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

kitchen. Steam veiled the windows.

      Lark picked up a book, a favorite she’d owned since childhood, and buried herself in the story. She’d read it countless times, but she never tired of the tale, in which a young woman, fallen upon hard and grievous times, offered herself up as a mail-order bride, married a taciturn farmer, slowly won his heart and bore his children.

      The knock at the back door brought her sharply back to ordinary reality.

      “Now who could that be?” Mrs. Porter mused, moving to answer.

      A blast of frigid air rushed into the room.

      And there in the open doorway stood Rowdy Rhodes, in his long, black coat, freshly shaven and barbered, holding his hat in one hand. Mai Lee had been right about his blue eyes and his smile.

      Lark was glad she was sitting down.

      “I heard you might have rooms to let,” he said, and though he was addressing Mrs. Porter, his gaze strayed immediately to Lark. A slight frown creased the space between his brows. “Of course, you’d have to let my dog stay, too.”

      The yellow hound ambled past him as if it had lived in that house forever, sniffed the air, which was redolent with frying chicken, and marched himself over to the stove, where he lay down with a weary, grateful sigh.

      Mrs. Porter, Lark thought, with frantic relief, was a fastidious housekeeper, and she would never allow a dog. She would surely turn Mr. Rhodes away.

      “It’s two dollars a week,” Mrs. Porter said instead, casting a glance back at Lark. “Normal price is $1.50, but, with the dog—”

      Rhodes smiled again, once he’d shifted his attention back to the landlady. “Sounds fair,” he said. “Mr. Sam O’Ballivan will vouch for me, if there’s any question of my character.”

      “Come in,” Mrs. Porter fussed, fond as a mother welcoming home a prodigal son, heretofore despaired of. “Supper’s just about ready.”

      No, Lark thought desperately.

      The dog sighed again, very contentedly, and closed its eyes.

      Mai Lee stepped over the animal to turn the chicken with a meat fork and then poke at the potatoes boiling in a kettle. She kept stealing glances at Rhodes.

      “I’ll show you your room and get a fire going in there,” Mrs. Porter said, only then closing the door against the bite of a winter evening. “Land sakes, it’s been cold lately. I do hope you haven’t traveled far in this weather.”

      Lark stood up, meaning to express vigorous dissent, and sat down again when words failed her.

      Mr. Rhodes, who had yet to extend the courtesy of offering his name, noted the standing and sitting, and responded with a slight and crooked grin.

      The pit of Lark’s stomach fluttered.

      Mrs. Porter led the new boarder straight to the room at the back, with its fireplace and outside door and lovely writing desk. The dog got up and lumbered after them.

      For a moment, Lark was so stricken by jealousy that she forgot she might be in grave peril. Then, her native practicality emerged. Even presuming Mr. Rhodes was not in Autry’s employ, he was a stranger, and he carried a gun. He could murder them all in their beds.

      Mai Lee set another place at the table.

      Voices sounded from the next room. Lark discerned that Mrs. Porter had undertaken to lay a fire, and Mr. Rhodes had promptly assumed the task.

      Lark stood up, intending to dash upstairs and lock herself in her room until she had a chance to speak privately with Mrs. Porter, but Rhodes reappeared before she could make another move. She dropped back into her chair and was treated to a second look of amusement from the lodger.

      Indignant color surged into Lark’s face.

      Mrs. Porter prattled like a smitten schoolgirl, offering Mr. Rhodes a tart and running on about how it was good to have a man in the house again, what with poor, dear Mr. Porter gone and all. Why, the world was going straight to Hades, if he’d pardon her language, and on a greased track, too.

      Rhodes crossed to the table, took one of the tarts and bit into it, studying Lark with his summer-blue eyes as he chewed. He’d left his coat behind in his room, and the gun belt with it, but Lark was scarcely comforted.

      He could be a paid assassin.

      He could be an outlaw, or a bank robber.

      And whatever his name was, Lark would have bet a year’s salary it wasn’t Rowdy Rhodes.

      2

      PAYTON YARBRO—Jack Payton to anybody who asked—sat with one booted foot braced against a windowsill, in the apartment back of Ruby’s Saloon and Poker House in Flagstaff, smoking a cheroot and pondering the sorry state of the train robbing business in general and his feckless sons in particular.

      He had six of them, at least that he knew of. Wyatt was the eldest—he’d be thirty-five on his next birthday, sometime in April, though Payton was damned if he could recall the exact date. Then came Nicholas, followed in short order by Ethan and Levi, who were twins, then Robert and, like a caboose, young Gideon, who’d just turned sixteen. He’d come along late, like an afterthought, and Miranda had died giving him life.

      Payton tried not to hold it against the boy—it purely wasn’t his fault—but sometimes, when a melancholy mood struck, he couldn’t help it.

      She’d driven her ducks to a poor pond marrying up with Payton Yarbro, Miranda had. Five of her sons were wanted by the law, and the sixth, Gideon, was likely to get himself into trouble first chance he got. Like as not, that opportunity wouldn’t be long in coming, for Gideon, like his brothers, was a spirited lad, half again too smart for his own good, hotheaded and reckless. By necessity the boy already lived, without knowing, under a partial alias—went by the surname of Payton.

      Robert—he’d been Miranda’s favorite, and she’d called him Rob, after some swashbuckling fellow in a book—used his nickname and a moniker meant to stick in Payton’s craw.

      There was no telling what the others had come to by now.

      Maybe Miranda’s prayers had been answered, and they’d all married and settled down to live upstanding, law-abiding lives.

      Of course, the odds were better that they’d been hanged or gotten themselves killed in a gunfight over a woman or a game of cards, out behind some whiskey palace.

      Payton sighed. At least he knew where Gideon was—sulking in the saloon, where Ruby had set him the task of raking the sawdust clean of cigar butts, peanut shells and spittle. Wyatt and the others, well, if they were alive at all, could be just about anyplace. Scattered to the winds, his boys.

      Miranda, God rest her valiant soul, was probably rolling over in her grave. She’d been a good, churchgoing woman, hardworking and faithful—at least, so far as Payton knew—with a Bible verse at the ready to suit just about any situation. She’d never given up hope that her sons would find the straight-and-narrow path and follow it, despite all contradictory evidence.

      She’d called it faith.

      Payton called it foolish sentiment.

      How she’d ever fallen in love with and married the likes of him—and borne him six sons into the bargain—was a mystery to be solved by better minds than his.

      She’d stayed with him, too, Miranda had, even with another man ready to offer for her, if she’d been free. She’d died wearing his narrow gold wedding band and honoring the vows they’d made in front of a circuit preacher nine months and five minutes before Wyatt had come along.

      Pity he hadn’t lived up to her example.

      He shifted in his chair, wished he could shut the window against the bitter chill of that Sunday afternoon, shut his mind against his thoughts, too, but Ruby was a stickler for fresh air, and