Liz Ireland (2 page)

In a frenzy of frills and frizzy hair, Paulie practically leapt over the bar in her hurry to get to him. “Will Brockett!”
she cried, launching herself at him in her old exuberant way. “Will—it’s really you!”

“Of course it’s me,” he said. Will allowed himself to be squeezed nearly to death, then held her out at arm’s distance. “The question is, is that really
you?”

She smiled, and did a lively, if not exactly graceful, pirouette for him. “Like it?”

He couldn’t help staring slack-jawed at her, his amazement utterly unchecked. “What is it?” he asked, gaping at the layers and layers of frills covering her.

Offense sparked in her eyes. “A dress!”

Paulie? In a dress? He wasn’t quite comfortable with the idea. And she didn’t look particularly comfortable herself.

“What happened to your britches?”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” she answered testily. “I’ve still got ‘em. Can’t a girl wear a dress around here every once in a while?”

“Well sure, but…where in tarnation did you get such an outfit?” It looked like the sort of dress women had worn years and years ago, before the war, when he was a boy. “I know Dwight doesn’t keep his stock up-to-date over at the mercantile, but…”

Paulie frowned and planted her fists on her slim hips—although they didn’t seem so slim given her ridiculously flared skirts. “It’s not from Dwight’s. It was my mother’s.”

“Are you actually wearing a hoop skirt?” he asked in amazement, using his toe to investigate exactly what was beneath those voluminous skirts.

With a scowl, Paulie slapped his leg away. “Of course! I’d look pretty silly without it,” she said.

She looked pretty silly
with
it, but Will didn’t dare voice the rejoinder on the tip of his tongue. Paulie, engulfed in flounces, ribbons, bows and lace, already appeared defensive, her pert chin tilting belligerently. From past experience,
he knew that once in a fighting mood, Paulie could be a tough one to wrangle with. And in her current state, he didn’t think that would be pleasant at all. Like wrestling a cream puff with claws.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t help asking, “What did you do to your hair?”

Immediately, he knew he’d made a mistake. She scowled. “I
curled
it, you cowpunching clod!”

“I see.” But while other women sported neat sausagelike ringlets, Paulie’s curls were completely untamed, crimping and sticking out at the oddest places. “Sort of looks like you wound your head around a cactus.”

She drew a hand over her unruly hair and looked at him defiantly. “Well, it’s better than it was!” she said. “I’ve been practicing. I think I’m finally getting the hang of it, actually.”

She stared at him for a few more moments, and the irate expression in her eyes slowly faded, replaced by one of her old huge smiles. She reached out and poked his arm. “Will, it’s good to see you! Come have a drink.”

He crossed the room, feeling strangely disoriented as he walked behind Paulie. Her skirt swayed like a dainty dress, but the square set of her shoulders and the clomping sound he heard every time she took a step made him shake his head. “What are you using for shoes, Paulie?”

She turned, her face a mask of long-suffering frustration. “Wouldn’t you know it—my mother’s feet must have been five sizes littler than my old dogs. So I’m havin’ to wear my work boots!” She lifted her layers of skirt and the hoops and revealed her old scuffed boots.

Will tried to control his mirth. “That’s your mother’s dress?”

She stuck out her chin. “Yes.”

Paulie’s mother had died shortly after the family had
moved to Texas. “Why would you have saved that all these years?”

“Well…” She hesitated a moment, a faint blush tinting her cheeks. “Oh, well…it was her wedding dress, so I felt obliged to.”

Will scratched his head in wonder. Paulie, wearing dresses, and blushing? Things in Possum Trot sure had changed!

He eased himself up on a seat at the bar, and for the first time noticed they had company. Trip Peabody was face down at the bar. He was also wearing the most ill-fitting suit Will had ever laid eyes on, with cuffs practically skimming his elbows.

“Trip?” he asked, shaking him. “Trip?” When Trip failed to respond, Will turned back to Paulie. “What happened to him?”

“He’s thinking about courting Tessie Hale,” she said matter-of-factly.

Here was another puzzler. Old Trip had always been half gone for Tessie, but he’d never found it necessary to dress up just to think about it.

“What would you like, Will,” Paulie asked, “tequila, or tequila?”

Will frowned. “Don’t you have any whiskey?”

Paulie looked uncomfortable. “Nope, just tequila.”

Will frowned. “Say…what’s happened around here?”

The expression on Paulie’s face turned from uncomfortable to downright miserable. She opened her mouth to say something, but still she didn’t speak.

“What is it?” Will asked with growing impatience.

“Our whiskey trader sort of…” Her eyes said she would rather talk about anything else. “Well, you remember Oat Murphy, don’t you?”

Of course! Will felt his shoulders fall a few inches.
Somehow, seeing Paulie in that strange getup had made him forget his troubles for a few moments. But Oat Murphy was right at the center of them. Now Will felt about as low as Trip.

How could Mary Ann have married that old man? It seemed impossible. He wished it wasn’t true. But it was, apparently, and now there was nothing he could do about it.

Gerald Redfern would probably haunt him for the rest of his days for this, Will feared. The older man’s last breath had been spent asking Will to take care of his wife and daughter. For Will, making the deathbed promise had been easy. He owed Gerald so much—for taking him in when he was a raw youth with no home, giving him a job, treating him like family. There wasn’t a time from the moment he met the Redferns when he
hadn’t
thought of taking care of Mary Ann. Even after Gerald died, and Mary Ann’s mother had married Mr. Breen, everyone had always assumed he and Mary Ann would marry. Including himself.

Until he’d gone off to Kansas this year. As much as he liked Mary Ann, and was positive that she was the woman he would marry, he’d always known she was a little…well, immature. She tended to be flighty, pouty, and overly whimsical in her ideas. None of these were good characteristics for a ranch wife, and Will wanted to start his own ranch. He had been saving for it for years. He was just waiting till he was good and ready to settle down; actually, he was waiting for that day when he fell in love with Mary Ann and couldn’t stop himself from proposing to her. And yet love, which every man seemed to find at least once in his life—and some cowboys he knew found on a weekly basis—eluded him.

At first Will had thought that Mary Ann would grow out of her childish side.
Then
they would fall in love. But finally,
two months ago, while lying on the hard ground, his bones aching from the discomfort of the trail, he realized he wasn’t getting any younger. And, unfortunately, Mary Ann didn’t appear to be getting any older. And neither of them seemed any closer to being in love with the other. She was still as much a flirt as ever, still putting off the idea of settling down in Possum Trot. A decision had to be made; and the very next day he wrote Mary Ann a letter, telling her they would both be better off if they stopped letting her mother entertain the notion that they would be married one day. He remembered now writing that he would always feel as a brother to her….

Now he could have kicked himself. Some brother! Poor Mary Ann had been alone all autumn, and apparently out of desperation she had turned to the first man who came along. Oat Murphy—a whiskey-stained old geezer. What business did that broken-down wreck have asking a girl half his age to marry him?

A sharp, sickening pang of regret shot through him.

Paulie shoved a jigger of tequila across the bar at him. “Have some Mexican milk. You don’t look so good.” He drank it, and she stared at him evenly. “So…I guess you heard.”

“About Mary Ann?” he asked, stiffly, still not comfortable discussing the topic even after endless practice. “I heard.”

Paulie leaned her elbows on the bar. “I sure am sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he said. “If it’s Oat she wanted, then I’m glad she got what she was pining for.”

Paulie tossed her head back. “I don’t think she knew what she wanted. Couple of months ago everybody said she was sweet on some gambler who came through here, a man named Tyler. Your Mary Ann never has been exactly discriminating, if you ask me.”

“I didn’t ask you.”

Paulie ducked her head and refilled his glass. “Well, anyways, I’m sure sorry. I know you set a store by her.”

He looked into Paulie’s eyes, wondering what she would think if he told her the truth. That he was being torn in two directions—relief that he had escaped marrying someone so flighty as Mary Ann, and regret that she had run off with someone so inappropriate. If only she had married Dwight the storekeeper, or…well, just
anybody
besides Oat. Then he could have rested easy at night, knowing Gerald Redfern wasn’t looking down from Heaven, scowling at him for breaking his promise to look after his daughter.

That’s why he’d come directly here, to the Dry Wallow. Paulie and Trip were always good listeners, and both were adept at putting a man’s head straight, too, most of the time. But now this place was topsy-turvy. Paulie was flouncing around in her late Ma’s wedding dress, and dependable old Trip Peabody was passed out at the bar.

He gave Trip a slap on the shoulder. “Hey, Trip, aren’t you even going to say hello?”

Trip raised one bleary eyelid. “That you, Tessie?”

Will laughed. “Not even close.”

Woozily, the man lifted his head of gray hair off the bar. “Why, it’s Will! Son of a gun!”

The two men shook hands, and Will couldn’t help noticing again the freshly store-bought state of Trip’s clothes. “Those are some stiff new duds you’ve got on, Trip. I don’t see how you were even able to pass out in them.”

“I was just restin’,” Trip said.

Paulie laughed. “He’s been ‘resting’ for two solid days now, trying to screw up the courage to propose to Tessie.”

The awkward silence in the bar stretched almost past bearing. Trip cleared his throat. “So I guess you heard about Mary Ann Redfern.”

“You mean Mary Ann Murphy,” Will said shortly.

Trip nodded. “I guess everybody’s heard.”

Paulie shifted impatiently. “Everybody’s heard
too
much about those newlyweds, if you want my opinion. The way people talk, you’d think Mary Ann was the only unmarried girl in this county.”

Trip’s eyebrows knitted together, and even Will was intrigued away from brooding by this statement. There
weren’t
many unattached females in the area, and that was a fact. Now that Mary Ann was out of his life for good, he supposed he would have to give more consideration to these matters.

“There’s the Brakemen twins out north, I suppose,” Trip said.

Will smiled. “What about Tessie Hale?”

Trip shivered nervously.

“But most people consider her accounted for,” Will assured him.

Paulie cleared her throat, patted down her voluminous skirts, and smiled. “Aren’t you two forgetting someone?”

“Tunia Sweeney!” Trip exclaimed. “Nobody’s married her yet.”

Will wrinkled his nose, dismissing the idea. A woman people called Tunia the Tuna wasn’t exactly his dream gal.

“You can’t think of anybody else?” Paulie asked, glaring at them as if they were dumb clucks.

Will shook his head. “Still, even counting Tunia, that leaves pretty slim pickings around here.”

A bottle shattered on the floor, sending glass shards shooting off in all directions.

“Oh, darn!” Paulie yelled. “Look what you made me go and do!”

The two men looked at each other and blinked. “Us?”

“What did
we
do?” Trip asked.

“Never mind!’’ Paulie said, bending down to wipe the clear liquid off the floor before sweeping up.

“Well, what are you so lathered up about?” Will asked her.

“I’m just tired of hearing about weddings and courting and such. I swear that’s all you men talk about these days. Don’t you have anything else to keep yourselves occupied?”

“I guess I should start thinking about what I’m going to do now,” Will said.

Trip glanced at him anxiously. “We could sure use a sheriff again with Night Bird roamin’ around.”

Will frowned. He’d had his heart set on starting a ranch. “Night Bird,” he said, repeating the name that he’d heard spoken with fear so often since returning to South Texas. “Is he harassing folks around here?”

“He’s been here several times,” Paulie informed him. Mention of the renegade seemed to have shaken her pettish mood a little. “I haven’t seen him, but he’s taken several bottles of my whiskey.”

“How do you know?” Will asked.

“’Cause they say when he comes you can’t even hear him,” Paulie answered. “Those three railroad men who got their throats slit probably never knew what hit them.”

Trip shivered. “The first one maybe. But I bet the second and third knew right enough what was happening.”

Will frowned. “When it comes to renegades, people are likely to swallow any tall tale.” Granted, some gruesome stories were true, but usually people believed what they wanted to believe. “Folks will blame Night Bird if cattle prices fall,” he said.

Paulie lifted her chin. “He was here. I know it.”

“Maybe,” Will allowed.

“Anyways, we sure could use a lawman hereabouts,” Trip put in again. “I know I’d sleep better.”

“I’ll think about it,” Will said. If he was going to start up that horse ranch, with or without a wife, it would take him a while to get his hands on a place and accumulate stock. He might as well winter in Possum Trot as anywhere else.

“You sound like you aren’t even sure you’re going to stay,” Paulie said, looking at him anxiously. “You know you’re welcome to bed down here, Will. There’s a room in the back, next to Trip’s.”

He looked into Paulie’s shiny green eyes and felt gratitude welling in him. “I’m obliged, Sprout,” he said, using his old nickname for her.