Lisa Plumley - Morrow Creek Marshal

As pressing as that issue was, Dylan didn’t see where this inbound lawlessness concerned him. He wasn’t a peacekeeper. He was just a gun for hire—a man with an experienced mind who’d finished one job and was headed to the next. He’d already picked up an assignment in Sacramento. All he owned sat in the satchel he’d left behind the bar with Harry. All he’d pocketed before leaving it was enough cash to assure he had money to leave town with. That was all Dylan really needed—enough to move on.

His limited funds were the reason he hadn’t agreed to pay Marielle Miller for her lost work time right from the get-go. If he’d had the greenbacks to spare, he’d have given them to her—even if he didn’t feel strictly responsible for her predicament. That would have been the right thing to do. As it was, Dylan had not even considered surrendering his moving-on money.

He was pleased that he’d distracted her from the pain of her ankle injury, though—no matter how many stretchers he’d had to tell in the process. Truly. No thinking man would have taken Marielle Miller for a thirty-three-year-old woman, much less a dancer on the near side of forty. When he’d said that, she’d practically shot sparks from her eyeballs. It had been all he could do to keep a straight face and keep on riling her up.

Reminded of the dance hall girl—and beset with an entirely unlikely sense of fondness toward her, too—Dylan took a step to the side, intent on shouldering past the other men to Marielle’s position. He was worried about her. Although his conversation with the menfolk had taken only moments, he hadn’t wanted to abandon her. She ought to be right where he’d left her...

As he made his way, the conversation continued.

“You took down the Bedell gang just last year, Corwin,” Daniel McCabe was saying, standing head and shoulders over most. “Near as I can see, you could do the same to the Sheridans. Hell, you could put up a posse and get Sheriff Caffey, too.”

Amid general murmurs of agreement, Jack Murphy raised his arms, signaling for quiet. The group of men obliged.

“We’ve already settled this, remember?” the saloonkeeper reminded them. “We’ve already chosen our new sheriff.”

Adam Corwin nodded. “We have.” Evidently, that’s what the men’s club meeting had been for. “Besides, you all know Savannah’s expecting.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry, boys, but if I up and took a job as sheriff now, she’d have my damn head.”

“Or I would,” rumbled Mose Hawthorne, Savannah’s longtime loyal helper at the adjunct telegraph station outside town. “Ain’t no way you’re deserting Savannah now. Not when we’ve got Coyle here. The man’s practically tailor-made for the job.”

Hearing his name, Dylan went still. Again... “What job?”

At the expectant, confident looks that met his question, he balked. This didn’t feel right. This... hopefulness wasn’t for him.

“What job?” he repeated, wary and tense jawed.

“Why, the job of sheriff, of course.” Thomas Walsh moved nearer, a pad of paper and pencil at the ready. As usual, the editor of the Pioneer Press wanted his story. This time, from Dylan. “Typically, the sheriff’s position is filled following an election, but with all these degenerate types coming to town—”

“Drifters?” Dylan felt compelled to ask. “Like me?”

But unlike Marielle, no one seemed to believe he’d earned that moniker. A few men chuckled. More shook their heads. All gazed at him with that same damn unearned faith and expectancy.

What the hell had he done to earn this ? Only his job.

“—we don’t have time for bureaucratic paperwork shuffling,” the editor continued. “We just need to get on with it.”

“Uh-oh. If Walsh don’t want paper shuffling,” Hofer said with a laugh, “this situation is right next door to doomed.”

Everyone laughed. But the newspaperman merely continued in his usual earnest fashion. “We’ll have a proper election,” he assured Dylan. “But while you’re serving, instead of before. During your first term, rather than wasting time with campaigns and signs and speeches. It’s more efficient that way. You can get started straightaway protecting everyone in Morrow Creek.”

They all beamed at him, but Dylan balked anew.

Protecting ... everyone? That sounded like a nightmare to him.

Resolutely, he squared his shoulders. He sobered his expression. He held up his arms. An instant hush fell.

Damnation, he couldn’t help thinking. They were serious .

They truly expected leadership from him. Safety.

The realization was worrying. And all the more reason he had to put a stop to this before it went any further.

“Far be it from me to deny Walsh, here, the joy of organizing an emergency election,” Dylan tried with a grin. “Not to mention the whole caboodle of newspaper coverage that’ll go along with it. But it’ll have to happen without me.”

They didn’t seem to understand. “We already voted,” Clayton said. “At the men’s club meeting. You’re the man for the job.”

Everyone agreed—even as, at the other end of the saloon, the piano player tinkled a few keys. It felt as though ages had passed, but it must have been only a few minutes. The dance hall girls didn’t typically take a long break. They couldn’t risk losing customers who would drift away during a lengthy interval.

Speaking of dance hall girls...where was Marielle Miller? As the queen of obstinacy, she should have refused to budge from her chair until Doc Finney properly saw to her injury.

Funny thing was, Dylan couldn’t help musing, in her shoes, he would have refused help, too. They were alike in that way.

They were alike in several ways, when it came to it. But he couldn’t think about that now—not with a whole saloon full of people expecting him to ride to the rescue as their new sheriff.

“I already have a job,” Dylan protested more strongly. “In Sacramento.” He took out his pocket watch and glanced at it. “In fact, I can probably make the next train west if I leave now.”

Remarkably, everyone laughed. Some men raised their ales and whiskies in apparent toasts to what they assumed was Dylan’s customary joshing. Growing concerned, he glanced at the door.

He had an awful feeling he wouldn’t be catching that train.

“I guess you should’a gone to the meeting, eh?” Nickerson yelled, rubicund and jolly even before receiving his first pint of ale. “So you could cast the only vote against yourself.”

Everyone roared with glee. But Dylan started pacing.

Thomas Walsh noticed. “It’s just the usual sheriff’s job, Mr. Coyle, nothing more,” he promised Dylan. “Peacekeeping, serving summons, collecting tax money, investigating crimes—”

“I’m not the man you’re after,” Dylan said more plainly.

“You are exactly the man we’re after,” Miles Callaway maintained. He aimed his chin at the friends he’d made since coming to Morrow Creek from Boston. “Or do you have such little faith in our judgment that you’d disagree with all of us?”

Each of their gazes veered to his face. Held. Stubbornly.

Glancing beyond the men for a respite from this wrinkle in his getaway plans—from this entirely unwanted obligation—Dylan glimpsed movement near the saloon’s door. A huge man lumbered toward it with a woman in his arms—a woman who was pointedly directing him exactly where and in what fashion to carry her.

Marielle Miller . She was hearty enough to dispense orders. That meant she would be all right. In her wake, Jack Murphy watched contentedly as his lead dancing girl left in the man’s keeping.