The Lawman Takes A Wife

Elizabeth stiffened. “You know I don’t interfere in Josiah’s business. Such things aren’t appropriate for a lady.”

“Huh!” said Thelma around a mouthful of sweet lemon biscuit. “I shay—”

“Watch the crumbs!” Without looking, Elizabeth slapped a napkin into Thelma’s hand. “Besides, I’m sure Josiah and all the members of the council investigated the matter thoroughly before they agreed to hire the man.”

“Doesn’t seem right, bringing in a man we don’t know anything about, a man with a scandal in his past when there was perfectly good candidates—” in the midst of battle, Emmy Lou’s carefully cultivated grammar tended to desert her “—for sheriff right here in Elk City. Why, if the town council had had a brain among ’em, they would have seen straight off that my Zacharius was—”

“Are you accusing my husband of not knowing what he’s doing?”

“Not only of not knowing, but of deliberately ignoring the good of Elk City just so he could—”

“But doesn’t anybody know what Sheriff Gavin did to make his wife divorce him?” Coreyanne persisted, more to stop the brewing quarrel between Emmy Lou and Elizabeth than because she really wanted to know.

The would-be combatants breathed out in angry little huffs, torn between their personal animosities and the attraction of a scandal.

“Most likely he was a womanizer,” said Emmy Lou with a challenging glance at her rival. Everyone in town knew Josiah Andersen had an eye for the ladies.

Elizabeth flushed. “Probably drank too much and beat her.”

Molly set her sewing in her lap. She’d only just met the man, but already she felt sorry for DeWitt Gavin. “Maybe it was her fault.”

Her calm statement got everyone’s attention.

“Her fault? Ridiculous!” snapped Emmy Lou. “He’d have divorced her, if that were the case. And Coreyanne said it was definitely she who divorced him. No decent woman would divorce her husband if she weren’t driven to it.”

“Maybe she wasn’t really a decent woman,” Molly insisted. “Maybe she had a…a lover and wanted to marry him, instead.”

“Or maybe she was really a criminal. A thief, perhaps or even a murderess!” Louisa Merton’s eyes were shining at the thought. “I read a book like that once, where she was really wicked, but the hero was really good and loved her anyway and he convinced her to repent and—”

“Nonsense!” snapped Thelma, Emmy Lou and Elizabeth, all at once.

“You read too many of those trashy romance novels,” Emmy Lou added quellingly, “and I’ve a good mind to tell your mother so.”

The light went out of Louisa’s eyes; her shoulders slumped.

“But even if it was his fault, that doesn’t mean he couldn’t make some other woman a good husband,” said Coreyanne, ever the peacemaker. “Maybe he’s settled down. Or maybe she drove him to it somehow. I’ll bet the right woman could keep him in line.”

Several heads around the room nodded in agreement. A couple turned Molly’s way, expressions alight with keen-eyed speculation.

“Sheriff Gavin seemed quite respectable when he stopped in my store,” Molly said, more sharply than she’d intended.

“Looks are one thing,” said Elizabeth Andersen primly. “Respectable’s quite another.”

“And you should know,” Thelma Thompson said.

One of the women at the far end of the room tittered.

“Respectable or not, he didn’t look so bad to me,” Coreyanne interjected quickly. She smiled dreamily, remembering. “Even if he is big enough to make two normal-size men. Those eyes, you know, and that deep voice, and that big, broad chest.”

Even Emmy Lou paused respectfully a moment, thinking of his chest. Thelma reached for the second plate of biscuits.

Molly remembered all too clearly how big Sheriff Gavin had seemed, standing there in the sunlit doorway, remembered how the floor had bounced beneath his weight. She knew the rumors about his past, yet what she’d thought about all afternoon was not his size or his disreputable past, but how strong and safe he’d seemed, and how gentle his voice had been, and how he’d looked, blushing. And though she’d tried to forget, she could remember, all too clearly, just how warm his hand had been when it had closed so securely around hers.

The memories had been playing havoc with her good sense all afternoon. If she wasn’t careful, they’d be wandering through her dreams, as well.

“Would anyone like more tea?” she said, picking up her cup.

Witt had rather liked the song, “Clementine.” He could have sat through it without a word of complaint three, or even four times running, if he’d had to.

After a half hour spent listening to it being played, over and over and over, and badly at that, he was debating whether to shoot the piano or the piano player. Neither one would be considered a great loss, so far as he could tell, though the miners might miss the piano.

“He gets this way every now and then.”

“What? Who?” Witt wrenched his gaze from the burly piano player.

“Crazy Mike.” Fred hooked a thumb in the piano player’s direction. “He gets this way every now and then. Decent sort when he’s sober, and the best miner in five counties, but he’s got a temper like a sore-footed mule when he’s drunk and a kick to match when he starts throwing those fists around.”

“Does he get drunk often?”

“Couple times a year, maybe. Maybe three.”

“It’s the melancholy, shee,” said Billie Jenkins, leaning across the table confidingly. He was having a hard time keeping his head up. Jackson’s whiskey wasn’t half the quality of the Grand’s, but it was a whole lot cheaper, and Billie had been enthusiastically saving money ever since he’d walked in the door.

“Ol’ Mike, he had a girl, onct,” he added by way of explanation. “Pretty girl. He was gonna marry her.”

Fred grinned. “Named Clementine, if you haven’t figured it out.”

“She left ’im.” Billie pooched out his lips in drunken frown. “Broke his heart, poor bashtard.”

“Women’ll do that to you,” said Bert Potter, blinking and nodding sagely over his half-filled glass. “Every time, women’ll do that to you.”

“Only if you’re damn fool enough to get hitched to ’em,” said Josiah Andersen heartily. He winked at Witt. “Or if you can’t get rid of ’em once you do.”

Witt’s jaw tightened. He shoved his chair back.

He’d shoot himself before he’d sit through another round of that damned song, and he wasn’t about to try pushing his authority to convince the miner to stop.

“You’ll excuse me, gentlemen,” he said. “Work to do.”

Whatever objections his companions might have made were cut short by a furious bellow from the direction of the piano.

“Gol durn it! Don’t you go tellin’ me what t’play!

”Crazy Mike surged to his feet like an angry buffalo, all snorts and dangerous, threatening bulk. The crash of his chair falling echoed loudly in the sudden silence.

One of his companions gave him a queasy grin. “Ah, now, Mike, you know we didn’t mean nothin’ by it.”

Mike glared at the cringing men in front of him. “You told me t’quit playin’.”

“Didn’t tell yuh t’quit! Just t’play somethin’ differnt.”

Mike advanced a step. The miners retreated two.

“You din’t like my song.”

“Not t’say we didn’t like it,” said one of his hapless friends.

“‘Clementine’s’ a fine song, Mike, just fine,” the other hastily assured him. “But dammit! You been playin’ it fer God knows how long an’—”

“Don’t cuss!” Mike roared. “You know I don’t approve uv cussin’!”

Three steps in retreat. “Sure, Mike. Sorry about that. Din’t mean t’—That is—”

“Ah, hell,” said the man beside Witt. “That’ll about do it for tonight, I’m thinking.”

The patrons nearest the door abandoned their drinks without a backward glance and escaped into the night. The freckle-faced boy, who’d been collecting empty glasses at another table, slowly set the ones he held back down, then sidled closer, eager for a better view.

The sharp crack of a pistol made even Witt jump. Crazy Mike wasn’t wearing a gun belt—most men didn’t even own a gun—so he must have carried it shoved in the waistband of his pants. Right now the weapon was pointing at the floor, which had a new hole in it and a number of fresh wood chips scattered across the surface.

Witt quietly got to his feet.

“Ain’t nobody tellin’ me what to play,” Crazy Mike insisted, swinging around to confront the saloon’s wary patrons.

“Put the gun down.” Witt didn’t raise his voice, but in the silence, his words carried clearly.

The miner’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Who’re you?”

“I’m the new sheriff, and I’d appreciate it if you’d put the gun down.”

Mike grunted. “Make me.”

Witt studied him for a moment, then slowly unbuckled his own gun belt. He set it on the table, much to the consternation of his drinking companions, then held up his hands, palms out.

“Put the gun down, Mike.”

Mike shot a hole through the painted tin ceiling.

“Watch the damned chandelier!” warned the outraged proprietor.

This time, Mike deliberately aimed at that battered brass fixture. His shot sent bits of paint flying from a new hole in the ceiling a good four feet to the right of the first.

“God dammit!” Jackson roared.

Mike swung toward him, the gun wobbling in his unsteady hand. “Don’t cuss. Ain’t right t’cuss.”

A warning gesture from Witt stopped Jackson from fishing beneath the bar for the gun that was undoubtedly hidden there.

“Sure, Mike. Sorry,” Jackson said through gritted teeth.

“Whyn’t you come back and play fer us, Mike?” one of the miner’s friends suggested.

Mike shot the piano. Twice.

He would have shot it again, but he was out of bullets.

Moving slowly, with both hands up where Crazy Mike could see them, Witt worked his way toward the angry miner. The crowd happily moved out of his way. No one offered to help.

For that small favor, Witt was devoutly grateful. He’d dealt with enough Crazy Mike’s over the years to know that “help” of that nature only made things worse. To men like Mike, one man coming after them was a joke.

Half a dozen eager citizens was a threat that provoked more violence and got a lot of people hurt.

And it would take half a dozen normal-size men to stop someone as big as Mike.

He hadn’t met many men even as big as he was, but Witt was willing to bet Mike topped him by a good two inches or so and outweighed him by at least fifty pounds. The man had arms that looked like tree trunks and fists the size of a nine-pound sledgehammer.

Five feet from the miner, Witt stopped.

“Nice night out, Mike,” he said conversationally. “Let’s you and me go for a walk, shall we?”

Crazy Mike tossed aside the useless gun and came at him like a bear, roaring with rage, shoulders hunched, eyes glittering with the light of battle.

Witt sidestepped, then punched him in the gut as he passed. Hard.

The miner’s roar died in a choking grunt as he doubled over, clutching his middle. He staggered, tried to straighten.

Witt hit him again.

Crazy Mike sagged, then slowly toppled onto the floor, face first. The floor shook when he landed.

Witt could hear the crunch as Mike’s nose smashed into the wood. He winced and ruefully rubbed his knuckles. The damn fool was so drunk, he didn’t have the sense to roll.

Silence held Jackson’s saloon in a grip of iron.

One of Mike’s friends stepped forward, fists half raised in the wary, defiant stance of a man who felt obligated to defend his friend but wasn’t all that happy about it. Witt looked at him, raised one eyebrow in silent inquiry. The fellow wavered for a moment, then lowered his fists and sheepishly slunk back into the crowd.

Witt scanned the rest of the gaping patrons. “A couple of you gentlemen want to help me get him to the jail?”

“You’re gonna put Crazy Mike in jail?”

“Well, I’ll be a—”

“Damn straight he’s going to put Mike in jail,” said the mayor, pushing through the crowd. “It’s about time Mike realized he can’t go around doing as he damn well pleases.”

“You might want to watch your language,” Witt advised, suppressing a grin. “The gentleman clearly objects to vulgarities.”

The gentleman in question groaned and tried to shove to his knees. Witt reached to help him up. Mike’s head bobbled. He stared at the proffered hand for a moment, bleary-eyed, his mouth working like a dying fish’s. In the end, drink and the effects of a broken nose won out. He glared, grunted, then his eyes rolled up in his head as he quietly slumped to the floor in a dead faint.

Chapter Four

It was nearing ten when Molly called good-night to the last of her friends. This late, most of the town had settled peaceably behind their doors. Lamps shone through windows, but here and there the houses were dark, their inhabitants long since tucked into bed.

A few people strolled past her—a man alone, head down and hurrying home; two men laughing; a couple, arms entwined, oblivious to anything outside their world of two.

The sight of them only reinforced her sense of isolation.

Four years. That’s how long she’d been a widow.

Sometimes, especially whenever she glanced at the photograph of Richard that hung in her small parlor, it seemed like only yesterday that he’d gone out to work and never come back. There were still times, usually when she was tired and her thoughts had wandered, when she would hear a sound and look up, expecting to see him walk in the door. And sometimes, in the night, she’d turn in her sleep and reach for him, wanting his warmth and his strength, needing to feel his lean, angular body curled around her, shielding her from the world outside their door.

There were even times when she was wide-awake, without the distraction of wandering thoughts or a weary body, when she would find herself physically aching for his touch and the glory of what they’d shared in bed.

Especially what they’d shared in bed.

She had never been one of those simpering misses who blushed at the mere thought of kissing a man, but she knew, now, that she had been fortunate in her choice of husband, for Richard had been kind and more than willing to teach her the secrets of what was possible between a man and a woman who loved each other. She’d never asked him where he’d learned his secrets, and he had never told her. She’d never thought it mattered, for once he’d married her, he had given everything to her—his heart and soul; his dreams. Eventually, even his life.

It was his dying that made her angry. He had gone into the mines because he wanted to earn more money to pay off the debt they’d incurred to start the store and a little extra to put aside for the future. Richard had always been impatient, eager to move ahead, and he’d seen the mines as the fastest way to get what he’d wanted. They’d quarreled about it horribly.

She regretted the quarrels. She regretted even more that, in the end, she’d been proven right.

Immediately after Richard’s death, when creditors were pressing her to close the store and sell off the inventory, she’d spent long, sleepless nights scheming how to save Richard’s dream and her children’s future.

Calhan’s would be different from all the other dry goods stores, she’d decided. Better. Bigger, someday, when she could manage it.

Richard hadn’t been buried a week before she began changing things. At first, the changes were more for distraction from her grief than for the work itself. Eventually, however, the new ways had taken on a life of their own, challenging her and helping to make the long hours and sometimes exhausting routine more bearable.

She’d started with a few eye-catching displays on the counters and tabletops. Gradually, as her confidence in herself and her ideas had grown, she’d ordered more merchandise that her competitors didn’t carry and tried more adventurous approaches to displaying what she had.

The man mannequin had been the talk of the town. People had wandered in just to have a look at the thing, and often as not they’d wandered out again with something else they hadn’t planned on buying. She’d paid for it in three months with the profits from the extra sales.

What she had realized, and none of her male competitors had yet understood, was that women were the ones who controlled the money in most households, not the men.

Oh, men were quick enough to buy tools and hardware and an occasional pouch of tobacco—they were, she’d found, particularly fond of fancy patent tools—but they were generally happy to pass responsibility for everything else to their wives. Women bought the family’s food and shoes, chose their clothes or the cloth to make them, and decided which medicines and tonics to stock to keep them well. It was the women who selected the furniture and decorated the home, then bought all the supplies to keep that home swept and polished and functioning as it ought.

It was an insight that had changed her life because once a woman was in her store, Molly knew how to hold her attention long enough to tempt her to open her pocketbook.

She hadn’t looked back since.

Sometimes she thought she didn’t dare. Though four years of hard work had paid off the debts and allowed her to put a little money aside, she couldn’t help worrying about the future. She still needed an occasional loan to finance her expansion. Was, in fact, considering her largest loan yet for a move that would increase the size of Calhan’s by half again. But what if the state was hit with another panic like the one in ’93, when the price of silver plummeted and nobody had any money for anything, even sometimes the essentials? What if the coal ran out and the mines had to close? What if something happened to her?

What if, what if, what if. There were so many things that could go wrong and so little she could do to stop them if they did. And, oh! how much easier it would be if only there was someone to share the worries and responsibilities with her, someone on whom she could depend, no matter what.

Molly drew her shawl closer about her shoulders, shivering a little in the cool night air. She didn’t usually waste time thinking about such things, but tonight, somehow, she couldn’t stop.

When she reached Main Street, rather than crossing it as she usually did, then walking down Elm Street to get home, she turned to the right. She’d pass the store on the way.

And the jail, a small voice inside her said.

She stifled the voice and kept walking.

This time of night, even Main Street was quiet, the buildings dark except at either end of the street where Elk City’s three saloons were lighted and open for business.

A burst of masculine laughter coming from somewhere ahead of her made her stop. When the jail door opened, spilling the faint light of an oil lamp across the walk, she muttered a word she would have washed Dickie’s mouth out for using and shrank into the shadowed doorway of Dincler’s Barbershop.

A moment later, half a dozen men stepped out, laughing and joking among themselves. They clumped off the boardwalk and into the street, clustered like reluctant partygoers leaving the fun.

“You take good care of your guest, now, Sheriff, you hear?” one of the men called.

“Don’t let his snoring keep you up!”

The attempt at humor brought more laughter from the men, but not a word from the sheriff. He stood, a silent presence in the faint wash of lamplight, watching them, neither friendly nor distant. Simply…there.

The laughter died. A couple of the men shuffled their feet.

“You did good, Gavin,” someone said at last. “Just want you to know that. You did good.”

The others murmured agreement. They would, she knew, have been more comfortable if the sheriff had laughed or joked right back at them, or made one of those vulgar comments men were prone to when they thought ladies weren’t present.

One among them broke the spell by clapping a companion on the back.

“Come on, boys. The night’s still young. Wouldn’t want to upset the missus by comin’ home too soon, now, would we?”

To Molly’s relief, they headed away from her, down toward the other end of town and the two saloons whose lights shone in the distance. She hadn’t worried that any of them would bother her if they did discover her huddling in the shadows, but men were as gossipy as women, no matter how much they denied it. The last thing she needed was word going round that she’d been hiding in the shadows outside the jail at an hour when a sensible woman would have been home and in bed.

To her dismay, the sheriff lingered in the open doorway.

He propped his shoulder against the frame, crossed his arms over his chest, and tilted his head to stare at the star-swept sky. The light behind him outlined the broad shoulders, deep chest and long, powerful legs, but left his face in shadow.

Why didn’t he just go in?

Why didn’t she just walk past? a mocking little voice inside her head demanded. A polite nod, a friendly greeting. Good evening, maybe. Or maybe just, Sheriff. And he’d say, Ma’am, or, Evening, and that would be it.

And if he did say something, she’d just explain that she’d been startled by the men suddenly emerging onto the street, which would be true. He’d nod, and maybe he’d apologize for having startled her, and then she’d say she had to get home, and he’d say, Of course, and maybe, Good night, and then maybe he’d go in and shut the door and forget all about it. Forget all about her.

Her stomach twisted, just at the thought.

Molly peeped out of her hiding place. The man hadn’t moved an inch.

He made a compelling figure standing there, his big, powerful body cast half in golden lamplight, half in shadow. She still couldn’t see his face, but she remembered with disconcerting clarity the strong lines of cheek and jaw, the piercing clarity of those blue-gray eyes that seemed to take in everything at a glance.

From the look of him, he might have been a thousand miles away.

Was he thinking of his wife? she wondered. Or of another woman, perhaps? A woman he’d loved so much that his wife had chosen to divorce him rather than live with the constant reminder that he had set another before her?

It had to have been another woman. She’d scarcely met the man, but she couldn’t imagine anything else he might have done that would have driven a woman to the scandal of divorcing him.

Yet if he’d loved another, why hadn’t he remarried the instant he was free of his first marriage?

Whatever it was that haunted him, he evidently found no solace in those cold, distant stars for he straightened suddenly and, without a glance to either side, turned and stepped into the building. An instant later, the door clapped shut behind him, throwing the street back into darkness.

Molly sank into her own shadows, heart pounding, fighting against a sudden urge to knock on the door and ask if she could help, if there weren’t something she could do to fill his yearning silence.

The thought was utter madness.

She forced herself to wait a minute, then two, to be sure he wouldn’t return. When she could stand the wait no longer, she tugged her shawl more closely about her and hurried across the street, turned toward home and walked as fast as her feet could carry her.

Witt picked up the oil lamp he’d left on his desk and carried it back to the single, windowless cell that served as Elk City’s jail. His first guest was a great deal too large for the lumpy, metal-framed bed. Crazy Mike’s big feet, still clad in their heavy miner’s boots—no one had been the least inclined to make him more comfortable by removing them—stuck out over the end by a good eight inches. His head was propped at the other end with only the single thin pillow to cushion the steel frame.

He looked like hell, but his broken nose had stopped bleeding long ago. One of his friends, an unprepossessing gentleman rejoicing in the name of Gimpy Joe, had washed off the worst of the blood, but that was as far as anyone had been willing to go.