Rustler Mountain

Chapter 3

Four days without food and I couldn’t stand it anymore. Not for me, but for the boys. I could hear their stomachs growling when they were trying to sleep. I sneaked into another camp and took a rasher of bacon. But when we started cooking it up, the smell filled the air and I was afraid they’d know it was us who took it. But no one came to our camp or said anything.

—Austin Wilder’s journal, May 30, 1848

M illie felt as if she was heading to the gallows. Which was sort of amusing, all things considered. Because not a Talbot in history had ever been sent to the gallows. But Jesse and William Wilder had been hanged publicly on the courthouse lawn on charges of robbery and murder.

She supposed it was really no wonder that Austin wasn’t a huge fan of town history. But it wasn’t her fault that his ancestors had been outlaws.

It felt relevant, though, as she put on a dress that only a few months ago she knew Michael would have pretended to like. She was getting ready to endure public humiliation at the town council meeting where she was going to get outvoted, and there was nothing she could do about it.

If this was her lesson in strength, she was going to be irritated. She had really hoped that the lesson was going to be that she could gain victory as long as she was willing to put herself in uncomfortable situations.

Maybe it was a sign of growth to be okay with the fact that she had to go even though she was going to lose.

Okay was perhaps a strong word.

She wasn’t going to be a no-show. She had too much pride for that. She wished she had had a little bit more pride before now. Wished she had had just a little bit more pride when she had been dating Michael. Because then maybe she would have seen all the relentless red flags in their relationship. But the problem was she had just been so.... She really didn’t like the truth. Because the truth was that she had been so surprised any man was paying attention to her that she had been willing to overlook the way he managed to give compliments that hurt. The way he had twisted any given situation and made her question herself.

It was always going to be a broken dynamic when one partner thought they were the catch, and the other one thought they were lucky.

She knew that now. But she had been surprised he’d wanted to date her for as long as he had. Let alone ask her to marry him. She felt the odds of that happening again were low.

Wow. Be sadder, Millie.

She looked at her reflection in the mirror and wished that the woman staring back at her didn’t look quite so tired.

Someone was going to mention that when she walked into the town council meeting. She just knew it.

She wrinkled her nose, and that made her laugh, because it was silly. And it reminded her of her mom. She could remember her doing that, sitting at the library desk, dealing with a difficult patron with endless grace and wisdom, and then turning to where Millie was sitting behind her, scrunching her whole face to let Millie know just how much her mom actually disapproved of the person’s behavior.

That was an interesting side effect of losing her dad. It had brought the loss of her mother closer to the surface too.

But she would hold on to the good memory for now. And she would let it boost her out the door and into her car, down the main street, then left to the old courthouse building.

It was a two-story redbrick structure, with a white roof that had a steeple, with an American flag perched up on the top.

There was a wide green lawn where arts and crafts markets were held every Sunday in the summer, and where there was a community picnic on July Fourth. Invariably, there were at least ten different varieties of doodle dog wandering around wearing bandannas, leading their owners on leashes. She supposed she had to admit that even if her museum was voted down, there was still a robust sense of community in Rustler Mountain.

During Christmas there were people who made old-fashioned candy on different street corners and carolers in Victorian clothes walking the sidewalks. There was Butch Hancock’s Wild West Show, which might be controversial—to Austin at least—but brought heavy traffic into town every weekend in the summer, with rodeo events and blacksmithing demonstrations by Jessie Jane Hancock on an old-fashioned forge.

Gold Rush Days was just the most . . . it was the most educational event, and the museum would be a place where that history could be experienced all year long.

What she wanted mattered.

She scowled as she found a parking space and squeezed her little Camry into it. She didn’t need to be placating herself already. Telling herself that it was going to be okay if she lost before the actual loss was ridiculous.

She would win . She would win.

Except she knew everybody who would be at the meeting and she knew exactly how they were going to vote.

This was the problem with living in the same small town for all of her life. She loved it here. She really did. But everyone had a prescribed role to play. Austin could act as if it was irritating that everyone thought of him as a villain. But he had played that part by leaving her metaphorically tied to the train tracks. As for everybody on the town council, and the other founding families . . . half of them were acting like they were still in high school. And what could be done about that?

She hated it. But there wasn’t much that she could do about it. Except leave. And she wasn’t going to leave. This was her home. This was....

She felt as if she might float away all of a sudden, sitting there in her car with her fingers still wrapped around the steering wheel. Because home meant her mother in the library, and her father at the sheriff’s office, and the family name, and now she felt untethered.

She was still a Talbot.

But it didn’t seem to matter when she was the family representative, not the way it had when it was her dad. Not even the way it had when it was her mother, who had been the very opposite of a stern librarian. Who had offered a safe place for everyone in the community to come in to learn.

She had known that she could never be her dad, so she had set out to try to give the community what her mother had.

She had completed an online degree to get her master’s in library science through an online program and had maintained a support position at the library throughout. Because her mother had been sick. Then partway through Millie’s degree, her mother had died. She had always been glad that she hadn’t gone away to school.

But it had meant that she hadn’t really met other people. She was with the same people she had always known, and who had always known her. Then when Michael had shown an interest in her, she had thought everything was changing.

In hindsight, she suspected he had probably just wanted to be with a Talbot. He had believed there would be a certain sort of cachet in being with her.

But she wasn’t her father. She didn’t walk around with the heroism of the past stitched into her very bones. He’d done that. He had worn his badge with ease and authority. He’d been affable, but firm when he needed to be.

He’d been the legend of the Wild West sheriff come to the modern age.

Like his father before him, and his father before him.

And then Millie had come along. She was the only girl in generations of Talbots, and her parents had never been able to have another child. She hadn’t felt compelled, or even able, to carry on the lawman legacy of the Talbots.

She didn’t think it was a coincidence that Michael stopped being so careful about his affair after her dad died.

He’d clearly decided not to preserve the future he’d been planning with her, because it wasn’t going to give him what he wanted.

A chance to climb the social ladder in a town where said ladder was barely a step stool.

She made a short, frustrated growling noise, hit the steering wheel, and got out of the car. She shut the door, not bothering to lock it, because she never did in Rustler Mountain, and crossed the grass before taking the steps two at a time up to the front door of the courthouse. She pushed the black door open and walked inside, her shoes echoing on the dark wood floor.

She could still remember when this place had been the museum. She missed it. Profoundly.

It still smelled the same inside. Hundreds of years of moisture, age, and different wood varnishes mingling together, creating this specific scent only found in historic buildings. There was something about it that felt welcoming to her.

She wanted to get down to the basement to look at all the artifacts.

She wanted.... She felt grounded again. The history of this place, of the people who’d walked these halls, was important.

She wanted to preserve this piece of the past for the future of the town, and for the future of everyone, really. Because she truly believed that history had to be preserved so that people could truly understand the times they lived in now.

Yes, the Wild West was interesting. It was sensational. There were stories of daring cowboys, of wild outlaws. There were also grave stories of injustice. Examples of humans choosing to be the worst versions of themselves over and over again. The way they continued to do. The way they split themselves into groups and marginalized people who didn’t look like them. Who didn’t think like them.

She thought if humanity was ever going to move forward, people had to really understand where they had come from.

She believed it wholeheartedly. Just as she believed that books were the key to changing a person’s heart. That stories were really what taught people that we’re all more alike than different.

So she cared about her little corner of the world. Her little piece of history.

Because she thought all of those things mattered. That children would go through the library and come out different from when they’d come in. That they would come out of living history demonstrations with a deeper understanding of how much progress had been made in the world. And how little at the same time.

She used her passion to steel her nerves as she walked down the hallway and into the meeting room.

It was already full, with most everyone milling around a table in the corner that held cookies no one ever ate, and open bottles of wine that had been donated by Alana from White Owl Vineyards. There was no shortage of vineyards in the area. The climate was great for growing grapes, and there were many fine local wines, which also helped draw tourists to the area. There were wine trail tours that started in Jacksonville, and moved from Ruch to Applegate, and then on to Rustler Mountain. Big vans full of people growing increasingly tipsy as the tour went on. A party atmosphere in every sense of the word.

And of course that was the kind of thing Danielle wanted to foster, which put Alana on Danielle’s side. Unfortunate, because it wasn’t that Millie was opposed to the wine tours. She wanted to support local business in all its forms.

It was just.... She didn’t want to lose what made Rustler Mountain unique.

Marietta Hensley caught her gaze right when she walked in, and it was not a friendly gaze. Marietta was one of Danielle’s dear friends.

Millie wondered what the discussion was around Michael, Danielle, and the fact that their relationship had started with infidelity. Somehow Millie had come out of it as the villain to the people who swore fealty to Danielle.

Actually, she didn’t wonder. Because she didn’t really want to know what array of nonsense had been presented as justification for that.

She was almost certain the biggest get-out-of-jail-free card for Michael and Danielle was that he and Millie hadn’t been married yet. Like that made it better.

“Hi, Millie. You look tired.” Her expression of faux concern was almost comical.

Almost.

“Thanks. I am,” Millie said. Marietta clearly didn’t know what to say to that, so she slowly sidled into a group of people who were already in conversation.

Good to know she still had the ability to kill a social interaction with a well-placed truth.

She searched the room desperately until some of the milling bodies moved and she caught Heather Lin-Stewart’s eye.

Heather scooped up a clear plastic cup of wine and crossed the room, handing it to Millie. “Do you think you’re going to win?” Heather asked.

Heather was probably Millie’s best friend in the world. She had always been nice to Millie. Even in high school.

Heather had gone away to college and had made more friends. She’d gotten married and had kids. She was busy in different ways than Millie, and even though they lived close together it was hard for them to find time to just hang out.

But she had been slated to be a bridesmaid in Millie’s wedding and had offered to personally castrate Michael when Millie had caught him cheating. She was there when it counted.

Like now.

“I don’t think so,” Millie said.

“Meh,” she said, pulling a face. “I have so many great letters for you. Correspondence that Gin Lin got from China, old gold-mining equipment. Copies of some of the claims. My dad cleaned out the storage unit at the back of the property, and it was packed to the gills with that kind of thing.”

“We’ll figure out a way,” Millie said, sounding much more hopeful than she felt. “Even if I have to open the exhibit up in the back room of the library and do rotating displays.” It was a possibility. It didn’t make her happy, but the truth was, it was a possibility. And maybe she needed to start thinking in terms of compromise.

Even if she didn’t want to.

“Well, Danielle is hideous,” Heather said.

“Inside,” she said. “Outside, she’s the opposite of hideous.”

“I know. It would be really convenient if horrible people signaled it. Like poison dart frogs.”

“Yes. It would. As it is, half the time you’re poisoned before you even know you need to look out.”

Not that she and Danielle had ever been friends. But she definitely hadn’t imagined that the woman was sleeping with Millie’s fiancé.

Everyone was beginning to file into their seats, and Millie and Heather were moving in that direction also when a hush fell over the room.

Heads began to turn toward the door, and Millie turned to look as well.

Her heart stopped.

There he was, standing in the doorway, dressed in all black, looking every inch the outlaw.

Black cowboy hat, black shirt, black jeans. Black boots.

Good thing she’d never had a crush on him.

“ No ,” said Heather.

“ Oh ,” said Millie.

“Did you know he was coming?”

“No. He totally.... He said no.”

He scanned the room, and the minute his eyes connected with Millie’s, she found herself completely frozen in place. Like a little sheep that had been spotted by a wolf.

And then he began to move toward her, every step fluid, languid, not doing anything to dispel the feeling that he was predator to her prey.

“Can we have a word?” he asked.

She could feel every eye in the room on her. She really hadn’t expected that. Not at this point. Yes, she had known they would all look at her when she made her presentation and when it was time to vote. They would all look at her and vote no, and feel triumph or pity depending on who they were and which camp they were in. But she hadn’t expected everybody to be staring now, while Austin Wilder stood there in front of her, looking into her.

“Sure,” she said, glancing at Heather and then turning to face him. He tilted his head toward the door, then turned away from her, clearly indicating that she was supposed to follow him. So she did.

Her footsteps seemed loud in the room, and it felt as if everyone had gone completely quiet. As if everyone was watching them.

They went out to the hallway, and he turned toward her, arms crossed over his broad chest. “I might be convinced to vote for you,” he said.

“Really?”

She felt a rush of relief, and suddenly her knees were weak. But she was pretty sure that was from relief, and not the fact that he towered over her. She had been so overwhelmed by him yesterday, she hadn’t fully processed just how tall he was.

She only came up to the center of his chest. He made her feel like a mouse. Fitting, since many of the people in that room had called her Millie Mouse when they were in high school. But she was not a mouse. Or maybe she was, but she was a very determined one, who had gone up the mountain and come down with Austin Wilder. To her own astonishment.

“What changed your mind?”

“Well, I wouldn’t go saying I did anything quite so dramatic as change my mind. But I had a think about it. I don’t have any affection for the Wild West shows, or any reenactments that include the death of my namesake. Having said that, what I do have affection for is history. And I would be willing to give you some of the information I have about my family if I could get access to letters and journals from the perspective of yours.”

“Why?”

He lifted a broad shoulder. “Research.”

“For?”

“Something that isn’t your business. I’m not looking to pick out a china pattern with you, Millie. I just want to see what you have about the Talbots. And anything that might exist about the arrest of the Wilders, and the shooting of Austin.”

“Sure. Of course.” She wondered if she should offer to give him a little bit more say in the different events connected with the Gold Rush Days. But she found she didn’t want to give him a say. She wanted tradition. Because she felt especially attached to it right now. Because of her dad. Because of how much she missed him, and how much he had loved Gold Rush Days.

How much her family’s past had meant to him.

That the Talbot family had cleaned up the streets, not just of Rustler Mountain, but of the West. Because the Wilder brothers had been a scourge.

She looked up into Austin Wilder’s face, with those thoughts still whirling in her head.

“And this is all you want? You’ll vote yes, and you’ll give me access to information on your family?”

“Conditionally. I’ll vote yes, but if I don’t like the way you proceed, then I won’t give you anything of my family’s.”

“That’s fair.”

“Good. Now let’s go.”

When they turned and walked back into the room, she felt a ripple go through the crowd. She hadn’t considered what it would look like for her to walk into a room, elbow to elbow.... Well, elbow to the top of her shoulder, with Austin Wilder.

She, Millie Talbot.

Maybe this was her moment of infamy.

She hadn’t realized she’d wanted one until this instant.

But having the ability to shock people, rather than simply arouse pity, was nice for a change.

He sat in the back, and she moved to the spot where she had been intent on sitting earlier, next to Heather.

She could feel Danielle looking at her, her blue gaze pointed. She could also feel Michael staring at her. They didn’t know what she had done. They had no idea what she had planned, they didn’t know why Austin was here, or how she knew him.

That made her feel powerful.

For once, she was completely unpredictable. And that was extraordinarily intoxicating.

She wasn’t mousy. Okay, maybe she was. But she was more than that.

And when it was her turn to speak, she walked to the front of the room with conviction. “You all know me, and I’m only going to cover the proposal you were sent after the previous month’s meeting. I am proposing that a portion of the budget be allocated back to the historical society. To Gold Rush Days, and to the reopening of the Rustler Mountain Museum. This would be good for tourism, not just the traditional kind that we are all accustomed to, but school groups as well. I truly believe that only by looking at the past can we really see the way forward to the future. I am ready to put this plan to a vote.”

And then it was Danielle’s turn to speak.

She stood up, a sugary smile on her face. “Thank you so much, Millie,” she said, her grin so broad and brittle that Millie was sure it was going to break her face. “That was a lovely speech. But the reality is that times are hard economically. We need to lean into projects that will directly increase revenue to the town.”

Completely unlike her, and absolutely out of character, Millie blurted, “And how exactly is travel for you and your friends going to do that?”

Danielle was undeterred, which was why she was the mayor and Millie was not. She continued to seem nonconfrontational, smiley, and unruffled. “Because education for myself and other members of the council is helpful in figuring out how to effectively manage the community. And it isn’t that I don’t believe in the importance of history. I do. Of course. As you know, I am descended from the first doctor ever to live in Rustler Mountain. And of course I would love to honor our history in a permanent way such as a museum. But, the economic times being what they are, I just feel that it isn’t the right moment.”

Danielle swanned around acting as if she herself was currently a physician, when in fact no one in her family since that first doctor had ever been in the medical profession. Her family actually owned a real estate company. Which was fine. But she could take it down a notch.

Millie felt as if she was boiling in her own rage. Because already this woman.... It took so much nerve to look at her in the face like this.

Michael couldn’t make eye contact with Millie. She took a small amount of comfort in that.

“All those in favor of maintaining the budget with an increase for rising costs, indicate your support with a show of hands.”

Half the hands in the room went up, just as Millie had known they would.

“And all those in favor of Millie’s suggestion?”

It was truly heartening to watch the show of support she had. She raised her own hand, and so did Heather. Everyone sitting on her side of the room followed suit.

Then she heard footsteps, heavy, coming down the center aisle. She knew exactly who it was. Somehow it sounded as if those footsteps were being made by black boots.

“I’m in favor of Millie’s proposition,” he said, his voice deep, commanding. Menacing, a little.

Michael stood up and faced Austin. Suddenly it was as if she was looking at a showdown in the middle of town.

All those years ago.

“You never exercise your voting rights. Nobody in your family does,” he said.

“And rumor has it, you didn’t exercise your right to be a faithful fiancé.”

A small gasp went through the room. Nobody had ever mentioned that outright. Everybody pretended it hadn’t happened.

Michael sputtered. And Danielle was frozen with rage.

“That doesn’t have anything to do with our budget,” Danielle said.

“Maybe not. But the fact that I haven’t chosen to exercise my right before doesn’t have much to do with anything either. It’s my right as a member of one of the town’s founding families.”

“I think whether or not the Wilders are included as one of the founding families could and should be up for debate,” said Danielle.

“But it’s not,” he said.

“I don’t think that felons—”

“Do you mean my ancestors?”

Danielle’s eyes narrowed. “Not exclusively.”

“Careful,” Austin said. “I’ve personally never been convicted of a thing. Also, you’re treading dangerously close to insulting your own family.”

Silence filled the room and he hooked his thumbs in his belt loops and looked around, making sure to cast an eye over everyone. When he looked at her, it was like being touched by electricity.

“You may not like the way that my family helped found this place,” he said. “But they did. In fact, they invested a fair amount of the money they stole in these streets. So if you have a problem with our role, it’s too damned bad.”

“I think there should be a codicil that states there must be warning before somebody shows up and—”

“But there isn’t,” Austin said, his voice hard, definitive.

She could watch Danielle making projections behind her blue eyes. Trying to figure out what the next move was. If she dug in and tried to get her way at the expense of protocol and any sort of pretense of civility, then she would possibly lose the allies she had. Because while her close friends might not care if Danielle was being entirely scrupulous, the majority of people did.

While Danielle’s friends had sided with her over Millie’s demolished wedding, when it came to the general populace she and Michael were on thin ice after the affair. Millie supposed that should be salve for her broken heart. That most people at least recognized the cruelty of it.

Though she had a feeling most people thought Michael couldn’t really be blamed. After all, Danielle was much prettier than Millie.

“Well, that’s . . . that’s settled?” Danielle looked around the room. “Everyone realizes that this means the budget will be set and we will be planning and executing Gold Rush Days again. I’m not sure it’s going to be easy to drum up the number of volunteer hours necessary. In fact,” Danielle said, a militant light in her eye, “that is one piece of information your paperwork was missing. We might have the money, but do we have the ability to execute? You can’t be the only person running things.”

“I’ll do it,” Austin said, before everyone had even taken a breath.

Millie whipped her head toward him. “Really?”

“Yes. It’s about time the Wilder family had a say in how we’re represented anyway.”

“You had a say in how you were represented,” Michael said, his tone arch. “By your own behavior.”

“Careful now,” Austin said, his mouth curving into a half smile. “If we start talking about behavior, this might go a direction you won’t like.”

“We won’t be engaging in revisionist history,” Michael shot back.

“Oh, does that mean that you’re going to include information on how your ancestor tried to collect exorbitant interest from mine because he was Chinese?” Heather asked, her gaze filled with fire.

Michael sputtered. “Maybe the plaques on the bank need an update.”

“Calling it revisionist history is assuming the whole truth got told in the first place,” Heather said. “And I know full well that isn’t true.”

Heather looked at Millie and smiled slightly.

Millie smiled back. “And as part of the museum reopening, I aim to present deeper insight into the history of the town,” she said. “I hope to correct some of the narratives that were told.”

“Will there be a children’s museum?” The question was asked by one of the men who had voted against the endeavor but also hadsmall children. Clearly, now that his side had lost, all he really cared about was how the museum might benefit him.

“Yes,” Millie said. “There will be a general store. One that replicates the original general store in Rustler Mountain.”

“And what building exactly are you going to use?” Danielle asked.

“I’m hoping to use the old Waterford building my family—I mean that I own.” There was no one but her. Not anymore.

It still didn’t feel as if it was just her building.

“You’re going to have to get approval.”

“I know,” Millie said. “Fortunately, that approval goes through the county.” Not you.

But she didn’t say that last part out loud, because they were trading fake niceties. Fake civility.

“All right. You have your earmarked budget,” Danielle said. “Let’s move on to the next order of business.”

But Millie couldn’t hear the rest of the meeting, because her ears were buzzing, and her entire body was floaty and tingly. As if she had ascended to a cloud somewhere high above this room.

And when it was over, she found that what she really needed was to get back home. To silence, to isolation. To take a minute to gather her thoughts. She waved at Heather and scurried out of the room as the meeting adjourned. But as she put her hand on the door, she felt an iron grip on her elbow.

“Wait just one minute.”

She turned and her gaze met the furious blue of Austin Wilder’s eyes.