Lawman

But in the meantime, until they found out, he could try being sheriff. Maybe before the gossip spread from Bryan, he could do such a good job that it wouldn’t matter which side he had taken in the war. Hadn’t he been looking for something he could do, something he could call his own?

“All right,” he said. ‘I’ll give it a try.”

Several of the onlookers cheered and clapped again. Gillespie bent over the fallen sheriff and unpinned his badge. He handed it to Long, who wiped it with a handkerchief before holding it out to Cal.

Cal took it, breathed deeply and pinned it to his shirt.

The mayor extended his hand again, and Cal shook it, unsmiling, but that didn’t dampen the mayor’s sense of ceremony. “Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to present the new sheriff of Gillespie Springs, Cal Devlin!”

The cheers and clapping began all over again, and the throng was just rushing toward Cal when, from behind him, someone cleared his throat.

“Mr. Devlin!” the doctor called from his open doorway.

Cal watched as the doctor caught sight of the bodies by the bank, saw his eyes widen as he realized that one of them was the sheriff. Then the sawbones turned back to Cal and Cal knew he had spotted the badge he had just pinned on.

“All dead?”

Cal nodded.

“Hmmph. Heard the shots, but I was busy with— with the lady you brought in. If I could just have a word with you?”

Cal nodded again and, grateful for the doctor’s timely interruption and for the fact that he hadn’t mentioned Olivia’s name, left the townspeople who had just been about to surround him.

He followed the sawbones back into the office, past Ginny Petree, who glared at him, and her children, who stared at him goggle-eyed. No doubt she would spread the news soon enough that just before he became the new sheriff, Cal had carried Olivia Gillespie into the doctor’s office. He wondered what the president of the Gillespie Springs Bank would make of the gossip.

The doctor didn’t take him into the examining room, however, but into a small room adjacent to that.

“Is she—is she going to be all right?” Cal asked.

The doctor folded his arms across his barrel chest. “She is, though she’ll need someone to watch her close overnight—she lost a lot of blood, you know.”

Cal knew. “The—the…” He couldn’t bring himself to say the word.

“The baby?” the doctor filled in briskly, his gaze piercing. “She lost it. Ordinarily I’d say ‘unfortunately,’ but under the circumstances…”

Cal looked down at his boots, not knowing what to say. Livy’s words, when he’d found her at the bottom of the stairs, echoed in his ears. Yes, I’m miscarrying…and I’m glad…

Had she been rejoicing that she would no longer have to bear the child who had been the evidence of her sin? As understandable as that was, Cal found it hard to believe the Livy he had known could think that way. Had she cared so little for her slain lover that she would only be relieved to lose his baby? But perhaps she had changed since he had left for the war. Perhaps he had never really known her at all.

The doctor’s raspy voice intruded into his thoughts. “I hope you’ll pardon me fer askin’, but I’m just wonderin’ how you come into this? How’d you happen to be, uh…were you—were you with Miz Gillespie… when the miscarriage began?”

Cal started to say yes, for it was the truth, and then he realized what the doctor had meant by “with” and he felt fury rising in him at the implication. He met the old man’s inquisitive gaze. “I was just pay in’ a call on Mrs. Gillespie to thank her for a kindness she did me recently,” he nearly growled, fighting the urge to punch the sawbones in the nose for what he was implying. “She fell down the stairs, and I’m the one who found her.”

The doctor must have realized he’d offended him, for he took another look at the badge on Cal’s chest. “I meant no offense,” he said quickly. “Just curious, is all…”

“Can I see her?” Cal wanted to see Livy, but he also wanted to escape the questions he knew the doctor was dying to ask.

The man nodded. “She was asleep when I left her, but I imagine she’ll rouse when you talk to her.” He gestured for Cal to follow him.

“Why, Cal, you waltz divinely!” she said, laughing up at the handsome young rector of the Bryan Episcopal Church, who released her with obvious reluctance as the music died. She glanced around, and just as she’d suspected, the eyes of almost all the ladies at the ball were on them, and they were envious eyes. And why shouldn’t they be? She’d been dancing with the catch of Brazos County, and he looked as if he couldn’t bear to give her up to her next partner. She didn’t want him to, either. There was a way she could keep him with her, but would he think her fast? He might…but if she didn’t try she’d never know.

“Cal…” she said, allowing, her lashes to flutter as she looked up at him over her fan, “would you like to take a turn in the garden? I think I’m…a little too warm…”

He smiled down at her, enthusiasm dancing in his wonderful gray-blue eyes. “Miss Livy, I can’t think of anything on this earth I’d like better…”

“Livy…” murmured a voice.

Was it the same voice she’d been hearing in her dream? “Mmm, yes…” she answered.

She extended her hand to Cal and together they stepped through the French windows and out into the rose garden, lit only by the light from the Childress ballroom.

“Livy,” the voice said again. “Livy, can you hear me? Open your eyes.”

Obediently, she did so, but it seemed like such an effort. Her lids seemed weighted down with rocks.

A face, bending low over her, swam into focus. It was the same face she’d seen just moments ago—surely it was just moments ago—under the cottonwood in her backyard.

“Ah, you’re awake,” he said. “How are you feeling?”

How was she feeling? How should she be feeling? she wondered as she studied his solemn face, and then she became aware of the insistent cramping within her belly.

And then she remembered the fall, the sudden sharp pain that had seized her as she struggled to regain her senses at the foot of her stairs and the gushing wet warmth between her legs. She had miscarried the baby, she remembered, and for a moment, sorrow for the loss of that innocent life flooded over her as she lay there looking up into Cal’s concerned face.

But where am I? she wondered as she took her eyes from his face and looked around the tiny room. She recognized at last that she was in Doc Broughton’s examining room—the same room in which he’d told her, just weeks ago, that she was with child. A fact she had already suspected, but the confirmation of that fact had filled her with horror. And the same fact had left the doctor’s face stern with disapproval, for it was, unfortunately, well-known that Dan Gillespie had come back from the war unable to perform his husbandly duties.

But now she was no longer going to bear the baby whose brief existence within her had brought about her disgrace. Sorrow became mingled with a regretful relief. As much as she had longed for a child, this one would have been born into a world of ugliness, and her love for it would have had to exist side by side with her hatred for its father.

“I’m tired,” she managed to whisper at last. “So tired…”

“The doctor says you’re going to be all right,” Cal said, nodding toward the door he’d closed behind him. “But you lost the baby.”

“I—I guessed,” she admitted.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured, his gaze leaving hers, but not before she had seen the question in his eye.

Then she remembered the way he had found her, and how she had told him she was miscarrying, and that she was glad Heavens above, what a heartless monster she must have sounded—to have admitted to a man she had once known so well that she was glad to be losing a baby, whatever the circumstances of its conception! What must he think of her?

“It’s for the best,” she told him.

His penetrating gaze returned to her face. She had forgotten he could study her that way and see to the depths of her soul, and the ability seemed undiminished by the patch that now covered one eye.

She was unable to stop the tears that belied her words.

He reached out and caught a tear with a finger. “You rest now, Livy. I’ll talk to the doctor and see what’s to be done.”

Just then she caught sight of the shiny, five-pointed star pinned to his chest, and she grabbed at his wrist before he could leave.

“Why are you wearing that?” she asked, puzzled.

His face grew guarded. “Don’t worry about that right now, Livy.”

He started to gently disengage his hand, but she tightened her grasp. “No, please tell me. I—I thought I heard shots earlier…”

“Seems there was a bank robbery taking place just about the time I was layin’ you down there,” he said, indicating the examining table she was still lying on. “The sheriff was killed. I stopped them and…well, seems I’m the sheriff of Gillespie Springs now.”

It was a lot of news to digest on top of what had happened to her today. In addition, the doctor had given her something to drink and it was making her feel so muzzy-headed…

“So…you’re the new sheriff…” she murmured, and then she let her too-heavy lids drift shut again.

He found the doctor waiting for him in the hallway. The old coot had probably been listening at the keyhole, Cal thought with irritation.

“You were saying that Mrs. Gillespie was going to need someone to be with her,” Cal began.

“Just a few days, till she gets her strength back,” the doctor said. “She an’ Dan used ta have some widow woman to help with the cleanin and such, but she hightailed it outa there when—when Dan Gillespie died, and I can tell you she wouldn’t come back.”

“You know some woman who might be willing to take the job?” Cal asked the doctor. “Some woman who needs the money more than she worries about what people think?”

The sawbones looked doubtful. “I dunno. Folks is pretty disapprovin’ a’ what they say Miz Gillespie did.”

Cal felt a surge of anger. Livy needed another female with her at such a time, damn it. There were things she’d need done, questions she’d have—and only another woman would do. He’d stay with her himself if there was no other choice—he wouldn’t let her be alone—but he knew that was the last thing Olivia Gillespie would want and the last thing her reputation needed, especially right now.

“You might ask around town,” the sawbones said. “Mebbe they’d listen, since it was you askin’. You’re ridin’ pretty high in folks’ opinions right now. But meanwhile, I gotta get back to my patients. And I’m gonna have to see them in my watting room,” he added, as if it were somehow Cal’s fault that his sole examining room was occupied.

“Give me an hour,” Cal said shortly. “I’ll see if I can find someone, then I’ll locate a wagon and take her home.”

“Good luck,” Broughton said, a skeptical note in his voice as he headed into his waiting room to see Ginny Petree’s restless brats.

As he left the doctor’s office, Cal was hailed by Mayor Long from the steps of the Gillespie Springs Bank.

“Devlin? Everything all right?”

Perhaps Long would know of a woman who could stay with Olivia, he thought, striding over the planking that led to the bank next door.

“Oh, everything’s fine,” he said. “I was…just checking on a friend.”

Too late, Cal saw Gillespie standing in the shadows, just inside the bank door. Hellfire, Cal thought, borrowing one of Sam’s favorite expressions. He couldn’t very well ask Long if he knew a woman who could help Livy for a few days right in front of the brother-in-law who hated her.

“We were concerned when we saw you go into the doctor’s office,” Gillespie said, his voice purring. “I trust you were not injured in the fray? I assure you, the town will pay all bills incurred in the line of duty.”

“No, I wasn’t, Mr. Gillespie.”

“Oh please, call me Bob. All my friends do,” said Gillespie, slapping Cal on the back. “And I’ll call you Cal, if that’s agreeable?”

Cal hoped the fact that he detested Gillespie’s familiarity and overhearty voice didn’t show as he nodded. “Bob, I won’t keep you from your duties,” he said. “I was just hoping the mayor would be kind enough to show me around the jail—you know, where the keys are kept and so forth?”

As he’d hoped, Gillespie either took the hint or wasn’t interested in such mundane details, and said he was sure he’d be seeing Cal around town. But Cal was aware of the bank president’s eyes boring into his back as he and Long crossed the street to the jail.

Was it only a couple of hours ago that Cal had entered this office to ask where he might find Olivia? How ironic that he was now returning as its new sheriff. He didn’t mention his previous visit to Long, though. Instead he listened and watched patiently as Long showed him around inside, pointing with pride at the two cells—fortunately empty, Cal noted.

Long tsked as he observed that the sheriffs desk still bore the remains of his dinner—a meal Cal had so recently seen the sheriff eating.

“As I said, your quarters are up above,” the mayor explained. “You reach it by a stairway out back. Come on, I’ll show you,” he said, reaching inside the desk for a ring of keys. “But I’ll warn you, Olin Watts, the old sheriff, wasn’t known for bein’ neat. Every so often he’d have this Mexican woman come and tidy up, but Watts was kinda stingy with a coin, so she only did it once in a blue moon.”

Cal followed him back outside and up the weathered steps.

The mayor hadn’t exaggerated the late sheriffs lack of tidiness, and apparently there hadn’t been a blue moon lately, for clothes lay haphazardly piled over the room’s only chair. The bed was unmade, the wrinkled sheets yellowed with age and lack of washing. Halfempty cans of beans and cups with coffee rings took up half of the table. The other half was littered with yellowed newspapers. A daguerreotype was nailed to the cracked plaster wall, and as Cal bent to study it he saw that it had been taken at a hanging, for it featured three dangling bodies with hoods over their heads, their necks bent at unnatural angles.

“The Galtry brothers, horse thieves,” read the scrawled notation on the plaster wall, “hanged March 8, 1868.”

“He certainly had an odd sense of the artistic,” Cal said, straightening and turning from the picture.

Long chuckled, then looked dismayed as he surveyed the clutter. “That Mexican woman’ll come and clean this for you. I’m really sorry, Cal. Why don’t we put you up at the hotel tonight—at the town’s expense, of course? I’ll have Jovita Mendez come and set it all to rights this evening.”

Cal had been conscious of the quickly passing minutes and had wondered how he was going to bring up the subject of the woman he needed to find for Olivia, but perhaps James Long had just supplied the opening he needed.

“Aw, don’t worry about this mess, it won’t take long to straighten up in here. But I do need to find a woman, now that you mention it—”

James Long grinned. “Right behind the saloon there’s a brothel of sorts. There’s two-three sportin’ women that live there—I imagine they can cure what ails you.”

Cal couldn’t help but smile at the way the mayor had mistaken his meaning. “No, I don’t mean that kind of female. You mentioned a woman who’d come and clean? Mrs. Daniel Gillespie just happens to be…an old acquaintance of mine, and she’s, uh…been real ill,” he said, praying Long wouldn’t press him for details. The full story would be spread soon enough, by that nosy mother in the waiting room. “The doctor said she was gonna need someone to stay with her for a few days, and I was just wonderin’ if perhaps this woman you mentioned would be willing? I’d pay her.”

He saw the mayor’s sunny expression become clouded. “Miz Gillespie’s…a friend a yours?” There was a world of insinuated meaning in the way he said friend.

“An old friend, from my growin’ up days in Bryan,” Cal said, careful to keep his voice casual. “I’m just try in’ to help her out….”

“Yes, of course,” Long said quickly, not meeting Cal’s eye. “Sure, I imagine Jovita Mendez’d be glad to earn some money takin’ care a’ Miz Gillespie. She probably doesn’t earn much takin’ in mendin’ and cleanin houses and such. Come on, I know where we can find her.”

By the time the sun was setting, Cal had hired the middle-aged Mexican woman, who was pathetically grateful for the job, and together they had brought Livy back to her own house in the buckboard Cal had found behind the barn, pulled by Blue.

Jovita Mendez insisted on fixing him supper after she’d tucked a sleepy Olivia into bed, and with her new employer’s permission, sent some clean sheets with him when he at last took his leave.

“That Senor Watts, he was a peeg, Dios rest his soul,” she said, crossing herself as she handed him the sheets at the door. “Don’t you worry, Señor Devleen. I weel take good care of the señora for you.”

He started to tell her that it wasn’t for him, exactly, but he guessed that this plump woman, unlike the rest of the town, was not an inveterate gossip. And that the shrewd eyes saw more than he might have wished. “Thank you, Jovita,” he said simply. He went to the barn to collect his horse, knowing he’d have to settle him at the livery stable before seeking his own rest.

He hoped his mama and Annie weren’t going to worry when he didn’t show up back at the farm tonight. In the summer, he could have ridden Blue home before it had gotten fully dark, but he wasn’t about to chance the roan breaking a leg loping over the road on this moonless autumn night. He’d get up early the next morning and ride home in time for breakfast, tell his family about his new job as sheriff and be back in Gillespie Springs before noon.

At the same time as Cal was struggling to make the room over the jail fit for human occupation—at least fit enough so he could get some sleep without worrying about roaches carrying him off—a conversation was taking place at Gillespie’s habitual table at the Last Chance Saloon.

“Thought you’d want to know I was takin’ care a’ your sister-in-law this mornin’, just about the time Olin Watts was gettin’ gunned down,” Doc Broughton said, then took a sip of his whiskey.

Robert Gillespie raised a brow at the cold-blooded way Broughton had mentioned the killing of the sheriff, then growled, “What makes you think I’d care about that murdering bitch?”

“Oh, I think you’ll care,” murmured the sawbones smugly. He puffed on his cigar until Gillespie was about ready to strangle him, but the banker would be damned if he’d ask and thereby show too much interest.

“She lost that baby. Had a fall down the stairs, she told me, an’ started bleedin. She was hemorrhagin’ by the time she was brought in t’me. If our fine new sheriff hadn’t found her, she mighta bled to death.”

“Why didn’t you just let the bitch die?” Gillespie growled.

“Aw, Bob, you know I cain’t do that,” protested Broughton. “I had a waitin’ room fulla people, and that sorta thing ain’t good for business. Ain’t it good enough that now the woman ain’t gonna give birth to no halfgreaser bastard to inherit your brother’s land?”

Gillespie was still examining his mixed emotions about his sister-in-law’s miscarriage. “Yes, I reckon that’s one good thing,” he finally said.

“And besides,” the sawbone continued, “Devlin was appearin’ t’take an interest. Seems he knew the woman…”

By then the rest of what Broughton had said earlier had sunk in. “You say Devlin found her? How’d that happen?” Gillespie demanded, chewing on the end of his own cigar.

The sawbones shrugged. “He said he was just payin’ a call. He’d been real insistent that I drop every thin’ to treat her, and he got real defensive when I, uh, kinda probed around as to how well he an’ your sister-in-law was acquainted.”

Gillespie studied the rotund physician. “Hmm. Now isn’t that interesting? This one-eyed fellow shows up just in time to stop a bank robbery, and he just happens to know Olivia. And he just happens to find her losing her baby. I call that an interesting bunch of coincidences, indeed I do.”

Chapter Five

Predictably, Sarah Devlin wasn’t pleased to hear that her son had taken on the hazardous profession of sheriff.

“Honest to Pete, Caleb Travis Devlin, I just get you back from the dead, and now you’ve taken up the most dangerous profession there is,” she complained as she dished up his second helping of flapjacks. “You might just as well tell me now what hymns you want played at your funeral,” she added tartly.

Cal grinned. “I expect you’d have to hold a funeral here, and you ladies’d have to sing any hymns without accompaniment, ‘cause I don’t reckon Mr. Maxwell would countenance preachin’ my funeral service,” he drawled. Of the three women present, only Mercy returned his smile.

“Cal, you stop teasin’ Mama,” snapped Annie. “You ‘bout worried her to death not showin’ up last night. She’s already imagined you murdered somewhere on the road, and now you come in and tell her you’ve hung a star on your shirt because the last sheriff was killed right in front of you?”

“I already said I was sorry for not returning last night, and why I didn’t,” Cal said evenly. “And you know there isn’t much chance of anything interesting happening in Gillespie Springs again for about another hundred years, so you can stop frettin’. I was hoping someone in this family would wish me good luck, at least.”

“I do, brother,” Sam said from across the table, extending his hand over a plate that had been piled twice as high with flapjacks as Cal’s had. “I think it’s right fine we have a lawman in the family now.”

“You haven’t said why your other arm’s in a sling,” Cal commented.

Now it was Sam’s turn to grin. “That Goliad a’ yours took exception to pullin’ up after he beat Johnson’s stud in a race from their barn to Bryan. That was after he bred their mare, mind you. But don’t worry about me— nothin’s broke, I’m just a little sore.”

“He won’t do that if you give him a treat before he runs—an apple or a lump of sugar or something,” Cal said.

“Now you tell me,” Sam said ruefully, but the twinkle in his eyes showed he didn’t blame Cal. “I think ol’ Goliad’s gonna win us as much money racing as he is in stud fees. Not bad for an old warhorse.”

But Garrick, who’d been sitting silently, pushing his breakfast around on his plate, didn’t let the talk drift to Sam’s favorite topic, horse racing.

“Did you meet up with the Widow Gillespie before you played hero in front a’ the whole town?” he inquired.

Cal finished chewing before he replied. “I did.”

“Is she still, urn, in a ‘delicate condition’?”

“Garrick! I’m sure Cal did not bring up the subject to her!” Annie scolded.

“Annie, you’re becoming a prissy old woman!” Garrick retorted sourly.

Annie gasped and seemed about to reply in kind when Sarah intervened. “Garrick Devlin, you will apologize. I will not have you speaking to your sister in this fashion.”

“Mama, it’s just the truth. Ever since her husband died she’s been as fussy as an old hen.”

Annie sniffed and pulled a lacy handkerchief out of her pocket.

“Sweep your own doorstep first, mister,” came their mother’s firm reply. “You haven’t exactly been sweet as pie yourself these days.”

Annie looked mollified, Garrick sullen.

Cal spoke up before anything else could be said. “As much as I’d love to stay and chat, I’ve got to be getting back. They’ll be expecting to see my face around Gillespie Springs.”

“But Cal, you never told us anything more about Olivia,” protested Annie.

He’d hoped he was going to get by without doing so, but that hope died as he saw the curiosity written all over Annie’s face. He might as well get it over with; the gossip would get back this way before long, anyway.