Shotgun Bride by Linda Lael Miller Page A

that the brides were busy with their pies over at the hotel, the store was quiet, and Mandy’s words, intended to be private, echoed from one end of the place to the other.
    Minnie’s small, eager eyes widened a little. “Why, Sister,” she said, leaning toward her, “what on earth would you want with ammunition?”
    “Even a woman of God has to take care of herself,” Mandy said, and then waited for the inevitable lightning bolt. It was a relief, and a bit of a surprise, when nothing happened.
    “These are troubled times,” Minnie agreed. “I wouldn’t give you two hoots in Hades for that McKettrick bunch’s chances, for instance.”
    Mandy stiffened, perturbed. “What do you mean by that?”
    Minnie shrugged her skinny shoulders. She was a painfully plain woman, her flesh pockmarked, her hair wrenched back from her face, slick as an onion skin, but it wasn’t those things that made her homely. It was, Mandy concluded, the way she relished seeing trouble come to other folks. “High and mighty, that’s what they are. Well, now that Mr. Holt Cavanagh has come to live among us, and they’ve got some real competition, they might just take a fall. Long overdue, if you ask me.”
    But I didn’t ask you, did I? Mandy thought sourly. “I reckon you’d be hurting without their business,” she said out loud, holding the other woman’s gaze. “Lots of folks around here would.”
    The store mistress had enough decency to color up a little, though it wasn’t likely she’d see the error of her ways and change herself accordingly. In Mandy’s experience, people either stayed the same or got worse.
    Minnie took the twenty cents and doled out the shells, slapping them down with a small harrumph sound. “I still can’t reckon up what a nun would need with shotgun shells.”
    Mandy smiled. “I suppose you’ll keep on trying to work it out, just the same,” she said sweetly, tucking her purchase into the pocket of her habit.
    She got as far as the door.
    “Sister?” Minnie called after her.
    Mandy sighed before turning back and smiling a smile she hoped was a shining example of Christian forbearance. “Yes?”
    “You tell John Lewis that folks are thinking about him.
    Mandy felt herself soften a mite. “I will,” she replied, and went out, but as she walked down the sidewalk toward the Arizona Hotel, with the shells in the pocket of her habit, she wasn’t thinking about the stricken marshal, or even about Kade McKettrick, who occupied more space in her thoughts most times than she would willingly have accorded him. Gig Curry, her personal devil, was far from her mind, as were her misplaced and ailing mother and Cree.
    On her way, she saw a poster—J IM D ANDY AND HIS W ILD W EST SHOW , she read. C OMING SOON.
    Her step quickened, and a warm thrill coursed through her.

Chapter 19
     
     
    T hey found the cavalrymen at midmorning the next day, a full dozen of them, all dead, and drenched in blood. Jeb’s stomach did a slow, backward roll.
    Some of the soldiers had been stripped of their trademark blue coats, as well as their shirts, others of their boots or trousers, and all of them had been relieved of their hair. The horses were gone, and so were the regulation carbines and the side arms issued to every soldier.
    The hairs stood up on the back of Jeb’s neck, and like Rafe and the others, he’d drawn his .45 as instinctively as a breath. “Sweet Jesus,” he marveled, averting his eyes for a moment. “Indians?”
    Rafe cursed, then spat. The stench from the dead men was all-encompassing, swamping the nostrils and throat, overpowering the other senses as well, and the flies, the flies were everywhere, crawling over every inch of bare flesh, droning in the otherwise echoing stillness. “Maybe they wanted us to think so,” he said with a shake of his head, scanning the quiet countryside around them, in case of an ambush. He drew his bandanna up around his mouth and nose, as Jeb did, though it didn’t