Double Chance Claim [Badlands 3] (Siren Publishing Menage Amour) (13 page)

Wade took a deep breath of fresh air. The scent of pine and loamy earth filled his lungs. With their ultimate goal on the horizon to being fulfilled, Wade relaxed a notch and slowed his mount to take in the majesty of the nature around him.

To his left was an incline with low scrub bushes against tall skinny trees rising several yards to the peak of a small hill. To his right, he saw much of the same landscape of bushes and trees until he caught something out of the corner of his eye. Several yards into the woods, in a small clearing between the trees was a pile of rocks that looked like someone’s grave. He would never have seen it at night, and the mound was too uniform to have occurred in nature. Why would someone stack up a bunch of rocks?

“Whoa.” Wade pulled on Lucky’s reins until they stopped. He started to dismount and explore the stone pile to assure himself there wasn’t a dead body underneath it, but paused when he heard the snap of a branch on the trail behind him. He twisted around in his saddle and searched the land.

Shit.
Someone had followed him from town.

* * * *

Wyatt forced his face not to betray the turmoil in his mind. “What makes you think someone stole my horse, sheriff?”

“A witness came to my office with the information a little while ago.” Vanguard nodded once to Maggie, and the corner of his mustached mouth lifted. “I guess you were off gettin’ hitched. Joe told me I’d find you here at the church. Don’t worry though, I’m about to go track the thief down.”

Holy shit!
“I appreciate it, sheriff, but my horse isn’t missing. He’s in the stable behind my saloon.”

“That so? Mind if I take a look?”

“Actually, I do.” Wyatt paused, trying to think of a good reason why the sheriff couldn’t see his stable. He leaned forward and lowered his tone. “Could we do this later, sheriff? I’d planned to be busy for the next couple of hours with my new wife.”

Maggie’s head dropped forward, and he saw her cheeks turn crimson at the innuendo.

The sheriff straightened, and Wyatt thought he might have blushed a little, too. “Right. Well, if you’re sure you still have your horse.”

“I am sure. Excuse us, Vanguard. We have a honeymoon waiting for us.”

“I’ll let the witness know he was mistaken.”

“Great. Thanks, sheriff.”

Wyatt steered Maggie off the steps of the church and quickly back to the saloon. If Vanguard checked, he’d find out Wyatt hadn’t lied about a horse being in his stable. It just wasn’t Lucky.

“Are you about to get caught in a lie?”

“No. There’s a horse in our stable. It’s not Lucky though, so I don’t really want the sheriff to look too close. Why did you think I lied?”

“I saw Wade ride away this morning. I didn’t know you had a backup horse just in case.”

Wyatt smiled. “We have a small stable in back of the saloon. There’s another horse that looks similar to Lucky. We trade them out occasionally.”

“So someone else saw Wade leave this morning.”

“That’s my guess. I’ll go ask the sheriff later on. Right now, I have a honeymoon to get started on.”

“I’m all for the honeymoon, but do you think we’ll be left in peace?”

He shrugged, and a long sigh escaped. “Possibly. Vanguard’s not stupid, but I don’t know if he’ll go back to the witness, sneak a look in the stable, or chase after Wade. I don’t think he’ll let it go. But I also don’t think he’ll bother us today.” He winked.

“Who do you think the witness is?”

“I don’t know. I saw someone lurking around next door when I came back from Stanton’s Dry Goods this morning, but I didn’t see who it was. I only saw a mangy pair of boots and a blur of someone running away.”

Maggie got a worried look on her face. “Was it Sadie?”

Wyatt almost halted mid-stride in the middle of the road. He kept walking and didn’t respond until he got to the saloon doors. “Why would you think it was Sadie?”

“Because she is very intent on getting you to go into business with her.”

“How do you know
that
?” Perhaps Wyatt needed to understand how his new wife had spent her time before coming to him last night.

“She’s been trying to use me to convince you. She was insistent. But I told her no. When I ran out of money for the hotel, she offered to pay my way if I’d come over and get you to agree to a partnership.”

Wyatt unlocked the doors and entered the saloon after Maggie walked inside. “So is that why you married me, to convince me to open the upstairs as a whorehouse?”

* * * *

Maggie nearly fainted when he accused her of colluding with Sadie. Distrust laced with secrets was not how she wanted to start this marriage. “I promise you, Wyatt, I would never do that. Not ever.”

His expression immediately turned contrite. “I’m sorry. I know better. That woman just makes me crazy. She’s been here every week, and sometimes twice a week, trying to get me to go into business since a month before you got here. If I could figure a way to do it, I’d bar her permanently from entering my saloon.”

“Why do you think she’s so adamant to set up shop here again?”

Wyatt shrugged. “I don’t know and I truly don’t care. She’s a nuisance.”

“She told me this place used to be hers, but her partner stole all her money and ran off so she couldn’t pay for it.”

Wyatt rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “Be that as it may, I just want to live in peace while we’re here. Once we sell the gold we’ve accumulated, we don’t have to stay here. Like I mentioned before, we can go anywhere we want.”

Maggie pondered where she might want to go. “Where are you two from?”

“Wade and I grew up just outside of Omaha in a small town.”

“Do you want to return there?”

He shrugged. “Not necessarily. Our father is already gone, as is our stepmother.”

“What about your mother?”

“She died of consumption before we were two.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to be. We don’t have any memories of her, although our father said she was a kind, sweet woman who loved us very much.”

Maggie nodded. Her mother was determined and often cross in daily matters involving her children versus kind and sweet, but Maggie loved her all the same. Her father had only tolerated her existence until she got caught, then he banished her from his life.

“Wade and I talked about heading out west a little farther. Do you have any thoughts?”

Maggie frowned at first. “Like to Montana?”

“No, more to the southwest, like to Arizona or Colorado.”

She shrugged. “My thinking has been centered on getting back to Philadelphia, but I wouldn’t be opposed to going southwest.”

The knock on the door startled both of them. Wyatt sent her a look that said he didn’t want to answer the door to any other interruptions.

She glanced at the grandfather clock and smiled. “Technically, you’re supposed to be open, aren’t you?”

“Perhaps, but I promised my new wife a two-hour honeymoon, and I don’t want to break my word.”

The knock came again, only louder this time. “Mrs. Altman, are you inside? I have an urgent telegraph message for you,” came a muffled voice from outside.

Maggie sucked in a breath. An urgent telegraph message?

Who besides her parents and Caleb’s partner even knew she was here?

* * * *

“Where is he? Where is the sheriff? I need to talk to him.” Sadie wanted to pound her fist on the desk and get the idiot deputy to perk up and understand her urgency and ire. Her meddlesome plans weren’t working out the way she wanted.

With his ankles overlapped and resting on the corner of the desk, Deputy Cross looked like he’d been taking a nap. Sadie didn’t have time for his laziness.

Ronald’s information had been very interesting. However, the more crucial problem she faced had to do with anyone going up north of town on a regular basis. How long had
that
been going on? It had to stop at least until she had what she wanted from the saloon.

Without moving at all, Deputy Cross remarked slowly, “I don’t rightly know, Miss Winters. But I’m sure he’ll be back directly.”

“Tell Sheriff Vanguard I demand to see him the minute he returns.” She’d been about to send Ronald over to make sure the sheriff understood that Wyatt Chance was up to something, but then decided the better course of action was to infer that Wyatt’s horse had been stolen. She’d sent Ronald over to inform the sheriff and put out the alarm.

A stolen horse would result in a search party. A search party including Wyatt would leave the saloon empty. Time alone in the saloon was what she needed most of all. And never more than right now.

If the sheriff had instigated a search party, the entire town would have heard about it, but an hour and a half later, nothing had happened. No gathering of men to ride or anything. Then Ronald had mentioned the direction of the suspicious rider as heading north. She wished she’d known
that
crucial information earlier. Stupid Ronald and his lack of details had pushed the necessity to get into Wyatt’s place to a dire pinnacle.

“I’ll tell him, ma’am.” Deputy Cross, still balanced on the two back legs of his chair, didn’t move an inch. She wanted to kick his chair over and watch him land on his ass.

“See that you do. I’ll be over at the hotel.”

“Is there somethin’ I can tell him for ya?” Hands folded behind his head, Deputy Cross remained still as frozen lake water.

“No. Just send him my way.”

Sadie desperately needed to get inside that saloon, and she wanted lots of time to search the place thoroughly. She just needed a reason for Wyatt to leave. Then she could spend some quality time in the saloon looking for what was rightfully hers.

The money her partner stole from her and hid somewhere in the saloon had eluded her for months. She shuddered a little bit at how much time she’d lost trying to take apart her partner’s former home in a futile attempt to find her money when the treasure she sought had been at the saloon all this time. Although, the time she spent at her partner’s house did yield the information she sought in the form of a letter he hadn’t mailed.

Thankfully, she’d had the presence of mind to open it and read the contents. That scoundrel. If it hadn’t been for that letter, she never would have known the money he’d stolen from her was hidden in the saloon.

If worse came to worse, perhaps she’d take something valuable of Wyatt’s and see if he were willing to bargain.

Perhaps Maggie mattered more to him than sole ownership of the saloon.

* * * *

Wade dismounted quickly and pulled his rifle from its holster. Aiming at the woodsy trail behind him, he pulled the rifle stock hard against his shoulder, sighted his general target, took a deep breath, and hoped whoever followed behind him was a stranger and not from Campbell’s Valley.

Unlikely, since the barely-there trail led straight to the town, but he didn’t relish shooting anyone.

Wade called out, “Who’s out there?”

Ten seconds later it was clear that the heavens above didn’t care about what he hoped. Sheriff Vanguard rounded the corner and into his sights.
Shit.