by Annie Lane
“There were two men at the blacksmith’s depot,” he answered, finding the courage to finally look over and meet Gabe’s fixed stare. “They just about tore the place to shreds, too. All your benches are broken and the walls are busted up. And the roof’s kinda fallen in too. I don’t right know why it stinks so bad, like it’s covered in cow dung or something, but … but that’s definitely what I smelt alright. I had to cover my face just to suck in air or I woulda done throwed up right there on the ground.”
“What about the rest of it?” Gabe shook with anger and it bled out into his voice. “Tell me right now, Junior. Is the house still alright?”
“I reckon so, Mr. Gabe, only the workshop’s a wreck.”
“Did you get a look at who did it?” asked Earl.
“Weeeeell … not exactly, it’s real dark outside, there ain’t a single star in the whole sky, but I know two things for sure … one of them was real tall and the other walked kinda funny.”
“What do you mean walked kinda funny?” asked Thomas.
“You know, like uh, when Doc Lawson drags young Sophie around the yard, you know when she’s grabbed hold of his leg and won’t let go. Crooked like … I think they call it alimped."
That’s when Alice screamed.
She screamed so loud in fact that the whole saloon shook, upstairs and downstairs and inside and out. Drinks rattled on the tables. Coins fell from the bar and clattered across the timber floor. Peanuts spilled from their plates and the fiddle-playing stopped so abruptly that the high-pitched scrape of the bow left the entire room grabbing for their ears.
Alice couldn’t believe it. They’d found her. Again! There was no mistaking what she’d just heard — two men … a limp … destruction and devastation.
They’d finally come to settle the score.
Chapter 25
Gabe wasn’t expecting Alice to run.
But she had, and she was mighty quick too. So quick in fact that he almost missed her as she dashed past him and threw herself out into the gloomy shadows of the night.
Her head spun quickly from left to right. She had to think fast. Her chest fixed taut inside her body and she wheezed for air. She exhaled once, knowing she would need to free up some space in her lungs so that she’d have the strength to run again.
She needed to hide. The only place she could think of was the alley behind the saloon. It was even darker back there than out on the street and she thought it might be a good place to lay low for a while, while she figured out her next move.
So she made a run for it again.
The boardwalk was covered in a fresh dusting of snow though, making it slippery and her dainty shoes lost traction on the icy timber, sending her toppling to the ground in an ungainly heap.
“Alice!” called Gabe, chasing after her.
“No, Gabe … let me go,” she squealed.
She wriggled and squirmed and twisted from under his grasp. Once she found her footing she tried running again, but Gabe wasn’t about to let that happen for a second time and he took both her wrists firmly in his hands. “What on earth is going on?”
Alice sighed and closed her eyes so she didn’t have to see his wounded expression. “Please let me leave before anyone gets hurt. I love you with all my heart, but I can’t just stay and let this happen. I’ll do whatever it takes to protect you from harm, so if that … if, if that means…” And then came the words Alice never dreamed she’d say. “If it means getting our marriage annulled, then that’s just what I’ll have to do.”
Gabe’s heart sank. “You’ll … what?”
“It’s the only way to make things right,” said Alice, tears blurring her vision.
“No it’s not, Alice…” Gabe shook his head then, completely befuddled. “I didn’t wait this long to find you just to have you leave me before we’ve even had a chance to make a life for ourselves. Whatever it is you’re running from is something we can work out together. Please, Alice, don’t leave me. Not now. We can talk about this later, but for now you need to get back inside where you’ll be safe and warm. I need to get my hands on—”
Mayor Clarkson suddenly appeared out of thin air.
He stood on the street before them, clutching in his hands the scruffs of two filthy coats. “Might be this pair of fools you’re looking for. It seems my good-for-nothin’ sons have finally gone too far. I just caught ’em sneaking out the back of your establishment, Gabe, covered in cuts and scrapings and … well, manure too by the smell o’ them.”
“I told ya so,” piped in Junior.
The Mayor shoved his sons forward then and watched as they stumbled and staggered all about the place, trying to find their footing on the icy road. Everything inside Gabe wanted to take an almighty swing and flatten both the brothers with one clean punch, but Alice was still whimpering and cowering beside him.
He took her in his arms. “Get them fools out of my sight and let the Sheriff deal with them. I’ve got more important things to worry about.”
“Sounds good to me, Son,” said Henry, stepping forward.
He was quick out of the chute and had them both cuffed in double-time. Escorting them toward the station, Henry called back over his shoulder, “Don’t think you’ll be seeing these two for a while, Mayor Clarkson. Any last words you want to say?”
“Good riddance … how about that!”
Henry laughed. “Fair enough. A bit of cell time might be just what they need to sober up. I reckon I could marinate a bison with the liquor inside these two. No offense or nothin’, Mayor, but I think your boys fell out of the stupid tree a while ago and they hit every branch on the way down.”
“No offense taken in the slightest, Henry.” He glanced cautiously each way up and down the street. “Reckon they take after my wife’s side of the family anyway.”
The shorter of the two Clarkson boys stumbled a little worse than the other and that’s when Alice noticed his torn trousers and blood seeping from his leg. So, this was the shorter man with the kinda funny walk. The man with a limp.
Just like Junior stated.
The taller Clarkson boy lifted his head and glared as best he could in his drunken state, before slurring loudly, “Shoulda just bins minding ya own bishness, Gabe, and left us to our drinkin’. Now looks whacha ya made us go and do. Itshhh all you fault.”
But it was only the Sheriff and the Mayor left to hear it as the others had all turned on their heels and headed back inside.
Alice knew she owed Gabe an explanation for her outburst. She needed to explain everything to him, right from the very beginning. Starting in Sulphur Springs. She needed to tell him about her past and come clean about the future. He was her husband after all and she owed him that much.
But she didn’t quite know where to begin.
She had spent so long trying not to think about that awful day. Those two men. She had cried herself to sleep so many nights. Had hoped not to see their faces in her dreams. Hoped to forget the image of them peering around the schoolyard and asking for her by her name. And always hoping she would never be found.
But that was impossible to do.
For when she walked back into the saloon … those two men were standing right there in front of her.
Chapter 26
“Well, look who we have here. If it isn’t the one and only Miss Alice Hamilton.”
Alice almost fainted, staring with eyes so wide you’d think she’d just seen a ghost.
She knew they would eventually find her. One way or another. And now her time was up. She had no choice but to concede her fate was decided by a power greater than herself and there was simply no more to say in the matter.
But she was yet to utter a single word.
Instead she just shook and shivered and shuddered and it took all Gabe had to keep her from falling to the floor.
“You sure are a hard woman to track down…”
Gabe stepped forward then and faced off with the two men. They didn’t have an advantage over him
in height or strength, but there was something unsettling about the way they stared straight through him. “For starters … it’s Mrs. Alice Calhoun, and she’s my wife. So I’ll ask you just once what you want with her, and if you don’t answer to my satisfaction, then I sure as heck won’t be asking you twice.”
“Good evening, Mr. Calhoun, it’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance—”
“Enough of the small talk!” snapped Gabe, growing impatient. “My wedding night has already been cut short by the most disastrous of events and I don’t plan on wasting another minute entertaining the likes of you two interlopers.”
“Forgive me, Sir,” said the man with the dark, bushy beard. “But my name’s Hank Whitely and I work for a law firm down south in Arizona … Jefferson & Sons. They’re quite well known around these parts, perhaps you’ve heard of them?”
“No,” said Gabe.
The two men stared at each other awhile, before Mr. Whitely said, “Alright then, we’ll play it your way, Mr. Calhoun. I guess we’ll just cut to the chase…” He watched Gabe carefully just a little longer for fear he might unleash all that pent-up anger. It was clear in the way the man’s arms strained inside the sleeve of his shirt. He turned then to the shorter man, the one with the clearly lame leg, and held out his hand. “The file please, Josiah.”
To which Josiah promptly handed over a thin, brown folder and then crossed his arms again. He looked bored with the whole affair and as it was, had remained silent the entire time. If the truth be told, Josiah was more interested in the bottles of unopened whiskey sitting over on the bar and hoped to find himself a glass once the paperwork was finalized.
Hank read through the file for a few long minutes and then glanced up from under his thick brows. “I’ll have you know, Miss Hamilton, I’ll sure be glad when all this is over. I’m beyond tired of living from my suitcase. If y’all had run off again we might just have considered giving up on you completely. Mr. Jefferson sure don’t pay us enough commission for all the miles we’ve covered on this case.”
“Mrs. Calhoun,” Gabe corrected, firmly.
Alice finally found her voice. It was weak and flimsy, but she couldn’t muster the strength to speak any louder. She almost wished they’d just pull their guns and get it over with. If she wasn’t shot soon, then the dreaded anticipation would surely kill her first. “What case are you talking about?”
Mr. Whitely sighed. He took a pen from his shirt pocket and began marking off what looked like a checklist of questions inside the folder. “Are you the daughter of one Sue-Ellen Hamilton?”
“Uh … yes?”
“And are you the same Alice Hamilton…” He glanced nervously over at Gabe and swallowed. “I mean, of course, Alice Calhoun, formerly known as Alice Hamilton, who once lived in Coopers Lane, Sulphur Springs, Texas until the year of 1884, the year in which the aforementioned Sue-Ellen, your mother, passed on in June, leaving behind just one dependent still accounted for?”
Alice had no idea what was happening. “Yes, that’s me.”
Then the man ticked the last box and proceeded to tear out a slip of paper. Gabe and Alice both leaned a little closer to get a better look. Louise also hovered to the forefront, not sure of what to make of the evening’s events and being that Henry had just walked back through the door — having clocked the blithering Clarkson boys once over the head and then stowed them away for the night — she was intrigued to see what he’d make of it all.
“Congratulations, Alice,” Mr. Whitely said, handing over a check. “I’m sorry we couldn’t get this to you sooner but tracking you down is easier said than done. I’m sure this tidy little sum will make a mighty fine wedding present though. Couldn’t have come at a more opportune time, I’d say.”
Alice stared down at the long run of zeros on the slip. “What is all this? I don’t understand. I thought you were debt collectors sent to kill me for my father’s arrears.”
“Kill you?” gasped Mr. Whitely. “Heaven’s above, why would we want to kill you?” He laughed then and pointed his thumb at Josiah. “As if this one could run fast enough to kill anyone. He’s as slow as a wet week and about as entertaining as one too.”
Josiah frowned at the comment and then headed for the bar.
“No, Alice, it couldn’t be further from the truth. We’re here to serve you your inheritance. It seems your mother set up a trust fund for you when you were born. She inherited some land herself back when she was just a girl from your grandpappy. It was just after his death, way back at the turn of the century, and for some strange reason she kept it hidden from your father all these years.”
“My father didn’t know there was money in the family?”
Hank shrugged. “No, apparently not. I wish I had more answers for you Alice, but all the information we have is stored away in a locked box down south. Your mother set it up with Jefferson so we’d only notify you about the money after her death. Of course, that would have gone a lot smoother if we could actually find you. We only had one address to go by, and it seems that address changed ownership a few many times. Once that happened, you were near impossible to find.”
“My father and I lived in a loft above some stables.”
Mr. Whitely nodded. “No fixed address then. Now it’s making more sense.”
Gabe stood stoically beside his wife, listening carefully to every word. The wind had all been knocked out of his sails but he kept calm for Alice’s sake. He wasn’t sure how to react. Their life together had just begun and now it was all changing. He didn’t want it to change. He liked it just the way it was.
Would she want to leave him and go back to Texas?
“So let me get this straight,” Gabe asked, making sure he had it all set right in his head. “My wife owned land back in Texas, but now she doesn’t? Where’d the cash come from?”
“A wealthy oil man going by the name of ‘Armstrong’ made an offer on the place and wrote out that very check she holds there in her hands. It’s more than a fair offer and could set you both up for a very long time. All you need to do is sign on the dotted line and the rest will be taken care of once we get back to the office.”
Alice couldn’t believe it. She stared down at the check and watched as all the numbers blurred together while her eyes brimmed with hot tears. Her heart pounded in her chest, filled with love for her mother. From the very beginning her mother had been there for her … and now, she was here too.
Alice wiped her eyes and finally pulled together her thoughts. She looked over at Gabe and smiled, right before she kissed him square on the mouth in front of everyone. “This is enough money to rebuild the blacksmith’s and then have some to spare. We’ll be able to put in a garden and a vegetable patch and maybe we’ll even get a few chickens for the place. That way we’ll save money on buying eggs.”
Gabe chuckled, stunned by his wife’s innocence. “Alice, my dear, you’ve just inherited enough money to build a manor over on the hills, one so grand there would be more bedrooms than people and a washroom set aside just for the dog.”
Alice gasped. “We’re getting a dog?”
“If you want, but that’s not the point. You can have anything your heart desires.”
Alice let her eyes trail slowly around the room.
Charlotte and Thomas were smiling over by the door, their eyes wide with surprise. Earl and Beth were there too, watching on with anticipation — though Junior had fallen asleep in Beth’s arms, softly snoring through his blocked nose while he dreamed of a life of happiness and laughter and babies and more animals running around the house than he could possibly muster.
Alice smiled to herself as she looked back up at the man she loved. The man with the messy mop of fair curls. Just like Junior, she’d spent her life dreaming of the very same thing.
“I have all my heart desires right here in this room. I can’t think of anywhere else I’d rather live than in that lovely home you built for us with your own two hands. You’re a wonderful man, Gabe, and y
ou have a wonderful family that I’m honored to be a part of. I want to use the money to resurrect your business and perhaps we might even extend the barn by a room or two. We’ll need all the extra space once we start making those babies you talked about in your letter.”
Gabe bit his lip. He didn’t expect her to say that out loud.
Thomas burst out laughing. “Well, looks like someone was a forward thinker, but if I know anything about baby-making, it sure ain’t gunna happen standing around a crowded saloon.” He looked around with a smile on his face and shouted for all to hear. “I say we call it a night and let these two get on with their honeymoon.”
Gabe and Alice couldn’t have agreed more.
And that night they talked and kissed and made love into the wee hours of the morning until there were no secrets left between them and no promises left broken.
Trust had brought them together, and love would see them through to the end.
Chapter 27
Dear Diary,
There aren’t enough words in this world to express just how very happy I am living here in Conrad!
Life in a small country town is wonderful and I’m constantly surprised by the kindness and the generosity of strangers. Never before have I felt so very welcome.
Gabe and I have been married for just over a month now and the love we share seems to have doubled in that short time. It turns out my husband is not only a very handsome man — with a wonderful sense of humor too — but he’s also extremely considerate and understanding and patient and … oh, listen to me rambling on, my head’s all over the place … but I’ve heard that can happen to a woman in the family way.
Yes, that’s right. Gabe and I just found out that we are expecting our first child … a Christmas baby no less. We can’t think of a greater gift from God to help us celebrate the festive season.
My only wish is that my parents were still alive to share in this wonderful occasion also, but I know they are both watching down on me from Heaven with their angel wings spread wide.