Blessing

by Deborah Bedford

  Olney snorted like a bull. “Oh, yeah. As if you weren’t going to reap any benefit from it yourself. Now shut up and let me concentrate on Old Pearsall in there.”

  The two men quit bickering long enough for Olney to make his assessment. The only sound in the cell for several long minutes was Henry Mortimus smacking through his very ample meal.

  “Well?” Mortimus finally asked, his mouth still full. “Is it gonna work?”

  “Yeah. It’ll work, all right. He’s doing just what I expected.”

  “You think he thought we were asleep when he came in here?”

  “I reckon he did,” Olney answered. “He isn’t smart enough to think anything else.”

  “You think he doesn’t know we were up all night figuring how to break out of here?”

  “Shut up, would you? Quit asking questions, Mortimus. I trained the man. I tested him just then. If he’d have thought we were up to something, he never would have unlocked that door and brought those plates in.”

  “Sure beats all how you think you know everything, Olney.”

  “It doesn’t beat all. I do know everything. You just wait until this afternoon, when we go after our plan. You’ll see I know what I’m talking about.”

  “Yeah,” Mortimus said dubiously. “I’ll see.”

  If fresh gossip was going around, Elizabeth Calderwood heard it as she tidied things at Aunt Kate Fischer’s, cleaning up after the afternoon meal and making ready for the onslaught of men just before suppertime. What she heard today made her dish rag pause in the middle of the wooden table. She glanced toward Charlie Hastings.

  “Yep. I heard Sam Kirkland say it as plain as day. He wanted two passenger tickets on the supply wagon going out this afternoon. He paid for them. I can’t figure it. Everybody knows Sam isn’t leavin’ town.”

  Alex Parent leaned in. “No. But I bet I know who is.”

  “Who, then?”

  “Nobody’s seen Tin Can Laura over at Santa Fe Moll’s since last night. I heard she got roughed up by one of the miners that came over from Pitkin. And you know Uley Kirkland’s been sweet on that hurdy-gurdy girl for a long time now. I figure Tin Can Laura and Uley Kirkland are running off together.”

  “No!” Hastings hollered. “Can’t be. Those two wouldn’t run off together in broad daylight.”

  “I don’t know,” Jack Strater commented. “You know Uley. Such a fine, upstanding member of the community. He wouldn’t think he had anything to hide.”

  All three men glanced up to see Beth.

  “Sorry, ma’am.” Alex Parent looked contrite when he saw her there. “We shouldn’t have been talking about it with you here. It ain’t right, discussing a woman of ill-repute around a real lady.”

  “No, ma’am,” Hastings agreed, coloring. “We shouldn’t have been talkin’ about that hurdy-gurdy—”

  Strater clobbered Hastings on the shoulder. “Shut up, will you? There you go serving it right up.”

  Beth’s cheeks turned as red as a cardinal’s wings. She went back to scrubbing the tabletop.

  Alex Parent scooted over until he sat right next to Beth. “You know, even though Kate’s business has doubled since you started carrying plates, it isn’t fitting for a woman like you to have to work so hard.”

  “This isn’t hard work,” Elizabeth replied, as she folded the rag over, found a clean spot and kept right on going. “Scrubbing tables is easier than the work I was doing on the farm.”

  “Even so, I could take awful good care of you, Beth Calderwood. For the third time, I wish you would consider my honorable proposal of marriage.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Parent. I am honored every time you make the request.”

  “What about my proposal?” Hastings added. “Are you still thinking about that one? I’d make you a fine husband, Elizabeth.”

  She’d finished scrubbing. “Gentlemen.” She managed to include all of them in one winning smile. “I’m not ready to marry anyone. I am still grieving deeply for my own dead husband.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Parent nodded, his brows furrowed. “I’m sure you are. I’m willing to wait as long as need be.”

  Jack Strater stood at her elbow, his face serious. “Miss Beth. I haven’t mentioned this to you. I’ve been afraid to. But, if you ever get around to considering all these proposals, I’d like you to consider mine, too.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Strater.” It seemed there was no end to it. And, really, it flattered her. She waggled her rag at all three of them. “This work won’t get done without me. I’d best go about my chores in the kitchen.”

  Just after dinnertime, Uley placed the last pair of britches upon the pile. Hated as they were, her eyes still filled with tears when she looked at them lying there.

  “I guess we’re ready, Pa. I can’t think of anything else we need to put in.”

  Laura sat cross-legged on the bed. “I wish we could take Storm.”

  “Me too, but Pa needs a good mouser here.”

  “Here’s some pasties you can take,” Sam said, his hands trembling as he handed them to his daughter. “I’m sure you’ll both get hungry before you reach St. Elmo.” They’d just finished a big meal, but it wouldn’t last them very long on the journey.

  “Is it time to go?” Laura asked.

  “No,” Sam told them. “With what you went through last night, I think it best to wait until the last minute. You two ought to try to get out of town as quietly as possible. We don’t want Santa Fe Moll trying to catch up with you.” Sam pulled out his watch and snapped it open. “I figure we ought to get down there to meet Lester McClain no sooner than three o’clock. By three-fifteen, you two’ll be headed on toward your new life.”

  “Our new life,” Laura echoed, sighing, her eyes cast somewhere far atop the mountains out the window, picturing a future for them as rosy as a calypso orchid. “Oh, Jesus, thank You! Our new life!”

  “Oh, Pa.” Uley grabbed hold of Sam, sending her cap askew, revealing hair held straight back from her face by Laura’s tortoiseshell combs.

  “You’ve grown up so much, honey,” he whispered against her shining hair. “I’m so proud of you, little one.”

  “Oh, Pa.” How can I be so sure of something and have my heart breaking at the same time?

  She held on to her father as tightly as she knew how.

  At precisely 2:30 p.m., Harris Olney winked at Henry Mortimus and began to execute the plan. “Oh,” Olney moaned at the top of his lungs, holding on to his belly. “Help, I think I’m gonna die in here.”

  Mortimus peered out between the bars, trying to see into the front office.

  “Aw, it hurts.” He added some curses to emphasize his pain.

  “You’re gonna have to yell louder than that,” Mortimus instructed. “Pearsall ain’t comin’.”

  “Shut up,” Olney hissed between clenched teeth. “He’ll come. He’s a sound sleeper. It takes a few minutes for sounds to register around that man.” He hollered again. “Oh, help me.”

  “He ain’t comin’.”

  Olney eyed his cohort, whispering fiercely. “Get over here, Mortimus. Stop staring out through those bars. I’m hollering for help. You’ve got to look like you’re worrying about me.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about you if you were getting gored by a herd of stampeding oxen. I’d say good riddance.”

  “Get over here.”

  “I don’t care what kind of show you put on—” Mortimus spat a wad and let it roll down the wall just beside Olney “—he ain’t comin’.”

  “He will. He always gets his heaviest sleep of the day right after he eats a big meal from Aunt Kate Fischer’s.”

  “This ain’t gonna work.”

  Olney bellowed as loudly as he could manage. “Oh, help! My belly hurts something awful!” Olney sprawled out on the cot, writhing in feigned pain. “I’m gonna die in here.”

  Mortimus heard the squeaking of a chair out in the front office. “You know, that might have done it.”

  “G
et over here,” Olney snarled. “Now.”

  Mortimus went to the cot and stooped over. “Sorry you’re feeling poorly,” he said. “Ain’t nothing I can do, though.”

  From out in the front office came the sound of slow, groggy footsteps.

  Olney bellowed a string of curses, then added, “Ain’t never had anything hurt as bad as my belly hurts now.”

  Pearsall leaned against the doorway, scrubbing at his eyes with clenched fists. He’d forgotten to put his Stetson on. “What seems to be the problem in here?”

  “This fellow’s sick, says he’s going to die,” Mortimus volunteered.

  Pearsall took one step toward them.

  Olney clutched his stomach and thrashed violently about upon the cot. “Must be something I et. I’m not going to make it, Pearsall.”

  “You can’t die in here,” Ben Pearsall said reasonably. “We’ve got to keep you alive so we can hang you.”

  “Now that makes a lot of sense,” Mortimus commented.

  “Please.” Olney squeezed his belly and writhed. “At least come in here and give me a look-see. I don’t wanna go on feeling like this.”

  “I’m not an idiot.” Pearsall took three more steps toward his prisoners and squinted into the cell. “I can recognize an attempt to escape from my jailhouse when I see one. Ain’t no way I’m opening that door and coming in there.”

  Olney lay still for a minute. Then he let go of his middle and rolled toward the new marshal, grinning slightly, the anguish gone. “Confound it, Pearsall. I should’ve figured I couldn’t outwit you.”

  “That’s right.” Pearsall squared his shoulders proudly. He’d been waiting for their breakout attempt, and it looked like he’d just foiled it. “You can’t outwit me.” He shook his head at both of them, then turned to go.

  That was when Mortimus pounced.

  He came at Pearsall from the opposite corner of the cell, gripping the new marshal’s neck through the bars with rope-thick fingers. “Got you!”

  Pearsall didn’t make a sound. He couldn’t. Mortimus’s clenched fingers completely blocked his windpipe.

  “Ah!” Olney roared. “Foiled our breakout attempt, did you?”

  Pearsall’s face puffed up like a sick trout. He struggled with his arms, trying to propel himself across the room. Despite the iron bars, Mortimus had a clear advantage.

  “Me and Mortimus here—” Olney stuck his mouth as close to Pearsall’s ear as he could manage “—are in the mood for killing.”

  Pearsall thrashed about.

  “Luckily,” Olney continued, “we ain’t in the mood to kill you.”

  Pearsall’s face was slowly turning an unhealthy color of blue.

  “All we want,” Olney explained, “is that key ring hanging out of your back hip pocket.”

  “No.”

  “You were right, Olney,” Mortimus said, paying no mind to the death grip he had on his captive. “He did bring his keys with him.”

  “I told you he would. Idiot’s so proud of them, he has them dangling out of his back pocket like fishing bait. Thinks he has to swagger around with them on his hip instead of keeping them safely stashed on the wall.”

  Pearsall couldn’t speak.

  “Bad move, Pearsall. How many times did I tell you to keep the keys on the wall? How many times did I give you the reason for that?”

  Still, Pearsall struggled.

  “Now, either way we do this is just as easy for me,” Olney told his former deputy. “You hand me those keys and I tie you up, or I kill you and get those keys myself.”

  “No.”

  “What?” Olney asked, enjoying the marshal’s discomfiture. “I can’t hear what you’re saying.”

  “Look at him,” Mortimus said, chuckling. “Face is the same color as my gun barrel. Blue as a snail.”

  “Stubborn fool. I figured this. Knew you’d be so proud of those keys, that you’d be carrying them around.” Olney began to stretch. He reached with one arm.

  Pearsall’s knees began to buckle beneath him.

  “Now,” Mortimus bellowed.

  Olney snatched those keys as quick as a fish snatches a fly off water. “Got you!” He dangled the iron ring proudly from his hand just as Pearsall hit the ground, unconscious. “Hurry!”

  “Get them in the lock. Fast, before he comes around.”

  “He ain’t coming around for a while. That fool Pearsall. I thought he was going down with his keys.”

  “Unlock it.”

  “It’s this one.”

  Olney used it and the door swung open smooth as butter. Within moments, the two prisoners stood free.

  Mortimus started for the door. “I’m leaving.”

  “Oh no you don’t. You’ve got to help me tie him up. He comes to and you’re still here, they’ll hang you right beside me. He’ll say you tried to kill him.”

  “I almost did.”

  “There’s rope in the front room. Handcuffs, too. You guard him. I’ll get what we need.”

  Within seconds, Olney was back, toting a chair, a length of sturdy rope and two sets of cuffs. “Pull off his boots, Mortimus.”

  Mortimus complied. “Phew,” the big man bellowed as Pearsall’s boot hit the floor. Mortimus gripped his nose, holding his nostrils shut. “That’s the gamiest-smelling foot I’ve ever been this close to.”

  “Shut up and help me lift him. A man’s foot isn’t supposed to smell like a spring day.”

  Once they got Pearsall settled in the chair, Olney snapped one set of handcuffs around Pearsall’s ankles. He snapped another around his wrists. Then they bound him with ropes, gagged him and locked him inside his own cell.

  “That ought to hold him,” Mortimus said.

  “It’ll be at least forty-five minutes before anybody figures out he’s not where he’s supposed to be.” Olney walked to the front room and manipulated the knob on the safe door. The tumblers clicked. The safe swung open. Inside lay their two holsters and their two guns. “Here you go. Best take this firearm and clear out of this town with it.”

  “What’re you gonna do now?” Mortimus asked.

  Olney didn’t answer for a moment. He buckled the holster around his hips. He slid his six-shooter from its leather sheath, casually turning its barrel in the light, examining the sleek, cold metal.

  At last he turned to Mortimus.

  “My freedom isn’t gonna last long. I’ve got about forty-five minutes to pay a man back for something mighty big I owe him.”

  “You going after somebody?”

  Olney grinned evilly. “Let’s put it this way.” He held his gun high, turning it again, admiring the barrel as it glinted in the afternoon light. “See this gun? I got this gun so I could enforce the law, see? Now I aim to use this same gun to break it.”

  Mortimus buckled his holster on, too. “Well, whatever happens, I ain’t sticking around for the party.”

  “Ah, it’ll be a party, all right.” Olney chuckled. “Now. Where do you suppose I could find Mr. Aaron Talephas Brown?”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Aaron sat on the front porch at Aunt Kate Fischer’s, his Stetson on the step beside him, trying to figure how to best give a white lace parasol to a lady. He balanced the contraption in both hands, supporting the length of it, his fingers open, as if the lace might lift out of his palms and take flight of its own volition.

  “What’s that?” Beth climbed down the porch steps and sat beside her brother. Her black high-top shoes aligned with his muddy brown boots.

  His face went red. “It’s a parasol.”

  “I can see that.”

  Silence. He didn’t volunteer any more information.

  “Who’s it for?”

  “Beth. Don’t ask me. I can’t tell you.”

  “Aaron.” She leaned toward him, exasperated. “You’ve always told me everything. I’m so curious about this, I can’t sleep nights.”

  “You’re going to have to stay curious, Beth. I just can’t say.”

 
She gazed into the afternoon sky. “I wish you’d tell me who it is you think you’re sweet on.”

  “Looks like it’s clearing up,” he said, following her eyes, desperate to change the subject. “The rain should be over soon. I wonder if it snowed up on the pass?”

  “That reminds me,” Beth said. “You aren’t going to believe who’s taking the supply wagon out today.”

  “Who?”

  “You’ve got to promise you won’t tell. It’s two sweethearts running away together.”

  “Who? What two sweethearts?”

  “Tin Can Laura, the hurdy-gurdy girl. I heard it all this morning. Uley Kirkland’s been sweet on her for the longest time. They’re leaving town together today.”

  Aaron felt as if his gut had just been jammed into his throat. “What?”

  Beth went on, oblivious of the effect her words wrought upon her brother. “Tin Can Laura’s running away from Santa Fe Moll’s place, and I figure Uley’s taking her away to marry her and start her in a new life. Everybody’s talking about it. But everybody’s being quiet because Moll’s out looking for Laura. I figure everybody I’ve talked to wants that girl to get away.”

  Aaron leapt to his feet. The parasol clattered to the ground. “Uley? Uley’s leaving?”

  “That’s what they’re saying all over town.”

  “When? How?”

  “I already told you. On the supply wagon this afternoon. Lester McClain’s taking them. It should be about time for them to get away now.” She peered up at her brother. “Aaron? What’s wrong?”

  “This afternoon? Beth—” he grabbed her arm to help her up “—I’ve got to get down there.”

  How could she do something like this?

  The parasol lay forgotten on the wooden step. She didn’t even want me to know. She didn’t even tell me goodbye.

  “Aaron? What is it?” Beth didn’t understand. “What’s wrong?”

  “Don’t ask.” Aaron stormed up the street for ten paces, letting his anger propel him. “I just can’t say.” Then fear took over and he began to run.