he’s my brother. I wouldn’t hurt Mark.”

  “No, but the sheriff don’t know that. And if he started asking around, he might hear you was wanted in Colorado. He might even have a wanted poster on you by now.”

  For a second, Johnny thought his heart had stopped ticking. “Do you think so?”

  “I dunno, but I don’t think you should chance
it. We ran away after Red was killed. We’re as good as outlaws now.”

  Johnny clenched his teeth. He’d tried not to think of it that way. Cam had said he had no other course but to run and that things would get straightened out.

  “Come on,” Cam said. “We’ll look around and make sure no one else is needing us, and maybe we’ll see some clues to who did this. When we’re sure the coast is clear, we’ll tend to your brother.”

  Johnny followed him outside, his steps dragging. He wasn’t sure Cam was right about the law. It seemed to Johnny that if he rode to town and told the local sheriff he’d just arrived and found his brother dead in his own home, the sheriff would believe him. But what if he didn’t? He looked around the barnyard. This was a nice little spread. The sheriff might think he and Mark had fought over it.

  Cam had located the well, which had a stone berm about two-and-a-half-feet high, and was hauling a rope up from it. Johnny walked over and watched him pull out a wooden bucket full of water and set it on the edge of the wall.

  Cam cupped his hands and took a drink. “That’s good water. Drink up, boy, and wash the dust off your face.”

  Johnny scooped up some water for a drink and splashed his face and beard. He felt somewhat better with his parched throat eased and a soft breeze cooling him. Until he thought of Mark, still and growing cold while he and Cam stood here making themselves comfortable.

  “Come on.” He strode toward the corral. The rail fence ran right up to the barn. Around the open gate, he searched the ground. Boot prints. Shod hooves.

  Cam stepped forward, but Johnny held up a hand. “Wait. See that? We need to get one of Mark’s boots and see if he made those footprints.”

  “Why? It’s not like we’ll know who did, if they aren’t his.”

  Johnny gritted his teeth and didn’t respond. He crouched down and ran his finger around the crescent of a hoofprint. “At least one horse wasn’t shod.”

  “Right. How many shod, do you reckon?”

  Johnny studied the other prints, inching through the open gate and into the corral to see more, but most of them were marred, overlapping each other in the dry dirt. He could make out the impressions of some rounded forehooves, and a few were definitely from slightly narrower hind feet.

  “Hard to say, but I think at least two.”

  “So…” Cam straightened. “Either someone walked in here and left with three or more horses, or they rode in and took their mounts and your brother’s horses.”

  Johnny nodded. “Let’s look in the barn.”

  The open structure held no stalls, the way a barn would in cold-weather country. The lower level held a pile of loose hay in the back corner, and the mow overhead was stuffed with it. Johnny approached the door to what he assumed was the storage room.

  “Hey, look.”

  Cam came to his side. “Someone broke the lock.”

  Johnny frowned at the hasp that had been pried from the doorjamb. He pulled open the door and peered into the small, dark room.

  Cam shoved past him. “Two barrels of oats. Harness. One saddle.”

  Johnny stepped in and joined him. A spade, an ax, a hammer, and several other tools hung on the wall. “Somebody stole his working saddle.” The one that was left was an old, dried-out, cavalry-issue rig with a thick coating of dust. “That one hasn’t been touched for a while.”

  “I think you’re right,” Cam said. “They’re long gone, whoever done it.”

  “Not too long,” Johnny said, thinking of his brother’s body. “Mark hasn’t been dead a whole day.” Suddenly doubting his own judgment, he looked at Cam. “Do you think?”

  Cam shook his head. “He ain’t stiff, and if it happened yesterday, there’d be…” He made a face. “You know how it is when we find a dead cow.”

  “Yeah.” Johnny preferred not to think about the aftereffects of death—the bugs, the bloating, the stench…“We’d best get him underground as quick as we can.”

  “All right.” Cam took the spade from the wall. “Do you want to get him ready, or you want me to do it?”

  “I will,” Johnny said. As hard as it would be, he wanted to spend these last few minutes with Mark and examine his wounds again.

  “I’ll find a likely spot to dig, then. Water the horses first, eh?” Cam shouldered the spade and went out.

  Johnny’s steps dragged as he went out into the brilliant sunshine. The cow lowed piteously. He almost ignored her, but after taking buckets of water to Reckless and Cam’s pinto, he went to the barn for a milk bucket and to see if Mark had a stool. Mark would wait another twenty minutes, but this cow needed relief. Besides, the milk would come in handy.

  He let the motions of routine take over, numbing the jagged pain that tore at him. As he sat rhythmically milking away, leaning back a little so he didn’t contact the cow’s hot side, sweat trickled down his back and off his face. He laughed out loud. Grief would hit him soon. It was sure to. But this was too absurd. His brother lay dead a few yards away, and here he was milking a stupid cow.

  As though she heard his thoughts, the cow flicked him in the face with her tail, the coarse hairs flogging him like tiny whiplashes.

  “Is that all the thanks I get?” His thoughts turned back to his brother. If he’d been shot today, it must have been early morning, or else Mark would have milked the cow. So, around sunup. That was probably as close as they could come to pinpointing the time.

  Johnny didn’t bother to strip the cow dry. When the bucket was two-thirds full, he stood and set it away from the reach of her feet. He untied her and gave her flank a swat. “Go on now.”

  She eyed him balefully for a moment then ambled away. Johnny picked up the pail and walked to the house. Inside the doorway, he set the bucket down and went to Mark’s side.

  Drying blood soaked the front of Mark’s shirt. The only comfort to Johnny was that it probably happened quick. He doubted his brother had lain there long, knowing he was dying. Nothing about the body or the floor around it suggested he had moved at all after he was shot.

  Johnny walked slowly around the cabin. The kitchen area was in disarray, with a few supplies strewn about. Whoever killed Mark must have helped himself to the foodstuffs. They didn’t take everything, though. A barrel half full of flour stood open below a worktable, and though the shelves had some empty spaces, several jars of preserves sat there intact, waiting for a hungry man to open them. A little more snooping revealed cornmeal, salt, and a small amount of dried peas.

  Johnny walked over to the bunk built onto one wall. The covers were neatly spread, and his heart spasmed as he recognized an old patchwork quilt their mother had stitched. She had promised Johnny one, but it wasn’t half finished when she died, so he never got his quilt.

  He reached to pull it off the bunk and hesitated. Should he bury Mark in it? He hadn’t seen any lumber lying around, from which he could make a coffin. But it seemed wrong to bury Mama’s quilt. Maybe there was another blanket he could use.

  A few garments hung from nails in the wall, and Johnny examined them. The white cotton shirt must be Mark’s Sunday best. He could put that on him and remove the bloody chambray one. If he washed the blood off, Mark would look almost natural.

  He got a basin of water and a rag and steeled himself to remove Mark’s bloody shirt. He unbuttoned it and laid back the front pieces of the shirt. Two bullet holes. They had shot Mark twice in the chest. Johnny tried not to think too closely about that as he dabbed the blood away, but he couldn’t help the pictures forming in his mind.

  Cam walked in as he finished and was easing the ruined shirt off over Mark’s lifeless arms. He stopped in the doorway.

  “Did you milk the cow?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good. We can have some milk with our dinner.” Cam stepped closer, frowning. “What are you doing?”

  “Dressing him nice.”

  Cam squinted at the basin of bloody water and the clean white shirt Johnny had brought over.

  “You�
��re going to change his clothes?”

  “Thought I would.”

  “You might want his things later on. He’s not going to care what he has on.”

  Johnny paused in his ministrations. “Cam, he’s my brother. I want to bury him nice.”

  After a moment, Cam said, “Sure. You do whatever you want. I’m gonna see if ol’ Mark had any coffee.”

  “He never liked it,” Johnny said.

  Cam grunted and moved toward the kitchen area. Johnny decided to let him worry about what food was left. All he cared about for the moment was that his brother was going to be buried in a clean shirt, with his blood washed off him.

  Sally waited until suppertime to break the news. Her stomach fluttered during the minister’s blessing over the food. Effie would complain that the vegetables were cold after the lengthy prayer, but that was hardly Sally’s fault.

  After the amens, the Reverend Mr. Winters reached for the meat loaf, and Effie pounced on the nappy filled with mashed potatoes. Sally had resisted the temptation to bake the potatoes, though it was much easier. Effie preferred them mashed, with plenty of butter, so Sally had taken the extra time to peel and mash them. She waited until the couple had heaped their plates and then helped herself to modest servings of meat loaf, potatoes, and squash. She doubted she would be able to eat much.

  She watched Mr. Winters take a few bites. He didn’t offer compliments, but his face relaxed into satisfied folds as he chewed the meat loaf. She had cooked it just the way he liked it, crispy around the edges, but well-done and juicy in the middle, with plenty of onions. Sally reached for her water glass and took a quick sip to moisten her dry mouth. When she set the tumbler down, it clunked on the table, earning her a scowl from Effie.

  Sally quaked inside, but she didn’t dare hold off until Mr. Winters’s plate was nearly empty. Then he would launch into a discourse on next Sunday’s sermon, or the reprobation of today’s youth, or the greedy landgrab of the Europeans, who were carving up Africa however they pleased.

  “We had a good meeting of the Ladies’ Aid,” Effie said.