The Ruination of Essie Sparks (Wild Western Rogues Series, Book 2) (26 page)

* * *

Jedediah Sampson, sheriff of the burgeoning town of Billings, sat with his mud-caked boots propped up on the two-planked bench that served as his desk, playing solitaire. One of the two cells to his left was occupied by a snoring cowboy, and Sampson beaned the man on the head with a carefully aimed walnut through the bars of his cell.

"Bingo!" he cackled as the snorer jolted awake and sat up.

"Aw, hell's bells, Jedediah, will ya quit it? I'm trying to sleep here," the prisoner complained.

"This ain't no hotel, Lackaway. Me usin'
you
for target practice is small price to pay for shootin' up the lobby of the International."

"I had my reasons," Lackaway grumbled.

"A whole bottle of 'em, to be exact. When you gonna give up that drinkin'?" Sampson asked with a laugh.

"When you do, I reckon." Lackaway rolled with his back to the sheriff, putting an end to the conversation.

Since that would never happen, Sampson figured he'd have regular company in his jail for a good long time to come. If he didn't have to shoot the idiot first.

"I'm lockin' up for the night, you old bastard. Sleep it off. I'll be back in the morning."

But before he could do more than reach for his gun on the peg behind his desk, the front door burst open and two men, holding up a third man by the arms, blew into his office along with a gust of cool wind.

Sampson unfolded himself from the chair and stood—all six-foot-eight of him—understanding immediately that the unconscious man was not just another drunk. He was an Indian. And as the men holding him tugged off their hats, he recognized them as well.

"Well, look what the rain washed down from the mountains. You fellas look a little worse for the wear. And so does this Injun. What is he, drunk?"

They dumped him on the floor at Sampson's feet, out cold. He was bleeding from the head and ears and his face had a dark, swelling bruise running alongside the old scar on his cheek. From that scar, he recognized him immediately.

"What
is
this, Laddner? This is Tom Newcastle's half-breed boy, Cade."

Laddner wiped the back of his hand across his face, leaving a streak of Cade Newcastle's blood there. "I don't give a flying damn whose son he is, but this here is the renegade who stole that woman from the school. We've been chasing him for days and finally caught up with him over in Coulson tonight. I expect there's a reward for the likes of him. We've come to collect it." Laddner propped the stock end of his rifle on the sheriff's table and spit into a brass spittoon poised just at his feet.

"Where's the girl?"

"Probably kilt her," Moran said, sliding a look at Laddner. "Ain't that right, Mitch?"

"He was alone when we found him. If she's anything like the others, she's lying gutted and scalped up in the high country somewhere. We must've missed her."

Sampson frowned, then squinted at the pair. "He alive?"

"Alive enough to hang. I would've saved you the trouble on my own, but I thought the reward might say 'alive,' so here he is."

Sampson rubbed his chin with the back of his beefy hand. "Folks hereabouts are stirred up by this trouble. Most folks thought those days of Cheyenne stealing women were over. I heard there was a boy missing from the Industrial School, too. There was some speculation he might be involved in all this. Any sign of him?"

"A boy?" Laddner slid a troubled look at Moran. "Didn't see no boy. But then, I suppose we could've missed him, too, up there in all the trees."

Sampson bent down to feel for a pulse in Cade's neck. Satisfied he was alive, he straightened, wanting to be rid of these two men as soon as possible. He'd never liked Mitchell Laddner and he'd heard stories about his tactics at the school. Stories that made his skin crawl. Cade Newcastle's condition here spoke for itself. This rough country drew men like Laddner like flies to honey, but they didn't live by any code he could point to except their own self-will. Still, if Tom's son did this thing, there'd be no helping him. He knew Tom Newcastle personally and he dreaded telling him that the culprit responsible for kidnapping a white girl was his son.

"The town took up a collection," he told Laddner, "considering there was not just kidnapping, but assault and horse thievery. There's a two-hundred dollar reward on the head of whoever is responsible. You say it's him. I say, how do you know?"

"We've been trackin' him for days. Plus, there's the scar on his cheek. I saw it that morning he took her from the barn. Clear as day. It's him. Just ask the Reverend Dooley. He saw him, too."

"What you say is true, then you two earned yourself some money tonight. For now, help me get him into that cell. I reckon the doc should have a look at his head. You boys got him good."

Newcastle moaned as they moved him, but didn't wake up. Sampson noticed the bloody slit and bullet hole in the man's leggings then. "You shoot him, too?"

"I expect that was my bullet that hit him that first day when we were tryin' to save the woman. He left a fine trail of blood for us to follow part ways."

"After they went off that buffalo jump, we thought they was both dead for a while—" Moran began, with a disbelieving laugh, but Laddner elbowed him silent.

"Buffalo jump? And he's still breathing?" Sampson shook his head. "Nobody survives that jump. That place is haunted. See any ghosts up there?"

"These two, we thought, for a while," Moran said. "Still can't figure how they survived."

"Like I said," Laddner interrupted, "she's likely dead and gone. When can we expect our money?"

They backed out of the cell and Sampson locked it shut. "I'll be checkin' in with Reverend Dooley, as you said, and then there'll be a trial. Circuit judge is comin' back to town in a week. We'll get him on his feet by then."

"He's a damned
Indian
," Laddner complained, as if that was enough to convict him.

"He's the son of a prominent rancher hereabouts. That gives him rights. I'll see the doc takes a look at him tonight. Wouldn't do to have him die without a fair trial, would it?"

Laddner spit into the container near his feet again. "You just be worryin' about getting us that money, sheriff. Meanwhile, I don't much care how that half-breed son of a bitch dies."

Chapter 16

Ollie stepped back out of the shadows of the building she'd been passing as she'd caught sight of the two men entering Sheriff Sampson's office, with what looked like Cade slung unconscious between them.

Her heart had dropped at the sight.
This is bad. Very bad.

The two had lingered in Sampson's office for all of ten minutes before exiting. Now, as the men disappeared down the street, she headed toward the small building whose lamplight spilled through the windows and out onto the street.

By now, Sampson was usually locked up and home for the night. She knew Jedediah Sampson as well as she knew any man in this town. A former trapper, he was a solitary type who'd gotten this job not only for his formidable size, but because he seemed to have a moral center that was lacking in other men. He lived alone in a small house up the street and frequented her place at the end of every month. He was one of her few personal customers and there was never any money exchanged in the bargain. First, she thought it good business to keep pleasant relations with the local law. And second, she liked him quite a bit. At her age, she only made room in her bed for men she gave a damn about.

She left the tapestry bag full of clothes she'd been carrying to Cade outside Sampson's door before entering the office. Above the entrance, a little bell rung.

Sampson was strapping his gun belt to his hips and looked up at her with a smile.

"Ollie."

"Jedediah?"

"What a nice surprise. What brings you out so late? These being business hours for you."

She shrugged. "Surely I don't need a reason to stop by and say hello to a friend."

"Well, I'd be plum flattered if I didn't think you had something else on your mind." He sounded wholly unconvinced and glanced over at the man lying in his cell. "Couldn't have anything to do with my guest, could it?"

She lifted her brows in feigned ignorance. But at her first good look at the man on the cot, she couldn't manage to gulp back her gasp of dismay.

She whispered a curse under her breath.

"Yup. He's stepped in a deep pile of it," Jedediah agreed. "I was about to go fetch Doc Watley. Unless you're of a mind to do it for me."

Unable to drag her gaze away from the wreckage, she said, "Yes. Of course. I-I—"

"He's a friend of yours, isn't he?"

She nodded, unsure of how much to say about his situation to Jedediah without making everything worse. "I don't know what you think he's done, but—"

"Murder, maybe. Kidnapping, at the least. Horse thievery. All of them hanging offenses."

"Murder?"

"That girl he stole is missing."

Ollie bit her tongue. She hadn't gotten to where she was in life by being an impulsive fool and she wasn't about to open her mouth, even to Jed, about Essie Sparks until she knew what was what. "I'll get the doc," she said. "But I'm asking you to keep an open mind, Jed. Cade's no murderer, whether he's living the life you or I would choose for him or not. And he's no horse thief, either. I know him."

"Not every man lives up to your expectations, Ollie. You must know that by now, too."

"What I know," she said, "is I trust my own gut instinct about men. And that's rarely steered me wrong."

"Maybe this is one of those times. You do know that he was accused of raping a white girl many years ago at that fancy school his father sent him to. It ain't common knowledge around here, but Tom confided it to me once. Boy's got the scar to prove it."

The scar! That mark had always been a mystery to her, one of those things he'd kept private. But she had no doubt that if there was a story to be told about what happened, it was his side she'd believe. "A man who rapes a woman doesn't do it for the sex, Jedediah. He does it out of pure meanness. Out of a hatred for women. To show her who's boss and to beat her down. And that doesn't change in a man. That's who and what he is. Cade has never,
ever
hurt one of my girls, or me, nor done anything even close to that since I've known him. And I've known him for a good long while. That sounds like a one-sided tale to me. So I don't believe it. And you shouldn't either."

He folded his arms over his massive chest. "I ain't the judge. Just the law. It won't be up to me to untangle the mess he's in once he gets in front of a judge."

"I'll remember you said that." Ollie gave the low-cut basque bodice on her blue silk gown a tug. "I'll be right back with Doc Watley. Don't you let anything happen to him. Or you'll answer to me."

* * *

Essie could not sit still. She paced the small room Ollie had given her, long after she'd finished with the delicious hot water bath the woman had arranged. After the briefest of naps, she'd changed into clean clothes lent to her, begrudgingly, by Lucy. The silk bodice of the bright green gown puckered for lack of volume, but the rest fit as if they'd been born twins. The dress had a narrower skirt and smaller bustle, which was all the fashion now, and looked like it might have come directly from a "Godey's Lady's Book." It made all of her old things back at the school seem woefully out of date.

"You could use a bit more up there, if you know what I mean," Lucy had advised, cupping her own ample bosom in two hands for effect. "But then we can't all be perfect."

Essie laughed. "They'll have to do, since they're all I have," she agreed, though the possibility of stuffing her camisole with rolled-up socks did, embarrassingly, occur to her.

"Bend over," Lucy said and tapped Essie not so gently between the shoulders. "Now, give the girls a shake. That's it. Let the corset be your friend."

That'll be the day
. But when she straightened, miraculously, her breasts looked fuller and, well, perkier. And the bodice lay smooth across her bosom.

Pleased, Lucy stepped back with her hands on her hips. "There's hope for you yet, town girl. You clean up real good."

"Thank you, I think."

"Anyway, not to worry. Cade Newcastle's an
ass
man... I mean..." She gulped back her faux pas. "Well... so I hear." She actually blushed. "What I meant to say was—"