“Come on. Let’s get you sitting down.”
The two of them started a hobble toward the cook fire. Emily took his other arm, and they got him to one of the wooden chairs they had brought from their farm back east.
Emily grabbed a bucket of water and a cloth, and began cleaning his face.
Nina said to him, “I’ll always call you Father. You are my father, and always have been. Maybe you weren’t there when I was born, but you’ve always tried to give Mother and me the best you could. Now that I know the truth, and what you have been trying to protect me from, I love you even more.”
He gave her a long look. “I thought I had lost you.”
“Not ever.”
She wrapped her arms around him in a hug, but he winced from the pain in his ribs and she pulled back.
“What happened?” Nina said. “Were you shot?”
“No.” He shook his head with an embarrassed smile. “I got into a fight.”
“A fight?”
He nodded. “At my age.”
“Who on Earth with?”
He looked at Nina. “With your boyfriend.”
Nina said, “Jack?”
He nodded and chuckled. “For a college boy, he packs a whale of a punch.”
Nina said, “Let me get this straight. You got into a fight with Jack?”
He nodded. “It’s my fault. I have to admit. I went over there lookin’ for trouble.”
Nina wasn’t pleased. “It doesn’t matter. You’re my father. It takes two to fight.”
Brewster and Age came walking over.
“I heard you call out,” he said to Emily. “Is everything all right?”
Then he saw Harding, and said, “Good Lord, man, you look like you were run over by a team of horses.”
“Feel like it, too.”
Carter told what happened. “The only consolation I have is I left him in almost as bad condition.”
Emily cleaned the cut on his face made by Jack’s fist. He then turned and spit some blood. He said, “I cut my tongue, on one of his fists. I will say this for the boy – he’s a scrapper. I’ve met some real hardcases in my time, but he could hold his own with any of ‘em.”
Brewster said, “Are you still thinking of lighting out for Oregon?”
Carter said, “I’d like to, but the women like it here.”
Emily said to Brewster, “You and Mildred are here. And the Fords. And we do have good neighbors. There are good people in town.
Brewster said, “Harding, you don’t have to go to Oregon. We all want you and your family to stay here.”
Carter said, “It’s only a matter of time before they send a territorial marshal for me. I’m a really bad man, Abel. There’s wanted rewards offered for me in three states.”
“What proof do they have? If someone sends for a marshal, all we have to say is you’re Carter Harding. From Vermont. Whoever thinks you’re Harlan Carter is wrong. I can say I’ve known you all my life, back in Vermont. I’ve talked to Ford about it, and he’s willing to say the same thing.”
Carter shook his head. “I hate to ask people to lie for me.”
“You’re not asking. And besides, it’s not entirely a lie. You’re not Harlan Carter. Not anymore. You forget, Harding, I’ve been in the war. I’ve seen men kill. I’ve seen men who like to kill. And I’ve done some killing. The look in your eye is not the look of a man who is a killer. Maybe you’ve killed. But that’s all behind you, now. I can look anyone right in the eye and tell them honestly that you’re not Harlan Carter.”
Carter gave him a long look. “I don’t know what to say.”
“It’s called having friends.”
“I guess..,” he hesitated, partly from the emotion welling up in him, and partly because his wounded tongue and his bruised up ribs made it kind of painful to talk, “I guess I’ve just seen myself as one man against the world for so long, I’ve kind of forgotten what it means to have friends.”
Brewster smiled. “Well, get used to it.”
“I made a real fool of myself, over these past few days.”
Brewster nodded. “We all do, from time to time. It’s called being human.”
Emily said, “Does this mean you’re staying?”
Carter nodded, and managed a smile. “I couldn’t go nowhere without you and Nina. You two are my life.”
Nina had stepped away from them while they talked. She was leaning on her cane. She was glad her father was all right, but she was also furious. But not furious at him.
“Age,” she said. “Come morning, can you hitch up a team and drive me over to the McCabe house?”
“Sure,” he said, questioningly.
Carter heard her and looked over at her, but before he could say anything, she said, “I need to talk with Jack. I have a lot of questions, and he’d better have some answers. And I don’t want to hear any sass from you.”
Carter looked at Emily and said, “Well, I guess I’ve just been told what-for.”
Emily said, “Maybe someone should have a long time ago.”
He gave a nod. “Maybe so. Can you forgive one man’s foolishness?”
She couldn’t help but smile. “Carter, I think I could forgive you anything.”
She leaned in for a kiss which he started to return, but then pulled back. He found his teeth also hurt from the uppercut punch Jack had given him, and thought maybe one had been broken off. Kissing hurt awful. He said, “Easy woman, I’ve had me a hard day.”
Emily couldn’t help but laugh.
The following morning, Fred saddled three horses and had them waiting by the corral. One of them was Rabbit. One was a buckskin Dusty preferred, and one was a bay with two white stockings that Jack preferred.
The three brothers stepped out from the kitchen door. All three had their guns in place and tied down, and sombreros over their heads.
Josh said, “I was gonna ride out to the line shack today, but maybe I should hold off.”
“No,” Dusty said. “I’ll ride along with the fighter, here, to make sure he gets to town. I’ll ride out and join you afterward.”
“Funny, funny,” Jack said. “I can ride into town all by myself. I’ve been taking care of myself for years.”
“Well,” Dusty said, “you sure took care of Harlan Carter yesterday.”
The side of Jack’s face was purple and swollen, and he couldn’t open his mouth more than a couple inches. He was on his way to Granny Tate’s. He had expected the tongue-lashing he would have gotten from Aunt Ginny to be worse than the fight itself, but all she did was look at him disappointedly, and then walk away. He found that was even worse than the tongue-lashing he had been expecting.
He said to Dusty, “I’m serious. I’ll be all right. Go on out with Josh. I can ride into town myself.”
Dusty was a little hesitant, but then gave a sigh of resignation. He was about to say, well, all right, but then he heard the clatter of iron-shod hooves and steel rimmed wheels on the wooden bridge in the distance.
The barn blocked their view of the trail down to the bridge, so he said, “Sounds like we might have company.”
They waited until the wagon pulled into view. It was Age Brewster holding the reins, and Nina was on the seat beside him.
Josh said, “Well, looks like we’re not needed here.”
He and Dusty both swung into their saddles as Age gave the reins a tug and called out, “Whoa,” to the team. Once the wagon was stopped, he reached up with one foot and pushed down on the brake.
“Good mornin’, Miss Nina,” Josh said, reaching up with one hand to touch the brim of his hat.
“Miss Nina,” Dusty said, doing the same.
Josh said, “We were just riding out.”
She said, “Good morning, boys. Don’t let me keep you. I was just here to talk to Jack.”
Dusty said to Jack, “We’ll see you in a couple days. Three at the most.”
And they turned and rode off.
Nina started climbi
ng down from the wagon. Jack hurried over to offer a hand for assistance. Not that a woman couldn’t climb down from a wagon herself, but chivalry required him to offer a hand, which he did. She accepted the hand.
He leaned in for a kiss. She didn’t do the same. He stepped back, thinking, Uh-oh.
“We need to talk,” she said.
Age said, “I’ll just wait right here.”
He wasn’t just being polite. He really wanted to be nowhere near the two of them right now, considering how riled Nina was.
“Come on,” Jack said. “Let’s walk.”
He offered his hand. She didn’t take it.
They started off, away from the corral and the house.
He said, “I was just heading into town to see Granny Tate. My jaw’s so bruised up I want to make sure it’s not broken. And I think I might have a concussion.”
She was still using a cane, but her ankle was no longer trussed up. She had pulled a shoe on over her foot.
He said, “I see you’ve taken the splint off of your ankle.”
“My ankle isn’t the issue.”
Now he knew she was angry. He decided it might be best to just be silent and give her the time she needed to explain what was going on.
She said, “I can’t believe you.”
He nodded. “Fighting with your father. I know. I’m so sorry. I let my temper get the best of me. But, in all fairness, he did come looking for a fight. He actually was holding a gun on Dusty and me at one point.”
“You don’t see, do you?”
Now he was confused. “I guess not.”
“My father sat up with Mother and me into the night, telling us step-for-step what happened. He was wrong, and he knows it. But so were you. You didn’t have to fight. You could have refused.”
“I know. And I’m so sorry. I have my father’s temper, and sometimes it gets the best of me.”
“I can’t believe you knew all along.”
He was even more confused. “I knew?”
“You knew all along, but you didn’t tell me. I can’t believe you didn’t share that kind of knowledge.”
Now he knew what she was talking about. “He told you.”
“Yes, he told me. But what I don’t understand is why you didn’t tell me.”
He shrugged. “I guess I was waiting for the right time.”
“The right time?” she stopped walking and faced him. “The right time to tell me something that important? That big? The right time was as soon as you found out. Jack,” she sighed with frustration and looked away for a moment, gathering her thoughts, and then looked back to him, “how can we even hope to build a life together if you can sit on knowledge like that and don’t even share it?
“According to my father, you knew back when we were on the trail. He talked to your father about it days before we even arrived in town. And from what your father said, my father gathered he had figured it out before that. Which means you knew, too. When did you find out?”
“My father told me who he suspected your father was back at the way station.”
“So, you knew for the past few weeks.”
He nodded a little sheepishly. “Yes. So it seems.”
She turned away. “I thought I knew you.”
“Look at it from my perspective. If I had told you, it might have looked like I was trying to drive a wedge between the two of you. Especially considering how he felt about me.”
“All right. Granted. I guess maybe I can see that.”
She stood still for a moment, looking off at the trees.
“So,” he said, “are we all right?”
“I don’t know.” She turned to face him. “Jack, what you did. Fighting my father. It’s no small thing. It’s made me see things in a little different light, I guess. It’s made me think my father might be right.”
“Right? About what? He’s not right about anything.”
“Jack, you’re a gunfighter. I’ve heard you use the word gunhawk. I think I understand what that means now. It’s a certain way of doing things. Of approaching life.”
“I am so sorry about fighting your father. I know it was wrong. I think a small part of me knew it then, too.”
“And yet, you did it.”
He was silent. He didn’t know what to say.
“It’s not a case of forgiveness, Jack. I do forgive you. But it’s a case of no longer being sure about you.”
“Nina..,” now he felt his own ire rising a bit. “It was a lack of judgment on my part. I have already apologized. It doesn’t affect how I feel about you.”
“But it does affect who you are. You’re a man of violence. You wear that gun on your leg like it’s somehow a badge of honor. You see fighting as an end to a means. When my father confronted you, you knew he had been drinking. Fighting him shouldn’t even have occurred to you.”
He nodded. “Yes. I was wrong. And I’ve said I was sorry.”
“It’s not a case of forgiving you.”
Despite his ire, he had to admit he was confused again. “Then, what is it?”
She said, “I’ve thought about this long into the night. I sat up by the fire just thinking. It’s hard to say this, but I think we need some time apart.”
Now he was really getting angry, but he tried to keep his voice to an even level because he loved her. “Are you telling me you’ve never done anything wrong?”
“It’s not that I haven’t made mistakes. We all do. But do I want to build my life with a man of violence? Do I want him to be the father of my children?”
“A man of violence.”
She nodded.
“A gunhawk,” he said.
She nodded again. “I guess what I’m saying is I need time. I have to think.”
“I don’t see what there is to think about. Your father is Harlan Carter. A wanted outlaw. A killer. A gunhawk, if you want to use that word, and much worse than I’ve ever been. I’ve never had my name on a reward poster.”
She shook her head. “He’s my father, Jack. He’s always been there for me. Maybe the man you describe is what he once was. But the only man I’ve ever known him to be is strong and sometimes stern, yes. And sometimes too closed-up for his own good. But everything he did was to protect Mother and me. He worked hard to build a home for us. He always put us first. He’s a good man, Jack.”
“So it’s okay for him to see me as no-good, but I have to accept him as a good man?”
She shook her head. “Don’t come see me, Jack. I need some time away.”
He nodded. Part of him wanted to plead with her not to do this, but part of him wanted to simply turn and walk away. His temper versus his love for her. And at the moment he felt like it was about to tear him in two.
“So, you’re going to be living just two miles away, building a farm, and I’m not allowed to come visit?”
She nodded. “For now.”
His turn to look away. He wanted to cry. He wanted to shout with rage. He had never felt this way before.
She said, “I need to go home, now.”
He nodded, and almost said, Yes you do. But he caught his tongue before it could slip out. It would be too easy to say something he might later regret. He walked her back to the wagon.
Fred was in the corral, leaning against the fence and chatting with Age. He stepped away as he saw Jack and Nina returning. She began to climb back up and into the wagon. Jack offered her his hand, but she ignored it.
“Please take me home,” she said to Age.
Age looked like he wanted to crawl away under a rock somewhere. He raised his brows in a sort of shrug at Jack, then disengaged the brake and clicked the team forward and turned them around, and headed away along the trail.
Jack pulled his horse’s rein free of the corral and swung up and into the saddle.
Fred said, “Are you all right?”
“No,” Jack said simply, and kicked the horse into a gallop toward town.
37
Jack’s bruised face
healed slowly, but it did heal. Granny Tate had told him she didn’t think it was broken. And she found his shoulder was healing well. The bullet wound had left a furrowed scar that she said would never go away, but the force of the bullet plus landing hard on it when he fell after being shot apparently wrenched the shoulder. Such a thing can be a long time healing fully.
He never told the family the details of his conversation with Nina, only that she wasn’t seeing him anymore. Aunt Ginny gently touched his arm but said nothing. Temperance looked at him sadly but also said nothing.
Bree, however, had less patience for subtlety. She said to him, “I’m not going to ask what happened, because that’s for you tell if and when you’re ready. But I just need to know if you’re all right?”
“I suppose I will be,” he said. “We’re McCabes. We’re survivors, right?”
She nodded, “That’s one thing we are.”
He saddled up the next morning, and rode off into the hills. He never felt more at home anywhere in the world than when he was riding through these hills. Letting his horse find its way through the pine trees, gradually climbing a slope. He hadn’t been riding anywhere in particular, but he found himself on the rocky cliff where Pa used to stand and look off at the valley during that year he wintered here with the Shoshone, before he married Ma. Jack dismounted and loosened the cinch and let the horse graze, as a little grass grew near the cliff. And he stood and simply looked off toward the distance.
One ridge across the valley gently declined and then melded into the next. They were covered with pine. Overhead, a chicken hawk glided about in the wind.
Beneath the cliff was a grassy slope that dropped sharply down before leveling off a little. A couple hundred feet down he saw a grizzly lumbering its way along. The bear was no threat to him. If it started working its way up the hill, he would just get his horse and continue along.
He wondered how it felt back years ago, when Pa had stood here looking off at this very scenery. Back when the only people within a hundred miles were the Shoshones who had set their village up on the valley floor. From what Pa had said, it wasn’t far from the lake. Not far from where Nina and the other settlers now were.
The following day, he did the same thing. Saddled up and rode, with no particular destination in mind. Around noon he shot a rabbit, and built a small fire from a deadfall and roasted the animal and ate his lunch.
One Man's Shadow (The McCabes Book 2) Page 32