The Gunman's Bride

“Sounds like you’ve got a lot of new habits these days.”

“I did some things I’m not proud of, but I can’t just turn myself in. The law would just as soon shoot a man dead as let him try to make a new life for himself.”

Rosie set her brush on the table and turned to face him. “Do you want a new life, Bart?”

“I didn’t come all the way here to rob trains—you can bet your bottom dollar on that.”

“Why did you come?”

Bart let out a breath. “About the time Bob Ford shot Jesse James in the back of the head, I was doing some thinking. I looked back over the years of my life and all I saw was a long tunnel. A black, cold tunnel. There was only one bright sliver. One spot of light.”

“Is that right?” she asked. He was staring at her with a look she couldn’t read, a look that sent her pulse skimming.

“That light was you, Rosie,” Bart said. “It was you. And that’s why I came to Raton, New Mexico. I came to find that light again, to see if I could touch it, to see if it could shine away some of that darkness in the stinking black pit I’ve made of my life.”

Oh, Bart, she wanted to say, I forgive you. I forgive you! But the one-o’clock lunch train pulled into the depot with a whistle and a rush of steam that obliterated every sound in the tiny room. Rosie felt the floor shake and heard the window rattle. And she was thankful—so thankful—she hadn’t said anything to Bart.

As she left her room and hurried down the stairs to the lunchroom, Rosie saw the faces of her disappointed father and her angry fiancé. She saw the wreath of rosebuds and lilacs she’d worn in her hair the night she married Bart Kingsley, the glade where she had cried her eyes out over him, the parlor where William Lowell had knelt to ask for her hand and her heart—the heart she had promised to another man.

Rosie realized that with all these things, a blackness had crept into her own life. A blackness so intense she had fled it on a midnight train to a frontier town where no one could ever find her again. A blackness so dark she was not at all sure that even a flicker of light remained—the light that had been Laura Rose Vermillion. The light Bart had come seeking.

Chapter Four

Minutes after the last lunch train pulled out of Raton, Sheriff Bowman and the local pastor strolled into the lunchroom looking for a bite to eat.

“I’ll have a ham sandwich, Miss Laura,” Reverend Cullen said as he seated himself at her table. “And a dish of that wonderful Harvey ice cream.”

“I’ll take the same,” the sheriff said. “Been out all night and most of the morning chasing that outlaw. I’m hungry enough to eat my own horse.”

Rosie tried to smile as she hurried to the kitchen. When she returned and began setting out the meals, the two men were deep in conversation.

“Bart Kingsley is a skunk,” the sheriff said. “Nothing but a no-good half breed.”

“Now, only the Lord knows a man’s heart,” Reverend Cullen reminded him. “This Kingsley fellow may not be bad through and through.”

“You didn’t hear what the Pinkerton man told me before he left for Kansas City this morning,” the sheriff insisted. “The gunslinger’s got a file as thick as this sandwich. The things he’s done would make your hair curl.”

“Did the detective think Kingsley got away last night?” the preacher asked.

“Not sure. We lost track of him right here at the depot. I figured he hopped a train, but the Pinkerton man wanted to search the girls’ rooms. I set him straight on that real quick. Tom Gable would have a fit if I let any man set foot upstairs. Ain’t that right, Miss Laura?”

Rosie swallowed. “I believe it’s Mrs. Jensen who would have the fit.”

“Ain’t that the truth! Anyhow, I figured the minute a stinkin’ outlaw set foot in one of the girls’ rooms, there’d come a hollerin’ and bawlin’ like you never heard.”

The elderly preacher smiled at Rosie, his blue eyes warm. “But I’m sure our fugitive is long gone.”

“The gals will do well to be cautious. Bart Kingsley ain’t got proper parentage. The mother’s said to be a…” The sheriff glanced at Rosie. “A woman of the evening.”

At that the preacher thumped his hand on the counter the way Rosie had seen him do in church. “I’ve heard enough. A man can’t be held responsible for his lineage.”

“Kingsley ain’t responsible for his family tree, but he’s sure accountable for them three trains he robbed over in Missouri. Two men was killed during one holdup. No half-breed gunman is gonna get away with nothing while I’m sheriff. There’s a price on his head. Fifty dollars. If I have to, I’ll shoot him on sight.”

“Fifty dollars would go a long way toward the new house you’re building,” Reverend Cullen said. “But you don’t even know what the man looks like.”

“I saw him well enough to shoot him, didn’t I? Besides, he’s half Apache. He’ll have black hair and a chest like a barn door. He’ll be packin’ guns and wearin’ some kind of buckskin getup like the one he had on last night. If he’s anywhere around here, it won’t be long before I put a window in his skull.”

The sheriff stood and palmed a nickel onto the counter. “Afternoon, preacher,” he said, settling his hat on his head. He nodded at Rosie and strode out of the lunchroom.

Hands trembling, Rosie began gathering up plates and glasses as fast as she could.

“Now, don’t give the sheriff much heed,” Reverend Cullen told her as he stood. “He’s fit to be boiled because he lost the outlaw’s trail last night. Will I see you in church as usual this Sunday, Miss Laura?”

“I imagine so, sir.” Rosie was fairly scrubbing the varnish off the counter as he made his farewell and stepped outside.

Oh, but she felt ill! Bart was an outlaw and a killer. He had admitted as much himself. Now she realized that he was the cause of every trouble in her life.

If Bart hadn’t asked her to get married, she never would have disobeyed her father. She might have learned to like Dr. Lowell and been a good wife to him. And if she had cared for her husband, he might not have been as cruel as rumors insisted. After all, her pappy had liked the man and admired his medical skill. Maybe if Rosie had been a quiet and gentle wife, Dr. Lowell might never have felt the need to hurt or shame her, as her friends so often predicted he would.

If she had been more sure of Dr. Lowell’s temperament, she might not have run away from him a mere two weeks before their wedding. And she wouldn’t be fighting for her future with such slender hopes. Bart was the reason she was shaking like a leaf. Now he had followed her to Raton, he was up in her room and the sheriff intended to kill him!

Rosie wrung out her washrag and scrubbed the same patch of counter for the third time. Bart had told her she was the only light in his life. But she felt more like a snuffed-out oil lamp—black, empty and cold. Bart himself had turned down the bright wick of her dreams, doused her flame and blown away the final sparks.

She picked up her tray of empty plates and started for the kitchen, determination growing with every step. She hadn’t come all this way and worked this hard to let some gunslinging outlaw ruin her hopes—no matter how his green eyes beckoned.

In a mere three years, Raton had grown from four ragged tents to a row of inhabited boxcars to a full-fledged bustling town. As Rosie marched down First Street, she felt a surge of hope. Her black-and-white uniform set her in crisp contrast to the ragged coal miners and rough-hewn cowboys on the street, and she held her head high. Maybe she did have an outlaw in her bedroom, Rosie thought. And maybe she had taken some unhappy paths in life. But none of that doomed her to failure.

Ever since she could remember, Rosie had loved children and had wanted to teach them. Pappy, of course, wouldn’t hear of such an absurd notion. Schoolteachers were working women and therefore far beneath her in social status. She could almost see his face, his dark eyes snapping as he lectured her from behind his huge desk.

“Working women are socially suspicious,” he had informed his stubborn daughter more than once. “They’re just one step away from the very cellar of society—prostitution. My dream for you, Laura Rose, is marriage to a prominent man, a bevy of healthy children and success as a full-time homemaker.”

Rosie had to smile as she crossed Rio Grande Avenue onto Second Street. Pappy would be downright apoplectic if he knew she had taken a job as a waitress. Women who worked in eating houses were at the bottom rung of the job ladder. Considered coarse, hard and “easy,” they were usually believed to be doubling as women of ill repute.

One look at Fred Harvey’s establishments, however, had convinced Rosie otherwise. Here in Raton she was held in as high esteem as any other reputable female. Men tipped their hats, women greeted her with genuine smiles. Rosie and the other Harvey Girls were invited to every community picnic, baseball game, dance and opera show in town. The fact of the matter was, in the two short months she had lived here, she had had more wholesome, refreshing fun than she could ever remember in her twenty-one years of life.

Never mind about Bart Kingsley, Rosie thought as she climbed the wooden steps to a small one-room structure at the corner of Clark Avenue and North Second Street. Rosie had come to Raton to build a new identity. Fred Harvey had laid her foundation, and Mr. Thomas A. Kilgore would build the platform on which she would at last find freedom.

She knocked on the door of the local schoolhouse. A middle-aged man with a walrus mustache and round spectacles greeted her. “May I help you?”

“Mr. Kilgore?” Rosie asked. At his nod, she continued. “I’m Laura Kingsley, sir. Recently of Kansas City. I work at the Harvey House, but I’ve come to speak to you about a teaching position.”

His eyebrows lifted. “We’re in class, Miss Kingsley. But come inside.”

She entered a dimly lit room filled with children, each one standing at attention beside a chair.

“Students, I’m pleased to introduce Miss Kingsley,” Kilgore said.

“Good afternoon, Miss Kingsley,” the children chimed.