Sundown, p.4
Sundown, page 4
“I’ll slow the team down and try to make the ride more comfortable for you.”
He took off his jacket and laid it on the grain sack. He covered his face with the Stetson, but managed a quick glance at Emma, whose cotton shirt hugged the curves he noticed before.
A cloud of guilt smacked him in the gut, so he faced the other direction. He closed his eyes and thought of the girl he'd left behind and wondered about the life they’d have in Sacramento, fancy parties, concerts and possibly an opera or two that Sadie fancied. He fell asleep, picturing the smooth skin of his betrothed.
Wyatt awoke to the sway of the buckboard and squeak of the wheels as the wagon headed up an incline. He removed his Stetson in time to see the McCrea Ranch signpost.
He climbed beside Emma and took a sip from the canteen.
“Reckon, you were more tuckered out than you realized.”
Wyatt flexed his back and stretched out his arms. “Would you like me to take the reins?”
Emma laughed. “Now that we’re almost there.”
“You’re better with a team of mules than me, anyway.”
Emma chuckled. “I have skills you haven’t even imagined.”
Was that a flirtatious innuendo?
She studied his face, and her eyes widened. “You scoundrel. I was referring to sewing, dancing and shoeing horses.”
“I’m terribly sorry.” He pointed up the trail. “The house is just beyond the hill.”
“I know. I’ve been here before.”
“You have?”
“Your brother hosted a party here last year.”
Party? First church, now a party at the ranch?
How well did he even know Travis? They had plenty to talk about.
“Do you mind if I ask you a few more questions before we arrive?”
He took another sip of water. “Would it make any difference if I said no?”
“Why did you become an attorney?”
“That decision caused a lot of problems for Travis and me. He thought I'd spend a few years in college, then come home and help run the ranch. In California I saw things I’d never see in Sundown. I didn’t want to be a rancher all my life. I wanted to help people, especially those unjustly accused of crimes, so I studied law. Little did I know my first real opportunity would be with Travis. He stopped writing just after I broke the news. Like I said, he’s stubborn.”
“He’s stubborn?”
Wyatt chuckled. “There’s more to the story. After Pa and Travis left for the war, I worked harder than ever on the farm. At night, I’d relax, and while Ma read the Bible, I’d unwind by the fire with a book about pirates or Indians. Books took me beyond the Illinois farm.”
“No Bible reading for you?”
“I learned enough from ma, mostly about not swearing and not to give in to temptations of the flesh.”
“We have a new minister in Sundown.”
“So I’ve heard.”
Emma’s eyes twinkled. “Preacher Taylor can help you stand strong in case you encounter any temptations of the flesh.”
They made it to the main house as the relentless wind swept from the corals to the barn. When the dust settled, they could see a horse and a mule tied up to the front porch.
Emma reached for the shotgun. “Someone’s here.” Wyatt jumped down and, without thinking, offered a hand to Emma who took it and climbed down. She stood beside him, holding the gun.
“Put that gun away,” Wyatt said. “I can handle this.”
“Like you handled Jeb Colfield? If it’s all right with you, I’ll hold on to this. It might be outlaws, rustlers or Indians. But I feel safe. I’ve got my double-barrel shotgun and an attorney with a lawbook.”
CHAPTER 5
The door to the ranch house opened, and a broad-shouldered, dark-skinned man with a familiar grin stepped out, Amos Freeman.
Travis’s neighbor shielded his eyes from the afternoon sun. “Miss Emma. Who’s that with you? Lord, if it ain’t… Ruby, come quick, it’s Travis’s brother.”
Wyatt shook the man’s strong hand.
“Ruby and I, and Miles, came by to help around the ranch.” Amos flashed a wide grin. “Thought you’d gone to California for good.”
“I had to come back.”
“‘Course you did. ‘Course you did. Haven’t seen you since the party, Emma.” Amos grabbed the bridle of one of the mules. “Let me water your team, wipe them down, and get ‘em some shade.”
“Thanks, Amos.” Emma squeezed his hand.
Wyatt grabbed his two bags and followed Emma inside.
Outside the kitchen, Ruby greeted them with warm hugs. “You two look hungry. I'll whip something up quick.”
“I’ll help. Yes, I can cook, Wyatt.” Emma’s smirk was like a cat’s, sly, playful and full of mischief. “One of my other hidden talents.”
As Ruby grabbed a pan, Wyatt glanced around and almost didn’t recognize the place, it was cleaner and tidier than he ever remembered it being.
Emma even noticed. “Your brother keeps a clean house.”
“Maybe Ruby picked it up.”
That was probably it.
While she joined Ruby in the kitchen, Wyatt went into his old room and set the two bags beside the bed. The room had changed from the way he left it. Like the rest of the place, the floor was uncluttered, the bed was made, and there was little dust on the furniture. Either Travis had become a better housekeeper since Wyatt left, or Ruby had cleaned the place. His money was on Ruby.
He went outside to help with Emma’s mules. When they finished drinking from the trough, Amos led them to the shade of a spruce tree. The two men unhitched them from the rig and led the team into the barn.
Wyatt had forgotten the smell of a barn. A wave of moist heat slammed into his face as he stepped inside.
A rhythmic crunch echoed beneath his boots. The harsh midday sun, momentarily obscured by the dusty loft, seemed amplified within the timber walls. The air hung thick with the early scent of hay and the pungent musk of manure.
The snort of Travis’s horse, Clementine, and the soft thud of the mare’s hooves drifted from the stall at the back of the barn. The only other sound was the distant creak of a windmill battling the relentless wind.
In the corner was a round metal bin with a lid slightly askew. As he lifted the lid to put it in place, he jumped back as a half-dozen mice scampered out from the bin and disappeared into the horse stalls. He set the lid firmly in place.
Amos chuckled. “I’ve been after Travis to get a cat. I told him if you raise chickens, you raise mice.”
“Travis never liked cats.”
After wiping down the two mules, Amos led them into a stall next to Clementine.
Wyatt and fed each a clump of hay.
“There’s something Travis told me about that you might need.” Amos headed to the workbench on the side wall. He removed a key from a peg on the wall, then reached beneath the bench and pulled out an old blue trunk.
Amos dropped the trunk onto the bench. Dust danced in a shaft of sunlight that speared through a crack in the barn’s weathered walls. Using the key, he lifted the lid and stepped back. “Don’t know how long you’ll be here, but I ‘spect you might be needin’ these.”
Wyatt peered inside at his black leather holster and Colt 45. “I hope I won’t.”
“I’m not saying you’ll have to shoot somebody, but strapping on a six-gun when you go to town sends a message.”
Not wearing a gun also sends a message. “I don’t see you carrying a gun, Amos.”
“I don’t need to when I come here, and I don't get to town much.”
“You never go to town except for supplies.”
“Some folks in Sundown don’t want us around.”
Sundown had changed plenty since he left, but Wyatt wasn’t sure it had changed enough to accept the Freeman family on equal terms. He remembered what it felt like to be an outsider in Sundown, but it couldn’t be anything close to what Amos and his family had gone through.
Amos gazed across the barn. “Wish things were different, that we could come and go as we pleased without feeling like folks are figurin’ how to get rid of us.”
“Sundown’s changing.”
“Not that I can tell.” Amos locked the trunk, set it beneath the bench, and hung the key on the wall. “You got a hard row to hoe in the coming days, Wyatt. Ruby and I'll keep our eyes on the place while you work on getting Travis freed.”
“Much obliged, my friend. I’ll let Travis know. I know the ranch has been weighing on his mind.”
“Wish I could do more to help, but I’ll see to it that things are taken care of here.”
“I appreciate it, but don’t neglect your own place.”
Amos laughed. “Ruby won’t let that happen.”
Ruby called from the porch. “Soup’s on!”
Outside the barn, Miles was sitting beside the corral, drawing in the dirt with a stick. Wyatt took a look. The boy had drawn a horse, a perfectly drawn horse. “That’s a mighty good drawing, son.”
Miles stood up, eyes beaming. He dropped the stick and dusted off his hands.
Amos shook his head. “My son needs to spend more time feedin’ and carin’ for horses ‘stead of drawin’ ‘em.”
Wyatt reached into his pocket and gave the figurine Deputy Stone had carved to the boy.
Miles looked it over. “Gee, thanks! A dog.” He showed it to his pa, and the three walked toward the house.
After a soothing meal of bean soup and cornbread, Emma said her goodbyes to the Freemans.
Outside, Emma and Wyatt hitched the mules to the buckboard.
As they worked, an unexpected feeling stirred inside Wyatt. He was sorry to see her go. She was contrary and argumentative, but he felt if he got to know her better, he’d find something warm and gentle inside.
Emma walked to a patch of wildflowers at the edge of the pathway leading away from the ranch. She picked a yellow flower that resembled a daisy. She twirled the flower, then began to pick the petals one by one until it was just a stem.
She walked up to Wyatt and shook his hand like a clerk in a store. “It was nice getting to know you, Wyatt. Your brother's lucky to have you as his attorney.”
She climbed onto the buckboard, placed the old hat on her head, and took the reins.
Wyatt wasn't sure what to say. They’d known each other less than a day, yet a subtle sense of attachment had taken hold inside, stirring feelings he didn’t want to admit to himself and certainly not to Emma. “Thanks for everything, Emma Sullivan. I owe you.”
An uncomfortable silence hung in the air between them as their eyes met.
Emma's face hardened. “You don’t owe me a thing.” She snapped the reins, and the team set off down the winding trail to Sundown. Wyatt stood watching her go as she headed toward the setting sun. Her wagon kicked up a cloud of dust that danced in the fading light until she was just a speck on the horizon. He found himself wrestling with emotions for the woman he'd just met, a mix of curiosity, intrigue and a whisper of something perplexing, like a riddle wrapped in a mystery.
He'd come to Sundown out of duty to family, not to forget Sadie or explore how he felt about someone new. Thoughts of his fiancée, soft and sophisticated back in Sacramento, fought against the image of Emma's fiery tresses and sapphire eyes that sparkled with the allure of mischief. Her spirit, a curious blend of gentleness and rugged tenacity. His feelings cast an unwelcome shadow on his once clear path as if a storm were brewing on the horizon.
Behind him, Ruby and Miles came out of the house. Ruby stopped beside him as he stared at the dust kicked up by Emma’s wagon. “If you forgot what you wanted to say to Emma, you should go after her.” Wyatt couldn’t do that, not with a brother in jail and a fiancée in Sacramento. He turned and thanked Ruby for the meal.
She gave him a misty-eyed hug. “There’s leftover cornbread for breakfast. I’ll bake some bread, and maybe a pie. I’ll bring the food by tomorrow.”
“You don’t…”
“Sush.” She held up her hand. Then she hefted her son onto the mule and led them down the path toward their house.
Amos came out and dropped in one of the rocking chairs on the porch, gesturing to the one beside him. Wyatt sat and the two men rocked as the final sliver of sun dipped below the orange glow of clouds clinging to the horizon.
Amos lit a pipe. The only time Wyatt ever saw the neighbor unwind was smoking a pipe. “Emma Sullivan’s a handful, ain’t she?”
“She certainly is.”
“A lovely woman when she scrapes off the layer of dust and printer’s ink. I think she’s takin’ a liking to you.”
“Emma? No. The Sundown Gazette is her interest. Besides, I’m engaged.” Wyatt showed him the picture of Sadie.
“Oh Lord.” Amos let out a low whistle. “She’s a dandy, all right.”
He blew out a puff of smoke. “You think you can get your brother off?”
Wyatt wasn’t sure at all. “That’s why I came back.”
Amos glanced down the path toward his house. “Ruby wasn’t happy the first few years here. She had no friends to chat with and bake for. Then you and Travis moved here, and before long, you two were like family. After you left, Travis became a brother to me and an uncle to Miles.” He clutched Wyatt’s arm. “You gotta get him off, you just gotta.”
Amos's words of comfort added to the pressure Wyatt felt. “I’ll do my best.”
As the sky grew dark, Amos snuffed out the pipe and knocked the ashes on the back of his boot. “I best be getting’ home. Got my own chores to do.”
Amos shook Wyatt’s hand. “This ranch needs your brother.”
“I have to find out who shot the man Travis is accused of killing.”
“Your law books won’t help with that. Don’t forget your gun in the trunk.”
Amos climbed onto his horse. “Maybe I shouldn’t say anything, but somethin’ you should know. After you left, your brother had a tough time with this place; fences needed mending, livestock wandered off. I thought he might lose the place, but about a year ago he began to change, for the good, mind you. He started payin’ more attention to the ranch, started going to church, mingling with the town folks like he never did much before. He didn’t shoot that man they said he did. He wouldn’t do it. He couldn't do it.”
“I know.”
After Amos rode away, Wyatt went inside and stood outside of Travis’s bedroom. He pushed open the door, the hinges squeaking in protest in the dim moonlight shining through the window. The room smelled of tobacco and aged leather. As the moonlight seeped in, it painted the room in a different light than Wyatt remembered. Everything appeared different about the room, clothes stowed away, a bed made up neat as a pin, polished boots standing guard against the wall like sentinels.
He didn’t know what he expected to find. If the room held any secrets they weren’t hiding in plain sight. He’d have to dig deeper.
In the corner, Travis’s guitar was propped against the wall. The old guitar might help his brother to pass the time in jail.
As he turned to leave, he spotted something out of place, something Wyatt brought from Illinois. From a chair in the corner by the window, he picked up the familiar book he’d barely glanced at over the years. “Poetry for Spring.”
Poetry? He set the book back and shook his head. “Travis, what’s become of you?”
Wyatt went to his room, took off his boots, and washed up. In bed, he lay awake with the window open to a cool breeze.
Nearly everyone he talked to mentioned how Travis had changed. They felt the change was for the better, but now he was in a musty jail cell in Sundown, and folks seemed to think Wyatt was his only chance of escaping the hangman’s noose.
He couldn’t dwell on that responsibility, not if he wanted to sleep. Sundown reminded him he was just a kid lawyer. He wouldn’t think of the responsibility he’d accepted after receiving the telegram. He let out a sigh. Proving Travis’s innocence would begin in the morning when he rode into town.
Wyatt tried not to think about his brother’s predicament or what he had to do to find out what really happened to Silas Thornton. Who was the dead bounty hunter? Where had he come from and why had he come to Sundown? The biggest unanswered question was who shot the bounty hunter and left Travis to face the dealer?
A coyote howled in the distance, and the curtain stirred in the breeze. Wyatt shook off the tasks ahead.
His thoughts drifted back to his life in Sacramento, his plans for a career with an influential law firm and his marriage to Sadie Hampton.
Wyatt struck a match and lit an oil lamp on the table beside his bed. He picked up the photograph of Sadie. In the picture, her face radiated a kind of elegance that would make the most hardened heart skip a beat, a California rose wearing the fineries of Eastern sophistication, elegant, educated and cultured. His fiancée was unlike anyone in Sundown, completely different from Emma Sullivan, the rough and tumble newspaper woman with the playful smile. He fell asleep thinking of the contrast between Sundown and Sacramento and the differences between Sadie and Emma.
CHAPTER 6
The next morning, Wyatt went through his old clothes. Apprehensive over the challenges he faced, he slipped into denim trousers, a tan long-sleeved shirt, a brown leather vest, and a green bandana tied around his neck. He wanted to blend in Sundown. He set his Stetson on his head and rode his brother's horse, Clementine, toward town. The sun, a pale disc through the haze of dawn, cast lengthy shadows across the rippling Wyoming grasslands.
He urged the mare onward. A stiff breeze, cool and fragrant with the scent of wildflowers and sagebrush, required him to tug on his hat keeping it low over his brow.
A dust devil danced in the distance, a miniature cyclone swirling over the endless expanse of brown and gold. He squinted through the sunrise and set his jaw as he thought about Travis in jail and the heavy weight on his own shoulders. Clementine’s mane and tail rippled like a windblown flag. Travis's horse seemed to relish the familiar journey from ranch to town. Her hooves pounded a steady rhythm on the trail he and Emma had taken the day before.
