The Rustler Read online

  “What was he like—before?”

  “Tough. Fast with a gun. Smart as hell. Not much he was ever scared of, as far as I could tell. That’s how he got the nickname. Ma called him by his given name, Rob—she had a soft spot for him.” Wyatt thought he heard the boy swallow hard, over there on his cot. It struck him—with a brief but hard pang—that he probably knew more about Billy Justice and the members of his gang than he did about Gideon, his own brother.

  “Pappy said Ma died having me,” Gideon said quietly, revealing a great deal more about himself in that one statement than he’d probably intended.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Wyatt said.

  There was a shrug in Gideon’s voice when he answered. “She’d be alive now, if it hadn’t been for me,” he argued.

  “You can’t know that for sure,” Wyatt pointed out, feeling sorry for the kid. It was a rung up the ladder, he reckoned, from feeling sorry for himself—he’d done enough of that in prison.

  Gideon was quiet again, but just long enough for Wyatt to start hoping the palavering was over, so he could drift back into oblivion. He slept like a dead man, and rarely remembered his dreams, if he had any, and he considered that a blessing. Other men he’d known, back in Texas, hadn’t been so fortunate.

  “There are some things a man just has to let go of,” he told Gideon.

  “I reckon,” Gideon agreed, but without much conviction.

  Wyatt rolled onto his side, with his back to his brother, and punched down his pillow, though it was already flat, figuring his saddle would have served better. Been cleaner, too. “Good night,” he said, with a yawn.

  “What was she like?” Gideon asked. “Ma, I mean.”

  Wyatt suppressed another sigh. Stayed on his side, eyes wide-open, staring at the splintery, raw-timbered wall. “She was a fine woman,” he said. “Half again too good for Pappy, that’s for certain. She loved him, though.”

  At last, Gideon fell silent, though Wyatt knew there would be more questions, right along. With luck, they’d be ones he could answer.

  THE MORNING AFTER Wyatt Yarbro walked her home from the revival picnic, Sarah overslept. She bolted awake, flustered, and scrambled out of bed, groping for her wrapper, wrenching it on, not bothering to shove her bare feet into house slippers.

  “Papa?” she called, from the top of the back stairs leading down into the kitchen. “Papa!”

  Dear God, suppose he’d wandered off again? The last time, he’d sneaked out wearing only a striped nightshirt and his best beaver top hat; she’d been lucky then, catching up to him at the corner, but Mrs. Madison, their neighbor, had witnessed the spectacle. Sarah had lied, smiling a brittle smile and explaining, perhaps too quickly, that her father had been sleepwalking lately.

  The lying hadn’t been the worst part, though—Sarah lied on a daily basis, to such an extent that she made notes in a ledger book in order to be consistent. No, the terrible thing had been seeing her intelligent, affable father looking so bewildered.

  The back door was still locked; Sarah rushed to the front.

  Ephriam Tamlin, founder, president and holder of majority shares in the Stockman’s Bank, sat on the porch step, spine straight, a shotgun lying across his knees. He’d stuffed himself into a moth-eaten army uniform, Union blue.

  Sarah put a hand to her heart. Drew a deep breath. “Papa,” she said, careful to speak softly, so she wouldn’t startle him.

  “They’ve come, Nancy Anne,” he said, without turning to look up at her. “The Rebs are here.”

  Sarah sat down beside him, tightening the belt of her wrapper and offering a silent prayer that no one would pass on the sidewalk and see them taking the morning air in such inappropriate garb. She reached for the shotgun, but Ephriam gripped it with strong, age-spotted hands.

  “I saw their tent,” Ephriam went on. “Bold as Lucifer, those Confederates. Made camp right on the banks of Stone Creek. Heaven help us all if it’s Quantrill.”

  Sarah closed her eyes for a moment, swallowed a hard lump of misery before attempting to speak. She laid a gentle hand on the faded blue sleeve of her father’s coat. “Papa,” she whispered. “Look at me.”

  He turned, his kindly blue eyes blinking behind the thick, smudged lenses of his spectacles. This was the man who had been her rock, before and after her mother died. He’d protected her, provided for her. Helped her keep a shattering secret. Now, he looked befuddled, as though he knew he ought to be able to place her, but couldn’t quite manage it.

  “It’s me, Papa,” she said. “Sarah. And the war has been over for forty-two years.”

  He blinked again, rapidly now, and looked down at his ancient uniform and the shotgun resting across his lap. He was sixty-seven, too young for dementia. “I’ve had another spell,” he said, with a look of such mortified regret that Sarah felt bruised inside.

  Gently, she took the shotgun from his hands. “No harm done,” she said, her voice hoarse with emotion. It probably wasn’t true, of course. He’d glimpsed Brother Hickey’s tent and mistaken it for a Confederate camp, and unless he’d followed the creek both ways, he must have walked right through town—dressed up in his old uniform, with the shotgun held smartly against his shoulder, like a soldier on patrol. Heaven only knew how many people had seen him, and were even now passing the word over fences and clotheslines.

  “I’m sorry, Sarah,” he said, looking so wretched that fresh tears scalded her eyes.

  “Come inside and change,” she replied, with an attempt at a reassuring smile. “I’ll make breakfast, and we’ll go to the bank and attend to business, just like we always do.”

  Ephriam nodded, rose stiffly from the step. Looked down at his uniform with a rueful shake of his head. “I’m not the man I used to be,” he said sadly.

  “Nonsense,” Sarah said briskly, once they were inside the house and out of sight of the neighbors. She set the shotgun aside with caution and straightened his blue coat. “You’re Ephriam Tamlin, head of the Stockman’s Bank. Now, what would you like for breakfast?”

  THE TELEGRAPH OPERATOR SHOWED up just as Rowdy, Gideon, Lark and Wyatt were finishing up their morning meal. Stood panting in the open doorway, skinny and sweating, a sheet of yellow paper clasped in one hand.

  Rowdy immediately pushed back his chair and rose.

  The baby, perched on Lark’s lap while she spooned oatmeal into his mouth, started at the commotion, and old Pardner gave a questioning bark but didn’t rise from the hooked rug next to the cookstove.

  “There’s been a lynching down near Haven,” sputtered the little man on the threshold. He looked like a scarecrow in Sunday clothes. “Bunch of ranchers caught a couple of cattle thieves and strung ’em up. They want you to come. You and Sam O’Ballivan. I sent Zeke Reynolds out to Stone Creek Ranch with the news.”

  A chill trickled down Wyatt’s spine. For a moment, he was out there under that rustler’s moon again, in the aftermath of a storm and a stampede he’d been lucky to survive, distant shots echoing in his ears.

  Rowdy snatched the telegram from the messenger’s hand and scanned it a couple of times, in the way of a man who hoped it might say something different if he read it enough. Swore under his breath.

  “You’re not a Ranger anymore,” Lark said quietly, gazing at her husband with luminous brown eyes. Her hair was fair, like Rowdy’s, and shorter than most women’s, just touching her shoulders. “And you’re the marshal of Stone Creek, not Haven.”

  “If Sam goes,” Rowdy told his wife, avoiding her eyes, “I’ll be riding with him.”

  “Me, too,” Gideon said.

  Wyatt didn’t speak, and that was a hard thing, not offering to help. If there was one place he couldn’t afford to be seen in, it was that little border town, just outside of which he and Billy Justice and the boys had helped themselves to more than five hundred head of cattle.

  “You’re staying right here,” Rowdy told Gideon, but his tone lacked conviction. Like as not, Gideon would get his way.


  Meanwhile, Wyatt saw his dream of settling down, living under his own name instead of yet another alias, marrying up with a woman like Sarah and raising kids and cattle, scatter into the air like the fluff from a dandelion head. As soon as Rowdy and Sam O’Ballivan rode out, he would, too—heading in the opposite direction.

  He should have known he couldn’t live in the open, like ordinary men.

  Rowdy handed the telegraph operator a coin and dismissed him with a muttered “Thanks” and a distracted wave of one hand, reading the message again.

  “If you’re going to Haven,” Lark said firmly, getting to her feet, swinging the baby onto her hip in the same motion, “so are Hank and I.”

  “Who’s going to mind Stone Creek?” Wyatt asked, not because he cared much about the answer, but because he thought Rowdy might get suspicious if he didn’t say something. “Is there a deputy?”

  A slow grin broke across Rowdy’s strained, thoughtful face. “Yes,” he said. “I’m looking at him.”

  Wyatt felt hot color rush up his neck. “Me?”

  Rowdy nodded. “You,” he said.

  At last, Wyatt stood. “I don’t know anything about being a lawman,” he protested, but carefully. “Until two years ago, I had a price on my head.”

  “So did I, at one time,” Rowdy said, unfazed. He could be like an old dog mauling a soup bone when he wanted something. Changing his mind wouldn’t be easy, if it was possible at all. “Turned out pinning on a badge was my salvation,” he said, catching Lark’s eye as she set the baby down on the rug beside the dog and moved to begin clearing the table. “That and a good woman willing to take a chance on a former train robber.”

  Lark blushed prettily. “If you think you’re going to charm me out of going to Haven, Rowdy Yarbro,” she said, “you are sadly mistaken. As soon as I’ve done these dishes, I mean to pack for the trip.”

  “Gideon will take care of the dishes,” Rowdy said. He was watching Wyatt again, though, and there was something disconcerting in his eyes, an intent, measuring expression. They hadn’t talked about the months between Wyatt’s release and his arrival in Stone Creek—there hadn’t been time. But Rowdy was a hard man to fool, and he clearly had his suspicions.

  Gideon banged the dishes and cutlery around in the sink, but he didn’t protest the washing-up.

  “It might be better if I just moved on,” Wyatt said. “I’m not cut out to uphold the law. Hell, it’s all I can do to stay on the right side of it. You know that.”

  “Stone Creek is a quiet town,” Rowdy answered easily. “Most you’d run up against would be drunken cowboys, or railroad workers whooping it up on a Saturday night.”

  Gideon grumbled something about getting shot at a dance, and did Rowdy call that quiet? But Wyatt was too focused on staring down the marshal of Stone Creek to pursue the matter right then.

  “Gideon Yarbro,” Lark called from the bedroom, where she could be heard opening and shutting bureau drawers, “if you break one of my good dishes slamming them around like that, I’ll horsewhip you from one end of Main Street to the other!”

  Exasperated, Wyatt shoved his hands into the hip pockets of his borrowed denim pants. Everything he was wearing, save his boots, pistol and gun belt—he’d left that outside out of deference to Lark—belonged to Rowdy. He sure hadn’t counted on adding a badge to the getup. “Why is a lynching in some other town any of your concern, anyhow?” he asked.

  “I wrote you about it,” Rowdy said, still watching Wyatt a little too closely for his liking. “Told you what happened there.”

  Wyatt’s mouth went dry. “I guess that particular letter didn’t catch up with me,” he said. He and Rowdy had written each other on and off for years, but it was a scattershot sort of thing. He’d ride into a town, stop in at the post office if there happened to be one, and inquire if there was mail for him, sent care of general delivery. Sometimes, there was. More often, there wasn’t.

  A month ago, he’d wound up in Tucson, and there was a letter waiting from Rowdy, full of news about Lark and the baby and his job in Stone Creek. He’d related the story of Pappy’s death, and said if Wyatt wanted honest work, a friend of his named Sam O’Ballivan was always looking for cowpokes.

  At the time, Wyatt had regarded that letter as a fluke of the postal system.

  Now, he figured Rowdy must have figured he’d wind up in the Arizona Territory eventually, maybe looking for Pappy, and wished he’d never set foot in the post office in Tucson. Or, better yet, thrown in with the likes of Billy Justice before Rowdy offered him a fresh start.

  “I can’t stay, Rowdy,” he said.

  “You’ll stay,” Rowdy said.

  “What makes you so damn sure?”

  “That old nag of yours is practically dead on his feet. He doesn’t have another long ride in him.”

  “He made it here, didn’t he?”

  Rowdy didn’t seem to be listening. “I’ve got a spare gelding out there in the barn. You can ride him if you see the need. Name’s Sugarfoot, and he’ll throw you if you try to mount up on the right side.”

  “When it comes to riding out, one horse is as good as another,” Wyatt said, but he was thinking of old Reb, the paint gelding, and how sorry he’d be to leave him behind. They’d been partners since that turn of the cards in Abilene, after all, and Wyatt would have been in a fine fix without him.

  “You’re a lot of things, Wyatt,” Rowdy reasoned, “but a horse thief isn’t among them. Especially when the horse in question belongs to me.”

  Wyatt scowled, said nothing. He was fresh out of arguments, at the moment. Hadn’t kept up on his arguing skills, the way Rowdy had.

  Rowdy saw his advantage and pressed it. “And then there’s Sarah Tamlin,” he said.

  “What about Sarah Tamlin?” Lark asked, appearing in the bedroom doorway with a fat satchel in one hand.

  Wyatt glared at Rowdy.

  Rowdy merely grinned.

  “She smokes cigars,” Wyatt said lamely. “You told me that yourself, just yesterday. Plays poker, too. Gives a man second thoughts.”

  “She does not smoke cigars,” Lark insisted.

  “So it’s true about the poker!” Rowdy said, in an ah-ha tone of voice.

  “I wouldn’t know,” Lark said, with an indignant sniff.

  “I heard she was a member of the Tuesday Afternoon Ladies Only Secret Poker Society,” Gideon said, looking smug. “And she’s not the only one. It might surprise you who goes to those meetings.”

  Rowdy chuckled.

  “Gideon,” Lark warned.

  He turned back to the sink, flushed, and scrubbed industriously at the kettle Lark had used to boil up the morning’s oatmeal.

  “It’s just a rumor,” Lark told Rowdy. “Respectable women do not play poker. Or smoke cigars.”

  “Whatever you say, dear,” Rowdy replied sweetly.

  Wyatt just shook his head, confounded.

  “Come on,” Rowdy said to him, beckoning. “I’ll show you around town. Sam can swear you in when he gets here. What I do is, I count the horses in front of the saloons. If there’re more than a dozen, I keep a closer eye on the place—”

  Wyatt followed, since that seemed like the only thing to do.

  “THERE,” SAID SARAH, straightening her father’s tie outside the door of his office at the bank, grateful that the place was empty at the moment. Thomas, the only teller, had gone out when they arrived. The train would be pulling in at the new depot within an hour, pausing only long enough to swap mailbags with the postmaster and take on any passengers who might be waiting on the platform—or drop off new arrivals.

  It was Thomas’s job, at least in part, to rush back to the bank and report to Sarah if any important visitors showed up. She was always on the lookout for unexpected stockholders.

  “I’ll handle things, Papa,” Sarah assured her father, who had turned fretful again after breakfast. She was fairly certain he hadn’t seen her stuff his army uniform behind the wooden barrel of t
he washing machine on the back porch, but she wasn’t absolutely sure. “If someone comes in to open an account or inquire about a loan, let me do the talking. I’ll say you’re busy. All you have to do is sit at your desk, with your papers—if they insist on greeting you personally, I’ll be careful to call them by name so you know what to—”

  “Sarah.” Ephriam looked pained.

  “Papa, you know you forget.”

  Just then, the street door opened with a crash, and Thomas burst in. Plump, with a constellation of smallpox scars spilling down one side of his face, he seemed on the verge of panic.

  “Sarah!” he gasped, from the threshold, one fleshy hand pressed to his chest. “It’s him—the man in the photograph you showed me—”

  Sarah’s knees turned to water. “No,” she said, leaning against her father for a moment. “He couldn’t possibly have—”

  “It’s him,” Thomas repeated.

  “Calm down,” Sarah said hastily. “Remember your asthma.”

  Thomas struggled to a wooden chair, in front of the window, and sat there sucking in air like a trout on a creek bank. “S-Sarah, wh-what are we going to d-do—?”

  “What,” Ephriam interjected, suddenly forceful, “is happening?”

  Even in her agitation, Sarah felt a stab of sorrow, because she knew her father wouldn’t be his old self for more than a few minutes. When the inevitable fog rolled in, shrouding his mind again, she’d miss him more keenly than ever.

  “You’re going to take Papa home,” she told Thomas, who had begun a moderate recovery—of sorts. He wasn’t sweating quite as much as he had been when he rushed in, and his breathing had slowed to a slight rasp. “Go out the back way, and stay off Main Street.”

  Gamely, Thomas got to his feet again. Lumbered toward them.

  When he took Ephriam’s arm, though, the old man pulled free. “Unhand me,” he said. “This is an outrage!”

  Sarah’s mind was racing wildly through a series of possibilities, all of which were disastrous, but she’d had a lot of experience dealing with imminent disaster, and she rose to the occasion.