I Need a Wife by Tomorrow
Copyright© 2026 by Megumi Kashuahara
Chapter 9
Calder
Cassidy rode out to us at a dead gallop, and I knew before she’d even reined in at the yard that whatever brought her out at that pace, alone, without warning, wasn’t good news riding beside her.
She’d gone into town that morning for supplies, same as I understood she still did most weeks, keeping half an eye on her own shelves even now that the store was hers by rights. She told it to us breathless, still catching her wind from the ride, LilLi’s hand steadying her arm while she got the words out in order.
I fetched her a cup of water while she gathered herself, and made her sit a moment on the porch step before she went further with the telling, because I could see her hands shaking bad enough that I didn’t trust the account to come out whole if we rushed her past it. She took a long pull from the cup, and closed her eyes a moment, and when she opened them again there was a steadiness in her that told me she’d found her footing enough to give us the whole of what she’d heard, plain and in proper order.
Rourke had come into the store not an hour before, she said, him and his two hired men, buying up ammunition in quantities that had struck her as strange even before she’d caught the tail end of what they were saying to each other, low, near the back shelves, thinking themselves unheard. She’d caught enough of it. Tonight, they meant to ride out to our place with a torch, and burn us out of the house if we wouldn’t leave it standing.
“He said it plain,” Cassidy told us, her voice still unsteady. “Said a burned homestead don’t need a judge’s ruling to settle who it belongs to after. Said the girl’d be asleep, most like, and wouldn’t hardly know what was happening before it was over.” She looked between LilLi and me, her eyes wet with the fright of it. “I closed the store the second they rode off. Went straight to the sheriff first, then came out here soon as he told me he’d handle his part of it.”
I felt something in me go cold and clear in a way I hadn’t felt since long before I ever came to Dry Creek, an old, familiar steadiness settling over the fear the way it always had, back when clear thinking had been the only thing standing between staying alive and not. I looked at LilLi, and found her already looking back at me, her face pale but steady, no trace of panic in it, only the same hard resolve I’d watched carry her through Rourke’s last visit without so much as a tremor in her voice.
“Sheriff Talbot’s putting together some men,” Cassidy said. “Six, he figured, maybe more if he can round them up in time. Said to tell you he means to be out here well before dark, hidden and ready, so Rourke rides into more trouble than he’s counting on.”
I thanked her for the warning, and meant it more deeply than the words could carry, understanding plainly enough that if she hadn’t caught what she caught, hadn’t had the nerve to act on it the way she had, we’d have had no more warning tonight than a torch already lit and thrown before any of us knew to be afraid. I found myself struck, watching her steady herself enough to finish the telling of it, by how far she’d come from the frightened girl LilLi had found stranded at the depot a year back. There wasn’t much left of that girl in the woman standing in our yard now, breathless from a hard ride but clear-eyed and certain in everything she’d come to say. I told her to ride back to town rather than stay out here where the trouble was headed, and she went, though not before LilLi caught her hand a moment and thanked her plain, the two of them sharing a look that told me there was a debt between them now that went well past dry goods and profit shares.
Once she’d gone, I didn’t waste time. I went to the strongbox where I kept what firearms weren’t already in daily use about the place, and drew out a spare Colt I’d carried before I ever came to farming, checked and loaded it careful, and brought it to LilLi where she stood in the kitchen, her hands already busy with whatever small useless task she’d found to keep them occupied while her mind worked through what was coming.
“You know how to use one of these?”
She took it from my hand without hesitation, checking the cylinder herself with a competence that told me plainly she’d handled a firearm before, though she didn’t offer the story of it and I didn’t ask, not with the hour we had left narrowing fast. “Tian kept one behind the counter,” she said. “For the nights I closed alone. I know how to use it.”
I showed her anyway, quick and thorough, walking her through the workings of this weapon rather than assuming her memory of another one would carry her through cleanly if the moment came. She listened close, asked the right questions, and when I was satisfied she had the whole of it, she tucked the Colt into the deep fold of her skirt where it sat hidden but ready, a weight I could see her settling into with the same steady resolve she seemed to settle into everything that was asked of her.
We told Emmie only as much as she needed to hear, that some bad men might come around tonight and that she was to stay in her room with the door shut, no matter what she heard outside it, until one of us came to fetch her. She took the instruction with a solemnity that told me she understood more of the danger than we’d spelled out for her, and I felt my chest tighten seeing it, hating that a girl her age had to carry even that much of the weight of what men like Rourke were willing to do.
LilLi knelt down to her level before we left her to her room, and took both her small hands in her own, and told her, plain and steady, that whatever she heard tonight, she was not to open that door for anyone but the two of us, and that no matter what happened, LilLi loved her and would come for her the moment it was safe to. Emmie nodded, solemn, and then did something that near about undid me watching it — she reached up and hugged LilLi’s neck, quick and fierce, the first time I’d seen her offer that kind of affection unprompted to anyone since her own mother died. LilLi held her back just as fierce, and for a moment neither of them said anything at all, and I understood, watching them, exactly how much more than a house we stood to lose that night if things went wrong.
I strapped on my own gun belt then, and took down the rifle I kept above the door, checking it with hands that had gone steady in the same old way they always had before trouble, a stillness I’d learned long before Dry Creek and had hoped, these past months, never to need again. LilLi watched me do it without flinching, and when I looked up and found her eyes on me, there was no fear in them, only a fierce, unshaken determination that told me plainly she meant to stand her ground tonight same as she’d stood it against Rourke two weeks before, Colt or no Colt, danger or no danger.
“You don’t have to be the one to use it,” I told her, low, needing to say it even knowing she likely wouldn’t hear it as anything but what it was — a man afraid for the woman he loved. “If it comes to shooting, I’ll do what needs doing. You get Emmie and get low, and let me handle the rest.”
To read the complete story you need to be logged in:
Log In or
Register for a Free account
(Why register?)
* Allows you 3 stories to read in 24 hours.