Morrow Creek Marshal

Marcus’s father-in-law, Adam Crabtree, nodded. “I’m not sure anybody else could cope with the no-good criminal types flooding into town right now.” He held his hat in his hand, but stood bravely. “If the women find out what we’re facing—”

“They’re not going to find out.” Rancher Everett Bannon said so with evident authority and resolve. “Not ever.”

All the men murmured agreement. They were united in wanting to protect their womenfolk. Dylan couldn’t fault them for that.

He’d accidently caused a bit of misfortune tonight for one solitary dance hall girl and had himself become obsessed with protecting her and helping her—to the point of becoming enchanted by her obstinacy and overall sense of independence...not to mention her lithesome figure and pretty, expressive features.

He couldn’t stop wondering what she’d look like when she smiled. When she laughed. When she sighed after kissing a man.

Marielle Miller was beautiful, all right. But she was a handful and then some. She didn’t like him much, either. She would sure as hell not be kissing him anytime soon.

“We already had enough on our plates, what with them no-account Sheridan brothers taking up in our town,” complained Ned Nickerson, owner of the local book agent and news bureau. He cast a tardily cautious glance around the saloon, then prudently lowered his voice. “We’ve already got Charley, Peter and Levi. We don’t need to invite every damn criminal in the territory to come here!”

The Sheridans. Dylan had a requisite familiarity with that family of felonious troublemakers. He knew they were bold. They were crafty. They acted immortal—like many men who were too young to know better—and were all the more dangerous because of it. They were best avoided by anyone sane, man or woman, who didn’t want to wind up gut shot and left for dead.

He didn’t know why Caffey hadn’t sent that gang packing a long time ago. Instead, he’d tolerated their petty thievery and frequent fighting to the point of seeming to encourage it.

Which, Dylan mused, he might well have. What better way to ensure his lasting employment than to keep a homegrown gang of reprobates close by? Since their arrival, the Sheridans had kept some in town running scared. Now the situation had worsened.

“Sheriff Caffey picked a hell of a time to skedaddle, that’s for sure,” Adam Corwin agreed, pacing like the restless former detective he was. He squinted toward the saloon doors. “The weather is good. The passes are clear. There’s nothing to stop more bad elements from coming here to Morrow Creek.”

As pressing as that issue was, Dylan didn’t see where this inbound lawlessness concerned him. He wasn’t a peacekeeper. He was just a gun for hire—a man with an experienced mind who’d finished one job and was headed to the next. He’d already picked up an assignment in Sacramento. All he owned sat in the satchel he’d left behind the bar with Harry. All he’d pocketed before leaving it was enough cash to assure he had money to leave town with. That was all Dylan really needed—enough to move on.

His limited funds were the reason he hadn’t agreed to pay Marielle Miller for her lost work time right from the get-go. If he’d had the greenbacks to spare, he’d have given them to her—even if he didn’t feel strictly responsible for her predicament. That would have been the right thing to do. As it was, Dylan had not even considered surrendering his moving-on money.

He was pleased that he’d distracted her from the pain of her ankle injury, though—no matter how many stretchers he’d had to tell in the process. Truly. No thinking man would have taken Marielle Miller for a thirty-three-year-old woman, much less a dancer on the near side of forty. When he’d said that, she’d practically shot sparks from her eyeballs. It had been all he could do to keep a straight face and keep on riling her up.

Reminded of the dance hall girl—and beset with an entirely unlikely sense of fondness toward her, too—Dylan took a step to the side, intent on shouldering past the other men to Marielle’s position. He was worried about her. Although his conversation with the menfolk had taken only moments, he hadn’t wanted to abandon her. She ought to be right where he’d left her...

As he made his way, the conversation continued.

“You took down the Bedell gang just last year, Corwin,” Daniel McCabe was saying, standing head and shoulders over most. “Near as I can see, you could do the same to the Sheridans. Hell, you could put up a posse and get Sheriff Caffey, too.”

Amid general murmurs of agreement, Jack Murphy raised his arms, signaling for quiet. The group of men obliged.

“We’ve already settled this, remember?” the saloonkeeper reminded them. “We’ve already chosen our new sheriff.”

Adam Corwin nodded. “We have.” Evidently, that’s what the men’s club meeting had been for. “Besides, you all know Savannah’s expecting.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry, boys, but if I up and took a job as sheriff now, she’d have my damn head.”

“Or I would,” rumbled Mose Hawthorne, Savannah’s longtime loyal helper at the adjunct telegraph station outside town. “Ain’t no way you’re deserting Savannah now. Not when we’ve got Coyle here. The man’s practically tailor-made for the job.”

Hearing his name, Dylan went still. Again... “What job?”

At the expectant, confident looks that met his question, he balked. This didn’t feel right. This...hopefulness wasn’t for him.

“What job?” he repeated, wary and tense jawed.

“Why, the job of sheriff, of course.” Thomas Walsh moved nearer, a pad of paper and pencil at the ready. As usual, the editor of the Pioneer Press wanted his story. This time, from Dylan. “Typically, the sheriff’s position is filled following an election, but with all these degenerate types coming to town—”

“Drifters?” Dylan felt compelled to ask. “Like me?”

But unlike Marielle, no one seemed to believe he’d earned that moniker. A few men chuckled. More shook their heads. All gazed at him with that same damn unearned faith and expectancy.

What the hell had he done to earn this? Only his job.

“—we don’t have time for bureaucratic paperwork shuffling,” the editor continued. “We just need to get on with it.”

“Uh-oh. If Walsh don’t want paper shuffling,” Hofer said with a laugh, “this situation is right next door to doomed.”

Everyone laughed. But the newspaperman merely continued in his usual earnest fashion. “We’ll have a proper election,” he assured Dylan. “But while you’re serving, instead of before. During your first term, rather than wasting time with campaigns and signs and speeches. It’s more efficient that way. You can get started straightaway protecting everyone in Morrow Creek.”

They all beamed at him, but Dylan balked anew.

Protecting...everyone? That sounded like a nightmare to him.

Resolutely, he squared his shoulders. He sobered his expression. He held up his arms. An instant hush fell.

Damnation, he couldn’t help thinking. They were serious.

They truly expected leadership from him. Safety.

The realization was worrying. And all the more reason he had to put a stop to this before it went any further.

“Far be it from me to deny Walsh, here, the joy of organizing an emergency election,” Dylan tried with a grin. “Not to mention the whole caboodle of newspaper coverage that’ll go along with it. But it’ll have to happen without me.”

They didn’t seem to understand. “We already voted,” Clayton said. “At the men’s club meeting. You’re the man for the job.”

Everyone agreed—even as, at the other end of the saloon, the piano player tinkled a few keys. It felt as though ages had passed, but it must have been only a few minutes. The dance hall girls didn’t typically take a long break. They couldn’t risk losing customers who would drift away during a lengthy interval.

Speaking of dance hall girls...where was Marielle Miller? As the queen of obstinacy, she should have refused to budge from her chair until Doc Finney properly saw to her injury.

Funny thing was, Dylan couldn’t help musing, in her shoes, he would have refused help, too. They were alike in that way.

They were alike in several ways, when it came to it. But he couldn’t think about that now—not with a whole saloon full of people expecting him to ride to the rescue as their new sheriff.

“I already have a job,” Dylan protested more strongly. “In Sacramento.” He took out his pocket watch and glanced at it. “In fact, I can probably make the next train west if I leave now.”

Remarkably, everyone laughed. Some men raised their ales and whiskies in apparent toasts to what they assumed was Dylan’s customary joshing. Growing concerned, he glanced at the door.

He had an awful feeling he wouldn’t be catching that train.

“I guess you should’a gone to the meeting, eh?” Nickerson yelled, rubicund and jolly even before receiving his first pint of ale. “So you could cast the only vote against yourself.”

Everyone roared with glee. But Dylan started pacing.

Thomas Walsh noticed. “It’s just the usual sheriff’s job, Mr. Coyle, nothing more,” he promised Dylan. “Peacekeeping, serving summons, collecting tax money, investigating crimes—”

“I’m not the man you’re after,” Dylan said more plainly.

“You are exactly the man we’re after,” Miles Callaway maintained. He aimed his chin at the friends he’d made since coming to Morrow Creek from Boston. “Or do you have such little faith in our judgment that you’d disagree with all of us?”

Each of their gazes veered to his face. Held. Stubbornly.

Glancing beyond the men for a respite from this wrinkle in his getaway plans—from this entirely unwanted obligation—Dylan glimpsed movement near the saloon’s door. A huge man lumbered toward it with a woman in his arms—a woman who was pointedly directing him exactly where and in what fashion to carry her.

Marielle Miller. She was hearty enough to dispense orders. That meant she would be all right. In her wake, Jack Murphy watched contentedly as his lead dancing girl left in the man’s keeping.

Evidently, Dylan’s responsibilities to her had ended.

He was free to leave. Free to drift to the next town, the next job...the next person who would disappoint him in the end.

“What’s it going to be?” Copeland pressed. “Sheriff?”

Sheriff. Not liking the sound of that, Dylan frowned.

But everyone else shifted and murmured, plainly het up. They wanted him for this job. Dylan knew he could still refuse.

More than that, he had to refuse.

But then, on the verge of turning to do so, he caught another, more surreptitious movement near the saloon doors. As Marielle passed by, a wiry man in a long coat and hat stepped out from the shadows. He watched Marielle with avid interest.

Dylan recognized him as one of the Sheridan boys. Charley, he thought. Charley Sheridan. The wily ringleader. At the realization, Dylan’s blood iced over. Why the hell would one of those criminals be interested in Marielle Miller? Or, he saw further, in trading a shifty nod with the man carrying her?

As though sensing Dylan’s attention, Sheridan transferred his gaze from Marielle...to Dylan. Calculatingly, he narrowed his eyes. Whatever was going through his mind, it wasn’t good.

“I’ll do it.” Dylan turned, saw the tin star held by Marcus Copeland and closed his fist around it. “Starting now.”

* * *

Forty minutes after leaving the saloon, Marielle found herself at home with an elaborately bandaged ankle, an order to rest up with no dancing allowed for an impossibly lengthy period of at least four weeks...and a younger brother who’d been plumb tuckered out by the events of the evening.

With a sigh, she glanced at Hudson. In the glow of the lamplight, he sprawled across his cot in their small house’s front room, still wearing all his clothes and boots, snoring.

His familiar snuffle rent the stillness. He snorted, then turned over and flopped on his side, facing her fully now.

Looking at his peaceful face, Marielle couldn’t help giving a pensive smile. That was Hudson to a tee. Now that the kerfuffle was over—at least for him—he was oblivious to everything but his pillow. Her brother lived life as it was handed to him, neither striving for more nor complaining when there was less. Hudson was jovial and giving, simple and free.

He was as big of heart as he was massive of body, and although he hadn’t strictly amounted to much in the traditional sense—having no steady employment nor a wife and family to call his own—he was nonetheless content. Hudson tried sometimes, at Marielle’s urging, to find steadier work. He tried to grow up as fully as they both knew he needed to. But his every attempt ended up confirming the same foregone conclusion.

“I can’t keep on with that job, Mari,” Hudson would say, shaking his head with his soft brown eyes fixed on hers. “Who will look after you while you’re dancing? I can’t leave you.”

Every time, Marielle would soften. Every time, she would see the end arriving along with the beginning and be helpless to stop it. Because all she knew were dancing and sewing, and the former was much more lucrative than the latter. Plying her needle did not support two people nearly as well as dancing did.

It would have been churlish of her to quit performing. Yes, Hudson enjoyed drinking and throwing dice at the saloon a bit too much. Yes, she regretted that her employment kept them both in such overall corrupting quarters. Jack Murphy’s saloon was better than most—better than many she’d worked in during her journey westward after her mother had passed on—but it was still a place where men went to imbibe, carouse, fight and forget.

Sometimes, she thought, Hudson wanted to forget, too. Sometimes, she thought, Hudson missed New York, missed the backstage work he’d done at the fancy theater there, missed their mother and their absentee father most of all. But then her brother would make a joke or tug her hair or laugh over some memory of their time together back in the States—before it had all fallen apart—and Marielle would tell herself he was fine.

After all, he had no more to forget than she did. If her own memories didn’t send her to drink and smoke and carouse to excess, then why would they do so to Hudson? Men could handle their intoxicants better than women, anyway. Everyone knew that.

Her own father excepted, of course...

A knock at the door jarred Marielle before she could fall straight into the quicksand of those darker memories. Puzzled and a mite vexed, she stared across the front room at the door.

Another knock came. Louder this time.

She looked at her ankle, duly wrapped in bandages and properly elevated on a footstool as the doctor had ordered. Doc Finney had left her with a crutch, but she hadn’t tried it yet. He’d also left her dosed with a quantity of laudanum for the pain, which—on top of the whiskey Jack had pressed upon her—had made her feel quite woozy. Also, clearly, far too melancholy.

The third knock threatened to wake Hudson. That was more than Marielle would permit. Frowning anew, she grabbed her crutch and used it to lever herself out of her comfortable chair. She hobbled across the front room, paused to pull a warm blanket over Hudson against the chill that might come in with opening the door, then made her way to answer that summons.

Most likely, she knew, it would be Doc Finney, returned to offer still more instructions or admonitions or medications. He’d told her that the keys to healing her injury were circular compression, something called perfect immobilization, and a hearty dose of that flawless healer: time. It had all sounded like a lot of fancy terms for wrapping and resting, but Marielle had followed his directives, all the same. Her livelihood depended on healing her ankle, and quickly.

She couldn’t take chances. She had to get better.

Leaning awkwardly on her crutch, Marielle worked the lock, bracing herself for the cool springtime chill that was coming. In the evenings, in this mountainous part of the territory, frostiness crept in and then sank into a person’s bones. She didn’t want a chill on top of everything else.

She opened the door to an unexpected visitor. Startled, Marielle leaped back.

Or at least she tried to. Instead, she stepped onto her hurt ankle, received a jolt of pain for her efforts and yelped.

Behind her, Hudson stirred. He moaned. He began to snore again.

At the doorway, the goose bumps that spread over Marielle’s body had nothing to do with the weather—and everything to do with the man who lounged in her open doorway, canny and mean.

“’Evening, Miss Miller.” Charley Sheridan tipped his hat. It was too big for him—probably because he’d nicked it off a larger man—but no one would have dared laugh at that. Folks had heard tell of men getting knifed for less. Sheridan roamed his gaze over her. “How’s that ankle of yours doing?”

“That’s none of your business.” Marielle wished she had something—anything—to cover up with. Instead, all she had was the costume she’d danced in. Although she’d set aside her frothy, feathered headdress and had lost her spangled fan someplace. “It’s too late for company, Mr. Sheridan. Good night.”

Heart hammering, she tried to shut the door.

Charley’s shoulder prevented it. “Well now, that ain’t neighborly at all, Miss Miller. I come here to talk to you.”

Usually—and unfortunately—the Sheridans came to talk to Hudson. To get drunk with him and gamble with him. The four of them had been...well, Marielle couldn’t call them friends, exactly. But her brother had foolishly taken up with Charley, Peter and Levi once or twice. She hadn’t been able to stop him.

Their influence had come along with his time at the saloon—another thing for which Marielle couldn’t help blaming herself. If not for her job dancing, none of them would have crossed paths. Charley certainly wouldn’t have been there bothering her.

With a backward glance, Marielle made sure Hudson was sleeping. A disloyal part of her wished her brother would wake up and deal with this himself. It might have been nice to have had a genuine protector to rely on. But now, as usual, she had only herself. It was up to her to protect both of them.

Wasn’t that what she’d promised, when Mama had been dying?

“We have nothing to discuss.” Marielle jerked up her chin. “Certainly nothing that can’t wait until morning.”

It was late enough there, on the outskirts of town, that no one was about. The birds were stilled in the darkened ponderosa pines. The moon provided most of the light on her front porch.

“Ah, but this here can’t wait till morning.” Charley looked beyond her, into her house. “Ain’t you gonna invite me in?”

As he moved to take the invitation she pointedly hadn’t offered, Marielle shoved him with her crutch. Charley was too surprised to object outright. He obligingly made room, looking amused, while she clumsily half hopped, half lumbered her way onto the porch. She shut the door. At this point, being outside with him felt safer than being in her own house with—she had to face facts—a passed-out-drunk Hudson as her only protection.

Admitting as much, even to herself, made Marielle’s former wooziness subside, just a bit. Evidently, laudanum was no match for having a notorious outlaw appear at your door uninvited.

“What do you want, Mr. Sheridan? I don’t have all night.”

“Nope. What you have is...all of that.” His loathsome gaze traveled over her costumed form. His odious gesture indicated those dratted horsehair-augmented curves she’d given herself where the Almighty had chosen not to bless her himself. Charley’s appreciation was anything but divinely inspired, though. His attention felt despicable. “Men pay good money to see you, Miss Miller. That there’s the reason for it.”

He meant her figure, plainly. She shuddered with disgust.

“They pay to see me dance,” she specified. “That’s all.”

“If you believe that, you’re dumber than your brother.”

“I’ll thank you to leave Hudson out of this.”

At her fiery, protective retort, Charley guffawed. “There ain’t no leaving Hudson out of this. It’s all his damn fault.”

“What is?” Newly alert, she clutched her crutch.

“You’ll have to ask him about that.” Plainly comfortable in his thuggery, Charley leaned on her porch railing. “Point is, and the solitary reason I’m here talking to a woman at all, is that I’m not the only one who’s noticed you and your ‘dancing.’”

Marielle knew he meant something far baser. She scowled.

“That Coyle fella—he noticed your ‘dancing,’ too.”

Shivering, Marielle looked up at the night sky. She wished she were anywhere but here, with an outlaw’s whiskey breath and overripe saddle stink washing over her. She couldn’t help noticing the heft of Charley’s gun belt. She wished she hadn’t.

“Now that he’s gonna be the new sheriff in town—”

“Dylan Coyle? The sheriff?” Marielle almost laughed outright, despite her alarming predicament. “Impossible. The man can’t stay put long enough to use up a pound of coffee, much less see to maintaining law and order in Morrow Creek.”

Unfazed, Charley spat his tobacco juice over her porch railing. “Seems you’re wrong about that. I saw him pin on that shiny ole badge myself just a little a while ago.”

Dylan Coyle...the sheriff? In a single night? How could this have happened? She’d known the men’s club was meeting to discuss their errant sheriff and to fill his now vacant post with someone new. But...this? Dylan Coyle? In charge?

Marielle could scarcely envision Mr. Coyle with a badge to go along with his gun. Yes, she’d felt a certain...affinity toward him. Yes, he seemed to be a reasonably fair and intelligent man, if entirely too autocratic for her liking. But he was a drifter, though and through. There was no way they could count on him.

Had the whole town lost its wits?

With effort, she tried to regain hers. “This has nothing to do with me. If you’re interested in the new sheriff, why don’t you go speak with him yourself?” As if he would. The Sheridans were notorious in the territory. Only Sheriff Caffey and Deputy Winston had been oblivious to the dangers their gang had posed.

Now that their former sheriff had fled so mysteriously and his deputy had been duly locked up—events Marielle had learned about along with everyone else just days ago—lawlessness would obviously increase. It was no accident there was no one around to stop Charley Sheridan from harassing her at nearly midnight.

“I ain’t gonna speak with him.” Charley poked her chest. “You are. You’re gonna jaw your fool head off. You’re gonna do whatever it takes to get in good with the new sheriff—and I mean real good. After you done that, you’re gonna make sure he’s good and distracted while me and my boys get what’s coming to us.”

She couldn’t help stating the obvious. “Prison?”

“Tsk-tsk.” He shook his head. “If you weren’t laid up—”

“I’m strong enough to face you, aren’t I?”

“—and maybe crippled for good—”

Marielle gulped, hoping he wasn’t right. Fearing he was.

“—I’d make you pay for a disrespectful remark like that.”

Shaking from fright and cold, Marielle nonetheless stared Charley down. “I’m not going to do anything for you. Not now. Not ever.” She reached backward for her doorknob, all but itching to turn it and escape. “I’m going inside.”

Charley slammed his hand on the door before she could open it. His presence loomed over her, menacing and conscienceless.

“You Millers owe me,” he said. “Hudson cost me something. So far, he ain’t been able to pay. But tonight, when I saw you gettin’ all flirtatious with the new sheriff, I figured out another way for me to get what’s coming to me. I aim to get it.”

Irrationally, Marielle wasn’t most piqued by the threat inherent in that statement. “Flirtatious?” she repeated in an outraged tone. “I assure you, Mr. Sheridan, that I was not—”