Catherine Palmer - The Gunman's Bride

“Oh, Etta.”

“Don’t be scared of that outlaw. The sheriff will have him rounded up by morning.”

“Etta, I want you to open my wardrobe door right this minute and look inside. Wait—take this!”

Rosie knelt by the bed, and Bart prayed she wouldn’t see him in the shadow as she fished a pistol out from under the mattress. He let out a stifled sigh when she stood and gave the weapon to her friend.

“Laurie! You’re not supposed to have a gun,” Etta squealed. “It’s against regulations!”

“If he’s in there, shoot him! Just shoot him right through the heart.”

Bart scowled. Well, that was a fine attitude.

“Take your gun, Laurie. The wardrobe’s empty.”

“Don’t leave me here alone. Please, I beg you!”

“That man’s not going to get in here. I locked your window, and you can bolt the door after I’m gone. I never expected you to be so—”

“Etta…” Her breath was shallow. “Etta…I know that man. The outlaw. The killer. I know him. Or I used to know someone by that name.”

“Injun Jack?”

For a moment the room was silent. Then Rosie let out a ragged breath. “Bart Kingsley,” she whispered. “I was married to him.”

A knock on the door by one of the girls who had come to investigate the shouting had taken Etta out of the room for a moment. As soon as she informed everyone about the sheriff’s warnings, she hurried back into Rosie’s room and sat down on the bed beside her friend.

“I swear my heart is about to pound right out of my chest! I could barely hold my tongue after what you told me, Laurie. You think you were married to the outlaw?”

“Etta, please,” Rosie pleaded, trying to still her own heartbeat. “I don’t want to talk about it. It’s all in the past.”

“Oh, Laurie, how can you just up and say you were married to a murderous outlaw and then not tell the story to me—your very best friend in all the world?”

“I wasn’t married to an outlaw, Etta. The Bart Kingsley I knew in Kansas City was no killer. He was a boy. Seventeen. And I was only fifteen. It happened a long time ago.”

“You got married when you were fifteen years old?” Etta’s blue eyes sparkled as bright pink spots lit up her cheeks. Her hair had escaped its roll to form a wildly frizzy blond spray across her forehead.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Rosie repeated. She felt hot, miserable and suddenly close to tears as a flood of memories washed through her. All she had ever wanted was to teach children. How she loved little ones with their wide eyes and fertile minds! She longed to open those minds and pour in knowledge that would create successful, happy adults who could change the world into a better place.

But schoolteachers were working women, Pappy always said, and far beneath her social rank. She would never be allowed to stand in a classroom, he informed her, with chalky fingers and eyes tired from reading late by candlelight. No, she was to marry—marry someone well situated—and forget her schoolmarm notions.

Then Bart Kingsley came along.

“Laurie, please tell me,” Etta begged.

“It’s not romantic like you think. It was all a mistake.”

“Was he cruel? Did you know he was going to become a killer?”

“Of course not. In fact…I couldn’t have known the Bart Kingsley they’re hunting. At least…I don’t think it could be the same man.”

“But it might be,” Etta stressed. “Remember how scared you were when you first heard his name—same as yours.”

With a sigh Rosie smoothed down her black cotton skirt. Right now she wanted nothing more than to untie her soiled white apron, slip off her stockings and soak her sore feet in a basin of water. She didn’t want to think about the past. She didn’t want to remember Bart Kingsley.

“He was handsome,” she murmured, unable to look at Etta. “My Bart Kingsley had green eyes…strange green eyes with threads of gold. And straight hair, black as midnight. He was skinny—rail thin—but strong. Oh, my Bart was so strong. He was kind, too. Always soft-spoken and polite to everyone. He loved animals. Stray dogs and cats followed him around the farm. When he sat down to rest, there’d be one cat on his shoulder and another on his lap.”

“He worked on your father’s farm?”

“In the stables. He was wonderful with horses. He broke and trained them with such gentleness. It was like magic the way they obeyed him. And you should have seen my Bart ride.”

“What do you suppose turned him into a cattle rustler and a murderer?”

“It couldn’t be the same man,” Laura Rose retorted. “The Bart Kingsley I married never hurt anybody. He wouldn’t even say a harsh word if someone was cruel to him.”

“If he was so kind, why would anyone be cruel to him?”

“The other farmhands taunted him because…well, because he was part Indian. His father was an Apache.”

“Apache!” Etta cried. “The sheriff just told us that outlaw they’re hunting for goes by the name of Injun Jack. I’ll bet it’s him, Laurie. How many men could fit that description?”

“A lot,” she shot back with more defiance than she felt.

“So you married him when you were fifteen. Did you actually keep house together?”

“No, of course not. We weren’t even…we didn’t sleep together like married people. We were just children really—children with such beautiful hopes and dreams.”

“I don’t see how you could bring yourself to marry a savage even if he was nice to you,” Etta rattled on.

“Did you get a…a divorce? Harvey Girls aren’t supposed to be married—it’s against regulations. You could be fired.”

“We were married two weeks before my father found out,” Rosie explained. “He was furious. The two of them had a long talk, and Bart left the farm that afternoon.”

“He left you? Just like that?”

“There was a note.” Her voice grew thin and wistful as she thought of the special place in the woods where they had first kissed each other. The place where she had found the note. “Bart wrote that he realized the marriage had been a mistake. He said we were too young to know what we were doing, and he’d begun to realize it right away after we got married. He said…he said he didn’t really love me after all, and I should forget about him. I was to consider that nothing had ever happened between us.”

“Nothing?”

Rosie focused on her friend. “Nothing. So there…I wasn’t really married to him at all. Not in the Bible way. Our marriage didn’t count. And that’s the end of the story, so if you’d please just leave me alone now, Etta, I want to go to bed. I have the early shift tomorrow.”

“You’ve got that blister, too,” Etta added, her voice sympathetic as she gave her friend a quick hug.

Pulling out of the embrace, Rosie stood and smoothed the rumples in the pink quilt on her bed. There were probably lots of Bart Kingsleys in the world. Besides, she was about as far as she could be from Kansas City and the life she had shared with him. No one was going to find her in Raton, New Mexico. Not her pappy. Not the man who had been her fiancé for the past two years. And certainly not Bart Kingsley.

“Lock up now, Laurie,” Etta said from the doorway.

“I’ve put your shoes out in the hall. You’ll see how much better everything will be in the morning.”

Under the bed, Bart watched as Rosie bolted her door and set a chair under the knob. He knew she was afraid. But afraid of Bart, the murdering outlaw? Or afraid of him, the Bart who had married her and then had run off and left her high and dry?

It wasn’t going to matter much either way if he up and died right under her bed. He needed to slide out from under this bed, wash his wound with some clean water and try to take a look at the damage. He needed ointment and bandages. He needed water. His mouth felt like the inside of an old shoe.