The Rustler Read online

  Again, he thought of how the last thing he needed was something he had to look out for and feed, but he didn’t have the heart to say so aloud. Might hurt Lonesome’s feelings, and he’d been hurt enough already.

  SOMEONE FROM THE HOTEL brought Owen’s baggage over in a wagon, bright and early, along with a telegram from Charles.

  Called back to Philadelphia on an urgent matter. Will return for the boy as soon as possible. Funds for his maintenance to follow.

  Maintenance? Was that all Owen was to Charles—something requiring maintenance? Sarah stared at the neatly typewritten words, amazed, dangerously hopeful, and utterly confounded. Her father and Owen were seated at the kitchen table, eating oatmeal and planning their fishing expedition to the creek. Ephriam was properly dressed, though in outdoor clothes rather than his usual suit, his hair was brushed, and his eyes were as clear and placid as still water.

  Indeed, in Owen’s chattering presence, he seemed almost like the man he had once been. Sarah was both thrilled and terrified, knowing as she did that the change would be fleeting.

  Owen, for his part, seemed delighted to be going fishing on a summer day. The creek was shallow, so Sarah didn’t fret that he’d drown, and as she cleared away the remains of breakfast, she stole sidelong looks at her son.

  Her son.

  He did resemble her mother’s side of the family, just as Ephriam had remarked the night before. Fortunately, Nancy Anne Owen Tamlin hadn’t looked a thing like her fair-haired parents and siblings—she’d been stout and quite plain, with hair she herself had described as mouse-brown, ears that protruded slightly, and an exuberant laugh.

  Sarah had adored her.

  “I’m due at the bank,” she told the man and boy at the table, as though it were a perfectly normal morning in the Tamlin household, her father bright-eyed and clear-minded, Owen gobbling up the last of his oatmeal. “Be careful down at the creek, both of you.”

  With that, she found her pocketbook and left the house by the front door, humming a little under her breath.

  As she passed the church, Sarah opened the gate and entered the cemetery. It was something she often did, of a morning, though she never stayed long.

  Intent on reaching her mother’s final resting place, she didn’t immediately notice Wyatt Yarbro standing nearby, gazing down at another grave. When she did, her face heated up, and she crouched in front of Nancy Anne’s headstone, her skirts spilling around her, pretending she hadn’t seen him.

  “Mornin’,” she heard him say.

  Sarah looked up, shaded her eyes from the dazzling sun. Wyatt’s lean frame seemed rimmed by the glare, eclipselike. “Good morning, Mr.—Wyatt.”

  As her vision adjusted, she noticed the speckled dog, sniffing between headstones a short distance away.

  “He and I have taken up with each other,” Wyatt said, grinning a little as he squatted beside Sarah in the sweet-smelling grass of that peaceful place. “You wouldn’t happen to know where he calls home, would you?”

  Sarah squinted. “I’ve seen him trying to scrounge food behind the saloons,” she said, then wished she’d held her tongue, because Wyatt would, of course, wonder what business she had behind saloons. “Sometimes, people throw rocks at him.”

  Wyatt plucked a blade of grass, examined it thoughtfully, and then tossed it aside. “Then I guess he’s my dog for the duration,” he said. When his eyes met Sarah’s, she had the disturbing sense of tumbling into them. The fall took her breath away.

  “I’ve tried to get him to follow me home,” Sarah said, catching herself, regaining her balance, nodding to indicate the dog. “He was just too skittish, though.”

  “Do you like dogs, Miss—Sarah?”

  “They’re God’s creatures,” she affirmed.

  Wyatt’s grin flashed, fairly knocking her back on her heels. “What I said last night about courting you—I hope you weren’t offended.”

  Sarah didn’t know how to reply, and she’d reveal too much if she tried.

  “I wouldn’t want to scare you off or anything,” he went on, somewhat awkwardly. “But it’s only right that you hear the truth about me, Sarah. I did a couple of years in prison for train robbing.”

  Still tongue-tied, Sarah simply stared at Wyatt Yarbro, wondering why she felt safer in the presence of an admitted criminal than she ever had with Charles.

  Wyatt sighed, stood, offered a hand to help Sarah to her feet.

  She took the hand, let him pull her up.

  “I figured you’d be shocked,” he said.

  At last, Sarah found her voice. “But I’m not,” she said. “Shocked, I mean.” She indicated the nearby grave of his very famous outlaw father, Payton Yarbro. “Rowdy’s been straightforward about his past, at least since he met Lark. It’s no surprise to learn that you were caught and punished for what you did.”

  He studied her, his wonderful eyes slightly narrowed. “Did Rowdy tell you about me?”

  Sarah shook her head. “No, and neither did Lark,” she answered.

  Wyatt was quiet for a long time, his gaze fixed on the far horizon, where a plume of dust rose against the sky.

  “Riders coming,” he finally said.

  “Cowboys, probably,” Sarah said, unconcerned. There were a lot of ranches around Stone Creek, and the hired hands often came to town to carouse at one of the saloons, especially when payday rolled around.

  Recalling that it was the last day of August, she sighed. She’d best get to the bank and help Thomas take in the deposits. Some of the cowpokes actually had accounts, and they put a portion of their wages away, or bought drafts to send funds home to mothers, wives and children, before throwing the rest away on whiskey and women of unfortunate character.

  Wyatt whistled for the dog, put his hat back on. He seemed distracted, even a little troubled, and kept glancing toward the billow of dust swelling against the southeastern skies.

  Even though he walked at Sarah’s side as far as the churchyard gate, and held it open for her while she passed through ahead of him, he was far away. When they reached the sidewalk, Wyatt touched the brim of his hat and he and the dog headed in one direction, while Sarah went in the other.

  The window shade was drawn at the bank.

  Frowning, she consulted the small watch pinned to her bodice. Five minutes past the opening time of eight o’clock. She was late.

  The door was locked.

  Sarah fumbled for her key, let herself in.

  Thomas stood behind the counter, looking anxious.

  Sarah rolled up the shade.

  “Maybe we ought not to open for business today,” Thomas said. Perspiration glistened on either side of his nose, as well as his forehead, and he kept wetting his lips with his tongue.

  “Nonsense,” Sarah said. “It’s payday on most of the ranches. Down at the feed store and the livery stable, too. People will want to make deposits.”

  “We shouldn’t open the safe,” Thomas insisted, glancing at the rolled-up shade above the front window.

  “Thomas, what on earth—?”

  “It’s just something I overheard at the boardinghouse last night,” he said. Then he walked right past her, lowered the blind again, and locked the door. “Probably nothing to be concerned about, but—”

  Sarah laid a hand on his arm. “Thomas.”

  He shoved splayed fingers through his hair. “A couple of drifters stopped off at our place and asked to chop wood in return for a hot supper. Mother allowed as how she’d feed them, all right, but they had to eat outside because they were strangers and she didn’t like the looks of them.”

  “And?” Sarah prompted.

  “It was hot, so Mother had a window open in the kitchen, and I went in there to shut it. That’s when I heard them talking outside. The drifters, I mean.”

  Sarah pressed her lips together, waited.

  “They said there was money to be gotten, in a place like Stone Creek, and they wouldn’t have to ride for the likes of Sam O’Ballivan to get t
heir hands on it.”

  Sarah remembered the dust on the horizon, and the way it had caught Wyatt’s attention. She felt a little prickle of alarm, not so much because the bank might be robbed—that was preposterous—but because Owen and her father were down by the creek, fishing, and the trail into town ran right past it. And because, if there was trouble coming, Wyatt would most likely face it alone, with Sam and Rowdy away.

  Thomas prattled on, apparently unable to stop talking now that he’d gotten started. “I wanted to come right over to your house and tell you,” he said, “but Mother said you had company and I’d be intruding.” He reddened. “Sarah, what if they mean to hold us up?”

  “Don’t be silly, Thomas. No one has ever held up the Stockman’s Bank.”

  “Folks know Rowdy Yarbro’s out of town, and Mr. O’Ballivan, too,” Thomas argued, albeit respectfully, “and this is the only place in Stone Creek where there’s any amount of cash money—”

  Sarah shook her head. “You’ve been reading too many dime novels,” she insisted. “This is 1907. The twentieth century, not the old West. Anyway, if we lock up on a Tuesday morning, it might start a panic.”

  “I feel sick,” Thomas said. “Can I go home?”

  Sarah sighed. Thomas was a faithful worker; he was never sick. His salary was small, but he never complained, or refused to run errands or other tasks outside his job as a teller.

  “Very well, then,” she said, somewhat snappishly. “Go home.”

  “I don’t like leaving you here alone,” Thomas fretted, but he was already making for the door, fumbling with the lock.

  “Give my kindest regards to your mother,” Sarah said.

  Thomas nodded, and fled.

  Sarah rolled the window shade back up, smoothed her hair and her skirts, and walked behind the counter, resigned to doing Thomas’s work, as well as her father’s and her own.

  She checked her bodice watch again. At three o’clock, she would close the bank, walk down the street toward home as usual, and duck around behind the Spit Bucket Saloon when she was sure no one was looking.

  CHAPTER SIX

  HOW MANY RIDERS would it take to raise a dust cloud like that one? Wyatt wondered, as he moved briskly toward the jailhouse, hoping poor old Lonesome could make it that far without collapsing. Much restored by a little kindness and a lot of breakfast, the dog was puny, just the same. He’d need some time to heal up proper.

  Reaching Rowdy’s office, he had to pick Lonesome up in both arms to get him over the threshold. The critter’s tongue hung to one side of his snout, and he was panting hard.

  He settled Lonesome in front of the cold stove, took the washbasin outside, and pumped cold water into it. Then, having set the basin within Lonesome’s reach, he drew his Colt, spun the cylinder to make sure it was fully loaded.

  It was, since he’d had no cause to shoot, except to pick off the occasional rabbit for his supper out on the trail. Pappy had been a great advocate of regular target practice, but Wyatt hadn’t been flush enough to waste good bullets plunking at tin cans for a long time.

  Fortunately, Rowdy kept enough ammunition in the bottom drawer of his desk to supply an artillery regiment.

  Leaving the dog in peace, Wyatt stepped back out into the street.

  He guessed at least a dozen riders were bearing down on Stone Creek, and even though they were most likely harmless cowpokes, looking to wet their whistles with a little whiskey and maybe visit a loose woman, a familiar uneasiness prickled in the pit of his stomach. He’d felt it last just before the stampede, down by the border.

  There was no fear—just a sense of standing a rung or two above it on an invisible ladder. That was another thing he’d learned from Pappy—fear was a luxury an outlaw couldn’t afford. When trouble came, a man had to stand up on the inside, ready to play whatever cards he might be dealt.

  Wyatt looked up and down the street, found it deserted, where a quarter of an hour before, the place had been bustling with morning business. He spared a moment to wish that Sam and Rowdy were around, but no more than that. Clearly, if trouble was on its way, he’d be the one facing it down.

  The riders were getting close—he could hear the hoofbeats of their horses now—probably within minutes of town, and Wyatt’s thoughts strayed to the bank. Or, more properly, to Sarah.

  He headed in that direction, not at a lope, as instinct urged, but with long, sure strides. In his head, he heard Pappy’s voice, as he often did. You’ve got to look tough, boy, even if you’re down to your last pint of blood and plumb out of ideas. Show any weakness, and they’ll be on you like wolves.

  At the moment, Wyatt had only one idea, but his blood was pumping just fine. It wasn’t a matter of looking tough, either. He knew he was. Two years breaking rocks in the hot Texas sun had given him that, if nothing else.

  He reached the bank, tried the door, found it open.

  Sarah stood alone behind the counter, pale and straight-shouldered. Relief flickered in those astounding blue eyes of hers, though, and a little color came into her cheeks.

  “Everything all right here?” Wyatt asked.

  “So far,” Sarah said, but a note of worry echoed in the air after she spoke.

  “You’re alone?” He knew she was, but it seemed odd, so he had to verify the suspicion.

  “I was,” she replied. “Until you came. Is something wrong?”

  “Probably not,” Wyatt said, though his senses told another story entirely.

  “Thomas has some silly notion that the bank is about to be robbed,” she said, in the same voice she’d used the night before, at supper, to offer him a second helping of fried chicken.

  “Where is he?” Wyatt asked, watching the street through the glass window in the front door. He saw three riders in the lead, but there were a lot more coming up behind, raising as much dust as they had on the trail outside of town. He upped his estimate of their numbers to twenty.

  “He was frightened, so I sent him home.”

  Wyatt gave a huff of disgust at that.

  “There’s no cause for concern, I’m sure,” Sarah said brightly. “It’s payday on the ranches, being the last day of the month, and cowboys come from all over to spend their wages and—”

  Wyatt glanced back at her. “Just the same,” he said evenly, “you ought to slip out the back door, if there is one, and go on home.”

  She hoisted a shotgun in one hand. Evidently, she kept it stashed behind the counter. “I’m not afraid,” she said, straightening her spine to confirm the assertion. “And besides, those men are harmless. You’ll see.”

  He had to admire Sarah’s grit, though he still wished she’d do as he said and go out the back way.

  Out front, men began to dismount, leaving their horses untethered, and tromping, spurs jingling, up onto the wooden sidewalk.

  Three of them, the same men he’d seen riding in the lead, headed for the bank’s door.

  Wyatt stepped back to admit them. The .45 seemed to vibrate against his hip, the way the ground trembled when a herd was passing at a high run, but he didn’t draw. No cause for that—yet.

  The first galoot through the door was big as a mountain. Despite the heat, he wore a long coat, and every part of him, from the top of his hat to the worn boots on his feet, was covered in a fine layer of yellowish-red dust. Wyatt noticed immediately that he’d pushed the side of his coat back, so it caught behind his gun and holster.

  Wyatt’s nape tingled, but he stood with his arms folded, a slight but deliberately cordial smile curving at one side of his mouth. An experienced desperado himself, he figured the men would have worn bandannas over their faces if they intended mischief. On the other hand, though, word of Rowdy’s absence had probably gotten around that part of the territory. With the cat away, the mice were inclined to play….

  The big man’s attention went straight to the star pinned to Wyatt’s vest, and his eyes, small and set deep in their grimy sockets, sparse lashes coated in dirt, widened a little. He
glanced toward Sarah, his countenance seeming to droop a little.

  “Thought you was gone to Haven,” the giant told Wyatt, his tone moderately resentful.

  Two facts registered in Wyatt’s mind: the big man didn’t know Rowdy by sight, only reputation, and finding a lawman in the Stockman’s Bank put some kind of hitch in his get-along.

  “Would you like to make a deposit?” Sarah chimed sunnily.

  A muscle contracted, hard, in Wyatt’s jaw. It was no time for feminine chatter. While the situation looked ordinary on the outside, he knew in his gut it wasn’t.

  Two more of them crowded in behind the yahoo. Their eyeballs stood out starkly in their dirt-caked faces—they reminded Wyatt of coal miners, just coming up from underground, startled by daylight.

  “Where can a man get a drink around here?” the big man boomed, suddenly jovial.

  “You don’t want to make a deposit?” Sarah asked, sounding disappointed.

  Wyatt didn’t take his eyes off the trail bum. These men weren’t riding for a brand—they were on their own, and traveling in a bunch because, at the core of things, they were cowards. “Oh,” he answered dryly, his arms still folded, “maybe in one of the three or four saloons you passed getting to the bank.”

  More men crammed themselves into the doorway, clogging it like hair in a drain. The big man put up a hand to stop the flow from the street.

  Wyatt was Yarbro-fast with a gun, but he was only one man, Sarah only one woman, shotgun at the ready or not. With a score of men in the street and stuffed into the doorway, they wouldn’t have a chance. But Wyatt could take out the first half-dozen comers with no problem, and the big fellow seemed to know that, if the others didn’t.

  “You have a name?” Wyatt asked easily, never taking his eyes off the stranger. Cowards, he knew, were especially dangerous.

  “Not one you need to know,” the other man blustered, offended.

  “I can always check the Wanted posters back at the office,” Wyatt said. If I chance to live that long. “If you gentlemen don’t have honest business in this establishment, I’d suggest you go elsewhere. I hear they don’t water down the whiskey—much—over at Jolene Bell’s place.”