Beautiful Bad Man (14 page)

Mr. Huber didn’t have a chance to recognize her. Caleb introduced her. “My wife wants to pay her debt here, Mr. Huber. If you’ll tell us how much is on the Hawkins account, she’ll settle up.”

Huber’s dour face actually lit up. “That’s an account I never expected to see another penny on.”

He bent down to get his ledger from under the counter, and Norah made faces at Caleb.

After considerable page flipping, Huber pointed with one grubby finger. “Right there. Seventy-eight dollars and thirty-two cents.”

Norah pulled out the money she’d so recently pocketed and paid, watching Huber’s careful notation of paid in full like a hawk.

Her husband then bought more oats than Norah believed the farm had produced the previous year.

“What are we going to do with all that?” she asked as they drove away.

“Feed horses.”

“I’m not getting a good feeling about your business sense.”

“If I can’t make a living farming, I’ll go back to killing people. It’s easier anyway.”

She had nothing more to say to him after that. At least not till they pulled up at the general store. “I don’t have enough to pay the account here, so you can’t make me do it.”

“Give me what you’ve got, and I’ll pay the difference. Keep twenty for yourself and sew it in your foundations for emergencies.”

“What emergencies?” she asked suspiciously, digging out all her lovely money and handing over everything except one pretty gold piece.

“If I knew that, they wouldn’t be emergencies.”

Purchasing supplies without having to weigh the value of having one thing over another and keep down cost any way possible was a new and intoxicating experience for Norah. By the time they finished, she was dizzy with it.

“It’s been so long I’m afraid I forgot something,” she told Caleb.

“You have all night to think of anything we missed. We can get it before we leave in the morning.”

She would have all night to think? Tonight was their wedding night, even if the wedding was a little — different.

The thought of the saloon or the hotel brought on a different kind of dizziness. She couldn’t bring herself to ask Caleb what he planned. Crawling under the tarpaulin on the wagon and freezing probably.

Darkness enveloped the town, and even the saloons appeared quiet from the outside by the time they finished every chore. Caleb groomed the Percherons while they ate the small portion of oats he decided was safe for animals in their condition, and he gave her a brush and expected her to help.

They left the horses munching hay heaped high in their mangers and walked to the restaurant. Norah’s stomach growled in approval.

“I can’t eat in a restaurant like this,” she complained. “I smell like a horse.”

“So do most of the folks in there.”

“Not the women.”

“There’s a place you can wash up back by the kitchen.”

Too tired and hungry to object, she nodded.

“
P
LEASE TELL ME
we aren’t going to spend the night in a saloon.”

Walking out of the warmth of the restaurant into the frigid winter night made Norah wish she could still cry.

“We aren’t.”

“The hotel?”

“I’d rather sleep in the street.”

That seemed to be the only choice left, but Norah couldn’t bear to say so. She followed Caleb in the dark, not understanding when he led the way between two buildings and then along behind the stores on the main street. She did understand when he stopped and tried a locked door, the rattle loud in the night.

“You’re not breaking into one of these stores,” she whispered furiously.

“Sure I am. We need a place to spend the night, and here’s an empty place with a stove with a banked fire in it and everything we need.”

“You can’t....” But he could. She heard a crunching and tearing noise, and the door opened. She tried to balk, but he grabbed her arm and yanked her inside.

“Stop fussing. We’re not going to hurt anything.”

“You already broke the door down. This is like moving into my house without a word. It’s stealing.”

“Stealing what? We’re not going to take anything. We’ll burn a little extra coal, and I didn’t break the door down, just did a little damage around the edges. We paid a debt he never expected to collect here today. What’s he got to complain about?”

She wanted to screech at him, but someone might hear, and she’d probably go to jail with him. And she was too tired anyway, and how did anyone sleep in a general store where every square foot was filled with shelves and one thing after another?

There was some empty space around the stove, but it was the
floor
. How could he expect her to spend her wedding night on the floor in a store where he’d made her pay her father’s and husband’s debts earlier the same day?

Light from the stove as he added fuel showed shadowy shapes all around. The door grated softly as he closed it, and almost total darkness returned. Norah jumped as something soft brushed by her, falling to her feet.

“There. Make a bed out of those.”

“Those” were blankets. Dozens of them by the feel. “Caleb....”

“Didn’t you promise to obey today?”

She didn’t answer.

“Make a bed out of those blankets. Be quiet and go to sleep.”

She smoothed out the blankets as best she could, hearing him doing the same nearby. The thick pile did make a decent mattress, and she was warm, and her stomach was full. That was how she’d gotten herself into this mess to start with, thinking about only the good things.

When she had suggested — all right, proposed — marriage, she had thought about the good things. How he was the Boy and in spite of everything that had happened between them recently, what happened so long ago was important and had forged an enduring connection. How he brought her food and wood even if she didn’t want them, and didn’t shoot her, hit her, or even yell at her when she behaved so dreadfully in return.

She’d thought about him checking to see how she was doing at her new job and taking her for her first meal in a restaurant. Not making fun about the goats. Holding her when she needed to be held so badly. Looking for her when he heard she’d quit.

She had to stop trying to paper over the bad things, though. No matter the reasons, he saw the world in a twisted way. Yes, she thought of him as a thief and a liar, but she had to stop letting her mind skitter over the worst things, the really bad things.

He was a killer, a murderer. He could kill without a flicker of emotion crossing his face, and he had joked about it today — if he was joking. With a man who smiled seldom and as far as she could tell never laughed, it was hard to tell.

If they were caught here, they’d deserve to go to jail. Caleb was the only one who deserved to go for breaking into the store and using Mr. Lawson’s coal and throwing brand new blankets on the floor and sleeping on them smelling of horse. She deserved to go for being criminally stupid, a charge Caleb had made several times, although not for the right reason.

Depending on what Mr. Van Cleve did next, Caleb might just save the farm, and her. With so much cash to burn, he’d leave her in a position to hire help next year.

Because he would leave. Farming would bore him soon, and he wouldn’t honor marriage vows any more than any other promise. He would leave her better off, though, debts paid and equipment purchased.

She thought she could feel him close in the dark. Thoughts of what conceiving a child would involve rose unbidden, and her body reacted. Her fingers twitched, but wool blankets were not what she wanted to touch. Would he be gentle? Rough? Indifferent? How foolish was she to trust him?

I don’t care. Let him leave me with a child. If that happens, nothing else matters.

For better or for worse. She’d keep her side of the bargain, but only this side of a jail cell. No more of this thieving business. He would lie, but she wouldn’t, and she most certainly wasn’t killing anyone. Decisions made and clear in her mind, she fell asleep.

C
AL WOKE AT
first light, rose, folded the blankets he’d slept on, and returned them to the table where they belonged.

On his own, he’d walk out of here without looking back, but with Norah along, disapproving of every move, he figured to smooth things over as best possible. The ride home was a long one and would be longer beside an angry woman. Home. Truly home. Worth folding a few blankets to keep a wife, if not happy, at least less unhappy.

He crouched to wake her, then hesitated, taken with the sight of her in sleep. With all the worry gone from her face, she looked content, her mouth soft and curved in a half-smile. Dark lashes made lacy fringes on eyelids that fluttered as her eyes moved underneath. Smooth skin invited a caress, dark arches of eyebrows the stroke of a fingertip.

He accepted the second invitation. A sound like a word not quite formed escaped her. Instead of springing awake, she turned on her side, curling a little and snuggling deeper into her pile of blankets.

He tried again. Two fingers this time. One along her eyebrow and the other on the fragile skin below. Her eyes opened, taking in first him and then everything else around them.

“Up and at ’em,” he said. “Sleeping free means being gone before anyone else is awake.”

She gave him a sleepy smile that took his breath away. “Good morning.”

Keeping control of the situation around her might turn into a full time job. She sat up, yawning, folded blankets and stacked them beside the others without comment.

Catching sight of a curious gleam on the front counter when he checked one last time to make sure nothing remained to identify them was actually a relief. She hadn’t changed into some different, compliant woman after all.

He retrieved the twenty dollar gold piece and gave it to Norah. “Don’t do that again.”

“Or what.”

“Or nothing. Don’t do it again. No wonder you lost most of your money within a day of quitting your job. We’re talking partnership money now. Argue with me if you have to but don’t go throwing gold coins around like we’re made of them.”

He slapped a single dollar down where the gold piece had been and herded her out. Her muley look returned, but he wasn’t paying nineteen dollars to be rid of that.

She chatted easily enough through breakfast about what they’d bought and visiting the Carburys to retrieve the household goods she’d stored with them months ago. He hoped she’d put aside the subject of his sins for a while but wasn’t counting on it, and he risked making it worse with his last words to Ogden, which felt a little like a betrayal, even to him.

“Why don’t you get word to Van Cleve about those big horses? He hauls a lot of timber from the hills up north and some stone from the quarries there too. If he knew he could get good teams for dog meat prices, fatten them on grass, and have them ready to work in a month or two, he might help you out.”

Ogden started to say something, glanced at Norah, and said, “I guess you’d know. I’ll do it. If he takes one it’s better than none.”

He offered his hand. Cal shook his head slightly, and climbed to the wagon seat.

She didn’t seem angry but sad. “You like horses better than people, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

The way she fidgeted on the seat prepared him for more serious talk, but not the line she took. “I don’t feel like a partner, you know. I don’t even feel much like a wife. Even my mother — she lived that verse from the Bible ‘wives be submissive,’ but at least she knew what she had to be submissive to before it happened. You’re always ahead of me, and I run along behind as fast as I can, and when I catch up you do something so surprising I wish I’d run the other way. Do you think you could warn me — we’re going to pay your father’s old debts, don’t worry about a saloon or the hotel, we’re going to spend the night someplace we shouldn’t but it will be warm and dry?”

“If I told you ahead of time you’d fuss.”

“I fuss anyway only afterward instead of before. And afterward I’m not only upset because I think you’re wrong, I’m angry because you did it without telling me. Like right now. We’re headed in the wrong direction to go home.”

The wisdom of keeping plans to himself had been beaten deep into Cal a long time ago. Everything inside him resisted the idea of trusting anyone with plans. Right now he could give her what she wanted, though. Where they were going now wasn’t a secret that needed keeping.

“We’re going to see the dog man and get a dog before we head home.”

“A dog! We don’t have sheep. What do we need a dog for?”

“Van Cleve is going to come after us hard and probably before he wastes time on anyone else. If he can show the others who are holding out that he can run someone like me — like us — off, then everyone may fold. You know why I believe he killed your husband?”

She shook her head.

“Asa Preston told me he killed my uncle. He laid in wait out in the yard, and when the old boy went out in the night to use the privy, Preston snatched him and threw him down the well. I’ve got no sympathy for Uncle Henry. I hope he died hard, and I regret I’m not the one did for him, but that tells me the way Preston’s mind works. I don’t want him able to sneak up on us in the night and kill you, me, or the horses. A dog can hear things we can’t. If we get the right kind of dog, no one will be sneaking up on us.”

He could see her chewing that over and didn’t like it that she saw more than he wanted her to.

“That’s why you insisted I buy a red scarf and that red-striped material for a coat yesterday. You want to make sure if Preston tries to shoot you from a distance, he doesn’t make a mistake.”

“I like bright colors is all. The land is pretty flat for that kind of sharpshooting. There’s not many places to set up.”

“I’ve heard buffalo guns like yours are accurate for more than half a mile.”

“They are, but only a handful of men in the country are. I’m not, and I doubt anybody in the State of Kansas right now is. Don’t worry about it.”

“I suppose you like dogs more than people too.”