Linda Miller - Here and Then

Sissy tossed the watch back to the table, glared at Rue for a moment, then turned and sashayed out of the room.

Rue was secretly relieved and turned all her concentration on the matter at hand. She had enough winnings to buy that horrible gingham dress and rent herself a room at the boardinghouse; now all she needed to do was ease out of the game without making her companions angry.

She yawned expansively.

Garters gave her a quelling look, clearly not ready to give up on the evening, and the game went on. And on.

It was starting to get embarrassing the way Rue kept winning, when all of a sudden the inner door to the saloon crashed open. There, filling the doorway like some fugitive from a Louis L’Amour novel, was Farley Haynes.

Finding Rue with five cards in her hand and a stack of coins in front of her, he swore. Sissy peered around his broad shoulder and smiled, just to let Rue know she’d been the one to bring about her impending downfall.

“Game’s over,” Farley said in that gruff voice, and none of the players took exception to the announcement. In fact, except for Rue, they all scattered, muttering various excuses and hasty pleasantries as they rushed out.

Rue stood and began stuffing her winnings into the pockets of her jeans. “Don’t get your mustache in a wringer, Marshal,” she said. “I’ve got what I came for and now I’m leaving.”

Farley shook his head in quiet, angry wonderment and gestured toward the door with one hand. “Come along with me, Miss Claridge. You’re under arrest.”

Farley Haynes set his jaw, took Miss Rue Claridge by the elbow and hauled her toward the door. He prided himself on being a patient man, slow to wrath, as the Good Book said, but this woman tried his forbearance beyond all reasonable measure. Furthermore, he just flat didn’t like the sick-calf feeling he got whenever he looked at her.

“Now, just a minute, Marshal,” Miss Claridge snapped, trying to pull free of his grasp. “You haven’t read me my rights!”

Farley tightened his grip, but he was careful not to bruise that soft flesh of hers. He didn’t hold with manhandling a lady—not even one who barely measured up to the term when it came to comportment. To his way of thinking, Rue Claridge added up just fine as far as appearances went.

“What rights?” he demanded as they reached the shadowy alley behind the saloon. He had the damnedest, most unmarshal-like urge to drag Rue against his chest and kiss her, right then and there, and that scared the molasses out of him. The thought of kissing somebody in pants had never so much as crossed Farley’s mind before, and he hoped to God it never would again.

“Forget it,” she said, and her disdainful tone nettled Farley sorely. “It’s pretty clear that around this town, I don’t have any rights. I hope you’re enjoying this, because it won’t be long until you find yourself dealing with the likes of Susan B. Anthony!”

“Who?” Farley hadn’t been this vexed since the year he was twelve, when Becky Hinehammer had called him a coward for refusing to walk the ridgepole on the schoolhouse roof. His pride had driven him to prove her wrong, and he’d gotten a broken collarbone for his trouble, along with a memorable blistering from his pa, once he’d healed up properly, for doing such a damn-fool thing in the first place.

He propelled Miss Claridge out of the alley and onto the main street of town. Pine River was relatively quiet that night.

They reached the jailhouse, and Farley pushed the front door open, then escorted his captive straight back to the jail’s only cell.

Once his saucy prisoner was secured, Farley hung his hat on a peg next to the door and put away his rifle. It didn’t occur to him to unstrap his gun belt; that was something he did only when it was time to stretch out for the night. Even then, he liked to have his .45 within easy reach.

He found a spare enamel mug, wiped it out with an old dish towel snatched from a nail behind the potbellied stove, and poured coffee. Then he carried the steaming brew to the cell and handed it through the bars to Miss Claridge. “What kind of name is Rue?” he asked, honestly puzzled.

This woman was full of mysteries, and he found himself wanting to solve them one by one.

His guest blew on the coffee, took a cautious sip and made a face. At least she was womanly enough to mind her manners. Farley had half expected her to slurp up the brew like an old mule skinner and maybe spit a mouthful into the corner. Instead, she came right back with, “What kind of name is Farley?”

If she wasn’t going to give a direct answer, neither was he. “You’re a snippy little piece, aren’t you?”

Rue smiled, revealing a good, solid set of very white teeth. Folk wisdom said a woman lost a tooth for every child she bore, but Farley figured this gal would probably still have a mouthful even if she gave birth to a dozen babies.

“And you’re lucky I know you’re calling me ‘a piece’ in the old-fashioned sense of the word,” she said pleasantly. “Because if you meant it the way men mean it where—when—I come from, I’d throw this wretched stuff you call coffee all over you.”

Farley didn’t back away; he wouldn’t let himself be intimidated by a smudged little spitfire in britches. “I reckon I’ve figured out why your folks gave you that silly name,” he said. “They knew someday some poor man would rue the day you were ever born.”

A flush climbed Rue’s cheeks, and Farley reflected that her skin was as fine as her teeth. She was downright pretty, if a little less voluptuous than he’d have preferred—or would be, if anybody ever took the time to clean her up.

Considering that task made one side of Farley’s mouth twitch in a fleeting grin.

He saw her blush again, then lift the mug to her mouth with both hands and take a healthy swig.

“God, I can’t believe I’m actually drinking this sludge!” she spat out just a moment later. “What did you do, boil down a vat of axle grease?”

Farley turned away to hide another grin, sighing as he pretended to straighten the papers on his desk. “The Presbyterians are surely going to have their hands full getting you back on the straight and narrow,” he allowed.

Rue stared at Farley’s broad, muscular back and swallowed. She was exhausted and confused and, since she hadn’t had anything to eat in almost a century, hungry. She kept expecting to wake up, even though she knew this situation was all too real.

She sat on the edge of the cell’s one cot, which boasted a thin, bare mattress and a gray woolen blanket that looked as though it could have belonged to the poorest private in General Lee’s rebel army.

“Did you ever get around to having your supper?” Farley’s voice was gruff, but there was something oddly comforting about the deep, resonating timbre of it.

Rue didn’t look at him; there were tears in her eyes, and she was too proud to let them show. “No,” she answered.

Farley’s tone remained gentle, and Rue knew he had moved closer. “It’s late, but I’ll see if I can’t raise Bessie over at the Hang-Dog and get her to fix you something.”

Rue was still too stricken to speak; she just nodded.

Only when the marshal had left the jailhouse on his errand of mercy did Rue allow herself a loud sniffle. She stood and gripped the bars in both hands.

Maybe because she was tired, she actually hoped, for a few fleeting moments, that the key would be hanging from a peg within stretching distance on her cell, like in a TV Western.

In this case, fact was not stranger than fiction—there was no key in sight.

She began to pace, muttering to herself. If she ever got out of this, she’d write a book about it, tell the world. Appear on Donahue and Oprah.

Rue stopped, the nail of her index finger caught between her teeth. Who would ever believe her, besides Elisabeth?

She sat on the edge of the cot again and drew deep breaths until she felt a little less like screaming in frustration and panic.

Half an hour had passed, by the old clock facing Farley’s messy desk, when the marshal returned carrying a basket covered with a blue-and-white checkered napkin.

Rue’s stomach rumbled audibly and, to cover her embarrassment at that, she said defiantly, “You were foolish to leave me unattended, Marshal. I might very well have escaped.”

He chuckled, extracted the coveted key from the pocket of his rough spun trousers and unlocked the cell door. “Is that so, Miss Spitfire? Then why didn’t you?”

She narrowed her eyes. “Don’t be so damn cocky,” she warned. “For all you know, I might be part of a gang. Why, twenty or thirty outlaws might ride in here and dynamite this place.”

Farley set the basket down and moseyed out of the cell, as unconcerned as if his prisoner were an addlepated old lady. Rue was vaguely insulted that the lawman didn’t consider her more dangerous.

“Shut up and eat your supper,” he said, not unkindly.

Rue plopped down on the edge of the cot again. Farley had set the basket on the only other piece of furniture in the cell, a rickety old stool, and she pulled that close.

There was cold roast venison in the basket, along with a couple of hard flour-and-water biscuits and an apple.

Rue ate greedily, but the whole time she watched Farley out of the corner of one eye. He was doing paperwork at the desk, by the light of a flickering kerosene lamp.

“Aren’t you ever going home?” she inquired when she’d consumed every scrap of the food.

Farley didn’t look up. “I’ve got a little place out back,” he said. “You’d better get some sleep, Miss Claridge. Likely as not, you’ll have the ladies of the town to deal with come morning. They’ll want to take you on as a personal mission.”

Rue let her forehead rest against an icy bar and sighed. “Great.”

When Farley finally raised his eyes and saw that Rue was still standing there staring at him, he put down his pencil. “Am I keeping you awake?”

“It’s just…” Rue paused, swallowed, started again. “Well, I’d like to wash up, that’s all. And maybe brush my teeth.” In my own bathroom, thank you. In my own wonderful, crazy, modern world.

Farley stretched, then brought a large kettle from a cabinet near the stove. “I guess you’ll just have to rinse and spit, since the town of Pine River doesn’t provide toothbrushes, but I can heat up some wash water for you.”

He disappeared through a rear door, returning minutes later with the kettle, which he set on the stove top.

Rue bit her lower lip. It was bad enough that the marshal expected her to bathe in that oversize bird cage he called a cell. How clean could a girl get with two quarts of water?

“This is a clear violation of the Geneva Convention,” she said.

Farley looked at her over one sturdy shoulder, shook his head in obvious consternation and went back to his desk. “If you hadn’t told me you and Lizzie Fortner were kinfolk, I’d have guessed it anyway. Both of you talk like you’re from somewhere a long ways from here.”

Rue sagged against the cell door and closed her eyes for a moment. “So far away you couldn’t begin to comprehend it, cowboy,” she muttered.

Farley’s deep voice contained a note of distracted humor. “Since I didn’t quite make out what you just said, I’m going to assume it was something kindly,” he told her without looking up from those fascinating papers of his.

“Don’t you have something waiting for you at home—a dog or a goldfish or something?” Rue asked. She didn’t know which she was more desperate for—a little privacy or the simple comfort of ordinary conversation.