The Lawman Takes A Wife

Elizabeth hastily passed the widow another plate of biscuits. “Well, I’m sure even a dedicated banker like Mr. Hancock likes to get out once in awhile.”

“Then why doesn’t he ask me?” Louisa demanded.

“Chit your age?” Thelma said, clearing the plate. “Why ever for?”

“At this rate, I’ll never find anyone to marry,” Louisa wailed. “Never!”

“I’m sure you’ll find somebody eventually, dear,” said Elizabeth. Before Louisa could demand to know just when that might happen, she added, “What I’d like to know is what the sheriff did for his wife to divorce him. He doesn’t seem the type to have a miss—” She glanced at Becky. “Be a troublemaker. He just doesn’t seem the type.”

She looked around the circle. “I don’t suppose anybody’s heard the details?”

“You’re married to the mayor.” Emmy Lou stabbed her needle into her quilting pieces as if it could have gone straight to the hearts of those who had deprived her husband of the position he deserved. “Seems to me you, of all of us, ought to know.”

Elizabeth stiffened. “You know I don’t interfere in Josiah’s business. Such things aren’t appropriate for a lady.”

“Huh!” said Thelma around a mouthful of sweet lemon biscuit. “I shay—”

“Watch the crumbs!” Without looking, Elizabeth slapped a napkin into Thelma’s hand. “Besides, I’m sure Josiah and all the members of the council investigated the matter thoroughly before they agreed to hire the man.”

“Doesn’t seem right, bringing in a man we don’t know anything about, a man with a scandal in his past when there was perfectly good candidates—” in the midst of battle, Emmy Lou’s carefully cultivated grammar tended to desert her “—for sheriff right here in Elk City. Why, if the town council had had a brain among ’em, they would have seen straight off that my Zacharius was—”

“Are you accusing my husband of not knowing what he’s doing?”

“Not only of not knowing, but of deliberately ignoring the good of Elk City just so he could—”

“But doesn’t anybody know what Sheriff Gavin did to make his wife divorce him?” Coreyanne persisted, more to stop the brewing quarrel between Emmy Lou and Elizabeth than because she really wanted to know.

The would-be combatants breathed out in angry little huffs, torn between their personal animosities and the attraction of a scandal.

“Most likely he was a womanizer,” said Emmy Lou with a challenging glance at her rival. Everyone in town knew Josiah Andersen had an eye for the ladies.

Elizabeth flushed. “Probably drank too much and beat her.”

Molly set her sewing in her lap. She’d only just met the man, but already she felt sorry for DeWitt Gavin. “Maybe it was her fault.”

Her calm statement got everyone’s attention.

“Her fault? Ridiculous!” snapped Emmy Lou. “He’d have divorced her, if that were the case. And Coreyanne said it was definitely she who divorced him. No decent woman would divorce her husband if she weren’t driven to it.”

“Maybe she wasn’t really a decent woman,” Molly insisted. “Maybe she had a…a lover and wanted to marry him, instead.”

“Or maybe she was really a criminal. A thief, perhaps or even a murderess!” Louisa Merton’s eyes were shining at the thought. “I read a book like that once, where she was really wicked, but the hero was really good and loved her anyway and he convinced her to repent and—”

“Nonsense!” snapped Thelma, Emmy Lou and Elizabeth, all at once.

“You read too many of those trashy romance novels,” Emmy Lou added quellingly, “and I’ve a good mind to tell your mother so.”

The light went out of Louisa’s eyes; her shoulders slumped.

“But even if it was his fault, that doesn’t mean he couldn’t make some other woman a good husband,” said Coreyanne, ever the peacemaker. “Maybe he’s settled down. Or maybe she drove him to it somehow. I’ll bet the right woman could keep him in line.”

Several heads around the room nodded in agreement. A couple turned Molly’s way, expressions alight with keen-eyed speculation.

“Sheriff Gavin seemed quite respectable when he stopped in my store,” Molly said, more sharply than she’d intended.

“Looks are one thing,” said Elizabeth Andersen primly. “Respectable’s quite another.”

“And you should know,” Thelma Thompson said.

One of the women at the far end of the room tittered.

“Respectable or not, he didn’t look so bad to me,” Coreyanne interjected quickly. She smiled dreamily, remembering. “Even if he is big enough to make two normal-size men. Those eyes, you know, and that deep voice, and that big, broad chest.”

Even Emmy Lou paused respectfully a moment, thinking of his chest. Thelma reached for the second plate of biscuits.

Molly remembered all too clearly how big Sheriff Gavin had seemed, standing there in the sunlit doorway, remembered how the floor had bounced beneath his weight. She knew the rumors about his past, yet what she’d thought about all afternoon was not his size or his disreputable past, but how strong and safe he’d seemed, and how gentle his voice had been, and how he’d looked, blushing. And though she’d tried to forget, she could remember, all too clearly, just how warm his hand had been when it had closed so securely around hers.

The memories had been playing havoc with her good sense all afternoon. If she wasn’t careful, they’d be wandering through her dreams, as well.

“Would anyone like more tea?” she said, picking up her cup.

Witt had rather liked the song, “Clementine.” He could have sat through it without a word of complaint three, or even four times running, if he’d had to.

After a half hour spent listening to it being played, over and over and over, and badly at that, he was debating whether to shoot the piano or the piano player. Neither one would be considered a great loss, so far as he could tell, though the miners might miss the piano.

“He gets this way every now and then.”

“What? Who?” Witt wrenched his gaze from the burly piano player.

“Crazy Mike.” Fred hooked a thumb in the piano player’s direction. “He gets this way every now and then. Decent sort when he’s sober, and the best miner in five counties, but he’s got a temper like a sore-footed mule when he’s drunk and a kick to match when he starts throwing those fists around.”

“Does he get drunk often?”

“Couple times a year, maybe. Maybe three.”

“It’s the melancholy, shee,” said Billie Jenkins, leaning across the table confidingly. He was having a hard time keeping his head up. Jackson’s whiskey wasn’t half the quality of the Grand’s, but it was a whole lot cheaper, and Billie had been enthusiastically saving money ever since he’d walked in the door.

“Ol’ Mike, he had a girl, onct,” he added by way of explanation. “Pretty girl. He was gonna marry her.”

Fred grinned. “Named Clementine, if you haven’t figured it out.”

“She left ’im.” Billie pooched out his lips in drunken frown. “Broke his heart, poor bashtard.”

“Women’ll do that to you,” said Bert Potter, blinking and nodding sagely over his half-filled glass. “Every time, women’ll do that to you.”

“Only if you’re damn fool enough to get hitched to ’em,” said Josiah Andersen heartily. He winked at Witt. “Or if you can’t get rid of ’em once you do.”

Witt’s jaw tightened. He shoved his chair back.