A Wanted Man: A Stone Creek Novel. Linda Lael Miller

he went back to the jailhouse and built a fire in the potbelly stove. By the time he’d adjusted the damper and shifted the chimney pipe to close the gaps issuing little scallops of dusty smoke, the supplies had arrived from the general store.

      He put a pot of coffee on to brew.

      Pardner, meanwhile, padded into the single jail cell, jumped up on the cot inside and settled himself for a snooze.

      Jolene Bell showed up before the coffee was through perking.

      “I hope you’ll be a better lawman than old Pete Quincy was,” she said.

      “I guess that remains to be seen,” Rowdy replied. He’d have offered her some of the coffee, but it was still raw and he only had one cup.

      “I run a clean place,” Jolene told him, after working up her mettle for a few seconds. “My girls are all of legal age, and my whiskey ain’t watered down, neither.”

      Rowdy bit the inside of his lip, so he wouldn’t grin. Obviously, Jolene was there on serious business. He’d learned a long time ago that if a woman had something to say, it was best to listen, whether she was the preacher’s wife or the local madam.

      “Am I gonna have trouble with you?” she asked, frowning.

      Rowdy hooked his thumbs in his gun belt. “Not unless any of your ‘girls’ are there against their will,” he said. “And I’ll be by to collect pistols, if I see more than a dozen horses tied up at your hitching rail.”

      Jolene’s gaze slipped to the .44 on his left hip. “Might be some as protest a rule like that one,” she asserted.

      “I don’t give a damn whether they protest or not,” Rowdy replied.

      “Since when is there a law on the books that says cowboys got to surrender their sidearms afore they can do any drinkin’?”

      “Since now,” Rowdy said. “They’ll get the guns back when they’re ready to ride out, sober.”

      “I’d be interested to see how you plan to make that stick,” Jolene told him. “There’s a lot of big spreads around here. The cowboys work long, hard hours, and when they get paid, they like to come into town and have themselves a good time. They get pretty lively, sometimes—especially if there’s a dance down at the Cattleman’s Meeting Hall, like there is next Saturday night.”

      “All the more reason,” Rowdy said, “to enforce the Rhodes Ordinance.”

      “The Rhodes Ordinance? I ain’t never heard of it.” Her tiny eyes widened as revelation struck. “Say—that’s your name, ain’t it? Rhodes?”

      “Yep,” Rowdy said.

      “You can’t just go around makin’ laws and expectin’ the rest of us to abide by ’em,” Jolene protested, drawing herself up in righteous indignation.

      “I imagine the town council will support it,” Rowdy replied.

      “If that don’t beat all,” Jolene marveled. “Ol’ Quincy was a piece of work—I had to pay him fifty cents a week just to stay clear of my place—but I figure you just might be worse.”

      Rowdy smiled. “I won’t be staying clear of your place,” he said. “I might even sit in on a hand of poker now and then.”

      Jolene narrowed her eyes. “You gonna put any kind of nick in my pocketbook, Mr. Rowdy Rhodes-Ordinance?”

      “Nope,” Rowdy said.

      A slow grin spread across Jolene’s pockmarked, sallow face. “Well, now,” she said. “Looks like we’re all in for a time of it.”

      “Looks that way,” Rowdy agreed affably. He cocked a thumb over his right shoulder. “Who do I talk to about buying the place on the other side of the back fence?”

      Jolene told him, and half an hour later, he was a man of property.