The army ought to pay him twenty percent of that six thousand. Or take her on itself. Since Mrs. Petty was now set to starve because of the army’s reward, it should send a general to figure out what to do with her. Of course knowing the army, it would send a sergeant. Who would do a better job than the general.
Bret huffed out loud, his breath pluming white in the cold air. If anything resembling laughter hadn’t dried up inside him and blown away years ago, he’d laugh. The army had no responsibility for Mrs. Petty. Breton J. Sterling, who had killed Rufus and left the woman without kith or kin, did.
Rufus’s pistol would be worth a few dollars, but the saddle and the rifle hanging on the side belonged to the army just like the horse. The army would never know if he left her with a little of its money, but unless he wanted to leave more than a little, it would run out all too soon. All of it would only make her a target for someone like Rufus.
Bret scraped the last of the dirt over the grave, and there she was, straining as she lifted stones and placed them on top of the loose dirt. Out here she didn’t seem so afraid of him, although she was still trying to stay as far away as possible and concentrating on the stones.
He stood back and let her do the work. She’d need to say some words over the husband too.
After that he’d pack up the few items worth anything, take them to town and sell them for her. And hard as he tried, he couldn’t see any way around it. Leaving Mrs. Petty here alone to starve was not an option. He’d have to pack her along too.
H
ASSIE PLACED THE
last stone, folded her hands, and recited the Lord’s Prayer in her head. Cyrus had been kind to her in his way. She wished him peace, and anything had to be better than his terrible, drawn-out sickness.
She turned away, already tasting the bitter gall of having to beg the bounty hunter for at least whatever had been in Rufus’s pockets. Somehow. The only paper in the house was between the covers of the Bible, and she wouldn’t write in the margins of those pages even if she had a pen or pencil.
Surely the sun had softened the ground in some places enough by now that she could use a stick to scratch out her request. In spite of the bounty hunter’s harsh words, finishing burying Cyrus like that had been decent. Maybe he would give her at least the ten dollars, leave her the gun.
Before she decided what to do, he said, “If you’re through praying, get on inside and pack up anything you want from this place. I’m taking Rufus to Werver, and you’re coming along.”
Coming along to town! She needed to go to town, but she needed supplies, money for supplies, and why would a bounty hunter take her with him? Should she go with him? Did she dare? What if she refused?
He reacted as if he could hear her. “Don’t even think about it. Shooting Rufus didn’t bother me. Leaving you to starve might.”
Might. If he didn’t sound like he meant it, she could smile at that.
“Don’t talk much, do you?”
Hassie made the all-too-familiar gestures, moving her fingers near her mouth as if speaking, shaking her head as she did it.
The grim line of his mouth tightened even more. “You can’t talk.”
She acknowledged the truth with the tiniest motion.
“At all.”
Drawing in a deep breath, she said, “Not in a way anyone can understand.” The humiliating sound of the hoarse whisper that bore no resemblance to speech grated over her nerves. Even Mama hadn’t been able to understand except from the rhythm of simple, expected phrases. He’d change his mind now. Leave her here.
“Is that as loud as it gets?”
She nodded.
He blew out an impatient breath, reached for the pick and shovel. “Get your things. I’ll saddle the horse.”
Through the front window, she watched him for a moment. He tied the tools on the packhorse and went back to the barn.
If she did try to refuse to go, no doubt he’d tie her on a horse too, but she didn’t want to refuse. She needed to get to town. Going with him would be better than going alone, and after that.... Well, after that, she could come back here if she had to.
Giving up watching for him, Hassie went back to the bedroom and pulled Mama’s old carpetbag from under the bed. The embroidered tablecloth she had kept hidden away in the chest all these years was the first thing she packed. She stroked it reverently before placing it in the bottom of the bag, remembering how it had been, stitching one end of the cloth while Mama did the other.
Everything else went on top of the tablecloth. Another patched dress, a few underthings, comb, hairbrush, and Bible.
In the time it had taken her to pack, the bounty hunter had added a few more tools to the load on his packhorse and saddled Brownie. He started to tie her bag behind the old saddle and cursed when the dried out saddle string broke. Her bag went behind the man’s saddle instead.
A low growl stopped Hassie before she could mount the horse. Stiff-legged, with the dull hair along his prominent spine standing on end, Yellow Dog looked ready to launch at the bounty hunter, who already had his gun out, ready to shoot Yellow Dog as dead as Rufus.
Without thinking, Hassie pulled at the man’s gun arm. He shook her off. “I’m not getting bitten by your mangy cur, and I’m not leaving it to finish starving. The thing needs to be put out of its misery.”
Yellow Dog had returned home less and less often since there was no food for him. With Rufus providing meat for the table, Hassie had been able to set out bones and entrails almost every day, giving Yellow Dog at least a few meager meals.
No matter what the bounty man thought, Yellow Dog had foraged successfully through the winter. His ribs might be sticking out through his dull coat, but he was still alive and still ready to take on a stranger who didn’t belong in his yard.
Hassie stepped between the man and the dog and walked toward Yellow Dog, humming a song for him in her throat. She touched his head, and he relaxed slightly; his tail gave a tentative wag.
“You’re not doing him any favors.” In spite of his words, the bounty man holstered his gun.
He was wrong. In spite of today’s cold, spring was here. Yellow Dog’s life would be easier with the weather warming.
The bounty hunter said no more. He held Brownie’s head while Hassie pulled herself into the saddle and arranged her skirt as best she could. He swung up on his horse and led the others out of the yard. Hassie followed, one hand over her cramping stomach.
T
HE DOG FOLLOWED
them. Of course a turtle—or a half-starved dog—could follow them at the pace of the woman’s half-starved horse. Yesterday Bret had been certain getting a line on a substantial bounty only days after setting out this spring meant this would be his best hunting season yet. Today he heartily wished the stable boy he’d paid two bits for information had forgotten all about Rufus Petty and the cavalry horse Rufus hadn’t had the sense to get rid of.
Rufus could have turned the horse loose and bought another. If only getting rid of Mrs. Petty proved that easy.
When Bret passed through Werver yesterday, stopping only long enough for a hot meal, no one had shown any interest in him. Today, as he led his ugly little parade into town, people stopped in the street and stared.
Bret reined up in front of the town marshal’s office, surprised at the sight of a man with a badge on his coat sitting outside on a day barely warm enough to melt last night’s ice from the horse troughs. A thin plume of steam rose from the cup in his gloved hand.
On second thought, the marshal had enough extra flesh for insulation against any temperature above freezing. His features looked small in his massive face, his eyes recessed dark beads. The short gray beard didn’t hide his three chins so much as carpet them.
The big lawman stayed in his chair and hoisted his cup toward the body as if offering a toast. “What have you got there, or should I say who?”
“Rufus Petty.”
“Rufus, eh? Haven’t seen hide nor hair of him or his brothers since they took off before the war. Heard he rode with Bill Anderson.”
“I wouldn’t know about that,” Bret said, “but I do know he stole the Fort Leavenworth payroll last month, killed the paymaster doing it.”
The marshal whistled. “So the army sent you after him?”
“The army put a price on his head and waited for someone like me to find him.”
The marshal’s beady eyes glinted. “Bounty hunter, eh? Are you telling me the army is angry enough to pay for old Rufus dead or alive?”
“No, they only wanted him alive, and the damned fool not only pulled on me, he kept trying after taking the first bullet. If you direct me to your undertaker, I’ll find out if the army wants a formal identification and if they care where he’s planted.”
“Never knew your kind to care about anything but the money.”
Bret hid his reaction to that “your kind” reference. Like most lawmen, this one didn’t like men who could make as much hauling one criminal to his jail as a town marshal would be paid for an entire year.
The Western Union operator would tell the marshal every word of any telegram to Fort Leavenworth, but Bret wasn’t telling anyone his business himself.
He changed the subject. “I’d appreciate any information about Mrs. Petty’s situation. As near as I can make out, her husband died yesterday or last night. She and Rufus were burying the old man when I rode up.”
“So Cyrus is gone, is he? I suppose he finished pickling himself in his own whiskey. He made a pretty good living off that corn liquor for years, but after the boys left, he started drinking more and more and brewing less and less.”
Considering the yellowish cast to the skin on the corpse, the marshal was probably right that the old man had pickled his liver, but Bret saw no reason to say so in front of the widow.
“So is Mrs. Petty right when she says she has no family? How about friends who can take her in?”
The marshal laughed, his belly shaking under his coat. “She says, does she? That would be quite a trick. So you brought her to town, did you? Didn’t see her back there.”
The marshal pushed up from the chair with a grunt, licking his lips as he stared at the woman. She sat on her horse stone-faced, the pale flesh of her legs exposed above her stockings because of the way her dress rode up in the saddle.
No wonder respectable women always rode sidesaddle. Bret had a sudden urge to yank the worn material of her dress down, hide that white skin from the marshal’s avid gaze. Touching a spur to his horse, he reined it at an angle in front of hers, blocking the marshal’s view.
“So you don’t know about her family.”
The chair groaned as the marshal settled back down. “Her ma died some years ago, came out here to marry Ned Grimes dragging the dummy along. Pure class that one was and snooty with it. I always figured if she had anybody back East, she wouldn’t have married Ned.”
“This Grimes would be Mrs. Petty’s stepfather then? How do I find him?”
“Ned never thought of himself as her step-anything. He had to put up with her to get the mother, so he did. You won’t find him. GTT.”
Gone to Texas. Bret scowled. Too many Missourians who came home from the war and found their homes in ruins picked up and left for Texas or other places. If a man had to start over, why not start over at home and build things back to what they had once been?
Bret considered asking more about the husband’s family and gave it up as a waste of breath.
The marshal enjoyed telling him about it anyway. “The only Pettys left would be Cyrus’s other two boys. Never came back from the war, so they’re dead for all I know, and you wouldn’t talk either one of them into taking on a woman, at least not permanent.”
Bret gave up on finding family for Mrs. Petty. Maybe she had no voice, but she’d told him the truth in her way. “Have you got any church groups in town? A preacher who can help?”
“We have two churches and two preachers. One’s off riding circuit, the other’s sitting with a widow who lives an hour or so thataway,” said the marshal, waving to the southeast. “If she dies quick enough, Reverend Lyons may be back tomorrow.”
Maybe he could leave Mrs. Petty with the preacher’s wife. Except on further inquiry, Bret learned the preachers of Werver were both unmarried. Resigned to waiting for Lyons to return, Bret got directions to the town’s undertaker. At least he could get rid of the body. Getting rid of Mrs. Petty was going to be harder.
D
ISAPPOINTMENT FLOODED THROUGH
Hassie at the news Reverend Lyons wasn’t in town.
In the years since Mama died, since marrying Cyrus had been the only way to stay out of the position she was in right now, Hassie had been to town less and less often, and not at all for at least the last two years. She had no real friends here and no one to ask for help, but she remembered Reverend Lyons as kind.
The bounty hunter was determined to foist her off on someone, but what did he intend to do in the meantime? Uncertain, worried, Hassie followed him to the undertaker’s.
Having learned her lesson the hard way, she drew her legs up under her skirts the minute her horse stopped and waited while the bounty hunter arranged for the undertaker to keep the body until after he wired the army.
The next stop was the telegraph office. Cold gray eyes assessed her. “You better come inside with me,” he said.
Hassie dismounted as fast as she could, relieved. She didn’t want to be out in the street alone with everyone who passed staring.
The bounty hunter might look down his nose at her and treat her as an annoyance, but he didn’t call her “dummy” in a voice dripping with scorn. He didn’t have the respect not to curse in front of her or to apologize for doing it, but he didn’t stare at her legs with undisguised lust as if she were a loose woman either. In the office with him had to be better than outside alone.
Pencils and paper lay scattered on the counter for customers to use to write their messages. The bounty man wrote. And wrote. Hassie picked up a pencil. No one paid any attention. She nudged a sheet of paper with a fingertip until it was in front of her.