Free The Outlaw's Bride by Catherine Palmer Page A

store.”
    “Hiding out?” Brady snarled.
    “Sheriff. Buchanan.” Dolan put up his small, ring-bedecked hand. “Men, why don’t you take your seats by the fire? I’ll see that Mrs. Buchanan gets her fabric.”
    “Why, thank you, Mr. Dolan.” Isobel awarded him a radiant smile. “How kind of you.”
    Noah had no intention of leaving her side for a moment. Dolan made his way around the counter and hooked the bolt of blue calico down into his arms. “It’sfifty cents a yard, ma’am.” He tossed the fabric on the counter. “That yellow silk is five dollars a yard.”
    Noah sensed Snake Jackson eyeing Isobel from his position against a wooden post.
    “Five dollars. My goodness!” She fingered the yellow silk and then the coarse cotton printed with tiny white sprigs on a blue field. “And the width?”
    “Twenty-two inches for the calico. Eighteen for the silk.”
    “I’ll need at least twenty yards to make a dress, won’t I, Mr. Dolan?”
    Noah watched her turn the dull fabric this way and that. Then, unexpectedly, she turned to face Snake Jackson. “Is there something wrong, sir?” she asked. “You have been staring at me.”
    Without taking his eyes from her, he straightened. “You always wear that shawl, ma’am?”
    Her cheeks paled. “May I ask why you would want to know that, sir?”
    “I’m looking for a woman I seen in a shawl just like that one. A woman about your size—”
    “Snake,” Evans called out, rising from his chair. “Get over here, and leave them people alone.”
    “You have a mighty odd accent, ma’am,” Snake went on as Evans approached. “Like Mexican talk, maybe?”
    She tried to smile. “I’ve never been to Mexico, sir.”
    “Get your snake-eyed mug back here.” Evans stomped up to the counter, a half-empty bottle of whiskey dangling from one hand. “’Scuse ol’ Snake, here, ma’am. He thinks he’s seein’ ghosties ever’where.”
    “I am seein’ ghosties. Mexican ghosties with little lace veils.”
    “Let’s get out of here, honey,” Noah said, reaching his arm around her shoulders. “We’ll take ten yards of the blue stuff, Dolan. Mark it down, and I’ll send you the money when Chisum pays me.”
    A slow smile spread over the Irishman’s face. “You’ll have a long wait for John Chisum to be paying you, Mr. Buchanan. I’m afraid he’s in jail.”
    “So I hear. They tell me some stinkin’ coyote of a man is behind it.”
    Dolan measured the yards of fabric, his face impassive. “The coyote is a smart animal, I’m told.”
    “Feeds on carrion,” Noah shot back.
    Isobel placed a placating hand over Noah’s. “Have you buttons?” she asked Dolan, tucking the fabric under her arm.
    “We don’t carry buttons. Most people cut the buttons off their old clothes and sew them on their new ones.”
    “Hooks?”
    “Those we have. I assume you’ll be wanting thread?”
    “Blue, of course.”
    “Do you have a sewing machine, Mrs. Buchanan?”
    “Mrs. McSween has a Wheeler and Wilson machine—” Susan blurted. “That is…she’s in St. Louis and I’m sure she wouldn’t mind if Mrs. Buchanan were to borrow it.”
    “McSween, eh?” Dolan squinted at her. “So you’re working for Mac, are you, Miss Gates?”
    “The lady’s a schoolteacher,” Noah spoke up. “She’s here to teach kids how to read and write.”
    Snake sidled along the counter. With one dirty finger he prodded Noah’s arm. “What I want to knowis why you didn’t do yer shoppin’ at Tunstall’s store, Buchanan.”
    “I reckon you’d know the answer to that, Jackson.”
    “And what’s that supposed to mean, huh? You sayin’ I done the Britisher in?”
    Noah smiled. “I’m saying you’d know we couldn’t shop at Tunstall’s because it’s shut down this morning. I didn’t say you killed him. You did.”
    “Why, you—”
    “All right, hold it there, now!” The voice of young Billy Bonney snuffed the argument as the Kid strode through the front door,