A Wanted Man: A Stone Creek Novel

“No,” Ruby replied, still frowning. “I sent him to fetch the mail a little while ago. I could say you’re not here—”

Payton shook his head. “No,” he said.

Ruby took a last long, worried look at him, then opened the door and went out, closing it crisply behind her.

Payton drew a deep breath, let it out slow and easy, and straightened his string tie. Tugged at the bottom of his gray silk vest, too.

There was a light rap at the door, and then it swung inward on its hinges.

Payton squared his shoulders, regretted that he hadn’t taken the time to throw back a slug of whiskey, just to steady himself.

“Well, Rob,” he said, when his next-youngest son stood on the threshold, “it’s good to see you again.”

* * *

“I’LL JUST BET IT IS,” Rowdy replied dryly, setting his hat aside on a table just inside the room. “It’s been a few years.” He’d left Pardner back in Stone Creek, in Mrs. Porter’s care, and bought new clothes for the occasion.

Fact was, though, he’d looked forward to several funerals more than he had to this meeting.

“Come in and sit down,” Payton Yarbro said, as if he meant it. But his ice-blue eyes were shrewd and watchful, and a muscle ticked in his jaw, under the stubble of a new beard. He still cut a fine figure, Pa did. He must have been pushing sixty, but he looked younger, despite the gray in his hair and the meager promise of an expanding middle.

And he still wore a .45 on his right hip.

Rowdy hesitated a moment, then steeled himself and walked full into the room, waited until his pa sat down in one of the chairs facing the cold brick fireplace before taking the other.

“What are you doing in this part of the country?” Payton asked, settling back and resting the side of one foot on the opposite knee. “Last I knew, there was a price on your head. You still wanted?”

“Still wanted,” Rowdy said. “Thanks to you.”

“I didn’t force you to help rob those trains,” the old man argued, taking a cheroot from a silver box on a side table, clamping it between his teeth and striking a match on the sole of his boot to light it. “You were hell-bent to join up, as I recall.”

Rowdy didn’t reply.

“How’d you find me?” Payton wanted to know, and though he put the question casually, the look in his eyes belied his easy tone. Shaking out the match, he leaned forward to toss it into the grate.

“I had a letter from Wyatt while I was still down in Haven. That’s—”

“I know where Haven is,” Payton said, sounding exasperated. “Little shit hole of a place just this side of the Mexican border. And what the hell was Wyatt thinking, to put news like that down on paper for anybody to see?”

“He didn’t use your real name, nor his. And he wrote to say he was in prison. He mentioned that someone he knew had seen you in Flagstaff, running a faro table at Ruby’s Saloon.” Rowdy paused, solemn at the mention of Wyatt. He’d been the brother Rowdy’d looked up to, the one he’d wanted to be like. “The letter must have been forwarded four or five times before it caught up to me.”

“What were you doing in Haven?”

“Passing through,” Rowdy said, reining in his temper. Whenever he got within shouting distance of his pa, he always wanted to fight.

“Wyatt’s in prison?”

“Last I heard,” Rowdy replied. “The letter was dated two years back, so he might be out by now.”

“Or dead,” Payton mused, and he had the decency to look troubled by the possibility, though he probably didn’t give a rat’s ass what happened to Wyatt or any of the rest of them. He’d never cared much about anybody but himself.

“If Wyatt was dead,” Rowdy said evenly, “I’d know it.”

“How?”

Rowdy’s jaw was clenched. He released it by conscious effort. “I just would.”

“You ever hear from Nick or Levi or Ethan?”

“No,” Rowdy said. “I guess Gideon’s still at home.” He looked around. “If you can call the back end of a brothel home,” he added.

“Don’t you get smart with me, boy,” Payton warned. “I can still whup you and three others like you without breaking a sweat. Anyhow, this ain’t a brothel. Ruby and me, we’re honest saloonkeepers.”

An involuntary grin tilted one side of Rowdy’s mouth. “Whatever you say, old man.”

“You look fit,” Payton allowed, though grudgingly. He was a stubborn old rooster, and sparing with his approval. “You ever get hitched? Sire me a grandbaby or two?”

Rowdy wanted to avert his eyes, but he didn’t. He waited a moment or two, letting his silence serve as all the answer he was willing to give, then countered with a question of his own. “You still robbing trains, Pappy?”

Payton hated to be called Pappy, which was why Rowdy had addressed him that way, but he had to give the old bastard credit for self-control. The only reaction was a reddening above the collar of his tidy white shirt. “Now why would you make a rude inquiry like that?”

Rowdy thought before he spoke, even though he’d planned what he would say all during the two-hour ride over from Stone Creek. He’d left Haven, where he’d drifted into a job as town marshal, for two main reasons—first, because he’d gotten that cryptic telegram from Sam O’Ballivan and Major Blackstone, summoning him north for a meeting in the lobby of the Territorial Hotel, and second, because a Wanted poster had landed on his desk with his real name and description printed on it.

He was taking a chance, continuing his acquaintance with O’Ballivan. Rowdy believed in hiding in plain sight, moving on when his feet itched, with most folks none the wiser for knowing him.

Sam O’Ballivan wasn’t most folks.

“I need to know if you’re still robbing trains, Pa,” Rowdy reiterated. “The railroad’s laying tracks from here to Stone Creek, and then all the way down to Phoenix. I’m hoping it’s a coincidence that you’re here in Flagstaff and two trains have been boarded and looted, not ten miles from here, in the past six months.”

Payton drew on his cheroot and blew a smoke ring. “You find religion or something?” he hedged. “Or maybe you’re just looking to make an extra dollar or two by riding my coattails.”

Rowdy leaned forward in his chair, lowered his voice. “Listen to me, Pa,” he said. “I came to Stone Creek because I was asked to, by two Arizona Rangers. I don’t know for sure what they want with me, but I’ve got a hunch it has to do with the railroad coming in. Most likely the territorial governor is putting some pressure on them to put an end to the robberies. If folks don’t feel it’s safe to settle and do business here, the men back in Washington might not be willing to grant statehood.”

Payton’s eyes widened slightly, then narrowed. “What the hell do you care if Arizona ever becomes a state? You’re an outlaw. There’s a price on your head, Rob. You can’t afford to cozy up with rangers!”

“If Sam O’Ballivan had me figured for an outlaw, he’d have tried to arrest me by now.”

Payton went pale as limestone in a creek-bed. “Sam O’Ballivan?”

“I see you know him,” Rowdy observed.

“Hell, everybody in the territory knows him!”

“He’s a good man,” Rowdy said.

“He’s a ranger,” Payton returned. His hands tightened like talons on the arms of his chair, and he looked as though he might bolt out of it, crash through the window and hit the ground running. “First, last and always, Sam O’Ballivan is an Arizona Ranger. You have truck with him, and you’re likely to find yourself dangling at the end of a rope!”

Rowdy looked around, spotted a decanter half-filled with liquor, and got up to pour a dose for the old man.