The Gunman's Bride

She laid the bandages across his stomach. “I didn’t find the bullet, and you’re still bleeding. I’m going to put this around you until you can get to a doctor.”

“I reckon you’ve done me such a good turn I won’t need to see a doctor, Rosie.”

“You can’t go around with a bullet inside you for the rest of your life.”

“Most of the men I know have been shot so full of holes you’d think they’d leak every time they took a drink. They carry a few lead souvenirs just to make their stories ring true.”

“That’s a fine bunch of friends you have, Bart.” As she smoothed the cloth bandage over his skin she could feel his eyes on her. Watching her. “Men walking around with bullets inside. Great ghosts, who ever heard of such a thing?”

“Cole Younger’s been wounded upwards of twenty times. He reckons he’s got a good fifteen bullets buried in him.”

“Cole Younger!” she snapped, straightening suddenly. “So you really are in leagues with those outlaws, just like the sheriff said. Oh, Bart, how could you?”

“Rosie, it’s not like you think.” He reached for her, but she had already swung away.

A blanket bundled in her arms, she knelt to pull her pink hooked rug into the center of the room. One glimpse of the blood-soaked wool and she let out a gasp of horror.

“Bart Kingsley, you have ruined my rug! I brought it all the way from Kansas City on the train because it was the only thing I ever liked out of that ugly house my fiancé bought for us last—”

Catching herself, she clamped a hand over her mouth. Her eyes met Bart’s.

“You and I weren’t married,” she whispered. “We never were married. Not really, were we?”

When he didn’t answer, she spread her blanket on the bare wood floor. Then she curled up and pulled the edges of it over herself. Bart lay nearby, his breathing easier now. In the darkness she wondered if he could hear her crying.

Chapter Three

Rosie woke to find Bart sprawled half on and half off her bed, a sheen of feverish perspiration covering his body. He writhed in the agony of a dream, and she feared his moans would bring someone to investigate.

“Bart, wake up!” she pleaded, placing her hand on his damp shoulder. “Bart!”

At once he sat straight up and grabbed her arms in a powerful grip. His green eyes were bright with fever. “Rosie, don’t let them get me! Don’t let…don’t…”

He winced in pain, then sagged back onto the bed. “Ah, blast that good-for-nothing sheriff—”

“Hush, now!” Rosie ordered. She glanced at the door and wondered if the voice of a fevered man would carry down the hall. Brushing her hair back from her face, she studied the massive figure on the bed.

What on earth was she going to do with him? In the light of day, she felt foolish not to have sent for Sheriff Bowman immediately. It wouldn’t be long before someone would hear—or maybe smell—the intruder. She ought to head down the hall to Mrs. Jensen’s suite and confess the whole thing.

The truth of the matter was, Rosie didn’t owe Bart Kingsley one shred of kindness. He had wooed her, misled her, tricked her, abandoned her. And now he had endangered the one sure thing in life—her job as a Harvey Girl. If anyone discovered an outlaw in her room, her dream of teaching in one of the local schools would end. She would never have a home of her own, a classroom filled with eager children, freedom from her past.

“Rosie?” he murmured as his head tossed from side to side, his black hair a tangle on the white pillow. “Rosie, where are you, girl?”

Fingers knotted together, she fretted over her dilemma. She couldn’t let Bart stay in her room, but he was too ill to climb out the window and escape. If she called the sheriff, everyone would wonder why she had let the fugitive renegade sleep in her bed all night. Her bloody sheets would bear witness to the fact that he hadn’t been hiding under her bed forever.

“Oh, dear Lord, please show me what to do!” she whispered in prayer as she checked the gold pocket watch she had inherited from her mother.

Six-thirty! The uniform inspection bell would ring in half an hour. Then she would have to rush downstairs, eat a roll, sip some coffee and prepare the dining room for the eight o’clock train. Dare she go off and leave a feverish, groaning man in her bed?

As she turned away in search of her apron, Rosie decided Bart could stay through the first shift. She would return to her room before the lunch train came through and check on him. If he was the slightest bit better, she would insist that he leave.

“Rosie.” His voice startled her as he struggled to sit up. “I promised I’d go this morning. I’ll need my jacket.”

Her shoulders sagged. “Oh, Bart, you’re in no shape to go anywhere.”

“No, Rosie-girl. I made you a promise.” For a moment he sat hunched over, breathing heavily. Then he hauled himself to his feet.

Rosie watched him sway like a great tree about to topple. He means to do it, she thought. He actually means to keep his promise to me. One of his long legs started to crumple, but he grabbed the iron footboard to steady himself.

His guns and cartridge belts weighed him down as he shuffled across the room toward the corner where she had tossed his jacket. His bandage was stained with a dark red blotch. He propped one big brown hand on the windowsill and bent to pick up the torn buckskin.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Sorry I messed up your sheets and rug. Sorry about when we were young and how much I hurt you. I’m sorry I made you cry last night, too, and—”

“For mercy’s sake, Bart!” She snatched the jacket out of his hands. “You’re delirious, plain and simple. Now get back to bed this instant. I’ll check on you after the breakfast shift.”

“No, Rosie, I—”

“Let go of that windowsill and grab on to me before you fall down with a crash and bring Mrs. Jensen running.”

Rosie clenched her teeth and heaved Bart against her. This man could drive me to drink, she thought. All those ridiculous apologies. If he weren’t so sick, she’d give him what for. She didn’t need anyone’s apologies for the way her life had turned out. She had made her own choices and now she would live with them.

“Get in this bed,” she ordered, shoving him down. “And don’t get up until I say. You’re going to make me late for inspection, and then where will I be?”

Working quickly, she tugged off his boots and set them on the floor. My, but they needed a good polishing. She pulled the sheets and blankets over his chest and tucked the edges under the mattress.

Opening the window to freshen the room, she didn’t take her usual time to pray and gaze out over the little town of Raton and its encircling range of snow-capped mesas. Instead, she quickly washed and then stepped behind the changing screen to put on her uniform. Black stockings. Chemise. Corset—oh, she had to hurry! Black skirt. Black shirt buttoned up to the neck.

Rushing to the hook by the door, she grabbed a fresh white apron, tied it around her waist and buttoned the bib. In two short months she had worked her way almost up to head waitress, but one moan from Bart Kingsley could undo everything.

Nerves jangling, she laced her boots and pinned her hair up in a thick, glossy knot. There had been a time when a lady’s maid had helped her dress in silk and velvet gowns, pretty slippers and kid gloves. Necklaces and bracelets that sparkled with gems had adorned her as she called on ladies of her social circle.

Now she wouldn’t trade her black-and-white Harvey Girl uniform for all the lace, ruffles and taffeta in Kansas City.

“Uniform inspection!” Mrs. Jensen called in the hallway.

Heart thumping, Rosie flew to the bed where Bart lay. “Now don’t do anything foolish,” she whispered, smoothing the sheet over his chest as though he were a sick child and not a gunslinger. “I’ll come back after the last breakfast train, so just—”

“My beautiful Rosie-girl,” he murmured as he caught her hand and brought it to his lips. With a gasp, she pulled away and hurried out into the hall.

Filling silver-plated urns with Fred Harvey’s famous coffee, Rosie tried not to think about the possibility that any moment Mrs. Jensen would storm into the restaurant screaming about the outlaw in Laura Kingsley’s room.

“Did you sleep all right?” Etta called from her station near a wall of windows. “I reckon that outlaw will be long gone by now.”

“If he’s smart, he will.” Rosie fretted as she folded napkins for her four assigned tables. “Of course, if he was smart, he never would have gotten himself shot in the first place. We’ll find out from Mr. Adams.”

Charles Adams, editor of The Raton Comet, boasted that his eight-page weekly never missed a good story. How shocked he would be to know that the scoop of the year lay just overhead in room seven.

“Twenty-two omelets are coming in on the eight-o’clock!” Tom Gable, the Harvey House manager, called out the food order that had been wired ahead. “Fourteen hotcakes, six biscuits and gravy, thirty-three coffees and nine milks. The train’ll be here in seven minutes!”

With a collective gasp, the five Harvey Girls rushed to finish their preparations. Rosie loved her work. Respected, protected, well paid, she couldn’t have found a better place to make a new life for herself. Once she had saved enough money, she would apply for a teaching position and buy a little house. It was a hope she had cherished for years. But she knew that at any moment, her past might catch up to her and snuff it out. A deafening whooo, and the dining-room floor began to shake. Glasses rattled. Cups wobbled. Spoons tinkled against knives. Steam billowed across the platform as the enormous black-and-silver engine of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe train rolled into the depot. As the brakeman set the brakes, the train squealed in protest. Chunks of red-hot coal spilled from the firebox. Railway men rushed to stomp them out. The smell of oil and smoke enveloped the Harvey House.

Like wraiths, the passengers descended through the steam onto the platform. Their hats askew and coats not quite settled, they stretched, waved and stared at the blue sky after the long ride. Children scampered to the rails to inspect the big engine. Tails wagging, a pair of dogs known to the whole town as Tom and Griff trotted through the crowd.

Then one of the busboys stepped into the crowd and raised his large brass gong.

“Breakfast is served,” he called, giving the gong a hard whack with a stick. “Breakfast is served!” Rosie stood silently, hands behind her back, as the passengers walked into the dining room and took their seats.

The moment one table had been settled, she started around it.

“What do you care to drink this morning?” she asked. “We have coffee, milk or orange juice.”

As each patron stated a selection, Rosie quickly arranged the cups according to the code she had been taught. She hurried off to fetch the food while another girl poured beverages. Rosie could almost hear the customers marveling that the drink girl knew exactly what they had requested. It was all part of the Fred Harvey mystique, an air of magic that delighted patrons and filled the staff with pride.

While the diners were munching on apple wedges, oranges and grapes, Rosie went around her station taking orders for omelets, hotcakes or biscuits and gravy. The dining room filled with the spicy-sweet aroma that seemed to rouse the passengers even more effectively than the famous Harvey coffee did.

Standing motionless, hands behind her back and the required smile on her face, Rosie kept her eyes constantly roving her station for the slightest possible indication that she was needed by a diner. On most mornings she was so absorbed in her work that she never gave anything outside it a second thought. But knowing Bart lay upstairs in her bed, Rosie found her concentration wandering. What if he took it into his head to try to climb out the window? What if he lost his balance and fell out? She glanced uneasily through the long side windows, suddenly fully aware of the impossible situation she was in.

Outside the front of the red board-and-batten Harvey House lay a long porch, a row of widely spaced trees and the depot and train tracks. Behind the building was the small, fenced private yard for the House’s female employees, and beyond that stretched the town of Raton. Now that Rosie thought about it, how on earth could Bart ever hope to escape in broad daylight? He’d be spotted immediately.

But how could he stay in her room for the rest of the day? Someone would find out for sure. And what if his fever grew worse? She lifted her head, listening for thumps, bumps and moans.

The silence was almost worse than the anticipation of noise. What if Bart had died? She wrung her clasped hands behind her skirt. If Bart died, she would never have the chance to chew him out the way she’d always intended. On the other hand, she’d never learn exactly why he had followed her all the way from Kansas City, or how he had fallen in with Jesse James and his gang.

More important, she wouldn’t be able to tell him how miserable her life had been after he went away…how awful the prospect of marriage to Dr. Lowell had made her feel…

“All aboard!” The cry startled Rosie. Her passengers were hurrying off, leaving the table littered with coins and dirty dishes.

The moment the train pulled away, Mr. Gable bounded into the dining room. “Sixteen omelets coming in on the eight forty-five!”

Rosie scrambled to clear her tables. There was no time for worry. And no time for longing.

Along about ten o’clock, Bart felt his fever break. Bathed in sweat, his body suddenly began to cool. The hammering in his head eased. The room stopped spinning.

He could hear the sounds of clinking glasses and chatter from a dining room somewhere. The tantalizing aromas of cinnamon, bacon and freshly brewed coffee drifted up through the floorboards and swirled around his head.

Rosie was downstairs, he remembered suddenly, and this was her room. Her hairbrush lay on the table. Her clean, starched aprons hung by the door. He had found her!

But as the truth set in, Bart closed his eyes. Rosie didn’t want him. She had made him promise to leave. And all he had done was bloody up her rug and sheets, smell up her room with his old leather jacket and dusty boots and put her in a position to lose her job. Rosie would be hoping he was gone by the time she returned to her room.

No surprise there. Who would want a no-good half-breed gunman like him around anyhow?

With a grunt he pushed himself to his feet and lifted the lace curtain at her window. The town was twice as big as it had looked the night before. From Rosie’s bedroom he could see a shoe shop, a bakery, an undertaking parlor and enough saloons to keep the whole town drunk as hillbillies at a rooster fight. There was the Five-Cent Beer Saloon, the 1883 Saloon, the Mountain Monarch, the Bank Exchange, the Progressive Saloon, the Cowboy’s Exchange Saloon, the El Dorado, the Green Light, the Lone Star, the Dobe Saloon and O’Reilly’s. And those were just the ones Bart could make out.

A church or two had elbowed out some holy ground amid the saloons. A meeting hall, a hotel, a bank and a water tower near the bank showed that the town of Raton, New Mexico, meant business. The whole place swarmed with people—folks heading in and out of the hardware stores and mercentiles, a milkman stopping off at every house in town, men loading wagons with lumber from Hughes Brothers Carpenter and Building Supply and women carrying bundles out of D. W. Stevens, Dealers in General Merchandise. Wagons, carriages and horses filled the packed-dirt streets.

Bart brushed a hand across his forehead. He would never be able to climb out a second-story window unnoticed. He let the curtain drop and sagged against the sill. He would have to wait until dark to try an escape.

Before he did, he would make up for the trouble he had caused Rosie. Some of it anyhow.

“See you at one o’clock!” Rosie called to Etta, who was chatting with the new cook.

Heart thundering, Rosie swung into the kitchen and filled a plate with food. What if Bart had already gone? she wondered as she climbed the stairs. Worse—what if he was still there?

She pushed open the door. The bare-chested man leaning against her window frame looked nothing like the pale invalid she had tucked away at dawn. In the sunlight, his bronze skin gleamed. A towel hung around his neck. His hair, still damp, had been washed and combed away from his face.

For the first time Rosie fully saw what time had done to the gawky boy she once loved. From the raven eyebrows that slashed across his forehead to his burning emerald eyes, from the squared turn of his chin to the solid breadth of his chest, Bart Kingsley was all man.

Disconcerted, she focused on a makeshift clothesline that stretched across the room. Denim trousers, a torn cotton shirt and a couple of white sheets hung dripping.

“You washed,” she blurted out.

“Everything but the rug.” He straightened, and she realized that he had tucked her blanket around his waist.

“Cold water. All I had.”

“Cold water’s the best thing there is for bloodstains.” Steadying her breath, she held out the plate. “I brought you something to eat.”

“Thanks. I’m hungry. The fever broke a while back. I’d be much obliged if you’d allow me to stay until dark, Rosie.”

At that moment she would have allowed him to do almost anything he wanted. If she hadn’t known his veins ran with both white and Indian blood, Rosie might have mistaken Bart for a pure Apache. With his copper skin and long, black hair, he could pass for a mighty warrior straight out of a dime novel. But he was too tall, and his eyes were too green to deny the heritage of his English mother.

“You’d better stay put,” she said, busying herself by straightening her dressing table. “Unless you want Sheriff Bowman nabbing you first thing.”

“You reckon I should hang for my crimes, Rosie?”

“You’d have to answer that one.”

“I can tell you this. It’ll be a cold day in—” He caught himself. “I’m sorry, Rosie. Cussing’s a hard habit to break.”

“Sounds like you’ve got a lot of new habits these days.”

“I did some things I’m not proud of, but I can’t just turn myself in. The law would just as soon shoot a man dead as let him try to make a new life for himself.”

Rosie set her brush on the table and turned to face him. “Do you want a new life, Bart?”

“I didn’t come all the way here to rob trains—you can bet your bottom dollar on that.”

“Why did you come?”

Bart let out a breath. “About the time Bob Ford shot Jesse James in the back of the head, I was doing some thinking. I looked back over the years of my life and all I saw was a long tunnel. A black, cold tunnel. There was only one bright sliver. One spot of light.”

“Is that right?” she asked. He was staring at her with a look she couldn’t read, a look that sent her pulse skimming.

“That light was you, Rosie,” Bart said. “It was you. And that’s why I came to Raton, New Mexico. I came to find that light again, to see if I could touch it, to see if it could shine away some of that darkness in the stinking black pit I’ve made of my life.”

Oh, Bart, she wanted to say, I forgive you. I forgive you! But the one-o’clock lunch train pulled into the depot with a whistle and a rush of steam that obliterated every sound in the tiny room. Rosie felt the floor shake and heard the window rattle. And she was thankful—so thankful—she hadn’t said anything to Bart.

As she left her room and hurried down the stairs to the lunchroom, Rosie saw the faces of her disappointed father and her angry fiancé. She saw the wreath of rosebuds and lilacs she’d worn in her hair the night she married Bart Kingsley, the glade where she had cried her eyes out over him, the parlor where William Lowell had knelt to ask for her hand and her heart—the heart she had promised to another man.

Rosie realized that with all these things, a blackness had crept into her own life. A blackness so intense she had fled it on a midnight train to a frontier town where no one could ever find her again. A blackness so dark she was not at all sure that even a flicker of light remained—the light that had been Laura Rose Vermillion. The light Bart had come seeking.

Chapter Four

Minutes after the last lunch train pulled out of Raton, Sheriff Bowman and the local pastor strolled into the lunchroom looking for a bite to eat.

“I’ll have a ham sandwich, Miss Laura,” Reverend Cullen said as he seated himself at her table. “And a dish of that wonderful Harvey ice cream.”

“I’ll take the same,” the sheriff said. “Been out all night and most of the morning chasing that outlaw. I’m hungry enough to eat my own horse.”

Rosie tried to smile as she hurried to the kitchen. When she returned and began setting out the meals, the two men were deep in conversation.

“Bart Kingsley is a skunk,” the sheriff said. “Nothing but a no-good half breed.”

“Now, only the Lord knows a man’s heart,” Reverend Cullen reminded him. “This Kingsley fellow may not be bad through and through.”

“You didn’t hear what the Pinkerton man told me before he left for Kansas City this morning,” the sheriff insisted. “The gunslinger’s got a file as thick as this sandwich. The things he’s done would make your hair curl.”

“Did the detective think Kingsley got away last night?” the preacher asked.

“Not sure. We lost track of him right here at the depot. I figured he hopped a train, but the Pinkerton man wanted to search the girls’ rooms. I set him straight on that real quick. Tom Gable would have a fit if I let any man set foot upstairs. Ain’t that right, Miss Laura?”

Rosie swallowed. “I believe it’s Mrs. Jensen who would have the fit.”

“Ain’t that the truth! Anyhow, I figured the minute a stinkin’ outlaw set foot in one of the girls’ rooms, there’d come a hollerin’ and bawlin’ like you never heard.”

The elderly preacher smiled at Rosie, his blue eyes warm. “But I’m sure our fugitive is long gone.”

“The gals will do well to be cautious. Bart Kingsley ain’t got proper parentage. The mother’s said to be a…” The sheriff glanced at Rosie. “A woman of the evening.”

At that the preacher thumped his hand on the counter the way Rosie had seen him do in church. “I’ve heard enough. A man can’t be held responsible for his lineage.”

“Kingsley ain’t responsible for his family tree, but he’s sure accountable for them three trains he robbed over in Missouri. Two men was killed during one holdup. No half-breed gunman is gonna get away with nothing while I’m sheriff. There’s a price on his head. Fifty dollars. If I have to, I’ll shoot him on sight.”

“Fifty dollars would go a long way toward the new house you’re building,” Reverend Cullen said. “But you don’t even know what the man looks like.”

“I saw him well enough to shoot him, didn’t I? Besides, he’s half Apache. He’ll have black hair and a chest like a barn door. He’ll be packin’ guns and wearin’ some kind of buckskin getup like the one he had on last night. If he’s anywhere around here, it won’t be long before I put a window in his skull.”

The sheriff stood and palmed a nickel onto the counter. “Afternoon, preacher,” he said, settling his hat on his head. He nodded at Rosie and strode out of the lunchroom.

Hands trembling, Rosie began gathering up plates and glasses as fast as she could.

“Now, don’t give the sheriff much heed,” Reverend Cullen told her as he stood. “He’s fit to be boiled because he lost the outlaw’s trail last night. Will I see you in church as usual this Sunday, Miss Laura?”

“I imagine so, sir.” Rosie was fairly scrubbing the varnish off the counter as he made his farewell and stepped outside.

Oh, but she felt ill! Bart was an outlaw and a killer. He had admitted as much himself. Now she realized that he was the cause of every trouble in her life.