Betting the Rainbow (Harmony) (27 page)

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A PLACE CALLED HARMONY

Coming soon from Berkley!

Truman

TEXAS

FEBRUARY 1876

C
LINT
T
RUMAN HIT THE FLOOR SO HARD HIS TEETH RATTLED,
but, as always, he didn’t have the sense to stay down. He came up swinging, ready for another round.

The next hard blow from the miner he’d decided to fight sent him flying through the saloon’s swinging doors and into the muddy street. He slid several feet, picking up horse shit along with the mud as he dug up the road. Then, he just lay still, letting the rain beat on him for a while.

When he tried to straighten, a heavy boot landed on his chest, holding him down like a boulder. Clint stared up but the rain and clouds offered him only a shadow of the man above him. A wide shadow.

“Evening, Truman.” Harry Lightstone’s voice matched his three-hundred-pound body, big and frightening. “You drunk enough to listen to me now?”

“Soon as I finish the fight, Sheriff,” Clint promised.

“The fight’s over.” Harry lifted the gun belt that circled his ample waist. “We need to talk to Truman before you kill someone and I have to arrest you. Now, we can do it here with you in the mud, or we can do it with you behind bars, but we’re going to have a talk.”

“Hell,” Clint said, hating both choices. “How about you buy me a cup of coffee before you get into telling me how to live my life?”

“Fair enough, but clean up first. Between the blood and the mud there ain’t an inch of you left unaffected. I’m tired of standing in this drizzle anyway. You’ve got ten minutes to meet me at Maggie’s. If you don’t pass her inspection to get in, I’m putting you in jail and letting you dry out until the mud flakes off and the bleeding scabs over.”

Clint stood and watched the sheriff head toward the only café in Huntsville, Texas. He hated being bossed around and he wasn’t trying to kill himself by fighting. He just had a ton of anger built up in him and needed to get it out. In a town like Huntsville someone was always looking for a good fight.

Walking over to the horse trough, he dunked his head in and shook, guessing the horses wouldn’t appreciate him bloodying the water.

Thunder rumbled and the sky dumped buckets down on him. Clint turned his head up and took the full blast. “Give it your best shot!” he yelled, waiting for the lightning. Life couldn’t get any more painful.

A kid of about ten ran past him, bumping into his outstretched arm. “Sorry, mister,” he shouted over the storm. “Didn’t you notice it’s raining?”

“Hell,” Clint answered. “It’s been raining all my life.”

He walked to a bench outside the saloon and lifted his saddlebags from where he’d left them three hours and several drinks ago. He might not have the sense to come out of the rain, but at least he’d left his horse in the barn.

Reluctantly, Clint headed to the back door of Maggie’s place. Once inside the mudroom, he stripped off his shirt and dried with a towel the cook/owner tossed him.

Maggie watched from the doorway of the kitchen as he cleaned up. “You’re one hunk of a man, Clint Truman. If you ever give up fighting and turn to loving, you’d make some woman very happy.”

“There’s no more loving left in me.” He said the words as if he were swearing. “You mind turning around while I change my pants?”

“Not a chance. An old widow like me don’t get to see a full-grown man strip but a few times, and I’m not missing this chance. My first husband used to wash in the creek and come back to the house naked, but he was so hairy I thought it was a bear heading my way half the time.”

“You got anything to drink, Maggie?”

“Sure.” She stepped away and he changed soaked trousers for damp ones from his bag.

When she returned, she handed him a cup of coffee and he frowned.

“Trust me, honey, you need this. That bull of a sheriff is out front waiting and he don’t look happy.”

Clint downed half of the hot liquid, which tasted more like the mud outside than coffee. He’d known this talk was coming so he might as well get it over with.

He thanked Maggie for the towel and the coffee, then stepped through the kitchen door to the café. Sure enough, Lightstone was sitting by the window staring out at his town.

Clint took the seat across from him without saying a word.

“You eat today?” the sheriff asked.

“I’m not a kid. I don’t need mothering,” Clint snapped. At thirty he’d about decided he didn’t need anything from anyone.

The sheriff ignored his comment. “I heard you fought with Sherman during the war. Some say you were a crack shot. Maybe even the best in the South.”

“Some talk too much. Most of what I shot was game for dinner. I don’t want to talk about the war, wasted years. We lost, you know, the whole damn country lost.”

“I know how you feel. I thought I was fighting for Texas. For rights, then found out later it was all about slavery. By then, it was too late and I was mostly just fighting to stay alive.” He stared down at his cup as if looking for the answer. “What’d you do when you got home?”

“I drifted for a while. My folks kept a little farm going during the war so I finally settled there. I helped them out for a few years. Then, I thought I’d marry and start a family.” Clint didn’t go on. He couldn’t.

Lightstone waited for a while, then added, “I know enough to fill in the details, Truman. I heard your wife and daughters died a few years ago of the fever. Folks say you burned the house and the barns the morning after you buried them.”

Clint didn’t comment. He felt like his whole life was simply acts in a play and some days he didn’t want to step on the stage. Sometimes he thought the ache to feel his wife by his side would collapse his chest or the need to run his hand over one of his daughters’ curly hair almost took him to his knees. They were gone so fast, like his parents and all the boys he’d joined up with to go to war. Some nights, in his nightmares, he felt like a time traveler going back to them all. They’d smile at him and wave, then curl up and die like dried leaves caught in a campfire.

Clint took a long drink of his coffee and waited for the sheriff’s lecture. He’d heard it before; different people, different towns. If he had enough caring left in him to change, he would try one more time, but he no longer saw the point.

“Truman,” the sheriff began, “I need your help with a matter.”

Clint raised an eyebrow. He hadn’t expected the sheriff would want a favor.

“Now, hear me out before you decide. Promise. This is me asking for something, not me telling you what to do. You make up your own mind.”

“All right. I’ll hear you out,” Clint answered. He didn’t plan to walk back over to the saloon until the rain let up anyway. He had no other clothes to change into.

Lightstone leaned back. “I got a friend I fought with during the war who wants to build a town. He’s been running a trading post up in the wild part of Texas where the Indian Wars are still going on. He makes good money, thanks to the cattle drives coming through, but he wants more. He wants to have a community. He’s got a half dozen kids and a wife who refuses to come west until the town is settled.”

“How does this affect me?”

“My friend is a good businessman, but the war left him crippled up. He’s been robbed several times, once they shot him and left him for dead. If he’s going to do this, he’ll need someone good with a gun working for him. I’ve heard, even if you don’t usually wear a gun belt, that there is no better shot.”

“I’m not a hired gun, Sheriff. Not interested.”

“Oh, you wouldn’t be that. He’s offering every man who comes to work for him forty acres and a house. If you stay ten years, he’ll deed the place over to you. He’ll pay a fair wage and you help him build the town.”

Clint was low on money and knew he’d have to look for a job soon, but he never planned to stay ten years anywhere. He might get attached to folks if he did that, and he never, ever planned to let that happen again. Signing on to be his friend or loved one was a death warrant.

“You’d be hauling supplies and running cattle and who knows what else, but you’d also carry a gun. This time you’d be fighting to keep people alive. That part of Texas has very little law of any kind.”

Lightstone leaned halfway across the table and yelled for Maggie to bring them a couple of meals. He didn’t have to say more, she only served one choice a day.

She yelled that he needed to stop yelling at her.

The sheriff smiled. “I’d marry that woman if she’d have me, but she says four husbands are enough.”

Clint didn’t want to picture the two in bed, but the image came all the same. Both were built wide and thick. Maggie told him once that she was simply big-boned. If she and the sheriff ever did get together and make love, they’d shake the house.

Lightstone drew him back to the conversation. “What have you got to lose? The trip north, even if you decided not to stay, would do you good.”

“All right. I’ll go.” Clint had nothing else to do anyway. He could be packed in an hour. “But I make no promises that I’ll stay ten years.”

The sheriff nodded as if they’d made a bargain. “Oh, I forgot, you have to take one thing with you.”

“What’s that?”

“A wife.”

* * *

CLINT TRUMAN FINALLY SOBERED UP ENOUGH TO REALIZE
just how crazy the sheriff’s plan was. He didn’t mind traveling across the state to look for a job, but picking a wife from the women being released from prison tonight was nuts.

Yet, somehow, here he was standing next to a mountain of lawmen waiting for the prison gates to open.

Sheriff Lightstone stood close, probably making sure he didn’t run. The night seemed smoky with low clouds, and so much moisture lingered in the air Clint could feel it on his face.

“Now, it’s not that hard, Clint. I’ve seen fellows do this before. Last month a fellow I knew met a little pickpocket outside these gates. They talked all night, then at dawn woke the preacher up. She had to pay, of course; somehow her new husband couldn’t find his money.”

Clint didn’t laugh. He had no idea if the sheriff was telling the truth or making a joke.

“Way I see it,” Lightstone continued, “marrying you will look better to a woman on her own with no property than her taking the only other choice.” He pointed with his head at a wagon pulled up twenty yards away. “If no one picks them up, that guy, who goes by Hadley, offers them employment at a whorehouse down near Houston. He makes regular runs picking up women leaving prison.”

Clint looked at the two women waiting in the back of the wagon as the sheriff continued. “He bailed them two out an hour ago. One knifed a guy. She said he raped her; he said he just didn’t pay. Judge will probably fine them both, him for stealing and her for knifing. The other lady of the evening stole money from a customer at Hadley’s place. She looked fine when Hadley picked her up, but judging from the bruises on her face, he made her sorry she caused him trouble. Women leaving prison and climbing in that wagon know exactly where they’re going.”

As Clint stared, the one with a black eye lowered her head. Neither woman looked to be eighteen, but both were worn down by life. He doubted either would make it to thirty.

Several other people waited around the gate, looking more like mourners than greeters. One man sat on a bench and played with his knife, striking it again and again into the corner of the bench. Clint noticed an old couple and a kid of about sixteen close to the gate.

The gate rattled and a guard stepped out.

“Might not be many tonight,” Lightstone whispered. “Sometimes there is trouble in the prison and they don’t let out many. They used to let them out in the morning, but too many people complained about them walking the streets. County gives each enough money to take the stage out of town.” He frowned. “I was kind of expecting one woman to be released today. She’d be worth considering even if we have to come back next week.”

Clint had already decided that he wouldn’t be coming again. This idea was far too crazy to repeat. Once the sheriff saw there was no wife material here, he’d drop the plan.

“This is a bad idea. Getting married because the job description says to bring a wife just doesn’t seem right,” Clint mumbled to himself, guessing the sheriff wouldn’t be listening. “How do I know one of these women hasn’t killed someone, like maybe her first husband?”

“I doubt any have done more than they had to, or more than any one of us didn’t do during the war. Toward the end we all stole to eat and killed to stay alive. I’m guessing they did the same.”

Clint didn’t argue, but picking a wife this way seemed like scraping the bottom of the barrel. He looked down at his worn boots and decided he was already at the bottom. Half the townspeople thought of him as a drunk, and the other half felt sorry for him and offered to buy him a drink. If he married an ex-con, some would say he was marrying up.

The first woman out of the gate ran toward an old couple standing as close as the guard would allow. All three hugged and cried. No matter what she’d done, she was obviously still their baby.

The next two walked out together, yelling for Hadley to pull the wagon closer and take them home. One of the women winked at Clint as she walked by. “Come on by tonight, honey. I’m offering rides for half price to celebrate.”