“There it is,” Edrina said, with a note of sadness in her voice that caught and pulled at Clay’s heart like a fishhook snagging on something underwater.
Clay barely had time to take in the ramshackle place—the council referred to it as a “cottage,” though he would have called it a shack—before one of the prettiest women he’d ever laid eyes on shot out through the front door like a bullet and stormed down the path toward them.
Chickens scattered, clucking and squawking, as she passed.
Her hair was the color of pale cider, pinned up in back and fluffing out around her flushed face, as was the fashion among his sisters and female cousins back home in the Arizona Territory. Her eyes might have been blue, but they might have been green, too, and right now, they were shooting fire hot enough to brand the toughest hide.
Reaching the rusty-hinged gate in the falling-down fence, she stopped suddenly, fixed those changeable eyes on him and glared.
Clay felt a jolt inside, as though Zeus had flung a lightning bolt his way and he’d caught it with both hands instead of sidestepping it, like a wiser man would have done.
The woman’s gaze sliced to the little girl.
“Edrina Louise Nolan,” she said, through a fine set of straight white teeth, “what am I going to do with you?” Her skin was good, too, Clay observed, with that part of his brain that usually stood back and assessed things. Smooth, with a peachy glow underneath.
“Let me go to third grade?” Edrina ventured bravely.
Clay gave an appreciative chuckle, quickly quelled by a glare from the lady. He didn’t wither easily, though he knew that was the result she’d intended, and he did take some pleasure in thwarting her.
At that, the woman gave a huffy little sigh and turned her attention back to her daughter. She threw out one arm—like Edrina, she wore calico—and pointed toward the gaping door of the shack. “That will be quite enough of your nonsense, young lady,” she said, with a reassuring combination of affection and anger, thrusting open the creaky gate. “Get yourself into the house now and prepare to contemplate the error of your ways!”
Before obeying her mother’s command, Edrina paused just long enough to look up at Clay, who was still in the saddle, as though hoping he’d intercede.
That was a thing he had no right to do, of course, but he felt a pang on the little girl’s behalf just the same. And against his own better judgment he dismounted, took off his hat, holding it in one hand and shoving the other through his hair, fingers splayed.
“You go on and do what your mama tells you,” he said to Edrina, though his words had the tone of a suggestion, rather than a command.
Edrina’s very fetching mother looked him over again, this time with something that might have been chagrin. Then she bristled again, like a little bird ruffling up faded feathers. “You’re him, aren’t you?” she accused. “The new marshal?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Clay said, confounded by the strange mixture of terror and jubilation rising up within him. “I am the new marshal. And you are…?”
“Dara Rose Nolan. You may address me as Mrs. Nolan, if you have any further reason to address me, which I do not anticipate.”
With that, she turned on one shabby-heeled shoe and pointed herself toward the “cottage,” with its sagging roof, leaking rain barrel and sparkling-clean windows.
Edrina and another little girl—the aforementioned Harriet, no doubt—darted out of the doorway as their mother approached, vanishing into the interior of the house.
Clay watched appreciatively as the widow Nolan retreated hurriedly up the walk, with nary a backward glance.
Chickens, pecking peacefully at the ground, squawked and flapped their wings as they fled.
The door slammed behind her.
Clay smiled, resettled his hat and got back on his horse.
Before, he’d dreaded the long and probably idle months ahead, expecting the season to be a lonesome one, and boring, to boot, since he knew nothing much ever happened in Blue River, when it came to crime. That was the main reason the town fathers hadn’t been in any big rush to replace Parnell Nolan.
Now, reining Outlaw away toward the edge of town, and the open country beyond, meaning to ride up onto a ridge he knew of, where the view extended for miles in every direction, Clay figured the coming winter might not be so dull, after all.
INSIDE THE HOUSE, Dara Rose drew a deep breath and sighed it out hard.
Heaven knew, she hadn’t been looking forward to the new marshal’s arrival, given the problems that were sure to result, but she hadn’t planned on losing her composure and behaving rudely, either. Poor as she was, Dara Rose still had high standards, and she believed in setting a good example for her children, prided herself on her good manners and even temperament.
Imagining how she must have looked to Clay McKettrick, rushing out of the house, scaring the chickens half to death in the process, she closed her eyes for a moment, then sighed again.
Edrina and Harriet watched her from the big rocking chair over by the wood-burning stove, Edrina wisely holding her tongue, Harriet perched close beside her, her rag doll, Molly, resting in the curve of one small arm.
The regulator clock ticked ponderously on the wall, lending a solemn rhythm to the silence, and snow swirled past the windows, as if trying to find a way in.
Dara Rose shivered.
“What are we going to do, Mama?” Edrina asked reasonably, and at some length. She was a good child, normally, helpful and even tempered, but her restlessness and curiosity often led her straight into mischief.
Dara Rose looked up at the oval-framed image of her late husband, Parnell Nolan, and her throat thickened as fresh despair swept over her. Despite the scandalous way he died, she missed him, missed the steadiness of his presence, missed his quiet ways and his wit.
“I don’t rightly know,” Dara Rose admitted, after swallowing hard and blinking back the scalding tears that were always so close to the surface these days. “But never you mind—I’ll think of something.”
Edrina slipped a reassuring arm around Harriet, who was sucking her thumb.
Dara Rose didn’t comment on the thumb-sucking, though it was worrisome to her. Harriet had left that habit behind when she was three, but after Parnell’s death, nearly a year ago now, she’d taken it up again. It wasn’t hard to figure out why—the poor little thing was frightened and confused.
So was Dara Rose, for that matter, though of course she didn’t let on. With heavy-handed generosity, Mayor Ponder and the town council had allowed her and the children to remain in the cottage on the stipulation that they’d have to vacate when a marshal was hired to take Parnell’s place.
“Don’t worry,” Edrina told her sister, tightening her little arm around the child, just briefly. “Mama always thinks of something.”
It was true that Dara Rose had managed to put food on the table by raising vegetables in her garden patch, taking
