In a Cowboy’s Arms (10 page)

He’d been just about certain that whoever had taken Daisy in had changed her name when he’d picked up Maggie’s trail. That’s when he’d decided to wait for her to return to Placid.

If there was even the slightest chance that Maggie would know Daisy on sight, then he had to convince her to go east with him. He didn’t expect it’d be easy to get her to agree, but there was the very real threat of the bounty hunter looking high and low for her.

As long as she was with him, he’d protect her from Carson. They could travel as brother and sister. Or husband and wife?

Nope, that was a bad idea. As it was, he couldn’t stop the very male feelings she roused in him. But he could damn well keep his hands to himself.

Yep, he needed someone who’d seen this gentleman. Who might have a better memory of what his sister looked like at that age. He needed Maggie Sutten’s help.

Above them at this point in the road lay a rocky outcropping that stacked into the foothills. Up there a person had a bird’s eye view of Placid, but down here on the road the town was hidden until they rounded the bend.

The road headed straight into the town that had remained a stopping off point to the minefields west of here back when the silver era was in full swing. Even the train had been used more by miners than anyone else in the area.

At any rate, folks tended to buy their supplies here and move on. Few stayed in Placid.

Dade suspected most of the good citizens liked it that way. Right now, a handful of them were clustered on the boardwalk in front of the mercantile as if they’d just had a meeting.

Nothing unusual about that. Yet as the anxious faces of the townsfolk turned to them, Dade sensed trouble.

Damn, had Carson returned and prattled about Maggie’s description? Were they riding into a trap of sorts?

Doc must have realized something was off too, for he stopped the buggy in front of the mercantile instead of driving Maggie on to the boardinghouse.

Mayor Willis strode to the steps and took a stand while the townsfolk fanned around Doc Franklin’s buggy. All of them were staring at Dade.

“Sheriff Logan, your absence from your duty came at a most inopportune time,” the mayor said.

“How so?” Dade asked, his sense of trouble ballooning.

“A band of outlaws descended on our fair town about an hour past,” Willis said.

“They robbed the bank.” This from someone in the crowd, and that was all it took to open the floodgates.

Everyone commenced talking at once, and Dade could scarce make head or tails of what had happened.

“Hush up! All of you,” Dade said, but the gathered crowd didn’t stop chattering until he pulled his sidearm and pointed it heavenward.

They hushed without him having to fire off a round. “Now then, one at a time, tell me what happened.”

“Take a look at the jail,” Duane said. “They rode in and shot out the windows first. Good thing we didn’t have any prisoners at the time.”

“They who?” Dade asked.

“The Logan Gang,” Willis said. “Lionel was a victim of theirs long ago and recognized them right off.”

The banker?
Hell!
His worst fear had come knocking at his door.

“Anyone hurt?” Dade asked.

“By the grace of God, we all escaped injury,” Willis said.

Murmurs of agreement echoed through the crowd. Dade silently gave up his thanks. There were enough tales circulating about the Logan Gang to know they didn’t hesitate to shoot anyone blocking their escape.

“What are you going to do about this travesty, sheriff?” Willis asked.

“A question I’m curious about as well, Sheriff
Logan.”
Lionel Payne stepped from the crowd, putting undue inflection on Dade’s surname. “Mighty interesting that you share the same name with the outlaws who ran roughshod over the town and my bank while you were off doing whatever it was that you was off doing.”

“Just what are you implying?” Dade asked, knowing full well what Payne was getting at.

The banker puffed his barrel chest out. “Are you related to the Logan Gang?”

An uneasy silence whispered around them, but it was the looks folks cast Dade’s way that left him on edge. He’d bet his last sawbuck that they were second-guessing themselves for not thinking to ask if the outlaw gang was his kin before they swore him in as their sheriff.

Payne fixed a dark accusatory glare on Dade, and he knew from that look that the banker was speculating if Dade’s leaving town today was planned so he wouldn’t have to face his family as they made an illegal withdrawal from the bank. He’d likely shared that suspicion with the townsfolk.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. But Dade had a feeling they wouldn’t believe him.

“It shames me to admit I’m related to the Logan Gang,” Dade said in all honesty.

“You had no right to keep that from us,” Payne said to a chorus of assenting murmurs.

“I had every right.” Dade stared Payne down. “All I shared with the Logan Gang is a surname. All I know about them is what I’ve read on wanted posters or heard as hearsay.”

Payne was shaking his head long before Dade even finished. “You expect us to believe that you’re estranged from your family?”

The old anger that had simmered in Dade for years fired up a notch. It wasn’t the first time he’d been judged unfairly because of his thieving kin.

The truth had never exonerated him. Didn’t matter that his pa had abandoned him and Daisy when they were children after their ma had died. It didn’t matter that Clete Logan never made any attempt to find his children in twenty odd years.

“It’s the truth, but I don’t rightly give a damn what you believe,” Dade said, earning him nods of understanding and scowls of disapproval.

Mayor Willis turned his attention to Maggie. “What have you got to say about your family descending on the town, Miss Logan?”

Maggie sat straighter beside Doc, and Dade expected her to deny being any relation to him now. “I’m appalled by their actions, but truthfully, I wouldn’t know my father if I passed him on the street.”

A commiserating chord twanged in Dade. He suspected there was a good dose of truth to that statement, for Maggie had been an orphan just the same as Daisy and he.

For the first time he didn’t see Maggie Sutten as a cunning imposter or manipulative liar, but as a lonely little girlnobody wanted. She certainly hadn’t had it easy being the companion to Harlan Nowell’s daughter.

Hell, Maggie clearly preferred being linked to an outlaw gang to fessing up to her identity. She was that desperate to hide from Nowell and the bounty hunter he’d hired to track her down.

“Nobody is suspecting you of subterfuge,” Mayor Willis said to her, earning a disapproving glower from Lionel Payne. “You were with Doc lending aid to those in need. Your brother is another matter.”

“He wouldn’t do anything underhanded,” Maggie said, surprising the hell out of him.

“Of course you’d say that about your brother,” Payne said, his expression as unyielding as the granite mountains rising around them.

“I wouldn’t defend him if he was as crooked as the Logan Gang,” she said. “I tell you truly they are strangers to us.”

Payne scoffed. “I am not convinced, Miss Logan. You came here six months ago and stole our sheriff’s affection. A few months later he was gunned down the day before your brother came to town.”

The townsfolk muttered among themselves. One good hard look at them screamed their suspicion that this could all be more than happenstance. And hell, it did look mighty fishy.

“Have you forgotten that Dade single-handedly routed the ruffian who’d gunned down our sheriff?” Mayor Willis asked. “Has it slipped your minds that we asked him to take over the job of sheriff?”

Begged was more like it, but Dade wasn’t about to point that out. At least a few folks seemed to be mulling over what Mayor Willis said. Not so for Payne.

The banker had come out the loser here, for it was his bank that the Logan Gang had robbed.

The hell of it was, Dade couldn’t be sure if his pa and uncles knew he was the sheriff in Placid. If they did, it’d be like them to keep watch then strike when he left town. It sure put him in a prickly situation.

“How much did they make off with?” Dade asked.

“Fifteen thousand dollars,” the banker said. “What do you intend to do?”

Dade took a bracing breath. “Not much I can do now but send a wire to the U.S. Marshal in Denver, then round up a posse and try to find their trail.”

“That could take days,” Payne said. “Weeks, maybe.”

“If I’m lucky.” And for Dade, luck would mean he didn’t have to hunt down his kin.

“I dislike the notion of your leaving the town unguarded again,” Mayor Willis said. “I wouldn’t want to see lightning strike us twice.”

The townsfolk muttered the same fear.

“We need to hire a deputy so we always have a lawman in town,” Doc said, drawing everyone’s attention back to the buggy where he and Daisy sat.

“Good idea,” Dade said, and the surprised look on Lionel Payne’s fleshy face proved he hadn’t expected Dade to readily agree.

There wasn’t enough commotion in town to keep one lawman busy, much less two. But the fact remained that Dade would be moving on soon in his quest to find Daisy.

If the town had a deputy, he wouldn’t feel like he was leaving them in the lurch. Though looking at their faces now, he guessed a good many would just as soon see him light out of town and take trouble with him.

Mayor Willis stepped up on the boardwalk and looked down on the throng. “Anyone know of a man who’d be interested in the job of deputy sheriff?”

“I could do it,” said the town drunk, which earned amedley of laughs and curses. “Hell, I spend most my time in jail anyhow.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Dade saw Duane Ten-feather square his broad shoulders and knew that he was going to volunteer. “I’d be interested in being deputy.”

That statement from the liveryman’s son had everyone staring at him, and some not too favorably. Sad fact was that while folks abided Indians and Negroes in certain types of work, they disliked their being in charge.

Didn’t matter that Duane had been a scout with the U.S. Army. That he’d been honorably discharged after being wounded in battle and even decorated for his service.

Men cursed by prejudice, like Payne, hated to give a half-breed a position of authority. Dade just hoped the banker’s venom didn’t poison the rest of the town against Duane.

Folks scanned the crowd as if expecting someone else would step forward. But nobody did.

Dade smiled. Duane wasn’t quite as thick in the shoulders and chest as his pa, but he seemed to stand a mite taller and hold his chin a bit higher as time stretched out.

That steely quality in his bearing bellowed confidence that even a blind man could see. If Duane could still handle a gun, he’d be the perfect man for the job.

“I can’t think of a better man to work with than Duane,” Dade said.

That got folks mumbling amongst themselves. Duane stood stock still, not showing any reaction to the scrutiny.

“His pa is the most trustworthy man I know,” the grocer said. “Reckon Duane is of the same bent so I say we hire him.”

One by one folks chimed in, adding more agreement than reservation. But they hushed when a woman asked, “Are you serious, Duane?”

Dade saw the telling and nearly imperceptible jerk of

Duane’s stance as he stared at Serena, the Mexican widow who ran Placid’s lone restaurant. It was enough to tell him that this woman was important to Duane.

“I’m sure,” he said.

Serena pressed a hand to her mouth and stepped back into the crowd. Dade wondered if Duane would take that hint of disapproval and change his mind about being the deputy. But Duane squared his shoulders and held his head high. Proud.

“Duane’s got my vote,” Dade said.

Mayor Willis held his hands up in a call for silence when folks started jabbering at once. “This holdup has drawn out the good citizens of Placid, so I suggest we decide right here and now if we want to hire Duane Tenfeather as deputy. All in favor say aye.”

A chorus of ayes followed, some more enthusiastic than others. But the majority of those gathered stepped forward to support the hometown boy.

That settled it. Duane Tenfeather was the deputy, whether he could shoot straight or not. He was a trusted member of the community. And right now, they were more interested in having someone at the jail who could keep an eye on Dade Logan.

“Sheriff Logan,” Benjamin Willis began, “I trust you will swear in the new deputy and apprise him of his duties.”

Dade dipped his chin. “Yes, sir. No time like the present.”

“Duane, raise your right hand and repeat what I say,” Dade ordered him as he said the vow he’d taken when he’d been sworn in.

The former army scout snapped to attention and did just that, saying his vow to uphold the law with his life if necessary in a clear loud voice. The man surely didn’t lack bravado.

“Congratulations, Deputy Tenfeather,” Dade said. “You’renow an official officer of the law in Placid. Come by the jail and we’ll hunt you up a star.”

“Yes, sir, Sheriff Logan,” Duane said, then strode off looking proud as all get out.

Some of the townsfolk clapped. Some merely nodded approval before they turned and went on about their business.

Doc set off in his buggy as well, and Dade silently groused that Maggie didn’t pay him a passing glance. He watched them disappear for too long before the lone man on the boardwalk caught his attention.

Saying the man wanted retribution didn’t do justice to the look Lionel Payne fixed on him. “I’ll be watching you.”

“You’ll be bored then.”

He whirled his chestnut gelding around and headed toward the livery. If nothing else, today’s events convinced him that his time here was over.

Foremost on his mind, he’d never find Daisy staying here. Now that he had an idea where Daisy had been claimed by a family, he was chomping at the bit to head to Kansas.

Though he’d been pissed to high heaven when he found out Maggie was pretending to be his sister, he was glad now that she’d done so. Hell, she was the first person he’d met who remembered Daisy.