Remington heaved himself into the opening between the bales as soon as the Putty brothers left the barn. He pointed Phoebe to the large square door that was used to hoist bales into the loft before he remembered that it had been temporarily nailed closed to prevent accidents. “Never mind. Can you follow me?”
“Don’t worry about me. Go on.”
He made a rapid descent to the bottom, jumping free of the ladder when he still had five rungs to go. He ignored the fire spreading in the stall and went straight to Ben, took off his jacket, and used it to smother the flames crawling alongBen’s neck, collar, and across his shoulders. The air around Ben was filled with the acrid scent of burnt hair and flesh.
Out of the corner of his eye, he caught the last few feet of Phoebe’s descent. He did not want her trying to slip past the fire in the stall for fear that her dress would attract the flames like a candlewick. “Try the back door!” he called out. He was not hopeful that she would be able to open it, not after Willet directed his brother to leave by that exit, but it was the safer option for a first try at escape. He wanted to be wrong, but when he heard Phoebe shouting for help, he knew he was not. He could barely hear her above the crackle of the flames and the fiddle music. She reappeared moments later and hovered on the other side of the fire, shaking her head.
“They’ve barred or jammed it from the outside. I can’t budge it, and I think someone would have to be passing very close to hear me.” Mindful of the fire, which had begun to crawl across the hay-strewn floor, Phoebe raised her skirt and gathered it as close as possible. She felt heat on her calves as she jumped this newly erected fence of flames. As soon as she was safely on the other side, Phoebe dropped her gown and ran to the barn door. She yanked and shoved. The door shuddered when she put her shoulder into it, but it didn’t budge. Frustrated, she beat at it with her fists and called out as loud as she was able.
Remington redirected her attention. “Come here and stay beside Ben. See if you can rouse Ellie or this fellow.”
“Mr. Shoulders? No. I’ll tend to Ellie and Ben.”
He was satisfied with that. “I’m going to get blankets out of the tack room. Don’t move.” He gave her his jacket. “Use this on the fire if it breaks this way. Watch that your gown doesn’t catch.”
Phoebe waved him away. “Go.”
Remington found a stack of blankets in the tack room and carried them out. In the short time he had been gone, flames had leaped to three more bales. The surface and sides of all of them were carpeted by fire but the dense centers were still untouched. Phoebe was no longer crouched besidethe Putty brothers’ unconscious victims. She had purposely put herself away from them and was standing in a ring of fire that was nibbling away at the hem of her cone-shaped skirt. She was alternately beating at the flames and trying to wriggle out of the gown. Trying to do both at once was what was defeating her.
Remington rushed through the firewall that now separated them and knocked Phoebe to the floor. He snapped open one of the blankets, rolled her onto it, and wrapped it around her feet and ankles until the flames were extinguished.
“It’s all right,” she said, sitting up. “It’s done. Help me out of this.” She twisted and presented him with her back. “It happened so fast. The oil from the lanterns. It seeped into the cracks in the floorboards. They just erupt.” Even as she said it, a line of fire suddenly appeared near Ellie’s feet and raced in the direction of her dress. “Get Ellie,” she said. “I can do this.”
Remington looked at the long line of fabric-covered buttons that closed the bodice and wasn’t as sure, but he also knew the futility of arguing. He left Phoebe’s side to hook Ellie under her shoulders and drag her to one side of the door, well away of the encroaching flames—for now. He did the same for Ben, and then for Mr. Shoulders, though he was sorely inclined to abandon him to the fire.
Phoebe had managed to tear away most of the buttons at her back and was trying to shimmy out of the gown when Remington returned to help her. He made fists in the silk on either side of her hips and yanked hard. The fabric gave way and fell in a puddle at her feet. He didn’t wait for her to move; he lifted her out and away from the skirt. She did not so much shed the bodice as molt it. In spite of the burgeoning heat from the fire, Phoebe shivered violently. He started to pull her into his arms, and God knew, that was what she wanted, but she shook her head and asked for a blanket instead.
Remington spread one open for her, and when she walked into it, he wrapped her inside. “Go wait by the door.” He coughed. Smoke filled his nostrils. He breathed in a lungful. “Stay low. Find somewhere you can breathe.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to try to put out the fire.”
Phoebe looked past his shoulder to where the flames were sliding into a second stall. Another bale of hay erupted. “Can’t you fire a shot? Someone would hear that. Where is your gun?”
“In the house.”
She glanced behind her at Ben and Mr. Shoulders. “What about them?”
He shook his head. “We put the guns up, remember? So no one would get foolish.”
“Let me help you, then.” Phoebe did not wait to see if he would agree to it. She stripped off the blanket and sidestepped Remington to attack the fire wearing her ice blue corset, matching garters, and silk stockings.
Watching her, Remington could imagine the fire retreating in the face of Phoebe’s Amazon warrior fierceness. When it didn’t, he followed her into battle.
Chapter Forty-three
The Honorable Judge Miner stepped out of the bunkhouse with more money in his pockets than when he went in. It was his opinion that coming out ahead made it a worthwhile use of his time. Thaddeus Frost’s fine liquor was an additional bonus. The judge recognized there were less than half the guests present than there were when he took refuge at the card table, but there was still plenty of food to be had and dancing to be done. He was making a relatively straight path for the lovely Mrs. Frost when he veered sharply to the left. Someone observing him might have attributed his sudden change of course to inebriation, but that would have been the wrong conclusion.
Judge Miner had just spied the Putty brothers. He couldn’t recall seeing them earlier, or at least not seeing them present at the nuptials, but then there had been such a gathering that he could easily have missed them. There also existed the very real possibility that they would have used the crowd to hide from him. If they’d seen him, they would have been relieved when he disappeared into the bunkhouse.
Judge Miner sidled right up to Willet Putty and threw a friendly arm around the man’s shoulders. When he spoke, though, it was to the sheriff. “These boys giving you any trouble, Jackson?”
“Not a whit,” Brewer said. He waved a lantern over the table where the guests who had been carrying had put down their gun belts. “It’s like an armory. We’re trying to find a tooled leather belt and a Colt with a pearl grip. We have plenty of ivory grips, but not one of the other. Mr. Doyle Putty says it belongs to him, but I don’t see it.”
The judge leaned forward and poked his head around Willet so he could see Doyle. “Is that right, Doyle? You own something like that? Or could it be that you saw it earlier and thought you’d like to leave with something different than you carried in? We’ve talked about this sort of thing before, haven’t we? At least that’s my recollection.” He felt Willet try to shrug him off. Instead of removing his arm, he tightened his grip under the guise of another friendly squeeze.
Jackson Brewer’s gaze shifted from the table to the Putty brothers. “You familiar with these men, Judge?”
