“You’re welcome.” Laurel put on her hat. “If you gentlemen will excuse me, I need to get to work.”
The three of them left the stable together. Bill said, “Thatcher, we need to get to work, too. I’ll meet you at the car.” He struck out in the direction of the auto garage.
Thatcher asked Laurel where she’d parked.
“I walked over. I didn’t want it to look like—”
“Like you were coming to see me.”
She shrugged guilty. “People talk.”
“People can go to hell.”
He ducked his head under her hat brim and gave her a lingering kiss.
When he pulled away he said, “I’m making you a promise, Laurel.”
She looked at him quizzically.
“If I ever get you in bed again, you can count on finding out what you missed.”
* * *
Excited by Thatcher’s final words to her, but also shaken by what he had told her about last night’s unrest, the arrests, the shootouts, Laurel swiftly walked home. She planned to hastily gather supplies and then to drive out to the stills. She feared what she might find when she got there, and was equally afraid of finding nothing.
By the time she reached her house, she was winded, but when she saw Irv’s truck there, she ran inside. He was standing at the cookstove cracking eggs into a skillet. She rushed over and hugged him from behind.
“Ouch! Mind my arm.”
“Irv, I’m so relieved. My God! Last night—”
“Don’t have to tell me about it. I lived through it.” He flipped the frying eggs. “You want an over-easy?”
“No thank you. Are Corrine and Ernie all right?”
“They’re fine. Pissed off because we couldn’t do runs last night, just when we were rebuilding our inventory. By the way, I brought back crates packed with jars. I’ll help you carry them down to the cellar once I’ve had a bite and a rest.”
“Fine. Good. But what about last night?”
“We were all set to get both cookers going, but then we started hearing gunfire popping from every direction. Some of it might have been echoes, but there was enough of it, and close enough, to scare the bejesus out of us.
“We knew better than to light the fireboxes and become targets, so we scurried a distance away and took cover between rocks, huddled in the dark all night. Shootin’ would break out every now and then. Didn’t let up till almost dawn. We were glad to be alive to see the sunrise. Went back to the camp. Looked just like when we left it. They didn’t find us.”
He slid the eggs onto a plate, sprinkled both liberally with salt and pepper, and added a leftover biscuit. As he hobbled over to the table, he remarked, “Your color is hectic. What’s the matter?”
“What’s the matter?” She sat down across from him. “When you weren’t here this morning, I thought you’d probably stayed at the stills all night because you were tired of being cooped up for so long. But when I heard about last night’s ruckus—”
“Who’d you hear it from?” He mopped up egg yolk with half the biscuit and popped it into his mouth.
“Thatcher Hutton.”
He gave a harrumph. “Figures.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Did he come around to boast about all the men he killed?”
“He didn’t kill anybody.”
“Not what I heard. The boys at the filling station said—”
“The filling station?”
“Stopped there on my way into town. It’s where you go to get a soda pop and the latest news. Word is that Hutton’s the sheriff’s new sharpshooter, said he dropped at least a dozen men last night. They say he’s taken the sheriff’s boy Tim’s place in his daddy’s affection. Said—”
“Nobody was killed.”
“Then why’d he come over here if not to brag?” One of his eyebrows went up, the other down. “Or don’t I know?”
She ignored the implication. “Actually, today I went looking for him to ask if he would pass along some information to the sheriff.” She explained why she thought the blowout that Corrine had witnessed between Gert and Wally Johnson was important.
“Things were peaceful around here before that jug-eared runt was murdered,” Irv said. “Now, look where we’re at. Folks shootin’ at each other.” He crumbled the second half of the dry biscuit into the remaining egg yolk. “What about the O’Connors? Do you know how they fared last night?”
“They weren’t around. They were making a delivery to Ranger.”
“That was mighty convenient.”
“Why are you still mistrustful of them?”
He waved his hand in dismissal. “They ain’t at the top of my worry roster. Deputy Hutton