The Rustler (21 page)

“Doc managed to keep his hand in, though. Tended broken bones for folks who didn't want a Chinaman looking after them. He and Sarah spent twenty-four hours of the day upstairs at the Spit Bucket, when the women came down with some kind of grippe. Lost a few of them. Doc gave them medicine Hon Sing brewed up for him, and most pulled through.”

Wyatt thought of Sarah, risking her own health to soothe and minister to the sick. If it came down to a choice between smoking cigars and courting maladies that could easily be fatal, he'd rather she indulged in tobacco.

Not, he reflected with a smile, that Sarah would be swayed by his opinions if she had that mind of hers hitched up to go in a different direction from his.

“I won't ask if you love my daughter,” Ephriam said, making Wyatt sit up straighter again. “I reckon that's your personal business, and hers. She's taken with you, though, I can see that. A lot of men might think we have money of our own put by, Sarah and me. If that's what's on your mind, Mr. Yarbro, you're sorely mistaken. We own the house, and not much else. Sarah made some shaky loans, and then covered them.”

“I know about the loans, sir,” Wyatt said, feeling his neck redden up a little. “And if I'm lucky enough to marry Sarah, it won't be for money.”

Ephriam was a shrewd man, when his head wasn't in a fog. It must have been a living hell for him, Wyatt thought, forgetting everything the way he seemed to do. “There's another possibility, of course,” the old man went on. “You're Payton Yarbro's flesh and blood. While he was famous for robbing trains—right now, this very day, you could go over to the mercantile and buy any one of a dozen dime novels, full of his exploits—I don't imagine he raised his sons to turn their nose up at the loot from a small-town bank, guarded only by a woman, an old man who can't recall his own name some days, and a single teller who's scared of his own shadow.”

“If I'd meant to hold up the Stockman's Bank, Mr. Tamlin,” Wyatt said, his neck feeling hotter still, “I'd have done it as soon that train pulled out of town with Rowdy and Sam on it.”

Ephriam smiled again. “Well, I guess Payton raised Rowdy, too, and he turned out all right.”

“Pappy didn't raise any of us,” Wyatt said. “Our ma did that. Then, when we got old enough, we went off with our pa to learn thieving. I make no secret of that, Mr. Tamlin. I did two years in prison, and while I didn't come forward at a revival meeting like Doc, something did happen that made me want to be a better man.”

“I don't suppose you'd care to tell me what that was?” Ephriam gave a gruff, rueful chuckle. “Hell, I'll probably forget, anyway.”

“I'd as soon not share it, sir, at least until I've told Sarah.”

A look of respect came into Ephriam's weary old eyes. He pulled off his spectacles, wiped the lenses with part of his banker's coat. “She knows you've been in prison?”

“I let her know that right off,” Wyatt said. There wasn't much about his life he could boast about, but living under his right name and claiming his past with no excuses was a point of pride with him. It was what his ma would have wanted, what she'd prayed for, all those nights, when she'd knelt by her sons' beds and offered them up to the care of the God she so completely, thoroughly trusted, no matter how hard things got.

Ephriam slid a stack of papers toward Wyatt. “Read these over, and sign them if you agree with the terms. I made the loan for four hundred and fifty dollars, instead of three hundred and fifty, figuring you'd need lumber and the like to fix up the Henson place.” He chuckled again as Wyatt picked up the papers. “Guess we ought to call it the
Yarbro
place, once the ink dries.”

For the first time since he'd set foot in Ephriam's office, Wyatt smiled. “The Yarbro place. I like the sound of that,” he said. “And I'm obliged for the extra money.” Then, because he was his mother's son, as well as his father's, he read every single word in those papers, made sure of his understanding, and then put his signature to the whole works.

That one hundred dollars, given to him in cash by Mr. Tamlin, meant an extra annual payment, and that was serious business to Wyatt. Still, if he wanted a roof and a floor and clean well water, he had to accept it.

He and Tamlin shook hands on the deal, and Wyatt left the Stockman's Bank.

He didn't kid himself that he owned that fifty acres and broken house. The bank did; all he owned was the mortgage. But there was a spring in his step, just the same, as he stepped out into the sunshine, looking up and down the street as he crossed, automatically counting horses in front of saloons. Since lumber and tools were sold out of the mercantile, he made his way there.

 

S
ARAH PUT
Owen's new clothes, tablets, pencils and other school equipment on her account, since she hadn't taken time to cash Charles's voucher at the bank. They were just leaving when Wyatt stepped up onto the sidewalk from the street.

Seeing her, he stopped and tugged at the brim of his hat.

Since Owen's purchases were to be delivered at the house later in the day, there having been too much for the two of them to carry, Sarah's hands were empty. Owen clutched a parcel wrapped in brown paper and tied with string, unwilling to let it out of his sight.

Knowing Wyatt would have offered to carry things home for her, if she'd had any, Sarah almost regretted asking that the order be delivered.

Owen shoved the package out to show Wyatt. “I've got long pants in here,” he said. “Just like yours. And a shirt, too. Aunt Sarah says it looks like it was cut from a flour sack, but
I
like it!”

Sarah laughed, rising, once again, on a swell of fragile and very temporary joy. “Lunch is included in your room and board,” she told Wyatt. “If you're hungry.”

Wyatt's white teeth flashed as he grinned. If they had a baby together, would it have Wyatt's fine, strong teeth, his rugged yet pleasing features?

She blushed, just to catch herself thinking such a thought, and on Main Street, too. In broad daylight.

“I'll be along directly,” he said. “I have some business in the mercantile, but it shouldn't take long.”

Hope quickened Sarah's heart. All morning long, despite helping Owen select his new clothes and grappling with what Kitty had told her, about her daughter's imminent arrival in Stone Creek to teach school, she'd been recalling breakfast, and the conversation her father and Wyatt had had about the Henson place.

She wanted to ask if Wyatt had bought the property, but couldn't quite bring herself to be that forward.

He must have seen it in her face, the longing to know if he'd be staying or moving on, because he said, “I've got a mortgage now. If there's one thing worse than a former train robber, it's a former train robber up to his gullet in debt.”

Sarah wanted to shout, to whirl, right there on the sidewalk, the way she used to do as a child in her mother's parlor, when Nancy Anne Tamlin sat down at her piano and filled the house with sweet, soaring music, coaxing whole concertos from the time-yellowed keys. Suddenly, she didn't trust herself to speak.

Wyatt didn't say anything, either.

They just stood there, the two of them, looking into each other's eyes.

It was Owen who broke the impasse. “Can I put these pants on when we get home, Aunt Sarah? I look
sissified
in this getup!”

Wyatt chuckled. “I wouldn't go so far as to say ‘sissified,'” he told the boy. “Just—well—
Eastern.
”

Owen made a face. “I wanted to put them on inside the store, but Aunt Sarah wouldn't let me. She said I'd get them dirty.”

“A boy's meant to get dirty,” Wyatt said.

Sarah laughed and steered her son in the direction of home. She cast a look back over one shoulder and saw that Wyatt was still standing outside the mercantile, watching her go.

 

A
HUNDRED DOLLARS WOULDN'T
buy all the lumber Wyatt needed, but it was enough get him started. If things stayed calm in Stone Creek until Rowdy and Sam showed up, he could start replacing the roof out home.

Home.
He hadn't had one, since his ma had died giving birth to young Gideon. When he'd gone back to pay his respects at Miranda Yarbro's final resting place, the farm had already been sold to the son of their late neighbor, John T. Rhodes.

Rhodes had been a friend to Miranda, and to Rowdy, although Wyatt hadn't approved of his ma associating with an unmarried man, while she had Pappy's wedding band on her finger. She'd mended John T.'s shirts, darned his socks, and let him drive her to church of a Sunday, too.

Looking back, Wyatt reckoned he'd taken too harsh a view of John T. Rhodes. The man had surely loved Miranda, but as far as Wyatt knew, he'd never overstepped the bounds of propriety. Unlike Pappy, John T. had been
there,
and if Miranda had been fond of him, and no doubt grateful, too, who was Wyatt to judge?

He went inside the mercantile, took off his hat, and ordered a wagon load of lumber, a hammer and saw, and a keg of nails. He could hardly wait to get out of the lawman racket, and get started, though he knew he wouldn't have much free time once he started riding for Sam O'Ballivan.

“You'll be staying on in Stone Creek, then?” asked the storekeeper's wife, evidently pleased. The question came after she'd introduced herself as Mabel. “Word's all over town that you're sweet on Sarah Tamlin, but a body can't take common gossip as gospel, now can they?”

“No, ma'am,” Wyatt said, amused and, at the same time, feeling shy. “You can't trust gossip, I mean. I do mean to stay on, long as I'm welcome, and I'm right fond of Sarah Tamlin.”

Mabel blinked, probably surprised by his straightforward answer. She was plain, but good-natured, with crooked teeth and eyes that didn't seem to focus right. She most likely needed spectacles, but a lot of women were too vain to wear them. It was one of the many things Wyatt did not understand about the female gender. They cinched themselves into corsets and pulled the strings so tight, they swooned. They wore shoes in the size they
wanted
their feet to be, not the size they actually were.

Strange creatures, but intriguing.

“We'll be selling a pile of lumber for the new jailhouse,” Mabel said, once she'd recovered from a good dose of plain talk. “Lucky thing you placed your order right away.”

“Lucky thing,” Wyatt agreed.

“Rowdy's been wanting a new jail for a long time,” the woman ran on. “He always said a town this size needed more than one cell.”

“Is that right?” Wyatt said idly, counting out payment for his purchases. Maybe he'd been worrying about Rowdy's reaction to the fate of the old jailhouse for nothing. Could be, if the storekeeper's wife had it right, he was
happy
it was gone.

“He and Lark are planning to build a new house, too. A big one.” Mabel leaned forward, halfway across the counter, to confide in a loud, carrying whisper, “She has money, you know. Lark, I mean.”

“So I hear,” Wyatt said, uncomfortable discussing his sister-in-law's financial situation, anxious to make his departure and see what Sarah was going to serve up for lunch.

“
Lots
of money,” the store-mistress prattled on. “When she came to Stone Creek, she
pretended
to be a schoolteacher. We all thought there was something very peculiar, since her clothes were all so expensive—”

Wyatt pulled out his pocket watch; it had belonged to his maternal grandfather, T. M. Wyatt, and his ma had given it to him because he was her eldest son and bore her family name. “I'm in sort of a hurry,” he said.

The woman had the good grace to blush. “Well, of course you are,” she said. “My husband will deliver the lumber tomorrow, or tonight after supper. Where should he take it?”

“The old Henson place,” Wyatt said, with a rush of pride.

The woman's eyes widened. “I've heard it's a hideout for outlaws,” she told him anxiously.

“Not anymore, it isn't,” Wyatt replied. Then, after collecting his change, he turned and hurried out of the mercantile. Walked with long strides toward Sarah's place. The store-mistress hadn't really said anything untoward about Lark, but he felt a little guilty just for listening to her.

Idle hands might be the devil's workshop, his ma used to say, but idle
words
were even worse. And he'd probably started a large-scale tongue-wagging session by saying straight out that he cared for Sarah Tamlin.

He was passing the telegraph office when the woman who'd given him a plate of food that first day, outside the revival tent, stepped out onto the sidewalk. She pressed a lace-trimmed hanky to her eyes and sniffled, and seeing Wyatt, made a subtle move to block his way.

He struggled to recall her name, but came up dry. Stopped and tugged at the brim of his hat.