by Austin, Lori
Dooley put his arm out. “Careful. You’ll fall in.”
“Where?”
“Inside,” he repeated like the half-wit he was.
“Inside what?”
He pulled a lantern from the blackness and fiddled with lighting it. As the dim glow spread across his pale face, Dooley lifted the light and beckoned. “I’ll show you.”
Then he disappeared inside.
***
Leon wanted to get out of town before anyone figured out what he was up to. He was doing the only thing that he could to save Ruth, and Ruth was what was important. But taking a notorious outlaw leader from the jail and wandering about the prairie with him, even if he was handcuffed, wasn’t the brightest thing a lawman had ever done.
Not that he owed anyone an explanation. He was the sheriff, for crying out loud. Still, he sneaked out before the sun rose, not even telling Barnett where he was going. If the boy didn’t know, he couldn’t tell.
The way tempers were running, Leon wouldn’t put it past the men of the town to organize a vigilante committee and come after them. Folks were mighty angry at being duped by an outlaw. They felt foolish for liking Noah, for trusting him, for welcoming him into their community, and when people felt foolish, they got snake mean.
“Where’s the posse?” Noah’s voice sounded loud in the still, icy darkness that preceded dawn.
This time always made Leon lonely. Death loomed near at that darkest hour, when it was colder than cold and even when you weren’t alone, you were.
“They’re meeting us at dusk, near the abandoned trading post on the border.”
“You don’t trust anyone from town?”
Leon looked at Noah, eyebrows raised. “Do you?”
“Good point.”
“How far to the money?”
Noah’s pale blue eyes scanned the horizon. “Few miles.”
Silence descended. Neither of them spoke until a ramshackle farmhouse appeared beneath the blue-gray sky. Walker headed right for it.
“You hid the money on someone’s farm?”
“Nope.”
Leon squinted. There was a horse in the corral and smoke puffed from the chimney. The place wasn’t deserted.
He drew his gun. The sound of the hammer pulling back cracked across the open prairie like a shot. “Walker, don’t make me kill you.”
Noah kept riding. “Relax, Leon. This will only take a minute.”
Panic lit in Leon’s belly. What if this was a trap and he’d walked right into it? He’d believed Walker was intent on saving Ruth, but the man had duped the entire town into thinking him harmless; maybe he’d been lying about love, too.
“Where’s Ruth?” Leon demanded. “If something happens to you, I need to find her.”
“You’ll never find her without me.” Noah threw a glance over his shoulder. “Trust me.”
“Not today.”
Noah snorted, a sound resembling a laugh, and Leon discovered he was smiling, too. Then the door to the cabin creaked open, and the barrel of a rifle poked out.
“Son of a—” Leon moved the aim of his pistol from the center of Noah’s back toward the door.
“No!” Noah shifted his horse between Leon and the house. “It’s me, Jonah!”
“Billy Jo?”
The rifle disappeared, and a man near the same age as the two of them limped onto the porch. How Leon came to that conclusion about Jonah’s age, he later couldn’t say, since the man’s hair was silver and gold, his face severely lined, and his movements slow and pained.
“Where have you been?” he demanded. “Carol thought you were dead. You scared her half to death last time with all the blood.”
“Blood?” Leon asked.
Jonah flicked a glance Leon’s way. The expression in his eyes was old, too. The only thing about the man that spoke of youth was his voice, deep and sure, and his hands, equally sure, upon the rifle.
“Who’s he?”
“Harker,” Noah said shortly. “I need the money, Jonah.”
“Right where you left it. Come on in.” He disappeared inside the cabin, and Leon heard him murmuring to someone, a woman from the sound of the answer. Leon and Noah dismounted.
“You can put up your gun,” Noah said. “There’s just Jonah, his wife, and their kids.”
Leon shrugged and holstered his pistol. The man would have shot him already if he meant to. “Who is he?”
“A friend.”
Noah entered the cabin, with Leon right behind him. Jonah waited just inside the doorway. He took one look at the handcuffs on Noah’s wrists and pressed his rifle to Leon’s neck. Leon froze.
“Let him go, lawman.”
Noah sighed. “Let it be, Jonah.”
“You know I’d kill to save you, Billy Jo, just like you did for me.”
Noah reached out with his bound hands and gently removed the barrel of the rifle from Leon’s neck. Leon started breathing again, “I know you would. But I’m okay. I need the money, and then we’ll be going.”
“Jonah, do what he says.” A large-boned, dark-haired woman, whom Leon had not noticed while his life was on the line, strode forward with a saddlebag. She handed it to Noah.
“Thanks, Carol. I’m afraid I need to take it all with me.”
Her gaze flicked to Leon, then away. “I kind of thought that you might. We’ll be all right. The crops were good this year. No grasshoppers or hail, no drought.” She patted Noah’s beard-roughened cheek. “You okay?”
“I’ll be fine.” Noah held out the bags, and Leon took them.
The woman caught at Noah’s hands when they were free. “I meant the bullet wound.”
“I’m alive, aren’t I?” He pulled free.
“I didn’t think you would be for long.”
“Neither did I.”
“So someone helped you?”
Noah grunted, shrugged, and turned to leave. Leon stepped in his way. “You were wounded in the robbery?”
“What of it?”
“Who helped you?”
Their eyes met. “Who do you think?”
Leon cursed. “Idiot! You went to Ruth?”
“I didn’t mean to.”
“They why did you?”
“Do we have to talk about this now?”
“Yes. Where were you while you healed? Not at Kelly’s, I’m sure.”
“The farmhouse across the river.”
“She lied for you? Hid you? How could you have put her in danger like that? You said that you loved her.”
Noah’s shoulders slumped. “It was Christmas Eve. I thought I was dying. I wanted to see her. I wasn’t going to let her see me.”
“Then what happened?”
“I don’t know.” Noah lifted his bound hands, then let them fall again. “I plead delirium.”
“Fool.”
“You’ll get no argument from me.”
Jonah and his wife stood silently by, glancing back and forth between the two of them. From the bedroom drifted the cry of a baby, and Carol disappeared. Jonah and his rifle stayed right where they were. Leon ignored him. He was on the trail of the truth, and he wasn’t going to stop now.
“How did you explain a bullet wound to Ruth?”
“I told her the truth. I had no idea who shot me.
“And she believed that?”
“She’s not as suspicious or as nosy as you are, Sheriff.”
“That’s because she hasn’t been around men like you. Now, because of you, she’s kidnapped and dragged God knows where.”
“You don’t have to remind me. I know this is my fault.”
The despair in Noah’s voice struck a cord within Leon, and he didn’t like feeling sorry for an outlaw. “Well, just so you know,” he said, even though it was petty.
“Who’s Ruth?” Jonah asked.
“I don’t have time to explain right now,” Noah said.
“You aren’t going to have time to explain later, either.”
Noah shot Leo
n a dirty look. Jonah started stroking his blasted rifle. Leon wanted to smack himself in the head. Why was he being such a bastard?
He loved Ruth. He was the man she should marry. She deserved a safe life in her hometown. Leon had all these things in his grasp. He should be happy. But he wasn’t, and he didn’t know why, which only made him mean.
“Let’s go,” he snapped. “We got places to be.”
“I don’t like how you talk to him, mister.” Jonah struggled forward to put himself between Leon and Noah. The man’s leg was so twisted, he could barely walk. Leon wondered idly how he managed to farm.
“It’s okay, Jonah.”
“No, it ain’t.” He poked the barrel of his rifle against Leon’s chest. “This man saved my life. I owe him. I’d do anything for him.”
“Jonah—”
“He should know he’s taking a good man off this earth, not a bad one, as I’m sure he thinks.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does to me. He’s gonna learn how a boy becomes an outlaw. Then maybe he won’t be so holier-than-thou.” Jonah glared at Leon with all the ferocity of a mama bear protecting her cub.
“I’m listening,” Leon said. “You don’t have to poke me with your gun anymore.”
Jonah lowered the rifle, but he didn’t put it away. Instead, he leaned on it like a crutch and limped to the kitchen table, where he fell into a chair with a groan.
“As you can see, my leg’s a mess. But I’d be a lot worse off if it wasn’t for Billy Jo.”
“Were you in the Kansas Gang?”
Jonah scowled. “You want to hear this or not?”
“Oh, I do.”
“Then shut up. I’m not your prisoner.” Jonah rubbed his hip and stared at the tip of his boot as if he were peering into the past. “We were both slaves for Simon Lane.”
Leon glanced at Noah. Appearing extremely uncomfortable, he shrugged and contemplated his boot as well.
Jonah continued. “The man was mean as a stuck boar. But meaner still was his brother. The two of them would fight whenever they saw each other, and one day Simon wound up dead at the end of their visit.”
“Lane’s brother shot him?”
Jonah lifted his gaze. “Isn’t that what I said?”
Leon looked to Noah again. If that was true, Noah hadn’t killed Lane. What Leon had accused him of in front of Ruth was untrue. Again he felt that niggling sense of unease but pushed it away. If Walker hadn’t killed Lane, he had killed others. Leon had no reason to feel bad for accusing him of murder, albeit of the wrong man.
“Why didn’t you two come forward and say what happened to Lane? You just left him dead in the yard and took off?”
“He was past minding, and we didn’t take off Lane’s brother took us along with him.” Jonah raised his eyebrows. “He was the man who started the Kansas Gang.”
“The man Walker killed.”
Jonah scowled and started stroking his precious rifle again. “You have a problem keeping your trap shut, don’t ya, Billy Jo?”
“I told him I killed the outlaw leader.” Noah moved to the window and peered out. “That isn’t news.”
“I’m sure it’s news as to why.”
“He killed the man to be the boss,” Leon said.
No. He killed him to save my life.” Jonah rubbed his hip again. “Simon Lane was mean. Charlie Lane was vicious. He crippled me. Would have killed me if it hadn’t been for Billy Jo. Now most men would say I’d have been better off dead, since I can barely get about. But Billy Jo wouldn’t let me feel sorry for myself. He hired me to cook for the men. Then when I met Carol, he bought us this place.”
“Why?”
Jonah caught and held Leon’s gaze. “Because he understood how it was to be alone in this world with no choices. Men like you think men like us choose this life we lead. But most times it chooses us.”
“You can’t change?”
“Some of us try,” Noah murmured, still staring out the window. “But who we are is more than our names or a job or a chance. Our past doesn’t die as easily as we do.”
“I don’t understand—”
“No, you don’t understand, Sheriff.” Jonah made the form of address sound like an insult. To him it no doubt was. “I’m sure you had two parents, a home, food in your belly, schooling.”
Leon nodded, wondering why he suddenly felt guilty about that.
“So you can’t understand what it might be like to have no one and nothing all of your life. Days without food. Weeks without a bed. Cold so bad you’d like to die of it. You have no idea.”
“So stealing and killing is the only way?”
“Most of us can’t even read. Billy Jo learned back in New York before he ran off from the glorified prison they called an orphanage. He taught me and a few others. But you think we can just walk up to a town and say, Hey, let me work at your store, your bank, your hotel. I ain’t got no learnin’, but I’ll do a good job, yes, surely I will.”
“You could try.”
“We did. We came out here full of hope for a family or at least a second chance. We were willing to work, and we got the shit beaten out of us for daring to dream.”
“Lane isn’t the rule, more of an exception.”
“How would you know? Men like Lane are a lot more common than men like Billy Jo.”
Leon glanced at Noah. In his eyes, Billy Jo Kansas had been the worst of the worst. He agreed that men like the Lanes were scavengers, picking on those smaller and weaker than they. But they weren’t really breaking the law. For the first time, Leon considered that the law might need some adjustment.
“To survive we had to adapt,” Jonah continued. “We became strong, tough, mean, willing to do whatever we had to do. Who we are is inside of us.” He thumped his fist against his chest. “Folks sense we aren’t exactly the best man for the job. We don’t fit in—except with each other.”
“And no matter how hard we try”—Noah turned away from the window—“we never will.”
That little niggle of guilt began again in Leon’s belly. Jonah was right. He had no idea what it was like to live the life they’d lived.
Leon would like to think he’d have done anything to keep from turning outlaw. But he’d never been hungry a day in his life. He’d always had a family, always known someone was there to help him if he needed them, always felt loved.
The only bad thing that had ever happened to him had been the burning of the Harker home by bushwhackers. Even then, his father’s family had taken them in that night, then given them money to start over in Kelly Creek.
Leon could remember watching as the house burned and being downright furious, wanting to hurt the people who had hurt him, wanting to do something terrible. How would he have reacted if his entire life was one rotten bit of luck after another? If he’d had no one and nothing but himself? How long until he’d done what he’d only dreamed of on that long-ago night that followed the war?
He shook his head to make the past go away. What was the matter with him? He was a lawman. They were the outlaws. He had no right to feel sorry for them, no business sympathizing with anything about them. Because of Noah, Ruth was in danger, and Leon didn’t care how awful Noah’s childhood had been. There was nothing that could excuse any harm that might come to her.
“The day isn’t getting any younger,” he said. “Let’s move.”
Noah nodded and preceded Leon outside, where they mounted up.
Jonah struggled down the steps. His gaze flicked from Noah to Leon once more. “You’re sure you don’t want me to—”
“If I’d wanted him dead, I’d have let Hoxie kill him.”
“Hoxie could have killed him?” Jonah scowled. “What the hell’s the matter with you? Hoxie must be mighty mad.”
“He’s mighty dead,” Leon muttered.
“You killed Hoxie to save him?” Jonah turned his glare from Noah to Leon. “He saved your life, and you’re going to do what? Hang him?”
&nb
sp; “Not me personally.” Jonah’s gaze remained unforgiving. Leon glanced at Noah. “Why didn’t you let him kill me?”
Noah shrugged. “What good would that have done? I want Ruth to have a life. With me she wouldn’t. With you she can. If I’d let you be killed, she’d have no one but her worthless excuse for a father.”
Leon remained silent. Could he have been as selfless when it came to loving Ruth? He wasn’t sure, and he didn’t like what that said about him as a human being.
“Now,” Noah continued, “as the sheriff said, we have places to be.”
“We could bury him where no one will ever find him.” Jonah was back to petting his rifle. The man just wouldn’t give up.
“I’m sure we could.” Noah smirked. “But not today.”
“You act like I’m just going to let you kill me,” Leon pointed out. “I’ve got a gun, too, you know?”
Jonah snorted. “If he wants you dead, Sheriff, you’re dead. No doubt about it.”
Leon scowled, set to argue some more. But Noah put a stop to any more arguments. “No, Jonah. Leave—him—be.”
“Billy Jo, you’re not makin’ any sense.”
“I can’t do it anymore,” he shouted. The anguish in his voice caused a chill to race down Leon’s spine. “I’m tired, Jonah. It’s over.”
Jonah stared at Noah for a long moment, as if to ascertain if he was truly serious. Finally, he sighed, nodded, and lifted a hand. “Goodbye, Billy Jo. You were the best damned friend I ever had, and I’ll never forget you.”
“Same goes, Jonah. Kiss Carol and the children goodbye.” Noah kicked his horse into motion, heading east.
As Leon followed, he could feel Jonah’s gaze boring into him, almost smell the man’s struggle to keep from shooting a sheriff in the back.
He came abreast of Noah. “Nice friends you have, Walker.”
“Better than you’ll ever know.”
Leon didn’t answer because Noah was right.
He didn’t have any male friends, not that Walker was a friend, mind you, but Leon found himself forgetting at times that the man was the enemy.
And thinking like that was more dangerous than Billy Jo Kansas himself.
Chapter Fourteen