The Accidental Lawman (10 page)

“Like yourself.”

Now that she thought about it, Amelia realized Hank and Charity were well suited. Charity was a bit gawky, but she was young and pretty, though painfully shy.

“He’s not a man of faith,” Amelia warned.

“He hasn’t attended church yet, but how do you know he’s not a believer?” Charity glanced out at the children. They’d apparently given up sawing down the mulberry and now Sam was using a lariat to tie Janie to the tree trunk.

Amelia nodded. “His wife and unborn child died and I believe he blames God.”

“Perhaps Brand could speak to him,” Charity mused aloud.

“About your feelings?”

“No, about attending Sunday services, about the sustenance one receives from an unwavering faith.”

“Perhaps.” Amelia wondered why she suddenly felt more exhausted than before. She stared down the street in the direction Hank had taken.

Hank and Charity
. She should have seen it before. Was Hank aware of Charity’s feelings?

She realized she had absolutely no appetite. “I really can’t stay for luncheon, Charity. I’m so sorry. I hope you understand,” she said.

“Oh, dear,” Charity’s hands fluttered to her throat. “I hope it’s not something I said.”

Amelia shook her head. “Of course not. It’s just all this trouble with Evan. I really…I would feel much better at home.”

A few minutes later, Amelia was headed down the street, looking forward to being alone.

Charity McCormick and Hank Larson.

Be happy for Charity.

The young woman deserved a family of her own. Hank was a widower, eligible, handsome. He was still under forty. Surely he’d be ready to start a new life one day. Take a new wife.

Amelia paused outside her gate, surveyed the little house, her flower and herb gardens. Someday Evan would come to his senses. He could marry, settle down here. She could help raise his children.

This is enough for me. My life is here. This is enough.

Incredibly, her footsteps seemed to have grown even heavier between the McCormicks’ house and home. She was about to go up the front steps when she noticed a bunch of bluebonnets lying on the porch. She picked them
up, stared at the drooping stems. The flowers were slightly wilted, obviously having been picked much earlier.

She looked around, wondering who might have left them and when.

H
arrison Barker introduced Hank to Charlie Scout, a Tonkawa who served as a tracker for the U.S. Army. Ever since the closest regiment had been transferred to Fort Griffin, Charlie spent most of his time hanging around in front of the mercantile.

One look at the bowie knife strapped to the scout’s thigh and the two cartridge belts criss-crossed over his chest and Hank was convinced he didn’t relish being on the trail alone with Charlie. But, since no one else stepped forward to help track Evan, Charlie was Hank’s only alternative.

They set out following tracks that led away from Amelia’s house, but the Tonkawa lost Evan’s trail at a nearby creek bed. Together they rode on to Comanche County to report to Oz Caldwell again.

The sheriff’s office was smaller than the row of jail cells strung out down a narrow hallway behind it. He took one look at Charlie Scout and told him to wait for Hank out front. If Charlie was offended, he didn’t show it.

“What can I do for you, Sheriff Larson?” Caldwell asked.

Caldwell was a huge man by anyone’s standards. Not
only did he stand a good six foot five in his boots, but he was nearly as wide as a door. “You here to talk to Ruggles again?”

Hank was by no means short, but he had to crane his neck to look up at Oswald.
This
is what a lawman should look like, he thought. A lawman shouldn’t have ink stains on his fingers and a busted-up hat. He rested those ink-stained fingers on the handle of a borrowed six-shooter in a holster riding his hip.

A lawman should at least own his own gun, Hank reckoned.

The trouble was, he barely knew what to do with one and had spent most of the ride over hoping he didn’t blow off his toes with the Peacemaker.

“I’d like to talk to Ruggles again. I’ve got the name of another suspect in the robbery. A man named Evan Hawthorne, from Glory.”

“Funny you should mention him.” Caldwell swung his feet off the desk, stood up and stretched. He walked over to a small table near the front door and ripped open a brown paper parcel. “I was going to send you a stack of these.”

He pulled what appeared to be a poster off the top of a stack and handed it to Hank.

Wanted!

For Robbery, Attempted Robbery,

And General Mayhem

Ned Perkins, Terrence Perkins, Silas Jones And

Evan Hawthorne

Also Known As “The Perkins Gang

“With a little encouragement from a couple of my deputies, Ruggles implicated all his friends. Seems like
this bunch of young rowdies fancies themselves a gang. Shot up a saloon over in Dublin. Ruggles was dumb enough to do what the Perkins boys told him to do and got caught.”

Hank knew what seeing her brother’s name there would do Amelia.

“Ruggles say where they hide out?”

“If he did, I’d have them all in custody.” Oz Caldwell turned around and walked back to his desk. “Take a few of those back to Glory and post ’em, would ya?”

Hank nodded.

Oz looked him over. “You still want to talk to Ruggles?”

“Sure,” Hank decided. “He give you any other particulars?”

“Believe me, after we were done with him, if he’d a known anything else, he’d a told it.”

“I’d still like to ask a few questions.”

Oz walked Hank to Ruggles’s cell personally but didn’t leave. He leaned back against the bars of the empty cell behind him.

Ruggles was stretched out with his back to the door. “Sit up, Harvey. Someone here to see you.”

When Ruggles turned around, Hank winced at the sight of his battered face. It was obvious how Caldwell had come by his information. More than obvious.

If Hank hadn’t been lying on the floor of the bank the day of the robbery, and if Miss Cutter hadn’t been wounded, and if Amelia’s life hadn’t been in jeopardy, he might have felt sorry for Harvey Ruggles.

But he didn’t. Not now.

“I’m here to ask
you
about Evan Hawthorne, Ruggles. We know he was with you the day of the robbery.”

“Who says?”

“Evan.”

“Then talk to him, not me.”

“I’m here to talk to you. I want to be real clear about his part in the holdup.”

“He had as big a hand in it as I did. We were told to rob the bank in Glory. I tried. If Evan hadn’t turned tail and run, we’d a done it.”

“How do you know Hawthorne ran?”

“He weren’t in the bank, were he? If he’d a been there, we’d a got away with it.”

“So as you see it, he didn’t go through with the robbery?”

“As I see it he sure didn’t.”

“Thanks.” Hank walked out. Oswald closed the door to the cell area behind them.

“You heard him,” Hank said, turning to the sheriff. “Evans wasn’t in on the robbery.”

“He was in on the planning stages.”

“Still, I want you to consider that if you find him before I do.”

Caldwell looked Hank over. “Oh, I’m restin’ pretty well assured I’ll find him before you do. How long you been a sheriff, anyway?”

“A handful of days. In fact, I’m just a temporary solution and looking for a replacement.” Hank paused, hoped he was getting through to the man. “Just remember, Evans is from Glory. He’s got family that wants to see him get a fair chance at a trial.”

“I’ll try and keep that in mind,” Oz Caldwell said, “but when things get fast and furious, no telling what might happen.”

Amelia loved Glory’s white clapboard church. Back when they’d first moved to town, services were held in a log
structure with a leaking roof. Her father had been on the church board then and she remembered the board members meeting at their house, poring over architectural plans.

The bell tower boasted a steeple and there were double doors that opened directly into the church proper. The funds saved by using a simpler design and expanding on it were allocated for the stained-glass window behind the altar. Tinted light streamed through the panes of colored glass depicting the Good Shepherd with His staff in His right hand, a lamb draped over His shoulders and His left hand resting upon a ewe’s head.

As she waited for Reverend McCormick to appear, Amelia’s gaze drifted from the window to Charity. The young woman was seated in the front pew between the pastor’s children. There wasn’t anywhere within a three-hundred-mile radius where a woman could buy a pink day dress the likes of which Charity was wearing. Charity’s fancy bonnet sported a long pink feather dyed to match. Whenever Sam disappeared the feather bobbed each time Charity reached beneath the pew to snag him.

Amelia smoothed her hands over her own brown serge skirt. Times were always lean for a doctor whose patients lived hand to mouth. Someday, perhaps, Glory would flourish, but those times were in the distant future. Of the folks who settled on outlying ranches after the war, only the stalwart remained.

As the congregation began to sing “Shall We Gather At the River,” Amelia found herself thinking about Hank Larson. He’d been gone for two days, and he still hadn’t come to tell her that he’d found Evan. She believed him when he promised she’d be the first to hear if he did.

Hank and Charity.

She stared at the pink feather bobbing on Charity’s hat
and experienced something she’d never felt before—an intense wave of jealousy.

I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God.

One thing for God to be a jealous God, to want His followers to love only Him, but Amelia knew that jealousy was a sin. She truly did not covet Charity’s fine clothes or her shining blond hair. The young woman was as shy and kind and well-meaning as anyone Amelia had ever known.

But when she pictured Charity and Hank together, a niggling, worrisome sensation in the center of her being clenched up and refused to let go.

Stop it! Amelia warned herself.

Jealousy, she decided, was an utterly ridiculous feeling to entertain, especially when Hank Larson meant absolutely nothing to her, nor she to him.

The only other time she’d ever even entertained the notion of falling in love, she’d been abandoned without so much as a by-your-leave. Since then, she’d wasted very little of her precious time worrying about love. This was certainly no time to start, what with Charity setting her sights on Hank and Hank out tracking down Evan.

The light shifted and a ray of sun streaming through topaz glass fell across her. Amelia stared up at the stained-glass window and turned her thoughts to Evan. She took comfort in remembering that no matter where he was, no matter what he was doing or what he might have done, the Lord continued to watch over her brother as He did all His sheep.

From behind the lectern, Brand McCormick began his sermon.

“No one shall enter the Kingdom, save through the Lord, for as Jesus himself told us, “I am the way, the truth
and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

Amelia sighed and closed her eyes. Through repentance and acceptance of Christ, Evan would be saved. There was no reason to give up on her brother yet, for the Lord would never give up on him. She vowed to remember that, and to believe that Evan would come to his senses and see the light. The good Lord would show him the way.

When services ended, Amelia walked outside with the others.

Reverend McCormick had just announced the church would be holding its first masquerade party at the end of the month in an effort to raise funds for choir robes. Everyone in town was invited and the congregation was to spread the word.

“So are you going?”

Amelia recognized Hank’s voice before she turned around and looked up into his eyes. For a split second she forgot all about Evan, about Charity. She forgot that there was anyone else in the whole world except him.

“Going to what?”

“To the social. I heard Mary Margaret yelling something about it into her husband’s ear.”

“The church fund-raising committee is holding a masquerade party. At the end of the month.”

“That should be interesting.”

“Would you actually attend?” She spotted Charity beneath the trees in the park in front of the church hall next door and experienced a wave of guilt.

“There aren’t many sources for news around here, as you so kindly pointed out to me the day we met.”

His words forced her to recall the robbery. Suddenly she wished all she had to think about was the upcoming church social.

“Did you…find Evan?”

He reached inside his coat and drew out a folded piece of paper. He glanced over his shoulder. People were milling all around the front of the church, some making their way over to long trestle tables where a potluck supper was set up beneath the trees in the square.

“Can we go somewhere alone?” he asked.

“That’s not seemly.”

“How about we just walk around the corner of the church? Or we could step inside. I don’t want anyone else to see this.”

“But—”

“I made you a promise, Amelia. I intend to keep it.”

I made you a promise.

Her heart sank. It ached so badly that she was afraid if she looked down, she’d discover she was standing on it. She turned and began to walk away. She didn’t want to hear what he had to say, but there was no avoiding it.

In two strides Hank caught up. Did she feel folks watching them, or was she just imagining it?

Once they reached the corner of the church, she looked over her shoulder and saw that Charity was watching them from beneath the brim of her fine pink hat. Amelia reminded herself she wasn’t betraying her friend. She had to know what Hank had found out about Evan.

Oblivious to her thoughts, Hank handed over the paper.

“What is this?” She wasn’t afraid to stitch a man’s wounds together, but she was afraid to unfold the page.

“It’s a poster. I brought a pile of them back from Comanche.”

Her hands nearly failed her as she opened the poster and saw the names of the Perkins Gang listed there. Evan’s name was among them.

“I wanted you to see this before I post them around town,” Hank said. “I thought I’d go around, talk to folks first. Ask if anyone has seen Evan. I wish I had better news, Amelia.”

“How did you find out? How did my brother’s name end up here?”

“Harvey Ruggles sang like a songbird,” Hank said. “He says your brother was in on the robbery, but he got cold feet and disappeared.”

“Has Evan done anything else? Harmed anyone? Robbed another bank?”

Hank shook his head. “Not that I know of. He and his friends shot up a saloon in Dublin, though.”

Amelia dropped her arm to her side. Forgotten, the poster drifted to the ground.

She turned on her heel and headed into the church.

Hank watched her go pale and drop the poster. He wanted nothing more than to take her in his arms and tell her that everything would be all right. But there were things beyond his power to make right, things well beyond his control. He’d found that out when Tricia died.

He watched Amelia slip inside the deserted church. Her feet nearly faltered but she held her head and shoulders high and didn’t bow under the weight of her pain. He wanted to follow her in, to sit beside her in silence until she could face the world again.

But she hadn’t asked for his company and she’d made
it perfectly clear that she didn’t need it. The best he could do was park himself on the steps and wait for her to come out again.

A few minutes later, Amelia dried her eyes and pulled herself together. Once she was outside, she nearly fell over Hank Larson seated on the church steps.

“What are you still doing here?” Wasn’t it bad enough that he’d brought her such horrendous news?

“Waiting for you.”

“I don’t want you waiting for me.” He was the man charged with bringing Evan in. He was the man Charity had set her cap for. She didn’t dare let herself care about him.

He shrugged. “I’m worried about you.”

“As I’ve told you before, Mr. Larson, I’m more than capable of taking care of myself.”

“Do you want to?”

“Do I want to
what?
”

“Take care of yourself. All the time, that is? Wouldn’t you like to have someone else take care of you once in a while?”