Hurriedly, she paid Granny Yeager exactly what she owed and repeated her vow to come back to Stony Hollow to fulfill the rest of the debt. Impulsively, she kissed the old woman's cheek and ran back to the door.
"My bunny," Jonah cried. Ellis looked to the widow, who was touching her cheek as if she could still feel Ellis's kiss.
“Take it," she said gruffly, adding, "Godspeed."
With Jonah on one arm and the rabbit on the other, she stepped from the cabin in time to hear Bryce say, “You wouldn't know a good woman if she walked up and bit ya on the butt. As to her takin' care of the boy, that ain't none of your concern. She and the boy are my family now."
This was all very nice for Ellis to hear. But she did wonder if Bryce had noticed that the brothers were wearing expressions as dark as a pile of black cats, and they were both carrying rifles.
"The hell ya say," the taller of the two brothers said. "She didn't ask to marry again."
"She doesn't have to. Nobody owns her," he said. "That reminds me. I heard she had a problem tryin' to sell the boy's land. If she's still of a mind to, she will."
"Who the hell do ya think you're talkin' to here?" the second, fiercer-looking brother asked. We been livin' in this here holler all our life. It can be a real treacherous place sometimes. Folks come up here alone and ain't never seen nor heard from again. If you're catchin' my drift."
"I'm catching it. But if you two don't turn them gawd-awful, ugly faces of yours downhill and move them sorry backsides out of my sight in the next second or so, I'm gonna fill 'em full of lead . . . if you're gettin' my drift." He stood there, unarmed, and dared them to call his bluff.
So they did.
Each brother lowered his firearm to Bryce's midsection and turned smiling faces to each other.
"Bryce! No!" Ellis shouted, running mindlessly toward him, skidding to a stop when she felt Jonah clinging to her neck.
Then, like in one of the fairy tales she didn't believe in, the woods came to life. Chills and a trillion little goose bumps skipped over her body. From out of the snow-laden bushes and behind the trees came twenty or more of Webster's finest citizens. Among them were Tug Hogan, Wilbur Jordan, Jim Doles, Buck LaSalle, Looty Miller, and Pete Harper. All were armed and looking uncharacteristically but unquestionably lethal.
She wasn't the only one to notice that the party had some late arrivals. Denny and Harlan Johnson, Junior, looked as if they'd just swallowed a persimmon berry— whole.
"Ellis and I will be takin' the boy and moseyin' along now," Bryce said with a dry smile for the brothers, regretting his earlier sense of caution and the precautions he'd taken to safeguard Ellis and the boy. He wanted very much to remove several of the brothers' teeth for them with his fists. "Unless, of course, ya got any more objections? Good. We don't expect to be hearin' from ya unless Ellis or Jonah wants to sell that land . . . and then we don't expect to hear a whole lot. Understand?"
He turned and welcomed Ellis into the bend of his long protective arm, and they started down the side of the mountain together. His truck was in sight at the bottom of the ravine before she turned to look back. Granny Yeager, with her shotgun over one arm, was the only person left to see.
"Where'd they all go?" she asked, unsure whether it hadn't been one of her fanciful dreams.
"Back to the other side of the hollow where they left their vehicles, I guess. They left town ahead of me and came through the woods the same way you did, I reckon." He helped her over an icy patch in their path.
"Ya mean ya didn't know they were there?"
"Course I knew they were there. I ain't completely nuts. I just didn't know exactly where."
"Why didn't y'all come together?"
"I had business in town."
"The money," she guessed. "How'd ya get it?"
She'd have to know eventually—wives always did. "I mortgaged my house."
"Your . . . ?" His house. His pride and joy. His roots. His hope for the future. "Ya did that for me?"
"For you and Jonah." He shrugged as if it were nothing. "Without you, it never woulda been much of a home anyway."
Speechless, too overwhelmed with too many emotions, she waited for him to open the door of the truck and hold Jonah and the rabbit while she climbed in.
He had his arm across the back of the seat and was looking out the rear window, turning the truck around, when she asked, "How’d ya know the Johnsons would be comin' for Jonah?"
He glanced at her and grinned. "I didn't."
"Then why was everybody here? Why didn't ya come alone?"
"Simple," he said, stopping the truck and shifting into drive before he met her eyes. "I wasn't sure how much trouble I was gonna have gettin' ya to come home."
Table of Contents
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Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Sweet Dreamin' Baby Page 17