The Man from Stone Creek (15 page)

W
HEN
S
AM SAW
M
ADDIE
crossing the schoolyard the next morning, he figured she'd come to make sure he hadn't taught Terran any new curse words or how to play cutthroat stud.

He could plead innocent on one of the charges, at least.

Watching her approach, he stopped cranking up that morning's drinking water, and wondered at the goings-on just beneath and back of his heart. The sunlight turned her chestnut hair to bronze, and her plain, work-aday calico dress looked regal. As she drew closer, he saw the flash in her eyes and the flush on her cheekbones.

He reckoned she'd found out about the poker, then.

He pulled up the bucket and set it at his feet. Neptune, ever helpful, stuck his nose in and lapped.

“Bird is gone,” Maddie said in a loud whisper, coming to stand square in front of him, like a petticoat general fixing to review her troops. She might as well have picked up that bucket and dashed him with the icy contents.

“What?”

Maddie set her jaw. “I had no choice but to let her go,” she said, and he knew by her tone that her stubborn stance was nothing but show. “Garrett Donagher came to the store last night, looking for her. He was drunk and bound to find Bird if he had to tear down the walls to do it.”

“You let him take her?”

The color flared brighter in her cheeks. “Of
course
I didn't! There wouldn't have been a thing I could do to save him, though, if Mr. Vierra hadn't interceded—”

Sam put up a hand. “Wait,” he said sharply. “Save
him?
I thought it was Bird Donagher was after.”

Maddie thrust out an impatient breath. For all the gravity of the situation, Sam had a sudden and ferocious yearning to take that beautiful, rebellious face between his rein-calloused hands and kiss Miss Maddie Chancelor into stupefaction.

“It was Garrett who was saved. Bird had the shotgun, and she'd have killed him for sure.
That
would have made a fine snarl of things, now wouldn't it?”

Sam rubbed the back of his neck, unable to hide his consternation. “I reckon it would have,” he agreed. He narrowed his eyes. “Where does Vierra figure into all this?”

“Right where I left off,” Maddie replied crisply. “He's taken her north, to catch a stagecoach or a train for Denver.” A new worry seemed to catch up with her just then; she paused to put a hand to her mouth and her shoulders stooped a little. When Maddie met Sam's gaze again, her eyes were full of trepidation. “Did she escape one devil only to find herself on the road with another?”

Sam reached out, hesitated, and squeezed her shoulder gently. A charge went through him, stirred up a riot in that strange new landscape that had opened up under his heart. He took a few breaths to steady himself. “Why didn't you come for me, Maddie?”

She sagged a little, but she didn't shake his hand off her shoulder, and that gave him a bleak kind of comfort. She gnawed at her lower lip, glanced down at her feet, and finally looked him squarely, resolutely, in the eye. “I was afraid,” she said very softly.

Sam was chagrined. What had he been thinking, chiding Maddie for not coming to fetch him? Donagher had probably lingered outside awhile, watching for a second chance. “You made the right decision,” he allowed. “You wouldn't have been safe.”

“I wasn't worried about myself,” she said with spirit and no little defiance.

“Then who—?” The words fell away, like pebbles from a limp slingshot, as the answer came to him, out of nowhere. “Me?” he asked, and for a moment or two, there was no sound save the birds, the rustle of cottonwood leaves and that damn dog slurping up the drinking water.

Maddie clamped her jaw down tight again, looked away and gave one unwilling nod.

Exultation swept through Sam, but he contained it. He had no right or reason to feel that way—he'd be riding back up north to Stone Creek, to Abigail, as soon as he'd completed his business in that part of the Territory, and like as not, he'd never lay eyes on Maddie Chancelor again. He'd set his course, tacitly promised to marry the major's daughter, and he couldn't go back on his word, even when it was only implied.

Neptune backed away from the water bucket, belched and ran off to chase a butterfly flickering yellow and crimson over the thirsty grass. Sam bent, emptied the pail, put the hook through the handle, and reeled it back down into the well as if it were the most important thing he'd do all day.

It seemed that even the birds and the trees went still.

“Where's Terran?” Maddie asked when Sam had the bucket clear down and on the way back up again.

“I sent him for the eggs,” he said. “I buy them from Violet's mama. Fifty cents a basket.”

She touched his arm and he stiffened as surely as if she'd laid a hot poker to his flesh. Felt a flush of embarrassment heat the back of his neck. Damnation, he was acting like a besotted boy, not a full-grown man.

“Sam—” she began, but he never knew what she'd meant to say because just then Terran came bursting through the brush, egg basket in one hand, face contorted with excited horror.

“Sam!” he whooped. “Maddie! Come quick!”

Maddie took the egg basket from Terran, set it down and caught him firmly by the shoulders. Gave him a little shake. “What's happened?”

Terran's eyes were huge in his pale face. He made a few false starts before he managed to choke out the news. “Mungo Donagher just showed up at the jailhouse, driving a wagon—” He pulled free of Maddie's hold and gagged a couple of times before he could go on. “He's awash in blood. I've never seen so much blood. He said it's Garrett under the tarp in the bed of that buckboard—”

“Dear God,” Maddie gasped.

“Both of you stay right here,” Sam ordered, and headed for the main part of town. Neptune tried to follow, but he sent the dog back with a stern command, and when he glanced over his shoulder, he saw Maddie and Terran staring after him, Maddie with one arm around her brother, as though she was holding him upright.

A crowd had gathered in front of the abandoned jailhouse and, sure enough, there was a team and wagon out front. Sam looked into the bed, saw a bloody tarpaulin with a man's shape sprawled beneath it. He reached in, tossed back a corner of the canvas covering, steeled himself against the sight. The body was unrecognizable, a ludicrous tangle of gore where the head should have been. He'd seen that kind of carnage before, but he'd never reconciled himself to it, the way some men did.

He covered the corpse again and made his way through the gathering of whispering townsfolk to the open doorway of Warren Debney's office.

Mungo Donagher sat square in front of the desk, splashed from head to foot with blood and other matter, hands resting crimson-streaked on his thighs, staring bleakly into the maw of hell itself.

The yellow dog was there, the one Sam had seen often, lying outside on the sidewalk, taking the sun, but there was no one to take charge. Donagher sat alone, motionless. He'd gotten himself this far, confessed his crime in the street and hunkered down to await his fate.

Sam rounded the desk, opened drawers until he found a forgotten pint of whiskey, dusty and three-quarters full, brought it to Mungo. “Take a swig of this,” he said, gruffly kind.

The man didn't reach for the vessel or even raise his eyes. He was watching the devil dance, it seemed to Sam, and could not look away from the performance. “I killed him. Killed my own boy,” he told Sam.

Sam put the bottle in Mungo's right hand. “Drink,” he said. “It'll steady your nerves.”

“Caught him with my wife,” Mungo said. His stained fingers trembled, but he took the whiskey, steered it to his mouth, took a deep draught.

“Did you kill her, too?” Sam asked, thinking of the feckless, pretty Undine.

Mungo shook his head, took another gulp of whiskey and shuddered as it went down. “I should have married Maddie,” he said, like a man talking in his sleep. “She wouldn't have wanted to go to California. She wouldn't have spread her legs for another man.”

Sam felt his back molars clamp together at the mention of Maddie, especially in that context, but he swallowed the furious protest that swelled in his throat. A figure moved into the doorway, from the street, and he recognized Oralee Pringle.

“Who's the law in this town?” Sam demanded.

Oralee made a contemptuous sound. “Ain't any,” she said, watching him speculatively as she approached, laid a plump, beringed hand on Donagher's shoulder. “Is it true, Mungo?” she asked with a gentleness Sam wouldn't have imagined she was capable of. “Did you shoot Garrett? Truly?”

Mungo didn't look at her, but he nodded. “I shot him, all right.”

Oralee's gaze collided with Sam's over Mungo's head. “If you ain't a lawman,” she said calmly, “what are you doing in here?” She cocked a thumb toward the road. “Half the men in town are out there gawking in that street, but not a one of them had the guts to come in and see what was what. My guess is, they're afraid old Mungo will put a hole in them, too, the way he did his boy.”

Mungo drained the whiskey bottle. “I'd do it again, too,” he said.

“Is there a doctor around here?” Sam asked Oralee.

“You must not have taken a look at what's left of Garrett,” Oralee replied. “I did. Ain't no doctor can help him. What he wants is the undertaker, and a whole slew of prayers said for his rotten soul.”

“Reckon I'll hang for this?” Mungo inquired, but he was still watching the devil dance. From his rapt expression, it was quite the show.

“Could be,” Oralee said matter-of-factly. She looked around the musty office, like she was familiar with it, even a little nostalgic, and marched over to take a ring of keys down off a peg. “You'd better lock Mungo up, Mr. Schoolmaster. Once he comes out of this stupor, a castrated bull would be easier to wrestle.”

Sam took the keys. “Send somebody for the doctor,” he told Oralee. “If there is one.”

“Have to ride all the way to Tucson, unless you want a Mexican.”

Sam's sigh came through his teeth.
“Send somebody,”
he repeated.

Her tiny eyes widened as best they could, given their obvious limits. “For him?” she asked, cocking a thumb at Mungo.

“Yes.” Sam bit the word off like the tip of a cigar, spat it out. Hooked a hand under Mungo's elbow and urged him to his feet. For a big man, Donagher was docile, but Oralee was likely right to claim he'd be a sight less cordial when he came out of his daze. “Come along,” he told the old man.

Mungo let himself be led to the single cell at the back of the long, narrow room. He took a seat on the cot wedged up against the wall and clasped his hands loosely between his knees.

Sam's stomach churned, watching Mungo, sitting there with his son's blood dried in streaks on his flesh, splashed like red paint over his clothes.

“He'll be wild when he realizes what he's done,” he said, aware that Oralee was standing close behind him.

“Mungo?” Oralee scoffed. “He'd do it all over again. Just like he said before.”

Sam turned to stare down into Oralee's round, upturned face. He'd never seen a colder woman, and given some of the places he'd frequented before he'd wound up at Stone Creek, that was saying something. “Get a doctor,” he said, hoping the third request would be the charm. “And somebody with the backbone to stand guard while I'm gone, if you can find them.”

Oralee didn't blink. “You sure give orders real easy-like, for a schoolmaster.”

“Do it,” Sam said, and pushed past her. He took the cell keys with him, just in case someone took it into their head to let Mungo go in his absence.

Townspeople milled and churned in the street, shaking their heads and muttering, one to another.

Sam scanned them, picked out a trail-worn cowpuncher with a go-to-hell look in his eyes and a .44 riding low on his left hip. “You ever guarded a prisoner?” he asked.

The cowpoke shook his head.

Sam tossed him the cell keys. “You've just been deputized,” he said.

The man caught the keys deftly, nodded, and went inside the jailhouse without a word.

Maddie made her way through the throng and stood facing Sam.

“The undertaker's on his way,” she said quietly, her eyes searching his face.

“I've got to ride out to the Donagher place,” Sam told her. “I'd appreciate it if you'd look after Neptune while I'm gone.”

She caught hold of his arm when he would have walked past her, headed for the schoolhouse to saddle his nameless horse. “I'd better go with you,” she said.

Sam shook his head. “No telling what I'm going to find out there.”

“All the more reason you shouldn't go alone,” she insisted. “Undine will need a woman. And—” She paused, swallowed. “There's Ben to think about.”