The Redhead and the Preacher: A Loveswept Historical Romance (33 page)

The gunfighter had to be eliminated. Then Pratt would die and be blamed for all of the holdups. Using criminals, then eliminating them had worked well for Larkin in the past. He could see no reason why it wouldn’t work again, so long as he didn’t wait too long. First there was Pratt to deal with.

“Ahoy, the cabin. Pratt!”

Larkin!
Inside the shack, Pratt pulled the rag tighter on his finger and winced. Who’d have thought that losing the tip of a finger could hurt so bad? He made his way out the door. Damn the man, he was still sitting up there on that horse like some kind of lord looking down on his slave. He was tired of all this.

“What happened to you?” Larkin asked.

“Nothing. Just a little accident with my knife. What do you want?”

“The sheriff from Promise is coming in. I want you to get rid of that preacher now and get out of town for a while.”

“Funny,” Pratt said, studying Larkin shrewdly, “I had the same thing in mind. Maybe I’ll just pick up my pay and ride over to Boulder City.”

Larkin gave a laugh of disbelief. “Pay? You expect to be paid after you fouled up the bank job in Promise and shot the banker? You’ll be lucky if I don’t decide to hang you for murder. Or let you have an accident right now. That would take care of everything, wouldn’t it?”

“You still need me to do your dirty work, Larkin.” Pratt’s voice wavered just a bit, though he didn’t want Larkin to know he was worried.

Pratt wasn’t fooled. He knew that Larkin would kill him. He’d claim that he’d tried to arrest Pratt for the bank holdup and Pratt had resisted. Too bad he’d been killed. His association with the gunfighter was just as risky, but Night Eyes had never murdered a man in cold blood.

“All right. I’ll do this one last job, then I’m heading for Alaska. Somebody said that there’s gold up there and I have a hankering for snow.”

He untied the bandage and it floated to the ground. “Don’t suppose you’d help me with this, would you?” he asked and knelt to pick it up, putting the horse’s head between him and Larkin, for just a moment. That was all the time he needed. But Pratt missed, causing the horse to shy. The marshal got off one good shot and Pratt fell.

Larkin gave a cynical laugh. Pratt was dead before the marshal dragged him into the rocks beyond the trail. Larkin retrieved the stolen gold and Pratt’s silver-trimmed saddle from the cabin.

Pratt was a fool. Larkin hadn’t intended to kill him yet, not until after he’d gotten rid of the preacher. Now Larkin would have to do it himself. That was no problem. He’d used gunfighters as fall guys before, but he didn’t like it when things went wrong.

Farther up the trail, Sylvia closed the ledger she’d been writing in and leaned back in her chair. She was tired; her eyes were strained from the squinting as she entered the tiny figures into the columns.

Her losses were growing. Even hiring men to work in the mine was becoming a problem. Since the explosion, workers had gradually drifted away, whispering that the Sylvia was jinxed.

She’d hired that gunfighter to stop the trouble and he was making no progress in doing so. Though she’d promised to hold off revealing his true identity, she wasn’t certain if that was smart. Nobody knew how dire her situation was. Nobody knew that, in the explosion, she’d lost the main vein.

The truth was, the gold had shifted when the explosion occurred and so far nobody had found it. Even after shoring up the tunnel and clearing away the debris, nothing seemed to be in the same place. It had to be there. A vein of gold didn’t just vanish. But this one had.

Sylvia closed her eyes.

“Moose, you old fool, why’d you marry me in the first place? You could have had any of those fancy women back East. Why me?”

But she knew the answer. She knew how to please a man. In spite of her airs, underneath it all, Sylvia Mainwearing was a former saloon girl who’d struck it rich. She bit
back a smile as she thought about all the women in Heaven who’d bought her act. Nobody knew that she and Moose were two of a kind. And she’d loved him, even with his loud voice and tendency to drink too much.

And somebody had killed him.

She’d refused to believe it at the time, refused to think that anybody had deliberately pushed him into that ravine and left him there to die. An accident, the marshal had called it, and she’d had no reason not to believe him. Until the other trouble started.

At first it was just little things: timbers that fell and injured miners, mules that spooked, ore spilling down the canyon. Then came the fires and stolen gold shipments, followed by the explosion and murder. And finally someone had taken a shot at her.

Somebody wanted to frighten her and they had. Sylvia was scared to death. She could marry again, and she might. She had to laugh at a former saloon girl being courted by a judge and a U.S. Marshal. The marshal was younger, but Sylvia didn’t delude herself about his sincerity. The judge was an old teddy bear and she was comfortable with him, but he was about as much protection as an old shoe.

Still, something was wrong, and Sylvia had learned long ago to take care of herself first.

And she might have found a way. One of the workers had just come from town with two pieces of news. First, a child had gotten lost and everybody had gone looking for her. Sylvia had sent some of her men over to help. It never hurt to keep up a good image with the townspeople.

It was the second announcement that caught her fancy. The preacher was going to hold a revival meeting on Wednesday evening, in the saloon. Sylvia glanced up at the painting of her crest with the
S
and smiled. That would work very well for her purposes. She’d attend his revival. It was time for Sylvia to confess her sins and let the town know that she was out for blood.

They needed to know that their preacher wasn’t a man of God after all.

When the search party for Rebekah Pendley rode out of Heaven, Bran knew that Macky was behind them. One part of him wanted to climb off his horse and turn her over his knee, the other was just glad to know that she wasn’t with Pratt.

But why had she gone to town?

The sorry little cabin where Lars Pendley’s family lived was barely more than a lean-to, built in the side of a hill. The back walls were dirt and the main house was poorly insulated from the wind and cold.

But he could see Rachel’s pitiful attempts to make the place into a home. There were small trees and shrubs planted across the front of the house and a flower box had been nailed beneath a shuttered window.

Rachel, baby on her hip, stood in the doorway, face pinched and anxious as she watched Bran organize the search. Macky rode in, dismounted and stood behind Rachel, listening as the men were directed to ride away from the cabin like the spokes of a wagon. They would go forward and zigzag back and forth until they heard a single gunshot. Then they were to move to their right fifty paces and move back to the cabin. If anyone spotted the child two shots were to be fired as a signal.

Macky glanced at the sky in concern. Heavy gray clouds hung over the mountains, ominously concealing the snow-covered tips. Macky had a bad feeling about this. A child following a mischievous puppy could cover a great deal of territory.

After what seemed like forever, Macky heard a single gunshot. The signal to turn back.

Rachel gasped. “They aren’t stopping, are they?” she asked.

“Of course not. They’ll just return, reset their directions, and move out again. We’ll find her, don’t you worry.”

But Macky was worried, and she began to pace back and forth. Even Solomon seemed to sense the tension. He moved about in agitation, shaking his shoulders and slinging his head. Finally Macky walked over to the big animal.

“What’s wrong, boy? Do you know something we don’t?”

For a moment Solomon only looked at her, his big brown eyes piercing and stubborn. He pulled against his reins, stomped his feet and pulled again.

Following a hunch, Macky untied Solomon’s reins and climbed on his back. “Let’s me and you have a little look,” she said, allowing the mule to go his own way.

Macky didn’t know how much time passed. Nor did she know exactly where she was, as the mule wandered down the draw, away from the mountains into the thick brush. Branches dug into her bare skin, and slapped her face, leaving red splotches. But the animal seemed to know exactly where he was going and wasted no time in doing so.

“Rebekah! Rebekah!” Macky called from time to time, but there was no answer. In fact the woods were curiously silent, not even a bird calling out to another.

Finally the sound of running water broke the silence. Solomon burst through the brush and stopped at the edge of a swift-running creek. Something about the scene looked familiar. Solomon reached down and took a long drink from the cold stream.

“Solomon, you old fool. Did you bring me all this way just so that you could get a drink of water? How dare you, you selfish, ornery old thing?”

And then she heard a whimper, not of a child, but an animal. “The puppy.” Macky slid from Solomon’s back and made her way down the bank. “Here, puppy! Here, puppy!”

The whimpering grew louder. And then she saw them. Rebekah and the puppy were caught by a pile of brush midway across the stream. Macky fired her new pistol twice,
then stepped into the icy water and waded out to Rebekah and the puppy, grateful that the water only reached her thighs.

The little girl had a gash on her forehead and she was cold as ice, but she was breathing. The puppy seemed fine, but afraid of the current. Moments later, with the squirming puppy under one arm and the child in the other, Macky managed to mount Solomon and head back to the cabin.

“After the trouble you’ve caused me, you’d better get us there quick, Solomon, or you’re going to have to live on snow and creek stones forever!”

The mule must have believed her, for a short time later, they reached the shack where the searchers were waiting anxiously.

“We heard your shot,” Otis said. “Where’d you find her?”

Lars Pendley took his stepdaughter inside by the fire. Rachel began to remove her wet clothes and wrapped her in tattered warm blankets.

“She must have fallen into the creek and been washed downstream. She was caught in a pile of brush,” Macky answered.

“How’d you know where to look?” Hank Clay asked curiously.

“I didn’t. Solomon found her.”

The men shook their heads then started back to town.

“Odd,” one man said, “the marshal never showed up.”

“Wonder where he is?” another asked.

“Maybe he had a lead on Sylvia’s trouble at the mine,” Hank said.

Bran rode beside Macky. He didn’t speak. He didn’t even say goodbye to the men he’d organized into a search party. Instead he turned his mount toward their cabin, paused and waited for Macky to do the same. Macky hadn’t known what to expect, but being ignored was making her feel very uneasy.

“I’m sorry if I worried you, Bran,” she said. “But I had some thinking to do.”

“In town?”

“Well, yes. I went in to talk to the marshal.”

“And did you?”

“No, he wasn’t there. Hank Clay said he left, heading this way just before I got into town. He thought I might have seen him on the trail but I didn’t.”

Bran was facing straight ahead. His voice cut through the air clean and sharp. “And what business did you have with the marshal?”

“It doesn’t matter. I’ve changed my mind. I’m sorry if I worried you.”

“Why should I be worried? I awaken in an empty bed, one, I might add, I’d tried to avoid, and you’re gone.”

“Wasn’t that what you wanted, Bran?”

“Yes, but not like that.”

Solomon had fallen behind. Macky planted her heel into his side and brought him even with Bran.

He
was
worried. He really didn’t want her to go. Macky wanted to smile. She’d never expected him to let his feelings show, but he didn’t have to. He couldn’t hide his concern.

“Bran, the marshal knows who you are.”

“I know.”

“No, I mean he knows you’re John Lee. I saw the wanted poster in his desk.”

That set Bran back. Being identified as Night Eyes wasn’t what he wanted, but it wasn’t against the law. Being identified as John Lee could get him arrested. “That does it, Macky. You have to go—now.”

“I’ve changed my mind. I won’t leave you willingly, Bran. I love you.”

Her words hit him in the gut like buckshot. Even his mother never said the words. He forced himself to say, “You have to, Macky. I know who is responsible for the trouble in Heaven and for the bank robbery in Promise as well.”

“So, we’ll wait for Sheriff Dover and he’ll help us.”

“No, Macky. You have to go now.”

“Not until after the revival. If I leave before, the marshal might get suspicious.”

“About that revival. What on earth made you tell the people in Heaven that I was going to do such a thing?”

“I never meant it to happen. Everybody wanted to know why I was in town and you weren’t. I couldn’t think of a reason. Then it just popped out. A town meeting might be the answer, Bran. The people of Heaven love you. Why not confess, both of us, and take our chances with the congregation?”

“And what about Marshal Larkin? You think he’ll just say go and sin no more? I don’t think so, Macky.”

Macky felt her elation subside as she slid down from Solomon’s back and walked the rest of the way to the cabin. Once in the corral, she gave Solomon an extra measure of the oats.

“You just get rested up, Solomon,” she whispered. “We’re going to start spring plowing soon. That is, if we’re still here.”

Macky didn’t know exactly what she’d do, or how she’d do it, but instinct told her that come Wednesday night, a way would be provided. It might not be God’s will, but it was close enough for Macky.

“Are you going to the revival meeting?” Lorraine asked Hank. They were sitting on the ground, staring up at the sky as they had every night since the evening she’d fallen asleep in his arms.

Forcing herself not to respond to her feelings for the strong, silent man was becoming more and more difficult. Before she’d always put the man off. This was her first experience with a man turning her away.