The Man from Stone Creek (10 page)

A tremor of rage went through Sam and it took a few moments to ride it out. Donagher must have set out for town as soon as he and Maddie had left the ranch house, riding overland at a hard pace.

“You told me to come to you if I had trouble,” Bird reminded him in a small, shamed voice.

“What brought this on?” he asked, and went on cleaning up her face. The answer wouldn't matter in the vast scheme of things, but he needed something to keep his mind on the task at hand, keep him from hunting Donagher down and taking his fists to him.

A tear slipped down Bird's cheek, trickling its windy way through rouge as thick as a coat of whitewash. “I don't know,” she said miserably. “I went over it and over it in my mind, after I got loose of him and come running for your place, but I can't come up with a reason for what he did, 'cept simple meanness.” She stopped, swallowed miserably. “I hit Garrett over the head with a lamp,” she confessed. “Oralee ain't going to like that, my breaking her lamp. Least of all, on a customer's head. Knocked him clean out, too.”

Sam smiled at the image of a Donagher prostrate on the floor of a whorehouse, though it probably looked more like a grimace to Bird. “Good,” he said.

“Good?” Bird asked, blinking again. “Garrett's going to kill me when he comes around, if one of his brothers doesn't do it first.” Another fleeting, brave little smile. “You said you'd help me, if I got myself into trouble, but right now, I can't for the life of me reckon how you'll go about it.”

Sam got his flask, the one he carried in his saddlebags when he was away from Stone Creek, and dampened a fresh corner of the towel with it. Bird winced when he touched it to the cut over her lip. “It's a conundrum, all right,” he conceded. “You sure can't go back to the Rattlesnake. But if you spend the night here, I'll be out of work by morning.”

Bird's shoulders slumped. She clearly expected him to go back on his word, like everybody else in her life had probably done for as long as she could recall.

She didn't know Sam O'Ballivan. What he'd go through to keep a promise was fitting stuff for the epic tales in those volumes over there on the table. He'd cut his teeth on Hercules, after all, but at times like this one, he felt like Prometheus, condemned to have his liver fed to an eagle on a continuous basis. It was the price of stealing fire, he supposed.

He must have voiced at least some of his thoughts, because Bird wrinkled her nose in confusion and asked, “Who?”

“Prometheus,” he said, resigned to the explanation. “He was a Greek god. Among other things, he stole fire and gave it to humans, so they could keep warm and cook their food. Zeus wasn't too happy about it and sent this eagle—”

“I never heard nothin' like that at the preachin',” Bird said, confounded.

“Never mind.” Sam sighed.

“Who's this Zeus fella?”

“Just somebody in a story,” Sam answered. He'd done all he could, in terms of tending Bird's wounds. The finer points of Greek mythology would have to wait.

“What are we going to do now?” Bird asked. “I'd as soon take my chances with wolves and bears as go back to the Rattlesnake.”

Sam strapped on his gun belt, slid his .45 into the holster, draped his coat over Bird's shoulders. “Only one thing we can do,” he said.

Five minutes later he was knocking at the back door of the mercantile.

Maddie answered, bundled in a wrapper and holding a lantern high. He'd have bet the shotgun was leaning against the doorframe, within easy reach. She'd plaited her hair, the single braid resting over her right shoulder like a gleaming length of chestnut-colored rope, reaching past her waist.

Her eyes widened when she saw Bird, huddled in Sam's coat, shivering even though it was a warm night.

“I know it's late,” Sam began, and then stopped, because he didn't know where to go from there.

Maddie's jaw clamped down visibly. She'd grind down her molars if she kept that up. She ran her gaze over the saloon girl again, then stepped back. “Come in,” she said.

Sure enough, the shotgun was beside the door. Sam felt a little less flummoxed, having that settled, along with the way Maddie wore her hair when she went to bed. Beyond those two things, though, he seemed to be at a loss.

“You're hurt,” Maddie said, taking another look at Bird's face in the lamplight.

“Garrett Donagher beat me up,” Bird said, and Sam was thankful. He'd had the impetus to get here, but now that they were in the kitchen behind the mercantile, with Maddie naturally wanting an explanation, he was having a hard time finding words.

“Sit down,” Maddie told her, pulling back a chair at a round table and setting the lamp in the middle. “Let me have a look.”

“I can't go back to the Rattlesnake,” Bird went on nervously, taking a seat and turning her face up for Maddie's inspection. “And Mr. O'Ballivan says I can't stay at the schoolhouse, either, or he'll be out of work by morning.”

Maddie flung a glance in Sam's direction. He kept his distance and held his tongue, leaning back against the wall and folding his arms. He hoped the light wasn't good enough to reveal the flush he felt pulsing in his neck and rising to his ears.

“So he brought you here,” Maddie said.

Bird swallowed and lowered her head before she nodded.

“Why can't you go back to Oralee's?”

“Because I clouted Garrett over the head with a lamp to get away from him,” Bird said, looking up slowly. “He was bleedin' pretty good when I left him.” She swallowed again, harder this time. “You don't reckon I
kilt
him, do you?”

Maddie sighed. “He's Mungo Donagher's son,” she said. “His head is harder than packed dirt.” She set her hands on her hips. “Where was Oralee while all this was happening?”

“She lit out for Tucson a couple of days ago, and she ain't come back yet,” Bird answered, squirming a little. “She wouldn't take my part even if she was here, though. Garrett's a customer, and I'm just a…just a—”

Maddie laid a hand on Bird's shoulder, squeezed. “I could make you a cup of tea,” she said with brisk kindness.

“I'd rather have whiskey,” Bird replied honestly.

Sam bit back a grin.

“Sorry,” Maddie said. “Fresh out.”

About that time, Terran appeared, through a curtained doorway, sleep-baffled and clad in a long nightshirt. “Is she a dance hall girl?”

There was a stove in the corner and a sink with a pump. “Yes,” Maddie said, sounding exasperated. She poked some kindling into the stove, along with crumpled newspaper, and lit a match to it. “And if you tell a soul she's here, Terran Chancelor, you'll be splitting firewood till your hands blister.”

Terran came a step closer, peering curiously at Bird. “What's your name?”

“Bird of Paradise,” Bird said, smiling a little now that she knew she wasn't going to be turned away.

“Tarnation,” Terran said, awed. “You born with that name?”

Sam pushed away from the wall, took the teakettle from Maddie and pumped water into it at the sink.

“Nope,” Bird told Terran. “I was Esther Sue before I came to work for Oralee.”

“I like Bird of Paradise better,” Terran said, dragging back a chair and sitting himself down next to the night visitor. “It's a pure mouthful, though.”

“Just call me Bird,” Bird suggested. “Like Mr. O'Ballivan here does.”

Sam had his back to Terran, but he felt the boy's gaze boring into his spine.

“I'd like to know how you and Mr. O'Ballivan became acquainted,” Maddie said. Her tone was cordial, but there was bedrock under it. She wrenched the teakettle out of Sam's hands and set it on the stovetop with a little bang of metal against metal.

Sam's ears burned.

“I brought him his supper,” Bird said proudly, “first night he was in town. We got to be friends then.”

“Isn't that nice?” Maddie responded. She didn't sound like she thought it was nice, but that seemed to go over both Terran's and Bird's heads. Sam wished it had gone over his.

“Nothing happened,” he told Maddie, and then could have kicked himself, because it was none of her damn business whether anything
happened
or not.

Maddie clattered down some cups from a cupboard, along with a tin of tea leaves. Evidently she and Terran had their meals down here and slept upstairs. Sam's eyes rose to the ceiling, and he was possessed of a powerful wondering where he had no call to wonder.

“Maddie won't let me go near the Rattlesnake,” Terran confided to Bird. “Not even to deliver Miss Oralee's provisions. Not that she buys much from us.”

“It's no place for a fine boy like you,” Bird agreed. “You listen to your sister. She knows what's best for you.”

“Do you have a sister?” Terran asked, still breathless with amazement at finding a dance hall girl in the family kitchen in the middle of the night.

“I did once,” Bird said with a note of sorrowful nostalgia. “She wouldn't speak to me now.”

Maddie waxed thoughtful. Now that she was over the shock of the encounter, Sam figured, she was sifting for solutions. He blessed her for that, though he knew she'd shoot a few blistering remarks his way the next time they were alone.

“Where does your sister live?” she asked Bird, measuring orange pekoe into a crockery pot and then adding more wood to the fire in the belly of the stove.

“Denver,” Bird replied. The way she said the word, the place might have been on the other side of an ocean, instead of a week's travel by stagecoach and railroad. “She's married and lives in a big house with a porch that wraps almost the whole way around.”

“You're sure she wouldn't take you in?” Sam asked, feeling that he ought to say something since he'd been the one to carry the problem to Maddie and drop it at her feet. Which, he noted, were bare under the hem of that wrapper.

He cleared his throat and looked away, forcing his gaze back to Bird and Terran, sitting close together at Maddie's table in a spill of lantern light, waiting for the tea water to boil. It might have been a cozy scene, if he hadn't known Garrett Donagher had probably come to by now and was fixing to turn over every stone in town until he found Bird and exacted vengeance.

“I don't know,” Bird mused sadly, having taken so long to answer Sam's initial question that he'd forgotten what it was and had to do some catching up.

Maddie had a pencil and a scrap of paper, and sat herself in a third chair at the table. “What's your sister's name?” she asked practically.

Bird hesitated. “Mrs. Zebediah T. Roundtree,” she said. “Her husband's a lawyer.” She followed with an address, in a good part of Denver.

Maddie scribbled down the information and thrust it at Sam. “Send a wire, first thing in the morning,” she told him. “If you give the telegraph operator a dollar, he'll keep it to himself. If you don't, you might as well print bills and post them all over Haven.”

Sam nodded, took the paper and tucked it into his vest pocket.

Heat began to surge through the teakettle on the stove.

Maddie got up again, brewed the tea, and poured cups for herself and Bird, since Sam declined the offer, made with a raised eyebrow, and wished that, just once, he could get through an uneventful day.

Terran was sent back to bed, and went unwillingly.

Bird took a few sips from her tea, laid her head down on the table and went to sleep.

Maddie glared at Sam over the rim of her steaming cup.

“Well,” Sam said, compelled to defend himself, “
you
made
me
take the dog home.”

Maddie made a snorting sound, set her cup down and clapped one hand over her mouth. Sam was relieved to see that, one, she wasn't choking, and two, her eyes were bright with laughter.

Once she'd swallowed and caught her breath, she actually smiled.

“You'll be all right here?” Sam asked, thinking he ought to leave. Trouble was, Bird was still wearing his coat, and he didn't want to wake her up, given what she'd been through. On the other hand, he'd left most of his belongings up at Stone Creek, and he'd need that coat, if only to cover up his .45.

Maddie inclined her head toward the shotgun, still leaning against the wall next to the door. “I'll be just fine,” she said, “provided you don't rescue anybody else before we can put Bird on the stagecoach come Wednesday.”

Sam sighed and got to his feet, uneasy with leaving, and not just because Garrett Donagher might get wind of Bird's hiding place and come after her. Being around Maddie was like drawing close to a fire on a cold night. A man didn't like going back out into the blizzard.

“Terran will bring your suit coat to school in the morning,” Maddie said. Evidently, mind reading numbered among her talents. “I'll wrap it in brown paper, so folks won't be speculating on how it came to here.”