Kendrick: Outlaw's Bride Part 20

She was never far from his thoughts these days. Every time he believed he had a handle on her, she revealed another facet of her personality. He wondered how many of those different sides of herself she would bring to bed with her. The sprite? The siren? The lady with an iron rod down her spine? Oh, how he would love the chance to melt it down!

He had felt her response to his kisses, her surprise and her surrender. He had felt her tremble at his touch.

She thinks she's in love with you.

What he wondered, what was driving him crazy, was whether her feelings were all left over from her childhood infatuation with him, or whether the woman she had become loved the man he was.

His musings were cut off by his arrival at the door to Horace Felber's store.

The Oakville Mercantile was busy. Several ladies were perusing the notions, while Horace Felber stamped a letter behind the jaillike cage that const.i.tuted the Oakville Post Office. The bell over the door jangled, announcing Ethan's arrival. It was almost funny, Ethan thought, how the women shrank from him as though he carried some contagious disease. His mere presence quickly cleared the premises.

Horace Felber didn't bother to hide his agitation at the loss of business. The storekeeper waited until he had closed the door behind the last of his customers before he acknowledged Ethan's presence. He returned to a position of relative safety behind the counter and asked, "What can I do for you, Hawk?"

Ethan fingered a piece of grosgrain ribbon that he thought might look pretty in Patch's hair. "I have a problem, Horace. It seems my mother's been drinking poisoned milk that came from your dairy."

Ethan watched for signs of guilt. Horace didn't twitch an ear or blink an eye. He wasn't even sweating. His chin came up and his palms landed flat on the counter.

"Are you accusing me of something?" Horace demanded.

"I'm asking if you put poison in the milk you gave Gilley to deliver to my mother."

Before Horace could answer, his wife stepped through a dark, heavy curtain that separated the store from the storeroom in back. Mrs. Felber was considerably less composed than her husband. In fact, her face was white as chalk.

It was obvious from her next words that she had overheard Ethan's conversation with her husband. "Is your mother all right?" she asked. "Nell isn't going to die, is she?"

Instead of answering her questions, Ethan asked one of his own. "What do you know about all this, Mrs. Felber?"

"Don't say another word, Lilian," Horace admonished his wife.

"But Horace-"

"If you're going to make accusations like that, you'd better have some proof, young man," Horace said. "Honest citizens like us have rights-"

Ethan had Mr. Felber by the throat in no time flat. He grabbed a handful of the storekeeper's s.h.i.+rt to haul him over the counter and stood him up so he could stare him in the eye. "I want some answers. Now I can get them the easy way or the hard way. It's up to you."

The bell jangling over the door alerted Ethan to the fact someone had entered the store, but he didn't take his eyes off Horace. "Well? What's it going to be?"

"Boyd," Horace croaked. "Make him let me go."

Boyd crossed far enough into the store that he could look Ethan in the face. "Some problem here, Ethan?"

"No problem," Ethan replied. "Horace was just going to tell me what he knows about the poison that turned up in the milk my mother's been drinking."

Boyd's face registered alarm. "Poison? Are you sure? What kind of poison?"

"Marshall Corwin's guessing a.r.s.enic. Ma has all the symptoms." Ethan tightened his grip on the storekeeper. "I figure Horace can fill me in on the details."

"I don't know a thing!" Horace bleated.

"Why would Horace want to poison your mother?" Boyd asked. "It doesn't make sense."

"I figure Trahern paid him to do it. What about it, Horace? You on Trahern's payroll?"

"No, I'm not. You're making a mistake. Anyone could have put poison in the milk."

"How do you figure that, Horace?" Ethan asked.

"My boy Chester milks those cows, bottles the milk, then leaves it sitting till it's picked up. Anybody could've put something in the milk and told Chester some story why he was doing it."

"Then maybe I'd better go have a talk with Chester."

"No!" Mrs. Felber cried. "Leave him alone! He's not right in the head. He won't be able to tell you anything."

Ethan loosened his hold on Horace. "It looks like Chester is the one who has all the answers."

"No!" she insisted. "He doesn't understand-"

Mrs. Felber didn't wait to finish her sentence, just shoved her way back through the curtains and out of sight. Ethan heard her heels pounding on the wooden floor, then the slam of the back door.

"Where's Chester now?" Ethan demanded of Horace.

"I don't know. I-"

Ethan leapt over the counter to follow Mrs. Felber.

Boyd was right behind him. "Wait for me, Ethan!"

Ethan d.a.m.ned the badly scarred leg that kept him from moving at a run. Once out the back door of the mercantile, Ethan saw a flash of green gingham that looked like Mrs. Felber's skirt going around a corner at the end of the alley and headed toward it.

When they got there, she had disappeared.

"She probably headed for the Felbers' barn. Chester lives in a room there," Boyd said.

"Let's go."

It took only a matter of minutes to reach the barn on the outskirts of town where Chester milked the cows. Ethan shoved the barn door open and let the sun stream in. The pungent smells of fresh manure and hay a.s.saulted him.

It was long past the morning milking time, and the cows had been driven back out to pasture. He found the tiny room with its simple wooden bed and table where Chester apparently lived. The door hung slack on leather hinges. The only things moving were dust motes in the sunlight. The barn was empty.

"So where are they? Mrs. Felber and her son?" Ethan demanded angrily of Boyd. "You said they'd be here."

"How the h.e.l.l should I know where they are?" Boyd retorted. "I thought she'd come here. She was headed in this direction."

"Where else could they have gone?" Ethan queried.

"Home, maybe," Boyd suggested.

"I'll go check the Felbers' house," Ethan said. "You take another look around here."

The two men split up and began their search. Ethan knocked and, when there was no answer, let himself in the Felbers' house. There was no one there. Disgusted, but not yet ready to give up the search, he headed out past the houses on the edge of town toward the cow pasture.

He froze when he heard a twig snap behind him. Too late, he remembered the gunman who had been hired to kill him.

"Lucky for you I'm not Calloway. You'd be dead now."

Ethan heaved a sigh of relief. He turned to find Frank lounging against a backyard fence. "Is that his name? Calloway?"

"Yep. Brought him out to the ranch last night myself," Frank said. "Meant to come find you earlier this morning to warn you about him, but I guess it wasn't necessary after all. According to Slim, the two of you already met at the Silver Buckle."

"We did."

"Thought sure you would already have drawn on each other. What's the holdup?"

Ethan grinned. "I'm not ready to die, and I guess he isn't, either."

Frank laughed. "I've been following your trail all morning. Boyd sent me out here from the barn to find you. What's going on?"

"Walk with me while we talk."

Frank slipped into step with Ethan as he stalked-long step, halting step-the streets and alleys of Oakville, searching for his quarry.

"I'm looking for Chester Felber and his mother," Ethan explained. "If I had to guess, I'd say Mrs. Felber ducked into a friend's house somewhere around here. I just wish I knew whether she has Chester with her, and if not, where the h.e.l.l he is."

"Why are you hunting Chester?"

"I suspect he's the one who's been putting a.r.s.enic in Ma's milk. Maybe in the whiskey Pa drank, too. At least, Mrs. Felber acted awful d.a.m.n suspicious when I started asking questions. She was ranting and raving about how poor Chester doesn't know what he's doing, and how he can't be held responsible. Well, if he isn't responsible, I d.a.m.n well know who is!"

"Your ma was poisoned? Your pa, too? I can't believe it!"

"Everything points in that direction. I sent some samples off on the stage this morning to a chemist in San Antonio." Ethan stopped. "h.e.l.l, I won't find him now unless I start knocking on doors. And I'm not ready to do that. Yet."

He headed back toward the barn as fast as his. .h.i.tching gait would allow. "Come on, if you're coming."

Frank did a hop-skip to catch up, then matched Ethan's stride as best he could. "Where are we going?"

"I want to see if Boyd found anything in the Felbers' barn. Then I'm going to pay a visit to the sheriff."

"Surely you're not expecting any help from Careless," Frank said. "I mean, not if you're going to accuse who I think you're going to accuse."

"Careless can keep an eye out for Chester. And he can question Horace and his wife."

"What good will that do you?"

"Maybe none," Ethan conceded. "But at least it'll put everyone on notice that I'm through running."

Frank eyed Ethan sideways. "I don't understand."

Ethan paused for a moment and met Frank's glance. "I'm through running from Trahern. From now on, he's the one who'd better watch his back."

Ethan walked through the open barn door, and Frank followed him inside.

The barn was quiet. "Boyd? You in here somewhere?" Ethan called.

"Up here," Boyd said.

"You find anything worth mentioning?"

Boyd came down the ladder from the loft. "I found this." He handed Ethan a small cloth bag that contained a powdery white substance.

"What is it?"

"I'd guess it's a.r.s.enic," Boyd said.

Frank whistled. "So Chester really was putting poison in your ma's milk."

"We'd have to get someone to confirm that this is a.r.s.enic," Ethan said as he hefted the bag in his hand.

"Even then, you don't have proof it was Chester who did it. Someone else might have kept the poison here and slipped it into the milk when Chester wasn't looking," Boyd suggested.

"I'm sticking with Chester as the guilty party until I get a better suspect," Ethan said. "But even if Chester did put the poison in the milk, I'm betting he didn't act on his own. He doesn't have the brains to think out something like that. Or the motive to do it. Someone told Chester what to do. Someone gave him the poison."

"Trahern?" Boyd asked.

"Who else?" Ethan replied in a harsh voice. "He blames me for Dorne's death. He blames me for what happened to Merielle. He hated my father for helping me get away. He wants me to suffer the way he's suffered all these years. Killing my father and mother would accomplish that.

"Give me another suspect," Ethan demanded of his friends. "Tell me who else has a motive to attack me and my family."

Ethan's two friends remained silent.

At last Frank said, "You need to find Chester. He could tell you who asked him to put the poison in the milk. That way you'd know for sure."

Ethan took off his hat, shoved his fingers through his hair in agitation, and pulled his hat back down. "I can't help thinking he won't go far. Not on his own, anyway."

Frank grinned. "I wonder who Horace will find to milk his cows now. Do you think he'll do it himself?"

The three men looked at each other and broke out laughing at the thought of Horace Felber sitting on a milkstool with his hands on a pair of udders. Their common dislike of the man ran long and deep. Horace hadn't been the kind of shopkeeper who offered free licorice to penniless eight- and nine-year-old kids. The three inseparable friends had each taken a turn distracting Horace while the others stole candy from the jars on the counter. Their sugary loot was relished all the more for the fact it had been taken from beneath Horace Felber's nose.

Boyd sobered first, recalling the day when they had finally been discovered in the act. Horace had caught Boyd red-handed with his fingers in the jar of licorice. Boyd would never forget the humiliation of being seized by the ear and yanked all the way across the street to the sheriff's office. He was thrown into a cell with Cyrus McFee, the town drunk.

The cell stank of vomit and urine, and Boyd gagged trying to breathe. Even worse was the knowledge of what his father would do when he came to get him out. Boyd had known he was going to get a licking. The antic.i.p.ation of that beating was making his stomach roll.

What he hadn't expected was that his father would just leave him there. He spent three days in that cell, the second two alone, before Clete Stuckey showed up to claim him. Boyd had felt relief when he first saw his father's face. It lasted no longer than the first blow of his drunken father's fist on his back. He had fled the jail-and his father-as fast as his legs could carry him.

Boyd had learned later that when he didn't get out of jail the first day, Ethan had begged his father to do something to help. Alex Hawk had gone hunting Clete. It had taken a day to find him and a day to sober him up enough to sit on a horse. Clete hadn't thanked either Alex or Ethan for the favor. Boyd had done it himself. Boyd had had no use for his father after that. He had resolutely and thoroughly killed what little love he'd had for him.

He hadn't mourned when Clete Stuckey had fallen off his horse drunk one rainy winter night and died of exposure. Despite the fact that by then Boyd was comfortably well off, he had allowed his father to be buried in an unmarked pauper's grave. He had given back to his father exactly what he had gotten from him-nothing.

Boyd jerked reflexively when Ethan put an arm around his shoulder. He forced himself to relax. They had no way of knowing that the wounds of the past still had the power to hurt him. He hid his bitterness, his anger, and his regret in a charming smile.