In a Cowboy’s Arms (32 page)

He hoped he didn’t live to regret it. “Let’s get a room and treat ourselves to a meal tonight.”

They reached the town in short order, and Dade headed straight for the hotel. Once he got Maggie settled, he’d see to their horses and make sure they were safe.

So far the only attention they had drawn was from the pair of old men sitting outside the general store. That would generate enough talk. Who else was watching?

He was so attuned to looking for trouble that he almost missed her wince as he lifted her from her mare. He set her on her feet but didn’t let go of her.

“Can you walk?” he asked.

“Just give me a moment,” she said, and when she wouldn’t look at him he knew.

Dade called himself ten kinds of an ass. He’d loved her long and hard last night then put her astride a horse and forced her to ride all day.

She needed to soak out the kinks and soreness. She needed rest. She needed him to keep his damned pecker in his britches tonight.

“I’ll see if the owner can draw you a hot bath,” he said.

She nodded. “That’d be very nice.”

“Come on.” He escorted her into the hotel.

A cherry-cheeked matron stood behind the counter. “Good day to you.”

Dade brushed two fingers over his hat brim. “Same to you, ma’am. Me and the missus would like a room. A bath too, if you can provide it.”

“That can be arranged.” She opened a book and angled the pen his way. “If you’d just sign here, Mr.–”

“Morris,” he supplied.

He caught himself from scrawling just his name and wrote Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Morris instead. A strange feeling of rightness settled in his soul as he put the pen back in the holder.

It didn’t matter that he liked seeing his name teamed to a lady’s. Didn’t change anything that he felt good being the other half to Maggie Sutten.

Like everything else in his life, this couldn’t last. He’d do well to keep that in mind.

The smiling woman handed him a key. “Room four at the end of the hall. It’s much quieter and private.”

Her innuendo wasn’t lost on him. “Thank you, ma’am. I’ll see my wife to our room then fetch our bags.”

“My son will see to those bags,” the woman said. “You just set them inside the door, and he’ll take them up for you.”

“Much obliged,” Dade said and took Maggie’s elbow.

This was a woman he’d never tire of touching. She wouldn’t bore him with chatter either.

Nope, she’d been through the hell of being shuffled off to an orphanage. She understood how being unwanted tore at a person’s soul.

He didn’t know all of her past yet–she’d not offered, and he hadn’t pushed. But he knew how secrets kept hidden could fester like a sore.

He still felt off balance from meeting his pa today. So many years since he’d laid eyes on him, but the pain of rejection was as fresh as if it’d just happened.

It was clear the old man hadn’t wasted any energy worrying about his children. Hell, he’d believed Maggie was Daisy. The man didn’t even know his own daughter.

“I am looking forward to the day when I can stay in one place for an entire week without ever getting on a horse,” Maggie said.

She moved slowly up the stairs. Anyone who didn’t know her would have thought she was just taking a ladylike stroll. But Dade caught the slight wince when she bent just so and the unnatural stiffness to her back. She was hurting, and he wasn’t sure that a hot bath would ease all her discomfort.

That could pose a problem tomorrow, for they had just as long a ride into Dodge City. She’d do far better in a well-sprung buggy, but he doubted he’d find anything besides farm wagons and buckboards in this town.

He unlocked the door and let her enter first. She made straightaway to the armless chair by the window and eased onto it.

“Finally something to sit on that isn’t moving,” she said.

Guilt took a bite out of him again. Yep, it was mighty clear that not all of her discomfort stemmed from sitting a saddle all day. A good part of her misery could be laid at his feet for loving her long into the night.

She needed rest from the saddle and him.

“You aren’t going to be in any shape to ride again tomorrow.”

She hiked her chin up, her lips pursed in that way that told him she was getting her back up again. “Is it wise to spend more than a day here?”

“With Allis Carson close by? Nope,” he said. “The sooner we get to Dodge City and the Iago Theater, the better off we’ll be.”

“Then we ride again tomorrow.”

“You need rest, Maggie,” he said. “I’ll fetch our bags so we can settle in.”

“Don’t take a foolish risk because of me. I’d rather suffer a little inconvenience now than risk getting caught here by Allis Carson.”

“All right. I’ll arrange for a bath to be brought up to you while I’m seeing to the horses and getting a feel for the town.”

Dade slipped from the room before she could protest any further. It took no time at all to remove her satchel and his saddlebags from the horses.

A request to make his wife’s stay comfortable was easily procured as well. “I’ll have your things taken to your room first, then set up her bath,” the matron assured him.

“Thank you, ma’am.”

He left the hotel and stood on the wide porch a moment, getting a feel for the town. While it didn’t look to be in decline, it didn’t seem to be growing either.

It was a sleepy Western burg where nobody seemed to be in any hurry. Still he took care riding to the livery.

The liveryman met him at the wide open doors. “Afternoon. What can I do for you?”

“Need to board my horses overnight.”

“You’re passing through?”

“On our way to Dodge City.”

“You got kin there?” the liveryman asked as he stabled the horses.

To Dade’s way of thinking, he’d said more than enough about his destination. Folks in small towns tended to have long memories. Time to cover their trail.

“My wife has family in Santa Fe,” Dade said. “We plan to catch the train in Dodge City.”

The lie wouldn’t fool the bounty hunter for long, but it might give Dade and Maggie enough time in Dodge to find out who’d adopted Daisy. After that they could disappear.

“Guess you plan to leave early in the morning then,” the liveryman said.

That had been Dade’s intent, but he was worried about Maggie’s condition. “Depends on how my wife feels. The journey has been hard on her.”

“Where’d you come from?”

Again, Dade didn’t dare tell the truth. “We had a small place in Nebraska.”

“Times are hard everywhere.”

Dade nodded, and let the man think what he would. He knew as time went on, the story would become embellished.

“Just send word down in the morning, and I’ll have your horses ready,” the liveryman said.

He’d do just that if Maggie was up for the ride.

He gave the town another cautious glance and returned to the hotel. Maggie should’ve finished her bath by now.

His gut grumbled in protest of the small meal he’d had today. Didn’t help that the most appetizing smells were wafting from the hotel dining room. He was tempted to escort Maggie down here for the evening meal, but fear that the bounty hunter would walk in on them changed his mind.

He’d have their meals brought up to their room, he decided as he entered the hotel. The owner was most obliging.

“I’ll have trays sent up in an hour,” she said.

Dade thanked her for her trouble and doled out what he owed. “Any chance you have a bathing chamber downstairs?”

“We certainly do,” she said. “Many of the men folk partake of it while their ladies are indisposed.”

She led him to a small room just off the kitchen. “There might not be much hot water left by now.”

“That’s fine.” He was used to taking a dip in a creek when the need arose.

Half an hour later, he bounded up the stairs in his same duds that had most of the dust beaten out of them. The sound of feminine laughter inside his room brought him up short. One woman was Maggie, but the other was a stranger.

“Do tell me more, Maggie,” a woman asked.

He set his teeth, annoyed with his traveling companion. After all the fuss of coming up with a new identity for her, she went and told some woman her real name.

His knuckles wrapped the door a bit more loudly than necessary, and the laughter inside instantly died. Talk about feeling like a killjoy. But damn, what if the bounty hunter had overheard them instead of him?

“It’s me,” he said.

To his relief, Maggie replied, “Come in. You won’t believe who I ran into.”

Someone she knew? Is that why the other woman called her by name?

It seemed impossible, but as he stepped into the room it was obvious that the two women knew each other by the relaxed way they were with each other. It was just as clear that Maggie trusted the other woman.

“Afternoon,” he said.

The welcoming smile and fitted dress Maggie wore caught him off guard. A vagrant thought crossed his mind that she’d greet him this way every time he came home.

As for the other woman, he’d seen her in the dining room when they’d first arrived. He doubted she worked here since she was great with child.

“Maggie and I have been catching up on old times,” the woman said.

“You won’t believe this,” Maggie told him, eyes bright with excitement, “but Rita was on the orphan train with me and Daisy. Just last year she married Faron Owens, the hotel owner’s son.”

Well now he damn sure hadn’t expected Maggie to meet another soul from that train here. More than anyone, Dade understood the bond of orphans. But he had learned the hard way that trust among brothers could be shattered by betrayal.

“Small world,” he said.

“You’ll wish that were so after you hear this,” Maggie said, her expression serious as she turned to Rita. “Tell him about Daisy.”

The woman’s smile faded. That’s all it took to drive a prod in his worry, because that look told him that whatever she knew about Daisy was bad.

“The McCray’s–that’s the family that adopted me–were visiting family in Hays when the orphan train passed through. But they lived in Dodge City,” she said. “I came down sick on the way back there, and they took me to the doctor. There were maybe a half dozen rough looking cowboys outside on horses. Two of them were inside with a little girl. That’s when I realized she was Daisy.”

Again, that followed from what Maggie and Miss Jennean had said about his sister being out of sorts after her fall. But his gut clenched with fear that Daisy had worsened enough to need a doctor’s help.

“At least if she was ailing, Mrs. Jarrett got help for her,” he said, remembering the name of the family who’d taken in Daisy only to give her up shortly after.

Rita shook her head. “But that’s just it. There wasn’t any woman there except Mrs. McCray.”

He had a real bad feeling he knew the answer, but he asked anyway. “Who the hell brought in Daisy?”

“The cowboys, or rather the one who seemed to be in charge,” Rita said and shivered, leaving him to wonder if that reaction was born out of revulsion or fear or a combination of the two. “He was so tall and big and gruff that he scared the dickens out of me. And Daisy... Poor girl just stood beside him with tears streaming down her cheeks.”

Dade flung his hat on the bed and drove his fingers through his hair. Pacing was a waste of shoe leather, and he lacked Trey’s explosive temper that would have had him driving a fist through a wall. He hadn’t inherited his pa’s inclination to shoot somebody just for the hell of it either.

But dammit all he sure had the urge to do something to vent the anger boiling inside him.

“You have any idea what was wrong with her?” he asked.

Rita’s eyes held a world of apology. “Not really, though afterward my mama, Mrs. McCray that is, said that the child was suffering from headaches.”

“You’re sure she didn’t know who she was?” Maggie asked, her blue eyes swimming with moisture.

“Positive. She didn’t remember me either,” Rita said, and in a small voice added, “She didn’t even know her own name.”

That was a gut punch he hadn’t braced himself for. Never mind that it followed with what Maggie and Miss Jennean had said all along. A part of him had hoped that they were embellishing the facts.

Hell, maybe they all were. Could he trust that Rita was telling him the truth? Was she backing up a friend’s story?

“You sure that Daisy was with these cowboys?”

She bobbed her head. “Without a doubt. When they left, they took her with them.”

Half a dozen men and one little girl who didn’t know her name. He didn’t like the direction his thoughts were taking him on this one damned little bit.

“Any idea who this big cowboy was?” he asked.

“None,” Rita said. “But after they left, I recall Mama and the doctor expressing concern about a child being in the company of cowboys for so long.”

That sounded like they were planning a longer trip. He hoped it was to a good family.

“Can you describe him?”

She did, and the description matched half the cowpokes he’d met in his life save one thing.

“I’ve never seen a man that big before. And his voice.” Rita hugged herself. “He spoke softly and with a deep drawl, but there was thunder in his tone.”

Sounded like he was a man to be reckoned with. A man’s man by most standards. So why was he taking on the care of a little girl?

He wanted to believe the cowboy was a family man. A rancher maybe who took in a pretty little girl out of the goodness of his heart. God knew the idea of his sister being handed over to cowboys, especially in a rough town like Dodge City that saw hundreds of men pass through each season, didn’t set well with him.

He strode to the window and stared out at the quiet street. Though Maggie saw no harm in drawing a childhood friend into their confidence, he wasn’t so quick to trust.

From his own experience, women tended to gossip. Men said only what needed to be said, and even then the truth had to be pried out of them.

He faced Rita again and caught the worried look that passed between her and Maggie. “This doctor who treated you and Daisy. You recall his name?”

“Of course. Dr. Pike,” Rita said, brightening a bit at being able to supply that. “I haven’t seen him since I married last year and moved to Ravanna, but I know he’s still in Dodge City.”