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  All at once the perverse wind seemed to lose interest in her bonnet and tossed up her skirt instead. It flew up about her petticoats. When she tried to press it modestly down a gust caught the fabric for Lucy’s dress and spun it right out of her clenched fingers.

  It looked like a blue-checkered tumbleweed racing across the street toward the Long Branch.

  “Oh blazes!” she cried, and took off after it at a run. Her petticoats flashed white to the knee but she didn’t care. Imagine having to wash perfectly new material before it could be sewn!

  The checkered fabric came to rest, wrapped around the thick thighs of a man standing outside the saloon.

  Emma stopped short. She stood in the middle of the street with her hair streaking out of its bun as if it was possessed.

  Daylight borrowing an unnatural orange tint from the sun had settled down on the town. It made the scene before her appear absurd. Even though the stranger looked intimidating, like a big mean bull trapped on the boardwalk, she covered her mouth to keep from giggling while he struggled to untangle the creeping fabric from his legs. The harder he plucked at it the more wrapped up he became in its checkered claws.

  Apparently the wind was not satisfied with tormenting him with a gingham skirt. It took a sudden updraft and knocked the hat from his shaved head. His hand shot out. Nearly as fast as Emma could see it, he caught the hat by its black brim and smashed it back on his head.

  The wind sighed softly all of a sudden, giving him an instant to free himself of the fabric, then fold it neatly from corner to corner then side to side.

  “Ma’am?” He held her wayward goods out to her with long slender fingers that didn’t match his stocky frame. One shiny fingernail caught the orange glow of the sky. What an odd day when a man’s fingers looked like flaming matches.

  Under any other circumstances she would not have approached a stranger standing in front of the saloon.

  Mercy, but wouldn’t Matt and the boys have something to say about her meeting this crooked-nosed stranger without them beside her.

  Why, they would raise dust from here to home to see her coming up the saloon steps with no more sense than the dry leaves blowing wild in the street. Still, she had paid good money for that fabric and she wouldn’t shy away just because the fellow had silver eyes that peeked out of lashless slits in his face, or just because they looked as if they might shoot out bullets more easily than goodwill.

  She wouldn’t cower in the street because the man had been conversing with Gray Derby Bart when her purchase had taken to the wind.

  She plastered her most fetching smile on her lips and ignored Bart’s I’d-like-to-drown-a-puppy glare at her. With the other man present she was likely to be safe from the scoundrel.

  “Thank you for rescuing my property.” She plucked the fabric from his narrow fingers, then took a step back. “I’m sorry it caused you so much trouble.”

  “No trouble at all, ma’am.” His voice rumbled like black coal in his chest, but he shot her a crooked smile that met the eastward slant of his nose. The gesture looked like a half-moon shining on his face and he didn’t look so intimidating.

  Bart, stretching up in his boots, whispered in the man’s ear.

  “Well, good day,” she said. The three steps from the boardwalk to the street felt like twenty. The bald man didn’t seem so sinister now that he had smiled, but Bart looked as if he had drowned the pups and was now on the prowl for kittens.

  “I’m sorry for your loss, Mrs. Suede,” the deep voice said.

  “I beg your pardon?” Emma turned. The wind raced about her head and the orange air prickled the hair on her arms. Her stomach felt as if that long-fingered hand had reached inside her and twisted it.

  “You could beg, but it won’t do no good.” Bart’s rheumy eyes glistened and his tongue, coated white, darted out to lick his lips. “This here is Angus Hawker, come all the way from prison to shoot your man dead.”

  “No harm meant to you, missus, but there’s a score to be evened.”

  He tipped his hat; the half-moon smile sagged to a quarter before he walked back into the Long Branch.

  “Whoo-eee!” Bart slapped his derby on his knee. “Don’t you worry any, sweet thing, old Bart will come courting before week’s end. Your bed won’t even have time to cool off.”

  * * *

  Ordinarily singing made a chore move along more smoothly. Nails were hammered into wood straighter and a heavy load felt lighter. But Matt didn’t sing while he swept out Pearl’s stall. He listened. In a quiet corner Lucy hummed to her little dogs. He couldn’t see her over the stall sides, but her voice rose through the dust twirling in the beam of light that slashed through the open barn doors. It pleased him to know that he had handed on the gift to her. It would help her through the sorry times.

  The shifting of fresh hay through the pitchfork drowned out the rest of her tune, but Matt tucked the memory of it away in his heart, saving the sound for a time when the voice would be grown.

  Would she always sing from her heart, like a pretty yellow lark fluttering over the land?

  So far, life hadn’t given her sadness, just days full of laughing in the sunshine, playing with pups and being the darling of all.

  Matt filled Pearl’s trough with hay. The horse would nuzzle his ribs when she returned from Dodge. She was an unusual animal, more of a pet than livestock. Her blindness was no handicap—it seemed only to make her more perceptive.

  “Good old Pearl,” he muttered, hanging the pitchfork on a nail hammered into the barn wall.

  Matt walked toward the trill of Lucy’s voice. He found her lying in the pile of straw outside Thunder’s stall.

  “You look as sweet as sunshine singing to your pups, baby girl, but I’ve got to put this straw in Thunder’s stall.”

  Lucy stood and stretched. “Papa, bend down. You have hay in your hair.”

  Matt stooped low and let her take it out.

  “When’s Mama Emma coming home?”

  “I’m sure she’s on her way right now.”

  “I’m glad.” Having plucked out the last bit of hay, Lucy fluffed his hair about his ears. “Will she make my new dress tonight?”

  Probably, but he hoped not. As soon as it was sewn, he’d have no excuse to put off his departure.

  Still, it was past time he had a talk with his daughter about going to California, but how did a man find the words to break a little girl’s heart?

  “Come on, sunshine baby, let’s go to the kitchen and have some of those oatmeal cookies that Emma left for us. Maybe by the time we’ve finished, she’ll be home.”

  “Carry me, Papa.”

  “Those little legs of yours run out of steps already?”

  Lucy giggled and wrapped her arms about his neck when he lifted her.

  “Legs don’t run out of steps, silly papa—they’re just resting.”

  Inside the kitchen, Matt plopped Lucy down on a chair at the table. He hoped the plate of cookies he set between them would ease the thing he was about to tell her.

  “I got a letter from your grandma in San Francisco.” Matt sucked in a deep breath and wished he were singing.

  Lucy took a bite of her cookie, then put it down. She chewed slowly and swallowed.

  “You’ve heard me mention Grandma Suede?”

  “Yes, she has a pretty house on a hill with a big glass window so you can see the Pacific Ocean.”

  “How would you like to take a long train ride all the way to California to see her?”

  “I’d like it, Papa.” Lucy picked up her cookie but set it down without taking a bite. “But Fluffy and Princess would bark at everybody.”

  Lordy, even a song wouldn’t make what he had to tell her any easier.

  “Finish up that cookie,” he said, stalling.

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Not hungry? You love Emma’s cookies, darlin’. Eat as many as you like.”

  Lucy took one more bite, then lost interest in the treat.
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  “We’d have to leave the dogs here.” How could words feel like a razor slicing up a man’s throat?

  “But if you and me and Mama Emma and Red and Billy go on the train, who will take care of Fluffy and Princess? Pearl will get real lonely.”

  While he wrestled with the words to break his child’s heart, he heard hoofbeats pounding fast, racing past the well and pulling up outside the front door.

  Two pairs of boots slammed against the front porch, coming around to the kitchen door.

  The door flew open and hit the wall. Good thing Emma wasn’t home yet. She’d have boxed Red’s and Billy’s ears for sure for treating her house so.

  “Fire!” Winded, Red slipped into a chair. He spotted the cookies and ate one whole.

  “Cutting straight between here and Dodge,” Billy added.

  “Faster than a son of a gun.” Red spoke through the crumbs in his mouth.

  Matt felt the blood drain from his face, and his fingers turned cold even though the kitchen was warm.

  Surely Emma would see the fire and have the sense to stay in Dodge. Common intelligence would keep her where it was safe. She wouldn’t come flying home thinking that she could save her home if the fire turned this way.

  Anyone would have the sense to stay put.

  “Damn!” he shouted. Too late, he noticed Lucy’s eyes go round in surprise.

  He bolted for the corral where Thunder lifted his inky nose to the sky, sniffing the air.

  * * *

  A farmer racing toward town on his big plow horse waved his hat at Emma.

  “Go back!” She saw his lips move but she couldn’t hear him. She sat atop Pearl’s back with the wind howling around her head and her heart hammering in her ears.

  Already she’d gotten the same advice from a family rushing for the safety of town in their wagon, countless jackrabbits and several deer.

  If Emma hadn’t listened to them, she wouldn’t listen to the farmer’s ever-so-wise advice, either.

  Good Pearl turned her nose toward a pack of prairie wolves who had stopped a hundred feet to the west to give the horse a look that said if the day were different they would have her for a snack. Pearl snorted but didn’t shy from the threat. The canines, with the sense that the good Lord had given them, trotted away from the threat of the oncoming flames.

  Emma had sent her good sense packing since Angus Hawker had come to town. Those fingers, so quick they could catch a hat right out of the wind, put more fear in her heart than any distant, if quickly approaching, fire.

  As soon as the flames burned out she would make sure Matt and his family boarded the train out of Dodge. Somehow, some way that she couldn’t think of right now, Hawker wouldn’t know they were at the train station.

  She’d find a way to make everyone think he was working hard on the homestead when all the while he was halfway to the West Coast.

  Ideas scurried willy-nilly in her brain but wouldn’t settle into a logical plan any more than the frantic quail underfoot could form an orderly line to flee from the fire. The ground seemed to be alive with birds running in circles, as though they had forgotten they could fly.

  She felt like a swimmer going against a tide of squirrels, deer, rabbits and every other creature with more sense than she had.

  “Come on, Pearl, we’ve got to go faster. Matt’s bound to come looking for us.” The horse, while not unwilling to follow the road home, went at her own cautious pace.

  “Hawker will kill Matt if he goes into town.”

  Pearl stopped to snort when a wisp of smoke curled over the road and across her hooves.

  “Come on, girl, that fire is moving a whole lot faster than we are.”

  The horse tested the road, one careful footfall at a time. Apparently she expected to step on hot coals at any moment.

  After only a quarter of a mile, she stopped altogether. Maybe Pearl’s eyes had begun to burn like Emma’s had.

  Lordy, it felt as though she stood on the windward side of a campfire. Her hair became saturated with the scent of burning prairie grass, and her throat felt raw and dry.

  No more than a mile down the road the air looked clear and breathable. If only she could convince Pearl to move, they could be on their way and catch Matt before he rode blindly into horrible danger.

  And ride he would. Hadn’t he already faced the preacher for her? Hadn’t he ridden into a storm, with crazed cattle on the verge of mayhem, to pluck her right out of the muck? Could she ever forget how he’d knelt, bare chested beside her in the mud and the rain, braving who knew what kind of fever or illness, to help save her trees?

  Emma had no doubt that Matt would ride right into the sights of Angus Hawker’s gun to see her safe from the fire without knowing his danger.

  “He’d come even if he knew, wouldn’t he, Pearl? He’d come with Hawker’s gun pointed right at his heart to see us safe.”

  From high on Pearl’s back, Emma watched the flames’ orange teeth eating up the grass. From this distance they looked no more than knee-high. She could probably jump right over the fiery line if she held her skirts high enough. There was still time to get to safety if only she could convince the horse to move.

  “Get along, Pearl.” She clucked her tongue, but the only movement from the horse was a shiver running from the tip of her nose to the flick of her tail.

  Emma slid off her back. “I know it’s frightening, not being able to see the danger. But we’re going home.”

  Emma tugged gently on Pearl’s reins and urged her down the road. The smoke grew suddenly thicker and the clear spot up ahead farther away.

  On the far side of the smoke, dust kicked up from the road some distance off. Relief swept through her at the thought it might be Matt. She’d catch him before he went galloping into town.

  After a few moments she heard the creek of a buggy and the hoofbeats of a pair of horses, coming fast. She pulled Pearl to the side of the road when she thought the driver might not see them, coming through the haze as fast as he was.

  The buggy, carrying a man and a young woman, rattled by and kicked up enough dust to make her cough. It mixed with the smoke and took its time settling back to the ground. Through the haze she recognized the reckless driver.

  Of course the man would assume the road belonged to him alone.

  Blast! Lawrence Pendragon had reined in his team and turned the buggy around. How ridiculous he looked, puffing on his infernal cigarette when the whole countryside was being incinerated!

  “Have you lost your way, Mrs. Suede?” Pendragon plucked the smoldering stub from his lips.

  “Certainly not.”

  “You can’t mean to continue on this road.” He leaned forward in his seat. “The fire will cut you off from front and back. You’ll never make it.”

  Mercy, but she wasn’t about to explain her need to get home and warn Matt about Angus Hawker. Pendragon would like nothing more than to see her a helpless widow.

  “In that case I’d better hurry along my way,” she said.

  “Don’t be a little fool. Turn back.”

  A fool? A little fool!

  “Why you low-down…” Lenore moved closer to her father, making room for Emma. “Your cowboys probably started this fire!”

  Lawrence Pendragon leaned across his daughter to speak. “That may be, but not by my orders, and not intentionally. My cattle graze this land.”

  Lenore tugged at her father’s sleeve, looking paler by the second. “Papa, make Mrs. Suede get in the wagon and come along with us!” Lenore reached her hand toward Emma.

  “You’ll never make it.”

  Oh, she would make it. More than her own life depended on it.

  She pulled on Pearl’s reins, hoping the horse didn’t dig her hooves into the dirt in stubborn defiance, or worse yet, take it into her mind to follow the wagon.

  “I’d have more luck getting my prize bull to get up in this wagon and swear off cows,” Pendragon answered.

  At last he had said somet
hing she agreed with. Her shoes would have to be sparking flames before she would accept his help.

  He snapped a whip at the horse’s ear to set his team racing down the road toward town. Lenore clung to the side of the buggy, looking back at her.

  A glance north told Emma that her shoes would indeed be sparking flames if Pearl didn’t get moving.

  Chapter Eleven

  Matt couldn’t tell which pounded harder, Thunder’s hooves tearing up clods of prairie sod in the mad rush toward Dodge, or his heart slamming against his ribs for fear that Emma had been caught on the road with the fire closing in.

  If she believed her precious house would burn, a dozen folks talking good sense wouldn’t make her stay put.

  Grit and backbone were a pair of qualities that Matt loved best in his wife. Unfortunately, when her house was involved, those good traits came smack up against a lack of common sense and it made his insides feel like a nervous herd of beeves.

  “Dear God,” Matt whispered. Bending low over Thunder’s neck, he rode loose and let the stallion stretch out to his quickest stride. “Make her stay in town…damn it, Emma, stay in town!”

  She wouldn’t know how fast a prairie fire could spread. It might seem a mile away one minute and the next have a person boxed in. She wouldn’t know how the smoke could kill you before you ever saw the flames.

  Stay in town, darlin’, stay in town.

  The fire spread from north to south, a blazing arrow headed straight for the road to Dodge. If he could get past the point where the fire would cross over, he’d be able to get to Emma. He’d take her to the boardinghouse and sit on her all day and night if that’s what it took to keep her in a sensible place.

  A wolf raced past Thunder, but neither of the animals took the time to threaten or fear each other. The wolf was as bent on his survival as Matt and Thunder were on Emma’s.

  The sky turned from crystal-blue to ominous orange in a matter of seconds and wind shot ash, but Thunder didn’t miss a step. His bold hooves kept pounding the ground.

  Stay in town…stay in town, stay safe…stay safe.

  He slipped his bandanna up, protecting his nose and mouth from the grit that snowed out of the sky. Without a doubt, Thunder breathed in more soot than he ought to. The brave horse, clearly sensing Matt’s urgency, ran without hesitation toward the danger that every other creature had the good sense to flee from.