Chapter 34
Chapter
“Was burning my building not enough for you?” Taggert rasped. “Did you have to sneak around back here to destroy what little I managed to save?” The soot blackening his face did nothing to mask his rage.
Noreen retreated, wagging her head in denial of his irrational charge. “I didn’t touch any of your belongings. They’re all there. Look.” She pointed, hoping the evidence of her veracity would calm him. “I’m just here to help. Like everyone else.”
“Help me into an early grave.” Taggert grabbed her wrist. “You’re a she-devil who needs to be stopped.”
Her bucket fell to the ground as his grip tightened. Connor shouted a protest and latched on to Taggert’s shoulder from behind. Taggert whirled and slammed his fist into Connor’s face. The young man toppled backward.
“Connor!”
Noreen tried to go to him, but Taggert reclaimed his hold on her arm and jerked her backward. Jaw clenched, he dragged her toward his pile of salvaged goods. Did he have a gun there? A knife? Would he kill her in front of witnesses?
“Please,” she begged as she pulled against him. “I only came to help.”
Taggert grunted, continuing his march undeterred. Until a shadowed figure stepped into his path and slapped him full in the face with a wall of water.
“Shame on you, Milton Taggert. Takin’ your anger out on a woman like that. Let her go.”
Taggert wiped a hand over his eyes, which only served to smear the soot around. “Irma?”
“Yes, it’s me, you dunderhead.” Irma Freeman, wife to the blacksmith whose business stood next door, planted her hands on her hips. “Out here trying to save your stinkin’ swill hole before it burns to the ground. Had I known you’d be this ungrateful, I woulda just doused the smithy instead.”
The manacle of his fingers loosened, and Noreen yanked free of his grasp. Taggert squinted past Mrs. Freeman to another figure emerging out of the night.
“Irma? What’s going on?” Rebecca Hunter, who lived a block behind the hotel, walked onto the scene with the next bucket, her eyes wide.
Taggert looked from woman to woman, his forehead scrunching. “How many women you got out here, Irma?”
“A couple dozen, I reckon. Though they ain’t here because of me. Noreen’s the one who organized us. Got my stubborn husband to agree to lettin’ the womenfolk run a bucket line from the hotel. You should be thankin’ her, not yellin’ at her.”
“Her quick thinking put out the fire that caught on your back when that beam cracked, too,” Connor said as he joined the group, his glare hot enough to cause sparks of its own as he rubbed his jaw.
He stepped past Taggert and took the full bucket from Mrs. Hunter.
“Now, if you’ll excuse us, we’ve got a fire to put out.
” He looked to Noreen. “Miss O’Sullivan? You coming?”
Eager to get away from Taggert, she nodded and hurried to Connor’s side. Taggert circled his gaze from person to person as if trying to piece together a puzzle that didn’t fit.
“Feel free to join the effort after you check the status of your belongings,” Connor called over his shoulder, then marched up to the rear of the saloon and tossed the water along the side wall that faced the smithy.
He handed the bucket to Noreen, and she jogged it back to Irma, taking a path that kept her well away from Taggert as he dug through his salvaged things.
“Keep it.” Irma strode up to meet her, a new bucket in hand.
“I’m tradin’ places with you. You can work my section.
Unless you want to head back to the hotel.
No one would blame you for wantin’ to put some distance between yourself and that hothead.
” She tipped her chin toward Taggert. “You might not think so, but the man’s a good neighbor.
Kind to us and the kids. I never had a quarrel with him until he put hands on you.
I know it’s no excuse, but it’s gotta be hard on a man to see everything he’s worked for turn to ash. ”
Noreen peered through the dark to where Taggert hunched over his pitifully small pile of belongings, taking stock of the few things he had left in this world.
A good neighbor. Kind to children. She’d never thought of him as a regular person with noble qualities.
He’d always been the enemy. A purveyor of poison.
Yet no person was just one thing, were they?
Everyone had strengths and flaws, traits to admire and others to endure.
If she wished for him to see her as more than the woman who vandalized his business, perhaps she should try to see him as more than an impediment to her temperance mission.
“I suppose you’re right.” Noreen moved past Irma and slid into her vacated link of the firefighting chain. “Let’s get this done.”
By the time she made it back to Rebecca’s station, there were two buckets waiting for her.
“They’re starting to stack up.” Rebecca hiked up the path carting a third bucket. “Rose has about five more waiting for me back there.”
Noreen dropped her empty bucket. “I’ll take two at a time until we get caught up, then.”
Easier said than done when her arms felt as limp as melted meringue, but she was determined to prove to Taggert, and herself, that she cared more about preserving the community than beating him in the temperance war.
Irma took one bucket from her and handed over an empty. “Just leave that one there. I’ll come back for it.”
Noreen did as she was told, but when she turned to head back, Taggert stepped in front of her.
“I know you set this fire,” he growled in a low voice, “and your Sweet Susie routine isn’t going to save your neck when the truth comes out. I’ve got proof, and I’ll make sure your besotted deputy doesn’t sweep it under the rug.”
Heart thumping, she stood rooted to the spot as Taggert stepped around her, picked up the extra bucket, and trudged toward the saloon.
Once he was out of sight, she exhaled a shaky breath, then headed back to the checkpoint to collect the next buckets.
She’d not let him rattle her. He was upset.
With good reason. If he needed someone to lash out at, she had plenty of practice being the target of his scorn.
She could handle it. He’d learn soon enough that she didn’t set the fire.
Whatever proof he thought he had would be easily rebuffed with logic because the truth was the truth.
She’d not gone anywhere near the Salt Fork Saloon tonight until the call of “Fire!” pulled her from her bed.
“Last bucket, Paxton.”
James accepted the final bucket from Alfred Cooper and tossed its load of water onto the charred remains of the Salt Fork’s bar.
The cherry finish Taggert always kept polished to a high sheen stood blackened, cracked, and burnt beyond saving.
Sad enough sight to turn even a nondrinking man melancholy.
He tugged his soggy bandanna down around his neck and picked his way back toward the entrance.
“Come on, Coop. The roof’s not stable.” One of the ceiling beams had cracked not twenty minutes ago. “We shouldn’t linger.”
The man who’d been handing him buckets for the last hour stood in the center of the tavern near one of the few tables that hadn’t been turned to kindling.
He ran his fingers over the scorched surface.
“I played poker at this table just a few hours ago. Now look at it. Everything’s just .
. . gone.” His shoulders dropped, more than physical weariness sapping his strength.
Such devastation and loss took a toll on a man’s spirit.
James clapped him on the back and urged him toward the door. His own boots dragged as he moved through the depressing surroundings. “Taggert’s gonna need his friends to rally around him in the coming days.”
Old Coop sighed. “I’ll gather the fellas. Maybe we can take up a collection or something. It wouldn’t be much in the face of all this,” he said as he paused at the doorway and turned back to survey the fire’s damage, “but maybe it’ll let him know there are people who care.”
James looked back over the large room as well, seeing details he hadn’t noticed when he’d been focused on dousing flames.
An odd burn pattern marked the floorboards.
Darker edges outlined a lighter, curved pattern that seemed to spread outward from beneath one of the windows facing the alley, almost as if something had spilled onto the floor.
Something that had protected the wood beneath from the flames. At least initially.
Making a mental note to come back in daylight for a closer look, James passed through the doorway and tossed his bucket onto the pile that tired neighbors were picking through to find the ones that belonged to them.
Mr. Freeman moved among the men, shaking hands and thanking folks for their hard work.
The wall of the blacksmith’s shop showed evidence of scorching, but no real damage had been done.
A reminder that there had been victories this night as well as tragedy.
James searched the crowd for Taggert, wanting to offer some meager encouragement, though he doubted words existed that could make this moment any less demoralizing.
He’d need to interview the man as well, see if he knew how the fire had started.
But that could wait until the morning. Which apparently wasn’t too far off, judging by the strip of pale gray sky hovering above the eastern horizon.
Not finding the man he sought among the bleary-eyed townsfolk who were starting to make their way back to their own homes, James approached the blacksmith, who seemed the most likely person to have the information he needed.
“Hey, Freeman. You seen Taggert?”
The man looked like he’d been swimming instead of fighting fires, drenched from head to toe as he was from his bucket work at the pump. “One of the boys said they saw him working the bucket line with the women at the rear.”
“The women?” First he’d heard of a rear bucket line. Though, he did recall seeing Connor Reed inside the building a time or two and had wondered where the kid had come from.
“Yeah, that O’Sullivan woman pulled a bunch of women together to cart water from the hotel cistern. My wife among them. Reed was supervisin’, making sure none of ’em got too close to the building.”
Noreen was out here? James’s sluggish pulse picked up its pace as he scoured the crowd for a different face, wanting to see her and reassure himself of her safety.
“Oh, hey.” The blacksmith pointed at the far side of the saloon. “That might be him there.” His bushy brows arched. “Them womenfolk don’t look none too happy, though.”
James turned and spotted Taggert, his head standing several inches above the group of ladies circling him and slowing his steps.
James strode that direction, his gaze searching for a head of dark curly hair.
Freeman followed, no doubt concerned about his wife.
The schoolteacher seemed the one most determined to impede Taggert’s progress, planting herself directly in his path and shaking a finger in his face.
He knocked her arm aside and pushed past her, finally revealing the woman James most wanted to see.
Taggert had Noreen by the wrist.
James’s jaw clenched, but he forced himself to hold his tongue.
Fisting his hand to keep from drawing his gun, James picked up his pace.
Taggert had lost nearly everything tonight, he reminded himself.
He deserved compassion. Yet no amount of loss gave a man permission to mistreat a woman.
Even one who’d pitted herself against him.
Drawing to a halt a few yards away from the group of women actively giving Taggert a piece of their minds, James raised his voice to be heard above their voices. “I suggest you release her, Taggert. No need for a bad night to get any worse.”
Milton Taggert pulled Noreen forward and flung her toward James. “Arrest her, Paxton. She set the fire.”
James steadied Noreen with gentle hands and did his best to portray a calm he didn’t feel.
“Hold on there, Taggert. I know you and Noreen have had your differences, but that doesn’t mean she set the fire. From what I hear, she helped put it out. Organized an entire water line to guard the rear.”
“That’s what we told him,” Martha said, shooting a dark scowl at the bartender. “Mr. Reed told us she even saved Mr. Taggert’s life by extinguishing a fire that caught on his clothing.”
James caught a movement from the back of the group. Connor Reed stepped forward. “That’s right, Deputy. I saw it with my own eyes.”
Taggert waved his arms about in a wild fashion as he turned to address the people clumped around him, focusing on James and Mr. Freeman.
“It’s all a ploy, don’t you see? She showed up to help as a pretense.
To hide the truth of what she did. But I have proof that it was her.
” He started digging in his coat pocket.
James stepped in front of Noreen and drew his pistol from his holster. “Easy, Taggert. Let me see your hands.”
“She’s wanted me gone for ages.” Taggert raised his left hand, but his right remained in his pocket. “And when I wouldn’t give in to her little terror tactics, she took matters into her own hands.”
He pulled his hand free of his pocket, and James raised his gun. The ladies around him gasped, but Taggert held no weapon in his hand. Instead, a white square danced in the night breeze like a flag of surrender. But Taggert was surrendering nothing.
“I got proof!”
James holstered his gun and stepped closer.
He pulled the handkerchief from Taggert’s hand.
Black letters painted across the cloth proclaimed motive for all to see.
FOR TEMPERENCE, it read. Yet that wasn’t the most damning piece of evidence on the cloth.
For directly below the lettering was a familiar cluster of blue embroidered flowers and Noreen’s initials.