Jacey's Reckless Heart

by Cheryl Anne Porter

“Not until you apologize.”

  “Look out for that scorpion.”

  “I see him. There. Now he’s dead. And you better hope that’s Knight in those mesquites. He’s got my bedroll and most of the food. How’d you like to go to sleep tonight with your belly grumbling and having to share your bedroll with me?”

  “You offering? Because if you are, I’ll abandon this search for that ornery black critter of yours right here and now.”

  “Shut up, Chapelo. That was no offer. It was a threat.”

  “Yeah? How about I get you to make good on it?”

  “I’m not sleeping with you—no how and no way.”

  “Maybe not tonight.”

  “Maybe not ever.”

  “That’s a mighty long time, Miss Jacey.”

  “Not near long enough, Mister Zant.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “Yes, we will. And I’ll be the winner.”

  “I doubt it. Now, what am I supposed to be apologizing for?”

  “I forgot. Oh, for saying Knight’s a nag.”

  “All right. I’m sorry your horse is a nag.”

  “Is that supposed to be funny? I’ll tell you one thing, I can’t wait to get to Buford’s place. Because after that, I won’t have to put up with your bossy ways anymore. I’ll be heading back to Tucson. And you can go to hell.”

  “I probably will. But it appears to me you’re betting heavy on Buford knowing something that the other ones didn’t.”

  “Call it a hunch. He knows. It’s always the last one who knows.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “Because you quit looking when you find the one with the answers. Leastwise, smart folks do.”

  “Ahh. Well, would the smart folks—particularly the one on foot and sweating like a washerwoman—maybe want a drink of some nice, cool water?”

  “Nope. I’m fine, thank you.”

  “Yeah, you’re fine, all right. I swear I never met someone with so much spit and—Hey, come back here. Where you running off to?”

  “To get Knight. It’s him—just like I said, outlaw. I was right about where he’d be, and I’ll be right about Joe Buford’s knowing. You just wait and see.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  She was right. And they were just barely in time. Joe Buford was dying.

  Jacey went quietly to sit in the bedside chair that his wife, a sad-faced, weary old woman, directed her to. The finely stitched and stuffed seat cushion retained a warmth that told her Alma Buford had been sitting here herself. For a long while.

  Unsure how to proceed, Jacey pivoted to look over her shoulder to Zant’s quietly serious expression. With a nod of his head, he encouraged her to speak. Jacey turned again to look down at the poor sight that was Joe. He lay thin and wasting, but clean and neat, on a bed obviously kept fresh with loving hands. His eyes were closed.

  Jacey turned to Alma, a rounded little woman with a gray bun atop her head and a white apron over her neatly patched skirt. “I don’t want to disturb him. Is he asleep?”

  Alma nodded. “Most likely. He sleeps a lot nowadays. Seems like livin’ just wears him out. But go ahead—wake him up and talk to him. It won’t hurt him none. I ’spect he’ll soon enough be restin’ a long, long time.”

  With a heavy heart and sympathy clouding her eyes, Jacey smiled at Alma. The old woman’s chin began to quiver. She turned away. “I ’spect you’uns would like a bite to eat. I’ll see to it while you’re talkin’. Just don’t wear him out too much, if’n you can help it.”

  “We won’t,” Jacey assured her. “But please don’t fuss on our account. You don’t have to—”

  “I’d like to, if’n you don’t mind. We … me and Joe … we don’t see too many folks. No one much to talk to, ’ceptin’ each other.” With that, she turned away, walked to a tall cupboard, and began quietly pulling dishes out.

  Jacey looked from the older woman’s solid form to Zant. He hovered just inside the doorway, his Stetson respectfully removed and held in front of him. He now came to stand beside her. He put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed gently. Jacey momentarily covered his hand with hers and then turned back to Joe. Reluctant to cause the balding old man any undue suffering, she stuck her hand out and took his. His warm skin was sallow, dry, and felt paper-thin. “Mr. Buford? Can you hear me?”

  Thin, veined eyelids opened to reveal brown eyes, the whites of which swam in yellow. Joe blinked a time or two and ran his tongue over cracking lips. Then he looked squarely at Jacey and up at Zant. “I knew you’d come,” he rasped out. “You both look … like your daddies.”

  Not sure he was lucid, Jacey turned in confusion to Zant. He swallowed and said, “He knows who we are. Ask him, Jacey. It’s what you came for.”

  Jacey nodded and turned again to Joe. “Mr. Buford, I need to—”

  “Call me Joe. Everyone does.”

  Jacey managed a smile for him. “Okay, Joe. We need to know about our fathers.”

  The sick old man closed his eyes. “I know,” came his whispery voice. His eyelids fluttered open. He blinked and shifted his long, thin legs under his covers. “It ain’t pretty … what I have to say.”

  Her heart thumping, Jacey quickly assured him, “We know. We’ve been told some of it.”

  “Good,” Joe mouthed. Then, “Your daddy’s dead, ain’t he? That’s why you’re here.”

  A deep breath caught in her chest. “How’d you know?” Her voice was no more than the whisper that was Joe’s.

  “Right now … I’m closer … to him than I am you. And I know.”

  Exhaling shuddering breaths, smelling the meat Alma was frying, and hearing Zant shift his weight behind her, Jacey asked, “What do you know?”

  “I know why … your daddy killed his.” He looked up at Zant. “Sit down, young fella. Sit. On the bed. It’s okay. I want … I want you to listen good.”

  Zant sat and said, “Yes, sir.”

  “Good.” Joe then launched into his story, telling it like he’d been rehearsing for years what he would say when this day came. “It was years ago. We was all younger then, full of mischief. J. C. was … was our leader. Didn’t nobody question his say-so. Best of our lot, he was. The Kid was the only one … on the outs with J. C. Only one. See, boy, your daddy didn’t … take care of you and your mama … like J. C. thought he should. J. C. was already a daddy twice over. And he wanted … out of the outlaw life. We all felt the same. ’Cepting the Kid.”

  Joe stopped talking when Alma came over to tilt his skeletal head up and give him a drink. “Here, old man, take you some of this.” Joe’s hands, big knuckled, long fingered, and shaky, cupped his wife’s as he drank in little sips and swallowed with obvious difficulty. When he indicated he’d had his fill, Alma handed the cup to Jacey. “Give him some every now and then.”

  Jacey looked at the cup’s contents. It wasn’t water, but a milky liquid. “What is it?”

  “Something an old Navajo woman showed me how to prepare. Just give it to him every now and then. Little sips, now.” Alma rubbed her hand tenderly over Joe’s balding pate and then walked across the adobe to the tiny kitchen area. Rich aromas now wafted throughout the warm, close space.

  After a moment, after a deep and sudden breath, as if he’d given in to his fate, Joe turned his head on his pillow to stare unblinkingly at Jacey. For one alarmed moment she thought he was dead, but he breathed again and picked up his tale. “That day … the Kid took off from the hideout … in a fierce mood. He was pretty riled up at our talk of disbanding. Said he’d … show us how a real outlaw acted. A hot-blooded Spaniard, that one. That afternoon, he came back to brag about … how he’d already begun his life as a … lone desperado. Said we was all a bunch of … cowards. J. C. listened to about all he was goin’ to. Stepped up to the Kid … and told him to explain hisself.”

  Jacey tensed. Here it was. She just barely stopped her impulse to cover her ears. Beside her, on her left, Zant sat up straighter on the bed. Jacey gripped the cup
of medicine in her lap so fiercely her knuckles turned white.

  “Plain awful … what the Kid had done. Plain awful. J. C. was fit to be tied. So was the rest of us.”

  Zant broke in, his voice soft and hoarse. “What’d the Kid do, Joe?”

  Jacey wanted more than anything to turn to Zant and hold his hand through this next part. But her own dread at what Joe had to say kept her rigid in her chair.

  Joe stared at Zant for a moment. “Hard words for me … to this day. What he done ain’t no … reflection on the man you are, son. You … remember that. Seems the Kid had robbed and … killed a young family. They was all alone and making their way … by wagon to Californy. He caught ’em in … Apache Pass and killed ’em. Took their few valuables. Left ’em for dead. ’Ceptin’ the baby girl.”

  “Baby girl?” A dawning suspicion rooted in Jacey’s heart. “What baby girl, Joe? What was her name?”

  Joe turned his jaundiced gaze to Jacey. “Don’t know. Never did hear.” He then resumed his tale. “J. C. done what any of us … would’ve done in his place. Our gang … never picked on hard-workin’ folks. Never killed no one who didn’t deserve it. Just robbed trains or banks. And only a few of those. Never was as bad as we thought we was.”

  Another grimace, or smile, contorted Joe’s features. “’Ceptin’ for the Kid. Always was a bad sort. Only tolerated him ’cause … to cut him out meant we’d have to … dodge his tryin’ to kill us … in revenge. J. C. figured he could … control the Kid better … if’n he knew where he was.”

  “What happened then, Joe?” Jacey prompted, suddenly anxious to have the story completed, wanting as much to spare Joe as to get to the end of this painful chapter in all their lives.

  No more than a wrinkle under his covers, Joe slowly edged his big hands together until they met in his lap. He folded them together. “J. C. got into … a fight with the Kid. They went at it pretty heavy. The Kid just kept makin’ it worse. Bragged ’bout leavin’ that girl-baby … out in Apache Pass. Alone and squallin’. J. C.’d finally heard all he wanted to, I s’pose, and before any of us seen it comin’… he called the Kid out.”

  Zant pushed to his feet, diverting Jacey’s attention to himself. He put his Stetson back on and crossed to the open doorway. He stood looking out at the desert landscape. Taking in his rigid stance, his broad back, and his intense quiet, Jacey frowned her of sympathy. She made a movement to get up but, turning in her chair, caught Alma staring at her.

  The old woman shook her head, her expression seeming to say there was nothing anyone could do to spare Zant the next few minutes. Jacey sagged in her chair and turned back to Joe, only to realize he’d kept on talking.

  “… an’ I believe this was just what … the Kid’d been wantin’ all along. A piece of J. C. Shoulda knowed better. J. C. was the … fastest gun out West … in his day. Never seen quicker. Before you could say … pass the potatoes, the Kid went down. Still managed to clear leather … and take a shot at J. C. as he fell. He missed, but J. C. finished him off with a second bullet.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Zant said from the doorway. He stepped outside and closed the door behind him. Jacey stood up.

  “Leave him be. He’s a man now. Got to get through this on his own.”

  Jacey stared at Alma through a waterfall of standing tears. “But he—I can’t—”

  The gray-haired woman wiped her hands on her apron. “Yes you can. If you love him, you can.”

  How did she know? Then Jacey heard her own thought. She hadn’t denied to herself that she loved him. She’d only wondered how Alma knew. Could it be? Was her love written on her face? Could Zant see it? Jacey sat down heavily, staring straight ahead. But when Joe raised his feeble, shaking hand, she sprang to and gave him a few halting sips from the cup she held.

  “Thank you, girl.” He laid his head back against his many pillows, swallowed, and closed his eyes. After a moment, he opened his eyes, looked right at Jacey, and said, “You’re the baby, aren’t you? You’re Jacey.”

  Jacey automatically shook her head. “No. I’m the middle girl. Glory’s the baby.”

  Joe held her gaze. “Glory.” He said the name as if praising the Lord. “Is that … what your mama named her?”

  Not as confused as she should be, and fearing why that was so, Jacey nodded. “Yeah. Glory. Glory Bea. Mama said ‘Another girl. Well, glory be.’ And the name stuck.”

  Joe smiled with a radiance not of this world. “I like that. But you are the youngest Lawless. You know that, don’t you?”

  Jacey looked down, turning the cup around and around in her lap. “I think so, Joe.”

  Joe then went on with his story as if he and Jacey’d never had their quiet little conversation. “After … shootin’ the Kid, your daddy mounted up and … lit out. Thought he wasn’t comin’ back. But he did. Had that baby girl with him. She was real quiet like … like she knowed she was okay now. Or maybe … she was just all cried out. But anyways, J. C. stopped back by the hideout—it wasn’t more’n a few miles from Apache Pass—and told us all … to go on home. It was over.”

  Just then, the door opened. Her heart racing, Jacey pivoted to see Zant standing there. Wordlessly, he took off his Stetson, held her gaze, his own expression unreadable, and came to sit at the end of the bed again. Jacey continued to stare at him, and him at her, until Joe spoke.

  “We done buried the Kid and … and said some words over him. Then J. C. dismounted, handed me the baby—purtiest … little thing I ever saw—and went by hisself to the grave. He took his hat off … and knelt on one knee by the Kid’s … resting place. And spoke in a low voice over him a few minutes.

  “Then he got up, put his hat back on … took the baby from me … and said he was going to … the squaws at a close-by village … and see what they could tell him about feeding … the young’un on his way home. He said he was going by Tucson way one last time, too. And then home. Tucked that … baby up in his arm and shook our hands. Said our goodbyes … and he mounted and rode off. Never did see no more of him. No, never did.”

  Jacey took a deep breath. And heard Zant do the same thing. Then, Joe added, “Finest man … I ever met, J. C. Lawless was. The finest. Man of honor and principle … for all his outlaw ways. Had a code, he did … and held every one of us to it … whilst we rode with him. Never did hurt me none to know him. No, never did.”

  Jacey couldn’t look away from Joe Buford, not even when he closed his eyes and turned his head to the rough adobe wall. In her heart, she felt a certain kinship with him. Almost as if they’d gone through the same things together. In a way they had, she supposed. So very saddened by it all, she turned to look at Zant. His head was down, his gaze on his hands as he restlessly turned his Stetson around and around by its stiff brim.

  Perhaps feeling her gaze on him, he looked up. His black eyes reflected the torment in his soul. “My father was a rotten son of a bitch.”

  Tears for Zant, for his father and hers, for his mother and hers, threatened to track down Jacey’s cheeks. She blinked them back. But had no words for him.

  * * *

  After lunch, after thanking Joe, after chatting with Alma, Jacey and Zant mounted up.

  “Where’re you’uns headed from here?” Alma shaded her eyes from the sun and squinted up at Jacey atop Knight.

  Jacey started to answer, but then closed her mouth. She realized she was at the end of the trail with still no clues about the silver spur and the portrait of Ardis. She looked to Zant, whose Stetson-shaded eyes kept their secrets, and then she turned back to Alma. “I don’t rightly know. I guess back to Tucson.”

  “Tucson? I’d think you’d head for Mexico.”

  Creaking saddle leather next to her told Jacey that Zant was paying close attention. As was she. “Why Mexico, Alma?”

  “Because that’s where them other three men was from.”

  “What three men? When?” Zant’s sharp tone drew Jacey’s and Alma’s attention.

  Alma shrugged.
“Oh, less than two months ago, I suppose. They came around—big, ugly, mean-lookin’ men—wantin’ to ask questions of Joe.”

  Almost afraid to hear the answer, Jacey asked, “And did they?”

  “No. I wouldn’t let ’em inside, wouldn’t let ’em bother Joe. He was havin’ one of his spells then. Still haven’t told him about them three. Seems they wanted to get real mean with me about not lettin’ ’em in. But right over atop that ridge there”—she pointed to a sharp jut of rock not thirty yards away—“some of them Apache showed themselves. Stayed real quiet and still, but them men didn’t want no truck with ’em. They left peaceable enough.”

  Happy that Alma and Joe hadn’t been hurt, but still frustrated to be so close and yet so far, Jacey plied her further. “Alma, this could be important. Did the men ever say what they wanted?”

  “Oh, yes. I let ’em ask me their questions.” She wiped her hands on her apron and swiped its tail end over her brow. “They wanted to know where your daddy had settled. I told ’em all I knowed was up in No Man’s Land somewheres. And they showed me one of them silver spurs that the Lawless Gang wore. I recognized it right off. One of ’em—a man with almost no color to his eyes—said it was the Kid’s. Well, that was curious enough. But I b’lieve the most curious thing they kept concernin’ themselves with was that baby girl Joe just told you about. Said they was lookin’ for her special.”

  Afraid she was going to be ill, Jacey put a hand to her stomach. She turned to Zant, hearing the panic in her own voice. “They didn’t want me at all. It’s Glory. They’re after Glory, Zant. Oh, my God, they’re after Glory.”

  As he stared at her, Zant’s expression became predatory, vengeful. “Don Rafael.” With sharp movements, he turned his horse to the southeast and put his spurs to it. The stallion responded with a burst of speed that left Jacey fighting the grunting Knight for control and left Alma choking on the dust.

  Alma coughed and signaled to Jacey. “Go after him, girl. Go.”

  * * *

  Had Knight not been as swift and powerful as he was, Jacey might never have caught up to Zant. But, hot on his dust-raising trail, she nearly rode Knight right over him late that afternoon as the gelding blazed around a turn in a rocky slope shouldering a sluggish river. Who would’ve thought the out-law’d be bent over, his butt to them, and occupied with picking up good-sized rocks? With only inches to spare, Jacey and Knight thundered by Zant.