C
HAPTER
T
HREE
Kate Kerrigan rose from her chair and returned her husband's letter to her writing desk.
It had been brought, no, the word was smuggled, to her by Michael Feeny, who arrived in Nashville more dead than alive from a wound received at Shiloh.
She'd been poor then, and all the poorer for her husband's death, but Kate had a family to care for and playing the weeping widow and living off the charity of others had never entered her thinking.
Still, it had been a long, long time since she'd filled a bucket with water, soap, and a scrubbing brush.
The blood of the dead robber and would-be rapist still stained her bedroom rug and she could not abide the thought of it remaining there.
She was at the foot of the grand staircase, bucket in hand, when someone slammed the brass doorknocker hard . . . once, twice, three times.
Kate's revolver was in the parlor and she retrieved it, then returned to the door as a man's handâfor surely a woman would not have knocked so loudly?âhammered the knocker again.
“Who is it?” Kate said, her voice steady. The triple click of her Colt was loud in the quiet. “I warn you I put my faith in forty-fives.”
A moment's pause, then, “Miz Kerrigan, it's me, ma'am, Hiram Street, as ever was.”
Kate recognized the voice of one of her top hands and unlocked the door.
“Come inside, Hiram,” she said.
Street was a short, stocky man with sandy hair and bright hazel eyes.
He was a good, steady hand with a weakness for whiskey and whores, but Kate did not hold that against him.
“I was on my way back from town and met Sheriff Martin on the trail and he told me what happened,” Street said. “I rode here as fast as I could to see if you needed help.”
Kate pretended to be annoyed.
“Running my horses again, Hiram?”
“Well, I figgered this was an emergency, Miz Kerrigan, begging your pardon.”
The cowboy wore a mackinaw and a wool muffler over his hat, tied in a huge knot under his chin.
He looked frozen stiff.
“Were you drinking at the Happy Reb again?” Kate said.
“I can tell you no lie, ma'am. I sure was, but I only had but two dollars and that don't go far at Dan Pardee's prices.”
“Come in and I'll get you a drink, Hiram. You look as cold as a bar owner's heart.”
“Dan Pardee's anyway,” Street said as he stepped inside.
He looked around at the marble, gold and red velvet of Ciarogan's vast receiving hall and said, “I ain't never been in the big house before, ma'am. Takes a man's breath away.”
Kate smiled.
“It wasn't always like this, Hiram, back in the day.”
“You mean when you fit Comanches, Miz Kerrigan. I heard that.”
Kate nodded.
“Comanches, Apaches, rustlers, claim jumpers, gunmen of all kinds and ambitions, even Mexican bandits raiding across the Rio Grande. Yes, I fought them all and killing one never troubled my sleep at night.”
“Maybe that's why I'm a mite uneasy about that there iron you got in your hand, ma'am,” Street said.
“Oh, sorry, Hiram.” Kate smiled and let the revolver hang by her side. “Please come into the parlor.”
Street, with that solemn politeness punchers have around respectable women, and with many a “Beggin' your pardon, ma'am,” asked if he could remove his hat and coat.
“And should I take off my spurs, Miz Kerrigan?” he said. “I don't want to scratch your furniture, like.”
“My sons don't take them off, so I don't see why you should,” Kate said.
“Ciarogan is sure quiet tonight, ma'am,” Street said, accepting a chair and then a bourbon. “That's why that no-good saddle tramp came here.”
“As you know, my sons are out on the range and Misses Ivy and Shannon are helping Lucy Cobb give birth. I also gave the servants the night off.”
“Got fences down everywhere, but Mr. Trace told me to stay to home on account you'd be here alone,” Street said. “I'm real sorry I left, Miz Kerrigan.”
“How were you to know what would happen this evening, Hiram? Though I'll make no fuss about your lapse this time, don't do it again.”
“Never, ma'am, I swear it.”
“Then we'll let the matter drop. I'll tell Trace that I sent you into town on an errand.”
“I appreciate that, ma'am. He has a temper, has Mr. Trace.”
“Ah, he takes after me,” Kate said.
Street hurriedly took a sip of his whiskey and said nothing.
Then, “Miz Kerrigan, I haven't been riding for Ciarogan long, but I'd like to hear about how it all started.” Street smiled. “You got the only four-pillar plantation house in Texas, I reckon.”
“I doubt that,” Kate said. “But I started with a small cabin and a thousand acres of scrub,” Kate said.
Street spoke into the silence that followed.
“Ma'am, I'd like to hear the story of how you got here.”
“Really, Hiram? Do you want to hear my story or do you like being close to the Old Crow bottle and warm fire?”
Street's smile was bright and genuine.
“Truth to tell, both,” he said. “But I'm a man who loves a good story. I figger to get educated some day and become one of them dime novel authors.”
“A very laudable ambition, Hiram,” Kate said.
She thought for a few moments, then said, “Very well, I won't sleep tonight after what happened and the servants won't be back until late, so I'll tell you the story of Ciarogan and what went before.”
Kate smiled. “But you have to sing for your supper, Hiram.”
“Ma'am?”
“There's a bucket of water and scrubbing brush at the foot of the stairs, and I have a rug in my bedroom that needs cleaning.”
Street had the puncher's deep-seated dread of work he couldn't do off the back of a horse, but Miz Kerrigan was not a woman to be denied.
“Follow me,” she said.
Street grabbed the soapy, slopping bucket and followed Kate up the staircase, his face grim, like a man climbing the steps to the gallows.
Wide-eyed, the cowboy stared at the bloodstained rug.
“Him?” he said.
“Him.”
“Gut shot, ma'am?”
“I didn't take time to see where my bullet hit.”
“But look at the rug, Miz Kerrigan.”
“I see it, Hiram. That's why you're here.”
“But, ma'am, it looks like Miles Martin and his deputies tramped blood everywhere. The tracks of big policeman feet are all over the rug.”
“Then you have your work cut out for you, Hiram. Have you not?”
Street made a long-suffering face, like a repentant sinner.
“This is because I rode off and left you alone, Miz Kerrigan. Ain't it?”
Kate smiled.
“Why Hiram, whatever gave you that idea?”
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After an hour, many buckets of water, and a good deal of muttered cursing, Hiram Street threw the last bucketful of pink-tinted water outside and returned to the parlor.
“All done, Miz Kerrigan,” he said.
Kate put aside the volume of Mr. Dickens she'd been reading and rose to her feet.
“I'll take a look,” she said.
Kate cast a critical eye over the wet rug and said, “There, Hiram, in the corner. You missed a spot.”
“Sorry, ma'am,” Street said.
He got down on his knees and industriously scrubbed the offending stain with the heel of his hand. The spot was only the size of a dime, but Kate's eagle eyes missed nothing.
“Very well, Hiram,” she said. “Now, we'll let the rug dry. I'll use one of the guest rooms for a few days.”
Once the chastened cowboy was again sitting by the fire, a glass of whiskey in hand, Kate smiled at him.
“Do you still wish to hear the story of Kate Kerrigan, her life and times?”
Street settled his shoulders into the leather and nodded.
“I sure do, ma'am.”
“I'll tell you of my early days, when just staying alive was a struggle. To relate all that's passed in the last forty years would be too long in the telling.”
Kate flashed her dazzling smile and continued to do so.
“I'm sure there's enough material in the story of my younger days for a hundred dime novels,” she said.
“Beggin' your pardon, Ma'am, but I'm eager to hear the tale of Kate Kerrigan,” Street said.
“Then, Hiram, you shall at least hear some of it.”