A Cowboy's Heart. Liz Ireland

his dream gal.

      “You can’t think of anybody else?” Paulie asked, glaring at them as if they were dumb clucks.

      Will shook his head. “Still, even counting Tunia, that leaves pretty slim pickings around here.”

      A bottle shattered on the floor, sending glass shards shooting off in all directions.

      “Oh, darn!” Paulie yelled. “Look what you made me go and do!”

      The two men looked at each other and blinked. “Us?”

      “What did we do?” Trip asked.

      “Never mind!” Paulie said, bending down to wipe the clear liquid off the floor before sweeping up.

      “Well, what are you so lathered up about?” Will asked her.

      “I’m just tired of hearing about weddings and courting and such. I swear that’s all you men talk about these days. Don’t you have anything else to keep yourselves occupied?”

      “I guess I should start thinking about what I’m going to do now,” Will said.

      Trip glanced at him anxiously. “We could sure use a sheriff again with Night Bird roamin’ around.”

      Will frowned. He’d had his heart set on starting a ranch. “Night Bird,” he said, repeating the name that he’d heard spoken with fear so often since returning to South Texas. “Is he harassing folks around here?”

      “He’s been here several times,” Paulie informed him. Mention of the renegade seemed to have shaken her pettish mood a little. “I haven’t seen him, but he’s taken several bottles of my whiskey.”

      “How do you know?” Will asked.

      “’Cause they say when he comes you can’t even hear him,” Paulie answered. “Those three railroad men who got their throats slit probably never knew what hit them.”

      Trip shivered. “The first one maybe. But I bet the second and third knew right enough what was happening.”

      Will frowned. “When it comes to renegades, people are likely to swallow any tall tale.” Granted, some gruesome stories were true, but usually people believed what they wanted to believe. “Folks will blame Night Bird if cattle prices fall,” he said.

      Paulie lifted her chin. “He was here. I know it.”

      “Maybe,” Will allowed.

      “Anyways, we sure could use a lawman hereabouts,” Trip put in again. “I know I’d sleep better.”

      “I’ll think about it,” Will said. If he was going to start up that horse ranch, with or without a wife, it would take him a while to get his hands on a place and accumulate stock. He might as well winter in Possum Trot as anywhere else.

      “You sound like you aren’t even sure you’re going to stay,” Paulie said, looking at him anxiously. “You know you’re welcome to bed down here, Will. There’s a room in the back, next to Trip’s.”

      He looked into Paulie’s shiny green eyes and felt gratitude welling in him. “I’m obliged, Sprout,” he said, using his old nickname for her.

      She blushed again and pushed back a lock of frizzy hair that had fallen across one eye. “There’s no obligation, Will. You know that.”

      For a moment, he stared at her, rapt by those eyes of hers. He could almost swear there was something different-looking about Paulie—besides the obvious change in her getup. Yet in spite of the shambles her hair was in, it was the same light brown color. Her eyes were the same lively pools. She was still skinny, and still had freckles galore, too. Yet, when taken all together, she seemed...different More frail, more vulnerable almost. He couldn’t explain it.

      And then it struck him.

      “Say, have you been feeling poorly?”

      Paulie blinked at him, seeming to snap out of the same daze he’d been in for the past few minutes. “What?”

      He shrugged. “You look different somehow,” he remarked. “I thought maybe you had been sick.”

      “Sick!” she cried, sounding offended.

      He stared at her quizzically. “What the beck’s gotten into you, Paulie? You didn’t used to be this prickly unless I commented on that freckle crop of yours.”

      “I don’t have that many freckles,” she shot back heatedly. “Never did.”

      “Ha!” He laughed. “Knit them together and you’d have skin as brown as an overripe berry.”

      Her face turned a fiery red. “Why you—”

      Before she could explode, and before he had a chance to elaborate on his remark, bootsteps were heard coming up the Dry Wallow’s porch. Paulie was the first to look up to see who their visitor was.

      From the look of horror on her face, Will was half expecting Night Bird himself. But when he turned, he found himself staring at someone even more surprising. Oat Murphy.

      Oat’s expression was even more hangdog than usual. Will felt a pang of anger rise sharply in his breast. What did that old man have to be sad about?

      Paulie was a bit more generous. “Land’s sake, Oat. What’s the matter with you? You look like you just lost your best friend!”

      Slowly, the grizzled ex-whiskey trader looked from one to the other of them. His droopy eyes were bloodshot and edgy, and his shoulders slumped even more than usual. Even his gray beard seemed to droop.

      “Ain’t my best friend I lost,” he said in his gruff rasp of a voice. “It’s my wife.”

      Chapter Two

      “You lost Mary Ann?”

      Paulie finally found her voice and spoke to Oat, who was clearly embarrassed to have to make such a confession. He shuffled to the bar, where she handed him a glass of tequila. He slugged it down, apparently without a thought to his recent vow to abstain from drinking.

      “Sure as shootin’,” Oat grumbled in his terse brand of speech. “Can’t find her. I tell you, I looked everywhere.”

      Trip appeared so astounded Paulie was afraid he was going to slip clear off his bar stool. And Will was simply incredulous.

      “What do you mean, you lost her?” he asked Oat, looking as if he wanted to throttle the man. Paulie could understand his frustration. Will probably looked on Oat as having won what he had failed to obtain himself. To misplace Mary Ann was careless in the extreme.

      But Oat was evidently tired of having to justify his loss. “I mean, she ain’t at home,” he said, frustrated. “Ain’t anywheres that I can tell.” He glanced up at Paulie, and almost as an afterthought, asked, “Ain’t here, is she?”

      “I haven’t seen her. Have you, Trip?”

      Trip blinked. “Sure haven’t. Not since long before she married you, Oat.”

      “That’s it, then.” Oat shrugged. “Just plum lost her.”

      Will looked as if he might explode any second. “Wait a cotton pickin’ minute, Oat. You can’t simply lose a woman. Are you sure she didn’t go somewhere?”

      Oat shook his head. “Not that she told me.”

      “Maybe she went back to Breen’s place to be with her ma for a spell,” Trip suggested.

      “First place I looked,” Oat said.

      “Could she maybe have had an accident?” Paulie asked.

      The old fellow rubbed his tobacco-stained beard and considered this possibility. Finally, he admitted slowly, “Ain’t likely. See, I just woke up one morning and found her missin’. What kind of accident