Deacon McCallister shoved his hat back and said impatiently, “Let's collect the bounty on these hombres, dead and soon-to-be-dead, clean up, find a willing woman or two, rest up, and then follow Jericho and his herd of cattle south."
He smelled his armpit. “I'm telling you, we're as ripe as those bodies we're hauling. I've got to have a bath."
Chapter Two
Naomi Parker stood in the alley between the sheriff's office and the town's only saloon. Neither building offered shade, so the sun, directly overhead, speared her with its heat.
Inside her muslin gown, perspiration gathered at the top of her shoulder, then slid down her back, pooling at her narrow waist. She wore a sturdy corset between camisole and dress, compressing her flesh an inch smaller, as
Godey's Lady's Book
dictated.
A white fichu at her neck had looked crisp and cool when she'd dressed the morning before. At that time, she'd been preparing for her duties as a teacher at the Sparrow Creek Ladies’ Seminary. In spite of the day's heat, she shivered, remembering.
The seminary's boarders were all at the meager breakfast Naomi had prepared. The cook and kitchen supplies would arrive when the rest of the girls got there.
The morning was already warm. Someone had opened the window hoping for a breeze, and there were already insects buzzing in the room. She sat with her students, eating cold porridge when the first shots sounded.
The girls bounded out of their seats—thankful for any distraction.
"Ladies, calm down. Mr. Wilson has probably encountered that skunk he's been fussing about.” Patrick Wilson had been waiting when she'd arrived in Texas at the Flat Rock stage depot, two weeks before. He'd told her all about the skunk in the henhouse on their ride back to the school.
She'd been prepared to meet a Board Member, or at least the Headmistress. But Patrick Wilson had been assigned the task of transporting her, and later her students, as they arrived to attend the Academy.
By the first nightfall, four of the daughters of Texas had been delivered to the building and left in Naomi's care. Justine Garner, Mary-Beth Calloway, Marta Mullins, and Ambrosia Quince had stumbled up the steps of the dormitory, worn out from travel, but filled with twelve-year-old curiosity.
It was Naomi's least favorite age for teaching students. Twelve-year-old girls were betwixt and between ... neither children nor young women. Sometimes, they were unspeakably cruel. She'd heard her share of giggled name-calling: “Old stick, skinny old maid, dried up prune,” behind her back, but not beyond her hearing.
The first week, Mary Calloway and Brody Quince had become fast friends and followers of whatever mischief Justine Garner and Marta Mullins invented. Chickens were tormented, bedding short-sheeted (even Naomi was not exempt), clothing hidden; Justine's specialty was fainting.
The tiny girl, much smaller than her twelve-year-old friends, ruled them with strong will and silly antics. Whenever she couldn't get her way, she would swoon, or at least that's what she called it. Naomi called it falling down to get attention.
By the following week when four older girls arrived—Rebecca Johnson, Emily Erdman, Daisy Meadow, and Millicent Cotter—the first four girls had been there long enough to feel that they owned the school.
The fourteen year olds disagreed. Discord, teasing, and finally mischievous damage ensued. Naomi, quickly losing control of her charges, was forced to render discipline.
It seemed a thing that had taken place a hundred years before. “Hold out your hands.” She'd made her voice severe, disapproving. “Justine, Mary, Marta, Brody...” Naomi flinched, remembering the slap of the ruler against the twelve-year-old palms.
After meting out punishment, she'd walked to the well for a bucket of water to hide her distress. The four twelve-year-olds had stood staring after her, rebellious and defiant.
"Mean, ugly old maid,” one of them had hissed at her back as she retreated, more the punished than the punisher. She had felt so sorry for herself, standing by the well, tears barely held in check.
Naomi's thoughts jerked back to the attack yesterday. She'd been studying the streaks of black ink that still stained Missy Cotter's blonde hair, even after a week's worth of washings, when shots fired down by the barn got everyone's attention.
"Gently, girls,” she'd admonished them. But benches had gone flying as the students hurried to the front windows.
Naomi had continued calmly repeating her instructions, even though no one listened. “Remember, a lady always maintains poise and calm, even in dire circumstance. Nor does one show extreme curiosity, as it is an emotion of the lower classes."
The young women of the Sparrow Creek Ladies’ Academy ignored her, pushing and shoving to be the first at the windows. Even watching the hired man shoot a polecat beat the bland morning meal and the boring day that was sure to follow.
Naomi walked slowly to illustrate gracious dignity. Even though she was secretly as interested in the outdoor disruption as her students, she was careful to model restraint as she passed the far window that overlooked the meadow below. She always looked at the meadow; it was the one spot of green in an otherwise monochromatic world of brown dirt, red dust, and gray sky.
That's when the day had changed. She'd thought it was an Indian attack.
Marta had told the girls about tribes of wild savages that roamed across Texas, stealing cattle and killing white people when they found them. Now, men fitting Marta's descriptions and like nothing Naomi had ever seen, swooped down on the school in the early morning.
"Indians ... Hide!” she screamed the warning, but it was too late. The men were already at the school, riding their horses up on the porch.
A day later, in the bright sun of the alley, Naomi pressed her hand against her mouth, holding back shuddering sobs at the memory
. I'm a coward. I abandoned my charges. Had I been alert, on watch ... I should have done something!
She'd stood frozen by the window until the first man burst through the doorway, setting the girls screaming. Then, instincts honed from her childhood, took over and Naomi jumped out and didn't stop when she landed, until she'd rolled under the school, hiding in the crawlspace.
She knew from the rough sounds, thumps, and screaming that terrible things were happening above, and someone had been badly hurt. She'd pressed her mouth shut, holding her hand over it tightly to silence her need to join in the screams. Instead, gagging on her own fear, she'd remained hidden.
Then, it had gotten quieter, and she'd watched when the savages had pushed and dragged the girls outside, loading them onto the extra horses the bandits led. She had been unable to think of any way to save her students.
And she'd heard the men laughing. She stuffed her fist in her mouth to stop the rising bile. “Collins didn't lie. White chickies like these'll bring us plenty across the river if he doesn't come up with his part of the trade."
Her fault, all her fault ... she'd known that she was to blame as she hunched under the school hiding from the disaster she'd wrought.
A fortnight before, her heart had almost stopped when Harvey Collins had driven his wagon full of trinkets and worthless gewgaws into the schoolyard.
Harley Collins was an unpleasant memory from her childhood in Alabama, and she'd not seen him in years. But, even as she'd chased him away with threats of the sheriff, he'd leered at the young girls hanging off the porch watching.
"Think you're all high and mighty now, don't you? I remember you. You're Nomi Parker. Turned into a dried-up old maid, didn't you? How's that sister of yours? Knew her pretty well, myself, but then again, so did half the men in the county.” He'd smacked his lips and cackled his question loud enough for listeners if they wanted to hear.
Even when Harvey had had all of his teeth, he'd been too lazy to say her name right. But, he knew that she came from a played-out dab of dirt, sharecropped by her father and brother until they'd both been killed in the war.
After that, Naomi's older sister, Comfort, had put food on the table however she could. But when an offer of marriage had been made, she'd grabbed it, leaving Naomi alone with a brush, a comb, a
Godey's Lady's Book
, and orders to leave the ramshackle cabin falling down around her, and go live with the neighbors. Stubbornly, Naomi had remained alone in her shack.
That's when Harvey had decided he needed a girl to look after him.
She remembered well the night he'd broken into her place and tried to jump her, when she'd broken a pitcher across his head and run all the way to the Lancaster Farm. So, when Harvey pulled up in front of the school in what he called his Travelling Wagon of Interesting Items, she'd yelled at him and refused to let him show his wares to her students.
"Get out of here you wicked old man. I'll send Patrick after the sheriff if you don't go now.” Then she'd ducked her head, embarrassed that she'd let her temper slip. Ladies were always in control of their emotions.
She'd been glad to see the hired man limping toward her, “Everything all right over here, Miss Naomi?"
"I've explained that we have no use for his potions or fribbles. He's leaving now.” Naomi had felt so safe with Patrick Wilson there to protect her. But both Becky Johnson and Missy Cotter had defied her instruction to stay on the porch, and swooped down on the wagon.
"I have money to buy what I want, Miss Parker.” Missy Cotter was the product of intense spoiling and never missed an opportunity to brag about the money she came from.
"Go back to the dormitory porch, ladies. The peddler has nothing you would want.” She'd been firm, and Becky Johnson's snobbery had helped.
"Really, Missy, would you want anything that dirty old man is selling?” The silly child had raised her voice, intentionally insulting the merchant to impress Naomi with her superior social status.
Harvey Collins had shrugged and driven on down the road, leaving a final warning, “Your day's coming, Miz Parker.” He sneered the formal address. “You and all your prissy females will get your comeuppance."
She should have realized it had been too easy getting rid of him. She should have told someone about Harvey Collins.
Her stomach churned with guilt. My fault—Patrick dead and the others stolen; it's my entire fault.
After the outlaws had ridden away, carrying her students with them, Naomi had huddled in the crawlspace for a long time, afraid to move. Shame filled her at the memory.
Had she grown a backbone sooner, Patrick might have lived. She found him dying by the barn when she'd finally shimmied out from under the house, no worse off than a few bruises she'd suffered in her plummet from the window.
"Miss Naomi,” he wheezed her name, barely able to speak. “Tell sheriff—Comancheros.” She'd lifted him, trying to stop the wound with the fabric from her dress, but nothing slowed the blood as it leaked into the dust around them.
"Take the mule and go, Miss Naomi.” Before he died, even Patrick's last words were respectful. She might have sat longer in the wake of death, but he'd given her a direction to follow.
So, she'd ridden Patrick's mule to the town of Flat Rock, the nearest place that had a sheriff. The town she'd arrived in two weeks before.
She'd alternately cried, mumbled aloud, and slumped lifeless on the mule until she reached help. She'd been ready to hand the nightmare over to someone else. But, that didn't happen.
"No, ma'am. That's a sorry thing that happened. But if the Comancheros are stealing women from roundabouts and took them girls, we can't be leaving our own women folk unprotected. I'll wire the Eclipse Marshal, but I won't be asking the Flat Rock citizens to chase down and fight those devils."
It would take days for the territory law to put together trackers and a posse of men, weeks before there was any hope of catching the outlaws. It was only then that she had realized the girls’ rescue was in her hands.
Three men rode down the main street of Flat Rock, surveying their surroundings for danger. They were bounty hunters who led the evidence of their success behind them—two live prisoners cuffed, gagged, and mounted on horses, followed by the smell of death emanating from the cargo of wrapped bundles that poisoned the air of Flat Rock.
Judging the three riders by the dirt, dust, and sweat they wore, it would have been easy to mistake the men for saddle bums. But the well-groomed and sleekly muscled horses they rode, as well as the remuda of mounts they towed behind them, told a different story.
Naomi had stationed herself at the edge of the alley and watched the trio ride down the dirt path that passed for civilization in the county seat. The heat, flies, and filth that surrounded her in the narrow passage were temporarily forgotten as she watched the fierce men send most of Flat Rock's citizens scurrying to get inside.
The bounty hunters, cloaked in arrogance and savagery, were evidently avoided by the honest and respectable as well as the thieves and murderers in Texas.
By the time the three riders reached the sheriff's office, word had already filtered inside and a deputy stood waiting to unload the neatly wrapped bundles of tarp stacked on the back of the pack animals.
Naomi knew that what the hunters brought was this land's version of rough justice, but it made her stomach clench, remembering Patrick in death. The strangers seemed more like the Comanchero killers who had attacked the school than like honorable citizens doing a needed task.
As she listened and watched, a deputy unloaded the horses, his complaints filling the otherwise quiet street. He wore his bandanna wrapped around his face to block the odor.
"Jesus Christ, sheriff said to just bring in their gear next time. This pile of stink is smellin’ up the whole town."
"Tried that,” one of the bounty hunters nodded at the deputy grimly and chided him. “Sheriff didn't want to pay out on our word last time, remember?” Even through the dust of the trail, the man's shoulder-length hair gleamed golden under the noontime sun.