A Cowboy's Heart
Until he’d gone off to Kansas this year. As much as he liked Mary Ann, and was positive that she was the woman he would marry, he’d always known she was a little...well, immature. She tended to be flighty, pouty, and overly whimsical in her ideas. None of these were good characteristics for a ranch wife, and Will wanted to start his own ranch. He had been saving for it for years. He was just waiting till he was good and ready to settle down; actually, he was waiting for that day when he fell in love with Mary Ann and couldn’t stop himself from proposing to her. And yet love, which every man seemed to find at least once in his life—and some cowboys he knew found on a weekly basis—eluded him.
At first Will had thought that Mary Ann would grow out of her childish side. Then they would fall in love. But finally, two months ago, while lying on the hard ground, his bones aching from the discomfort of the trail, he realized he wasn’t getting any younger. And, unfortunately, Mary Ann didn’t appear to be getting any older. And neither of them seemed any closer to being in love with the other. She was still as much a flirt as ever, still putting off the idea of settling down in Possum Trot. A decision had to be made; and the very next day he wrote Mary Ann a letter, telling her they would both be better off if they stopped letting her mother entertain the notion that they would be married one day. He remembered now writing that he would always feel as a brother to her....
Now he could have kicked himself. Some brother! Poor Mary Ann had been alone all autumn, and apparently out of desperation she had turned to the first man who came along. Oat Murphy—a whiskey-stained old geezer. What business did that broken-down wreck have asking a girl half his age to marry him?
A sharp, sickening pang of regret shot through him.
Paulie shoved a jigger of tequila across the bar at him. “Have some Mexican milk. You don’t look so good.” He drank it, and she stared at him evenly. “So...I guess you heard.”
“About Mary Ann?” he asked, stiffly, still not comfortable discussing the topic even after endless practice. “I heard.”
Paulie leaned her elbows on the bar. “I sure am sorry.”
“Don’t be,” he said. “If it’s Oat she wanted, then I’m glad she got what she was pining for.”
Paulie tossed her head back. “I don’t think she knew what she wanted. Couple of months ago everybody said she was sweet on some gambler who came through here, a man named Tyler. Your Mary Ann never has been exactly discriminating, if you ask me.”
“I didn’t ask you.”
Paulie ducked her head and refilled his glass. “Well, anyways, I’m sure sorry. I know you set a store by her.”
He looked into Paulie’s eyes, wondering what she would think if he told her the truth. That he was being torn in two directions—relief that he had escaped marrying someone so flighty as Mary Ann, and regret that she had run off with someone so inappropriate. If only she had married Dwight the storekeeper, or...well, just anybody besides Oat. Then he could have rested easy at night, knowing Gerald Redfern wasn’t looking down from Heaven, scowling at him for breaking his promise to look after his daughter.
That’s why he’d come directly here, to the Dry Wallow. Paulie and Trip were always good listeners, and both were adept at putting a man’s head straight, too, most of the time. But now this place was topsy-turvy. Paulie was flouncing around in her late Ma’s wedding dress, and dependable old Trip Peabody was passed out at the bar.
He gave Trip a slap on the shoulder. “Hey, Trip, aren’t you even going to say hello?”
Trip raised one bleary eyelid. “That you, Tessie?”
Will laughed. “Not even close.”
Woozily, the man lifted his head of gray hair off the bar. “Why, it’s Will! Son of a gun!”
The two men shook hands, and Will couldn’t help noticing again the freshly store-bought state of Trip’s clothes. “Those are some stiff new duds you’ve got on, Trip. I don’t see how you were even able to pass out in them.”
“I was just restin’,” Trip said.
Paulie laughed. “He’s been ‘resting’ for two solid days now, trying to screw up the courage to propose to Tessie.”
The awkward silence in the bar stretched almost past bearing. Trip cleared his throat. “So I guess you heard about Mary Ann Redfern.”
“You mean Mary Ann Murphy,” Will said shortly.
Trip nodded. “I guess everybody’s heard.”
Paulie shifted impatiently. “Everybody’s heard too much about those newlyweds, if you want my opinion. The way people talk, you’d think Mary Ann was the only unmarried girl in this county.”
Trip’s eyebrows knitted together, and even Will was intrigued away from brooding by this statement. There weren’t many unattached females in the area, and that was a fact. Now that Mary Ann was out of his life for good, he supposed he would have to give more consideration to these matters.
“There’s the Brakemen twins out north, I suppose,” Trip said.
Will smiled. “What about Tessie Hale?”
Trip shivered nervously.
“But most people consider her accounted for,” Will assured him.
Paulie cleared her throat, patted down her voluminous skirts, and smiled. “Aren’t you two forgetting someone?”
“Tunia Sweeney!” Trip exclaimed. “Nobody’s married her yet.”
Will wrinkled his nose, dismissing the idea. A woman people called Tunia the Tuna wasn’t exactly his dream gal.
“You can’t think of anybody else?” Paulie asked, glaring at them as if they were dumb clucks.
Will shook his head. “Still, even counting Tunia, that leaves pretty slim pickings around here.”
A bottle shattered on the floor, sending glass shards shooting off in all directions.
“Oh, darn!” Paulie yelled. “Look what you made me go and do!”
The two men looked at each other and blinked. “Us?”
“What did we do?” Trip asked.
“Never mind!” Paulie said, bending down to wipe the clear liquid off the floor before sweeping up.
“Well, what are you so lathered up about?” Will asked her.
“I’m just tired of hearing about weddings and courting and such. I swear that’s all you men talk about these days. Don’t you have anything else to keep yourselves occupied?”
“I guess I should start thinking about what I’m going to do now,” Will said.
Trip glanced at him anxiously. “We could sure use a sheriff again with Night Bird roamin’ around.”
Will frowned. He’d had his heart set on starting a ranch. “Night Bird,” he said, repeating the name that he’d heard spoken with fear so often since returning to South Texas. “Is he harassing folks around here?”
“He’s been here several times,” Paulie informed him. Mention of the renegade seemed to have shaken her pettish mood a little. “I haven’t seen him, but he’s taken several bottles of my whiskey.”
“How do you know?” Will asked.
“’Cause they say when he comes you can’t even hear him,” Paulie answered. “Those three railroad men who got their throats slit probably never knew what hit them.”
Trip shivered. “The first one maybe. But I bet the second and third knew right enough what was happening.”
Will frowned. “When it comes to renegades, people are likely to swallow any tall tale.” Granted, some gruesome stories were true, but usually people believed what they wanted to believe. “Folks will blame Night Bird if cattle prices fall,” he said.
Paulie lifted her chin. “He was here. I know it.”
“Maybe,” Will allowed.
“Anyways, we sure could use a lawman hereabouts,” Trip put in again. “I know I’d sleep better.”
“I’ll think about it,” Will said. If he was going to start up that horse ranch, with or without a wife, it would take him a while to get his hands on a place and accumulate stock. He might as well winter in Possum Trot as anywhere else.
“You sound like you aren’t even sure you’re going to stay,” Paulie said, looking at him anxiously. “You know you’re welcome to bed down here, Will. There’s a room in the back, next to Trip’s.”
He looked into Paulie’s shiny green eyes and felt gratitude welling in him. “I’m obliged, Sprout,” he said, using his old nickname for her.
She blushed again and pushed back a lock of frizzy hair that had fallen across one eye. “There’s no obligation, Will. You know that.”
For a moment, he stared at her, rapt by those eyes of hers. He could almost swear there was something different-looking about Paulie—besides the obvious change in her getup. Yet in spite of the shambles her hair was in, it was the same light brown color. Her eyes were the same lively pools. She was still skinny, and still had freckles galore, too. Yet, when taken all together, she seemed...different More frail, more vulnerable almost. He couldn’t explain it.
And then it struck him.
“Say, have you been feeling poorly?”
Paulie blinked at him, seeming to snap out of the same daze he’d been in for the past few minutes. “What?”
He shrugged. “You look different somehow,” he remarked. “I thought maybe you had been sick.”
“Sick!” she cried, sounding offended.
He stared at her quizzically. “What the beck’s gotten into you, Paulie? You didn’t used to be this prickly unless I commented on that freckle crop of yours.”
“I don’t have that many freckles,” she shot back heatedly. “Never did.”
“Ha!” He laughed. “Knit them together and you’d have skin as brown as an overripe berry.”
Her face turned a fiery red. “Why you—”
Before she could explode, and before he had a chance to elaborate on his remark, bootsteps were heard coming up the Dry Wallow’s porch. Paulie was the first to look up to see who their visitor was.
From the look of horror on her face, Will was half expecting Night Bird himself. But when he turned, he found himself staring at someone even more surprising. Oat Murphy.
Oat’s expression was even more hangdog than usual. Will felt a pang of anger rise sharply in his breast. What did that old man have to be sad about?
Paulie was a bit more generous. “Land’s sake, Oat. What’s the matter with you? You look like you just lost your best friend!”
Slowly, the grizzled ex-whiskey trader looked from one to the other of them. His droopy eyes were bloodshot and edgy, and his shoulders slumped even more than usual. Even his gray beard seemed to droop.
“Ain’t my best friend I lost,” he said in his gruff rasp of a voice. “It’s my wife.”
Chapter Two
“You lost Mary Ann?”
Paulie finally found her voice and spoke to Oat, who was clearly embarrassed to have to make such a confession. He shuffled to the bar, where she handed him a glass of tequila. He slugged it down, apparently without a thought to his recent vow to abstain from drinking.
“Sure as shootin’,” Oat grumbled in his terse brand of speech. “Can’t find her. I tell you, I looked everywhere.”
Trip appeared so astounded Paulie was afraid he was going to slip clear off his bar stool. And Will was simply incredulous.
“What do you mean, you lost her?” he asked Oat, looking as if he wanted to throttle the man. Paulie could understand his frustration. Will probably looked on Oat as having won what he had failed to obtain himself. To misplace Mary Ann was careless in the extreme.
But Oat was evidently tired of having to justify his loss. “I mean, she ain’t at home,” he said, frustrated. “Ain’t anywheres that I can tell.” He glanced up at Paulie, and almost as an afterthought, asked, “Ain’t here, is she?”
“I haven’t seen her. Have you, Trip?”
Trip blinked. “Sure haven’t. Not since long before she married you, Oat.”
“That’s it, then.” Oat shrugged. “Just plum lost her.”
Will looked as if he might explode any second. “Wait a cotton pickin’ minute, Oat. You can’t simply lose a woman. Are you sure she didn’t go somewhere?”
Oat shook his head. “Not that she told me.”
“Maybe she went back to Breen’s place to be with her ma for a spell,” Trip suggested.
“First place I looked,” Oat said.
“Could she maybe have had an accident?” Paulie asked.
The old fellow rubbed his tobacco-stained beard and considered this possibility. Finally, he admitted slowly, “Ain’t likely. See, I just woke up one morning and found her missin’. What kind of accident can a woman have in the middle of the night in her own house that would cause her to disappear? The only trip she was liable to take in the night was a short one to the outhouse, but I checked that first thing. Wasn’t there, or anywhere abouts the house.”
Paulie crossed her arms, dismayed. “We didn’t think it likely that she’s been locked up in the outhouse all this time, Oat. When did you lose her?”
“Two days ago.”
“Two days!” Will cried. “Poor Mary Ann’s been gone two days?”
Oat looked defensive. “Well, the first day I waited for her to come back. That night, I started to look around. Next day I started askin‘ around. And today I decided I should come to town and ask here. But as of now, I’m concludin’ she’s lost.”
The three men sitting at the bar bore three different expressions of dumbfoundedness.
“She must have run away,” Paulie explained. “She always did want to go to the city.”
Will shot her a sharp glance. “Then why would she have married Oat and settled down in the country just weeks ago?”
Trip nodded. “He’s got a point there, Paulie.”
Paulie sighed. “This is pure foolishness!” Men were so dense sometimes—especially this crew. She was still steaming from being left out of the tally of marriageable females in the county even as she was parading around in front of them all decked out in a frilly white dress. Now having to explain the obvious to these men irked her in the extreme. “Mary Ann didn’t just disappear. That can’t happen. A body either has to be lost, or snatched, or to run away. I doubt Mary Ann would get lost. She’s lived in these parts for years.”
Oat nodded. “That’s a fact. She was a smart one, too.”
Paulie could have debated him on that point, but felt it would be bad form. The man was grieving, in his own way; he was apt to think of Mary Ann as better than she actually was.
“Did you two ever fight?” Paulie asked him.
“Fight!” Oat let out a bitter laugh. “All we did was fight.”
This news perked up everyone’s ears.
“What about?”
“Didn’t want me to give up my whiskey route.” Oat lifted his shoulders. “But I said, what’s the point of gettin’ hitched, if’n you’re gonna be gone all the time? I was figurin’ on raisin’ some stock and settin’ around the house some. Peaceful like. Gettin’ old, you know.”
That was an undeniable fact, but the strange truth was that the man actually looked older after his few weeks with Mary Ann than he had when he was travelling incessantly around South Texas with a wagonful of liquor.
“Was Mary Ann worried about money?”
Oat nodded. “Yep. So worried about money that she wanted to go with me on my route to make sure I handled things right.”
Paulie and Trip, remembering Mary Ann’s weakness for one passerby, the gambler, exchanged glances. “She mention anyplace in particular on your route?”
Oat downed another glass of tequila and shook his head. “Nope.”
But everybody knew Oat’s route took him as far as San Antonio. And San Antonio was the place that the gambler had been heading. “Say, Trip...” Paulie said, trying to sound casual, “what was the name of that snappy gambler man who came through here last August?”
Despite her attempt to strike a nonchalant chord, Will’s sharp gaze honed in on her immediately.
“Tyler,” Trip said. “Name was Oren Tyler.”
Will scowled. “I don’t like what you two are thinking.”
“Everybody knew she was crazy about him,” Paulie explained. “A real good-lookin’ dude. I heard tell he stopped one night over at Mary Ann’s stepfather’s farm.”
Even Oat remembered him. He nodded enthusiastically. “I remember Mr. Tyler all right.” He looked almost relieved to be solving the mystery of his missing wife, even if the solution pointed to another man. Paulie’s guess was that Oat had been just as ready as Mary Ann to wiggle out of the hasty marriage.
“Sure,” Trip said, “and after he left, Mary Ann came around here once, askin’ if Tyler was still here.”
“But he’d gone by then,” Paulie remembered.
Will raised a skeptical brow. “And that was August?”
They all nodded.
Will considered for a moment. “Did Mary Ann ever mention this Tyler fellow to you, Oat?”
“Nope.”
Will spent another minute ruminating, and for some reason, the other three watched him as if awaiting his verdict on the issue of Oat’s missing wife. Of course, Paulie actually looked at him because she hadn’t been able to take her eyes off of him since he walked through the door. Lord, he was even handsomer than she remembered! His dark hair was grown almost to his shoulders and his face was bronzed from his months on the trail, making his dark . brown eyes appear as if they had some kind of fire in them.
Staring at him almost made her forget how mad she was with him.
Then, finally, he shook his head. “Can’t be,” he announced.
“Why not?” Paulie asked. “Makes perfect sense to me. Mary Ann started sweet-talkin’ Oat so she could go to San Antonio and hitch up with Tyler.”
Will’s sharp glance melted her insides like butter, even if his gaze was brimming over with condescension. “Think about it. We’re not sure that Mary Ann was in love with this man. In fact, we have good reason to doubt it.”
“Why?” Oat asked.
Will shot the old codger an even stare. “She married you, didn’t she?”
Oat looked abashed at having to be reminded. “Oh, right. Well sure, but...”
“But even putting that fact aside,” Will continued, “why would she have married Oat if she simply wanted to get to San Antonio? Why didn’t she just cadge a ride?”
Paulie had to admit, that would have been an easier alternative.
“And how did she leave?” Will went on, his voice gaining intensity. “Oat didn’t mention his wagon was missing, or any horses.”
“Nope,” Oat admitted. “Didn’t take anything that I could tell.”
“There. Now what kind of woman sets out to meet a man on foot with just the clothes on her back?” Will asked.
“It’s like I said,” Oat concluded. “I just plum lost her.” And there was more than a hint of relief in his voice when he said it.
Against Will’s explanation, and Trip’s defection, and Oat’s resignation, Paulie lost much of her gusto for the whole argument. “Well, maybe she’ll come back,” she offered.
“Yeah,” Trip agreed. “That could happen.”
“Maybe,” Oat said, not sounding particularly brightened by that prospect, either. “Anyways, guess I’ll be takin’ up my whiskey route again.”
Paulie nearly collapsed with relief at this news. Thank goodness! Maybe things would be returning to normal soon. Will was back, and perhaps with a sheriff, Possum Trot folks would feel a little safer. At least she would rest easier knowing an officially designated gun stood between her and Night Bird. Everyone else in the area probably would, too. And with Oat making deliveries again, business might pick up.
“Of course, now I got to start worryin’ about that old Injun again,” Oat grumbled.
“Night Bird?” Will asked.
“Yessir,” Oat said, practically shivering at the mention of the name.
Will frowned, causing three deep creases of worry to appear in his forehead. “That’s it!” he said, then muttered, “Damn.”
The three of them stared at him, but Will just looked straight ahead, brooding.
“What’s it?” Paulie asked.
“Night Bird,” he said, his lips forming a grim line.
Paulie sucked in her breath. Was he thinking that Night Bird had taken Mary Ann? “Night Bird!” she repeated, the terrible thought attempting to catch hold of her mind like the fleeting memory of a nightmare. Trip stood and then nearly collapsed on wobbly legs, and Oat straightened in his chair, looking truly disturbed for the first time during the whole discussion.
“Of course!” Trip said.
But Paulie, after the first shock, wasn’t so certain. She tilted her head, mulling the idea over. “I’ve never heard of Night Bird kidnapping women.”
Will sent her a dead serious look. He didn’t even have to say it. When it came to a renegade Comanche, a consistent code of behavior couldn’t be expected. “You said yourself that when Night Bird stole your liquor those times, you didn’t even hear him.”
“Sure, but that was whiskey,” Paulie explained. “Wouldn’t Mary Ann put up more of a fuss?”
Trip shook his head slowly, in an awed trance of dread at the very idea of Night Bird. “They say those three men he killed didn’t even know what hit them.”
Paulie frowned. It wasn’t that she didn’t think Night Bird was capable of abduction—it just seemed so unlikely. Texas Rangers had taken care of most of the Indian trouble in these parts. For an Indian to just walk into a man’s house and steal his wife, or ambush her on her way to the outhouse, didn’t seem worth the trouble that he would bring upon himself by such a heinous act. “Wouldn’t there be at least a sign of a struggle? Mightn’t we have heard that someone had seen them somewhere?”
“Maybe not,” Will said.
“And what would Night Bird want with Mary Ann anyway?”
Trip and Will exchanged stony glances, and Oat just looked depressed.
Paulie shook her head. “I meant, why would he want her specifically? Killing three men is one thing, but he’s bound to know that kidnapping a woman is going to cause big trouble for him.”
“You bet it is.” Will’s voice was thick with determination.
A creeping dread began to snake through Paulie’s body.
The two other men turned to him with questioning glances.
“I’m going after her,” Will announced.
“After Night Bird?” Trip asked.
“After Mary Ann,” Will clarified.
Oat was startled. “You’re going?”
“I’ve known Mary Ann a long time, Oat,” Will explained. “I promised her father I’d look after her.”
“Well, sure,” the old fellow rasped, “but after all, I’m her husband.”
“Of course, you can come along if you want to,” Will allowed.
At that suggestion, Oat looked even more startled than before. “What I meant was, I should be the one to go get help.” Even given his marital tie, the old man didn’t look at all eager to chase after a renegade Comanche to find Mary Ann. And who could blame him?
“There’s no need for you to go anywhere, if you don’t want to,” Will said sharply. “I’ll find her.”
The room was thick with tension. Paulie felt she was going to pop if she didn’t say something. “Why should either of you go after Night Bird? Oat’s got the right idea. Go fetch the army—or the Rangers. It’s their job!”
“That’s true,” Trip said.
“Should I ride all the way to Fort Stockton?” Will asked them. “Why waste precious days while Night Bird might be dragging Mary Ann into Mexico or God only knows where?”
Because you’ll be killed! Paulie couldn’t voice the fear in her heart. It wasn’t necessary anyway; Will obviously knew the risks involved. So did Oat, who, wisely, was still hesitating. He took his third swig of tequila, bracing himself.
A kind of hysteria began to build in Paulie. Here she’d been thinking that her problems were almost over—thank ing her lucky stars that Will was back. She’d thought Will would be around for a while, had even fancied the idea that he might develop a yen for her, even if he did think she looked like a crazy lady in her dress. But instead, no sooner had he arrived than he was going to ride off and get himself scalped or worse.
“You sat there a while ago telling us that people attribute all manner of things to renegades, just to suit their own purposes,” she argued.
“You think I want to believe that Mary Ann’s been kidnapped?” Will asked.
His look of accusation was more than Paulie could bear. Of course he. didn’t. No one would, but for Will it was even worse. He might convince Oat that he was running after Mary Ann just because of some promise he’d made to Gerald Redfern, but Paulie knew better. He was in love with Mary Ann. More than Paulie had even suspected, apparently—enough to risk his life for her. But she couldn’t bear the thought of his going. “Bad enough that we have to worry about Night Bird coming after us,” she said, “without us going after him.”