The Marriage Barter. Christine JohnsonЧитать онлайн книгу.

      Chapter One

      Evans Grove, Nebraska

      Late April, 1875

      Get in, do the job and get out.

      It sounded simple, but Wyatt Reed knew that “simple” jobs seldom turned out that way.

      All he had to do was escort a bunch of orphans to Greenville. That’s what the town’s wealthiest citizen, Felix Baxter, had told him. Apparently, the kids had gotten off in Evans Grove when robbers held up their train. They were supposed to continue on to Greenville the next day. Two weeks had passed, and still no sign of the children.

      Baxter had sent telegrams and only got excuses. The town was fed up with waiting, and wanted the children now. That’s where Wyatt came in.

      The thing he couldn’t understand was why. From what he could tell, the orphans had been rounded up out of Eastern cities and sent west by one of those do-gooder charities, the Orphan Salvation Society. Families were found for the children along the way, and Greenville was the final stop. They’d only get the worst of the lot, the children that hadn’t been taken in anywhere else. Logic said this would be a rough bunch of kids, yet Baxter, claiming to speak for the town, had pounded his fist on his desk when demanding they come to Greenville as promised. The town wanted those children badly—too badly.

      It made no sense, but Wyatt wasn’t hired to ask questions. He was a tracker. He found what needed finding, and he wasn’t about to turn down the kind of money Baxter had spread out in front of him.

      Get in, do the job and get out.

      With luck, he’d finish before the catch in this supposedly simple job reared its head. If not, he’d hightail it out of Evans Grove on his trusted mount, Dusty.

      Wyatt dismounted in front of the hotel, his bum knee stiff after the twelve-mile ride from Greenville, and surveyed his surroundings. Baxter said he’d find the orphans here. The town was quiet, cozy, the kind of place where everyone knew everyone. No place for him.

      He could spot a few signs of last month’s dam break that he’d read about in the newspapers. Water stains marked the wood siding of the hotel at porch height. The lower floor must have escaped flooding. The front door stood open and a couple of gnarled old men sat on the bench outside spitting into a cracked chamber pot that served as a spittoon. Otherwise, the place looked deserted.

      “Hotel open?” he asked. Locating eight missing orphans would take more than a couple hours. Any hitch, and he’d need a room.

      The men on the porch eyed him warily before the one with a mangled ear managed to grunt in the affirmative.

      “Thank you.” Wyatt tipped a finger to his well-worn Stetson. “Got a town hall?”

      The cabbage-eared man pointed north, across the street and toward a grove of hackberry trees. Beyond them stood a single-story building large enough to house a meeting room. Must be the place, but would the mayor be there at four-thirty in the afternoon? In towns this small, the mayor usually worked his business by day and officiated in the evening.

      He absently patted his ill-tempered Arabian. The horse nipped at his hand as if to tell Wyatt that he should settle them both for the night, but he wanted to see what he was up against. When a boy came bounding out of the hotel, eager to set Wyatt and Dusty up with quarters, Wyatt let him lead the horse to the livery but told the lad he’d register for a room later. For now, he had business to attend to.

      First step in tracking is to get your bearings. Wyatt looked past the hotel to a saloon. Piano music tinkled out the open door. Some men fell prey to the lure of whiskey and gambling. In the end, they always lost. Wyatt should know. He’d done his share of stumbling in the war, but he hadn’t touched a drop since the march through Georgia. He set his jaw against the swell of memory.

      He had a job to do. The sooner he got it done, the better. Baxter had only given him a quarter of the fee up front. The rest would come upon completion.

      He looked past the saloon to the creek. Piles of brick and lumber stood between the grain mill and the other creek-side buildings that had suffered the greatest damage. Rebuilding had already begun.

      In the opposite direction, the street stretched east toward a pretty little church with a white steeple pointed high into the blue sky. It could have been plunked down here from any New England town. That old longing for the faith he used to know welled up out of nowhere. Wyatt pushed it aside. God wouldn’t want someone like him.

      Beyond the church loomed an unmarked building and then the general store. Wyatt strolled in that direction. A wagon rumbled past, and several women picked their way around muddy potholes. One glanced his way, and he nodded politely. She looked away and whispered to her companion, probably wondering who he was. This sure wasn’t a town where a stranger could go unnoticed.

      The cries of children rang out in the distance. The orphans? Or just the local boys and girls? He had no way of knowing. Orphans didn’t wear signs. They didn’t look any different than any other child. Except, like him, they didn’t have a home. Like him, they belonged to no one. Like him, their future looked bleak, and they’d know it. They wouldn’t be laughing and squealing. Those playing children couldn’t be the orphans. No, orphans didn’t belong in a hopeful town with scrubbed buildings and spring blossoms any more than he did.

      He absently patted the front of his buckskin jacket and his too-thin wallet. After this job, he’d have enough to settle in San Francisco. He wouldn’t have to track another fugitive or desperate soul. Maybe he’d open a shop, do something respectable. Yep, once he got paid in full, he’d never again have to take orders from men whose honor he couldn’t trust. But he hadn’t gotten paid yet.

      Wyatt had lived in Greenville less than two months, but it was long enough to hear rumors about Baxter that made him doubt the man’s sunny promise of a simple, quick and completely legal job.

      “Mamaaaaaa!”

      The plaintive cry halted Wyatt in his tracks. A child. Very young. Female. His tracker’s instinct clicked into place. Her hiccups and wordless sobs came from very close, between the church and the unmarked building. These weren’t the ordinary cries of childhood. This girl was terrified.

      He slipped into the narrow alley between buildings, but a pile of empty crates blocked his view.

      “Ma.” Hiccup. “Ma.”

      Wyatt paused before the crates. What was he doing? He didn’t know the first thing about children, and he didn’t know a soul in this town. Where would he take her once he found her?

      He started to back away until a string of unintelligible words came out at a fevered pitch, followed by what sounded like choking. If someone didn’t calm that child down, she’d stop breathing. Seeing as he was the only one nearby, that someone would have to be him.

      He skirted the pile of empty crates, but she wasn’t there. He followed the sobs to the back of the building and a muddy lane where a small, thin child with raven-black pigtails sat in the dirt. He wasn’t much of a judge of children’s ages, but she looked younger than school-age. Maybe three or four. Too young to be wandering around on her own.

      Wyatt hesitated, unsure what to do as she lifted her tear-stained face to take in his considerable height. The sobs stopped. Her blue eyes widened so big they seemed to take over her whole face. One grubby hand went into her mouth, just like...

      Wyatt stared.

      By all the stars in the sky, she looked just like his kid sister, Ava, had at that age. Same pigtails. Same blue eyes. Same need to suck on her fingers.

      The girl