Renegade Most Wanted

chapter Five



Keeping a dugout clean was work enough to make a woman scream. Since Emma didn’t want the men outside to figure her for a weakling, she hummed a tune that anyone would think was cheerful.

A beam of sunshine shot through the open dugout door and illuminated the bed that she shared with Lucy. She smoothed the covers flat, then flicked away a flea that fell from the dirt ceiling.

If it weren’t for the bugs living in her walls, the soddie would be pleasant enough. She’d lined the walls with fabrics and covered the floor with canvas. Cool during the day and warm at night, it was a snug retreat from the wind and sun. Even at midnight, the only wild creature she needed to worry about was of the insect variety.

The men preferred to sleep outside near the campfire that burned day and night. It was what they were used to, they claimed. It reminded them of being on the roundup.

Evidently Matt preferred outdoor life, as well. Lucy and Emma had slept alone for the full two weeks they had been here.

It was only midmorning and Emma had swept the dugout floor twice, but she snatched up the broom and did it again.

For the moment, her home was clean enough for her to do a job she had wanted to begin for ever so long. This morning she would plant trees. Matt had met the train yesterday and picked up her order of fruit trees along with her shipment of Orange Lilly.

It had pleased her no end that Matt had returned to the homestead with half the case of Orange Lilly sold and ten dollars in his pocket. The crease in his cheek had been flashing when he’d told her that five ladies from town had approached the wagon before he’d turned off Front Street, vowing they would perish if he didn’t sell them the snake oil.

Emma filled a basket with chicken, bread and a piece of peach pie left over from last night. She took a canteen from a peg on the wall and put it in with the food.

She plucked her bonnet from the corner where her clothes hung and took Lucy’s little one, as well. The child didn’t care for her hat, never having been required to wear one before. It was clear that the men who’d raised her doted on the girl. What a shame they’d never thought to protect her fair face from sunburn.

No doubt at this very moment Lucy splashed in the creek like a little boy, heedless of the sun beating down and turning her skin pink.

Emma closed the heavy wood door that Matt had installed on the dugout the first day here. At least it would keep the prairie soot from getting in until she opened the door again.

As always, when Emma stepped outside her heart skipped over itself. Every day the lumber pile in the yard grew smaller. A little more than a cow’s bellow away from the creek, fresh-smelling wood took the shape of a home.

A body would think she’d get used to seeing it. Still, every time she spotted Matt carrying a heavy piece of lumber or driving home a nail, her pulse quickened. She’d always known she’d love her new home.

Five men labored in the early-morning heat. Cousin Billy and Jesse worked on the house, Red on the barn. Except that just now Red was watching Lucy by the creek. Matt stood by the well in the shade of the roof he had built over it. He spoke with a man he had hired, Rusty Cohen, an experienced home builder in Dodge.

Matt and Rusty looked up from their conversation when they spotted her coming toward the well. Rusty tipped his hat. A grin that made her insides weak slid across Matt’s face.

Sometime before summer’s end she would have to learn not to enjoy it so much.

“I left some lunch in the dugout.” Emma took the canteen from the basket. When she reached for the ladle in the bucket Matt took it from her and filled the canteen.

“Are you wearing those new boots?” he asked.

Since Rusty had glanced down at her feet, she raised the hem of her gown only enough for the toe of one leather boot to peek out. When Matt had presented them to her she had yanked her skirt up past her knee, aglow with the impropriety of it.

“I wouldn’t want to meet the snake that could sink its fangs through this leather,” she said.

“All the same,” Matt said and tucked the filled canteen into the basket. “I had Red look the area over when he dropped off your trees. It seemed clear at the time, but you’d better keep an eye out.”

“There’s no need to worry about Lucy and me. We’re on Parker land.”

Rusty arched his heavy brows and tipped his head. Matt took the revolver from his holster and tucked it in with the canteen.

“Don’t shoot at anything unless you have to. Just point the gun out toward the horizon and I’ll come running.”

Emma didn’t like the feel of a loaded weapon in her picnic basket. Wouldn’t a scream get attention as easily as gunfire?

She rose on her toes to kiss Matt’s cheek. She’d only just realized her slip of the tongue in calling her homestead Parker land instead of Suede land. This casual display of wifely affection toward her husband should smooth that over.

“Good day, Mr. Cohen,” Emma said, then headed toward the corral where Pearl nuzzled noses with Thunder.

“Come on, Pearl, we’re going for a walk.”

The horse whinnied and trotted toward the corral gate. Emma didn’t bother with tack equipment, since she wouldn’t be riding the horse. Pearl followed behind Emma swishing her tail while they walked toward the creek to fetch Lucy.

After a moment of disagreement over wearing the bonnet, Lucy allowed Emma to tie up the ribbons under her chin in exchange for riding to the site of the tree-planting on Pearl’s bare back.

Surely too soon for Lucy, Emma lifted her from the horse.

“Here we are. Which tree do you want to plant first?” Lucy raced toward the row of thirty trees that Red had set in a line. “This one!”

“That’s a fine choice. It’s an apple.” Emma picked up the sapling. “Let’s plant it right here in front so we can see it from the house.”

Emma set the picnic basket with the loaded gun well away from the area where they would be working. From what she had learned of youngsters, they seemed to be attracted to the very thing that would cause them grief.

She found a shovel in the pile of tools that Red had left behind with the trees.

“Put it here, Mama.” Lucy jumped up and down on the spot of prairie she had picked for her tree. “I want it right here where Mr. Hoppety can come and get an apple.”

There might not be enough apples for all the Mr. Hoppetys in the creek, but the place looked as good as any to begin.

Emma expected the sod to be hard digging. She’d heard the tales of sodbusters truly being busted over it. To her amazement, the shovel went in as if it was cutting into cake.

She’d have to bake something special for whichever one of Matt’s gang had thought to prepare the ground.

With the hole dug, she knelt beside it and set the tree in. Matt’s big gloves nearly slipped off her hands while she pressed the dirt around the roots, filling the hole.

“What do you say we give your tree a name?”

Lucy plopped down on her knees. She pressed her hands on top of Emma’s firming the dirt. “I want to call it Hoppety.”

“Next thing, you’ll want to turn your name to Hoppety.” Lucy giggled. Childish laughter was one of the things Emma liked most. She reached for Lucy’s middle and tickled. “Hoppety, Hoppety, Hoppety!”

Lucy’s giggles rang out over the land. Pearl quit her grazing to let out a playful snort.

“Hoppety Suede!”

“Mama, I’m Lucy!” she declared with a hiccup.

“Yes, you are. I suppose your papa wouldn’t like it if you turned into a frog.” Lucy shook her head hard. She’d quit laughing when the tickling ended, but her eyes continued to dance with blue sparkles. Healthy children had the most wonderful glow about them. “Lucy, sweetheart, you know that I’m not really your mama, don’t you?”

“You brush my hair like a real ma, and make me wear a bonnet.”

“I think you’re a fine little girl.” Emma touched Lucy’s chin and peered into a face that had grown suddenly solemn. “Someday you’ll have a real mama and that’s what you’ll want to call her.”

“I want to call you Mama.”

“How about if you call me Mama Emma?”

The sparkle flashed back into Lucy’s eyes. She hugged Emma tightly around the neck.

Hopefully she hadn’t set Lucy up for heartache by giving in to that name.

“We’d better get busy giving the rest of these trees names.”

Lucy let go of her neck and hurried over to the line of trees lying on the ground.

“This one is Lucy.” She pointed to a peach tree and then to a pecan. “This one is Mama Emma.”

Lordy, she’d never allowed a child to call her Mama-anything. She prayed that she wouldn’t have to mend that mistake at summer’s end.

After two hours, Emma and Lucy broke for lunch. Emma took the gun out of the picnic basket and set it beside the tools.

After they’d eaten, Lucy yawned, stretched and fell asleep on the picnic blanket.

“Come on over here, Pearl.” Emma positioned the horse so that her shadow covered Lucy. “That’s a good horse. Now, don’t move. Stay right there.”

Pearl whickered and nuzzled Emma’s chin.

“I’d best get back to work on these trees. In no time at all I’ll be feeding you apples from them.” She kissed Pearl’s velvety muzzle. “You watch over Hoppety there, and I’ll bake you a pie full of apples.”

It took only another hour to get the remaining trees into the ground, thanks to the soil preparation that must have taken such time and sweat.

She firmed the dirt around the last sapling. The bawling of a steer cut the peaceful afternoon. Mercy, if it didn’t seem to be right behind her.

Emma pivoted on her knees. A bull munched Hoppety Tree between his hairy brown jaws. Dirt crumbled from the roots before the huge mouth chomped and swallowed them.

“Shoo!” She jumped up and waved her apron at him. “Go away!”

“I wouldn’t wave your clothing at him, ma’am.”

Emma glanced up to see a cowboy ride into view. “If this beast belongs to you, get him off my land!”

“Now, the trouble with beasts is that they don’t have a speck of respect for property lines.”

Finished with Hoppety Tree, the bull lumbered toward the next tree in line. The cowboy gave him an indulgent smile.

“You get this steak off my property, Mr… .”

“Mr. Samuel Tucker, foreman for Lawrence Pendragon.” The cowboy twirled a rope over his head and lassoed the bull but he let it hang slack, giving the animal the space he needed to eat another tree.

“Fickle critters.” Mr. Tucker drew his gun from his holster and aimed it at the munching steer.

“You never know what they’re going to do.” While he spoke, the barrel of his gun shifted. It took dead aim on Lucy asleep in Pearl’s shade.

Angry heat flashed through Emma. She stepped between the piece and the child.

Blast! Why had she left Matt’s gun with the pile of tools? A good twenty feet lay between her and the weapon. She took a few sidesteps in that direction.

Praise be! The cowboy’s gun shifted away from Lucy and toward her. The sun’s glare glinted up and down the length of it.

Pearl snorted. She lowered her head to sniff Lucy then stepped over her so that she straddled her. The good horse had always had a sense for protecting young ones.

“I’ve seen these cattle trample the dreams of many a settler,” the foreman declared.

So far, the cowboy hadn’t wrapped his finger around the trigger of his revolver. Emma stopped to consider her situation further. Even if she made it to Matt’s gun, what then? The cattleman had the upper hand, since he already had a weapon pointed at her heart.

If she could get on the far side of the big red steer, she’d be safer. The man might think twice about shooting his boss’s livestock.

“Yep, I couldn’t tell you the times I’ve seen the ornery cusses hurt or even kill folks who got in their way.”

“Why, you low-down, flea in a dog’s—”

A shotgun blast blew away the meanest thing Emma had ever said to anyone. The gun flew out of the foreman’s hand as if a twister had snatched it away.

The startled steer made a run toward Pearl, but the blind horse stood her ground. She lowered her head and snorted. The steer turned and bolted across the prairie with the rope snaking behind him.

Emma spun about to see where the shot had come from.

Matt stood halfway between the new house and the place where she had planted her trees.

He kept the rifle trained on Mr. Tucker while he walked forward. The prairie breeze lifted the hair trailing out from under his hat. The sun shone off his jeans with each long stride he took.

“Tucker, you’ve known me for a long time.” Matt stood at the edge of the turned earth with the rifle’s aim settled on the foreman. “You know I could have blown away a whole lot more than your sidearm.”

Matt never lowered his aim. He stood steady with his legs braced wide and his vest rippling in the wind. “Turn around and ride that pony hard. You’d best make it your personal business to be sure Pendragon’s beeves stay clear of my land.”

Tucker shot Matt a sullen look, but he turned his horse and trotted after the steer.

With the danger past, Emma became aware of Lucy’s sobs. The shotgun blast must have woken her with an awful scare.

Good old Pearl stood guard. She lowered her muzzle to Lucy and nickered at her hair.

Emma reached Lucy a step before Matt did. She swept her up in a comforting hug.

“It’s all right, baby.” Lucy snuggled her face into Emma’s neck. “It’s all right.”

Matt stroked Lucy’s back, but his gaze following Tucker’s retreat toward the Pendragon spread told her that everything was far from all right.

* * *

Thunder rumbled in the distance, but Matt figured the rain to be still some way off. There’d be another hour of sitting outside by the campfire before they’d all be driven into the dugout for the night.

The scene set out about him looked as cozy as anything he’d ever seen. Lucy slept in the dugout, a tuckered-out jumping bean, Jesse had gone back to the livery for the night and Rusty had gone home, but Emma, Red and Billy sat with him under the gathering clouds soaking up the cheer of the fire.

He needed some cheer. The threat that Pendragon had sent over this afternoon had him sitting uneasy. The man kept the marshal in his back pocket and pretty much ran free rein over the town. Matt had seen the things that happened to settlers who defied the powerful foreigner.

Emma would be safe for as long as he could act the part of her husband, but what would happen come autumn?

It struck him that it might be a fine thing for her to find a respectable man, one who would stand up for her once he’d gone. It struck him like a fist in the gut!

Matt sipped his coffee and watched her across the flames. He’d ripped his shirt before dinner tonight and now that shirt lay in Emma’s lap, as he wished he could do. Her delicate-looking fingers worked a needle in and out of the fabric in what seemed to him to be a caress. Firelight bronzed her skin and sparkled on the needle.

He sure would like to make up a song about the honey glow of her hair and the pretty way her lips puckered together while she concentrated on her mending.

In the end it would be best to let that song go. The singing of it later on might weigh too heavily on his heart.

When the time came, he needed to be able to ride off with no more than a friendly wave goodbye between them.

Out across the prairie thunder rolled and bucked, but it was still far enough off that they could remain gathered about the fire.

Red laughed out loud. The knife he used to carve a toy for Lucy went still while he listened to some story that Billy told. The words were low and whispered. It must be some sort of tale that they would have told out loud without Emma there to hear it.

Coffee and firelight spun a nice web around the four of them and created one of those moments a man wanted to pluck out of time to savor again later. But the air had begun to smell damp and no magic could last forever.

Matt poured another cup of coffee, then closed his eyes to listen to the night sounds. Crickets chirruped close at hand and far off a steer bellowed. The wind picked up and set the prairie grass whispering.

Over the crackle and sparking of the flames he imagined he heard the gentle rise and fall of Emma’s breathing and the slip of her needle through his shirt.

“If it was me, I’d have shot him clean off his horse.” Red’s whisper carried across the fire. Emma’s needle stopped midstitch.

“That’s because you don’t have the sense that God gave a buffalo chip,” Cousin Billy said.

“He had it coming, pointing the gun at Emma like that. Matt could have sent him along to hell, and he should have.”

Sometimes Red scared the boots right off Matt. Red was almost an echo of himself at that age. He had the look of a man, but inside he was as green as the saplings Emma had planted down near the creek.

“You shouldn’t talk about a man’s life with such disregard, son,” Matt said.

“He wasn’t showing any regard for Emma and Lucy this afternoon. Any man who tries to shoot a helpless woman and child is no better than a cow pile. He doesn’t deserve to walk the earth.”

Matt dumped the rest of his coffee into the fire. All of a sudden it didn’t set well in his belly.

“I’d have to agree with the cow-pile part, but it’s not for you to decide who deserves to walk the earth.”

“Someone needs to make sure criminals get their due.”

“Unless you’re planning to take the marshal’s job, it’s not you. Until you can recognize whether a man is out to do murder or just mischief, you keep that gun of yours in its leather.”

“I saw what I saw.”

“You saw a mean-spirited threat and nothing more. Even though Sam Tucker is lower than a maggot on a carcass, it’s not for you to decide his fate.”

“Billy the Kid wouldn’t have let him go.”

“Billy the Kid is dead.”

Red shot to his feet. He’d always had a foolish hero image of the killer that Matt had never been able to dissuade him from.

“You made that up!”

“Pat Garrett gunned him down one night last week. It came in over the wire last time I was in town.”

Red stomped off with anger and rebellion in his stride. A bolt of lightning split the sky overhead and a fat warm drop of water hit Matt on the nose. He jumped up and caught up with Red in a few long strides.

“Red.” He grasped the boy’s arm and spun him around. “Any man who chooses to live by the gun finds an early grave. I’ve seen it happen time and again. I’ll be damned if I’m going to see it happen to you.”

“Nothing’s going to happen to me.” All at once the rain crashed down. Red dashed for the dugout and vanished in a blur of water.

* * *

The realization that the nervous lowing of cattle and the snap of a cowboy’s whip was not a dream came to Matt like fog gradually lifting off the land. A shrill whistle made him bolt up from his pallet on the floor

The distant noise was so muffled by rain that Matt believed he was the only one to have noticed it—until he glanced at Emma’s bed. Although the darkness inside was nearly complete, the open dugout door let in enough illumination for him to make out a single tiny form beneath the covers of his wife’s bed.

“Damnation, woman,” he muttered under his breath.

With a penny’s worth of luck she’d only made a trip to the outhouse, but more than likely she’d gone to investigate the sounds of cattle roaming where they shouldn’t.

Matt jammed his feet into his boots, thanking his stars that he’d decided to sleep in his clothes the way he did on the nights spent under the open sky. On the way out the door he grabbed his gun belt. He fastened it around his hips on a run toward the stir of unsettled cattle.

The land between the house and the creek sloped gently downward. It gave him an unobstructed view of the acre devoted to Emma’s trees.

Three mounted cowboys whipped and whistled a good fifty head of cattle across the creek. The storm-spooked animals trampled the trees that Emma had spent the day putting in the ground. Not a single green leaf showed beneath the clumsy beeves’ hooves. The planting field had turned into an acre mud puddle. Matt didn’t doubt that the cowboys had intentionally pushed the cattle so that every one of the trees lay buried in the muck.

A streak of white flashed against the mud-soaked land. It was Emma dashing to the rescue of her damned orchard! Even under the deluge of rain, Matt felt the cold sweat of fear break out on his skin. Did she think she could scare the beasts off by yelling and waving at them?

Anger shot out of his brain like nothing he’d ever felt. Those men of Pendragon’s had to see her running toward the herd, and yet they continued to whip them up.

Matt reached for his gun but let his hand lie tense and loose beside it. A gunshot might be just the thing to send the herd into a full-blown panic.

“Emma! Get back!” He knew she wouldn’t hear over the storm and the cattle. Even if she did, odds were even that she’d ignore his order.

“Thunder!” Matt let go a shrill whistle. The stallion pranced about his corral. He circled twice, then sailed over the fence.

The horse caught up with him in only a few seconds. He caught its mane and hauled himself up on the slick back without missing a step. A well-trained and fearless pony was the best friend a cowboy could have.

He was still a hundred yards off when Pendragon’s men spotted him. He must have looked like the devil coming down, for they turned on their mounts and lit off toward home.

If only his wife had such sense. She had run right into the throng of beeves, shooing them with the soaked hem of her nightgown. Memories of Utah’s broken body made his gut heave and twist.

“Get out! Go away!” He was close enough now to hear her scream at them. A huge brown bull lowered his head and pawed at the ground. Emma flapped her nightgown.

It wasn’t necessary to direct Thunder in what needed to be done. The horse kicked up a wall of mud weaving in and out of the cattle, making his way toward Emma.

Matt leaned low over Thunder’s back, blinking back mud and spitting it off his lips. The stallion’s bare back was too wet and slippery to catch Emma up as he would do in the solid leather of a saddle.

Thunder must have sensed that. He halted in front of Emma, using his living bulk as a shield. Matt reached down and pulled her up in front of him at the instant the bull began his charge. As soon as Emma’s weight hit his back the stallion dashed into the center of the herd.

A good horse was better than a friend. He could mean the difference between life and death.

The bull, confused at losing sight of its target, became just one more jittery steer.

Matt urged the horse toward the outer edge of the herd on them. He drew his gun and fired in the air. Between the gunshots and Thunder’s running herd, the cattle retreated to familiar ground.

With the beeves in retreat, Matt exhaled a pent-up breath of relief. He tugged one arm tighter around Emma’s waist then bent his head to her shoulder. Rain sluiced between his cheek and her neck.

“Good God, Emma. Where’s your sense? Those cattle were spooked and dangerous.”

A shudder that probably didn’t have a thing to do with the rain rippled over her skin. Matt rubbed his hands up and down her bare arms to smooth it away.

“I was so angry, I didn’t think.”

“Darlin’, you’ve got to think about every move you make out here. This isn’t like town where help’s right next door and the doc just up the block.”

Emma let out a deep sigh and laid her head back against Matt’s shoulder. Her neck arched backward, and sodden hair clung to bare flesh. All of a sudden Matt was the one not doing the thinking.

The scent of womanly skin, damp and steamy, filled his nose and boiled his brain. Her soaked nightgown might as well have been packed in her trunk in the dugout for all the modesty it provided. He’d have had to be a saint to keep from watching the rise and fall of her breasts, full and glistening with the rain and her heavy breathing.

No one had ever accused him of being a saint.

He might have touched them, he might have quieted her fluttering heart with a stroke of his fingertips if he hadn’t heard Red and Billy yelling and running toward the smashed orchard.

Emma’s clinging nightgown might be fit for a husband’s eyes, but he’d be damned if Red or Billy would get a glimpse of it.

“Nothing to be done here tonight, boys. Go back inside and mind Lucy.”

Billy waved his arm in acknowledgment and yanked on Red’s sleeve, making sure that the boy followed.

Evidently Emma didn’t agree that there was nothing to be done. She slid off Thunder’s back, apparently unaware that her gown hadn’t slid with her. The glimpse of a gleaming thigh and the curve of a pearly nether cheek nearly knocked him off Thunder’s back.

Emma knelt in the mud and dug her fingers in deep. She found a ball of roots with a trunk still attached to it.

“What are you doing?” Matt scooted off Thunder and stood over Emma’s bent back. Rain beat down and washed the sapling’s trunk, revealing the damage.

“Planting what I can of these trees.”

She tried to dig a hole, but it filled with water nearly as fast as she could dig. Matt knelt beside her.

“Not now.” He caught her hands to hold them still. He felt the anger and the cold shaking her fingers. “Tomorrow we’ll go to town and order new trees.”

She slipped free of his grasp and snatched up the tree with the roots still on. “These are my trees. Lucy and I named every last one of them. No low-down no-good is going to take them from me.”

“That’s just not reasonable, Emma darlin’. They won’t live with being trampled on. Besides, we’ll catch our deaths out here.”

“Let the boys know that breakfast might be late.”

If God had ever created a more stubborn woman, he hadn’t heard tell of her. She lifted a mud-caked hand to wipe the hair out of her face. A brown smear streaked across her cheek. The rain washed it down the constricting muscles of her throat.

She wanted to cry—it was plain as anything—but instead she plopped the wounded tree into the ground, then plunged her hands into the muck in search of another.

Blamed if his wife didn’t have the grit of a dozen men.

Matt took off his shirt and settled it over her shoulders before he plunged his hands into the liquid sod in search of a battered, hopeless tree.