Morrow Creek Marshal

He hadn’t expected to be swamped by Morrow Creek’s take-charge menfolk, all of them eager to get his attention—and his opinion on the crisis they’d discussed at the men’s club that evening. Truthfully, when Dylan had spied the group of men coming into Murphy’s saloon, he’d thought they were there for Marielle Miller. Especially the doctor. It had certainly looked that way. As one, they’d turned their heads toward the dance hall girl’s position, perked up, then beelined straight there.

It turned out, though, that they’d beelined toward him.

Since that turn of events, Dylan had been unable to avoid all the backslapping, camaraderie, jokes and gossip they’d surrounded him with. He hadn’t invited it. But he also hadn’t been idly jawing to Miss Miller earlier. He did know these men. They knew him. During his short stay in Morrow Creek, he’d taken part in some important goings-on, mostly involving his employer at the Morrow Creek Mutual Society, the conniving brute who’d followed her West and the thugs that reprobate had employed.

In the aftermath of that incident, Dylan and the other men—Murphy, Copeland, McCabe, Corwin and several more, along with his fellow security men Seth Durant and Judah Foster—had assembled a posse and seen that justice was done. Rightly so.

But if they now believed that his onetime participation in a single necessary manhunt meant he wanted to join their damn men’s club and spend his days being gradually nailed down to one place, fenced in by friendship and obligation and belonging...

Well, they needed to think again.

“...Caffey is still on the loose. The bastard got away,” Miles Callaway was telling everyone, explaining the emergency that faced them to those listening saloongoers who, like Dylan, hadn’t been at the meeting that night. The dance hall girls had taken their usual midevening break to change costumes. The saloon had quieted somewhat, even as the faro games and drinking continued. “Deputy Winston wasn’t so lucky,” Callaway went on. “The federal marshals already took him off to Yuma Prison.”

“He deserves it. Caffey deserves worse.” Clayton Davis, the lumberman who said so, made a grim face. There was no love lost between him and the deputy—or the sheriff, for that matter.

As near as Dylan could gather, Caffey had absconded a few days ago under mysterious circumstances. The townspeople were still trying to understand what could have made their longtime sheriff leave his badge and his post. He’d skedaddled just steps ahead of the marshals who’d closed in on his hapless deputy.

None of them, though, would miss Caffey. They were right not to, Dylan knew. The lawman had abused his authority, plain and simple. More than a few of the good men present had themselves been unjustly detained by Caffey at one time or another, under one fabrication or other. Even one woman had spent copious time in the jailhouse for her rabble-rousing and protesting: Grace Murphy, the saloonkeeper’s suffragist wife.

All of which explained Jack Murphy’s particular zeal to attend the men’s club meeting and have the sheriff’s wrongdoings dealt with—whatever they were. In Murphy’s position, Dylan would have done the same thing. Not that he could glimpse Murphy at the moment. He seemed to have disappeared along with Doc Finney.

Maybe they were both tending to the dance hall girl?

Wanting to make sure, Dylan looked for them.

“I don’t expect much integrity from folks, generally speaking,” Cade Foster was saying as Dylan searched. As a renowned gambler, Cade undoubtedly had his reasons for expecting the worst of people. “But a lawman ought to be different.”

“Our lawmen were different,” Adam Corwin said. “Crooked.”

Dylan could have told them that. In fact, he had told Miles Callaway and his enterprising fiancée, Rosamond McGrath Dancy—the proprietress of the Morrow Creek Mutual Society and his most recent employer—that more than once. In no uncertain terms.

Until this latest incident, though, no one had been too riled up. When it came to Caffey, they’d been content to look the other way. Sometimes, in small towns, convention trumped sense. Tradition beat intelligence. Good intentions were no match for longtime connections and established ways of doing things.

As far as Dylan was concerned, those were fair arguments for not getting caught up in a close-knit community like Morrow Creek. The people here were too all-fired busy being cozy to use their heads. They hadn’t wanted to see the problem at all.

Now it was too late. By Dylan’s reckoning, Sheriff Caffey had never earned his job in the first place. There was evidence he’d fixed his election, wrangled himself an undeserved position of authority and gloated for years about doing both of those things. He’d also forcibly impeded the press—including local Pioneer Press newspaperman Thomas Walsh—from reporting on his misconduct. And that had been nothing more than his way of getting the job.

Dylan hadn’t poked his nose too far into what Caffey had done after securing his position, but the man’s penchant for brute force, coercion and dishonesty were known. Widely, now.

“We can’t go on much longer without a sheriff.” Jedediah Hofer, the mercantile owner, jutted his chin. “Already, bad men are coming into town. Damnable drifters and the like—”

Dylan objected. “I take offense to that, Hofer,” he said with a smile. “Not every traveling man is up to no good.”

“Not every traveling man is capable of organizing a posse, taking out Arvid Bouchard’s lackeys and handling protection for a place like the mutual society.” Griffin Turner gave Dylan a nod of recognition. Coming from the infamous “Boston Beast,” that was high praise, indeed. “People around here don’t know what a man like Bouchard is capable of, but I reckon you did.”

“You brought him in anyway,” Marcus Copeland reminded everyone present. As the man who’d built one of Morrow Creek’s first businesses—his successful lumber mill—Marcus was respected in town. So everyone quit nattering to listen. “You took care of it. No hesitation. That’s why you’re the only man for this job.”

Dylan didn’t like where this was going. He was the only man for what job? Tracking down the sheriff? The lawman’s disappearance was none of his business. He was leaving. He should have already been gone. Just then, he wished he was.

Marcus’s father-in-law, Adam Crabtree, nodded. “I’m not sure anybody else could cope with the no-good criminal types flooding into town right now.” He held his hat in his hand, but stood bravely. “If the women find out what we’re facing—”

“They’re not going to find out.” Rancher Everett Bannon said so with evident authority and resolve. “Not ever.”

All the men murmured agreement. They were united in wanting to protect their womenfolk. Dylan couldn’t fault them for that.

He’d accidently caused a bit of misfortune tonight for one solitary dance hall girl and had himself become obsessed with protecting her and helping her—to the point of becoming enchanted by her obstinacy and overall sense of independence...not to mention her lithesome figure and pretty, expressive features.

He couldn’t stop wondering what she’d look like when she smiled. When she laughed. When she sighed after kissing a man.

Marielle Miller was beautiful, all right. But she was a handful and then some. She didn’t like him much, either. She would sure as hell not be kissing him anytime soon.

“We already had enough on our plates, what with them no-account Sheridan brothers taking up in our town,” complained Ned Nickerson, owner of the local book agent and news bureau. He cast a tardily cautious glance around the saloon, then prudently lowered his voice. “We’ve already got Charley, Peter and Levi. We don’t need to invite every damn criminal in the territory to come here!”

The Sheridans. Dylan had a requisite familiarity with that family of felonious troublemakers. He knew they were bold. They were crafty. They acted immortal—like many men who were too young to know better—and were all the more dangerous because of it. They were best avoided by anyone sane, man or woman, who didn’t want to wind up gut shot and left for dead.

He didn’t know why Caffey hadn’t sent that gang packing a long time ago. Instead, he’d tolerated their petty thievery and frequent fighting to the point of seeming to encourage it.

Which, Dylan mused, he might well have. What better way to ensure his lasting employment than to keep a homegrown gang of reprobates close by? Since their arrival, the Sheridans had kept some in town running scared. Now the situation had worsened.

“Sheriff Caffey picked a hell of a time to skedaddle, that’s for sure,” Adam Corwin agreed, pacing like the restless former detective he was. He squinted toward the saloon doors. “The weather is good. The passes are clear. There’s nothing to stop more bad elements from coming here to Morrow Creek.”

As pressing as that issue was, Dylan didn’t see where this inbound lawlessness concerned him. He wasn’t a peacekeeper. He was just a gun for hire—a man with an experienced mind who’d finished one job and was headed to the next. He’d already picked up an assignment in Sacramento. All he owned sat in the satchel he’d left behind the bar with Harry. All he’d pocketed before leaving it was enough cash to assure he had money to leave town with. That was all Dylan really needed—enough to move on.

His limited funds were the reason he hadn’t agreed to pay Marielle Miller for her lost work time right from the get-go. If he’d had the greenbacks to spare, he’d have given them to her—even if he didn’t feel strictly responsible for her predicament. That would have been the right thing to do. As it was, Dylan had not even considered surrendering his moving-on money.

He was pleased that he’d distracted her from the pain of her ankle injury, though—no matter how many stretchers he’d had to tell in the process. Truly. No thinking man would have taken Marielle Miller for a thirty-three-year-old woman, much less a dancer on the near side of forty. When he’d said that, she’d practically shot sparks from her eyeballs. It had been all he could do to keep a straight face and keep on riling her up.

Reminded of the dance hall girl—and beset with an entirely unlikely sense of fondness toward her, too—Dylan took a step to the side, intent on shouldering past the other men to Marielle’s position. He was worried about her. Although his conversation with the menfolk had taken only moments, he hadn’t wanted to abandon her. She ought to be right where he’d left her...

As he made his way, the conversation continued.

“You took down the Bedell gang just last year, Corwin,” Daniel McCabe was saying, standing head and shoulders over most. “Near as I can see, you could do the same to the Sheridans. Hell, you could put up a posse and get Sheriff Caffey, too.”

Amid general murmurs of agreement, Jack Murphy raised his arms, signaling for quiet. The group of men obliged.

“We’ve already settled this, remember?” the saloonkeeper reminded them. “We’ve already chosen our new sheriff.”

Adam Corwin nodded. “We have.” Evidently, that’s what the men’s club meeting had been for. “Besides, you all know Savannah’s expecting.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry, boys, but if I up and took a job as sheriff now, she’d have my damn head.”

“Or I would,” rumbled Mose Hawthorne, Savannah’s longtime loyal helper at the adjunct telegraph station outside town. “Ain’t no way you’re deserting Savannah now. Not when we’ve got Coyle here. The man’s practically tailor-made for the job.”

Hearing his name, Dylan went still. Again... “What job?”

At the expectant, confident looks that met his question, he balked. This didn’t feel right. This...hopefulness wasn’t for him.

“What job?” he repeated, wary and tense jawed.

“Why, the job of sheriff, of course.” Thomas Walsh moved nearer, a pad of paper and pencil at the ready. As usual, the editor of the Pioneer Press wanted his story. This time, from Dylan. “Typically, the sheriff’s position is filled following an election, but with all these degenerate types coming to town—”