Spirit of the Wolf

by Loree Lough

  He’d given it a lot of serious thought in the hundreds of miles, during the hundreds of hours it had taken to get from Arizona’s west border to Texas: Mamie had been faithful and true to the end. She deserved to go to a good home, to a man who’d value her devotion and her loyalty, who’d appreciate just how far she’d go and just how much discomfort she’d tolerate for her master.

  She wouldn’t be sold, like common property. Instead, Mamie would be a gift, given in good faith to whatever man passed Chance’s horsemanship test. And when he found that man, he wouldn’t, couldn’t say goodbye to his faithful companion. Instead, he’d leave, quick and simple. It would be far less painful that way.

  “That’s some horse you’ve got yourself there,” the liveryman said as Chance’s feet hit the hay-strewn floor. “Ain’t you a beauty,” he continued, nuzzling her nose. “What’s a purty li’l gal like you doin’ with a dusty ole cowpoke like this?” He sent a gap-toothed grin in Chance’s direction, then patted Mamie’s forehead.

  Chance watched Mamie’s head dip low as the grizzled old fellow continued to shower her with affectionate praises. She’d always been skittish, wary of strangers, yet she hadn’t so much as blinked when the liveryman approached, hadn’t backed off when he reached out to scratch her whiskered chin.

  “She could use a good brushin’,” the man said. There was no mistaking the scolding tone in his voice. “And when was the last time she had herself some water? A bucket of oats?” He ran a leathered hand over her withers. “Man oughta be horsewhipped,” he continued, “treatin’ his horse this-a way….”

  “She’s yours, if you want her.”

  “Horse like this?” He laughed. “I promise, I ain’t got the askin’ price.”

  Chance crossed both arms over his chest and willed himself to say it: “I have personal business,” he began, “and Mamie, here, can’t come along. All I’m askin’ for her is your promise that you’ll take good care of her. No rough ridin’, no plows to pull. She ain’t overly fond of grass, but she’ll eat it when pickin’s are slim, and—“

  “Mister,” the liveryman interrupted, “no need to fret. I’ll treat her good.” He ruffled her bangs, as if to prove it. “She’ll be here when you finish your business.”

  Chance cleared his throat, pulled the hat lower on his forehead and headed for the door.

  “What-say we get you cleaned up all nice an’ purty?” he heard the liveryman say as he stepped onto the wooden walkway. “An’ after that, I’ll rustle you up a feedbag full o’ fresh oats….”

  One down and one to go, Chance thought, frowning. His relief at providing Mamie with a caring owner waned as he headed for the sheriff’s office. On the other side of that weathered door, his deadly fate awaited.

  Stepping onto the porch, he paused beside the worn rocker. How many times had he seen the sheriff, sitting right there, chewing a toothpick and staring through narrowed eyes at the comings and goings in the street? Carter had held a tight rein on this town. From all outward appearances, that hadn’t changed, either.

  Chance wondered if Carter and his deputies would string him up at sundown, or make him wait until morning, so a proper crowd could be gathered to watch him die? Would they let him go to his Maker with a shred of dignity, or would they use fists and boots to take out ten years’ worth of frustrations on him first?

  Well, he thought as his hand wrapped around the doorknob, you’ll soon find out….

  Chance shoved the door open and stepped inside, and squinted to hurry his eyes into adjusting to the dim light.

  “Well, I’ll be,” said a deep, gravelly voice from the shadows, “if it ain’t W.C. Atwood.”

  He closed the door behind him and unholstered his six-shooter. “One and the same,” he said, laying the revolver on the sheriff’s desk.

  “Well, I’ll be,” the man repeated, stepping into the light.

  Chance chuckled quietly and shook his head as he recognized the man. “Joe Purdy, you sure are a sight for sore eyes.”

  Purdy snickered. “Well, you sure ain’t. You look like somethin’ the dog drug in.”

  Shoving his hat to the back of his head, Chance smiled.

  “Didn’t you get my telegram?” Purdy asked.

  “Yeah. I got it. You saved my bacon again. Don’t know how I’ll ever repay you for warnin’ me that Carter and Yonker were headin’ my way.”

  Purdy held up a gnarled, arthritic hand. “Not that telegram, boy…the last one. The one the Widow Pickett paid for. I sent it more’n a year ago.”

  Frowning, Chance said, “The Widow Pickett? Why would she send me a telegram?”

  The old man stood there, silently studying Chance’s face for a long moment. In place of an answer, Joe said, “You been on the run all this time? Since leavin’ Baltimore, I mean?”

  “Yep.” There wasn’t much point in telling him what evils he’d seen, what tragedies he’d survived in the year since leaving Foggy Bottom. His troubles would be over soon, if not this evening, then in the morning. It would be a blessed relief, once they slipped that noose around his neck and released the gallows’ trap door…. Chance stood taller. “But I’m all through running. I’m here to turn myse—“

  “Set yourself down, W.C.,” Purdy interrupted, pointing at the chair behind the sheriff’s desk, “and take a load off. I got some news might just take you some gettin’ used to….”

  His frown deepened. “I don’t have time for one of your stories, Joe. Now tell me, where’s the sheriff? We’ve got business to discuss.”

  Purdy rolled the chair into the center of the room. “Set down, I tell you, and shut yer yap.” He leaned his broom against the wall and pointed at the empty seat. “I mean it now, set!”

  “I don’t reckon it’ll hurt to humor you,” Chance said on a sigh, “‘cause after tomorrow….”

  “Lot of things have changed around here.” He pointed at his bony chest. “This, for starters.”

  Chance grinned at the five-pointed star. “You’re…you’re a deputy?”

  Purdy nodded. “Ain’t had a drop to drink in over a year.” He smiled and thrust out his chest. “Took me a wife, too.”

  Shaking his head, Chance chuckled. “Well, don’t that just beat all.” One brow high on his forehead, he added, “I was wonderin’ why you’re all spruced up…no whiskers, clean duds, and—“

  “And you’re a free man, W.C.”

  The smile faded as Chance’s mouth went dry. Heart pounding and pulse racing, he narrowed his eyes. “What?”

  “You heard me. You’re a free man. Horace Pickett’s real killer confessed.” Purdy shrugged. “He’s locked up good ‘n’ tight in the new jail out on the edge of town.”

  Chance screwed up his face, shook his head in disbelief. “Joe, I declare, you always did have the strangest dreams when you were drinkin’. You sure you haven’t touched a drop?”

  “I told you some stories, but I never told you a lie. I said I don’t drink no more, and it’s the plain honest truth.”

  Eyebrows rising in disbelief, Chance grinned. “Well, I’m glad to hear it, but the fact is, true or not, you’re spewin’ nonsense. I’m not free yet, but I will be soon as I turn myself in and they drape the noose around my neck.”

  “Will you hush, boy; I’m tellin’ you true! You ain’t a wanted man anymore.” He paused, squinted one eye, and grinned. “Tell me…when was the last time you saw your face on a wanted poster?”

  Chance removed his hat and ran a hand through his hair. “Now that you mention it, I don’t rightly recall.” He met Purdy’s eyes. “But that doesn’t mean I’m not—“

  “It sure as shootin’ does!”

  He described what happened that night out behind the saloon. When he finished, Chance took up where Purdy left off, boots thudding across the board floor. “I’m not a wanted man,” he repeated, more to himself than to Purdy. “I’m not a wanted man….” He could go home now, home to Foggy Bottom, and if Bess was free…

  “Ain’t you t
he least bit curious to know who killed Pickett?”

  It would take time to align himself with the news. After so many years on the run, he wondered if he could adjust to life as a free man again. Curiosity raised its ugly head. “Yeah, I reckon I would.”

  “Then you’d better set your sorry self back down,” Purdy insisted.

  Chance smiled. “I believe I’ll take the news just fine, standin’ up.”

  “All right, then, but don’t say I didn’t warn you….”

  “What did you do, Joe, trade whiskey for slow molasses? Spit it out, why don’t you!”

  “Was your uncle who done it,” Purdy blurted.

  “My….” Chance swallowed, hard. “Uncle Josh? But…but he’s the one who….”

  “Admitted it, straight out. It’s what said in the telegram.”

  His uncle Josh? Who’d lectured him that very day, after Chance warned Horace Pickett what might happen if he ever threatened a defenseless woman again? He remembered Josh on the witness stand, testifying that yes, he believed his nephew capable of a hot-blooded crime. And as he’d headed back to his seat, Josh had stopped, apologized—with tears in his eyes no less!—for what he’d been forced to say under oath.

  “Where’s this new jail?” he ground out.

  “Just east of town. Remember where the old Connor place used to be?”

  Nodding, Chance jammed the hat back onto his head. “I’ll be back by sundown.”

  Purdy grabbed his hat. “It’s a slow day,” he said, winking mischievously. “I’ll ride over with you. The warden is Naomi’s brother and—”

  “Naomi?”

  A slight flush colored Purdy’s cheeks as he grinned. “The new Mrs. Purdy.”

  “Do I know her?”

  Winking mischievously, Purdy said, “Let’s just say the Widow Pickett ain’t a widow anymore.”

  More had changed around here than he realized. “You don’t say….”

  “Well, let’s not stand here yammerin’,” Purdy said. “Let’s get on over to the jail.”

  Chance nodded. “We have to stop over at the livery first; I have to see a man about a horse….”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chance stared out the iron-barred window of a small office beside the infirmary and watched the men outside trudge single-file across the hard-packed dirt, the stripes around their shoulders and the chains around their feet branding them prisoners of Lubbock Prison.

  The blistering noonday sun beat down, glaring angrily from the whitewashed stone walls, deepening the bitter frowns of weariness on their hard-luck faces. Despite the heat, Chance shivered, for he knew that only the grace of God had spared him a fate even worse than this. Nothing he’d experienced on the trail could compare with the bitter ache of knowing that his uncle would spend another ten years in this cold, barren place….

  According to the warden, Texas law had gone easy on Josh, taking into account his clean record and all he’d done for the good folks of Lubbock. Instead of lynching him for Horace Pickett’s death, they’d sentenced him to a decade behind bars.

  I’d rather swing from the tallest tree than spend one day in this God-forsaken place, Chance thought as the last of the men disappeared through a double-wide iron gate. He guessed the wall at twenty feet high, perhaps higher, topped off by a tangle of barbed wire. From his vantage point, Chance could see over it, to field and farm and stream. To view so much as the sunlit, cloud-dotted blue sky, the men who called this place home had no choice but to look straight up…as if into the eyes of God, Himself. If the prisoners prayed, did they ask for freedom from this place? And when no answer came, did their hearts cry out to Him for mercy?

  The men had paved the road leading to the prison, brick by back-breaking brick, and the many-hued flowers lining the drive had been grown from seed and planted by those same calloused hands. At first glance, a visitor might be fooled into thinking he’d mistakenly stopped at some wealthy rancher’s mansion. But once beyond the bright-white entry doors, the tidiness and color stopped as abruptly as life within these walls. The place was gray and black, far as the eye could see. He couldn’t imagine what life here these past few months had been like for his uncle, who often slept outside under the stars, claiming that “sometimes, the confinement of the house smothers me!”

  Chance shoved the unpleasant thoughts aside and focused instead on the deal he’d struck with the liveryman: The gap-toothed fellow got the price of a new horse for the time he’d spent feeding and grooming Mamie, and Chance got his devoted friend back.

  He’d gotten Joe back, too, and Chance was in the midst of acknowledging his gratitude about that when a pair beefy guards led a prisoner into the room. One elderly woman could have done the job, yet these two seemed to delight in dragging and shoving the convict.

  Chance stepped away from the window and rubbed his eyes. Surely the bright sunlight was playing tricks on him, for this frail, white-haired old man couldn’t be his robust uncle. The Josh Atwood Chance remembered was dark-haired, tall and broad-shouldered, hale and hardy. Had they brought him the wrong man?

  One guard pushed the prisoner onto the seat of a rickety wooden chair as the other fastened his prisoner’s chains to an iron ring bolted to the stone floor. “Warden says take all the time you want,” he said to Chance. “Just bang on the door when you’re through, and we’ll take the miserable piece of scum back to his cell.”

  The man lurched when the door slammed shut, winced at the metallic clank of the key in the big black lock.

  Could this debilitated being possibly be the man who’d delivered countless brutal beatings and harsh tongue-lashings? Nah, Chance corrected himself, not this broken-spirited—

  And then their eyes locked, and Chance knew without a doubt that this was indeed his Uncle Josh.

  “Good of you to come, W.C.”

  He even sounded like a tired old man. Chance pulled up a chair, turned it around and swung a leg over its seat.

  Josh managed a feeble smile. “You remind me of your pa, handsome and strong, cock-sure of yourself….” Then, almost as an afterthought, “Have you seen your Aunt Polly?”

  “Not yet.” And after a moment, “Wasn’t it you taught me to do first things first?”

  Josh nodded. “Yes. I expect I taught you quite a few useless lessons….” He inhaled a shaky breath. “Well, you be sure and pay her a visit on your way back to town. She’ll be mighty proud to see how you turned out.” He averted his gaze. “No thanks to me.”

  There was no rancor in Chance’s voice when he said, “Why’d you do it, Uncle?”

  For a moment, Josh only sat there shaking his head. Chance was about to add a line of explanation to his question when the uncle said, “Because I’m a coward.” He looked up, stared deep into his nephew’s eyes and added, “That day in the store, when you defended Francine? You were more man back then than I’ll be on the day I die, which, if God is truly a merciful Being, won’t be long.”

  Josh heaved a deep sigh. “There’s no righting the wrongs I’ve done you, W.C., but I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me before I meet my Maker.”

  Before he met his Maker? Chance’s eyes narrowed slightly.

  “I know I should have confessed sooner, but now that I have, you’re a free man again.”

  If Josh ever had any intention of coming clean on his own, would he have waited ten years to do it? Chance didn’t think so. He had Joe Purdy to thank for his freedom, not Josh Atwood.

  Not so long ago, a thought like that might have driven him to do something vengeful and violent. But Bess had changed that about him just as surely as she’d changed his belief that he didn’t deserve the love of a good woman.

  When Chance told her what life had been like in Josh Atwood’s house, he’d could see in her dark, loving eyes that his suffering hurt her, too. Somehow, she’d sensed he hadn’t told the story to engender pity, and in her gentle, puppy-to-the-root way, Bess helped him puzzle out why his uncle changed. Didn’t matter that
no one held Josh accountable for the disaster that caused a young mother to lose her fingers. Josh blamed himself. What did matter, Bess had insisted, was that Chance learned to forgive the man Josh became because of it. Forgiveness, she’d taught him, was far more beneficial to the giver than to the receiver.

  “Did you hear your nephew threaten Horace Pickett?” the prosecutor had asked.

  Now Chance understood the heavy sigh, the long hesitation that came before Josh said, “Yes, I heard the threat.”

  “And do you believe your nephew is capable of such violence?”

  He’d avoided Chance’s eyes, and frowning, Josh had said, “All men are capable of such violence.”

  His uncle’s testimony had been carefully worded to cover his own tracks. And if Joe Purdy hadn’t stumbled onto proof that it had been Josh who’d killed the banker, Chance would still be on the run…or dangling from a rope….

  He could almost hear Bess’s sweet voice, whispering, “Nothing will be gained by holding a grudge, except your own misery….”

  “I could go to Jesus easier, if I could take your forgiveness with me,” Josh was saying.

  “Go? What’re you talkin’ about?”

  “I’m dying.” Josh exhaled a long, shuddering sigh. “They say it’s the cancer, that it’s been eating at me for some time now.”

  Chance frowned, swallowed. “There’s nothing they can do? No medicine? No operation? No—“

  “Wouldn’t accept any of that even if it were available.” He shook his head. “I’m as good as dead, nephew.”

  Chance didn’t have to think twice before saying, “There’s nothing to forgive…Uncle Josh.”

  A moment of deafening stillness punctuated his statement. During most of the conversation, Josh had been staring at a crack in the floor between his boots. Slowly, his chin lifted from his chest and his eyes filled with tears. “I’ve been praying for your forgiveness, son. I don’t deserve it, but it does my heart good to know the Almighty has answered my prayer.”

  I’m not your son, he wanted to say. But Chance held his tongue. What would be gained by lashing out at this shattered shell of a man? Even if he told Josh what he thought of him, those years Chance had spent running from the law would still be just as gone. He shrugged, acknowledging yet again that without those years, he never would have met Bess. If he looked at it that way, he owed Josh a debt of gratitude.