Shotgun Bride (21 page)

E
verybody turned to look when Becky stepped into the town’s only church that Sunday morning, with her eyes burning and her soul turned to dust. There was no preacher to lead the congregation, since the enterprise was fairly new, but a homesteader stood in front of the rustic altar, the good book open in his calloused hands. She saw pity in a few faces, and stone-cold condemnation in others. Word of John’s passing in the night had surely gotten around the small community by now, along with news of Emmeline and Rafe’s lost baby.

She raised her eyes to the plain wooden cross on the wall back of the pulpit and, drawn to it, started up the aisle between the benches serving as pews. She was midway to her goal when a tall, thin woman stood up and moved to block her way.

“Sit down, Mavis,” said the man she’d been sitting beside. His bald pate gleamed in the sunlight pouring in through the windows.

A murmur arose like faraway thunder, a mere hum in Becky’s ears. She stepped around the woman and marched on, knowing all the while that the cross was nothing but two pieces of scrap wood nailed together, but she needed to feel the texture of the thing just the same.

She was aware of folks getting to their feet behind her, but she didn’t stop, didn’t turn to look back. This effort was for John, and for the baby, as much as for herself, though she couldn’t have said what she hoped to gain by it.

“Trollop!” a female voice shouted.

“Leave her be,” said another.

“Defiler!”

The words bruised Becky like stones, the kind ones as well as the cruel, but she reached her destination and put out one trembling hand to the rough wood. Waited for lightning to strike—and sure enough, it did. Something seared her from the inside, white-hot, nearly dropping her to her knees. Stricken, she straightened her spine and turned to face the gathering, eyes blazing.

“Sinner!” cried the recalcitrant Mavis, sitting flushed and flustered beside her husband, next to the aisle.

Becky pushed her shoulders back and raised her chin. “That’s right,” she said clearly. “In all your days, you’ll never meet a bigger sinner than I am.” She paused, swept them all up in the imperious gaze she’d perfected long ago. “I heard this was the place for people like me, but it seems I was mistaken.”

An uncomfortable silence descended, but Becky waited it out.

After an eternity had passed, a small woman near the back stood, adjusted her bonnet strings, and drew a breath so deep that it might have risen from the floorboards under her feet. She seemed to grow visibly taller, and when her husband tried to pull her back down onto the pew, she brushed his hand away.

“I say she has a right to be here,” the woman said.

Another silence rolled in, heavy as the air before a storm, throbbing with tension. Then a second woman stood. “Essie’s right,” she said. “If Mrs. Fairmont has to leave, then I’m going, too. And if I leave, Mavis Potter, I won’t be coming back. Not ever.”

A third woman rose and echoed her opinion, then a man, then another person and another. In the end, only Mavis and two other women remained seated. The lay preacher was still standing next to the altar, open-mouthed, the Bible drooping over his hand.

“I’m obliged,” Becky said to one and all. Then she marched over to the front pew, sat herself down, and folded her hands.

After some shuffling and muttering, the service resumed, and Becky listened intently, her soul as dry as a desert gulch.

D
avy Kincaid’s hideout was a cave, it turned out, all but hidden from view by a cluster of scrub brush. Kade swung down from his saddle, his .45 springing into his grasp seemingly of its own accord. Avery watched from behind an oak tree, his eyes darting this way and that, as if they’d leap right out of his head at the slightest provocation.

No horse was in sight, but there were plenty of fresh tracks, and Kade found a cold fire inside the cave, along with some scattered gear, half a dozen rumpled bedrolls, and a few empty tins of beans.

“They won’t be back,” Holt said from the entrance.

The words angered Kade, probably because he knew they were true. Like any wild animal, Davy would know that his den had been disturbed, and he’d stay clear. There was, of course, no sign of the Triple M’s lost money, but a military button lay on the hard-packed dirt, imprinted with a cavalry insignia. On closer inspection, after he’d pushed past Holt into the daylight, Kade saw the flecks of blood dulling the brass and shut the thing up tight in his fingers.

“At least we know who to go after,” Holt said quietly.

Avery crept forward with his hand outstretched, and Kade gave him the remaining cheroots, as promised, along with a five-dollar gold piece. “Let’s see where these tracks lead,” he said to his brother.

Holt grinned wanly and slapped him on the back. “Whatever you say—Marshal.”

Avery scurried into the underbrush, nimble as a jackrabbit, and Kade dropped the button into his pocket, slipped the .45 back into its holster, and headed for his horse. A hard ride lay ahead and most likely a hell of a fight at the end of it; best get on with things.

“He might go after the old man and that poor idiot,” Holt remarked as they mounted their horses. “We’d better send these men back to fetch them over to the Circle C for safekeeping.”

Kade merely nodded, and Holt gave the order. The two cowhands riding with them set their faces toward the Kincaid place, one of them snatching a smoking, squirming, yelping Avery right up off the ground and onto his horse as they passed.

“I counted six bedrolls in there,” Holt reflected when they’d been riding awhile, and each had done some private pondering. “That doesn’t mean there aren’t more of them, and they could meet up someplace and decide they ought to do something about us.”

Kade spared him another nod. “If you’re scared,” he said dryly, “go on home, take your boots off, and sit by your fire. I’ll understand.”

Holt’s laugh was quick in coming. “Shhhhhhhit,” he said, drawing the word out Texas-style. T hen he said it again, this time shouting to the skies, and gave a rebel yell as he slapped his horse’s flank with the reins. The animal bolted forward, and Kade had to spur Raindance to keep up.

That it was an effort galled him not a little.

M
andy stood at the lobby windows of the Arizona Hotel, staring out at the street and willing Kade to ride in safe and sound, bad-tempered and hungry, bossing her around in that offhand way he had, as if it were a surety that he’d be obeyed. Emmeline appeared at her elbow looking pale and tired; she had to be one of the bravest, most cussed women Mandy had ever run across. Despite attempts to keep her in her bed, she was up and around, determined to go on in spite of everything. Too, she was surely as worried about Rafe as Mandy was about Kade.

“You should be resting,” Mandy scolded, but gently.

“I can’t. I need to move around as much as I can.”

Mandy squeezed her friend’s hand. “How’s your mother?” Becky had gone to church that morning, of all places, and come back in a deeper daze than when she’d left.

Emmeline sighed. “I gave her a dose of the sleeping powder Doc left. I don’t know if it will take, though. You’re watching for Kade, aren’t you?”

Mandy wondered if Emmeline knew she’d taken Kade to her bed the night before, and decided it didn’t matter. She tried to smile. “Yes. That man vexes me something fierce.”

“That’s because he’s a McKettrick.”

Mandy put an arm around her friend’s waist and squired her to the nearest chair. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?” she teased gently, taking a seat facing Emmeline. “How is Rafe?”

Tears sprang to Emmeline’s eyes, and she shook her head. “He’s hurting, but he’s too strong and too stubborn to fall apart.”

She paused, searched Mandy’s face with worried eyes. “Why did you agree to marry Kade?”

Before Mandy could think of a sensible answer, Becky appeared in the dining room doorway, looking for all the world like a sleepwalker. “Emmeline, you should be in bed.”

Emmeline just looked at her mother.

Becky eyes were blank. “I must see John,” she said, wringing her hands.

Emmeline rose to embrace her. “We’ve got to let them go.”

Mandy was ashamed of what she felt in those moments, watching Emmeline and Becky together: it was sheer envy. Even in circumstances as tragic as these, she would have given anything to have her own mother close, or just to know she was still among the living. Her thoughts turned to Gig, and right then, she could cheerfully have shot him for keeping Dixie’s whereabouts from her.

“You tell me how to do that, Emmeline,” Becky fretted. “You tell me how to turn loose and I will.”

Emmeline dashed at a tear with the heel of one palm. She looked done-in again, broken and gray. It was too much to ask of one woman, losing a baby and a friend in the same day.

Mandy got hastily to her feet. “I’ll settle Emmeline in her room,” she said, taking charge. “Then you and I will go over to Doc’s. In return, I want your word that you’ll lie down when we get back.”

Becky nodded tremulously. “Thank you.”

Emmeline didn’t resist, but let herself be led back up the stairs and tucked beneath a quilt on her and Rafe’s bed.

“You stay put,” Mandy ordered.

Emmeline smiled, closed her eyes, and slept.

Mandy and Becky found Doc in his small office, pen in hand, paper before him, writing. When he looked up and saw Becky, his homely old face contorted with a thousand secret sorrows. “Becky,” he said, rising. His tone held a gentle rebuke. “You’re wearing yourself to a raveling. Do I need to remind you that your heart won’t stand much of this?”

“My heart,” she said, “is broken beyond repair. When I find all the pieces, we’ll see about putting them back together.”

Doc crossed to her, took her hands in his. He looked sober, which Mandy counted as a blessing. With Doc, it could go one way or the other. She wondered what devils he was trying to drown in all that whiskey. “John wouldn’t want you grieving like this,” he reasoned gently. “And you’ll be no good to Emmeline and Rafe if you fall apart.”

Becky hiked her chin up a notch. “I won’t let Emmeline down. Right now, though, I need to see John. I need to touch him, get it straight in my mind that he’s really gone.”

“All right,” Doc said with a heavy sigh. He inclined his head toward the examining room. “He’s in there.”

Becky moved toward the inside door with all the wounded dignity of a bereaved queen, and Mandy went with her, even though she didn’t particularly cotton to the idea of looking at a dead man so close up. Since it was Mr. Lewis lying on a table, and he’d been decent to her in his quiet way, she forced herself to set her misgivings aside.

John didn’t look like himself, stretched out there, all still and colorless. His eyes were closed and weighted with pennies, and he’d been stripped of his shirt, vest, trousers, and boots, then covered to his shoulders with an Indian blanket.

Becky moved to stand at his side, taking one of his hands in both her own. “So cold,” she whispered, then sought Doc out with her eyes. “Is there another blanket?”

To his credit, Doc didn’t raise the obvious argument; he simply fetched the blanket from a cabinet against the wall and handed it, still folded, to Becky. She shook it out and spread it tenderly over John’s body.

“There,” she said, her voice soft as a lullaby.

A sob escaped Mandy’s throat, and Doc led her away, settling her in a chair in the outer office. “She’ll be all right,” he said, quietly, as Mandy gave in to tears. “So will Emmeline.” He paused, studying Mandy intently. “You’re not going to go to pieces on us, are you?”

Mandy nodded then, in the grip of paradox, shook her head. Doc handed her a handkerchief and waited while she worked things through.

She was crying because the body laid out on that hard table could so easily be Kade’s. The reckless fool—did he think a bullet couldn’t penetrate that tough McKettrick hide of his? She was crying for her mother, poor, bewildered Dixie, she of the gentle and winsome soul, and for all the lost children, born and unborn. Some of her tears were for Cree, too, and for herself.

“I keep trying to make sense of things,” Mandy finally replied when she could trust herself to speak, wiping furiously at her swollen eyes.

Doc smiled sadly. “Now
there’s
a fool’s errand. There are a lot more questions than answers in this world, it seems to me. But we’ve got to go right on living all the same, Miss Mandy, whether it suits us or not.”

Mandy was beginning to compose herself when Harry appeared, his face so white that his multitude of freckles seemed to stand out. Her heart stopped at the sight of him; she knew he’d come with bad news about Kade. She just knew it.

“What’s the matter, boy?” Doc asked, rising yet again from his desk chair.

In her mind, Mandy saw him and Mrs. Sussex strolling past her and Kade the night before, and she wondered about that.

“We’ve got sickness over at our place,” Harry blurted. “Ma said it might be the diphtheria, and you need to come quick!”

“Oh, Lord,” Doc murmured, casting about for his bag, finding it, closing a hand over the grip. His eyes were weary as he caught Mandy’s gaze. “Take Becky home,” he said. “And look after Emmeline as best you can.” Then he was gone, following Harry out of the door and leaving it gaping open behind him.

Mandy dried her cheeks, took a deep, restorative breath, and stood. “Becky,” she said firmly, when she stood in the inner doorway. “It’s time to go back to the hotel now. You promised, remember?”

Becky nodded. “I remember.” Then, with heartbreaking purpose, she leaned down, kissed John’s forehead one last time, and murmured a final good-bye.