Beautiful Bad Man (29 page)

“Did you recognize him? Was he one of Van Cleve’s men?”

“No, and he didn’t look like one of Van Cleve’s, too dirty, dressed too rough.”

So he was just another man who had heard about Van Cleve’s bounty and died trying to earn it, Norah thought. And this one may have succeeded in killing Caleb.

They rode in silence for a while, Norah concentrating on the rattles and creaks of the wagon, the muffled thumps of the horses’ hooves in the road, and Early’s nervous panting.

“What was he up to last night?” Archie asked.

“Another bounty man tried to kill him yesterday at our place. He went to discuss the matter with Mr. Van Cleve.”

Archie’s only response was a low whistle. He would guess Caleb planned to kill Van Cleve, and Archie was perceptive enough to know that meant Caleb also planned to leave Hubbell and the State of Kansas. Maybe he’d even guess Caleb was leaving her.

After more miles of silence, Archie said, “Got to hope he succeeded.”

No one spoke after that. Norah clenched her hands in her lap and prayed.

N
ORAH HARDLY WAITED
for Archie to rein up in the yard, much less for help down. After countless sessions in Becky’s room admiring the girl’s latest dress or bonnet, Norah knew the way. She ran up the stairs and to the second door on the left, hurried in, and stopped in horror at the sight.

Mabel and Granny Johnson bent over the bed, hiding all but small glimpses of Caleb. Blood-soaked cloths filled a pan by the bed.

The room reeked of carbolic overlaid with something stronger, nauseating — burned flesh. Mabel straightened, her face tired and apron streaked with more blood.

“There you are. Granny has the bullet and the bone fragments out and the bleeding stopped. I’ll let you be the assistant from here.”

Norah barely noticed Mabel’s hug or departure. She crossed the few feet to the bed and stared down at her beautiful bad man.

He lay on his stomach, face turned toward her, naked to the waist, trousers wet with blood, red streaks and smears all over his back. Granny stopped dabbing at an angry circle of burned flesh.

“Had to cauterize, but we got it stopped. Here now. If you’re going to faint or retch, get out of here and get Mabel back.”

Norah reached down and closed a hand around Caleb’s forearm. Warm. Alive. She took a deep breath. “I’m fine. Tell me what to do.”

“Get the rest of his clothes off. All that’s left is bandage him up, clean him up, and cover him up.”

His boots hung past the end of the bed and rested on the oak chest there. The sight brought a lump to Norah’s throat. She pulled them off as gently as she could. Stockings next. How could bare feet make a man look so vulnerable?

When she tried to reach under him to unfasten his trousers, Granny said, “Don’t try to lift him even a little. We can’t have the bleeding start again. Here.” She slapped a large pair of scissors into Norah’s hand.

Norah struggled to cut the thick, wet cloth until she had enough cut away to peel off the rest. His drawers were easier.

“I took off that thing he had around his waist. It’s over there.” Granny pointed to the money belt, coiled on top of the bedside table.

“If they shoot me, make sure you get the money belt off the body before anyone else gets it.”
Caleb had said that the first time they’d come to visit the Carburys. A choked sound escaped her.

“No retching,” Granny said, her wrinkled face set in hard lines.

“I’m fine.”

“You’re a fool is what you are. Marrying one like this guaranteed this day would come.”

Norah wanted to argue, let fear erupt in anger, but Caleb needed this cranky old woman. “Thank you for coming for him, Granny. I was afraid you wouldn’t.”

“I only did it for the boy. Carbury needs to sit that boy down and make sure he knows one like this is no hero because that’s what the boy is thinking.”

“Caleb would agree with you about that,” Norah said.

The older woman gave her a suspicious look, then seemed to realize Norah wasn’t making light. Granny bandaged the wound so tightly Norah questioned her.

“Got to keep what’s left of his blood in. If he wakes up, get him to take water. If he don’t wake up, spoon it in a little at a time. That’ll help stretch what blood he’s got left.”

Norah didn’t want to ask and couldn’t stop the words. “Has he got a chance?”

“If they’re alive, there’s a chance. So far as I can tell the bullet didn’t hit anything he can’t live without. Hit a rib and broke some off, but I think I got all the pieces. He lost too much blood, and there’s the fever to come. It’s up to God now.”

Granny packed bottles and instruments into the basket she used for medical supplies and left with it and the pan of bloody cloth, closing the door behind her harder than necessary.

Norah brushed his hair off his forehead and kissed him, on his mouth, on every bit of uncovered skin. Sinking to her knees by the bed, holding his arm, she found how wrong she’d been. She hadn’t run out of tears over Joey. She had just stopped loving anyone enough to cry.

Her throat closed, aching too much to swallow, but not too much for wracking sobs. She cried until her eyes and her head throbbed, and her breath came in gasps. She would have cried longer except for a small movement under her hand.

His eyes didn’t open, his voice was faint and didn’t sound like Caleb, but the words were distinct. “Need to — negotiate. No crying — over me.”

“Caleb? Caleb!” But he was gone again. And she hadn’t even tried to get water down him.

She fished her handkerchief out of a pocket, blew her nose, and whirled at the sound of the door opening behind her. “He said something. Words that made sense. That’s good isn’t it?”

Granny marched in and smacked more water and clean rags down beside the bed. “Here, use this, then wash your face,” she said, handing Norah a rag.

Norah complied and looked at Granny expectantly.

“I figured you married him because you were out of choices out there alone, and he could keep Van Cleve off you,” Granny said. “I could understand that, but how did you go and fall in love with a killer? I suppose that handsome face and fine body make you overlook a sinful nature.”

Norah stuffed the dirty rag in her pocket and met the old woman’s unsympathetic black eyes. “I love him for a hundred reasons. Those are only two.”

“Mumbling a few words don’t mean anything. He did that while I worked on him, and if he cares about anyone, it ain’t you. He said, ‘I always loved the Girl.’”

Norah closed her eyes to stop more tears. When she opened them, she startled the old woman with a hard hug. “Thank you for that.”

Granny gave Norah the kind of look people reserved for drunks and the feeble-minded and left.

Sitting on the floor beside the bed, Norah took Caleb’s hand in hers, leaned against the mattress, and drifted off to something resembling sleep.

The scratch of a match woke her. Granny touched the flame to the wick of the bedside lamp, and the darkened room glowed with dim light. Caleb lay still as death, but the hand in Norah’s was warm.

“I thought Archie or the boys would have taken you home by now,” Norah said.

“I’ll stay the night.” Granny hesitated, then said, “Mabel told me about you two. Maybe I see how it could be, like Androcles pulling the thorn from the lion’s paw.”

The thought of herself as Androcles and Caleb as the lion in the Aesop’s fable almost made Norah smile. “Becky thought it was very romantic until she met him. He scares her, so she’s sure I’m terrified of him too and won’t admit it.”

“He’d scare most sensible women, and Becky’s years away from sensible.”

Norah did smile at that. “You don’t have to sit with him. I’m staying here.”

“I’ll keep you company, but first you get downstairs and get something to eat. Do something about that dog while you’re down there before someone shoots it.”

By the time Norah reached the bottom of the stairs, she heard the whining, rising and falling in a ceaseless rhythm.

Archie’s voice came from the darkened parlor. “The boys drug him to the barn a while ago and tied him there, but he chewed through the rope and came back. Mabel won’t let me shoot him, so Ben thinks we ought to drown him in the horse trough and not tell her.”

“He needs to see Caleb.”

“Take him on up then. If he jumps on the bed, either Granny or Mabel will wring his neck and at least it will stop that infernal noise.”

Norah opened the door and caught the frantic dog in her arms as he lunged through. The rope he’d chewed still hung from his neck, and she used it to slow his dash for the stairs. Like her, Early didn’t need directions.

Granny sat in the room’s only chair, knitting, and started when the dog hurtled in. “What? Get that thing out of here.”

“I will, just give him a minute.”

The dog nuzzled the same hand Norah had held, licked, and whined, his wildly waving tail slowly lowering and falling still. As if understanding what he’d seen, Early sank to the floor near the foot of the bed, head on paws, eyes on Caleb.

“That’s it? The dog’s going to lay on the floor and moon over that man the same as you?”

“Yes. Early thinks I’m good for dishing up food and a few other things, but I’m not the one who makes the sun rise in the morning.”

Granny made a sound close to a snort. “Leave it here then. Tell Archie we need another chair, and don’t come back until you’ve eaten something.”

Because she needed a trip round back, Norah obeyed.

L
ATE MORNING OF
the next day, Early raised his head and gave a deep growl. The sound continued, grating across Norah’s nerves like sandpaper. Cracking the bedroom door open, she listened only long enough to identify Sheriff’s Ludlow’s voice among those arguing below.

Nothing she said or did silenced the dog. At least he showed no tendency to escalate to barking.

Her rifle leaned against the wall next to Caleb’s, the gleaming brass frame he had polished for her a reminder of the source of the gun. Surely no one could recognize it. Maybe not, but just in case she took Caleb’s.

Moving into the hall, she closed the door behind her, leaving Early to stand guard. Did the sheriff and his men know Caleb was here, or were they guessing, searching? For the first time she wished she hadn’t made Archie bring Jeb and Stonewall. A plain bay horse like Forrest wouldn’t be so obvious as the Percherons. Early was at least safely out of sight.

She crept to the top of the stairs and listened. They knew. They’d followed the blood trail here from where Caleb had fallen. That meant they somehow knew where he’d been shot.

The thought no more crossed her mind than she heard an unknown voice, pitched high and loud with emotion.

“Bo Murdock shot that miserable killer and lost his brother doing it. He wants the bounty, and he can have it if Sutton’s dead. We’re not leaving until we have him or see his body.”

The only question was whether to make a stand here or at the bottom of the stairs. The farther she could keep them from Caleb the better, she decided.

She stopped on the last step and brought the rifle to bear on Ludlow’s stomach. Surely she could hit a target that size across a room. If only the room weren’t so crowded.

Mabel and Archie, Ben and his brothers, Becky and Ethan, Granny Johnson and her oldest son all faced Sheriff Ludlow and a man Norah recognized as Van Cleve from the cut of his clothes and Caleb’s description of him as an arrogant runt. Through the front windows, Norah glimpsed mounted deputies.

The sheriff took Norah in at a glance. “Put that rifle down, Mrs. Hawkins. I don’t want to shoot a woman, but I will if I have to.”

Her hands stayed steady, and she didn’t let the rifle waver. “Mrs.
Sutton
. And I don’t want to shoot a sheriff, but I will if I have to. You’re not taking my husband anywhere.”

Granny said, “I told you. Moving him will kill him. He hasn’t got enough blood left in him to spare a drop.”

“And I told you, I don’t care. He should have thought of that before he assaulted Mr. Van Cleve, scared his wife half to death, and set their house on fire.”

The smile Granny gave Van Cleve was pure venom. “Burned you out did he? I wish I could have seen it.”

“No, he didn’t burn me out. What he did was throw a dead body in my bed and stick a gun under my chin. He was going to kill me. The devil had every intent, but my wife walked in and scared him off. The fire was just a little....”

As if he realized minimizing the fire was a mistake, Van Cleve snapped his mouth shut.

Ben broke into the escalating tension in the room, words spilling out in a nervous torrent. “It couldn’t have been Cal — Mr. Sutton — in your house two nights ago, Mr. Van Cleve. Me and my pa found him out on the prairie the day before that, shot in the back and almost dead. We brought him home, and he’s been here ever since. I bet it was dark in your room that night. I bet you didn’t see clear. Somebody else did what you said because Mr. Sutton was already shot by then.”

The boy stopped speaking, an astonished look on his face, as if the lie that had just spilled out surprised him as much as everyone else.

Archie recovered first. “The boy and I were getting ready to take my daughter and her husband back to town. We heard gunshots and went and found Sutton the way Ben said.”

Granny folded her arms across her thin chest and chimed in. “Mr. Carbury came and got me before he even went for Mrs. Sutton.”

“I spent hours working with Granny to get the bleeding stopped,” Mabel said.

Granny’s son said, “Ma’s been here ever since Mr. Carbury come for her. I’m here to bring her home.”

The older Carbury sons made agreeing sounds.

Becky had fidgeted and stared at each person who spoke, looking miserable. Now she pitched in, making Ben’s story seem slow and calm by comparison.

“We’re visiting from town, my husband and me. We’re going to have to move to Topeka, so we visited for a whole week, and we were here when Pa and Ben brought him back, Norah’s husband, that is. Brought him back shot and bloody, and he’s in my room, in my bed. My brothers had to double up so Ethan and I didn’t have to sleep on the floor, and we need to get home, and no one can take us. We can’t go by ourselves, you know, even if we had a buggy, because your men....”