The Sheriffs of Savage Wells Read online

  “Whaddaya want, stranger?”

  If I get shot, I’ll strangle that woman. “I’ve come with groceries, Andrew.” He held up the crate.

  “How d’you know my name?” Wariness hung heavy in his tone. But quick as lightning, his face lit with excitement, his voice changing to match his expressions. “Do you get premonitions or something? I’ve always wanted to meet someone with second sight.”

  Very well. “I knew you were going to say that,” Cade answered, nodding sagely.

  Andrew climbed down quite agilely, his gun hanging from a strap across his back. Paisley had said Andrew likely wouldn’t fire. So long as the man had his shotgun near at hand, Cade didn’t mean to provoke him.

  “You never been up to the house before,” Andrew said. “How’d you know where we live?”

  Cade tapped his temple with one finger.

  Andrew’s eyes pulled wide. “How long have you been in town?”

  “Since yesterday afternoon.”

  “And—and—” Excitement cut off his words each time he tried to speak. “Have you had any inklings of things coming?”

  Cade eyed the shotgun. He was at something of a disadvantage, having a crate in his hands. It’d slow him down on the draw if pulling his weapon became necessary. There was nothing for it but to play along.

  He made a show of thinking deeply. “I’ve a strong sense we’ve a powerful cold winter coming.”

  “I’ll make certain we have plenty of firewood.” Andrew motioned him toward the house. “I can take the groceries in.”

  Cade handed the crate over.

  “Come by again,” Andrew said. “I promise not to shoot you. You ain’t one of the enemies.”

  Andrew walked into the house, his gait slow and uneven, as though he’d sustained an injury that hadn’t healed properly. An armed madman in a tree. That was a tragedy waiting to happen.

  A shotgun-wielding sentinel looking for a fortune teller. A jail filled with ribbons. An impertinent, temporary sheriff. The town grew stranger by the moment. Stranger—and a great deal more fun.

  He’d done his time in towns where the undertaker had the most successful business and the graveyard was more full than the church pews. He wouldn’t turn down the occasional criminal roundup, but he had no taste left for the exhausting pace he’d been keeping for so long.

  He loved being a sheriff. Protecting the innocent, upholding the law, keeping the wheels of a town turning smoothly. It was in his blood, in his lungs, spinning about in his mind. He meant to cling to this chance to do it without all the death and dying. He’d more than earned it.

  “That Cade O’Brien is a very sheriffy kind of person, isn’t he?” Mrs. Wilhite had mentioned Cade a full half-dozen times while Paisley helped her dust her shelves of ribbon. “There’s a certain air about a sheriff. A bit frightening, but caring too.”

  Cade did have the frightening part down. Whether or not he would prove caring had yet to be seen.

  “What about the other two men trying for the job?” Paisley kept her voice low; the “other two men” were just over by the cells.

  Mrs. Wilhite’s lips twisted in thought. “I suppose they have the air a bit as well, just not as much.”

  What about me? Paisley and Mrs. Wilhite had gotten to know each other well during Paisley’s time helping Sheriff Garrison and her short tenure filling his shoes. They were friends. But would she view Paisley as a good candidate?

  Cade came inside without the crate of groceries. He tossed his hat onto the coatrack. Rice and Thackery watched him closely.

  “I see Andrew didn’t shoot you.” Paisley crossed to the corner where she’d left her broom.

  “He’s a reasonable fella.” Cade sat down in her chair behind the desk.

  Andrew was considered an odd duck by most everyone in town. She, herself, had needed several encounters with him to really understand why the man who, according to his family, had once been very levelheaded and reasonable had become so reclusive and irrational. How much did Cade truly understand the situation?

  “You didn’t threaten him, did you?”

  “No need.” Cade leaned over the pile of papers on the desk and picked up the first one, reading it.

  “And Mr. Gilbert received his groceries?”

  “Yes.” Cade didn’t look up.

  He seemed rather intent on the papers. “That’s a report of criminals believed to be in the territory sent from the federal—”

  “—marshal,” he finished her explanation. “I know.”

  “That one is two weeks out of date, though,” she continued. “We should receive another—”

  “—next week. I know.”

  She took a calming breath. Rice and Thackery were watching, and she wanted them to see that she knew as much about running a sheriff’s office as any of them did. But Cade was making things difficult. He was so infuriatingly arrogant. “We receive word of captures—”

  “—as they occur. I—”

  “You know. I know that you know.”

  He looked up at last. “No need telling me what I’m already aware of, sweetie.”

  “Don’t talk to me as though I were a child, Cade O’Brien.” She pointed a finger at him.

  “Are we going to have to listen to this for two full weeks?” Rice asked, eyeing them both with impatience.

  “You could always chime in now and then,” Cade said, still flipping through papers. “Unless you’ve nothing helpful to say.”

  Thackery bit back a smile. Paisley liked him better than Rice. She liked them both better than Cade, probably because he was the bigger threat and he knew it.

  She approached the desk and set her fingertips on it, leaning in to look Cade in the eye. “I know you have a lot of experience, and I’m not discounting that. But I have more experience with this town. I know them. I’m one of them. You’d do well not to discount that.”

  He leaned back in the chair and folded his arms across his chest. “That’d be the same town that can’t stop whispering to each other about Paisley Bell and the ‘odd hitch in her getup’?”

  The pain of his mockery cut deeper than she was willing to let show. “And you were loved in every town you ever sheriffed in, were you?”

  “None of them ever laughed at me.”

  “Hush your bickering, you two,” Mrs. Wilhite instructed in her usual sweet voice. “I see a customer coming.”

  Paisley stepped back from the desk and sent Mrs. Wilhite an apologetic smile. She was a widow without a family. The Ribbon Emporium gave her a purpose and a reason to leave her house. The entire town did all they could to support her in it.

  Rice and Thackery had sported smiles ever since Cade’s cutting remark. Everyone was laughing at her lately, it seemed. She’d simply have to work that much harder to prove them all wrong.

  Mr. Lewis stepped inside. His eyes met Paisley’s. “Good day, Miss Bell.”

  “And to you, Mr. Lewis.”

  Interactions between them had been awkward from the very beginning. Mr. Lewis had replaced her father as head of the bank. She wasn’t entirely certain why Mr. Lewis held that against them; it wasn’t as though there’d been tension surrounding Papa’s departure.

  “I am in need of blue ribbon,” Mr. Lewis told Mrs. Wilhite.

  “Of course. Blue is in the first cell. I have so many different shades of blue.” She fluttered across the room, eagerly guiding him to the blue ribbons.

  Several more customers dropped in over the next half hour. Nearly all of them peppered Paisley with questions about why she was trying for the sheriff job, whether or not she was serious, and why her brief two weeks filling in as sheriff full-time hadn’t been enough to satisfy her curiosity about the job. She took the questions in stride, keeping her cool throughout. She answered their inquiries then quickly changed the subject by introducing
them to Rice, Thackery, and Cade before handing them over to the eager ministrations of the local ribboner.

  Through it all, she could feel Cade watching her. He greeted each arrival in his typical gruff, take-charge manner. But quick as the striking of a match, his attention returned to her. She didn’t flatter herself that he was mesmerized or enchanted. His expression put her firmly in mind of the eerie calm one feels in the air just before the breaking of a storm.

  She’d managed to get enough information from Gideon to know of Cade’s vast and impressive background. No man could bring law and order to as many infamous towns as he had and not be rather dangerous himself. Paisley hid all hints of worry, refusing to show in her posture or expression that he’d managed to intimidate her. Fear had never stopped her before—a twinge of worry certainly wouldn’t stop her now.

  By late that afternoon, Cade had returned to reading through the entire folder of marshal reports and the town’s crime logs. He was thorough enough to convince even a skeptic that he fully believed the job would be his in the end. Rice and Thackery were antsy enough that she knew they sensed it as well. The whole town would be sold on the idea of Sheriff O’Brien if she didn’t find a way to convince them to at least consider her.

  The question still hung in the back of her mind that evening as she walked home. The house she shared with her father had once been pristine, filled with fine furnishings and impressive décor. The upstairs rooms were now nearly bare. She’d sold as much of the furniture and decorations in the public rooms as she could without making their straitened circumstances too obvious. They’d once been in a position to fund the building of both the jailhouse and the school and to contribute to the fund to bring a doctor to town. She couldn’t bear the thought of becoming the town’s charity case, not when she was young and able-bodied enough to work.

  The salary the town meant to pay the new sheriff would ease every one of her financial burdens. She and her father would have food on the table, could replace some of the more crucial pieces of furniture they’d parted with. She could replace Papa’s threadbare coat before the dangers of winter descended again.

  Paisley could smell something frying the moment she stepped inside the house, so she moved immediately to the kitchen. “Papa?”

  He stood hunched over two plates with one fish fillet on each, poking them about with a fork.

  “Papa, you didn’t have to cook.” She rather preferred he didn’t. There was no knowing if he would remain focused long enough to see his task through to the end or if he would abandon it for some new endeavor.

  “I do know how to cook a fine fish. My father taught me not long ago.”

  Her grandfather had been dead for thirty years. It seemed Papa wasn’t quite as firmly himself in that moment as she would have hoped.

  “I’ll fetch some bread,” she said.

  He looked over at her, and his brow pulled together in confusion. “Why are you dressed like that? Are you playing at being a soldier again?”

  She and her brother had often spent their days as children pretending to be fighting in some imaginary war or another. But that was long ago, before actual warfare had claimed her brother and driven them from their home in Missouri. Papa had, it seemed, spied her gun belt and pistol and in his mind assumed she was still that tiny girl playing a game.

  She pulled a loaf from the bread box, cutting two thick slices. “Would you like butter on your bread?”

  He made a noise of agreement. She made quick work of the task then carried both plates into the once-elegant dining room. Papa had grieved the change in their circumstances back when it first began. He wasn’t really aware of it any longer.

  Paisley watched him as they ate, acutely missing the highly polished manners he’d once employed. Not that formality mattered to her; it was simply a recurring reminder that he was not the same person he’d once been.

  “I had a busy day in town today,” she said. “I believe I’m making progress in my bid to secure a new job.”

  “A new job? What happened to your last job?”

  She hadn’t had a job before, not really. They’d been living on their savings. He knew that, or had at some point.

  “I am excited about this possibility. It’s a job where I can help a lot of people and make a difference in the world.”

  “Mary-Catherine likes that kind of work,” Papa said through his mouthful of fish. “She is forever helping people.”

  Paisley sighed inwardly. Mary-Catherine was her late mother, and Papa was not only speaking of her in the present but also used her Christian name. Did he not even remember that Paisley was his—and Mary-Catherine’s—daughter?

  She picked at her meal as he launched in to a retelling of his childhood. How was it he remembered those long-ago moments so well when he more and more often couldn’t even recall what they’d done the day before? Gideon had assessed the situation months ago and reluctantly informed her that nothing could be done.

  “Prepare yourself, Pais,” he’d said. “He will only grow more distant with time. He’ll be confused often, likely frustrated. It is impossible to predict how dementia will change him, but one thing I can tell you is that it will change him.”

  At some point, Papa wouldn’t recognize her. He wouldn’t remember fishing with her in the river behind their house in Missouri. He wouldn’t remember teaching her to ride a horse or shoot a gun. Papa had seen her through the loss of her brother and her mother. He’d been her strength after her fiancé, Joshua, had walked out on her. He was the very best of fathers, and she would be a stranger to him.

  He finished his meal and sat there, quiet, brow pulled low. His eyelids were heavy and his posture weary. Sometimes he struggled with things as instinctive as knowing what to do when he was tired.

  “Perhaps you ought to go lay down,” she suggested.

  He nodded slowly, vaguely.

  Paisley hooked her arm through his and walked with him up the stairs to his room. She paused in the doorway and placed a kiss on his cheek. “I love you, Papa,” she said. “Sleep well.”

  He wandered inside. Would he remember to change into his nightclothes this time? It was impossible to say from day to day how alert he would be.

  She closed his door, granting him that privacy, but she couldn’t walk away entirely. She leaned against the wall and let the weight of the world settle on her.

  She couldn’t save her father from the bleak future he faced, but she would see to it he had food to eat and a roof over his head. She would make certain he was warm through the winter. All of that took money.

  Oh, heavens, I need this job.

  But it was more than the money. The thought of being robbed of one of her few sources of joy—work she enjoyed and was good at—left her with a gnawing sense of dread. The other candidates had a potential livelihood on the line, but Paisley had far more to lose than any of them.

  Cade set the spindle-back chair behind the desk once more and twisted the back a bit, testing its sturdiness. He spun his hammer the way he usually did his gun. Rice was acting as sheriff that day, but Cade never had been one for sitting around doing nothing. Fixing a chair sure beat twiddling his thumbs.

  Paisley stepped out of the back room and eyed his handiwork. “George Andrews is the closest thing Savage Wells has to a carpenter. Perhaps when this sheriff job doesn’t work out, you could ask to be his apprentice.”

  There was nothing quite like a sharp-tongued woman to keep a man on his toes.

  She continued her trek across the room to the shelves of ribbons. She stretched and dusted the top shelf. Mrs. Wilhite had Paisley wrapped around her finger, even when she wasn’t there.

  “You’re not too shabby with the ribbons,” Cade said, leaning against the desk. “When they go, you might ask Mrs. Wilhite for a job.”

  “The ribbons and I both fit here just fine.”

  “A s
tubborn woman can beat the devil,” he grumbled.

  “My mother used to say ‘Often as not, it is a man’s mouth that breaks his nose,’” Paisley returned.

  He knew the familiar turn of phrase. “You’re gonna belt me, then?”

  “I imagine I will eventually.” She smiled a little. Paisley Bell was decidedly pretty when she smiled. A nag and a thorn, but pretty, just the same. “We had a great deal of wind last night that brought dust in by the bucketful. Seeing as I’m not in charge today”—she acknowledged Rice with a quick nod of her head—“I figure I’ve more than enough time to see to the sweeping.”

  “I’m no expert with a broom,” Cade said. “I’ve far more experience with a gun.”

  “So do I, but a good sheriff hones the skills the job calls for.” Paisley dusted yet another shelf of ribbons. There were a lot of ribbons.

  “You’re a pistoleer, then? Or just a terrible housekeeper?”

  “It has to be one or the other, doesn’t it?” She stepped back, eyeing her work.

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “No, I didn’t.” And that was, apparently, all she meant to say about it. She crossed the room as unconcerned as a cow in a green pasture.

  Thackery, who had come to see Rice ply his trade as temporary sheriff, jumped up as Paisley approached the stool he sat on. “I can help clean up the dust as well,” he said. “The sheriff I was deputy to before coming here had me do a lot of cleaning.”

  Paisley gave a firm nod of acceptance. “There’s a dust rag in the bucket by the back room door.”

  Somehow the woman already had one of the candidates under her thumb.

  Rice sauntered out onto the front porch, no doubt meaning to keep an eye on the street for a time. Cade knew exactly what he’d see; he, himself, had made a study of the view the day before. Well-kept businesses. A great many women and children, the former tending to stop and jaw a while with every person they passed. Cade had seen them do just that during his tour of the town with Gideon. It seemed gossip was Savage Wells’s lifeblood.