The Law and Miss Penny (2 page)

Marring Miss Shylo

The Marrying Kind

~

The Law & Disorder Series

The Law and Miss Penny

The Outlaw was no Lady

A Lawman for Maggie

To Love a Scoundrel

Dedication

With all my love to my husband, Larry, and our children, the wildest wild west show I've ever seen, much less coproduced: Lisa Ihle Kabouridis, Allen, Todd, & Sandy Ihle

and

In loving memory of my nephew and godson:

David Allen Schmuckle

Chapter 1

New Mexico Territory

A profusion of springtime flowers painted the desert landscape, coloring the outskirts and the drab little settlement of Bucksnort in splotches of brilliant red, pink, and yellow. Casting a pall over the bright spring day, a man riding a big sorrel horse crested the knoll at the edge of town. His expression was dark, filled with singular purpose, and though his hat was white, the color of peace, the man beneath that hat was anything but peaceful.

Today marked his twenty-eighth birthday, but he felt much older than his years. The first quarter of 1888 had yet to pass, but since January he'd already killed three men. If he added to that number the outlaws felled by his guns over the past couple of years, the score would have tallied somewhere around two dozen. But United States Marshal Morgan Slater never dwelled on those figures, or on the men he'd cut down. As always, he focused all of his thoughts on the next assignment.

Now as he rode away from the town of Santa Fe and headed north, his thoughts were consumed with catching up to the Doolittle Gang and bringing them to justice. He would gain the latter through the courts if possible, but if forced to mete out the sentence himself, Morgan would do it without hesitation. Two members of the Doolittle Gang had already slipped through his fingers and the system by swaying a sympathetic jury. This time, one way or another, he'd see to it they weren't so lucky.

Morgan had not forgotten the ugly sneer on Billy Doolittle's pockmarked face when the judge pronounced him free to go—free after having taken part in one of the bloodiest train robberies of the century. Nor was he likely to forget the look in Billy's beady black eyes as he'd taunted Morgan, vowing to settle the score if their paths should ever cross again. Morgan swore on that day that if it was the last thing he ever did, their paths
would
cross again. And the sooner the better.

With his anger growing as he thought ahead to the hunt, Morgan urged his big red mount into an easy lope. He'd named the horse Amigo, and in many ways, the animal was his best and only friend, even though he'd castrated the beast early on in their partnership. Only a damn fool would ride a stallion on a manhunt, he had reasoned, and no one had ever had cause to call Morgan Slater a fool.

As he and his best friend rode into the town of Bucksnort, Morgan noticed a group of people crowded around the garishly painted wagon of a medicine show. Although he hadn't had much firsthand experience with such operations, what little he did know added more provocation to his already foul mood. Most of these "doctors" were quacks, and a swollen wallet was the only ailment their tonics could possibly cure. Since confidence games were second only to murder on Morgan's personal list of crimes against society, he nudged Amigo toward the gathering and watched as a middle-aged woman stepped out of the medicine wagon and began to beat on a tom-tom.

She wore a plain cabbage-green dress with leg-of-mutton sleeves, making her short, stout figure appear even more so. Her light brown hair was slicked back and tied into a large knot at the top of her head, and her features were plump and droopy. But the thing that caught Morgan's eye was her mouth—more correctly, the side of her mouth, which was stretched to accommodate the butt of a fat stogie.

This unladylike sight only added to his less-than-high opinion of the show. Morgan slid his rifle out of the scabbard, swung his body up and over the saddle, and dropped Amigo's reins to the ground to signal the horse to stay. Then he elbowed his way through the crowd for a better view of the action. By now the frantic drumbeats of the woman's tom-tom had been joined by the jangling of a tambourine. A tall, thin man wearing a swirling black cape and a top hat was slapping the instrument against his palm, encouraging the hoots and catcalls from the crowd. Morgan assumed this weathered old man to be "Doc Zachariah."

A younger woman stepped out of the back of the wagon then, gracefully made her way to the musicians, and bowed low from the waist. She was costumed in a white buckskin dress featuring rawhide strips at the elbows and knees, and blue beads fashioned into chevrons. At her neck she wore a breastplate made of cerulean beads woven into concentric circles, and at the crown of her head, a single eagle feather sprouted up from a blue-beaded headband. She was the very picture of what a real live Indian princess should be, Morgan supposed, and she lent the troupe a touch of legitimacy.

Morgan didn't buy it for a minute. He was sure that only one detail of this performance could be considered authentic. The girl appeared to be at least half Indian, tribe unknown. His gaze flickered to the signs nailed against the side of the bright red wagon.
Doc Zachariah's Kickapoo Medicine Show,
read one. The others made lofty claims:
Money-Back Guarantee, Certificate of Purity,
and
Cures All!
But the most outrageous proclamation of all was:
Purveyors of Kickapoo Wizard Oil, A Secret Formula Known Only by the Daughter of the Great Chief Sagawaka, Princess Tanacoa!

Morgan studied the "princess" who now faced the audience in a trancelike state. Her skin was dusky, light cinnamon in color, and her blue-black hair was plaited into braids which reached the tops of her thighs. Although he was far from an expert on

Indians, Morgan doubted that she carried any actual Kickapoo blood in her lying, cheating veins. Nor had she lived amongst the tribe which sired her. Her features were too soft, and her expression too haughty for her to have been raised by a band of savages.

She glanced at him then, catching his stare, and he saw that her eyes were a rich violet-blue color, fringed with thick lashes of the deepest ebony. She dared him with those eyes, alternating between a "come-get-me" look and a "try-it-and-I'll-carve-your- liver-into-a-whittle-stick" expression.

In spite of the fact that he never backed down from anyone, Morgan found that he was the one to break eye contact. He glanced at the dusty road, wondering briefly if she'd used some kind of hypnotic trick on him, and then heard the voice of the "doctor" resound as he gave his pitch.

"And don't we all know the signs of the first stage of liver disease? Ayuh. It's that painful ache which strikes so many of y'all right across the small of your back."

Several men in the crowd, farmers who toiled over their crops daily, immediately swung their hands around to their backs and began to rub the aches and pains brought on by long hours of hard work.

"The kidneys... uric acid." The man shuddered dramatically. "The consequences of that horrifying malady are just too dreadful to even think about, but for today, thar is hope for one of y'all." He held up a small brown bottle. "I offer the last of Princess Tanacoa's Special Kickapoo Wizard Oil to the first man to offer me one paltry dollah." At the gasps from the crowd, he added, "That's right. One measly dollah."

Several voices erupted at once, and a few of the men began to argue over who had been the first to lay claim to the elixir. The man turned toward the back of the wagon where the younger woman stood, catching his wooden leg in the hem of his cape, and grasped the large back wheel to keep from falling. "I now call on Princess Tanacoa, true daughter of the great Kickapoo Medicine Man, Chief Sagawaka."

As the "princess" stepped forward, eight men scrambled to the front of the small crowd, each one proclaiming terminal symptoms. The princess paused before each man long enough to brush her fingers across his forehead. Then she raised her hands and began to wail.

"Oh, great Sagawaka. Help me to choose correctly." She squeezed her eyes shut, chanting all the while, and then suddenly opened them as if struck by lightning. Pointing to a flabbergasted farmer, she said, "Et tu, Brute," and fell to her knees as if exhausted.

Morgan had seen enough. He remembered the warnings his father had issued during the one medicine show he'd attended as a young man as clearly as if he'd heard them yesterday. "Some poor farmer lucky enough to be deemed in the most ill of health will buy that bottle of medicine, son," Matt Slater had said, his tone stern and all-knowing. "Then that poor fool will guzzle it on a regular basis, and become addicted to the major ingredient therein—alcohol, cocaine, or even opium. This swill is nothing but the devil's brew, and you're watching the devil himself as he's brewing it."

Egged on by memories of his father's harsh, unforgiving voice, Morgan broke through the crowd, shouting, '"Et tu, Brute,' princess
?
Don't you have your Romans mixed up with your Indians?"

Hearing the anger in the man's tone, Mariah Penny lifted one eyebrow and cautiously peered up at him. "Beg pardon?" she said, trying to sound as if she couldn't quite understand English.

'"Et tu, Brute,' my ass." Morgan dismissed the young woman with those words and turned to face the crowd. "Show's over, folks. These people don't have anything to sell you but grief. Go on back to your homes."

Mariah watched openmouthed as, incredibly enough, several members of the audience did just that. It was as if the stranger's deep, authoritative voice had snapped the crowd out of a collective fugue—and, just as easily, wrested command of the situation away from her father, Zachariah Penny.

Zack, who'd stepped between the stranger and his daughter, drew all six feet of his skinny frame up to meet the man's gaze, but fell some two inches short. "Begging your pardon, suh," he said. "But I'm afraid I'll have to ask y'all to kindly step back and—"

"The kindest thing I intend to do for you, old man, is keep you out of jail." Morgan shot him a glance filled with hot indignation as he tore his rawhide vest aside to reveal a shiny gold badge.

Zack went pale. "Oh, ayuh... in that case, I do believe I see your point."

"I thought you might."

Turning from the quack doctor, who by now had been joined by the older woman and the "princess," he addressed what was left of the crowd once again. "My name's Morgan Slater, U.S. Marshal, and I'm telling you for the last time to go back to your homes. This show is definitely over."

Whispering amongst themselves, the disappointed townsfolk slowly disbanded and went on their way.

Zack glanced at his wife and heaved a weary sigh. "Damned if it ain't time to move along, missus."

Oda struck a match against the side of the wagon and lit her stogie. "Damned if it ain't."

Only Mariah took exception to the marshal's orders. It certainly wasn't the first time the Penny family had been thrown out of a town, and it most likely wouldn't be the last, especially if they should venture too close to a Mormon settlement as they had done last spring. But she couldn't remember ever being asked to leave in such a rude and degrading manner.

The show wasn't quite legal in status in some areas, but they certainly had never done anything to invite prosecution. From town to town, and sheriff to sheriff, the terms of the ordinances varied, but even in the few places where the show was judged to be unacceptable, the law had always been polite about their dismissal, if not downright friendly. Exactly what had they done to anger this man so?