She paced across the kitchen floor, then stepped out to the back porch and peered down the road. She saw no one coming or going. As her gaze drifted over the property, she noted again how tangled and overgrown it had become. The spring rains had given new life to the grass that she swore grew an inch every hour, and the weeds that threatened to choke out everything else. On the right end of the porch the trellis, bearing the weight of an old climbing rose, sagged alarmingly—a strong wind might send the whole business crashing through the side window.
Almost unwillingly, she turned her eyes to the spot under a solitary ancient oak tree where her parents were buried. It was surrounded by a wrought iron fence and planted with flowers. Although she hadn’t been able to keep up the rest of the yard, this place was as neat as a town square, and Althea tended it zealously. Any weed with the temerity to take root within that enclosure was promptly yanked out. Sometimes she almost feared that Amos Ford would leap from his grave if he realized that the rest of his land was not being properly attended. Just before her father died, he had charged Althea with the care of Olivia and this house.
“Don’t let me down again, girl,” he’d bade with a rattling breath. Again. Of course, there had been no need to review the time she failed. Her negligence had been horrible, monstrous, and unforgivable. Though they never spoke of it over the years, she had seen his chilly disapproval every time he looked at her for the rest of his life, right up until its last moment. And it had not been until that final moment, while she sat by his deathbed and held his icy hand between her own, that she’d realized how little he cared for her.
In the parlor the clock tolled nine times, bringing Althea back to the present. She looked down the road one last time, then turned to go inside and fetch her shawl.
She had a responsibility to fulfill. And if Cooper Matthews would not come to her, she would go in search of him.
~~*~*~*~~
It was hard enough to eat with a headache that would have felled a horse. And the gamy odor drifting up from the stained tick, the only place to sit, didn’t help Jeff’s stomach, either. It wasn’t a bad meal that he held on his knees—a dish of cold, dried-up fried eggs with a biscuit, some limp bacon and coffee. God knew he’d eaten worse. But with Will Mason watching the fork make its shaky trip from his plate to his mouth and back again, Jeff found it nearly impossible to swallow. In the not so distant past, he’d had a rock-steady grip.
For just an instant, Jeff stared at his palsied hands and felt humiliation send a flush of heat up his neck. Then sanity returned. That rock-steady grip he’d once prided himself on had enabled him to become one of the fastest and most accurate shots in the territory. That talent had ended up robbing a boy of his life before he’d had a chance to really live. Maybe people did look down on him now, Jeff thought. So what? At least he wasn’t hurting anyone but himself.
Mason didn’t say anything. He just leaned against the brick wall beyond the cell door, his arms crossed over his chest. His hard gaze assessed, judged. It was very easy to assess and judge from that side of the bars. Oh, and didn’t Jeff know that.
Maybe if he didn’t look at him, if he kept his eyes on his plate, the sheriff would get bored and go back to his desk. But he didn’t. He just leaned against that wall, watching.
“Don’t you have something better to do?” Jeff finally asked, throwing down the fork. He couldn’t make himself look up into those hard, shadowed eyes. “I’m not planning to try an escape, if that’s what you’re worried about. Farley caught me in his henhouse fair and square.”
Will pushed himself away from the bricks and uncrossed his arms. “Hell, that isn’t why I’m keeping you here. If you were any other man, you’d have gotten a sharp talking-to and that would have been the end of it. And you know it.”
Now Jeff looked up, wary. “So, what’s your grudge against me, Mason?”
Will shook his head. “I don’t have a grudge against you, Jeff. But you do raise my dander more than most men. You’re drunk half the time and sleeping it off the other half. Cooper Matthews was already the town drunk before you decided to join in. We don’t need two of them in Decker Prairie.”
Hearing himself compared to Matthews, Jeff felt hot blood rise to his face, partly from shame but mostly from anger. It seemed like all of his troubles could be traced to that bastard. He put the unfinished tray on the floor and stood. “I mind my own business. What do you care how I spend my time? You’re a lawman, not a preacher recruiting souls.”
“I hate to see a man lie down and wallow in self pity, that’s all. Are you going to spend the rest of your life feeling sorry for yourself? Do nothing more than an odd job here and there for whiskey money? Your hands shake so bad, I’ll bet if I gave you a pistol you wouldn’t be able to hit the side of a barn. There was a time when no one could hold a candle to your aim.”
Smarting from his last comment, Jeff looked at Will Mason’s holstered Colt and then turned his eyes away from the sheriff’s granite stare. Jeff couldn’t tolerate the idea of even holding a gun again. The last time he’d tried, when he’d still worn that silver star on his shirt, the tremor in his hands had been worse than now. If his own life depended upon it—and from his viewpoint, that was little reason—Jeff knew he couldn’t fire a pistol again. Not to defend himself or anyone else. The knowledge was somehow emasculating, and was a notion that Will seemed to share.
“Being good with a gun never made anyone a man,” Jeff muttered, more uncomfortable than ever.
“And sleeping it off in someone’s barn does?” Will’s gaze did not waver.
“Don’t go flapping your gums until you’ve walked in my boots for a while. Things look a whole lot different from here.”
“I remember what happened that night at Wickwire’s. It was bum luck, but you don’t have to throw everything away trying to forget it.”
Will’s words hit a little too close to the truth and made Jeff feel even more weary than he had before. “Look, just leave me be, Will. It’s none of your business what I do as long as it isn’t against the law.” Turning, he went back to the cot and lay down with his hands locked beneath his head.
Will shrugged, then walked to the door. “I guess you crossed that line this morning, didn’t you?”
~~*~*~*~~
The sun angled through the high, barred window above Jeff and caught him in a bright rectangle that threw striped shadows across his torso. He lay on his back, watching a spider weave an intricate web in the corner overhead. The hours dragged on, yet Will Mason hadn’t returned. Maybe Mason was sticking with his plan to leave Jeff alone to think. It was the last thing Jeff wanted to do, but the thoughts came anyway.
He’d tried to sleep, but his mind had jumped around from memory to memory as if he’d had a whole pot of coffee instead of one lukewarm cup. With the sun setting against the other side of the wall, it grew warm in the cell. The heat gave a ripe edge to the stink of his own unwashed clothes and body, and the spot where the egg had broken under his shirt was glued stiffly to his skin. Yeah, Will’s earlier description of him was probably not far from the truth. Jeff most likely did look like something a dog had puked up.
He didn’t care. Absently, he put a hand to his jaw and felt the coarse stubble growing there. He had never been a vain man, and his appearance was just another of the details that no longer mattered to him. His world had become very narrow and simple. His aim was to get from one day to the next, and to find forgetfulness in a drink.
His thoughts continued down the roads of his past until drowsiness moved upon him. Everything—his marriage, the man he’d once been—it all seemed so long ago.
Jeff turned toward the brick wall and drew his arms and legs close to his chest. Sally had been gone for more than a year now.
That was just as well.
~~*~*~*~~
At his feet, Wesley Matthews lay with a bleeding hole in his chest. Blood, there was so much blood. Jeff knew he could save him if he could just reach him. But he was sti
ll paralyzed and couldn’t move no matter how hard he tried.
Jeff came awake with a jerk. Dreaming . . . he’d been dreaming again. His shirt and the old tick beneath him were drenched with sweat. His eyes focused on Will Mason, who stood in the open doorway to his cell, holding the keys.
“Come on, Jeff. There’s some work that needs doing.”
CHAPTER THREE
Will Mason pulled on the reins of the delivery wagon he’d borrowed from Eli Wickwire. Their harness and bridles jingling, the horses in the doubletree stopped at the entrance to a road that led to a yellow farmhouse with green shutters. The back of the wagon was loaded with tools, and on the seat next to him Jefferson Hicks rode in silence.
A brilliant noonday sun glared out of the blue sky and pounded down on Jeff’s head. He squinted against the brightness. He wasn’t accustomed to being out at this hour of the day anymore.
“Okay, there she is,” Will said, pointing at the house with the end of one rein.
Jeff peered at the place. Surrounded by unplowed fields punctuated with stands of old oak and fir, it didn’t look like anyone lived there. Blackberry brambles grew like tangles of barbed wire, engulfing part of a well house, and forming a thorny crown around the stovepipe of an old smokehouse. The property was so run down it had to be deserted. “This is a joke, right? You’re going to dump me here at this abandoned house and make me walk back to town.” He wasn’t used to stringing so many words together. There weren’t many people he talked to these days.
Will pushed back his hat and snorted. “Nope. It’s not abandoned, and I’m not joking. Miss Althea Ford needs some help around the place, and I think you’re the man for the job.”
Jeff peered at the house again. “Who’s Miss Althea?”
“You remember Althea Ford. She lives here with her ailing sister. Their father, old man Amos Ford, died about three-four years ago.”
Jeff remembered the name and something about a pair of odd, reclusive sisters but nothing more, and he’d never met either of them. He looked again at the wild shrubbery and decrepit house. “Jesus, Will, how much do you expect me to do here? I took one lousy egg from Farley, not his whole damned farm!”
Will fixed him with a stern look. “Look, the lady said she needs help and I guess even a fool can see that she does. You never really struck me as the lazy type.”
Stung, Jeff muttered, “I’m not lazy—I just don’t give a damn. And I don’t think there’s anything you can do to me to change that.”
Will slapped the reins on the horses’ backs and the wagon lurched forward. As he turned into the road that led to the house, he replied, “That’s your problem, not mine. I don’t need you to give a damn. As for Miss Althea, she only needs your labor. That’ll be enough.”
“Why don’t you just release me? Then I can go about my business and you won’t have to trouble yourself with keeping me busy.”
“You know that if I decide to, I have the legal authority to hold you for thirty days for what you did. You can help out here or you can go back to the cell in town and think some more.”
Jeff frowned. That wasn’t much of an alternative. Yeah, he knew Will could keep him. He just couldn’t figure out why he bothered. He didn’t remember the sheriff’s job being so boring that he needed to hunt around for diversions. He hadn’t lied when he said he didn’t care. Nothing much mattered to him anymore, and what once had mattered was fainter in his mind than winter shadows now. But he supposed that spending the day outdoors in the clean May air beat the hell out of being trapped in the jailhouse with his thoughts and memories for company.
“Since when is it the sheriff’s job to provide a handyman for the local spinsters?” he asked.
Will held the reins loosely in his hands, letting the horses pull them along at a slow pace. “Miss Althea came to the office looking for Cooper Matthews. He promised to be here this morning and he didn’t show up. So you’re taking his place.”
Jeff stiffened at the name. “Matthews—how did he get involved?”
“She was desperate.” He gestured at the surrounding landscape. “You can see why.”
Yes, he could. Nearing the house, Jeff took note of the silver-gray barn that had waist-high grass and weeds growing in front of its doors. Maybe someone really did live here, but he’d bet a dollar that neither of those sisters had set foot in that barn for years. On the house, some of the shutters hung slightly askew and the whole thing needed painting. An ancient farm wagon stood disintegrating in the tall grass, its iron wheel rims rusted and some of the spokes broken. Everywhere he looked—the land, the outbuildings—something needed fixing. Jeff was no stranger to hard work. He’d done his share at the ranch and house when Sally still— But, damn, there was enough here to keep a man busy for months.
“God, I wouldn’t even know where to begin,” he said, feeling overwhelmed and more than little put upon.
“Don’t worry, Althea Ford will tell you exactly what to do,” Will replied with a slight smile as he maneuvered the wagon around to the back porch.
Jeff eyed him suspiciously; he thought he heard the hint of satisfied laughter behind his words. He could picture her now, Miss Althea. A dry, creaking old maid wrapped up in the depths of a big black shawl, and her white hair nailed to her head in a tight bun. She was probably a little dotty, too, living here with her equally dry and dotty sister.
Will set the wagon brake and wound the reins around the handle. “Looks like you might need the tools we brought. It’s hard to say what they have here.”
Jeff jumped down from the seat and looked around, feeling like a prisoner being put to work on a chain gang. He reached into the back of the wagon and lifted out the shovel, hammer, hoe, and other gear Will had collected for him. If only that one stringy chicken hadn’t started squalling the other morning, he would have slipped out of Farley’s henhouse undetected, and he wouldn’t be faced with the chore before him now.
Will led the way to the back door on the one clear path Jeff could see near the house. When Will knocked, Jeff, keeping his eyes on the worn porch flooring, again pictured a hunched woman as dried up as last year’s corn husks.
He heard the door open.
“Miss Althea, I hope we’re not late.” Will’s tone was as pinched and respectful as a schoolboy’s.
Oh, brother, Jeff thought, short of rolling his eyes.
“I can certainly overlook fifteen minutes, Sheriff.”
The feminine voice was young and clear, Jeff realized, and he let his eyes venture as far as the hem of her apron.
Will continued. “I couldn’t find Cooper and I gave my word that I’d have a man out here. It looks like you’ve got enough work to keep him busy.”
Jeff inched his gaze up higher. The line of her dark blue skirt draped over the modest flare of her hips, ebbing to a small waist that accentuated her full breasts.
She faltered. “Yes, well— Yes, I’ve had some trouble getting anyone to come out here as I mentioned. I’m afraid things have declined to a pretty bad state.”
Jeff lifted his eyes to discover a straight-backed, softly rounded woman in her middle twenties. The sight of her hit him with an impact that startled him. He’d seen her outside the saloon yesterday. He remembered that—he’d almost asked her for money when she’d passed him. But he’d been so taken by the sight of her, his pride had frozen the words in his throat. Her hair, rather than white, was a thick, rich auburn that framed her heart-shaped face with red and amber highlights. She wore it pulled into a knot at the back of her head, but soft vagrant tendrils had escaped here and there.
In vivid contrast with her surroundings, she was tidy and unrumpled, and beautiful in a way that many women were not: she didn’t realize her beauty. How he knew that he had no idea. But those big blue-gray eyes of hers— They looked as if they could see into his very soul and read the shame written there, all the doubt and failure and cowardice.
Jeff dropped his gaze to the floorboards again, feeling a flush work it
s way up his neck and over his face. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d done more than rinse his clothes out in a rain barrel or the branch that ran in back of the Liberal Saloon. And baths had become occasional rather than regular events. He reached up to flatten out his hair with his palm, then caught himself. Maybe she hadn’t noticed. He had never been as conscious of his own appearance as he was right now, but hell, how was he supposed to look? He’d spent a day and a night in jail, and he’d been drafted to do a job that no one else would take. Little wonder. There was enough work here to overwhelm three men and a small boy.
Althea stared at the two men on the porch. Assuming that Sheriff Mason would find Will Cooper, she’d been surprised to find him standing at her back door with a tall, unkempt stranger. The man looked as if he lived in a hog wallow, and when the breeze eddied around the confines of the porch, she caught an overripe whiff of his unwashed body. His long sandy hair stuck up in cowlicks all over his head, and his frayed dungarees and shirt were of some undefinable color. He looked even worse than Cooper Matthews had.
“This is Jefferson Hicks. He’ll be happy to hire on for a day or two, won’t you, Jeff?”
The man grunted without taking his eyes off his feet.
Jefferson Hicks! Althea gaped at him, astounded. He was the man she’d seen on the street yesterday. Even as isolated as she and Olivia were, she’d heard talk about the total ruination of Decker Prairie’s last sheriff. He’d killed Wesley Cooper, she remembered that much. From then on he’d slid downhill.
Will shifted his weight from one foot to the other and adjusted his hat. “To be honest, I have to tell you that Jeff has been spending a little time in the Decker Prairie jail. Farley Wright caught him in his henhouse taking a couple of eggs. It was a minor charge, but I thought you should know.”
“Um, yes—I can’t think of—I’m sure—” Althea stumbled along, feeling trapped. She gazed at the top of Jefferson’s downturned head and hesitated to commit herself. He was still a young man, if her memory served, but he seemed more dilapidated and rundown than her house. She’d heard that he’d taken to the drink after that incident with Wesley Matthews. But the man looked like a total derelict. How much work could he have left in him? And what kind of a job would a man do who’d squandered his life on alcohol? The calm hand of reality stopped her questions—it wasn’t as if she had a lot of choice. “I haven’t met many men who were willing to work. What about you, Jefferson Hicks? Are you afraid of work?”
Allie's Moon Page 3