| |
Missouri
GOD, PLEASE TAKE PETER into Your loving arms, Katie prayed as she slowly dared a peek through one watery eye. However, both of her eyes widened at the scene which lay before her.
Jim and the bandit Katie felt she had almost led to Salvation stood with their quivering arms held high above their dirty hats. A streak of blood trickled down Jim’s right hand before disappearing into his shirt. The weapon he’d drawn on them was nowhere to be seen.
There, sitting tall on a horse before the lot of them, sat a young man. “You look like you fellows could use a hand,” he said, a silly grin tilting his lips at an awkward angle on his freckled face. He was tall no doubt, and not much older than Katie and Peter.
Actually, Katie thought, he may even be a bit younger than me. As he stared at them, his blue eyes sparkled with a certain brand of gaiety that only the youth can know. Three fellows rode up quickly behind him, dismounted, and began to tie and shackle the bandits.
“Got the rest of ’em down below, Bob,” one mumbled through a wad of what Katie presumed was tobacco.
Still staring at Katie, young Bob pushed the brim of his hat up with his pistol before holstering it and swinging down from the saddle. “Why, howdy ma’am. I’m Bob. Bob Dalton. Who might I have the pleasure of addressin’?” He walked with a swagger that put Katie in a mind of her old self-assured tomcat, Whiskers.
Whiskers had always managed to bring home the scrawniest mice and saddest of birds, but from his proud swagger, he seemed to think his prizes the most grand. Always delighted with his catch, it seemed as though he wasn’t sure what to do with his prey once he got it back home. However that never stopped him from swaying along with the typical tomcat swagger, even when he would let his dinner go free and then try to befriend it. Katie would smile and set out a bowl of fresh milk for the big-headed stray that couldn’t seem to bring himself to eat another living thing.
“Peter Wagler and Katie Knepp,” Peter said extending his hand. Even though Peter spoke and Bob shook his hand, the young man’s azure gaze was still trained on Katie.
Lifting his hand, Bob touched the tip of his hat. “If you’ll excuse me ma’am, I have some outlaws to shake down and articles to return to their rightful owners.”
Katie watched through the leafy canopy as Bob returned to his business. Still weeping, Mrs. McDougal was obviously overjoyed at having her wedding ring returned, however they sounded to be happier tears than they had been earlier. Offering her his hand, Bob assisted Mrs. McDougal back into the stagecoach, along with the other passengers. Holding up one finger, he examined the wound on the shot man’s shoulder. Motioning to the stagecoach driver, Bob pointed up to Katie, but his words were lost on the breeze before she could make them out. The driver nodded at Bob, who promptly began walking with the wounded rider up to where she sat watching.
“Howdy there, Katie girl,” Bob said as he meandered back into camp. She and Peter had lit a fire and tried not to watch as the men who’d ridden in with Bob Dalton interrogated the men that had held up the stage. Holding him by one arm, Bob helped the shot man to have a seat by the small fire.
“Was it the Wild Bunch who held up the stagecoach?”
Bob stopped and turned to face her, a puzzled look on his face. “I figured you to have a voice sweeter’n the mornin’ dew Miss Katie Knepp, but I didn’t figure you to know anything about the Wild Bunch.” With a shake of his head, the confounded lawman went back to examining the man’s injury.
“It went clean through, but you’re going to need that hole sewed up back in town.” Bob was adamant as he packed the hole in the old man’s shoulder full of a bandana from his back pocket.
The stagecoach rider shook his grizzled head. “No way Mr. Dalton. I’ll be fine. Ain’t got no money to pay no sawbones.”
Bob grinned and shot a wink at Katie as she took in the scene through wide eyes. “Ain’t your debt to pay, Mister.” Pushing himself up, Bob sauntered over to where the unmasked outlaws were shackled to a gnarled oak. “Which one of you was the shooter?”
Nobody offered an answer.
“That’s just fine then,” Bob said leaning over the outlaws. One by one, he rummaged a coin out of each of their vest pockets. “Thanks boys, this should just about cover the doctor’s fee for the man you shot.”
The wounded man grinned and offered a nod. “Many thanks.”
His medical tending done, Bob turned his attention back to Katie. “So, tell me Miss Katie. What exactly does a little Aim-ish girl know about outlaws?”
Katie watched the injured cowboy saunter back to the waiting stage. He climbed back up to the shotgun position with a little help from the driver. After a moment, they snapped the reins and continued on their journey. Realizing everyone was staring at her, still awaiting an answer, she stole a quick glance at Peter.
He poked a stick in the fire, sending up a shower of orange sparks, but said nothing.
“Well,” she began, “I know the Wild Bunch owes me a train ticket to Texas.”
Bob pulled a biscuit and handful of beef jerky out of his knapsack. He offered the morsels first to Katie, then to Peter. Both refused the proffered food. “Well darlin’, this here ain’t the Wild Bunch.” He grinned, giving his boyish features a mischievous look. “This here’s the Burrows Gang, though incomplete. Rube and Jim Burrows were the two men who you and Peter there became acquainted with back up in the bushes. These two ugly fellows here are the Brock brothers. Looks like Henderson and Nep.” He raised his voice a bit. “Those two idiots ride with your gang too, don’t they boys?” He spoke to the outlaws, but didn’t look at them. “Looks like those got away. Anyway, you’re mighty lucky they didn’t get their slick mitts on you. Every lawman in the country has been after this bunch at one time or another, and rumor has it that they don’t treat pretty girls too kindly.”
Peter bristled a bit. In the language only the pair of them shared, Katie whispered quickly. “I’ll start us some dinner.”
Retrieving what they’d brought in the buggy, Katie began a large meal. Before long, a fluffy tin of biscuits was ready, along with fruit preserves, honey, and stuffed crust rhubarb pie. All the while she worked, the hungry gazes of Bob and the bandits that made up the Burrows Gang were hot on her back. “So you’re a lawman, Mr. Dalton?”
Bob smiled at her as Peter looked on while he tended the horses. The fact that Bob’s gaze was never far from her brought a flush to her cheeks and knots to her stomach. From the corner of her eye, Katie noticed Peter watching Bob, his eyes hot emeralds. The look he was giving the young lawman was none too kind.
Bob smiled easily at Katie. “A lawman? No ma’am, I’m not that noble. The boys and me—” Bob gestured to the men at the edge of camp with tied-down holsters and empty eyes. “We’re bounty hunters.”
“What’s a bounty hunter?”
Peter coughed loudly.
Bob gave him a sideways glance as his lips tilted into an awkward, crooked smile. “Miss Katie, you’re mighty handy around a camp,” he complimented, eyeing the pie. “I do believe it’s time for us to get these fellows back to Elizabethtown, though.”
The bandits licked their lips like hungry, misbegotten dogs.
Peter’s voice rang out through the darkening camp. “Perhaps you all would like to stay and have dinner with us before you go? It’s the Christian thing to do.” To Katie, it sounded as though Peter was trying to convince himself of that, as well.
Without waiting for an answer, Katie dished up plates for both Peter and Bob. Not stopping there, she had dinner for all of the shackled outlaws plated before anyone could offer a rebuttal. “Would your, um, boys, like some too?”
“No they’re fine, thank you,” Bob said, not bothering to ask the looming men who hovered at the edge of camp. To Katie, they looked more like vultures eyeing a stumbling, sick cow than actual men. However, they had all managed to come along at just the right time to save both her and Peter from the clutches of the outlaws, so she couldn’t think ill of them. “Many thanks to you, Miss Katie.”
Katie took a seat next to Peter. “Will you be a bounty hunter forever, Mr. Dalton?”
Ducking his head, Bob tried to formulate an answer through a stifled laugh. “I don’t reckon so.”
“Is bounty hunting something you’ll train your future sons up to be, too?”
Bob almost choked on his pie. “Why, no ma’am. Fact is, this here is my last job before I head out to Indian Territory to join my brothers, Grat and Emmett.” He helped himself to a large bite and spoke through the crumbs. “They’ve got a security firm started out there, so I’ll be helpin’ them to run it.”
Katie nodded, lost on all the nonsensical words.
“Need all the law they can get out that way, wild as it is,” Bob muttered absently. “Miss Katie, if you don’t mind my sayin’ so, that was mighty fine pie and equally thoughtful of you to dish some up for the Burrows Gang.” He glanced at her from the falling shadows. “However, you must have a cruel streak in you that not even my men possess.”
Katie studied Bob’s laughing eyes, glittering in the firelight. What does he mean? Turning, she looked at each of the outlaws’ plates. Each had a biscuit topped with preserves and a generous slice of pie set before them on the ground. Then, it dawned on her. “Oh silly me! I didn’t give them any utensils...” Katie’s voice trailed off on the night winds as she scurried to gather enough forks for the men.
Bob let out a whoop that sent the night birds, those which had been singing in the tree overhead only moments before, beating the chilled night air with their wings in a burst of sudden, feathered urgency. “Why no, Katie, that ain’t it. Those men are shackled, they can’t reach the food you gave ’em, utensil or no utensil!”
Katie’s smile melted from her face as she realized Bob spoke the truth. She had, indeed, set out heaping plates of food for hungry outlaws as they sat shackled to a tree. Helpless, she glanced at Peter. A smile, albeit tiny, had found its way onto his lips, too. He gave a little shake of his head as if to say, Good job, Katie Knepp.
Gathering the forks and lifting her skirt just a bit, Katie hurried over to where the outlaws sat immobile. “I’m so sorry,” she said, plucking up the first outlaw’s plate. “What’s your name, sir?”
All the men, chained and unchained alike, looked at her as though she’d grown another head. Unsure of what to do, the first outlaw muttered under his breath as if he spoke a secret for only her to hear. “Willard Lenny, but they call me W.L.” Before the last initial was clear of his lips, Willard opened wide for his first bite. Swallowing without bothering to chew, he opened his mouth again, like a baby sparrow waiting on a worm. In only a handful of bites, W.L.’s plate was bare. “Thank you Miss,” he managed. The polite words came out rusty, like a forgotten door being opened for the first time in a coon’s age.
Katie moved to the next man. “Well I be hog-swaggled,” Bob swore from behind her. “I ain’t never seen such a thing.” Katie ignored him, focusing all of her attention on the hungry outlaw before her.
“I’m Leonard, W.L.’s my brother,” he reported before letting his lower jaw sag like a hapless, oily rag. With the hint of a smile playing at her lips, Katie fed the man. His plate was clean in less time than his brother’s. Dutifully, she moved to the first of the Burrow brothers.
“Hey,” Bob interjected. “What do you say there Leonard? That lady didn’t have to feed you and I certainly wasn’t going to. You owe her a—”
“Thankee,” Leonard grumbled.
Like a toddler being told to do something he doesn’t want to do, Katie thought.
She nodded to the sulking outlaw before plucking up the plate for the first of the two men for which the outlaw band was named. “Hello Jim,” she said before offering up a forkful of pie. “Figured you’d like your pie before your biscuit, just like the others.”
Jim flushed and opened his mouth a tad. “Thank you Miss Katie,” he whispered. “I’m mighty sorry we almost offed you and your beau back there.”
Katie smiled softly. “There are better ways to make a dollar in the English world,” she imparted over the emptying plate, “that won’t cost you your eternal soul.”
Hanging his head, Jim offered a slight nod. “Thank you, ma’am. I’m done. You can give the rest of mine to Rube.”
Scooting over, she came face to face with Reuben Houston Burrow. “So what were you saying earlier, Miss Katie? About God?” He sat straight, his eyes glistening with moisture.
“Well Mr. Burrow, God loves you. He wants you to be happy and live a life that honors Him. He will bless you for it, too.” She held up a bite of pie.
Rube accepted the forkful of pastry, never taking his eyes off Katie. “If you don’t mind my sayin’, Miss,” he stated once his bite was swallowed, “we almost blew you and your man away back in those trees. How can you call that a blessing?”
Katie lifted the biscuit to his waiting lips. “It was a blessing meeting you, Reuben Burrow. And something kept you from, as you said, blowing us away. We met for a reason.” Dropping her hands to her lap, she waited for him to chew the flaky biscuit. “And I got to share the good news.”
“Good news?”
Nodding, Katie offered him the last bite of biscuit. “Yes, the good news of God’s love for all men. And, I got to share it with a certain man who needed to hear it.”
Reuben sniffled. “I’m mighty sorry, Katie. Sorry a girl like you is wrapped up in the likes of us.” A lone tear dripped down his cheek as he chewed.
“What happened to turn you on a path away from God, Mr. Burrow?”
A handful of tears joined the first. “Yellow fever,” he said, voice cracking. “Took my wife, only woman I ever loved. Left me with two babies to raise on my own. It weren’t fair.”
By now, Rube’s testimony had the attention of everyone in the camp.
“So I left. Moved off to start a new life. Needed a new woman to tend my kids till my crops came in. Married up with a sweet young gal, but my crops failed. We was broke, so I turned to robbin’ with these fellers here.” He sniffled long and loud, the tears silently leaving dribbles down his cheeks.
Katie swatted absently at a fly as it buzzed the filthy outlaw.
Rube seemed not to notice as he continued. “When I come back from my first job, she left me. Took my kids too. Ain’t never seen nor heard hide nor hair of any of ’em since.” Rube ducked his head and gave over to a crying jag that was probably long overdue.
Katie’s heart wrenched in her chest. “Just ask, ask Him for help. Your soul is hurting. He can mend it.” Katie was on the verge of tears herself. God please change this outlaw’s heart—
“While we’re bein’ honest, there’s somethin’ else. This here’s Joe Jackson. He ain’t my brother Jim.” Rube sniffed and his voice cleared. “Jim died last year of consumption. He was in the pen when he died so every lawman probably knows, but guess word ain’t made it to the bounty hunters yet.”
Katie dared a peek at Bob, whose smile slid from his face, dripping into a deep frown. “I let the lady feed you sad excuses for human bein’s. It’s time now we get gone. You men got a train to catch.”
Katie bit her tongue and rose to her feet, careful not to make eye contact with anyone. Bob’s tone had changed so drastically, drips of icy fear danced down her backbone.
Peter gestured to the buggy. “Katie,” he said softly, helping her inside.
Once she was safely out of sight, Peter stood guard, his arms crossed across his chest. Indeed, Katie felt safer with Peter between her and the moody Bob Dalton. Both watched inconspicuously as the bounty hunters loaded the bandits up on some strung-together horses. Their iron shackles clinked heavily as they started off on the trail back towards Elizabethtown under the cloak of darkness.
“Got a trial waitin’ for you,” Bob chided the outlaws. “Or a necktie party.”
A necktie party?
“With any luck, the train you ride back to Arkansas won’t get held up,” another of the bounty hunters continued. “If it does, maybe this time you’ll take the bullet you got comin’ to you.”
Katie climbed out of the buggy and took her place next to Peter. “What’s all that?” She took care to keep her voice quiet.
“Lots of bad blood between those men. They’ll be lucky to make it to Elizabethtown alive,” he muttered absently, a faraway look in his sea-foam eyes.
Katie wasn’t sure if he meant the outlaws or Bob and his men, but nonetheless, she listened to her gut and let the conversation go.
“Goodbye Katie Knepp,” Bob called suddenly, turning in the saddle. His jovial smile was back, lighting up his young, freckled face. “If you’re truly headed down Texas way, there’s a bad drought. Fires springing up everywhere, so be mindful.” The wink he flashed by moonlight made her stomach turn over with an odd thunk.
Offering a slight wave, Katie glanced at Peter who stared after the odd group of men, all of whom seemed a little ignorant of the law. His eyes grew stormy. “We did right by them. Nobody can say we didn’t. But me,” he turned to Katie. Those deep, green eyes cleared of the gray haze that invaded them when Bob was near. “I’m glad they’re gone.”
