The Lawman Takes A Wife. Anne Avery
the essentials? What if the coal ran out and the mines had to close? What if something happened to her?
What if, what if, what if. There were so many things that could go wrong and so little she could do to stop them if they did. And, oh! how much easier it would be if only there was someone to share the worries and responsibilities with her, someone on whom she could depend, no matter what.
Molly drew her shawl closer about her shoulders, shivering a little in the cool night air. She didn’t usually waste time thinking about such things, but tonight, somehow, she couldn’t stop.
When she reached Main Street, rather than crossing it as she usually did, then walking down Elm Street to get home, she turned to the right. She’d pass the store on the way.
And the jail, a small voice inside her said.
She stifled the voice and kept walking.
This time of night, even Main Street was quiet, the buildings dark except at either end of the street where Elk City’s three saloons were lighted and open for business.
A burst of masculine laughter coming from somewhere ahead of her made her stop. When the jail door opened, spilling the faint light of an oil lamp across the walk, she muttered a word she would have washed Dickie’s mouth out for using and shrank into the shadowed doorway of Dincler’s Barbershop.
A moment later, half a dozen men stepped out, laughing and joking among themselves. They clumped off the boardwalk and into the street, clustered like reluctant partygoers leaving the fun.
“You take good care of your guest, now, Sheriff, you hear?” one of the men called.
“Don’t let his snoring keep you up!”
The attempt at humor brought more laughter from the men, but not a word from the sheriff. He stood, a silent presence in the faint wash of lamplight, watching them, neither friendly nor distant. Simply…there.
The laughter died. A couple of the men shuffled their feet.
“You did good, Gavin,” someone said at last. “Just want you to know that. You did good.”
The others murmured agreement. They would, she knew, have been more comfortable if the sheriff had laughed or joked right back at them, or made one of those vulgar comments men were prone to when they thought ladies weren’t present.
One among them broke the spell by clapping a companion on the back.
“Come on, boys. The night’s still young. Wouldn’t want to upset the missus by comin’ home too soon, now, would we?”
To Molly’s relief, they headed away from her, down toward the other end of town and the two saloons whose lights shone in the distance. She hadn’t worried that any of them would bother her if they did discover her huddling in the shadows, but men were as gossipy as women, no matter how much they denied it. The last thing she needed was word going round that she’d been hiding in the shadows outside the jail at an hour when a sensible woman would have been home and in bed.
To her dismay, the sheriff lingered in the open doorway.
He propped his shoulder against the frame, crossed his arms over his chest, and tilted his head to stare at the star-swept sky. The light behind him outlined the broad shoulders, deep chest and long, powerful legs, but left his face in shadow.
Why didn’t he just go in?
Why didn’t she just walk past? a mocking little voice inside her head demanded. A polite nod, a friendly greeting. Good evening, maybe. Or maybe just, Sheriff. And he’d say, Ma’am, or, Evening, and that would be it.
And if he did say something, she’d just explain that she’d been startled by the men suddenly emerging onto the street, which would be true. He’d nod, and maybe he’d apologize for having startled her, and then she’d say she had to get home, and he’d say, Of course, and maybe, Good night, and then maybe he’d go in and shut the door and forget all about it. Forget all about her.
Her stomach twisted, just at the thought.
Molly peeped out of her hiding place. The man hadn’t moved an inch.
He made a compelling figure standing there, his big, powerful body cast half in golden lamplight, half in shadow. She still couldn’t see his face, but she remembered with disconcerting clarity the strong lines of cheek and jaw, the piercing clarity of those blue-gray eyes that seemed to take in everything at a glance.
From the look of him, he might have been a thousand miles away.
Was he thinking of his wife? she wondered. Or of another woman, perhaps? A woman he’d loved so much that his wife had chosen to divorce him rather than live with the constant reminder that he had set another before her?
It had to have been another woman. She’d scarcely met the man, but she couldn’t imagine anything else he might have done that would have driven a woman to the scandal of divorcing him.
Yet if he’d loved another, why hadn’t he remarried the instant he was free of his first marriage?
Whatever it was that haunted him, he evidently found no solace in those cold, distant stars for he straightened suddenly and, without a glance to either side, turned and stepped into the building. An instant later, the door clapped shut behind him, throwing the street back into darkness.
Molly sank into her own shadows, heart pounding, fighting against a sudden urge to knock on the door and ask if she could help, if there weren’t something she could do to fill his yearning silence.
The thought was utter madness.
She forced herself to wait a minute, then two, to be sure he wouldn’t return. When she could stand the wait no longer, she tugged her shawl more closely about her and hurried across the street, turned toward home and walked as fast as her feet could carry her.
Witt picked up the oil lamp he’d left on his desk and carried it back to the single, windowless cell that served as Elk City’s jail. His first guest was a great deal too large for the lumpy, metal-framed bed. Crazy Mike’s big feet, still clad in their heavy miner’s boots—no one had been the least inclined to make him more comfortable by removing them—stuck out over the end by a good eight inches. His head was propped at the other end with only the single thin pillow to cushion the steel frame.
He looked like hell, but his broken nose had stopped bleeding long ago. One of his friends, an unprepossessing gentleman rejoicing in the name of Gimpy Joe, had washed off the worst of the blood, but that was as far as anyone had been willing to go.
Mike hadn’t roused to any of it. Having at last yielded to the influence of all the whiskey he’d consumed at Jackson’s, he’d gone from a faint to a dead sleep from which the angels would have a hard time rousing him before he’d slept it off.
Witt made sure the cell’s chamber pot was within Mike’s reach if he did wake up, checked the lock on the cell door one last time, then retreated to his own small room beside the cell. The only real differences between the two spaces were that the walls of his room were painted wood, not raw metal bars, and he had a window and a door that wasn’t anywhere near thick enough to shut out the sound of Mike’s snoring.
Eventually, he’d have to find a proper place to live, but for right now, this would serve. So long as he didn’t end up with too many guests like Crazy Mike, that is.
Slowly, he undressed. Hat, vest, gun belt he hung from nails driven into the wall beside the bed. His boots, side by side, claimed the floor at the foot. With every movement, the soft rustle of the paper bag in his shirt pocket reminded him that there were other things in life besides barren rooms and drunken miners.
Slowly, he pulled the small bag of chocolates out, then set it on the rickety table beside his bed. In the lamplight, he could see the stains where the oil of the chocolate had seeped through the paper.
He’d already eaten three of them, and with every slight rustle of the paper, with ever sweet bite of the chocolate, he’d found himself thinking of