Marrying Miss Marshal (9 page)

The girl slid her hands through the cell bars and accepted the quilt and pillow.

“My name's Katy.” With those softly spoken words, she went to the cot and began spreading out the quilt.

That was it. Just Katy.

 

The next morning, Danna finished a quick sketch of the man Chas had pointed out to her at the dance. She wanted to put his likeness on paper while it was still clear in her mind. If Chas thought the man was a
suspicious character, perhaps she had a Wanted poster on him.

Her next task was to flip through the stack of hand-drawn faces and see if she could match her sketch to any of them.

However, it was a little hard to concentrate, with Katy humming a bawdy tune that she might've learned in a saloon.

Danna didn't move from where she sat with elbows propped on her desk, but flicked her eyes up to watch the teen.

Katy seemed much more relaxed today than she had last night. The shadows behind her eyes had lifted somewhat, and her humming—a scandalous tune—showed her mood had lightened. Now all Danna needed to do was find out where she belonged and get the girl out of her jail.

“I brought breakfast.” The cheerful, masculine voice preceded Chas into the jail as he backed through the door, two piping plates in his hands.

She looked down at the Wanted poster, but she couldn't make her eyes focus on the face it depicted. Chas's casual statements last night about his sister's tutor and running a household had thrown another obstacle in the way of her silly emotions. He obviously came from money. Somehow he'd ended up here in the West, but his roots mattered, even if he didn't talk about home much.

If she was right, and his family was well-off, she would never fit in. She was no lady. That was if her silly, female emotions ever came to anything.

Not that her silly emotions
would
ever come to anything.

A gilt-edged china plate—much nicer than the tin
ones she owned—plonked onto the table and her head came up.

Chas quirked a half smile, just a corner of his lips turned upward. “I grabbed breakfast at the hotel. Didn't figure you had.”

His kindness flustered her; she could feel a flush creeping into her cheeks. He didn't seem to notice as he crossed to glance out the window.

 

Chas kept one eye on Katy again shoveling the food into her mouth, ignoring the fork he'd put on her plate. Was she still
that
hungry?

In the reflection of the window's glass, he caught a glimpse of Danna with her head bent over the papers on her desk. Before he'd turned away, he'd seen her blush.

She was sweet on him.

The thought was terrifying. Surely he was mistaken. She couldn't be.

“I think I've found your man with the blond mustache.”

He turned to find Danna waving a piece of paper in his direction. “You're kidding.”

Surprised she didn't want to read the poster's information first, he took it from her outstretched hand. He did indeed look down into the face of the blond man he'd seen in the café and then in the saloon with Hank Lewis.

“Well, what does it say?” Danna demanded.

“Jed Hester,” Chas read aloud. “Wanted in Kansas, the Indian Territory and Colorado. For robbery. There's a reward.”

“Robbery? Not rustling? Are you certain it is the same man you've seen around town?”

“I'm sure,” he replied grimly. “But what is he doing
around this area?” And what was his involvement with Hank Lewis? Hank had been a cardsharp in Arizona. At least, that's what he'd been doing just before he'd killed Julia and Joseph.

“How many times have you seen this man?”

“Three.”

“Then he isn't just passing through.”

“It would appear not.”

What did it all mean?

“Do you mind if I borrow this?” Chas indicated the Wanted poster with Hester's likeness on it. “I might check around and see if he is staying at the hotel or boardinghouse.”

“Do you think that's likely?” From her skeptical frown, it was obvious Danna didn't think so.

“No, but it wouldn't hurt to ask.”

 

“Marshal?”

The quiet voice from the girl huddled in a blanket next to Danna's bed brought Danna from the brink of sleep instantly. It was the first time Katy had spoken since telling Danna and Chas her name the night before.

“Hmm?” Danna levered herself up on the bed with an elbow, in order to see the girl, though she could only make out an outline—Katy appeared to be curled in on herself, though the room was warm.

A barroom brawl earlier in the evening had filled the two cells, and Danna's conscience wouldn't let her leave the girl in the jail. Danna'd brought Katy into her room above the jail, telling the girl sternly that she was still under Danna's custody.

“Did your brother love you?”

It wasn't remotely the question Danna had been
expecting. Stunned, half-asleep, she spoke before thinking about her words. “I suppose he must've.”

“Then why did he send you away?”

Danna had asked herself the same question for years after she married Fred. She'd never come up with a satisfactory answer. She hadn't spoken to her brother much since she married Fred—hadn't seen him in years now—so the subject was never brought up.

“My brother had lived on the ranch his whole life. Didn't even go to school. I don't think he knew what to do with a sister—a girl.”

Katy was quiet for so long that Danna almost drifted off to sleep again. When she finally spoke, her voice was almost a whisper, tentative.

“What would have happened to you if…if there wasn't a husband to take you in? If you had nowhere to go?”

Aha. Now they were getting to the crux of the matter. Danna suspected Katy was speaking of her own situation. Finally.

“Well, Katy… I guess if I hadn't married Fred I probably would've found a family that I liked and that liked me and I would've stayed with them and helped work their farm. I was used to outdoor work from being on my brother's ranch.”

“What if you didn't know how to work?”

Danna followed her instinct and reached down to rest her hand on the girl's shoulder. At first Katy flinched but then seemed to calm.

“Honey, if you're worried about what's going to happen to you, you don't need to.”

Danna felt more than heard the girl take a shuddering breath.

“Do you have any family?”

“N-no,” came the whisper. “My p-pa died.”

“What about schooling?”

“I can't read, but I can cipher some.”

“Well, come tomorrow we'll see if we can find you a place to stay and some work to do. You promise not to steal anymore?”

The girl grunted and Danna decided to take it for a yes. She should probably feel good that she finally had a plan on what to do with Katy, but something about it sat like a stone in her stomach.

Was it because the girl reminded her so vividly of herself at that age? Alone, uncertain, unloved?

It was a long time before Danna drifted off to sleep.

D
anna moved wearily up the stairs to her room above the jail, looking forward to her bed and some rest after breaking up a barroom fight after one gambler had declared the man playing against him was cheating.

She'd nearly taken a broken bottle to the ribs. Chas would've been upset if he'd been there, but this was his evening off. Finally, in the wee hours, the saloons had closed, and she was free to get some sleep.

She pushed open the door, being careful to stay quiet so she wouldn't wake Katy, whom she'd settled earlier in the evening. A sliver of moonlight from the open door fell on the blanket Katy had used the past two nights.

The girl was gone.

A horrible feeling clenched Danna's insides in a fist. She struck a match and lit the oil lamp she kept on the small round table in one corner of the room, only to find the entire room was empty.

The blanket was folded neatly, extra pillow in the middle of Danna's bed. No signs that the girl had ever inhabited the room with Danna. She'd left?

It had been dark when Danna had brought her up here for the night. If she'd left, she probably wouldn't have gotten far. But why would she go?

Questions swirled in Danna's mind as she raced back outside and clomped down the steps, her boots echoing loudly in the quiet darkness.

She slipped in between the small space between the stairway that led up to her rooms and the outside wall of the milliner's building, pausing before she reached the boardwalk.

Something felt wrong. Call it instinct, call it something else, but her skin crawled and she felt in her bones that something was going on tonight. Something that she hadn't felt two minutes ago when she'd gone upstairs.

Taking her time, just like Fred had taught her, Danna peeked around the corner of the building, but the street was empty, the buildings dark. Yet something still wasn't right.

Danna crept down the street, taking care to stay in the shadows under the building awnings, keeping her bootsteps muted against the boardwalk.

As she crossed Third Street, she thought she glimpsed a flash of light from inside the Calvin Bank and Trust. She froze, eyes glued to the front window. Was someone inside? Straining her ears, Danna heard a soft whicker. A horse?

Everything was still. Then—
there
. The flash of light came again.

From this distance, she couldn't make out any details through the bank windows. She needed to get closer.

A prickle of unease skittered up the back of her neck, a sure sign that something was wrong.

She needed to be sure, needed to see into the bank.
She crouched down and crept along the boardwalk, keeping close to the front of the grocery. She jumped when something warm bumped into her leg, but was able to stifle a scream.

“Wrong Tree!” She hissed the dog's name, and he sat in front of her. He was supposed to be at the livery with Will. “Go home.” He looked up with his tongue lolling and tail sweeping the dirt-packed lane. “Go. Home.”

He whined, and turned his head away from the jailhouse, toward the saloon across Third Street from the grocery.

“I don't have time to deal with you right now,” she hissed, and tried grasping the piece of rope around his neck to usher him a few steps toward the jail, but he immediately turned back toward the saloon, and this time he barked.

“Hush!”

Danna released him, ignored him when he galloped away. She had work to do.

The bank had two entry points that she knew of. The main customer entrance at the front, as well as the employee entrance at the rear. Both of those doors were on the east side of the building, so it was possible someone could be watching both exits at once from the alley between the bank and the doctor's office next door. It would make it harder for her to get near the building.

And the bank's entire front wall was composed of large windows. If they had a sentry inside, there would be no sneaking up on the building from Main Street.

The closest she could hope to get without being seen was the doctor's office. And it had no windows that looked toward the bank.

But it was only one story tall. If she could get to
the roof, she could use her field glasses to see into the bank. And she'd have her rifle in case she needed it.

It wasn't much of a plan, but she had to try. She didn't have time to track down Chas at the hotel if the bank was being robbed.

 

Chas had had a bad feeling all evening that Hank Lewis was in town. This was his third patrol through Calvin's streets tonight, and he was exhausted, his eyes tired from scouring the shadows and darkness for trouble that might or might not be there. He'd never told Danna about the conversation he overheard at the party, so he'd been taking extra patrols on his own.

Everything was quiet, the streets deserted, the saloons finally having closed down for the night.

Then he saw movement on top of one of the buildings a few blocks down.

Heart pounding, Chas pulled his pistol from his gun belt and ran across Main Street, then jumped up onto the boardwalk. He chose the building on his left simply for its nearness—the other building had an empty lot next to it, and he wasn't keen to walk across the open land.

At the corner of the bank building, he paused with his back against the bricks, beside the bank of windows that stretched all the way across the front of the building to its front door.

Noise from inside the building surprised him into stillness. Scuffling…and voices.

From this position, Chas couldn't get a look at the roof of the building next door. It would require him to cross in front of the five large windows overlooking the boardwalk. Was there a lookout up there? Was this a bank robbery?

Chas peeked around the corner and through the window closest to him. He thought he could make out some movement, but the inside of the building was too dark for him to be sure.

The soft neigh of a horse brought his head up. Were the robbers ready to move out if they robbed the bank? If this was Hank Lewis and his gang, Chas needed to stop them.

But he didn't have time to rouse the marshal from her sleep.

Ducking low, he half-crawled, half-shuffled across the boardwalk toward the front door of the bank, pistol in hand. If he could just get a glimpse inside…see the layout of the bank, or if there was a sentry standing just inside the windows…

From this angle down low, and farther along the bank building, he could now see the roof of the building next door. He caught a flash of movement. Was that a hat? A glint of moonlight on metal told him there was a weapon up there. Then the figure shifted and he caught a glimpse of a dark braid under the hat.

Danna? No—it couldn't be!

He blinked, straining his eyes for another look, but he couldn't see anything. Had it really been her, or just an illusion prompted by his imagination?

Before he could raise his head above the windowsill to try and see inside, a shot rang out, followed by the sound of breaking glass.

He froze, his mind going back to the day Julia had died.

Julia fell to the ground at his feet, blood seeping from underneath her crumpled body. He followed her to the ground, moaning her name.

But she didn't hear him. She was already gone.

 

Danna took her carefully aimed shot and watched the person-size shadow disappear from the bank's side window at the same time it shattered. Had she hit him?

She left her rifle on the doc's rooftop—out of the way of any would-be robbers—and dangled her feet off the edge, then dropped. Landing in a crouch, she spun to face the man on horseback who'd been watching three other horses, in time to see a blur of snarling dark fur launch across the alleyway.

Wrong Tree!

Horses whinnied and then thundered off, hoofbeats fading into the night. She hoped the lookout that had been posted with them was gone, too.
Thank you, Wrong Tree!

She fumbled for her pistol, moving toward the broken window. With a little hop, she vaulted the lip and slammed right into a moving body.

 

A dog barked. Horses whinnied. Then came the sound of hooves pounding against the dirt-packed streets.

Chas fought the paralysis—mental and physical—that held him pinned in a ball on the boardwalk. All he could see was Julia's form crumpled before him; his bloodstained hands…

“We got comp'ny!”

The muffled shout shook Chas from the dark place he'd sunk into, his memories of the day Julia died.

A woman's shriek brought him to his feet, though it almost cost him his last meal. He shook with the adrenaline and revulsion coursing through him.

He clutched his pistol against his shoulder, know
ing he had to go in there. He couldn't save Julia, but he could rescue Danna.

He used his elbow to break the glass in the window, and then rolled over the sill.

It was even darker inside the building than out. He could make out sounds of scrabbling to his right and started to step in that direction when he was tackled from behind.

 

Danna grappled with the man trying to take her arm off, using both her shoulder and elbow to try to find a bit of leverage. The man grunted, but instead of releasing her shoved her into the wall, and she cried out.

Her gun had been knocked from her hand when she'd barreled into this human ox, and she could really use it right about now.

Over the sounds of their struggle, she heard glass breaking and a muffled shout. “Danna!”

Chas O'Grady? What was he doing here? He was liable to get himself killed!

The large man's rancid breath hit her full in the face and she reacted, knocking her head into his. He let go of her arm, cursing.

She dropped to the floor, scrambling for her weapon. The ox man walked into her, knocking her flat. Where was her gun? It couldn't have gotten far.

“Let's go!” A third voice rang out from behind the wall separating the bank's teller area from the vault room.

The man Danna had been struggling with turned, but she swept her leg out and caught his ankles. He stumbled, but didn't go down. She tackled his knees and he fell.

 

Chas and his assailant were evenly matched. He couldn't get the kid—the man
felt
young, as if he hadn't had time to grow to his full size yet—to go down and stay there.

“Shoot her!” someone shouted.

“No!” The cry ripped from his throat. The exchange was enough of a distraction for him to lose track of the fight. He registered a sharp pain in his temple and knew no more.

 

Danna heard the sound of a body hitting the floor, but she was too busy struggling with the human ox to do more than hope someone on the street would hear the ruckus and come in to help her.

Something metal clanged against wood. Oh, no! Had the big man somehow gotten hold of her gun?

He shoved her away and she slid, rolling to one side. Light from a torch glinted off the barrel of a pistol, held in the man's beefy hand. Pointed right at her.

She saw the slight movement of his hand as she leapt to her left. The crack of the bullet whizzed close by, but didn't hit her. She ducked behind the teller counter.

A deep thud and soft moan turned her head. The light illuminated two bodies lying on the floor. Was one of them her deputy?

“Get out, get out!” shouted the voice from the back.

From her vulnerable position crouched on the floor, Danna saw the huge shadow of the man she'd been grappling with move away—the robbers were leaving?

Two pair of boots thumped against the wooden floors, one with a noticeable drag to one of his footsteps.

Silence fell.

Danna knelt behind the desk, trembling. She'd nearly been shot. In all the years she'd worked at Fred's side, she'd never been so close to dying before—except two weeks ago, when she'd nearly been run over by a stampede.

She was aware of her heart drumming in her ears, pounding about as loud as the gunshot had been. She couldn't believe she was alive.

Another moan from nearby drew her gaze up from her shaking hands. The body closest to her was moving, his head rolling from side to side.

“Mama,” he whispered.

She crawled toward him, frowning when her palms met with something warm and sticky on the floor. Blood? She hadn't been shot, but apparently this man had.

The body she reached wasn't her deputy's, but she saw his tousled head a few feet away and sucked in a quick breath. What had happened? How had he known something was wrong and come in here? Had he been shot?

A shaft of moonlight filtered through the shattered window and illuminated her deputy's face, slack and unconscious. No blood marked his body, thankfully.

The unknown man groaned again and she crouched next to him, kicking away the weapon lying nearby. Even a wounded man could shoot.

A quick examination told her he was in serious danger. Blood seeped from a wound in his abdomen.

Danna bit back a cry and reached into her pocket for her bandanna. She pressed it against the man's stomach, trying to stanch the flow of blood. Wounds in the torso were hard to treat. If she didn't get help, he might not make it.

“Marshal?” came a wavering voice from the vault room. Danna wished she'd have found her pistol, but there wasn't time to locate it now. She kept holding pressure on the man's wound.

A light appeared somewhere behind her and bounced and shook on the walls until she could see the face of Zachariah Silverton, the bank manager. Danna swallowed a groan. Zachariah was not known for his calm during an emergency.

“Silverton, I need you to bring the light closer, then run for the doc. This man's in a bad way.” She used her marshal's voice, the one Fred had taught her to cultivate on a laughter-filled afternoon so many years ago.

“Th-th-they made me open the vault. They held a g-g-gun on me. Said they'd sh-shoot me.”

Splendid. He was so shaken up he didn't seem to have heard her. “Zachariah. Zachariah!”