Chapter 8 – An Unexpected Journey
By the time we closed up Maude's that night, I was exhausted. I'm pretty sure from the way Doralice looked, she was too. "Are you sure this is what we wanna do with the rest of our lives?" I asked her as we stumbled into the house.
"I don't know," was the answer I got from her as she collapsed down onto the settee. "Have we ever been this busy before?"
"I'm sure we must have, but I just can't remember when," came my reply as I lowered myself gently next to her. I stifled a yawn. "We were gonna have coffee when we came home tonight."
"I know. I think we better have some real coffee first." We both kind of giggled. "I'll get up in five minutes and make some." It was her turn to yawn. "I promise."
"Sounds good to me." That was the last thing I remember until several hours later. I woke up cramped, sore and stiff, with Doralice in my arms, both of us sprawled across the settee. We'd never made it to either kind of coffee.
I got my bearings and picked her up gently. She looked like an angel, and for just a moment I had a flash back to a memory from a long time ago. One of me picking up Caroline and carrying her up a staircase to my bedroom, the one and only time we were ever together. I shook my head and the memory faded. This was the here and now, and the woman in my arms was alive and breathtaking. She stirred and murmured something as I lay her gently on the bed, and I bent down to catch her words.
"Don't you dare leave," she whispered in my ear as she pulled me down next to her. And everyone and everything except the aqua eyed blonde in my arms faded into the past, and I knew that I would never let this angel go.
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The smell of coffee, actual coffee, is what woke me, finally. It was several hours later and I yawned and stretched, much as I had that last morning long ago, but this time there were no worries about anyone trying to kill us. "Are you awake in there?" I heard from the kitchen. "Coffee's ready."
"Soon as I get some clothes on," I called back, and scrambled to get dressed. Not only was coffee ready, there were eggs and bacon and biscuits, and the most perfect looking face I'd ever seen.
"Well, where are you going off to this morning?" Doralice asked as we ate breakfast.
I was almost in a daze from last night, or maybe I should say this morning. "Hmmm? Oh, this morning. I have to go to Cristian's and read over that court order again. There's somethin' in there I've missed and I've got to find it." I took another bite and waved a piece of bacon at her. "Good thing you don't do this every morning. I'd be as fat as Bret." My brother Bret was NOT fat.
"I can think of ways to work off any excess energy you might have," she grinned at me as she leaned over her plate. Damn, this was the woman I thought I'd never find. Her idea of a good time was to spend the day in bed. And I don't mean sleeping. We could be in serious trouble.
It was almost two hours later before I left the house, headed for Cristian's office. Josie told me he had a client in with him and I decided to wait. Within fifteen minutes Dave Parker came barrelin' out of there and went past me without even so much as a 'hello.' That was rather unusual for Dave, but I chalked it up to 'professional discourtesy.' Parker liked to harass me about all the times I'd played lawman in one capacity or another.
"Go on in, Bart," Josie urged, and I did just that.
Cristian was behind his desk but got up, and we shook hands. "Sorry to drop Doralice like that on you, but she was askin' me questions I wasn't gonna answer."
"It's alright, at least that's out of the way now."
"Uh, Parker bein' here isn't anything we should be worried about, is it?"
He took a long time to answer, and I didn't catch it. "No."
I sat down. "I hate to bother you, but I need to see both the original bill of sale and the court order turning Maude's over to Jedidiah Milford Pike. I'd like to just drag this chair into a corner and go over everything again."
"You think of something that you missed before? I know that was bothering you."
"Nope. But I'm not leavin' here until I've figured it out."
That elicited a sly grin out of Cristian. "Bring your bedroll?"
I laughed. "Hey, you're gettin' better at those jokes. No, I'm not spending the night here. How long's Josie gonna be here today? And can I use her desk? Or maybe I should ask, can we lock the front door while I use her desk?"
Cristian nodded, pleased with himself for throwing a joke at me that I actually laughed at. "Josie's just about to leave for the day, and I have a deed to write. So yes you may use her desk, and yes we will lock the front door."
Thirty minutes later I was sittin' in the front office reading over the bill of sale when I spotted what I was looking for. At least what I saw triggered something else in my head, and I switched my focus to the court order delivered to Maude. I read it through and went to ask Cristian what a particular phrase meant. He gave me the answer I expected, and I sat down in front of his desk again. "Uh, Bart . . . "
"Stop working on that deed, Cristian. There's somethin' you need to do."
"Can't it wait till I'm done here?"
"Not if we've got a prayer of beatin' Jedidiah Pike. It says here in the court order that Maude's got the right to request her adversary's physical presence at the thirty-day deadline meeting, and if the time period has to be extended to accommodate her request, the court must be notified by the twenty-day mark. That would be tomorrow. That gives you time to make the request.
"Wire the court that issued this order and politely insist on Mr. Pike's presence in court."
Cristian looked alarmed. "But if he's in New York, he'll never get here by the court date."
"I don't believe he's in New York. I think he's a lot closer. And even if he's not, the court will be forced by its own language to grant whatever time he needs to get here."
"What good will that do?"
"There's somethin' I need to find out, and I have to go to Dodge City to do it. I can make it there and back, but I sure could use the extra time. This extension of time might give it to me. And if I don't get it, I'll just have to figure out a way. I know what I'm dealin' with now, and if I'm right, Maude can beat this whole thing."
The expression on Cristian's face had slowly changed from one of disbelief and doubt to complete acceptance. He gathered the deed he'd been working on into a neat pile and copied down all the pertinent information off of the court order, then handed me a key. "Will you need to leave before I get back? If you do, put the paperwork in the safe and lock the door behind you."
"Probably. Thanks for not askin' any more questions. I'm not sure I could explain it without the proof in Dodge City."
"Bart, there's something you need to know. That visit from Sheriff Parker – you asked me a question and I didn't give you a truthful answer. I couldn't then, and I shouldn't now, but it looks like it's something you need to know."
I was momentarily confused. "Alright. What's this all about?"
"The cowboy that tried to shoot you when Maude and I were gone to Tucson? Did you ever wonder just what his name was?"
I shook my head. "Never gave it any thought. He was just a drunken cowboy."
"No, he wasn't. His name was LeRoy Donovan."
