The Bridegroom (30 page)

Church was just letting out as Gideon opened the gate, and folks were visiting out front, the way they might be expected to do after being penned up for an hour or two of somber reflection upon their sins, but he paid them no mind.

It took him a couple of minutes to find his sister’s grave, once outside the cemetery proper because Rose had had the temerity to be born to a saloon woman and, though the parishioners couldn’t have known it then, an erstwhile train robber, but then he spotted the white marble angel Ruby had told him about.

He looked around, without appearing to do so, as he approached the grave, but he was alone in that part of the churchyard.

Reaching Rose’s final resting place, he crouched. Blinked a couple of times. “It’s been a while,” he said hoarsely.

The breeze whispered in the tops of the cottonwoods and oaks sheltering the graves in that quiet churchyard. It was, for all its sadness, a peaceful place.

“I’m married, Rose,” Gideon went on, after a few
moments spent dealing with the emotions that always attended these visits. “Her name is Lydia, and I think you’d like her a lot.”

He smoothed away the dried petals of a bouquet Ruby had probably left there at the base of Rose’s headstone. Ruby would have visited at night, most likely, or very early in the morning, when nobody was around to disapprove of her setting foot on sacred ground.

The brown paper bag crackled a little as Gideon opened it, took the rock candy out, placed it carefully where Ruby’s flowers had been before. It was crazy to bring presents to a dead child, he knew that, but he’d always done it anyhow. And as long as he had breath in his body, he always would.

“Gideon Yarbro?”

He turned, squinting a little, and chagrined that he hadn’t heard anyone approaching, to see a stranger standing over him. His contact—and right on time.

Gideon stood up. Nodded.

The man had a long scar on his right cheek, and he was in want of a bath and barbering. He’d didn’t look much like a messenger for a bunch of rich mine owners but, then, that was the point, wasn’t it? The men with the big cigars and the private railroad cars liked to conduct this kind of business in secrecy.

“Matthew Hildebrand,” the man said, by way of introduction, putting out his hand but not smiling.

Gideon hesitated. The back of his neck prickled. But he finally shook Hildebrand’s hand.

“I don’t think we ought to talk here,” Hildebrand said, glancing toward the church where folks were still milling around. “Too many people.” He frowned. “Seems all the saloons are closed, though.”

Gideon gave a spare grin, a Yarbro grin. His gut clenched
in warning. “I know of one that will do for our purposes,” he said, knowing full well that trouble had just found him, as it so often had before.

R
UBY HADN’T SURVIVED
in business for so long—or thrived—because she was slow-witted. The moment Gideon stepped through the side door again, and their gazes met, a clear response to his silent warning registered in her eyes.

She slipped behind the bar, glanced over Gideon’s shoulder at the tall man walking behind him.

“Pour you gentlemen a drink?” she asked hospitably, with a smile that said she didn’t give two hoots in hell about the Sunday laws or the consequences of breaking them.

“Whiskey for me,” Hildebrand said.

“Same,” Gideon agreed easily, drawing back a chair at one of the tables. “Some of that special stuff, though. The bourbon you keep locked up in the storeroom.”

Ruby nodded, slipped out through the doorway behind the bar. It led into her office, Gideon knew, and from there, to the street. He hoped Ruby would heed what he’d been trying to tell her and get the hell out of there, but with her, there was no telling.

Hildebrand sat down, and so did Gideon.

They might have been acquaintances, meeting up again after a long separation, given the air of reserved cordiality they both assumed. Gideon shifted, on the pretense of settling back in his chair, and used his thumb to unsnap the narrow strip of leather that kept his .45 from riding up in its holster.

Ruby returned with the whiskey Gideon had asked for, ignoring an irritated glance from her stepson, and filled two spotlessly clean shot glasses, brought them and the bottle to the table.

Hildebrand looked up at her, and Gideon glimpsed a predatory glint in the other man’s eyes before he reached for his glass.

Gideon left his own untouched, as if to savor the anticipation for a while. “Ruby,” he said casually, when she lingered next to the table just a little too long, “this is a private conversation.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Hildebrand agreed, solemnly reluctant. “It is.”

Ruby hesitated for another heartbeat or two, and then turned in a swirl of costly skirts and lace-trimmed petticoats to head back behind the bar again. Maybe she hoped distance would suffice—in any case, she busied herself taking glasses from the shelf under that fancy imported bar and wiping each one until it gleamed.

“Women,” Hildebrand said, with an amused shake of his head. “Nowhere around when you want one, and can’t blast ’em out of a room when you don’t.”

Gideon made no comment; out of the corner of his eye, he was watching Ruby, wondering why she hadn’t taken the hint, gotten out of the saloon and stayed gone.

She hummed a little ditty as she worked, but Gideon wasn’t fooled. Though she was a good twenty yards away, she could hear everything they said. Years in a rough and potentially dangerous business had honed her eyesight and hearing to a sharpness seldom seen, even among railroad detectives and Wells Fargo agents.

So why wasn’t she following the dictates of those senses?

The wondering was rhetorical; Gideon knew the answer
only too well. Ruby kept a shotgun behind that bar, and sometimes a pistol, in case she needed more range. And she was sticking close to one or both.

“You got anything to prove you’re the man my employers sent?” Gideon asked, still with easy affability, every bit as aware of Hildebrand’s every move, as he was of Ruby’s.

“You doubt that I am?” Hildebrand countered, sounding unconcerned as he tossed back the contents of his shot glass.

“I guess you could say that,” Gideon said.

Hildebrand scowled, handed over a packet of documents, glanced once more at Ruby—earlier, Gideon had seen him scanning the back of the saloon several times, as though looking for a way out—and shook his head.

Gideon did not trouble himself to read the papers; his instincts had already told him what he needed to know.

“I do not fancy,” the stranger said sadly, “killing a woman.”

The remark was incendiary, like a spark striking a pocket of gas in the depths of a mine.

Things happened fast.

Hildebrand drew a knife, brandishing it a couple of times, perhaps to show his prowess.

Gideon overturned the table to put a momentary barrier between himself and the other man, drawing his .45 and rising in almost the same move.

A shot boomed through the otherwise quiet saloon.

Hildebrand’s eyes widened and, the knife falling soundlessly to the sawdust floor, he clasped his bleeding midsection with both hands.

Gideon watched, his finger still on the trigger of his pistol, as the man dropped to his knees and pitched face-first into the sawdust.

“Christ, Ruby,” Gideon gasped, after letting out the breath he’d been holding. “You just
shot
a man.”

Ruby laid a rifle down on the bar with a heavy thump, smoke still wafting from its barrel. “Well, hell,” she said, “I couldn’t wait all day for
you
to get around to it.”

“Better get a doctor,” Gideon said, reholstering the .45 he hadn’t fired. His shirt, he realized numbly, was soaked with the other man’s blood, still warm and sticky. It made him queasy. “Just in case.”

“No ‘just in case’ about it,” Ruby answered, approaching but keeping her skirts clear of the pooling blood while Gideon crouched to check Hildebrand for a pulse. She glanced up at Gideon’s drenched shirt, frowned. “If I go to all the trouble of putting a bullet in somebody, I shoot to kill.”

Ruby’s philosophy held true; the man who’d called himself Matthew Hildebrand was definitely dead.

Gideon drew several deep breaths. The gun-blast had stirred up a ruckus out on the street; the law would be there any minute now. But there’d be no need for a doctor.

“Better open the front doors, Ruby,” Gideon said.

She nodded, got her keys, unlocked and drew back the heavy inside doors, leaving the swinging ones open to the daylight.

And the first one through them was Rowdy. Seeing the dead man sprawled on the saloon floor and noting that Ruby and Gideon were the only other people in sight, he shoved his pistol back into his holster and crouched beside the body, just the way Ruby had done.

“What are you doing here?” Gideon asked his brother. It was a stupid question, he knew, but after all, he’d just witnessed a shooting. The smell of blood was coppery in the heavy air, his shirt clung to his flesh in a way that made him half-sick, and tiny specks of sawdust were still settling.

Maybe he was a little addled.

“I’ll ask the questions, Gideon,” Rowdy said, straighten
ing. “If you don’t mind.” He paused and a muscle bunched in his right cheek, unbunched again. “Matter of fact, I don’t give a damn if you
do
mind.” As Ruby had, Rowdy frowned at the mess on Gideon’s shirt.

Flagstaff’s marshal, badge gleaming on his Sunday coat, banged through the swinging doors before Gideon could think of an answer that would set Rowdy back a pace or two. A thin-faced man, sparely built, the lawman wore a shoulder holster, with the pistol resting square in the middle of his solar plexus.

“Rowdy?” he said, in a tone of surprised recognition. “Rowdy Yarbro?”

“Chester,” Rowdy greeted the other man, with a nod. “It would seem we’ve had an incident here.”

Chester approached, looking down at the corpse. Townspeople crowded in through the doorway behind him, like a flock of chickens set on pecking breadcrumbs off the floor of a farmhouse kitchen, but Ruby shooed them all right out again.

“Don’t you damn fools know it’s against the law to set foot in here on a Sunday?” she scolded.

“Our brother, Wyatt, and Sam O’Ballivan will be along soon, Ruby,” Rowdy said quietly, though his gaze was still boring right into Gideon’s hide. “I’d appreciate it if you’d let them in.”

“Somebody want to tell me why there’s a dead man layin’ on the floor of a saloon that ought to be closed for business?” Chester inquired mildly, and after a long sigh, deftly turned the body over for a better look. “I got up from the Sunday dinner table to come here, and my Lucille’s roast beef is gettin’ colder by the minute on my plate.”

“There’s a dead man on my floor, Chester Perkins,” Ruby said, “because I shot the sorry son of a bitch with that rifle over there on the bar. Barrel’s probably still hot.”

Chester stood, looked Gideon over thoughtfully, then
wandered to the bar, tested the barrel of Ruby’s rifle with a touch of his fingers, and drew them away quickly, wincing a little.

That was when Wyatt and Sam shouldered their way through the curious crowd outside and strode into the saloon, Wyatt in the lead.

“Are the wives and kids along, too?” Gideon asked dryly, shoving a hand through his hair, resting the other across his middle.

“Shut up, Gideon,” Rowdy said grimly. “You may or may not be in trouble with Marshal Perkins here, but you are
sure as hell
up to your neck in shit with
me.
”

“You want to whup him, Rowdy?” Wyatt drawled easily, wincing with distaste when he caught a look at poor, gut-shot Hildebrand lying there on the floor with his eyes wide-open, staring upward into eternity now that Perkins had rolled him onto his back. “Or shall I?”

Gideon took a threatening step forward. After all he’d been through that morning, his temper was frayed, and he was in no mood to put up with any “big brother” crap. “You’re welcome to try—either one—or both—of you.”

Sam O’Ballivan stepped between the two men. “Rowdy,” he said, “stand down until you can get a grip on your good sense. Gideon, you’d do well to take your brother’s advice and shut up.”

Gideon colored up, bit back a response.

Sam’s gaze dropped to Gideon’s shirtfront, and his eyebrows drew together.

“We got to sort this out,” Chester said. “Might be, Lucille’s keeping my plate warm and I can get back to that fine dinner before it all dries out.”

“I
told
you what happened, Chester,” Ruby said impatiently. “I shot him.”

“The events leading up to that,” Chester answered, “are of some interest to me.” His gaze shifted back to Gideon, and for all the folksy talk and the lamentations over his Sunday dinner, Gideon saw a formidable intelligence in the marshal’s eyes. “What was your part in this, young fella?”

Drawing a deep breath and letting it out slowly, Gideon recounted meeting Hildebrand in the graveyard, coming to Ruby’s to talk in private, and how the other man had suddenly pulled a knife. He’d turned the table onto its side and drawn his .45, fully intending to fire it, but—and he flushed at this part—Ruby had been faster.

Chester listened to all that, the tip of his tongue making a bulge in his right cheek. When Gideon had finished, he sighed and shook his head.

“You say he called himself Hildebrand?” Chester asked.

“Matthew Hildebrand,” Gideon confirmed.

Chester bent, gingerly folded back the sides of the dead man’s gore-splattered coat, felt the pockets, probably looking for some kind of identification. He didn’t find anything, and for some reason, Gideon didn’t tell him about the documents, which must have been lying there in the sawdust someplace close by.

The lawman didn’t speak until he’d straightened up again. “There was a man by the name of Matthew Hildebrand murdered down in Phoenix last night,” he said. “I got a wire about it before Lucille and I went to church this morning—said I ought to be on the lookout for a fella matchin’ this man’s description. I guess I can wire the federal marshal back and tell him we got his suspect right here in Flagstaff.”

Sam put a hand on Rowdy’s shoulder, and a hand on Gideon’s, and pressed them into chairs at the next table. Wyatt joined them, and Ruby got out the good whiskey and poured a round for everybody.

Chester Perkins made no arrests owing to the blatant violation of the Sunday liquor law.

The undertaker arrived, word of the killing having spread on its own, with two helpers and an old wooden door. “Chester,” the mortician said, patting at his sweating forehead with a wadded handkerchief, “you’d better disperse that crowd out there. This fella ain’t a fit sight for the ladies, and we didn’t bring a blanket.”

Chester nodded, went over to the swinging doors, and ordered the gathering to move on.

Ruby, meanwhile, disappeared into the back of the saloon, where the living quarters were, and returned with an old quilt.

“I just had this sawdust put down fresh,” she said, shaking her head at the mess as she offered up the covering.

The mortician and his youthful assistants hoisted the corpse onto the door and draped it with the quilt.

“Much obliged, Ruby,” the mortician said. “You won’t be wanting this coverlet back, I reckon?”

Ruby wrinkled her nose, shook her head.

Chester appeared to be ready to go back to his roast beef dinner, but he paused by Gideon’s chair, laid a hand on his shoulder. Squeezed with vice-strong fingers. “I’ll have no trouble keeping track of Ruby,” he said quietly, “but where would I find
you,
young fella, if I should happen to get a yen to jaw a while?”

Gideon sighed. “Stone Creek,” he said. A sudden chill overtook him, rattled his bones.

“Chester,” Rowdy said wearily, “he’s my brother—Gideon Yarbro. Wyatt and I will see that he’s available if you have any more questions—but we surely do mean to take him home.”