Tatiana March - The Outlaw And The Runaway

Letting the heels of her half boots ring out her anger at the citizens of Rock Springs, Celia clattered up the porch steps and let herself in. The front door opened directly to a parlor furnished with sagging armchairs and crammed bookcases they had purchased with the house. The books had turned out to be a treasure trove, one of the few things that gave her pleasure in this place that had wrecked her hopes.

In the kitchen, Celia stirred the embers in the big cast-iron stove and got a meal started, oatmeal gruel with tinned milk. The bland fare was one of the few things her father could eat without retching, the tumor in his belly having ruined his appetite.

By the time Papa came home, Celia had the table set, with a posy of wildflowers decorating the center. Long walks in the desert were another source of pleasure, something that allowed her to leave her worries behind for a few hours at a time.

As Celia watched her father shuffle into the kitchen and take his seat, a shaft of despair pierced her carefully maintained shield of courage. All his vitality was gone, leaving a thin husk of a man, with sparse brown curls and ashen skin. For as long as she could remember, sickness had been part of her life, first seeing her frail mother succumb to one ailment after another, and now witnessing her father slowly fade away.

But even in his weakened state, Papa managed an encouraging smile at her. “Celia girl, are you all set for the church social on Sunday?”

Celia curled her nervous fingers into the cotton apron she wore to protect her threadbare gown. “Papa, it’s no use...”

“Make your fried chicken,” her father prompted. “Nobody makes it better.”

The reproach in his tone caused Celia’s sense of helplessness to flare into frustration, and she spoke more sharply than she had intended. “Papa, at a box lunch, men don’t pay to eat. They pay to court a girl.”

“You’ve got to keep trying, Celia girl.”

There was such anguish in her father’s eyes, such fear for her future in his manner, it added to Celia’s list of woes. She wanted to tell him their only solution was to go away—to leave Rock Springs and move into some other town—but no business would employ a man in her father’s state of health. The bank manager was only keeping him on because dismissing a dying man might be seen as a callous act that could cost him the goodwill of his customers.

Moreover, Celia knew Papa lacked the strength for a new start. He loved the house, the books, the quiet town and the few friends who had yet to desert him on her account. Ever since Papa had learned his days were numbered, he’d been looking for a place to die in peace, and she could not wrench him away from what he had found in Rock Springs.

Celia sighed in resignation and straightened her spine. She’d not been to a church social since she fell out of grace with the town, but how bad could it be? So far, their only weapon against her had been rejection and ugly whispers. Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never harm me , she reminded herself—a gem of wisdom gleaned from one of the old issues of the Christian Recorder she’d found in the bookcase.

“I’ll try, Papa,” Celia promised, and made an effort to sound positive. “I’ll make my fried chicken, and I’ll wear my blue dress and put rouge over my scar.”

* * *

Camped by a creek a mile outside town, Roy Hagan stood beneath the morning sun and dictated a message to Zeke Davies, to be delivered to Lom Curtis, the leader of the outlaw gang. It would be too risky to put the information in writing, in case Davies caught the attention of a lawman and the note was discovered.

“We’ll need six men,” Roy repeated, drilling in the information. “Three in the bank and three outside. We’ll hit at noon. The ranchers come into town in the morning, the miners in the evening for the saloon. Midday is the quietest, and the bank does not close for lunch.”

Bulldog features furrowed in concentration, Davies memorized the details. After a week of constant companionship, Roy had learned to know his associates. Davies was slow-witted and liked to follow orders, grateful that some other man had done the thinking.

“Saldana and I will ride over to Prescott and wait there,” Roy went on. “Tell Curtis to telegraph me at the Western Union office there, to let us know when he plans to arrive.”

Lom Curtis, the leader of the Red Bluff Gang, had an inside contact, someone who would let him know when Wells Fargo was due to collect the gold the miners in the region deposited at the bank. The gang would time their raid just before the next collection, when the amount of gold in the bank’s vault would be at its greatest.

Davies rehearsed the message a few more times, got on his sorrel and trotted off. Roy kept an eye on the man until the trail took him out of sight behind a rise. Then he turned to Saldana. The lanky Mexican was crouching beside the dying campfire, trimming his droopy mustache and admiring the result in the small mirror he carried in his vest pocket.

“We’ll ride into town,” Roy told him. “I want to see how many people come to the Sunday service. It’ll give us an idea of how big a posse they might be able to put together.”

Saldana gave his reflection one final perusal and put the mirror away. Roy had learned that the tall, lithe outlaw came from a good family in Tucson. After a secret tryst with a judge’s daughter, trumped-up charges of rape had forced Saldana to choose between the hangman’s rope and a life on the wrong side of the law. To Roy’s surprise, Saldana showed no bitterness and had not been cured of his womanizing ways.

They broke camp, carefully sweeping the ground and burying the coals to hide the signs of their stay before getting on their horses. Roy rode a buckskin, a color that blended in with the desert scenery. Saldana put vanity before safety and rode a gleaming black stallion, useful for a night raid but easy to spot during a daylight getaway.

In town, a collection of buggies and carts and saddle horses stood outside the small, unpainted lumber church. Roy signaled to Saldana and they drew their mounts to a halt. People were streaming out of the church and congregating on a flat piece of ground where a few women were already bustling around a pair of trestle tables laden with food and stacked with baskets decorated with ribbons and bows.

“It’s a church social,” Saldana said, an eager glint in his dark eyes. He smoothed the ends of his mustache. “There’ll be women. Dancing.”

“No,” Roy told him. “It’s too dangerous.”

“Even more dangerous to keep away,” Saldana countered. “Men ride a hundred miles for a church social. It will look suspicious if we turn away.”

Saldana was right, Roy had to concede. To reassure the town about their presence, they had put out a rumor that they’d been employed as security guards for a freight line out of Denver and were now drifting south, enjoying their leisure time until their money ran out. Those kinds of men—honest men—would feel entitled to take part in the festivities.

While Roy mulled over the dilemma, his attention fell on a girl in a blue dress. It was a different dress, and she wore a wide-brimmed bonnet to match, but no dress could hide those feminine curves, and no bonnet could confine that riot of curls.

Celia Courtwood. Her image had filled his thoughts at night, while he lay awake listening to the ripple of the creek by the camp. Why this particular female had stuck in his mind like a burr might stick to the shaggy winter coat of a horse, Roy could not figure out. He tried to tell himself it was the danger she posed, in terms of recognizing him, but he knew it to be a lie.

Watching the girl through his uncovered blue eye, Roy fought the conflicting impulses to ride away as fast as he could and to stay, to seek an opportunity to talk to her.