Daisies In The Wind Page 7

  “You’re making a pile of accusations for a man without any evidence to back them up!” she retorted, lifting her chin. “The last I heard, proof is required in order to lock someone up. Proof of some crime, or intent to commit a crime. The way I see it, Sheriff Bodine, you’ve got nothing! And you’re trespassing on my property. Get out.”

  Anger tightened his grip on her. Every muscle coiled with tension as he fought to control the wrath that surged through him. Yet through his anger he had to hand it to her. She was tough. As tough as her father. And no doubt every bit as unscrupulous.

  “Get out!” she repeated when he didn’t say anything or release her. Only the slightest trembling in her voice betrayed her agitation. “And take that dead man with you.”

  Wolf glared into her diamond-hard eyes; his own narrowed with menace. He thought she flinched as she gazed back, but only for a moment, then the lashes fluttered wide again and she was regarding him with icy rage every bit as determined as his own.

  “I’ll take him, Miss Rawlings,” Wolf drawled. An unpleasant smile just barely touched the edges of his lips. He released her so suddenly, she slumped and ended up sitting down hard on the sofa. Wolf nodded coldly.

  “Tomorrow.”

  He turned on his heel and strode toward the door.

  “Tomorrow? But you—”

  “Made a deal—and I’ll keep it fair and square. I’ll get rid of Fess Jones’s body for you—tomorrow. You can spend the night with him meantime and think about what might have happened if I hadn’t been around. Folks who stray outside the law in these parts have a way of ending up dead. Like your father. Like that hombre in there. Like many more I’ve seen—and killed. Think about it.”

  And without another glance he was gone, striding from the cabin with a lithe grace that was no less flowing for the wound in his shoulder, a wound that must be paining him, she knew, though he gave no sign of it.

  Rebeccah jumped up as the door slammed behind him. She had to struggle to keep from running outside and hurling the coffee cups after him. Leaving her here alone with that ... thing. How could he? What if Jones wasn’t really dead? What if he got up after she fell asleep and came after her, dripping a trail of blood ...

  Stop it, she told herself sternly, and paced around the room in an effort to gain control of her emotions. Check on him, you fool. Then bring your blanket and pillow in here and sleep on this sofa. Don’t be a ninny. Show Wolf Bodine you can’t be scared by the likes of him or Fess Jones—dead or alive.

  But she scarcely slept a wink all night and awoke on the horsehair sofa shortly after dawn feeling heavy-eyed and haggard. Beyond the parlor window pale sunlight and beautiful country beckoned. But a dead man lay in her bedroom, and Neely Stoner knew where she was. It was only a matter of time before he showed up personally, looking for the deed to that mine.

  Her troubles seemed to be growing instead of dwindling. And to top it off, she’d have to face Wolf Bodine again today.

  Sighing, Rebeccah put up coffee in the kitchen and nibbled hardtack. Somehow she’d have to find a way to get herself that teacher’s job, or she’d be out of both food and money within a month. Chewing hardtack, trying not to think about the flapjacks and sausage and buttermilk biscuits with raspberry preserves her stomach longed for, she wondered bleakly how soon Wolf Bodine would tell everybody in Powder Creek exactly who she was.

  6

  “Bear Rawlings’s daughter! Living on the Peastone place?”

  Billy Bodine’s gray eyes widened in excitement as he set down his glass of milk and regarded Wolf across the kitchen table. He knew nothing of his father’s wound, since it was bandaged under his flannel shirt and vest, and Wolf had been moving about without any visible sign of pain or discomfort, but Billy had asked first thing this morning, while washing up at the pump, if Wolf had caught Fess Jones.

  “I did. And we won’t have to worry about him anymore,” Wolf had responded shortly, then had turned on his heel and gone into the kitchen. But Billy hadn’t been satisfied with such meager information. He’d followed his father upstairs, pressed him while he shaved before the brass-framed mirror, and demanded to know everything that had happened after Wolf had ridden off the previous night in search of the outlaw.

  Naturally Wolf didn’t tell him.

  All he said was that Fess Jones was dead and that Jones had been trying to kill the new owner of the Peastone place. When Caitlin had inquired in surprise who that might be, Wolf had set down his coffee: “Rebeccah Rawlings.”

  Billy, with his keen memory, had instantly recalled the rumors that Amos Peastone had lost his ranch to the outlaw Bear Rawlings. Of course no one was ever sure, since Bear Rawlings hadn’t shown up to lay claim to it. But when Billy heard Rebeccah’s name, he put two and two together with amazing speed.

  “Is she an outlaw, too, Pa? Are you going to arrest her?”

  “She could be. And I might.”

  “Wait till I tell Joey. He says there’s no such thing as a lady outlaw. I told him that a lady was just as likely as a man to be dishonest, but he said that—”

  “Whoa.” Wolf’s long arm reached across the table to grasp the boy’s shoulder. Billy met his frowning gaze. “You can’t go around calling this lady an outlaw, son. She hasn’t done anything wrong. And we don’t know that she will. We don’t know anything about her, so until we do, we have to give her the benefit of the doubt. It wouldn’t be right to go around spreading tales.”

  Wolf heard in his own words the echo of what Rebeccah Rawlings had said to him the previous night. Damned if she hadn’t made sense, much as it irked him to admit it.

  His mother agreed. “Every person deserves a chance, Billy, a chance to be judged on their own merits,” she said in her brisk, no-nonsense way. As always Caitlin Bodine had come down to breakfast impeccably dressed in a crisp yellow-and-white everyday gingham, the buttons fastened up to her throat, her gray hair tidily pinned into a topknot, and her sleeves rolled up, ready to work. Though her vision was dim and blurry at best due to the cataracts that had robbed her of clear sight over her fifty-odd years, she could still make out shapes, and she worked fiercely each morning at her toiletry, determined to look neat, clean, and precise, the way a lady ought, even if she couldn’t see very well what she was doing.

  “Don’t you ever be one to start calling folks names for no reason,” she warned her grandson, peering at him with effort, seeing only the shape of him, his small frame and dark head, none of the features that only a few years ago she had still been able to make out. “That’s no way to be going on. Maybe the young lady is perfectly honest and respectable. She could be hurt from being misjudged.”

  “Aw, Gramma ... how can it possibly hurt—” Billy began to argue, but a stern look from his father made him duck his head obediently. “Yes, ma’am,” he muttered.

  Wolf refilled the boy’s milk glass from the blue china pitcher Caitlin had used for nearly forty years. “Eat some of your Gramma’s sausage now, and take one of these sourdough biscuits before you see to your chores,” he said. “And stay away from Rebeccah Rawlings.”

  As Wolf swallowed a forkful of the delicious sausage and washed it down with fresh-brewed coffee, he tried not to think about Rebeccah Rawlings spending the night in that godforsaken cabin with Fess Jones’s corpse. Regret had lashed at him the moment he’d ridden off and left her like that—it had been a low-down-thing to do—but something about her refusal to answer his questions had goaded him into it. Why did she have to be so stubborn? Why couldn’t she be sweet and respectful and good-natured like most other women?

  He was sorry he’d done it, though. He’d almost turned right around and gone back and dragged the body out for her right then, but that would have been like giving in, and he’d be damned if he’d give in to Rebeccah Rawlings, ever, on anything. But he’d lain awake in bed all night, feeling bad. At least now it was morning and he could go to the cabin and take care of it. Matthew Crimmons, the undertaker, would be in his office by
the time he hauled Jones’s body to town.

  The talk at the breakfast table turned to the desertion of Miss Kellum, the new schoolteacher, and Wolf dragged his thoughts on to this topic. Billy, reflecting the spirit of the other children of the town, cackled gleefully at the prospect of no school for the entire winter. But Caitlin shook her head.

  “Wolf, one way or the other, we must find a teacher for these children. It’s essential. What are you going to do?”

  Wolf sighed as he met the interrogating gaze of this hardy little woman with the tiny hooked nose and wrinkled brown skin. Caitlin Bodine had always felt her oldest son could do anything. She had implicit faith in him and was fond of reminding him of this fact. She had firmly believed that he could raise Billy just fine after the boy’s mother was gone and she had been confident that he could clean up Powder Creek when they’d first arrived and found it run by the Saunders gang. Caitlin had always believed he could solve any problem, conquer any obstacle.

  Now she wanted him to produce a genuine certified and willing schoolteacher immediately, and out of thin air.

  “Any suggestions, Ma?” he inquired with the ghost of a grin.

  “As a matter of fact, yes,” she returned promptly. She wiped her mouth daintily on her napkin and set it down beside her plate. “Hold a town meeting. Ask if anyone has a relative with a teaching certificate, someone who wants to come west, to settle in a decent, respectable town where the law runs things regular and safe and people take care of their own. Someone in Powder Creek must have a nephew or sister or cousin with a hankering for a job.”

  “No, Caitlin, there’s no need for that. I’ve got a much better idea,” Myrtle Lee Anderson declared from the open kitchen doorway. Wolf stood up, regarding her with raised brows.

  “Come right on in, Myrtle,” he drawled, holding out a chair. “Help yourself to a biscuit.”

  “Don’t mind if I do. Caitlin, I have to talk to you. You’ve got good sense. Tell me what you think of my scheme. I say we ask that young lady who came to town yesterday—the one who shot Scoop Parmalee—to take over as the new schoolteacher. Word is she didn’t take the stage out of town with the other passengers, though I don’t know where she is precisely this morning. Maybe at the hotel. Anyhow,” Myrtle rushed on, barely pausing for breath as Wolf’s eyes narrowed on her, “Rusty at the hotel overheard one of the other passengers say she was a right fine shot for a schoolteacher. A schoolteacher! Seems she told the other folks on the stagecoach she taught at some fancy private academy back east. Well, you could have knocked me over with a feather when I heard that! If it isn’t a stroke of luck, I don’t know what is!”

  “Pa! Is she talking about Rebeccah Rawlings? The outlaw’s daughter is going to be our new schoolteacher?” Billy burst out, then clapped his hand over his mouth as Wolf shot him a thunderous glance.

  “Outlaw’s daughter!” Myrtle cried, wheeling to stare at the boy.

  It was Caitlin who interjected calmly, “Why, I think it could be a fine idea, Myrtle. You and Waylon and the mayor ought to ask her about it right away.”

  “But ... but ...” Myrtle, like everyone else in the town, was aware of the stories a few years back that Bear Rawlings had won Amos Peastone’s ranch. But she had never put much stock in it. “That girl ... the one who shot Scoop Parmalee—she’s Bear Rawlings’s daughter? Is she taking over the Peastone place? Good Lord, Sheriff, do you know that for a fact?”

  Wolf had no choice but to answer curtly, “I do.”

  “Well, dear me. Caitlin, how can you even think such a thing would be a fine idea? I never would have suggested it if I’d known who she was.”

  “According to what my son told me, she’s a young woman with great presence of mind and mighty good aim with a pistol,” Caitlin said crisply. “Aside from that, Myrtle, we know nothing more about her.”

  “Except she was mixed up somehow with that hombre Fess Jones,” Billy piped in.

  Myrtle’s mouth dropped open. “Fess Jones!”

  Wolf glowered at his son. “Billy, see to your chores.”

  “But, I—”

  “Now.”

  Billy knew better than to argue with his father when he got that quelling look in his eye. He realized too late that his brash tongue had seriously angered not only his grandmother but his father as well. He pushed back his chair, glanced around the table in some consternation, and mumbled, “Sorry.”

  “There’s only one thing to do,” Myrtle said the moment the door swung shut behind the boy.

  “And what might that be?” Wolf inquired dryly, though he had a feeling he knew exactly what was coming.

  “Run the hussy out of town.”

  “Myrtle Lee Anderson!” Caitlin’s lips clamped together reprovingly. “I’m surprised at you.”

  “Bear Rawlings was a murdering thief with no conscience—and any kin of his must be just the same.” Myrtle’s voice throbbed with emotion. “You know what he did when he robbed our bank. You both know what happened that day ...” Her voice broke, but before either Caitlin or Wolf could say anything, she banged her stout fist on the kitchen table so that the spoons rattled in the saucers, and rushed on with trembling emotion: “We can’t have her here in Powder Creek, attracting vermin like Fess Jones. What’s he got to do with her anyway, Sheriff?”

  “Nothing. He’s dead.”

  “Well, thank goodness for small favors.”

  Wolf decided he’d had enough. He left the table, lifted his hat from the hook by the door, and regarded the head of the town’s social committee with a warning glance. “Sorry I can’t oblige you, Myrtle Lee, by running Miss Rawlings out of town on a rail, or maybe lynching her in your backyard, but you see, the lady hasn’t done anything wrong. Until she does, she can stay in Powder Creek, she can live on the Peastone ranch, and she can dance down Main Street in her drawers if she wants. It’s my sworn duty to see that she’s treated as decently as every other citizen. So no one’s going to be running anyone out of town, do you understand? Or that someone will have to answer to me.”

  The door slammed behind him. Silence settled over the bright, tidy Bodine kitchen while he mounted Dusty and headed for town.

  Cowed momentarily into speechlessness, Myrtle only stared at the untouched biscuit on her plate. But she wasn’t seeing it at all. She was seeing an elegant young woman in a fine blue traveling dress, a woman gazing up at Powder Creek’s sheriff with big pansy-blue eyes. Her brows knit together in a dark line. Then she banged her fist on the table again.

  “What’s got him all riled up?” she demanded.

  Caitlin took a sip of coffee. “My son is a fair man. He doesn’t like to see folks hastening to judgment against someone—anyone—even if she is an outlaw’s daughter,” she added coolly.

  “Maybe it’s more than that,” Myrtle said, a sly look entering her eyes. “I’ve seen that girl, Caitlin. She’s a beaut. You’d better watch out for Wolf. Oh, I know half the town thinks he’s going to get hitched one day soon to that Westerly girl, but that there Rebeccah Rawlings, she’s quite a looker. Why, she could turn his head in an instant.”

  “Not Wolf’s head,” Caitlin said.

  “Don’t be so sure. Why, I wager that black-haired hussy could make any man go loco, if she put her mind to it. Waylon Pritchard sure made a fool out of himself. Wait until he finds out who she is.”

  Caitlin sighed. In a few minutes the youngest Adams girl would be arriving to help her with the day’s cooking, cleaning, and household chores. Maybe then Myrtle would leave. Caitlin had heard more than enough nonsense for one morning. Besides, she had several things to think about now: whether Rebeccah Rawlings really might be qualified to become the schoolteacher the town so desperately needed and what kind of a woman she really was. As far as what Myrtle had said about Wolf getting riled because of some attraction toward her, Caitlin felt only skepticism. It had been ten years since Clarissa, and she oftentimes wondered if Wolf would ever get over it. She knew everyone was waiting for him to ma
rry Nel Westerly or possibly even the pretty young widow, Lorene Simpson, but she also knew he cared not a whit more for them than he did for Molly Duke, the tall, buxom owner of the Silk Drawers Brothel. Wolf was in no more danger of losing his heart than Caitlin herself was of falling into the Pacific Ocean. Yet she made up her mind to meet this Rawlings girl and find out for herself what kind of a woman she was.

  And the sooner the better.

  Caitlin heard Mary Adams trudging up to the door before she made out the shape of the fourteen-year-old girl’s sturdy figure. “Myrtle,” she said, rising from the table with what she hoped was a dismissive air, “now that Mary’s here, you’ll have to excuse me. I’m behind on all my chores, and much as I’d like to do it, I simply can’t sit here all day chatting. But do come over for Sunday dinner,” she added, fearing she’d been too abrupt and therefore rude. “We’d be happy to have you join us.” Wolf would be furious, Caitlin knew, but there was no help for it.

  She waited until Myrtle had gone before putting into motion the idea in her head—an idea too irresistible to ignore. “Mary, dear, pack up a lunch hamper with a side of beef and the rest of these sourdough biscuits and some of my special preserves while I see to these dishes. Oh, and bring a jug of lemonade along. Then get the buggy ready quick as you can. We’re going on a little neighborly drive.”

  7

  “Did you sleep well?”

  Wolf knew the answer even before he swung down from the saddle. Rebeccah Rawlings, busily sweeping her front porch, glanced over at him, and her weariness was plain to see.

  Guilt stabbed at him. Leaving her here all night with that dead body had been a low-down trick. Today he saw the results of it. There were dark circles under her eyes, she was pale, and her shoulders sagged as though they were sore. Yet for all that she looked as pretty as ever in the bright splash of Montana sunshine. Her high-necked blue gingham dress molded becomingly to the curves of her figure, her dark satin hair shone as it fell loosely about her shoulders, and her generous mouth looked all too kissable.