Desert Moon Page 3

  Sam Dennis, the livery owner, broke into a wide grin when he saw her entering his barn.

  “Well, now! Miss Julia! Welcome back.”

  “Thank you, Sam. Have you got a horse I can use this afternoon?”

  “Surely, but…Are you and Oliver going riding so soon? You came in on today’s stage, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, and I want to ride up to the mine.”

  “Oh, well I guess Oliver’s working and you can’t wait to see him, eh?”

  She didn’t disillusion him, but stood impatiently watching as he saddled a lethargic dun gelding. Within minutes, she was in the saddle. She made the horse trot until they were out of sight of the livery then urged him into a lope. Ten minutes later, they drew up before the mine’s headquarters. She dismounted and tied the horse to the hitching rail. The clerk inside lost no time in ushering her to Leland Gerry’s office.

  “Good day, Miss Newman.” The older man rose behind his desk. He hadn’t aged much, though his hair had a little gray now. He wore the same clothes Julia had always seen him wear—black suit, white shirt, black necktie. While greeting her, he removed the spectacles he’d been wearing.

  “Hello. Is it true that my brother is not here?”

  He blinked then said, “Yes. No one seems to know where he’s gone to.”

  “Did he come to work this morning?”

  “Yes, I spoke to him personally less than an hour after I came in. He didn’t mention to me that he’d be going out, but sometimes he does go on errands without my knowledge. Things having to do with mine business.”

  Julia nodded. “He didn’t meet the stagecoach when I arrived, and I assumed he was here.” A stack of papers on Gerry’s desk caught her eye—campaign posters. One hung on the wall behind him. GERRY FOR SENATE. Arizona wasn’t even a state yet, and he was planning his move to Washington.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “No one here has seen him since ten o’clock or so. If you’d like to leave Oliver a note, I can show you to his office.”

  “Thank you, but I know where it is.” She whirled then walked into the hallway and a few steps along it to the tiny room that held Ollie’s desk, two chairs, and a set of shelves. She found a scrap of paper and a pencil and bent over his blotter to scribble a note.

  Ollie, I’m at home. Hurry back.

  She added a stylized lizard at the bottom—a rune she’d used for her signature since they were children. Oliver used an eagle. They’d copied the simplified depictions from petroglyphs they discovered when they lived up near Canyon Diablo more than a decade ago. Their father had managed the trading post there for three years, and Julia and her brother had run wild in the desert and loved every minute of it.

  She went back out to the dun gelding. Where now? If no one knew where Oliver had gone, searching seemed pointless. She’d check back at the house, but her mind was made up before she reached it. If he wasn’t there, she’d ride back down to the place where the stage had been robbed. Adam was right about one thing—that holdup was downright odd. Only one man, no horse, and he hadn’t demanded anything from the passengers. Maybe there were some clues down there.

  The horse loped willingly back into town. Julia ran into the house. Her trunk sat on the floor just inside the parlor, to the right of the door. They never locked doors in Ardell, and she was glad Chick had brought it inside for her.

  “Ollie? Are you here?”

  Her voice echoed off the walls and ceiling. Tears sprang into her eyes. Where was he? She refused to worry. Instead, she ran back out to the horse and mounted. The gelding wanted to return to the stable, but Julia forced him to head out of town, down the mountain, along the road toward Flagstaff.

  Her thoughts, against her wishes, swung back to the sheriff as she rode. Adam hadn’t changed a bit since she’d left two years ago, unless it was to be more suspicious—more antagonistic. She realized how much she’d counted on him taking up some other occupation after the Arizona Rangers disbanded. She’d have happily married him if he became a rancher or a storekeeper or a freighter.

  But, no. Adam Scott couldn’t lay down the badge. Within weeks after he was done with the Rangers, he’d accepted the offer of a job as sheriff. Technically he was a deputy to the county sheriff—the office her father had once held. But all the townspeople called him “sheriff.” Why couldn’t he settle down and be an ordinary citizen—one who wasn’t hated and cursed and shot at? At the age of twenty, Julia had hoped. She was older now, and she knew he couldn’t change. Adam would always need to be a lawman.

  And so she’d left—ostensibly to pursue a teaching career. She and Adam both knew she’d really done it to put as many miles as possible between them. She’d nursed her shattered heart at a safe distance from the man she loved but couldn’t have.

  A mile out of town, and a good deal lower in elevation, she paused. This was the spot. The robber had chosen one of the steepest stretches of the road. The horses had to slow down here. On one side an outcropping of rock rose, with several large boulders at the bottom. Good places to hide. Beyond it, brush grew thick and edged up to a copse of scrub pines. More cover. The other side of the road ran close to the edge of the mountain. Passengers got a beautiful view, but the coach driver had to stay clear of the drop-off.

  Julia dismounted and examined the ground. After a moment, she thought she knew exactly where the stage had stopped and located a squarish scuff where the treasure box had hit the ground. A few boot prints showed in the nearby dirt, which must have belonged to the robber.

  The road itself was a mess of hoofprints, but no one had seen the robber’s horse. He must have had one. She looked around again. The trees were a good fifty yards away. The bandit must have hidden the horse at least that far away, unless he’d had a place in the rocks to keep him out of sight.

  She walked toward the boulders and searched the ground between and behind them, and along the edge of the juniper bushes, but all she found was an empty bottle. She held it up for a moment and eyed it with distaste before tossing it as far as she could into the brush. Useless, that’s what this trip was. There was nothing here that would tell her who did this.

  Maybe Oliver had come home. She ought to go and check. The dun gelding was cropping the short, dry grass at the edge of the road. Julia mounted and headed back up the slope toward town. Halfway there, another horse came around a bend toward her. She drew back the reins and the dun stopped.

  Adam stopped his horse, too, for a moment then proceeded toward her. She took in the bedroll and pack tied behind the cantle of his saddle. Adam wasn’t out for a brief ride. He planned on being gone a while.

  What was Julia doing out here? Adam urged his horse forward, trying to read her face. Impossible—she’d donned a guarded look that might as well have been a mask. In the old days, he’d been able to take one look into her eyes and know exactly what she was thinking. How many other ways had she changed?

  “Hello, Julia.” He pulled back, and Socks stopped, almost nose to nose with the dun Julia rode. One of Sam Dennis’s horses. “Oliver didn’t come home yet?”

  “Would I be out here alone if he had?”

  She had a point. “So, what are you doing?”

  “Looking for Ollie, of course.”

  “Out here?”

  She shrugged. “Maybe he rode into Flagstaff to see if I came in on the train.”

  It wasn’t like her to use weak logic—or to lie. What was she really up to? Maybe she knew exactly where Oliver was. He looked her over, more closely, taking in the comfortable old riding clothes she used to wear. This wasn’t the proper lady who’d gotten off the stage. She might be taking Oliver information or supplies. Maybe she planned to join him so they could escape together with the loot from the robbery. Adam hated to even think that about his best friend—or the woman he’d loved.

  But if Oliver was innocent, why did he disappear when the payroll did? And why was his sister out here in an isolated spot, near where the robbery took place?

 
“Look, Julia, what’s going on?”

  “What do you mean?” She blinked those blue eyes at him, so guilelessly that he almost believed she was innocent.

  “Ollie knew you were on that stage, didn’t he?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “I can’t believe you just said that.”

  She turned her horse and clucked to it, going around Socks. As they passed, Socks stretched his neck and nipped the dun’s flank. Julia’s horse let out a squeal and quickened its steps. Julia flung a dark look over her shoulder at Adam.

  He slumped in the saddle and watched her go. How many times would he have to watch Julia ride away from him? He’d had more than enough of that.

  He turned Socks back down the trail and determined to forget her. Again.

  “Women.”

  Socks twitched his ears back toward Adam, and he realized he’d spoken aloud. He stroked the bay’s withers.

  “We were gettin’ along just fine, weren’t we, boy?”

  But Adam wasn’t. Life without Julia was gray. The intense color she’d splashed all over it was gone. True, things were more peaceful without her, and he’d gotten used to the calm. He had a lot of friends and few enemies.

  Another pain sliced through him. Oliver Newman was his best friend. He couldn’t have done this. How could he? Adam knew his friend well—or he’d thought he did.

  Oliver had been there for Adam when Julia went away. Even though she was his sister, Oliver hadn’t tried to defend her. He’d seemed to be able to look at both sides, and Adam respected that. The Newman kids’ father had died in the line of duty when he served as a deputy sheriff. Julia couldn’t go through that with a husband, too. Adam had thought long and hard about it, but in the end he couldn’t resign his position. He’d honestly felt God had called him to be a lawman. But Julia couldn’t accept that. Or maybe she could, but not the two of them together as long as he wore the badge. So she’d gone away to teach.

  Oliver had helped him pack up the memories and put them away. Not to forget. Adam could never forget his love for Julia. But he could keep it sealed away in a dark place, like the trunk full of his mother’s things that sat up in Uncle Royce’s attic. He hadn’t opened that for a long time either.

  And Ollie had been there to talk things out after Adam came home from a recent trip to Phoenix. He’d gone there to take in a train robber he’d helped the county sheriff catch. He hadn’t minded the journey to the capital, though it was hotter than molten iron in Phoenix during July.

  Adam had been stunned when the bigwigs in Phoenix had come to his hotel and urged him to run for representative in the new state government. Arizona wasn’t even accepted as a state yet, but they were lining up senators and representatives and all kinds of other officials.

  He’d thought about it until he got home. Then he told Oliver, and they’d hashed it over—for about five minutes. They both knew he didn’t want to spend half the year in Phoenix. He wanted to stay right here and keep the peace in the mining district—which he’d done fairly well until today.

  He reined Socks in when he reached the scene of the robbery. Chick Lundy had described it well, and he’d had no trouble finding it the first time he came out here. There had been no rain for more than a week, and it wasn’t hard to tell where Chick had stopped the team and they’d stood for several minutes. He’d also found boot prints and a few other scuff marks. Now smaller footprints had joined the mix. Adam dismounted and studied the trail for a few yards beyond. Julia hadn’t gone any farther. She’d stopped here and looked the site over again. Why? Had she met her brother here in the short time he’d been gone? He didn’t see any other footprints, but that didn’t mean anything. Oliver might have met her and stayed in the saddle.

  Adam gritted his teeth. He’d only ridden back to town long enough to see Leland Gerry. Then he’d alerted a trusted man and grabbed his gear. Andy Black was going to meet him out here with several other men to help him track the robber. But apparently he’d left the spot unwatched long enough for Julia to look it over—and maybe to communicate with the bandit.

  He swung back into the saddle. Did he really believe that? He didn’t want to.

  Julia was nearly to the outskirts of town when she met four riders. She felt a twinge of unease. In the old days, she wouldn’t have been afraid to be out by herself on horseback, so long as she had her gun. But since she’d lived in a city, her ideas about that had changed. Maybe that was part of growing up. She rested her right hand over her pocket, where she could feel the reassuringly hard shape of her revolver.

  “Howdy, Miss Julia.”

  “Sam?” With relief she recognized the livery owner, as well as another of the men who rode with him. “Where are you all going?”

  “Out to meet the sheriff. He called for a posse.”

  “A posse?” Julia looked back down the road in bewilderment. Adam had said nothing to her of this, or even of having a suspect. “What for?”

  Bob Tanner, the barber, raised his hat for a moment. “Adam found where someone tied a horse in the trees not far from the holdup, and he called for men to go out with him to track the robber.”

  “Be quiet, Tanner,” one of the other men said.

  Julia’s stomach curled in dismay. Had the notion of her brother’s involvement been discussed in town?

  “We’d better get going,” Sam said. “Just put the horse in the corral when you’re done with him, Miss Julia.”

  “All right. Thank you.” She felt ill as she watched them ride away to meet Adam. When they were out of sight, she turned the dun homeward and galloped for the livery stable. Three more men passed her, heading toward the posse’s rendezvous.

  She rode into town and tied the dun in front of the mercantile. When she went inside, the owner was standing behind the counter.

  “Hello, Miss Newman.”

  “Hello, Mr. Morley,” she said. “I don’t suppose you’ve seen my brother today.”

  “No, I haven’t. He’s probably out to the mine.”

  “Thank you, but I’ve been there.”

  “So it’s true he’s disappeared?”

  “I beg your pardon.” She didn’t try to hide her shock this time—or her outrage.

  Mr. Morley shrugged. “Just that folks are saying it’s mighty peculiar how Oliver disappeared right when the payroll did.”

  She stared at him. “Are you implying that Oliver had something to do with the robbery? My brother is as honest as the day is long.”

  “Have to follow the evidence.”

  Julia’s jaw dropped. “How could you say that?”

  Mr. Morley shook his head. “If your brother’s found guilty, you’ll have to accept it.”

  “It’s more likely he was injured trying to do some good.” Julia whirled and went out into the sun again. Two women were coming up the steps.

  “Julia, is that you?” Mrs. Tanner peered at her from beneath the brim of her sunbonnet.

  “Yes. How are you?” With great effort she controlled her voice.

  “Fine, just fine.”

  “Have you seen Oliver today?” Julia ventured, hoping they wouldn’t insinuate that he was guilty.

  “Why, no, I haven’t,” Mrs. Tanner said.

  The other woman shook her head, and Julia left them. If they hadn’t heard the rumors yet, it wouldn’t be long until they did. Just about as long as it took them to get to the counter and speak to Mr. Morley, in fact.

  She visited the feed store, the bakery, and the tea shop next to the church, but no one had seen her brother. Nobody else seemed as bold as Mr. Morley, but some of them looked at her oddly, and Julia began to feel like an outcast. As she left the tea shop, she saw an older man walking unsteadily across the street.

  “Dr. Scott!” She hurried to meet him. The physician was Adam’s uncle, but she wouldn’t hold that against him. Dr. Scott had served the little town since before her family moved here, and she considered him an old friend. A whiff of whiskey wafted to her as she took his arm. She looked ove
r her shoulder. Judging from his course, he’d come from the nearest saloon. Oh well. A lot of men had a drink now and then. That’s how the town supported three saloons.

  “Hello.” She smiled up at him.

  He stood in the middle of the street eyeing her uncertainly. “Julia? Julia Newman?”

  “That’s right,” she said. “How are you?”

  “Oh, not too good.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  The old man took a step toward his house, which was located on a side street a few yards down. “Well, it’s this new young doctor, you know. Since he came to town, I don’t see many patients anymore.”

  “That’s too bad.” She wasn’t sure whether Dr. Scott wanted to retire or not, but perhaps he didn’t have much choice. She walked along beside him. “You haven’t seen Oliver, have you?”

  “Who? Ollie? Can’t say as I have.”

  She saw him to his door, and by the time they reached it, she was certain he’d had more than one drink. “Well, good-bye. It’s good to see you again.”

  He waved vaguely and opened the door.

  Julia backtracked toward the tea shop. Oliver had written last summer that the church beside it had a new minister. Maybe he could shed some light on her brother’s whereabouts.

  She knocked on the door of the little house behind the church. The woman who opened the door looked tired. Julia could see why—she carried a baby, and a little girl tugged at her skirts. The woman seemed older than Julia—at least ten years older, though some of her wrinkles might be due to fatigue.

  “Yes?”

  “Hello, I’m Julia Newman. Oliver’s sister.”

  “Oh yes, of course. I’m so sorry about your mother.”