The Rustler. Linda Miller Lael

a shrug in Gideon’s voice when he answered. “She’d be alive now, if it hadn’t been for me,” he argued.

      “You can’t know that for sure,” Wyatt pointed out, feeling sorry for the kid. It was a rung up the ladder, he reckoned, from feeling sorry for himself—he’d done enough of that in prison.

      Gideon was quiet again, but just long enough for Wyatt to start hoping the palavering was over, so he could drift back into oblivion. He slept like a dead man, and rarely remembered his dreams, if he had any, and he considered that a blessing. Other men he’d known, back in Texas, hadn’t been so fortunate.

      “There are some things a man just has to let go of,” he told Gideon.

      “I reckon,” Gideon agreed, but without much conviction.

      Wyatt rolled onto his side, with his back to his brother, and punched down his pillow, though it was already flat, figuring his saddle would have served better. Been cleaner, too. “Good night,” he said, with a yawn.

      “What was she like?” Gideon asked. “Ma, I mean.”

      Wyatt suppressed another sigh. Stayed on his side, eyes wide-open, staring at the splintery, raw-timbered wall. “She was a fine woman,” he said. “Half again too good for Pappy, that’s for certain. She loved him, though.”

      At last, Gideon fell silent, though Wyatt knew there would be more questions, right along. With luck, they’d be ones he could answer.

      * * *

      THE MORNING AFTER Wyatt Yarbro walked her home from the revival picnic, Sarah overslept. She bolted awake, flustered, and scrambled out of bed, groping for her wrapper, wrenching it on, not bothering to shove her bare feet into house slippers.

      “Papa?” she called, from the top of the back stairs leading down into the kitchen. “Papa!”

      Dear God, suppose he’d wandered off again? The last time, he’d sneaked out wearing only a striped nightshirt and his best beaver top hat; she’d been lucky then, catching up to him at the corner, but Mrs. Madison, their neighbor, had witnessed the spectacle. Sarah had lied, smiling a brittle smile and explaining, perhaps too quickly, that her father had been sleepwalking lately.

      The lying hadn’t been the worst part, though—Sarah lied on a daily basis, to such an extent that she made notes in a ledger book in order to be consistent. No, the terrible thing had been seeing her intelligent, affable father looking so bewildered.

      The back door was still locked; Sarah rushed to the front.

      Ephriam Tamlin, founder, president and holder of majority shares in the Stockman’s Bank, sat on the porch step, spine straight, a shotgun lying across his knees. He’d stuffed himself into a moth-eaten army uniform, Union blue.

      Sarah put a hand to her heart. Drew a deep breath. “Papa,” she said, careful to speak softly, so she wouldn’t startle him.

      “They’ve come, Nancy Anne,” he said, without turning to look up at her. “The Rebs are here.”

      Sarah sat down beside him, tightening the belt of her wrapper and offering a silent prayer that no one would pass on the sidewalk and see them taking the morning air in such inappropriate garb. She reached for the shotgun, but Ephriam gripped it with strong, age-spotted hands.

      “I saw their tent,” Ephriam went on. “Bold as Lucifer, those Confederates. Made camp right on the banks of Stone Creek. Heaven help us all if it’s Quantrill.”

      Sarah closed her eyes for a moment, swallowed a hard lump of misery before attempting to speak. She laid a gentle hand on the faded blue sleeve of her father’s coat. “Papa,” she whispered. “Look at me.”

      He turned, his kindly blue eyes blinking behind the thick, smudged lenses of his spectacles. This was the man who had been her rock, before and after her mother died. He’d protected her, provided for her. Helped her keep a shattering secret. Now, he looked befuddled, as though he knew he ought to be able to place her, but couldn’t quite manage it.

      “It’s me, Papa,” she said. “Sarah. And the war has been over for forty-two years.”

      He blinked again, rapidly now, and looked down at his ancient uniform and the shotgun resting across his lap. He was sixty-seven, too young for dementia. “I’ve had another spell,” he said, with a look of such mortified regret that Sarah felt bruised inside.

      Gently, she took the shotgun from his hands. “No harm done,” she said, her voice hoarse with emotion. It probably wasn’t true, of course. He’d glimpsed Brother Hickey’s tent and mistaken it for a Confederate camp, and unless he’d followed the creek both ways, he must have walked right through town—dressed up in his old uniform, with the shotgun held smartly against his shoulder, like a soldier on patrol. Heaven only knew how many people had seen him, and were even now passing the word over fences and clotheslines.

      “I’m sorry, Sarah,” he said, looking so wretched that fresh tears scalded her eyes.

      “Come inside and change,” she replied, with an attempt at a reassuring smile. “I’ll make breakfast, and we’ll go to the bank and attend to business, just like we always do.”

      Ephriam nodded, rose stiffly from the step. Looked down at his uniform with a rueful shake of his head. “I’m not the man I used to be,” he said sadly.

      “Nonsense,” Sarah said briskly, once they were inside the house and out of sight of the neighbors. She set the shotgun aside with caution and straightened his blue coat. “You’re Ephriam Tamlin, head of the Stockman’s Bank. Now, what would you like for breakfast?”

      * * *

      THE TELEGRAPH OPERATOR showed up just as Rowdy, Gideon, Lark and Wyatt were finishing up their morning meal. Stood panting in the open doorway, skinny and sweating, a sheet of yellow paper clasped in one hand.

      Rowdy immediately pushed back his chair and rose.

      The baby, perched on Lark’s lap while she spooned oatmeal into his mouth, started at the commotion, and old Pardner gave a questioning bark but didn’t rise from the hooked rug next to the cookstove.

      “There’s been a lynching down near Haven,” sputtered the little man on the threshold. He looked like a scarecrow in Sunday clothes. “Bunch of ranchers caught a couple of cattle thieves and strung ’em up. They want you to come. You and Sam O’Ballivan. I sent Zeke Reynolds out to Stone Creek Ranch with the news.”

      A chill trickled down Wyatt’s spine. For a moment, he was out there under that rustler’s moon again, in the aftermath of a storm and a stampede he’d been lucky to survive, distant shots echoing in his ears.

      Rowdy snatched the telegram from the messenger’s hand and scanned it a couple of times, in the way of a man who hoped it might say something different if he read it enough. Swore under his breath.

      “You’re not a Ranger anymore,” Lark said quietly, gazing at her husband with luminous brown eyes. Her hair was fair, like Rowdy’s, and shorter than most women’s, just touching her shoulders. “And you’re the marshal of Stone Creek, not Haven.”

      “If Sam goes,” Rowdy told his wife, avoiding her eyes, “I’ll be riding with him.”

      “Me, too,” Gideon said.

      Wyatt didn’t speak, and that was a hard thing, not offering to help. If there was one place he couldn’t afford to be seen in, it was that little border town, just outside of which he and Billy Justice and the boys had helped themselves to more than five hundred head of cattle.

      “You’re staying right here,” Rowdy told Gideon, but his tone lacked conviction. Like as not, Gideon would get his way.

      Meanwhile, Wyatt saw his dream of settling down, living under his own name instead of yet another alias, marrying up with a woman like Sarah and raising kids and cattle, scatter into the air like the fluff from a dandelion head. As soon as Rowdy and Sam O’Ballivan rode out, he would, too—heading