The Lawman Takes A Wife

Mike hadn’t roused to any of it. Having at last yielded to the influence of all the whiskey he’d consumed at Jackson’s, he’d gone from a faint to a dead sleep from which the angels would have a hard time rousing him before he’d slept it off.

Witt made sure the cell’s chamber pot was within Mike’s reach if he did wake up, checked the lock on the cell door one last time, then retreated to his own small room beside the cell. The only real differences between the two spaces were that the walls of his room were painted wood, not raw metal bars, and he had a window and a door that wasn’t anywhere near thick enough to shut out the sound of Mike’s snoring.

Eventually, he’d have to find a proper place to live, but for right now, this would serve. So long as he didn’t end up with too many guests like Crazy Mike, that is.

Slowly, he undressed. Hat, vest, gun belt he hung from nails driven into the wall beside the bed. His boots, side by side, claimed the floor at the foot. With every movement, the soft rustle of the paper bag in his shirt pocket reminded him that there were other things in life besides barren rooms and drunken miners.

Slowly, he pulled the small bag of chocolates out, then set it on the rickety table beside his bed. In the lamplight, he could see the stains where the oil of the chocolate had seeped through the paper.

He’d already eaten three of them, and with every slight rustle of the paper, with ever sweet bite of the chocolate, he’d found himself thinking of Mrs. Calhan.

She’d laughed at him, there in the store. He’d felt it, even though she’d clearly taken pains to cover her amusement beneath that sweet, friendly smile of hers.

The thought made him droop. He did that to women, made them laugh. A big man like him, clumsy and hulking and likely as not to get his tongue tangled around every other word, at least when pretty women like Mrs. Calhan were around. He’d often wondered why Clara had married him, knowing how she liked everything around her to be just so. But, then, they’d grown up together and she hadn’t had much to choose from, so maybe he’d just been the best of a bad lot.

The thought never brought much comfort, but it was better than admitting she had used him until she had a better offer, then discarded him as easily as she’d have tossed out an old shoe.

Strange how he never felt a fool when he was with men. Not that he’d ever been what you could call talkative, but at least he didn’t mumble and stumble, and God forbid, turn red at every other word. Not when he was with men.

And not when he was around children, either. He liked children and he usually found, once they’d gotten over their dismay at his sheer size, that they liked him and were comfortable around him. Kids never expected much of a man except that he be a man. But a woman, now…

Witt frowned, then picked up the bag of chocolates, turning it in his hands, remembering.

Women like Clara—pretty, marriageable women—seemed to think a man should have a tongue that worked slick as silk and always had just the right words on the tip of it. His tongue had never worked that way and he didn’t expect it ever would.

He knew he’d made a fool of himself in Calhan’s this afternoon.

He’d been staring at Mrs. Calhan and thinking how smooth her skin looked, and how pretty her hair was—brown like a thrush’s wing, with a dozen colors all mixed in so subtly that you couldn’t really say it was brown, but you couldn’t say exactly what it was, either. Maybe if he saw it in the sun, free of that neat little twist she kept it in—

Witt bit his lower lip, cutting off the thought, and gently set the bag of chocolates back.

The thought of that drift of hair on her cheek and nape had plagued him something fierce. Even as he’d gone about his business, introducing himself to the businessfolk up and down Main Street and getting the lay of the land, he’d been thinking about those wayward strands of hair and how soft they’d feel, brushing against his fingers.

The thought of Gordon Hancock’s fingers sifting through her unbound hair had been enough to make him grind his teeth.

But there was no sense thinking thoughts like that. It wasn’t right, and all it would do would be to lead him into trouble.

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