Scuse me, ma’am.” Caleb took a step backward and helped the little lady back onto her feet, then removed his hat and gave her a nod. “I’m real sorry. My mind was elsewhere.”
“As was mine. I do apologize.”
She was a pretty thing, no bigger than a minute, but with a voice as smooth as silk and a pair of big brown eyes that could cause a man to forget his troubles.
Well, most men might. Not him, though. His troubles were impossible to forget.
Then again, something told him so was this gal.
“You comin’, Cal?”
One more look at the big-eyed gal, and then he nodded and replaced his hat on his head. “Be right there, Ed. Pleased to make your acquaintance, ma’am.”
He trotted across the street, then took another look at the lady. A force of nature, she’d already disappeared, leaving a stack of trunks and a dark-skinned maid in her wake.
“Probably best you didn’t tangle with that one,” he said under his breath, although the sentiment didn’t reach his heart.
Not that he’d want a gal who looked so fragile. No, he liked a woman with a little meat on her bones. And while dark hair was nice, he’d always fancied blonds.
“What are you thinking, Wilson? Remember that prayer you prayed? There isn’t a woman alive who’d be interested in you, leastwise not until the Lord changes His mind.”
Then there was the issue of his freedom.
Caleb shrugged off his miserable self-pity to step into the sheriff ’s office. The smell hit him first, then the dust. He reeled backward trying to sneeze and cough all at once and nearly tripped over a pile of lumber that looked to have once been part of the roof.
When he recovered, he saw Ed standing in the door. “You okay, Cal?”
Straightening, Caleb swiped at his mouth with the back of his hand. “Name’s Caleb, Ed, and I’m fine. Just wasn’t prepared, that’s all.”
“Yeah, looks like we got some cleaning and fixing to do in there.” Ed shrugged. “To tell you the truth, ain’t nobody been in there since Sheriff Merritt passed on last winter. The skunks must’ve moved in ’bout the time the sheriff moved out. The roof, well, you got me how that whole thing fell down like that. Must’ve happened when we had that big wind back in January. See, there’s an old piece of roof. I reckon we must’ve had some rotten timbers that didn’t cotton to being pounded.”
Caleb let his gaze sweep the office and adjoining jail cell. No sheriff or prisoners since last winter?
That surely told a man what sort of town Dime Box was. Even if he weren’t about to be the guest of the jailhouse, he might have considered staying around of his own accord. What were a few skunks when the townsfolk were a law-abiding sort? Compared to Tombstone, this place was paradise.
A thought occurred. “If the sheriff passed on last winter, who’s been keeping the peace?”
Ed leaned against the door frame and crossed his arms over his chest. “Oh, we mostly been doing it ourselves, the menfolk, that is. Once in a while we get a tough customer who has to be taken over to Millville. Mostly, though, we see a few drunks and the occasional mischievous lad.”
“I see.” Caleb paused. “Well, then, I suppose we ought to be heading out. Millville’s a half day’s ride.”
The Thompson fellow looked at Caleb as if he’d grown an extra ear. “What would we be wantin’ to go to Millville for?”
“Well, I just figured, what with the jail not being usable you might want to put me over there.”
To Caleb’s surprise, Ed began to laugh. At first he chuckled; then he doubled over in full-fledged laughter. When he straightened, he had to wipe his eyes before he could speak.
“You’re a real hoot, Cal.” He gestured toward the place where they’d just come from. “I reckon you can head on over to the Widow Sykes’s place and set yourself up in a room there. Last I heard she had two empty ones. Once we get the jailhouse back in shape, we can move you in here. That to your liking?”
To my liking? Caleb searched Ed Thompson’s face for signs he was pulling a prank. What he saw looked to be concern. “Anything wrong?” Ed asked.
“Wrong? Well, I guess I was wondering if you’re serious or just pulling my leg.”
There was that look again. “Why would I be pulling your leg? Don’t you like the rooming house? I mean, I know things are fancier where you come from, but I figure a clean bed and a good meal’s the same no matter where you get ’em.”
“I reckon you’re right.” He reached out to shake Ed’s hand. “I appreciate your trust in me, Ed, and you’ve got my word as a law-abiding man that I won’t leave town.”
“You’re too much, Cal.” His amused expression turned serious. “I wonder if we ought to keep this under our hats, though. I mean, once the townsfolk get wind of who you are, well, you and I won’t have a moment’s peace.”
Caleb said a quick prayer of thanks for the reprieve, then beat a path to the rooming house before Ed changed his mind.
Caleb spent four nights at the Widow Sykes’s place and five days at the jailhouse helping Ed repair the ceiling damage and remove all traces of the skunk family that had spent Christmas in the lone jail cell. When questioned as to his reasons for taking on such a task, Caleb had an easy answer: “If I’m going to be spending my time here, the least I can do is make it livable.”
That response satisfied Ed, and just before sundown on the fifth day, they completed their work.
“I best go get cleaned up,” Ed said. “The missus is particular about smelly menfolk at her supper table.” He scratched his head, then glanced over at Caleb.
“Why don’t you join us tonight, Cal? Evelyn sets a fine spread, and I know she’d welcome you. She’s been after me to fetch you home, but I figured with you working yourself to the bone here the last thing you felt like was socializing of an evenin’.”
Along the way he’d met quite a few of the townsfolk, most of them arriving carrying a baked good of some sort. They welcomed him like an honored guest rather than the inmate he was to become, and they all called him Cal, which struck him as odd. Still none of them had invited him to socialize.
He met Ed’s gaze. “You sure about this, Ed? I mean, I’m a—”
“Pa, you still in there? Mama said to tell you she’s buttering the corn bread.”
Ed grinned. “Looks like I’m being called to supper. You comin’ or what?”
Caleb pondered the invitation for a moment before shaking his head. He sure did like a good piece of buttered corn bread. In fact, he loved to eat.
“I really ought not to get used to such luxuries. You tell your wife I appreciate the invite, though.”
Ed studied Caleb a moment, then shook his hand and headed out the door. A moment later he returned. “I know you’re tired and all, but we need to talk about getting you moved in here. What say you fetch your things from the Widow Sykes’s place after breakfast and meet me here? Say eight o’clock?”
“Eight it is.” Caleb straightened his hat and walked out into the dying rays of the last sunset he would see as a free man—at least for quite a while.
“Lord,” he said under his breath, “I sure would like another chance. If You’d see fit to let me get a clean start, I’d be much beholden.”
Bypassing the dining room, Caleb made his way upstairs and kicked off his boots. It would be a shame to spend his last free night alone, yet he felt no need to go any farther than the table where’d he left his Bible.
A sound drifted up and pulled Caleb toward the window. There below, in the sliver of dirt and rocks the Widow Sykes called her garden, the dark form of a person huddled against the far wall. Upon closer inspection he could see skirts.
The sound found him again, and this time he knew it was the sound of a woman crying. While he watched, she doubled over, then sank to her knees.
His first instinct was to leave her be. A woman’s tears were a more dangerous weapon than a gun or a knife, and he generally steered clear of a female packing a damp hankie.
But what if she’s hurt? What if she’s hiding from someone looking to do her harm? Despite what Ed said about Dime Box’s low crime rate, plenty of bad guys were lurking out there, and they could just as likely be hiding here as anywhere.
Caleb ought to know. He used to be the worst of the worst, and his favorite hiding places were where the decent folk went. That’s how he’d learned to pass himself off as a gentleman.
Some days he felt like he was still playing that game: an outlaw pretending to be a man of character. Then the good Lord would give him some reminder He had settled the score and wiped away the past.
Caleb waited a moment longer, then made his decision. “Nothing like spending the night before I go to jail doing a good deed.”
Shoving his feet into his boots, Caleb headed outside. He might not be able to do much with his immediate future, but the least he could do was help a woman who was obviously in some kind of distress.