by Jack Ballas
He decided that after the trial, he’d talk her into taking a walk down by the Animas River. Then, if he could get up the nerve, he’d tell her he loved her, and ask her to marry him. If he didn’t tell her, ask her, he’d never know.
His order came, and before he could begin eating, Emily came into the room. She looked tired—like she’d not slept much, and he knew taking care of him had been the reason.
He asked the waitress to keep his food warm while they fixed Emily’s breakfast. When their food came, they ate, lingered over their coffee until he looked at his watch and said it was time for him to get over to The Eagle. He looked at Em. “You goin’?”
She nodded. “After what that man did to my father, and knowing what he told those men to do to me—you bet I’ll be there.” She stood, and rushed around the table to help Lingo stand.
“Reckon I’ll handle this by myself, little girl.” He grinned. “ ’Sides, if I stumbled, or started to fall, I figure I’d crush you.”
On the way to The Eagle, Emily did not hold on to Lingo’s arm, but he noticed she stayed mighty close in case he stumbled. When they went in, she sniffed, and looked at him. “How in the world do you men stand the smell of stale whisky and beer in these places?”
He grinned. “We sorta look forward to it.” His grin widened. “Besides that, this saloon smells right nice. You shoulda been in some o’ the ones I been in. Miss Faye keeps this’n right clean.” He looked toward the bar. A few tables in the front row were empty, apparently saved for those involved in the trial. Lingo led her toward one of those tables.
Not long after they were seated, the McCords, Cantrell, and Elena, Wes, Kelly, Sam Slagle, Maddie, and Miles Colter took seats at tables in the front row. They all took up two tables.
Then, Marshal Nolan brought Bartow in. Emily gasped. Lingo snapped his head to the side to look at her. Her face, ashen, had paled to the color of fresh fallen snow. Lingo feared she would pass out and wondered why she stared at Bartow so intently. He put his hand over hers. It felt cold, as though she’d been on the mountain with him, and had not thawed from it. Her reaction caused a crease to form between his eyebrows. As far as he could figure, she’d never seen the man before—or had she?
18
BARTOW SAT STONY-FACED, and holding his broken right arm with his left and glanced at each front table. His eyes swept past Emily, came back, and stared at her with the deepest look of hatred Lingo thought he’d ever seen. Then his look went to Colter, and his eyes seemed to spit venom, worse than a rattlesnake would eject. Then he turned his eyes toward the wall at the side of the saloon.
The judge, standing behind the bar, rapped the shiny surface with the butt of his six-gun, called for quiet, announced that no whisky would be sold until after the trial, and said the attendees could light up, smoke their pipes, cigars, or the new-fangled roll-your-own cigarettes.
Then he selected twelve men from the audience after determining they didn’t know the defendant. He said in that this was an open-and-shut case they didn’t need any lawyers to slow the decision down. He’d call the witnesses and turn it over to the jury.
Lingo was the first to testify. He told the court of the stage holdup in which Emily had been taken captive, and his part in freeing her. He told about Bull Mayben and how he figured he’d been killed, then he told about finding Shorty Gates in Bartow’s cabin dead, and that he and Mayben had been saddle partners. He looked from the jury to Emily Lou. If anything, her face had paled even more. He marked it as remembering all that had happened to her, and the pain her father had suffered at the hands of Bartow.
He looked back at the jury. “I’m tellin’ y’all ’bout the takin’ of Miss Colter off that stage because by the time Mr. Colter, Miss Brice, an’ Mr. Slagle have their say, you’ll see that the prisoner was the boss o’ the gang of which Mayben an’ Gates were members. The same gang that snatched her off that stagecoach. Tell you also, that Bartow there was the man who tried to hold up the stage for the money chest. I broke up his game that time, too.” He looked around the saloon, then to the judge. “Reckon that’s all I got to say.” He limped back and sat beside Emily.
Maddie was next, and stated the facts as she knew them, and that she had actually witnessed Bartow sticking fire to Colter’s feet, body, and hands. Then Sam told of his and Maddie’s part in freeing Colter.
After Sam testified, Lingo stood, was recognized by the judge, and told the court that in his opinion Emily Lou Colter should not be called on to testify in that she’d been through enough already. The judge agreed, but stated that if the jury needed more information to hang Bartow, he might call her later.
The judge then called Miles Colter. After being sworn in, Colter glanced about the room, then centered his eyes on Bartow, who sat, now obviously in pain, his right arm dangling. “There are a few things you need to know before I get into what that man has done. Up until yesterday I had shut out the past.” He shrugged. “I suppose it was from the pain of what he did to me, but more so because of the pain of knowing the boy I raised could do such a thing. I remember everything now.”
He went on to describe the things Bartow had done, all in the interest of greed. Bartow wanted his mine along with the rich vein he’d uncovered.
As soon as Miles said he’d raised Bartow, Lingo heard nothing more—his world fell apart. He’d been steeling himself to tell Emily he loved her, wanted to marry her, but now he was responsible for getting her brother hanged. Now he understood why she had paled after seeing Bartow for the first time.
He’d brought Bartow or, as Colter had identified him, “Rush,” Emily’s brother, in to be hanged. He’d not only tied him into kidnapping, but also robbery—two robberies—then he’d chased him down.
His shoulders slumped. A man couldn’t marry a woman whose brother he’d killed, for kill him he had, as surely as if he himself put the rope around his neck and kicked the horse from under him. Regardless how much they loved each other, the fact that he was the one who brought him in to the law would always stand between them.
He couldn’t look at the woman he loved. He dreaded seeing the accusing look he knew she must be sending his way. He fumbled for his pipe, not aware that he did so. He packed it, lit it, pulled the aroma into his lungs, and didn’t taste the smell that usually brought him so much comfort. He sat in a daze.
Finally, he became aware that all had testified when Bartow stood and asked the judge if he was going to be permitted to have his say.
“Go ahead, but make it short.”
Bartow cast a steady gaze on the jury. “Back East this so-called court would be called a lynch setup. I’ve had no lawyer, no witnesses called in my defense, and all you have is the words of a saloon woman, a broken-down old man, an ignorant cowboy, and a miner who probably never saw the inside of a schoolhouse. And the old man, by his own admission, couldn’t remember anything before a few days ago. How do you know that he remembers anything now? Maybe the rest of that ragtag bunch coached him into saying what he’s said. This trial is a farce.”
The judge flashed his contempt at Bartow—or Rush, as Colter had named him. He shook his head. “If you have witnesses for your defense, name them and I’ll call them.” He waited a moment, then said, “All right, I take it you have none.” Then the judge addressed the court—and Bartow. “There have been times when I felt bad about sentencing a man to hang—but this is not one of them. I sentence you to hang from the loading arm down at the livery stable at sundown today.” He twisted to look at Marshal Nolan. “Take care of it, Marshal.” He rapped his six-gun on the bar. “Court’s adjourned; bar’s open.”
Lingo sat there until most had either bellied up to the bar or left. Someone put a drink in front of him, he downed it and didn’t taste or feel the raw alcohol go down his throat. He looked to the chair in which Emily had sat. It stood empty.
His pipe had gone out. He again put fire to it, straightened his shoulders, and stood. Emily had every reason to not marry him, every reaso
n to hate him for killing her brother. He’d never dodged facing whatever he must, especially a situation for which he was at fault. He’d find her, and let her accusing looks and words singe him.
He looked at his watch, a heavy, silver railroad watch; it was a little after twelve o’clock. Time to eat. He wasn’t hungry, but the dining room was where he’d probably find Emily—if she felt like eating.
Before he got to the hotel, he saw her standing on the veranda looking toward him. When he walked up the steps, she never took her eyes off him. He wanted to shrink down in his sheepskin and disappear. He looked her in the eye. “Reckon you hate me; you got every reason to do so. Can’t say I’m sorry. Your brother did what he did, an’ the judge—all of us did what shoulda been done long ago.”
Still without taking her eyes off of him, her face a frozen mask, she said only, “Let’s take a walk.”
Limping badly, Lingo led her, wending his way toward the river. When standing at its edge, she turned to face him. “Why are you so distant, Lingo? You haven’t looked at me, or said anything to me for hours.” She blinked, apparently trying to rid her eyes of the moisture that had welled in them.
A huge lump swelled in his throat, then trying to talk past it, his voice little more than a whisper, he put his hands on her shoulders. “Got somethin’ to say, an’ I figure now is the best time to say it. Even if I’d known, Bartow—or Rush—was your brother, reckon I’d have had to do what I did. Know bein’ your brother you can probably excuse him for anything.” He shrugged. “But I can’t, an’ don’t think your own pa can.” He squeezed her shoulders and stepped back from her. “So there it is, Emily. Like I said, can’t blame you for hating me.”
“Lingo, you said you had something to say to me and to ask me, when we talked last night. What was it?”
He shook his head. “Lot o’ water’s gone under the bridge since then, little one. Can’t do what I figured on doin’, that is, I figured on doin’ it ’til I learned Bartow’s your brother.”
“Lingo, I want you to tell me what you were going to say, then I’ll tell you a few things I know you don’t know. All right?”
He stared at her a moment, and nodded, his head seeming to be on a tightly wound spring. “All right. First off, reckon I was gonna tell you we needed to go to a lawyer an’ get Wes an’ Sam made our official partners, split evenly three ways; Sam, Wes an’ Kelly, an’ you an’ me.” His face feeling like some of this mountain granite, he forgot his manners, pulled out his pipe, packed, and lit it. He didn’t ask her if she would approve of his smoking.
“You notice when I named the partners, you were one of ’em? Well, that’s the way I been figurin’ things since soon after I met you. Soon’s I saw you lyin’ there by the bandit’s fire, I fell in love with you. Been lovin’ you ever since, only now more’n ever.” His shoulders slumped. “An’ now it’s too late. A woman can’t marry a man who caused the death o’ her brother. We’d be shoved apart by my doin’ that for the rest o’ time.” He took his pipe from his mouth and nodded. “That’s what I was gonna say to you. I was gonna say, ’Em, I love you. I’m askin’ you to say you’ll marry me.’ ” He shook his head. “Now it’s too late.”
She stood there, no expression, her face frozen. “Lingo Barnes, I told you there were a few things you didn’t know. Now I’m goin’ to tell you what they are. When Mama brought me into this world, her labor was so hard it weakened her dreadfully. She lived only a few years after she gave me life.
“Papa was lonely. He married a woman who brought with her a son. She ran off with a salesman who travelled around the country. She left her boy for Papa to raise. He did the best by the boy that he could. Treated him like he was his blood son—but the boy was never any good. He was in one scrape with the law after another. Papa spent most of the few dollars he had saved keeping Rush out of jail. Papa owned a ready-to-wear apparel store back then, and after borrowing on it to keep Rush out of prison, he lost the store. That’s why he came West, hoping to find a better life for us.
“Rush apparently read the letter Papa wrote to me, the one telling me where he was, and that he’d made a big strike. He left, telling me he was going to find Papa. Once out here, he probably found out I was coming out and planned then to find the location of the rich vein Papa found, have me killed, kill Papa.” She shrugged. “Then he’d have it all.”
She stepped back, then obviously still trying to hold back her emotions, but failing to hold back tears, looked at him straight on. “Lingo Barnes, we have a lot of work to do. We have to build Wes and Kelly a cabin, go see that lawyer about making you all partners, an’ get everything arranged for Kelly and Wes to get married.
“Now, big man, I want you to say those words to me. You do, and I’m saying ‘yes’ right now. Then we need to go see that lawyer along with our partners; then we gotta find us a preacher—and arrange for a double wedding.”
Her last words came out against his lips. He squeezed her so tightly she couldn’t breathe, but to keep the heavenly feeling she experienced, she would have gladly quit breathing.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18