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

how to read yet when she was living.

      He supposed he ought to have gotten over the loss of her by now, since he was sixteen and almost a man, but some wounds never heal, no matter what the preachers said.

      Today Gideon laid a letter at the base of Rose’s headstone.

      “It’s from a college back east,” he told her quietly. “Pa went and signed me up for it.” He paused, frowned. “I don’t even like school that much, but I guess I’m good at it. Pa and Ruby say nothing worthwhile can come of my staying here, once I finish up my lesson-work this spring.”

      A flicker of motion at the edge of Gideon’s vision interrupted his speech before he could get to the part that sorrowed him most—he knew he’d have to go, and that would mean he couldn’t pay Rose any visits for a long time.

      A rider sat watching him from the road. His horse was a gelded pinto, and his boots were good, probably handmade in Mexico. He wore a hat pulled down low over his brow, and a pistol, butt forward, showed where he’d pushed back one side of his long black coat, so it caught behind the holster.

      Gideon took in all those things in the space of an instant, but they weren’t what caught his attention. Something in the stranger’s countenance sent a thrill through Gideon, made him rise slowly to his full height.

      The man resettled his hat, briefly revealing a head of straw-colored hair. Then he nudged the horse into motion with the heels of his boots and rode along the length of the picket fence.

      “Strange place for a grave,” he said, drawing up close to where Gideon stood. His eyes were almost the same shade of blue as Pa’s were, Gideon noted, and his mouth was like his ma’s had been—still, but ready to smile. Not that Gideon rightly recollected his mother; she’d died when he was born, and he’d only seen one likeness of her, a faded old picture tucked between the pages of a Bible.

      Gideon stiffened, gestured toward the cemetery flanking the small church. “Nobody in there’s got a better marker than my sister, Rose,” he told the rider. His heart was beating fast and, cold as it was, sweat tickled the skin between his shoulder blades.

      “I didn’t know you had a sister,” the stranger said quietly.

      Gideon straightened his spine. He wasn’t afraid of the man. Standing on the ground, not sitting a horse, he’d be no taller than Gideon, but he was older, and seasoned, if the easy way he wore his gun was any indication. “I reckon there’s a lot you don’t know about me, mister,” he said, intrigued.

      The rider grinned. “I know a little more than you probably think I do,” he said, shifting in the saddle, standing briefly in the stirrups as if to stretch his legs. “Your name is Gideon...Payton. You’re sixteen years old. Ponder it a bit, and you’ll realize that you’ve seen me before.”

      That little hesitation before he said “Payton”—what did that mean?

      And Gideon did recall a previous encounter, a shadowy glimpse that teased at the edges of his memory but wouldn’t show itself.

      “Who are you?” he asked bluntly.

      “I call myself Rowdy Rhodes,” the man answered. “And I’m your brother.”

      Gideon had known he had brothers, but he hadn’t been able to get much more than that out of his pa. They were all older than he was, but he couldn’t have said how many of them there were, or recited their names with any certainty. Now one of them was sitting right in front of him.

      “You call yourself Rowdy Rhodes? If you’re my brother, you ought to be a Payton, not a Rhodes. And what the hell kind of name is Rowdy, anyhow?”

      Rhodes chuckled and leaned forward in the saddle, resting one forearm on the pommel. “One that suits me just fine,” he said. “Are you still in school, Gideon?”

      Gideon glanced at the letter lying in front of Rose’s gravestone, and wished he hadn’t. Rhodes made him uneasy, with his watchful, knowing eyes, and yet Gideon wanted to know all about him. “I’ll be going away to college, come autumn.” He swallowed. “I mean to be an engineer. Maybe work for the railroad.”

      “Now, that’s ironic,” Rhodes said wryly.

      Gideon was affronted, though he didn’t know why. Felt like a rooster with its feathers ruffled. “I’m smart,” he said.

      “I don’t doubt it,” Rhodes replied. He looked down at Rose’s grave, maybe noticed the letter, and the bottle caps, some of them rusting now, and the ear bobs and bits of frayed ribbon, with all the color weathered out of them. “How come they buried your sister out here, instead of in the churchyard, with the others?”

      An old rage, all the worse for being helpless, surged up inside Gideon, stung the back of his throat like gall. “Because Ruby Hollister is her mother,” he said.

      Again, Rhodes adjusted his hat. “But not yours.”

      Gideon shook his head. “No, sir,” he said. And he waited. If Rhodes was his brother, like he claimed, let him prove it. Let him say Ma’s name.

      He did, just as surely as if Gideon had demanded it of him aloud. “Your mother was Miranda Wyatt...Payton.”

      There it was again, that little hitch between words, subtle but sharp as a tug on reins already drawn tight.

      Gideon wanted to ask about it, but his audacity didn’t stretch quite that far. Rhodes’s manner was kindly enough, yet there was an invisible fence line behind it, enclosing places where it wouldn’t be wise to tread.

      “You ever need any help,” Rhodes went on, when Gideon didn’t speak, “you’ll find me boarding at Mrs. Porter’s, over in Stone Creek.”

      Gideon nodded. Stone Creek was a fair distance from Flagstaff, and he didn’t own a horse. Still, it was good knowing he could go there and expect some kind of welcome when he arrived.

      Rhodes moved to rein his horse away, toward the road.

      “Wait!” Gideon heard himself say.

      The familiar stranger turned in the saddle, looked down at him.

      “How many of you are there? Brothers, I mean?” Gideon blurted.

      Rhodes smiled. “Five,” he answered. “Wyatt, Nick, Ethan, Levi and me.”

      Gideon drew a step closer. “Are they Paytons?”

      The answer was slow in coming. “No,” Rhodes said.

      Gideon frowned. It was bad enough that he hadn’t known his own brothers’ Christian names. Now he wasn’t sure he knew who he was, either.

      With a nod for a goodbye, Rhodes took to the road headed in the direction of Stone Creek.

      Gideon watched him out of sight, half-sick with wondering. Then he bent, picked up the letter from the college in Pennsylvania, the only mail to come that day, and tucked it into his shirt pocket.

      Without a fare-thee-well for Rose, he headed for Ruby’s place.

      * * *

      THE YELLOW DOG LAY in the doorway to Mr. Rhodes’s quarters as though guarding them, looking utterly bereft.

      Lark, alone in the house because Mrs. Porter had gone to an all-day meeting at church and Mai Lee was off somewhere with her husband, Hon Sing, set aside the lesson plans she’d been drawing up, in preparation for the week to come, and regarded the animal with compassionate concern.

      “He hasn’t left you—your master, I mean,” she told the dog.

      Pardner, muzzle resting on his forepaws, gave a tiny whimper.

      “Perhaps you’re hungry,” Lark said, getting up from her chair. Mr. Rhodes had given the creature table scraps the night before, with Mrs. Porter’s blessings, and he’d had leftover pancakes and a scrambled egg for breakfast.

      While she certainly didn’t