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She blushed again and pushed back a lock of frizzy hair that had fallen across one eye. “There’s no obligation, Will. You know that.”
For a moment, he stared at her, rapt by those eyes of hers. He could almost swear there was something different-looking about Paulie—besides the obvious change in her getup. Yet in spite of the shambles her hair was in, it was the same light brown color. Her eyes were the same lively pools. She was still skinny, and still had freckles galore, too. Yet, when taken all together, she seemed...different More frail, more vulnerable almost. He couldn’t explain it.
And then it struck him.
“Say, have you been feeling poorly?”
Paulie blinked at him, seeming to snap out of the same daze he’d been in for the past few minutes. “What?”
He shrugged. “You look different somehow,” he remarked. “I thought maybe you had been sick.”
“Sick!” she cried, sounding offended.
He stared at her quizzically. “What the beck’s gotten into you, Paulie? You didn’t used to be this prickly unless I commented on that freckle crop of yours.”
“I don’t have that many freckles,” she shot back heatedly. “Never did.”
“Ha!” He laughed. “Knit them together and you’d have skin as brown as an overripe berry.”
Her face turned a fiery red. “Why you—”
Before she could explode, and before he had a chance to elaborate on his remark, bootsteps were heard coming up the Dry Wallow’s porch. Paulie was the first to look up to see who their visitor was.
From the look of horror on her face, Will was half expecting Night Bird himself. But when he turned, he found himself staring at someone even more surprising. Oat Murphy.
Oat’s expression was even more hangdog than usual. Will felt a pang of anger rise sharply in his breast. What did that old man have to be sad about?
Paulie was a bit more generous. “Land’s sake, Oat. What’s the matter with you? You look like you just lost your best friend!”
Slowly, the grizzled ex-whiskey trader looked from one to the other of them. His droopy eyes were bloodshot and edgy, and his shoulders slumped even more than usual. Even his gray beard seemed to droop.
“Ain’t my best friend I lost,” he said in his gruff rasp of a voice. “It’s my wife.”
Chapter Two
“You lost Mary Ann?”
Paulie finally found her voice and spoke to Oat, who was clearly embarrassed to have to make such a confession. He shuffled to the bar, where she handed him a glass of tequila. He slugged it down, apparently without a thought to his recent vow to abstain from drinking.
“Sure as shootin’,” Oat grumbled in his terse brand of speech. “Can’t find her. I tell you, I looked everywhere.”
Trip appeared so astounded Paulie was afraid he was going to slip clear off his bar stool. And Will was simply incredulous.
“What do you mean, you lost her?” he asked Oat, looking as if he wanted to throttle the man. Paulie could understand his frustration. Will probably looked on Oat as having won what he had failed to obtain himself. To misplace Mary Ann was careless in the extreme.
But Oat was evidently tired of having to justify his loss. “I mean, she ain’t at home,” he said, frustrated. “Ain’t anywheres that I can tell.” He glanced up at Paulie, and almost as an afterthought, asked, “Ain’t here, is she?”
“I haven’t seen her. Have you, Trip?”
Trip blinked. “Sure haven’t. Not since long before she married you, Oat.”
“That’s it, then.” Oat shrugged. “Just plum lost her.”
Will looked as if he might explode any second. “Wait a cotton pickin’ minute, Oat. You can’t simply lose a woman. Are you sure she didn’t go somewhere?”
Oat shook his head. “Not that she told me.”
“Maybe she went back to Breen’s place to be with her ma for a spell,” Trip suggested.
“First place I looked,” Oat said.
“Could she maybe have had an accident?” Paulie asked.
The old fellow rubbed his tobacco-stained beard and considered this possibility. Finally, he admitted slowly, “Ain’t likely. See, I just woke up one morning and found her missin’. What kind of accident can a woman have in the middle of the night in her own house that would cause her to disappear? The only trip she was liable to take in the night was a short one to the outhouse, but I checked that first thing. Wasn’t there, or anywhere abouts the house.”
Paulie crossed her arms, dismayed. “We didn’t think it likely that she’s been locked up in the outhouse all this time, Oat. When did you lose her?”
“Two days ago.”
“Two days!” Will cried. “Poor Mary Ann’s been gone two days?”
Oat looked defensive. “Well, the first day I waited for her to come back. That night, I started to look around. Next day I started askin‘ around. And today I decided I should come to town and ask here. But as of now, I’m concludin’ she’s lost.”
The three men sitting at the bar bore three different expressions of dumbfoundedness.
“She must have run away,” Paulie explained. “She always did want to go to the city.”
Will shot her a sharp glance. “Then why would she have married Oat and settled down in the country just weeks ago?”
Trip nodded. “He’s got a point there, Paulie.”
Paulie sighed. “This is pure foolishness!” Men were so dense sometimes—especially this crew. She was still steaming from being left out of the tally of marriageable females in the county even as she was parading around in front of them all decked out in a frilly white dress. Now having to explain the obvious to these men irked her in the extreme. “Mary Ann didn’t just disappear. That can’t happen. A body either has to be lost, or snatched, or to run away. I doubt Mary Ann would get lost. She’s lived in these parts for years.”
Oat nodded. “That’s a fact. She was a smart one, too.”
Paulie could have debated him on that point, but felt it would be bad form. The man was grieving, in his own way; he was apt to think of Mary Ann as better than she actually was.
“Did you two ever fight?” Paulie asked him.
“Fight!” Oat let out a bitter laugh. “All we did was fight.”
This news perked up everyone’s ears.
“What about?”
“Didn’t want me to give up my whiskey route.” Oat lifted his shoulders. “But I said, what’s the point of gettin’ hitched, if’n you’re gonna be gone all the time? I was figurin’ on raisin’ some stock and settin’ around the house some. Peaceful like. Gettin’ old, you know.”
That was an undeniable fact, but the strange truth was that the man actually looked older after his few weeks with Mary Ann than he had when he was travelling incessantly around South Texas with a wagonful of liquor.
“Was Mary Ann worried about money?”
Oat nodded. “Yep. So worried about money that she wanted to go with me on my route to make sure I handled things right.”
Paulie and Trip, remembering Mary Ann’s weakness for one passerby, the gambler, exchanged glances. “She mention anyplace in particular on your route?”
Oat downed another glass of tequila and shook his head. “Nope.”
But everybody knew Oat’s route took him as far as San Antonio. And San Antonio was the place that the gambler had been heading. “Say, Trip...” Paulie said, trying to sound casual, “what was the name of that snappy gambler man who came through here last August?”
Despite her attempt to strike a nonchalant chord, Will’s sharp gaze honed in on her immediately.
“Tyler,” Trip said. “Name was Oren Tyler.”
Will scowled. “I don’t like what you two are thinking.”
“Everybody knew she was crazy about him,” Paulie explained. “A real good-lookin’ dude. I heard tell he stopped one night over at Mary Ann’s stepfather’s farm.”
Even Oat remembered him. He nodded enthusiastically. “I remember Mr. Tyler all right.” He looked almost relieved to be solving the mystery of his missing wife, even if the solution pointed to another man. Paulie’s guess was that Oat had been just as ready as Mary Ann to wiggle out of the hasty marriage.
“Sure,” Trip said, “and after he left, Mary Ann came around here once, askin’ if Tyler was still here.”
“But he’d gone by then,” Paulie remembered.
Will raised a skeptical brow. “And that was August?”
They all nodded.
Will considered for a moment. “Did Mary Ann ever mention this Tyler fellow to you, Oat?”
“Nope.”
Will spent another minute ruminating, and for some reason, the other three watched him as if awaiting his verdict on the issue of Oat’s missing wife. Of course, Paulie actually looked at him because she hadn’t been able to take her eyes off of him since he walked through the door. Lord, he was even handsomer than she remembered! His dark hair was grown almost to his shoulders and his face was bronzed from his months on the trail, making his dark . brown eyes appear as if they had some kind of fire in them.
Staring at him almost made her forget how mad she was with him.
Then, finally, he shook his head. “Can’t be,” he announced.
“Why not?” Paulie asked. “Makes perfect sense to me. Mary Ann started sweet-talkin’ Oat so she could go to San Antonio and hitch up with Tyler.”
Will’s sharp glance melted her insides like butter, even if his gaze was brimming over with condescension. “Think about it. We’re not sure that Mary Ann was in love with this man. In fact, we have good reason to doubt it.”
“Why?” Oat asked.
Will shot the old codger an even stare. “She married you, didn’t she?”
Oat looked abashed at having to be reminded. “Oh, right. Well sure, but...”
“But even putting that fact aside,” Will continued, “why would she have married Oat if she simply wanted to get to San Antonio? Why didn’t she just cadge a ride?”
Paulie had to admit, that would have been an easier alternative.
“And how did she leave?” Will went on, his voice gaining intensity. “Oat didn’t mention his wagon was missing, or any horses.”
“Nope,” Oat admitted. “Didn’t take anything that I could tell.”
“There. Now what kind of woman sets out to meet a man on foot with just the clothes on her back?” Will asked.
“It’s like I said,” Oat concluded. “I just plum lost her.” And there was more than a hint of relief in his voice when he said it.
Against Will’s explanation, and Trip’s defection, and Oat’s resignation, Paulie lost much of her gusto for the whole argument. “Well, maybe she’ll come back,” she offered.
“Yeah,” Trip agreed. “That could happen.”
“Maybe,” Oat said, not sounding particularly brightened by that prospect, either. “Anyways, guess I’ll be takin’ up my whiskey route again.”
Paulie nearly collapsed with relief at this news. Thank goodness! Maybe things would be returning to normal soon. Will was back, and perhaps with a sheriff, Possum Trot folks would feel a little safer. At least she would rest easier knowing an officially designated gun stood between her and Night Bird. Everyone else in the area probably would, too. And with Oat making deliveries again, business might pick up.
“Of course, now I got to start worryin’ about that old Injun again,” Oat grumbled.
“Night Bird?” Will asked.
“Yessir,” Oat said, practically shivering at the mention of the name.
Will frowned, causing three deep creases of worry to appear in his forehead. “That’s it!” he said, then muttered, “Damn.”
The three of them stared at him, but Will just looked straight ahead, brooding.
“What’s it?” Paulie asked.
“Night Bird,” he said, his lips forming a grim line.
Paulie sucked in her breath. Was he thinking that Night Bird had taken Mary Ann? “Night Bird!” she repeated, the terrible thought attempting to catch hold of her mind like the fleeting memory of a nightmare. Trip stood and then nearly collapsed on wobbly legs, and Oat straightened in his chair, looking truly disturbed for the first time during the whole discussion.
“Of course!” Trip said.
But Paulie, after the first shock, wasn’t so certain. She tilted her head, mulling the idea over. “I’ve never heard of Night Bird kidnapping women.”
Will sent her a dead serious look. He didn’t even have to say it. When it came to a renegade Comanche, a consistent code of behavior couldn’t be expected. “You said yourself that when Night Bird stole your liquor those times, you didn’t even hear him.”
“Sure, but that was whiskey,” Paulie explained. “Wouldn’t Mary Ann put up more of a fuss?”
Trip shook his head slowly, in an awed trance of dread at the very idea of Night Bird. “They say those three men he killed didn’t even know what hit them.”
Paulie frowned. It wasn’t that she didn’t think Night Bird was capable of abduction—it just seemed so unlikely. Texas Rangers had taken care of most of the Indian trouble in these parts. For an Indian to just walk into a man’s house and steal his wife, or ambush her on her way to the outhouse, didn’t seem worth the trouble that he would bring upon himself by such a heinous act. “Wouldn’t there be at least a sign of a struggle? Mightn’t we have heard that someone had seen them somewhere?”
“Maybe not,” Will said.
“And what would Night Bird want with Mary Ann anyway?”
