Cheryl St.John - The Lawman's Bride

Clay rested his boot on the brass rail and thumbed his hat back on his head. “I’m callin’ it a night. Set one up for me.”

Tubs slanted a mug beneath the barrel spigot and foam ran over his sausagelike fingers onto the floor. He sat the brew on the bar with a whack.

Clay reached into his pocket for a quarter.

“Nope.” Tubs held up a glistening palm. “Mr. Dotson don’t let me take no payment from marshals or deputies. Havin’ a lawman sittin’ in stops a whole lot o’ trouble from ever startin’.”

Clay shrugged and sipped the lukewarm brew. He wasn’t the sociable type. His presence might raise the eyebrows of the regulars, but a stranger to town, like the one he’d come to observe, wouldn’t know this wasn’t his usual routine.

There were many establishments nicer than the Side-Track for killing an evening if one had a mind to, but this was where the fellow registered at the Strong Hotel as Monte Morgan had chosen to spend the last few evenings.

Clay glanced into the grainy mirror behind the bar and observed the other men standing on both sides of him, the haze of blue-gray smoke that hung near the low ceiling a ghostly backdrop behind their heads. He turned enough to speak to the man on his right in a friendly fashion, one elbow on the bar, both eyes casually scouring the crowd.

A few stockmen and herders sat at one of the green felt poker tables, seriously attending to their game. Cowboys, gamblers and soiled doves filled most of the other tables.

“Heard a new family from Vermont bought the Bowman place,” Clay said, just to come up with something to say.

The store owner beside him looked up in surprise. Everyone in Newton knew the marshal wasn’t one for small talk. “Bought himself a whole rig over at the livery, he did,” he replied.

From a platform at the rear of the building, a tall skinny man in faded trousers and a leather vest preached and read passages from his Bible. After several minutes he was replaced by one of the scantily-clad girls, who belted out an off-key rendition of “When The Roll Is Called Up Yonder.”

“The daughter’s easy to look at,” he went on. “One of these cowboys’ll snatch her up fast.”

Clay nodded, feigning interest in the conversation. Monte Morgan sat with a bunch of well-dressed men who were taking turns listening to the singing and preaching while patting the bottoms of the girls who sat on their laps. Morgan was lean, but Clay sensed whipcord muscle beneath the dark suit, silk vest and string tie. The weapon at his hip was an ivory-handled .45, a six-shooter in an embossed holster. Pretty.

Morgan’s confident smile and grandiose mannerisms gave him the larger-than-life quality ladies liked. That was apparent by the fawning and almost laughable way they maneuvered themselves, trying to be the one who got his attention. Maybe he tipped well.

Clay couldn’t put his finger on why the man troubled him. Newton was the home of the Sante Fe roundhouse and hundreds of strangers passed through each week. It was impossible to watch or even check out each one of them. Morgan hadn’t done anything to draw attention, hadn’t so much as tossed a match off the boardwalk. But something about him made Clay wary. Morgan didn’t seem like just another rancher. Clay’s gut instincts had paid off more than once, and he figured he should go through the papers to see if there were clues to this Morgan’s past there.

Sophie strolled along Oak to Broadway where the darkened park beckoned. There were gas lamps along the street, but in the one square block between Broadway and Seventh, only the moon lit the dark brick walkways, hedges and flowers.

The park wasn’t much farther than the boardinghouse from the railroads tracks, but it was a good bit farther from the roundhouse where men worked and switched the tracks all night long. Both of Newton’s public parks were in the First Ward, nestled in housing areas and away from businesses, saloons and billiard halls. It was the closest thing to being out of the city she could find, and she loved the impression of peace and privacy, no matter how false.

Taking a tin of matches from her skirt pocket, she settled on a stone bench still warm from the day’s heat, lit a cigar and blew a smoke ring into the star-filled sky. Hours like these presented more freedom than she’d known in all of her twenty-three years. With liberating calmness, she attempted to clear her thoughts, lying back on the bench to study the night canopy overhead.

She thought of the coming weekend, of three days she could spend any way she chose. She could take a train to Wichita and shop. She could don a disguise and attend the opera right here in Newton. Her lips curled up at the idea. There was something wickedly gratifying about carrying out a pretense such as the last one she imagined. No one would be harmed in the process.

Those thoughts led to others of former guises and the reason she had a need for anonymity. The image of those wanted posters swam against the sky, the stars twinkling like the city marshal’s badge. She’d feel so much better if she knew he wasn’t going to shuffle through a stack of papers and wonder why a drawing of a certain female criminal looked familiar.

She eased the chain from the collar of her shirtwaist and squinted at the face of the dainty watch. Only an hour left until the doors of the dormitory were locked for curfew. Her fingers curled around the sleek leather case in her pocket and her mind raced. She’d secretly let herself back in on more than one occasion. She could do it again.

She hurried to the northwest corner of the park where she stubbed out her cigar and scuffed dirt over it with the toe of her shoe. One more block to the north and a little farther west, and she made out the wooden-framed jail. No light shone from the windows. Confident in her skills and her ability to talk her way out of any situation, she continued on.

After peering through the panes of glass into the darkened interior, it took only seconds to work her magic on the lock. The door swung open, and she closed it behind her quickly, acclimating herself to the dark. Snoring droned from a hallway at the rear of the building.

She drew the shades and lit the lamp on the largest desk, turning the wick down low.

A scratching sound and an oomph made her heart leap, and she whirled, expecting to find someone who’d been waiting in the darkness. She readied herself to run.

A big old dog struggled to its feet from a pallet near the wall, and, with nails scratching the wood floor, padded over to where she stood poised.

Her whole body slumped with relief. She bent and rubbed the animal’s head and soft floppy ears, and it turned its nose into her hand and gave a halfhearted lick.

The stack of wanted posters was in plain sight and nearly as thick as the marshal had described. A brass key ring was being used as a paperweight. She gave the dog one last pat and sat, subconsciously noting the leather seat of the chair had been worn to fit the contours of the man. She set the keys aside. In silence broken only by rustling paper, the hiss of the lamp, and the resonating snore from the depths of the building, she turned pages, scanning drawings and descriptions.

She’d learned that there was more than one marshal in Newton, and several deputies: so, if someone should catch her here, she would say another had let her in to wait.

From somewhere in the back, the prisoner gulped air and mumbled in his sleep, startling her. She paused to listen until the monotonous snore resumed. The dog went back to its pallet and lay down with a grunt.

Two names and drawings caught her attention and snagged her breath from her chest. Gabriella Dumont and Joseph Richardson the caption read. Garrett had been darkening his mustache the last time she’d seen him. He’d had his head shaved, and the baldness had completely changed his appearance.