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

in pigtails to farm boys strong as the mules they rode to town—and shot out of the schoolhouse, down the steps, across the yard. He vaulted over the picket fence and sprinted for the livery stable four streets over.

      * * *

      ROWDY PLACED AN ORDER down at the sawmill, bought a hammer, a keg of nails, and some other tools at the mercantile, paid extra to have them delivered, Pardner tagging along behind him. Then, figuring he ought to do some marshaling, since he was getting paid for it, he walked the length of Center Street, speaking quietly to folks as he passed, touching the brim of his hat to the ladies.

      He looked in at the bank and the telegraph office, introduced himself and Pardner.

      He counted the horses in front of the town’s three saloons, and went inside the last one, which happened to be Jolene Bell’s place.

      “That your deputy?” a grizzled old-timer asked, leaning against the bar and grinning sparse-toothed down at Pardner, who was sniffing at the spittoon.

      “Leave it,” Rowdy told the dog.

      Pardner sighed and sat down in the filthy sawdust.

      “Don’t see no badge on him,” quipped another of the local wits.

      Rowdy smiled. “This is Pardner,” he said. “Guess he is my deputy.”

      “He bite?” asked the skinny piano player, looking worried.

      “Not unless he has just cause,” Rowdy answered.

      The old-timer’s gaze went to Rowdy’s badge, then shifted to his .44. “You a southpaw, Marshal?”

      “Nope,” Rowdy said, looking straight at the old man, but noticing everything and everybody at the far edges of his vision, too.

      Always know what’s going on around you, boy. Ignorance ain’t bliss. It can be fatal. He’d been raised on those words of Pappy’s, drilled on them, the way some kids were made to learn verses from the Good Book.

      “Gun’s backward in the holster,” the piano player pointed out helpfully.

      Rowdy glanced down at it, as if surprised to find it such. In the same moment, he drew.

      The old-timer whistled.

      The piano player spun around on his seat and pounded out the first bars of a funeral march.

      Rowdy shoved his .44 back in the holster.

      “Come, dog,” he told Pardner, and they went back out, into the bright, silvery cold of the morning.

      From there, Rowdy and Pardner proceeded to the Stone Creek schoolhouse. He didn’t have any official business there, but he thought he ought to familiarize himself with the place, just the same.

      And he wouldn’t be averse to a glimpse of Lark, either.

      The kids were out for recess, running in every direction and screaming their heads off in a frenzy of brief freedom, while Lark watched from the step, wrapped tightly in her cloak, her cheeks and the end of her nose red in the bitter weather.

      She didn’t see Rowdy right away, so he took his time sizing things up.

      The building itself was painted bright red, and it had a belfry with a heavy bronze bell inside, sending out the occasional faint metallic vibration as it contracted in the cold. There was a well near the front door, and an outhouse off to one side. A few horses and mules foraged at what was left of last summer’s grass—come the end of the school day, they’d be carrying Lark’s students back home to farms and ranches scattered hither and yon.

      Pardner lifted himself onto his hind legs and put his forepaws against the whitewashed fence, probably wishing he could join in a running game or two.

      “Sit,” Rowdy told him quietly.

      He sat.

      The dog’s movement must have caught Lark’s attention, because she spotted them then. Made an awning of one hand to shade her eyes from the bright, cool sun.

      Rowdy grinned, waited there, on the outside of the fence, while she hesitated, made up her mind and swept toward him, her heavy black skirts trailing over the winter-bitten grass.