Shotgun Bride by Linda Lael Miller Read Free Book Online Page A

couple of terrified plow horses and a razor-hipped milk cow, but his wife hoisted up her skirts and ran right alongside the fire. She had some spirit in her, he thought. Maybe he’d come back another time, if they stayed on, and pay her a social call. He turned melancholy on occasion, since Dixie had run him off, threatening to bring the law down on him if he came near her, though he didn’t miss the aggravation.
    The lady of the house sprang into the cabin just as the fire started climbing the eastern wall and came out quick with a bundle in her arms. Yes, sir, she had some gumption, all right. He did admire a frisky woman.
    The shack went up just as fast as the shed had, and the nesters stood piteous but proud next to the trickle of a creek, with their flea-bitten livestock gathered around them, watching as fire took everything.
    Still Gig remained, fascinated. It soothed something in him, watching ill fortune overtake somebody else besides him. He looked on until the flames died to embers, until the dirt farmer and his wife and the babe finally laid themselves down on the creek bank, spent by their efforts and their heartbreak.
    When he was sure they weren’t fixing to stir and catch sight of him, he pulled a cold branding iron from the scabbard where he usually carried a rifle, climbed down off his horse, and laid the business end of the rod in a patch of red coals to heat.
    Light was gathering in the eastern sky by the time the iron was ready; he took it from the coals and pressed the Triple M brand hard into the charred trunk of an oak tree. The mark it left was clear, and he paused to admire his handiwork for a few moments.
    He was humming under his breath as he mounted his horse, turned north, toward the Circle C, and rode off. A man needed his diversions, and if the boss man took pleasure in the news of the dirt farmers’ calamity, once it reached him, Curry might just feel obliged to take the credit for a fine night’s work.

Chapter 9
     
     
    T hey’d ridden to town on a spavined, swaybacked plow horse with singed hide, the sodbuster, his wife, and the child, and as they stood in John Lewis’s office that cold morning, he despaired of going on a wedding trip with Becky anytime soon.
    The family’s clothing, probably little better than rags in the first place, was soot-stained and torn, but it was the look in their eyes that stabbed at something in the depths of the marshal’s soul. They’d fought tooth and nail, these people, endured hardships of every sort, made all the sacrifices anybody could rightly expect of them, probably, but now they were beaten, even if they didn’t seem to know it yet.
    “It was the McKettricks,” the man said before he’d even given his name. “They burned us out last night. Left their brand on a tree, like they was proud of what they done.”
    Tears welled in the woman’s eyes—she was a plain thing, a mere scrap of a female, barely bigger, it seemed to John, than the child she clasped in both arms. “We weren’t hurting anybody,” she said. For reasons John would never understand, folks always thought nothing bad ought to happen to them if they weren’t causing harm to others. It was a noble thought; too bad the world didn’t work like that on its best day.
    Belatedly, John recalled his raising in a good Christian home and thrust himself to his feet. He rounded the desk without a word, drew up a chair, and eased the woman into it. The baby, warmly wrapped and wiggly as a pup in a grain sack, made a small sound, part cough, part whimper.
    “You folks hungry?” John asked. The man stood behind the woman, ignoring a second chair over by the wall, his hands resting protectively on her shoulders. His jaw was hard, his eyes too old for the rest of him, his body thin and slight. “I’ve got hot coffee here, and I can send over to the hotel for some food.”
    The woman swallowed, the man shook his head, quick and fierce. “We ain’t got the money to pay,” he said.