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

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.

      5

      PA’D SADDLED UP and gone off someplace, in the middle of the night. Bent over a book at his desk in the back of the big schoolroom, Gideon couldn’t take in the words he was supposed to be reading. He just kept remembering.

      He’d awakened out of a sound sleep, hearing noises he thought were coming from the shed out behind the saloon, gotten up out of his bed, pulled on his clothes and boots, and headed out there to investigate.

      And there was Pa, dressed to ride a distance, fastening his rifle scabbard to the saddle. His gelding, Samson, snorted and tossed his big head, eager to be away.

      “You go on back inside, Gideon,” Pa’d said. He wore his round-brimmed hat, and there was a bandana tied loosely around his neck. Under his long coat, he wore a gun belt, with a holster on either side. The pearl handle of one of his .45s flashed in the gloom as he swung up onto the horse.

      “Let me go along, Pa,” Gideon had said, at the edge of pleading. “I can get a horse over at the livery stable—”

      “You stay here and look after Ruby,” Pa replied. He’d clamped an unlit cheroot between his strong, white teeth, and he shifted it from one side of his mouth to the other, looking as though he might ride Gideon down if he didn’t get out of the way.

      If there’d ever been a woman who didn’t need looking after, it was Ruby Hollister. She kept a loaded shotgun behind the bar, and everybody in Flagstaff knew she wouldn’t hesitate to use it. No, sir. She would not be requiring Gideon’s protection.

      “At least tell me where you’re off to, Pa,” Gideon had argued.

      “That’s none of your never-mind,” Pa had answered, narrowing his chilly blue eyes with impatience. “Now, step aside.”

      Gideon stood his ground for a long moment, but in the end, he couldn’t prevail against his pa’s hard stare. “When’ll you be back?” he’d asked.

      Pa hadn’t said anything in response. He’d just nudged the gelding into motion with the heels of his boots—not the fancy ones he usually wore, Gideon noticed, but the light, supple kind, made for moving fast, but soled for hard going.

      Gideon had moved out of the shed doorway, lest he be trampled, and Pa had bent low over the saddle to avoid knocking his head as he passed through.

      He’d vanished into the darkness, the hooves of his horse beating on the hard dirt, the sound growing fainter as he gained the road.

      When the cold of that winter night finally penetrated Gideon’s awareness, he’d gone inside. Shed his boots and lain down on top of his bed in his clothes, staring up at the ceiling, knowing he wasn’t going to sleep.

      At breakfast, Ruby had been pale and unusually fidgety.

      Gideon had been bursting with questions, but he hadn’t dared put a one of them to her. When Ruby didn’t want to talk, the devil and ten red-hot pitchforks couldn’t make her do it.

      Now, sitting in the schoolroom, he felt restless, as though there were something else he ought to be doing, and wasn’t.

      He thought about Rowdy, the brother he barely knew.

      You ever need any help, you’ll find me boarding at Mrs. Porter’s, over in Stone Creek.

      A hand came to rest on Gideon’s shoulder just as he was recalling that conversation for the hundredth time, nearly scaring him right out of his hide. He wasn’t commonly the jumpy sort, and it embarrassed him mightily, the way he’d started. He felt his neck and face go warm.

      “You’re not concentrating, Gideon,” Miss Langston said good-naturedly, smiling down at him. She was about a thousand years old, short and square of build, a phenomenon that had confounded him until Ruby had explained the mysteries of a lady’s corset. “It’s too early for spring fever, but I’ll vow, you’re already afflicted.”

      Gideon tried to smile, because he liked Miss Langston. She was briskly cordial, and never made sly remarks about Ruby or his pa, like a lot of folks did. And she’d attended Rose’s funeral, too, he remembered. Cried into a starched hanky with lace trim around the edges.

      “I’ve got some trouble at home,” he confided, keeping his voice down so he wouldn’t have to fight later, out in the schoolyard. He’d never lost a one of those battles, but, as his pa liked to say, there was no shortage of idiots in the world. There was always somebody ready to take him on.

      Pa’d had things to say about that, too.

      Pa.

      “You’d best go and see to things there, then,” Miss Langston said, kindly and quietly. When he hesitated, she prodded him with, “You’re excused, Gideon.”

      He fairly knocked his chair over backward, getting to his feet.

      You ever need help—

      Did