The Last Renegade (3 page)

“Morphine?” asked Kellen.

The doctor didn’t answer. Without a word of warning or apology, he plunged the point of the syringe into his patient’s thigh.

There was only waiting after that. Nat Church eventually closed his eyes. He slept. He died. And none of those who stood as witness to his end had an explanation for it.

They agreed that the bloody tin star the doctor found pinned to Nat Church’s vest might account for some part of the answer. Kellen Coltrane was left to wonder what accounted for the rest of it.

Bitter Springs, Wyoming Territory

Lorraine Berry wondered about the man arriving today. Allowing her thoughts to drift into the great unknown of possibilities and unforeseen consequences was as close to daydreaming as she ever got. The work facing her was considerable, and she was too practical to stray from it for long. Besides, she had deliberated at length, sometimes out loud, and she had done it for weeks before she began the correspondence with the gun for hire.

It had been a risk writing to him, but at the time it seemed that not writing was the greater risk. It troubled her that she no longer had the same firm sense that she’d made the better choice. Of course, it could be that if she’d done nothing, she would still be plagued by niggling doubt, and then she would have lost the opportunity to hire him. In spite of the fact that she answered
his
notice, Raine could not imagine that a man with his specialized talent was ever without work for long. In fact, Raine had supplied more information about her circumstances than he revealed about his own. Somehow this made
her feel more comfortable about the arrangement, as though he were choosing her, not the other way around, and that he could be better trusted because of it.

It was not until his last letter that she learned who he was, and then because she requested it. He never signed his previous correspondence, so it showed a certain amount of confidence in her when he finally shared his name.

Best regards, Nat Church.

Raine looked up from arranging bottles behind the mahogany bar and caught her reflection in the gilt-framed mirror. Her wry smile was mocking, which was exactly as it should be. Nat Church? She might have ended their arrangement if he had penned that at the outset.

It wasn’t that she believed it was his real name; it merely troubled her because it demonstrated a singular lack of imagination. Now if he had signed his name as Aaron Burr or John Wilkes Booth, that would have hinted at wit, however dark and ghoulish.

Raine’s self-mocking smile deepened as she addressed her reflection. “You are most assuredly twisted, Raine Berry.” She raised a hand to her hair. “Look at you. When exactly was it that the cat dragged you over the backyard fence?” One of her tortoiseshell combs had lost its moorings and was no longer serving the intended purpose of keeping her hair close to her head. When she was still a young girl and knew every sort of thing was possible, she held fast to the notion that her dreadful carroty curls could be tamed. As a woman full grown, she knew better and accepted as marginal consolation that sometime between four and twenty-four the color of her hair had darkened from carrot to copper.

Raine licked her fingers, smoothed back the strands trying to stand at attention, and anchored the comb so it was positioned on a symmetrical plane to its twin. In the event there was still more wrong in places she couldn’t easily see, she felt for the coil near the crown of her head and rearranged a few pins to keep it in place. When she was satisfied that she had done the best she could with what she had, she nodded once at the mirror so her reflection could confirm it.

Raine turned away from straightening the bottles and picked up a broom before the mirror became a bigger distraction than the impending arrival of Nat Church. She swept behind the bar and was starting to make a pass under the tables when Walter Mangold walked in from the storeroom at the back. She was glad he didn’t know how to tread lightly; otherwise his sudden appearance might have had her diving for cover.

Walt rested his large hands on his waist, his arms akimbo, and scolded Raine in a baritone so deep and dulcet that no sting could be attached to it. “Now, stop that, Mrs. Berry. Give me the broom. On no account should you be doing my work just because you can.”

Raine didn’t think about arguing. She held out the broom. Walt was her hardest worker, and what he lacked in quick-wittedness, he compensated for in size, strength, and steadiness. He was also loyal. While there was a certain amount of charm in his devotion to her, Raine also felt a responsibility to do right by him. There were plenty of people in town who looked out for Walt, but there were always a few who considered it a fine joke to make him the butt of one. Before she and Adam took over the Pennyroyal, Walt mostly worked for the Burdicks, and that family had a way of using a body that had nothing to do with useful. The passing recollection of the way they had treated Walt was enough to set Raine’s teeth on edge.

“Goodness, but you got yourself riled up about something,” Walt said. “There’s color creeping up your neck.”

Raine wished she still had the broom so she could make a playful jab at him with it. Instead, she immediately raised a hand to the hollow of her throat. She didn’t know whether she really felt the heat or only imagined it, but she knew Walt was right about the color. She could school her fine features into an expressionless mask, but it usually served no purpose when her pale skin flushed pink with so little provocation.

“You think I’m riled now? Just stand there talking to me when you should be sweeping and I’ll show you riled.”

Walt grinned, flashing teeth almost as big as his fingernails, before he ducked his head and set to work.

Raine got out of his way. She started to pick up a rag to
polish the brass rail at the bar, thought better of it, and retreated from the saloon in favor of the hotel’s dining room. Three overnight guests were already seated, the older married couple from Springfield at one table and the liquor salesman from Chicago at the other. Town regulars who enjoyed the company and coffee at the Pennyroyal occupied two more tables. Raine greeted everyone by name before she disappeared into the kitchen.

Mrs. Sterling promptly told her to get out.

“You’re going to get underfoot,” the cook said flatly. “You always do. And Emily will take her orders from you instead of me, and sure as God made little green apples, the next thing you know I’ll be burning Mr. Wheeler’s toast and scrambling Jack Clifton’s eggs instead of turning them over real easy like.” And in the event Raine had a conveniently forgetful memory, Mrs. Sterling reminded her, “It’s happened before.”

Raine stayed where she was just inside the door. To further placate her cook, she kept her palms flat against the raised oak panels. “I thought I might get my own breakfast,” she said. “I haven’t had anything to eat since yesterday’s lunch.”

Mrs. Sterling evinced no sympathy. She used one corner of her apron to swipe at the beads of perspiration outlining her widow’s peak before she returned to flipping hotcakes on the griddle. “Whose fault is that? That’s what I would like to know.”

“It’s mine,” Raine said. She stepped aside to let Emily pass into the dining room with a pot of coffee and a platter of hotcakes. She tried to catch the girl’s eye, but under Mrs. Sterling’s more predatory one, Emily was having none of it. The fair-haired Emily slipped past Raine with otherworldly efficiency, like a wraith in a Gothic novel. Raine was left to inhale sharply as the cakes went by and hope the aroma clung to her nostrils until Mrs. Sterling invited her in.

“Did you say something, dear?” Mrs. Sterling asked. “Because I thought I heard you say something.”

Raine knew the cook had heard her perfectly well, but she answered just the same. “I said it is my fault.”

Mrs. Sterling nodded briskly. “Always good to have that out
of the way. Now, why don’t you go up to your room, have a little bit of a lie-in, and I’ll send Emily up with a plate of everything once I attend to the guests and the regulars?”

“The regulars are also our guests,” Raine said.

“If you say so.”

Raine smiled. “I always do.” Mrs. Sterling had known Howard Wheeler and Jack Clifton since they worked beside her husband laying rails back in ’67. She knew the other regulars just about as well. If they were visitors in her own home, which they hadn’t been since Mr. Sterling was shot dead, then she would have called them guests. What she thought of them now, she’d told Raine, lacked Christian sentiment and did not bear repeating, so she was a better woman for just calling them regulars.

Raine watched Mrs. Sterling carefully tend to Mr. Clifton’s eggs. Her smile deepened. In spite of the unchristian sentiments the cook insisted she harbored, she never broke one of Jack Clifton’s eggs if she could help it and to Raine’s knowledge she had never tried to poison anyone.

“Why do you think I should have a little bit of a lie-in?”

“Do I need to say it?”

“Apparently so.”

Mrs. Sterling stopped what she was doing long enough to remove her spectacles from their perch above her forehead and place them on the rather pronounced bridge of her nose. It was all for effect because she stared at Raine over the top of the gold-plated rims. “Those bags under your eyes are so big that Rabbit and Finn would refuse to carry them, and you know those two would rather throw themselves in front of a moving train than admit there’s something they can’t do. Is that plain enough for you?”

Raine blinked. “Yes,” she said when she found her voice. “It is.”

“Well, you had to make me go and say it.”

“Again, my fault. Perhaps the next time you’ll simply tell me that I look tired.”

“Mr. Sterling was always trying to put words in my mouth. It didn’t work for him. I don’t expect that it will work for you.”

Sighing, Raine gingerly pressed her fingertips to the underside of her eyes. The skin didn’t feel puffy, so the reference to bags was an exaggeration, but during her earlier conversation in front of the mirror, she’d glimpsed the same faint shadows that drew Mrs. Sterling’s notice.

“I was late going to bed. The saloon was crowded last night.”

“I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating. You’re the owner, not the entertainment.”

“I was behind the bar all evening.”

“Pouring drinks with a smile and a kind word for everybody.”

“I like to think it reminds them they’re gentlemen, and it helps keep tables and chairs in place and the mirror in one piece.”

Mrs. Sterling pushed her spectacles back above her salt-and-pepper widow’s peak. She gave Raine a hard look, nothing feigned about it. “Were the Burdicks here?”

Raine shook her head. “No. No, they weren’t.”

The cook’s shoulders had drawn together, tension pulling them taut. Now they relaxed. She began to plate eggs, steak, and fried potatoes. “You’d tell me, wouldn’t you?”

“Of course I would.”

“Hmm. That’s because you know I’d hear about it.”

“I’d tell you because you deserve to know. The same as I do. And there are others, you know, besides us.”

Mrs. Sterling nodded. “I’m not afraid for myself. They did their worst by me already, taking my husband the way they did, but I can’t help fearing for you and the others.” She picked up Jack Clifton’s plate and gave it a little shake. “I don’t know what makes this man think he needs to stay around when he knows he could end up no better than my Benton.” She raised the plate she’d made for Howard Wheeler and thrust it in Raine’s direction. “And this man has about as much sense as a bag of hair or he would be on the next train to somewhere else.”

“That didn’t work for John Hood,” Raine said quietly. “The Burdicks found him.”

“I think it scares folks to say so out loud,” said Mrs. Sterling. She returned both plates to the tray and looked past Raine to the door. Her voice crackled with her rising agitation. “Where’s that girl gone to? Look in the dining room and see if she’s wiping up something she spilled or flirting with Mr. Weyman.”

Raine opened the door wide enough to catch Emily Ransom’s eye when the girl stopped giggling at something the whiskey drummer from Chicago had said. She crooked her finger and gently closed the door, then moved out of the way until Emily pushed through. Mrs. Sterling gave over the tray and shooed the girl out again.

“I say it out loud,” Raine said, picking up the thread of their conversation. “And Hank Thompson’s been gone almost a year and no one in Bitter Springs has heard from him. He had friends. There should have been a letter by now. One to his mother, at least.”

“That could mean anything. Maybe Agnes got one and isn’t saying. She could be trying to protect him.”

“You’ve known Agnes Thompson all your life. She can’t keep a secret. No one’s heard from him because he’s dead.”

Mrs. Sterling twisted her apron in her hands. “I don’t like this talk.”

“I know.”

The cook hesitated. The question was drawn from her reluctantly. “You really think Hank’s dead?”

Raine briefly closed her eyes. “I’m afraid so, yes.”

“If it’s true, it’s not your fault.”

“I appreciate you saying so, but I know differently.”

“It’s not your fault,” Mrs. Sterling repeated. The steel was back in her voice. “I think I’ve proven I know how to assign blame when it’s warranted. And it’s not, not about this. I don’t hold you responsible for my Benton’s death. He knew what he was about, and he wanted to do the right thing. He was proud to stand up, and I was proud of him for doing it. Still am proud. You diminish his courage by thinking you pressed him to do something against his will.”

Raine nodded, willing to be convinced for now because it
was important to Mrs. Sterling. “Maybe that’s what Mr. Clifton and Mr. Wheeler are doing. Standing up.”

“They did that. Now they’re just standing around, and that’s plain foolish. It’s hard to be proud of fools.”

Raine understood that Mrs. Sterling was determined to have the last word. It was wiser to change the subject and hope for the best. She yawned as if she meant it. “I suppose I’ll have that bit of a lie-in after all.”