He didn’t know what to make of that question. He couldn’t make her forgive him. Perhaps asking forgiveness was for his own selfish peace of mind. Maybe he didn’t deserve absolution. What he’d really been asking was if there was hope, and she wasn’t giving him any encouragement. “All right.”
He ambled to the hooks near the door and got his hat and coat.
“Brock?” she said.
He turned back.
“Um, thank you for supper.”
“You’re welcome.” Shrugging into his coat, he left.
Abby bolted the door, leaning against it for a moment. Finally, she turned down the wall lamp and carried another lamp to her room. She had only a few shreds of self-defense left, and she couldn’t afford to let him rip them away. Depending on how long he actually stayed in Whitehorn, she might have plenty of opportunities to resist him, and she couldn’t do that if things were all neatly tied up between them.
All she had left was this last meager shred of defense. And she wasn’t letting go to forgive him.
At the bottom of the stairs, Brock turned left and entered the alley, as he always did when he left Abby’s. The hair on the back of his neck stood up, and he removed his glove and opened the front of his coat. Drawing one .45, he let his eyes adjust to the darkness.
At the back corner of the building next door, the orange glow of a cigar caught his attention at the same time he smelled the aroma of tobacco. His wariness eased somewhat, because obviously the person in the darkness wasn’t trying to hide.
“Evenin’,” Brock called.
“Warm one,” came the reply. He’d heard the voice before, but couldn’t place it.
This alley was an odd place for a man to stand and enjoy a smoke, so Brock left his hand on the revolver. Matthews was still in jail, but this was below Abby’s home. “Got business here?” he asked.
“Maybe.”
Brock came to a stop six feet from the indistinguishable man. The moon was up, but the figure was shadowed by the looming hardware store. “What might that be?”
The man took a few steps forward and Brock made out the hat and coat, the lean face and the dark mustache. “Manley?”
“Spade?”
Brock’s instincts took over, his mind and body functioning as one, deadly calm, alert, focused. “Name’s Kincaid,” he replied.
This wasn’t the way a flashy gunfighter like Linc Manley called a man out. There was no crowd, no one to witness the heroics he thought he possessed, no one to carry the story to the papers. He hadn’t come here tonight for a showdown, but he had come for a reason. Brock was sure on both counts.
“There seems to be a lot of speculation over which one of us is Jack Spade,” Manley said. “Amusing, isn’t it?”
“Not particularly.”
“Oh, come now. Surely you can see the irony in the fact that you’re trying to lose a reputation and I’m looking to gain one.”
“It’s the looking that will get you killed,” Brock warned him.
“Such concern for my welfare is heartwarming. Who would have thought that a famous fast draw like you would be concerned for a stranger?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I’m talking about Jack Spade. The man who fights for law and order, the man who strikes fear into the hearts of the dangerous men he hunts down. The man who seeks justice with a pair of deadly blazing .45s.”
Brock actually chuckled. “You’ve been reading too many dime novels.”
“Writing them, actually.”
That brought Brock up short. “You’ve written stories about Jack Spade?”
“Jack Spade, Wyatt Earp, the Rock Canyon Kid—all of them. I’ve traveled the West in search of stories, and told them to thousands of readers.”
“Half that stuff isn’t true,” Brock pointed out.
“That’s why it’s fiction.” The tip of his cigar glowed as he drew on it.
In the back of his mind Brock was thinking that Manley might be trying to trick him into saying something he could use against him. “So you’re famous yourself.”
“I write under the name L. M. Hayes, but nobody remembers my name. They only remember Jack Spade’s.”
“What do you want from me?”
“The name.”
“What name?”
“Jack Spade. You’re done with it. You’re starting over here.”
This could still be a trick to draw him out in the open.
“I covered your back with the last one,” Manley added.
“What do you mean?”
“The shooter outside the restaurant. Followed him and took care of the situation.”
The information didn’t sit well. More than one person had already tracked him here. This man and the shooter.
“Figure I’ve already started earning the name,” Manley said.
Without acknowledging the man’s admission, or the fact that he believed him, Brock shook his head. “Guess you don’t need my permission to call yourself anything you want to.” Brock took a few steps past the man and stopped. “But you’d be inviting trouble if you chose to use that name. Men and boys will track you down to try to get the drop on you. Someone will always want to be better. Faster. More famous.”
Manley touched the brim of his hat. “Warning taken.”
Brock strode through the alley, the exchange troubling him. Reaching the livery, he saddled his horse and headed for the ranch. Had Manley set out to find Jack Spade or had his arrival in Whitehorn merely been a coincidence? If one man had looked for the gunslinger here, it meant others could, too. Others who wanted more than just a chat. Had it been foolish of Brock to come here? Was he placing his son and the woman he loved in danger?
Just when things had turned for the better. Just when it had begun to look as though there might be a future for him here, just when he and his son had formed a tenuous bond… A terrible heaviness weighed his heart.
As much as the thought tore him apart, he gave it consideration: maybe leaving again would be his only choice.
The second thaw came a week later, the snow melting and rushing down from the mountains in a torrent, overflowing creeks and riverbeds. The ranchers and hands from the higher country went to help others in danger of losing cattle, as well as aiding the business owners in Whitehorn, who sandbagged their buildings against disaster.
In the midst of the confusion, the circuit judge arrived and held court. Abby testified against Everett, and the judge gave him thirty days in jail.
For the most part, the population was sympathetic toward Abby, and several of the women voiced their support. Those who had bought into the rumors and snubbed her she recognized as never having been friends.
Sheriff Kincaid came to tell her one evening that Everett was planning to head East after he’d served his sentence. He’d been strongly encouraged to do so by the Kincaid family.
The river had risen to a dangerous swell and then, as if a dam had burst somewhere downstream, it gradually lowered. Abby breathed a sigh of relief. Standing on her dock beside Laine, who wore a man’s Hudson Bay coat, she shaded her eyes against the glare of the sun and listened to the report of the cowboy who rode down the muddy street calling the news. The town was a flurry of activity, accommodating the added business of having emergency help on hand.
Up and down the street, the buildings were surrounded by piles of strategically stacked sandbags, customers climbing over them to enter stores and businesses.
“The river is down,” Laine breathed.
“Thank God,” Abby replied.
Across the street, Sam and Brock wearily perched on kegs on the boardwalk. Linc Manley, dressed in his long black coat and wearing a red satin bandanna, smoked a cigar and carried on a running conversation with them. Sam and Brock had been hauling bags of grain and seed up a ladder to the Dillards’ loft all morning.
Suddenly, gunshots echoed from another street.
“Someone is celebrating the flood missing
us,” Laine suggested.
“Seems they could clap or sing or something, wouldn’t you think?” Abby asked, cringing at the sound.
Several men on horseback rode toward them, mostly ranch hands, but at the front of the group was a young man who didn’t look like he’d come to Whitehorn to work. He wore no coat, but sported pistols tethered to his thighs and a pair of thin leather gloves.
The horses couldn’t hold their footing in the slick mud, and the young man impatiently waited for his mount to obey his commands.
From behind them, a commotion rose, and a throng of people appeared, most on the boardwalks to stay dry, but some running through the ankle-deep mud.
“Jack Spade!” the kid hollered, the shout echoing.
The crowd murmured. Some folks moved backward, others scrambled forward for a better look.
“Nobody here goes by that name,” Brock called back, slowly standing.
“Don’t matter what name he’s goin’ by, I reckon. I come to send him to glory. Him and anybody else who gets in my way.”
“That’s big talk,” Brock called.
Horror engulfed Abby’s senses, numbing her scalp, ringing in her ears. What was Brock doing? Stay out of it! she wanted to shout, but her lips were frozen, as if she was having a nightmare.
Sam stood, too, but he moved back against the wall.
Linc Manley crushed out his cigar with the toe of his boot and draped his coat back, away from his holsters. “Better think twice, kid. You’ve got a lot of years left for card games and pretty women.”
The kid laughed. “Guess your days are numbered, though, eh, Pop?” The kid dismounted, dropping his horse’s reins and taking a couple of steps forward. He stood wide-legged, facing Brock and the man in black. “Either of you got the gumption to draw?”
Abby’s scalp prickled with horror. Get away from there, Brock! Get back!
Brock’s coat still covered his guns, and he wore a pair of work gloves.
Abby’s stressed brain likened this moment to another many years ago, a day when her brother had looked just as cocky and sure of himself as the boy who stood in the street right now.
Fast as lightning, the kid drew both his guns.
Chapter Eighteen
Shots rang out, and immediately the kid dropped a pistol and held his hand to his chest, his face contorted with pain.
Linc Manley lay on his back in the street, one boot on the wooden stairs, his hat fallen away. He held a gun lifelessly in his gloved hand.
Brock had one hand on his gun, too, but Abby didn’t know if he was drawing it or putting it away; it had all happened too fast. He was alive and that was all that mattered.
People crushed in around the fallen gunfighter, and someone called for a doctor. “That’s you, Laine,” Abby said.
Laine’s almond-shaped, dark eyes blinked in dreaded resignation. She took Abby’s hand and they hurried through the slippery mud to the other side of the street.
Blood bubbled from a hole in Manley’s brocade vest. His breath wheezed from his throat. He looked at Brock and tried to say something. Abby covered her mouth with her hand and shuddered with the remembered horror of watching a man die.
Laine took an apron that Tess Dillard handed her and pressed it to the wound. Even Abby could tell it was a hopeless act.
“Like you said,” Manley rasped, and blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.
“Don’t talk,” Brock told him, leaning forward.
He took Brock’s collar and pulled him down. “One of us is dying here.”
Brock met his eyes.
“Someone…will always…want to be faster….” He chuckled, a ghastly, choked sound. When he coughed, Brock helped him turn on his side to spit out blood. Bile rose in Abby’s throat.
“Don’t let anybody take my guns,” Manley said, a vein bulging in his temple with the strength it took to speak.
Brock assured him.
His eyes rolled back.
Laine placed her fingers on his neck. “He is dead.”
The crowd murmured, and men turned to talk to each other.
Brock leaned over Linc Manley’s body with the front of his coat open, and Abby thought she saw him tuck something into the other man’s coat. Brock straightened, and his grim expression distracted her.
He bent at the waist, unbuckled the holsters from the man’s body and held them for a moment. Turning, he walked toward the kid, who stood surrounded by another, smaller crowd. Bart Baxter and Will held him between them. “His hand’s shot,” Will said.
“Good.” Brock leaned toward the boy and poked his chest with Linc Manley’s gun belt. “Maybe that’ll keep him from killing more people.”
The boy cringed and whined, “One o’ you sons of bitches shot me!”
“You’re lucky that bullet isn’t between your eyes,” Brock growled.
Sheriff Kincaid showed up then, raising a hand to silence the dozen voices talking at the same time. “Quiet!” He turned in a half circle. “Who saw the whole thing?”
Twenty voices declared they had.
“Who shot Manley?”
“He did.” In a consensus, they pointed to the kid.
“And who shot you?”
“Jack Spade,” he said, cradling his hand. Laine hadn’t made a move to help him. “I killed Jack Spade!” He glanced at Brock with uncertainty.
“You don’t know for sure he was Jack Spade.” James glanced toward the man lying in the street. “He’s dead?”
Laine and Brock affirmed that he was.
“Somebody take him to the livery, then. Briggs can lay him out.”
Brock handed his cousin the gun belt.
Sam came out of the hardware store with the makeshift stretcher they’d used to transport Mr. Waverly. “Somebody give me a hand.”
George Lundburg moved forward, and with another two men, they got the body onto the stretcher. Manley’s coat gaped open in the process.
The butcher leaned over his prone form. “I’ll be damned!”
Heads turned.
“Look at this!” He slid a small stack of colorful playing cards from Manley’s vest pocket and splayed them for everyone to see. Every one of them was a jack of spades.
Conversation rose all around them.
“Told ya I killed Jack Spade,” the kid bragged.
Brock drew back his fist and slugged him in the jaw with a sickening crack. The blow elicited a howl, but effectively shut him up.
James placed a restraining hand on Brock’s chest. “Can’t let you beat up any more prisoners.”
“Lock him in there with Matthews, will you, James? Let them kill each other.”
Abby elbowed her way to Brock’s side. “What did he mean by that? Have you talked to Everett?”
“Briefly. He’ll be heading out of town as soon as his jail time is up.”
“I hope you slugged him once for me.”
He slanted her a glance.
She’d been terrified of him getting caught in the middle of a gunfight. Seeing him standing here in the sunlight, as handsome and vital as he’d ever been, she breathed a prayer of thanks. “For a few horrifying seconds there, I thought I might lose you.”
Something flickered behind his blue eyes. “So did I.”
She had the feeling he didn’t mean it in the same context she had. Around them, paying Brock and Abby scant attention, neighbors talked and gestured and prepared to move on about their business. The gossipmongers had something more absorbing to dwell on now.
Laine hurried home to get supplies for the kid’s hand. Brock walked Abby toward her store and watched her climb the stairs, then stop and turn back.
“You put those cards in his vest pocket, didn’t you?”
His expression didn’t change. He was good at hiding what he was thinking. The only times she’d ever seen a reaction on his face were when they’d been involved intimately…and when he looked at Jonathon.
“Jack Spade is dead now,” she said.
She remembered the lightning-fast speed with which he’d leaped from her divan and held a gun to her head. She’d known then, she supposed. She’d known in her heart every time she looked at those guns, heard the regret in his voice, read the reactions only she could pick up on.
“You stayed away to protect your family,” she said, thinking aloud. “To protect me…and the son you didn’t know you had. It took more courage to stay away than to come home, didn’t it?”
He wasn’t answering. His face revealed nothing.
Over his shoulder, she saw Sam approaching. “Watch the store for a while, will you?”
Brock turned.
“Sure,” Sam replied.
“By the way,” Abby asked, “how’s that girl from the reservation working out? A big help with the baby?”
“A godsend,” Sam replied, then passed her on the stairs and entered the store.
“Come with me,” she said, and stepped back down and around the corner. Brock followed her up the stairs and inside her kitchen, pausing in the doorway to glance back down at the street.
“They have better things to talk about today,” she assured him, closing and locking the door. Abby removed her coat and took Brock’s. “I have something to say.”
“Okay.”
“Let’s have tea—or coffee, you like coffee.”
“Let’s get to the point. Everything’s a work of art with you.”
She filled the enamel pot with water and added a log to the cook stove. “Trying to make me mad?” she asked, measuring grounds.
“That’s something I don’t have to work at with you.” He leaned back against the counter and crossed his arms over his chest.
She offered him a smile and a slice of corn bread.
He accepted the plate. “You can’t make me say anything I don’t want to.”
“It’s my turn to say something,” she told him. Behind her the coffee boiled, the aroma filling the air.
Brock took a few bites of the corn bread and set the plate aside.
Abby removed the pot and poured two mugs full, spooning sugar into Brock’s.
“You laid it all out for me,” she told him. “Shared your regret and your feelings and apologized…and I couldn’t take those extra steps. I was too afraid. Afraid you’d leave again, but more afraid of how powerful these feelings are.”
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