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Outlaw Love. Judith Stacy
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Deuce wiped his sweaty brow with his sleeve and nodded.
“I’ll be back. You stay put.”
Inside the store, dozens of colorful candies sat in glass containers along the counter, and the display cases teemed with cookies, pies and cakes. The scents of vanilla, cinnamon and apples mingled in the air. Behind the counter stood a robust woman who appeared to have perfected her recipes by years of sampling her own confections. She eyed Clay up and down.
“You must be that new marshal I heard about. Welcome to Eldon. I’m Connie. I just took some oatmeal cookies from the oven. How about it?” Clay nodded, and she twittered, her cheeks going as round as ripe apples as she fetched a cookie from the display case behind her
He tasted and nodded quickly. “Give me a handful of those.”
“Well, hello again, young man.”
Clay turned to see Miss Matilda Wilder at his elbow. He touched the brim of his Stetson. “Good day, Miss Wilder.”
She shuffled her big satchel onto the counter, waving her flowered handkerchief. “Looks as though you have quite a sweet tooth.”
Clay grinned. “I sure do”
“Well, good for you. Keep up your strength. You’ve got a big job to do, and we’re all very proud of you, dear.” Miss Wilder gathered her handkerchief and satchel and made her way out of the store.
Connie wrapped the cookies in waxed paper. “How about some cider to go along with these?”
“Sure. Make it two.”
She poured the drinks and picked up her tablet to tally Clay’s purchase. Absently she reached in her pockets, then felt behind both ears and patted her neatly coiled hair.
“I swear to goodness, where is my pencil? It was here just a second ago.” Connie searched the counter, lifting the cookies and cups. “Where did it go?”
Clay dug coins from his pocket and dropped them on the counter, more than enough to cover his purchase. He thanked her, but she didn’t notice as she searched for her pencil.
Deuce was waiting on the bench outside, where he’d left him. He’d washed up at the water trough; his shirt was damp.
Clay plucked a piece of straw from Deuce’s shaggy hair. “You need a haircut, son.”
He swiped his hand across his forehead, pushing back his bangs. “Pa takes Jared and me to the barber at the same time. Jared doesn’t need a haircut yet.”
Clay sat beside him and passed him the apple cider. “How’s it going with your pa?”
Deuce gulped down half the cider and grimaced. “He’s powerful mad at me still.”
“Maybe you’d be better off working at home in- stead,” Clay suggested. Ben Tucker had been right about one thing. Deuce was too small to do manual labor.
Indignation and a hint of anger showed in Deuce’s eyes. “I’ve got five sisters at home. You think I should stay there? With all those girls? And do women’s work?”
“No, I guess not” Clay bit into a cookie.
Obviously, Deuce’s options were limited, and Clay could see how the boy, unable to attend school anymore, not wanted by his father and too prideful to help his mother, had been easy prey for the likes of Luther McGraw and the Dade gang.
“Your pa will come around, once you show him you’ve no intention of getting into trouble again.” “He don’t need me. He’s got Jared.” He turned away.
Clay swallowed the last of the cookie. “How did you get mixed up with Luther and the Dade gang, anyway?”
His shoulders slumped. “I wasn’t really part of the gang,” he said. “I met Luther here in town, and he claimed he had a mine somewhere up in the hills, so I signed on to help him. Luther knew Scully, but he wasn’t in the gang, either.”
“Luther sure acted like he was.” Clay touched his finger to the burns on his neck. “He seemed dead set on protecting Scully and his hideout.”
“Scully just let Luther ride with the gang ‘cause Luther could cook so good.” Deuce bit into a cookie. “It’s hard to find a good trail cook.”
“Were you ever at Scully’s hideout?”
“No. I only met up with the gang that one time, a couple of days before me and Luther—” Deuce glanced at Clay’s throat and quickly averted his eyes. “Well, you know.”
Clay ran his finger around the inside of his shirt collar. “Yeah, I know.”
Deuce chanced a look at Clay again. “I’m real sorry. I didn’t want any part of hanging you, but Luther kept going on about it. I didn’t know what to do.”
“Decisions in life keep getting harder, Deuce. You need to learn how to handle them. It’s part of becoming a man.”
Deuce’s mulled that over for a moment, then nodded. “I guess you’re right.”
“Nobody ever said it would be easy.” Clay chucked him softly on the shoulder. “But I can see you learned a lesson this time. I’d say that means you’re on your way.”
Deuce looked up at him again, and the tiniest grin tugged at his lips. “Do you think so?”
Shouts from across the street drew their attention to Duncan’s General store. After a moment, the raucous noise stopped, a door slammed, and a young woman left the store. Head high, shoulders straight, she marched determinedly down the street.
Deuce popped another cookie in his mouth. “Don’t give it no mind. It’s just Nate and Estelle Duncan. They fight all the time.”
Clay’s gaze followed the young woman along the crowded boardwalk. She looked vaguely familiar, but he’d only met a few women in town, and none so young. “Who is she?”
“That’s Holly, their daughter.” He finished the last of his cider. “She’s the reason they’re always fighting.
From what he could see, she was a pleasant-looking girl, fuller around the hips and waist than her corset could disguise. “Is she too willful to suit her ma?”
“More like her ma’s the willful one. Holly’s nice. She just got into a fix, I guess you’d say.”
Clay looked down at him. “What sort of fix?”
Deuce’s cheeks reddened. “She got in the family way.”
“She had a baby?”
Deuce shrugged his slim shoulders.. “I heard my mama telling my sisters about it, warning them about…you know. All of a sudden Holly’s ma sent her to visit her aunt, and she was gone for a long time. Her ma made her give the baby away—that’s what my mama said—because when she came back she didn’t have it with her.”
“What about the baby’s father? He wouldn’t marry her?”
“He couldn’t. He got caught stealing from Mr. Morgan’s hardware store and got sent to prison.” Deuce gazed across the street. “I don’t think Mr. Duncan liked him much, anyway.”
Clay blew out a heavy breath. Maybe Eldon wasn’t as quiet as he had originally thought
He turned to Deuce again. “Tell me about Luther. Does he know where Scully’s new hideout is?”
Deuce waved away the notion. “I don’t think Luther knows anything. I think he just talks like he does.”
“I’d say you’re right about that. And I’m glad to see