Behaving Herself

by Yvonne Jocks

  And for a tense moment, he cherished hopes that things would commence just that way. Then Mason raised his shotgun to his shoulder. “Ain't no way in—”

  And the world erupted.

  Jack had a passing acquaintance with death, and he'd noticed that if death came close enough, everything else faded. He did hear Ernest Varnes's scream as Jack shouldered him, now unarmed, out of the immediate line of fire—but he noted it only offhand. Just so with the bark of the revolver. Blue flame spurted not a foot from Jack's cheekbone, and he hardly flinched. Horses mil ed; Whitey cursed; Lucy screamed. But none of it felt as real as the stillness of death.

  The stocky stranger lifted his shotgun with what seemed like exaggerated languor, and Jack launched himself to one side, lifting his derringer with the same odd lack of speed. He somehow squeezed off his one and only shot before hitting the ground, shoulder first—

  And then, as Jack's momentum carried him over the edge of the riverbank and out of the line of fire, death looked the other way—again—and the world erupted back into a chaos of shots, cries, screams, even the thuds and grunts of his own tumble down the steep, rutted bank. With a splash into silence, the Trinity closed over his head. He might have heard a couple more river-muffled shots before he could struggle to the surface.

  Jack's own gasp as he resurfaced seemed to resound into the night, then stil ed as he sank back under, echoing with a spray of water as he resurfaced. He lunged for the bank and, after a few handfuls of sand, caught hold of an exposed tangle of cottonwood roots. Holding on against the current, he caught his breath and listened.

  He heard retreating hoofbeats and a man crying—“Oh, God, oh, God a'mighty!—”and someone

  else's moan.

  Heavy and wet, Jack used roots and dry grapevine to drag himself back up the eroded bluff. He half expected more gunshots as he pulled himself over the bank onto his stomach. None came.

  Catching his breath, he pushed up to see what kind of damage they'd done.

  Nobody called to God anymore, but a body sprawled across a clump of prickly-pear cactus where the voice had sounded. Farther over, Lucy kneeled on the ground, weeping, her fallen lover pulled onto her lap.

  Well ... tarnation.

  Jack had survived. That meant consequences. Unsteady, he pulled himself to his feet and

  staggered, dripping, toward Lucy and Ferris.

  Now he could be scared.

  Audra could tell even before class started that something had happened. Her pupils hadn't been so excited since Jerome Newton got back from the Wild West show in October. But when she rang the bel for the start of class, she could see that this news outdid even Buffalo Bill Cody. Some of the pupils backed reluctantly away from the conversation, but nobody actually turned toward the schoolhouse.

  What could they be discussing with such animation?

  Aunt Heddy startled Audra by snatching the bell rope from her hand. “Do not stand there gaping,”

  the older woman scolded: “Make them come!” She rang the bell until its clang made Audra's teeth ache. “School is now in session!”

  The smaller children scuttled over then. With a critical look, Aunt Heddy pressed the rope back into Audra's hand and followed her charges inside. Even now, Audra's pupils—though obeying the summons—were still talking as they walked.

  Audra took a deep breath and rang the bell again to make her point. Knowing that Aunt Heddy might mark her progress, she wondered if she had to dole out punishments. Obedience would lead these children to become better citizens, which would protect them from some of the world's darker temptations ...

  But, to be truthful, Audra would rather understand what was going on.

  And then Melissa darted to her side and tugged at her arm. “Audra!”

  “Miss,” corrected Audra automatically; she did not blame Melissa for forgetting, but it did seem important to maintain at least the illusion of authority at school.

  For once Melissa did not correct herself. She just tugged Audra away from the doorway, around the outside corner, and then announced, “There was a shooting at the river last night.”

  Which would certainly explain the children's excitement, but hardly the dire solemnity of Melissa's words. Unless . . . had one of her pupils been injured? A church member? Or—

  Fear hit Audra then, unbalanced her; only Melissa and the log side of the school kept her from sinking to the ground. A hole gaped inside her, empty and awful. No— oh, please, no! Even if it was the expected end for people who lived outside the law...

  The single, choked word hurt her throat. “Jack?”

  Melissa was saying something, repeating it, but Audra heard only the roar in her head. She stared at Melissa's moving lips and saw Jack's grin, Jack's anger, Jack's affection. No.

  Her friend shook her hard. Breath rushed back into Audra's lungs, and she could hear again.

  “Audra! You aren't listening to me!”

  What was that moaning sound? Why was Melissa's face blurring like that?

  Melissa shook her again, with the most beautiful words ever spoken. “It's not him!”

  Audra's world solidified once more, trembling but whole ... despite the implications of her extreme reaction. “It's not him?” she echoed, desperate to be right, implications or no.

  “Well —it is him.”

  Audra grabbed Melissa's arms. “What?”

  Melissa shook her again. "Do you want folks to see you like this? Listen. There was a shooting last night, and two men are dead—Forney Wells and Ernest Varnes. Mr. Hamilton—"

  “Miss Garrison?” Audra clapped her hand to her mouth against a scream and spun to face Jerome Newton. “It's class time,” he reminded her, cocking his head at her obvious upset.

  “She'll be in momentarily, Jerome,” said Melissa.

  The boy actually appeared concerned. “Is she okay?”

  She, she, she. Audra took a deep breath, then thought to uncover her mouth. “I am fine, Jerome,”

  she said, marveling at her calm words. "Thank you. But I must have a word with Melissa. Would you please start the others reviewing their spelling words?"

  Jerome began to extend one hand, then paused, uncertain. She schooled her features, then breathed more slowly, focusing on her posture. He nodded. “Yes, ma'am. I'd be glad to.”

  “Thank you, Jerome.”

  After he vanished, she and Melissa leaned around the corner to make sure that he went into the classroom and shut the door.

  Then Audra spun on her friend again. "What about Mr. Hamilton? And what happened to Jack? Mr.

  Harwood," she added belatedly, as if that would fool either of them.

  "I don't know al the details. Nobody wanted to upset the little ones, and there are things they won't tell the girls either. But apparently Mr. Hamilton has a colored wife—or something like that.

  Some of the sharecroppers found out and tried to lynch them, or rob them, or something. There may have been liquor involved, and there was definitely a shooting."

  Drinking. Shooting. Bigotry. She could not be so wrong! “And Mr. Harwood?”

  “He was helping Mr. Hamilton,” said Melissa, and Audra's shoulders relaxed. Hell's Half-Acre had made it easy for her to doubt Jack; she loved being proven horribly, foolishly wrong.

  “And he's not hurt? You're certain?”

  "Someone rode out for the doctor from Bedford. From what Early said, though, that was for Mr.

  Hamilton and Mr. Wells, but he died this morning. Mr. Wells, I mean. They sent for a marshal, too.

  Audra—Mr. Harwood might be arrested for murder."

  Mere moments ago, she would have been thrilled to hear any news except that Jack was dead.

  Then, anything but that he was hurt. Then, anything but that he'd been part of the mob. Now she pressed her fists against her mouth with brand-new fears. She'd seen how quickly even the kindly reverend had turned on Jack. How could he possibly hope for a jury to acquit him of the murder of simple farmers? “But it was
self-defense. It had to be!”

  “Early says folks are at the store now, deciding all that.”

  “I've got to help.” Audra brushed at her skirts with numb hands. “I've got to go.”

  Go do what? Other than to see Jack, to be with Jack, to tell him ... what?

  "You can't! There are lawmen there, Audra! And dead people. You'd be in the way, and people might guess at your intentions, and that couldn't help him, now, could it?"

  Which certainly gave her pause. “But...”

  "What possible good can risking your position do, when nothing's been decided? Can't you be of more help to him as the schoolmarm? For mercy's sake— think!"

  Reluctantly, Audra did. Of course she mustn't rush to Jack's side. Once a decision was made about the charges he faced, then she would know better whether he needed food, comfort, a character witness ... even her brother, the lawyer, if need be! Melissa was right. Audra had more power as a schoolmarm than as a girl who'd been dismissed for unseemly conduct.

  So why did her heart feel an almost physical tug in the direction of the mercantile?

  “Perhaps I could send someone to wait for news,” she suggested slowly.

  Melissa nodded approval. “Early. I don't think spelling lessons help him—”

  “Audra Susan Garrison!”

  Melissa and Audra winced together, then turned to face Hedda Cribb's disapproval.

  "How dare you stand out here gossiping when school is in session! Bad enough were you a pupil, but as a teacher! You are sorely delinquent in your obligations, young lady, and do not think our relationship will keep me from reporting this to the school board!"

  Mere months, even weeks earlier, the accusation or threat might have brought Audra to tears.

  Today she only wondered how her aunt could think of the school board with men dead, injured, facing murder charges. In one moment of terror, Audra's values had shifted in ways Aunt Heddy might never comprehend. Jack could have died. He could have vanished not just from her life but from life itself, and she'd never apologized, never told him that just because common sense bade her to stay away, her heart didn't... wasn't...

  “You will return to your duties at once,” commanded Heddy.

  Which only heightened the cal of the mercantile. But Heddy—and Melissa—had the right of it in one way, at least. Audra had pupils to see to. She'd taken a job, and she meant to do it.

  “Melissa, please return to the schoolroom,” she said steadily.

  “Yes, Miss Garrison.” Giving the older teacher wide berth, her friend gladly escaped.

  “Melissa was telling me—” Audra began, once they had privacy.

  “No excuses!” snapped her aunt, which suddenly struck Audra as rude.

  “—about the shooting,” Audra finished. “Our pupils may be anxious to discuss it.”

  “Not during school time!”

  “Do you think their minds will be on anything else? I'll . . . I'll use this to explain our judicial system.”

  She prayed the explanation would not end up accompanying a trial.

  “Best not speak of such things,” insisted the older teacher— apparently the pupils had filled her in at least a little. "I just

  thank our lucky stars that most of the school board saw you turning that gambler away after church! I cannot imagine what they would think of you had you been too civil with such a man just as this happens!"

  Audra could not imagine that they'd be thinking about her at all , compared to the excitement of a double murder. But she knew what she thought of herself. Jack could have died. Depending on whether he was charged with murder, he might still.

  Audra's opinion of herself was far from complimentary, proper behavior or not.

  “If you will excuse me,” she said evenly, walking past her aunt. “I have lessons to teach.”

  “I am not through with you, young—”

  But Audra walked into her classroom and closed the door behind her, silencing anything else the older woman had to say. She knew she would regret her willful action later.

  But for the moment, as disappointed with herself as she was furious at her aunt, it seemed the most polite of Audra's possible responses.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Teachers should avoid any behavior that might attract calumny or scandal.

  —Rules for Teachers

  Between the marshal and his deputies, the doctor, and the undertaker—all from larger towns—

  along with townsfolk come to gawk and one furious widow, the Candon mercantile was nearly bursting at the seams that first morning. But nobody bought much.

  Just as well . Between his wounds and his woman, Hamilton wasn't up to making sales, and Jack found himself doing more talking than trading. The marshal, a flinty-eyed fellow of the old school, obviously hungered to make murder charges stick. But despite his clear distaste for the two defendants—one a citified gambler and the other a gimpy storekeeper who'd “started it” by taking up with a colored—he was an honest enough lawman to admit self-defense when he saw it.

  Not that he pressed charges against the three surviving attackers, either, despite the fact that Ernest Varnes had been shot in the back by one of his own comrades. In the time it took Forney Wells to die—and he almost made it to dawn—he'd insisted that he wasn't the one who had

  turned Varnes into such a mean and oozy corpse.

  “But he could have done it,” the marshal noted afterward. End of investigation.

  Wells's lead poisoning was likely the work of Ham and Jack together, which made Jack none too comfortable, especially once his widow showed up. The doctor fished out both a .41- and a .45-caliber slug and couldn't rightly say which wound did the deed. But Wells did admit to holding a shotgun. In a contest between shotgun and derringer, Jack won the claim of either self-defense or lunacy—or both. And though Ferris had the revolver, well ... he had family in the area, old family at that, on his mother's side. That cleared him of the crime as well .

  Nothing like small-town justice.

  After Wells breathed his last, the Bedford doctor went home. Ferris's wounds—a chewed-up shoulder from what buckshot didn't take out Varnes and a bruised head where a falling branch had struck him, after Wells shot a tree—should mend without further medical attention. By noon, the threat of jail faded and the law rode out as well . While Lucy hid upstairs, the undertaker stayed until midafternoon, time enough for a photographer to arrive and capture both bodies, laid out side by side in front of the store, for posterity. Then the widow Wells got the menfolk to help her load her “no-account” husband into a buckboard borrowed from the livery, so that she could drive him home for a proper vigil.

  By that point, since anyone with the stomach to ogle Varnes had already been by, even the undertaker pulled out, taking the second body with him. Then the mercantile emptied faster than a fool's wallet in a game of three-card monte, the smell of blood and sweat finally fading.

  Ham, who'd sat in his old corner chair for the greater part of the day, looked wordlessly across the empty store at Jack, then let his head fall back against the wall and his eyes drift shut with relief.

  Jack sank back against a cold display stove, suddenly a mite shaky himself.

  Damn, but he never wanted to face another twenty-four hours like these again. Or maybe,

  considering the fiasco outside the church yesterday morning, he should stretch that to thirty-six hours he'd prefer to avoid from here on out.

  “Mr. Hamilton?” ventured a low voice from the curtain to the back room, and both men opened their eyes to face pretty, dark-skinned Lucy Wolfe.

  Jack knew her name now. He'd also offered to take her home, but she'd dared not go. "They might come after me,“ she'd explained. ”I won't bring that trouble down on my folks. I won't do them that way.“ Regret stained her words. ”They may not want me back, anyhow."

  Only then had it occurred to Jack that had she been a white girl of any distinction, Ferris would be facing more shotguns one way
or the other. But Lucy didn't have the protection of a white girl's reputation, even if hers had, as he suspected, been spotless before Ferris came along.

  “You can cal me Ferris here, Lucy,” Ham said now, abashed—for Ham. “Jack's okay.”

  “I made some tea,” Lucy offered, neither agreeing nor disagreeing with him. “I could bring some down for the two of you.”

  The place seemed to warm at Lucy's offer, but Jack said, "Why don't the two of you go on up? Ham can rest that ground-up shoulder of his, and you can both start figuring on what comes next. I'l stay down here, keep an eye on business."

  Ham laughed humorlessly. “There won't be any business, Harwood. Count on it.”

  Jack said, “Then I won't have to work awful hard at it, now, will I?”

  So Hamilton got the hint and headed upstairs with his lady friend, pausing only once at the doorway. "You didn't have to stay, Harwood. Even if you felt honor-bound to defend us, you could have rode off once the shooting stopped, left me to face all this on my own."

  Jack probably would have done just that not so long ago. But something had happened to his priorities in this town, something that made him take noble risks for foolish reasons.

  Honor-bound?

  More than one such reason likely involved the good opinion of a serious, sorrel-haired

  schoolmarm. But not all of them. Jack said, “Don't confuse me.”

  “You really are okay,” insisted Ham before following his own forbidden lover up the stairs. As an afterthought, he called down, “Don't steal anything.”

  Jack chuckled—then nearly fell off the cold stove when he turned too quickly toward the opening door. There, hesitating in against cold sunlight, stood the last person he'd expected to see set foot in the mercantile again, even before last night's fun.

  His world momentarily stilled to dust motes and silence. He'd always thought her attractive, of course. But after the hel of last night and this whole damned day, she now looked so clean, so downright wholesome, that she nearly glowed with it. His eyes smarted just to look at her, but the rest of him eased considerably.

  If it wasn't the lovely Miss Audra Garrison herself.

  Al of Audra's second thoughts and concerns about why she ought not go by the mercantile