Good lord, she’d been prying, a fault that Althea herself disliked. She fumbled for words. “Oh—yes, well, I think I’ve included everything. Please go to Wickwire’s too and buy yourself some dungarees . . . and a new shirt if you like. You can pay with—” Gripping it in her closed fist a moment longer, she finally opened the hand that held the gold coin. “Here’s ten dollars. It should be more than enough.”
Jeff gazed upon the money in Allie’s palm like a starving man would view a banquet table. He let his eyes connect with hers, and an unspoken question hung between them. Would Jefferson Hicks do as she’d asked and return from town with the goods and change left from the coin? Or would he take the money, stop at the Liberal Saloon, and disappear back into the bottle that she and Will Mason had fished him from? He saw worry written in the depths of her eyes. But he saw trust, too.
He took the money from her and folded it inside the list, then put it in his pocket. “Maybe I’ll just wash up a little, and then I’ll hitch Smithfield’s mule to your wagon and be on my way.”
“All right, then.” She turned to walk toward the pear tree in the corner of the yard, carrying her suet bird treat. Jeff admired her form as she went—her long slender neck and narrow back, her rounded hips that swayed softly with the rhythm of her pace. She stopped suddenly and called over her shoulder, “I’ll see you when you get back.”
That lonely, scared feeling came over him again, stronger than ever.
~~*~*~*~~
“Come on, Kansas, keep moving,” Jeff muttered to the mule. He thought Kansas was a stupid name for a mule, but he didn’t own the bad-tempered animal. The old wagon beneath him rattled and lurched along the rutted, potholed road, and he hoped it would hold together long enough to get him to Decker Prairie.
If he could only make himself relax and enjoy the ride, there were lots of things to see and appreciate. The afternoon was so sharp and blue, the trees on the far side of the valley seemed close enough to hit with a rock. The stream that ran across the Ford property paralleled the road, and the water looked clear and icy, like liquid glass, as it gurgled over the rocks in its bed.
He noticed things that had always existed around him, but until recently had been hidden by the blurry curtain that he’d drawn over his mind.
The turmoil galloping through Jeff’s thoughts prevented him from taking any pleasure in his surroundings, though. He’d seen Allie watching him from the kitchen window as he pulled away, and then he’d felt her eyes boring into his back. That she trusted him enough to send him to town with money gave his self-respect a considerable boost. But terror sluiced through his veins with every beat of his heart.
He hadn’t been to town since Will Mason sentenced him to the country hush of the Ford farm. After being away from the jangling piano and the smell of whiskey at the Liberal, Jeff’s head had begun to clear. The ground he’d gained was shaky, though, and as the gray outline of Decker Prairie’s buildings emerged in the distance, he knew it could crumble beneath him by a single moment of temptation.
He didn’t want to be in town.
He didn’t know if he could make himself leave after he got there.
The town loomed closer, and he let Kansas slow to a moseying dawdle. Why had Allie put her trust in him and sent him into Decker Prairie, and with a ten-dollar gold piece, when she knew it would be so easy for him to backslide and disappoint her?
Then a treacherous thought occurred to him. Maybe Althea expected Jeff to fail. That way she could send him back to Will Mason and be rid of him. She’d been so cool and distant since that one evening in the lean-to, when he’d merely thought about kissing her, this might be just the opportunity she’d been looking for.
The very notion made Jeff sit up straight on the wagon seat, boiling anger and cold fear tightening the muscles in his back.
“Damn her!” he snapped at the mule’s rump. “That’s just what she’d like, fussy Miss Althea Ford—to see me knocked on my ass again.” Well then, by God, if he started drinking again it would be her fault, not his.
He rode along, nursing the idea of blame-shifting. He’d done it often enough before. It wasn’t even his fault that he’d started drinking in the first place. It had been Cooper Matthews’ fault—if he’d done right by his own boy, Wes never would have broken into Wickwire’s. Sally, with her complaints about loneliness—a married widow, she’d called herself once—had only helped to keep him on the bottle. Decker Prairie had done its part, too, he rationalized, by whispering about him. The notions all worked for a moment, filling him with a kind of righteous indignation. Those people had all wanted him to fail, to see him flat on his back, so they could dispense their pity and disapproval and moralizing. Oh, it made them feel so superior.
But in his heart Jeff knew better. He’d always known better.
And whether he failed or succeeded today would be his responsibility.
Once he reached Decker Prairie proper, Jeff’s foreboding was overshadowed by a sense of amazement. He’d only been gone for a couple of weeks, but the town looked different somehow. A new sign hung over the café, except it didn’t really look new. Judging by the way it had weathered, it must have seen at least one winter. Why hadn’t he noticed it till now? And the bakery—hadn’t it been white before? Today the storefront was pale green with cream-colored trim.
He was so busy taking in the changes around him as Kansas pulled him farther into town, it was several moments before he realized that the people on the street were watching him. He heard his name as heads bent discuss him. Jeff did his best to ignore the curious stares—hell, he knew they’d talked about him all along, there was no reason it should bother him now. It had just never seemed so obvious to him.
As he neared the Liberal Saloon, he let Kansas slow down again, and the reins grew slack in his hands.
Don’t look at it, don’t listen to the sound of it.
Don’t even smell it.
But it was all there, as unmistakable to him as a stock tank would be to a thirsty horse. From those open doors he smelled stale cigar smoke, and the rich, yeasty scent of warm beer. The piano clanked out the heart-rending “Rose Connelly.” All of it familiar, inviting. It wasn’t the camaraderie that drew him. Jeff was not a sociable drinker; he liked to sit alone in a corner or on a back porch somewhere.
No, what pulled at him now was the simple promise of forgetfulness. One drink, maybe. What could just one drink hurt? His heart thudded in his chest. If he didn’t buy the whole bottle he wouldn’t be able to take it back to the farm with him—
“Thinking about going inside?”
Snapped out of his reverie, Jeff looked around and saw Will Mason on the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street, sitting in front of the barbershop.
“No, I’m not,” he snapped impatiently. Yes, that was exactly what he’d been thinking.
Will pushed himself out of his chair and walked over to meet him in the street. “Well, you’re dead stopped in front of the saloon, Jeff.”
“I’m just here to buy seed and a couple of other things for the farm.”
“That’s good.” Will pushed his hat off his brow and considered him for a moment. “You know, you’re beginning to look like the man I used to know. Life out there must agree with you.”
“It isn’t like you gave me much choice.” Jeff resented what he saw as Will’s high-and-mighty attitude. He felt like a kid having to answer to a schoolmaster.
Will scanned him up and down. “It doesn’t seem to have hurt you.”
Jeff chuckled but not with humor. “Well, don’t get your hopes up. No matter what happens, I’m never going to be the man you used to know. Never again. That man is dead.”
Will shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. Someday down the line, you might even be glad I sent you to the Ford farm.”
The tension of being in town and sparring with Will burned Jeff’s fuse down to the last inch. “Look, Will, you got your way. Don’t expect to be thanked, too.”
The sh
eriff pushed his hat down again. “I didn’t do it for you. I was helping out Miss Althea.
“Uh-huh.”
“Just remember, Jeff. For you, one drink is too many, and a hundred wouldn’t be enough.”
Jeff slapped the reins on the mule’s back and the wagon lurched forward. Then he turned down the side street that ran between the Liberal Saloon and the feed store. He set the wagon brake and jumped down, raising a cloud of dust when his boots hit the dirt.
Sheriff or not, friend or not, Will Mason wasn’t his keeper. Jeff had seen too much and lived too many years to let anyone, including Althea Ford, treat him like a naughty boy. They could tell him to jump, but he’d be damned if he’d ask how high. Reaching into his back pocket for the ten dollars she’d given him, he closed his fist around the coin and set off to prove that.
~~*~*~*~~
“By God—by God, ain’t that Hicks over there?” Cooper Matthews pushed himself away from the doorframe and pointed a dirty finger at a man jumping down from a wagon. From his vantage point near the back door of Kincade’s Livery, Cooper could see the town’s main street and most of the side street next to the Liberal, including all who came and went there.
“I won’t bother gettin’ up to look at that son of a bitch, if you don’t mind,” Floyd Endicott groused, and aimed a stream of tobacco juice at a sand bucket. He sat on an old milking stool by a back stall, alternately gnawing on a piece of jerky and a tobacco chaw. Between bites he used the blade of a pocketknife to dig at the festering wound in his hand caused by a splinter. The same hand was missing its index finger, lost when an angry madam had slammed his hand in the door of her safe for pilfering her cash. “I wouldn’t even waste a fart on the effort,” he added primly, as if such conservation was noble.
“What the hell is he doin’ in town?” Cooper muttered. “I figured he was cozying up with those two crazy Ford women.”
“Who cares what he does?” Floyd asked, screwing up his face when the point of the knife went too deep.
“I b’lieve we ought to keep an eye on him, watch what he’s up to. I got old scores to settle with him. Didn’t you say you wanted to get even with him, too? For that time he put you in the pokey overnight?”
“Watchin’ ain’t gettin’ even.”
Cooper, whose overalls made him look like a bag of soup bones, folded his arms across his chest and continued to watch Hicks with a ruminant expression and narrowed eyes. “No, but he’s givin’ me an idea. And I got a plan comin’ up. A big one.”
“I got a big one comin’ up myself,” Floyd said, scratching his crotch. His grin was mostly toothless and excessively salivary. “Why don’t we wander over to New Era and find them gals again? They ain’t beauties, but they don’t charge much.”
“Get your head out of your pants, Floyd,” Cooper snapped. “This is more important.”
“Aw, shit, what’s more important than gettin’ a leg over a female?”
“This is . . . yup, I’ll start slow-like. And I’ll fix that Ford bitch in the bargain. She’ll learn what it means to double-cross Cooper Matthews.” He turned to look at Floyd. “I’ll bet you’d like to get even with her too, especially after she wouldn’t pay you. Are you comin’ with me?”
The other man tossed aside the remainder of the jerky and folded his knife. “Hell, I guess so. If we ain’t goin’ to New Era, I got nothin’ better to do.”
~~*~*~*~~
“Just the shirt and the pants, then, Jeff?” Eli Wickwire peered at Jeff over the top rims of his spectacles, and gestured at the shirt and two pairs of dungarees on his counter. He literally had the biggest mouth Jeff had ever seen. He guessed that the shop owner could push a whole apple between his jaws and still be able to close them. “There are lots of other things to choose from here—you remember my motto: A Wealth of Goods for Man and Beast.” He pointed at the sign hanging behind him that said the same thing. It seemed to be true—Jeff had only to look around to see all the merchandise Eli had for sale.
“Yeah, I remember, but this stuff will do, Eli. I have to be getting along.” Jeff shifted from one foot to the other. He either had to get to the Liberal Saloon before his conscience changed his mind, or he had to leave while he still had the will to do so.
Eli, however, was in no hurry at all.
“It’s good to see you out and about, Jeff. You’re looking more like an upright, breathing human again. How’s it going out there at the Ford farm?” He tore a length of brown paper from the roll at the end of the counter and began wrapping the clothes. “You going to get the planting done and fix things up a little?”
Jeff tried not to sigh too loudly. “Something like that.”
“The place has sure gone downhill since Amos died. But then his daughters wouldn’t be able to handle it, just the two of them. Althea’s had her hands full since she was just a girl. And I doubt that Olivia would be much help to her. Pity about the younger sister—she has those fits, and Althea won’t leave her.”
Jeff’s spinning impatience slowed to accommodate his curiosity. “Fits? I thought maybe she was addled.”
Eli shook his head. “Nope, she’s all right in the head—well, I s’pose that might be stretching it. The whole family was never quite right, you know.”
Jeff did know, or at least he’d heard it, but he didn’t feel comfortable trading gossip with Eli as if they were a pair of meddling old ladies. Anyway, except for a couple of eccentricities, like the business about the barn door, Althea seemed fine. Very fine. He reached into his pocket and took out the money for the clothes, hoping that cash would distract the man. “Here, Eli—”
But he simply kept talking as he wrote up the sale. “ ’Course, the girls’ mother strung herself up when Althea was, oh, seven-eight years old and her sister was still in diapers. I guess that might make anyone a little odd.”
Stunned, Jeff snapped his gaze to Eli’s round face. “God—she hanged herself?”
“Yes—well, I guess that’s what happened. Amos never said a peep about it. I guess he didn’t want everyone in town to know, but it’s pretty hard to keep something like that quiet. Word got out that the preacher wouldn’t say even word one over Lucinda’s grave—suicide was an abomination in the eyes of God, he said. So there wasn’t any funeral, but I remember Amos bringing his wife to the undertaker’s with Althea on the wagon seat next to him.” Eli looked up and gazed across the store, obviously remembering the scene. “Olivia wasn’t more than a few months old, I don’t think. I can still see Althea holding the baby in her arms, her little face pale and blank. I’d never seen a kid look like that before. She had old eyes, like she’d lived fifty years instead of eight.” He shook his head and then chuckled, “It made quite a fuss around here, I can tell you. It was a long time before something else came along to cause a stir like that. I don’t think it was until that Matthews boy—” Eli broke off then, his face crimson and the great cavern of his mouth hanging open, obviously realizing who he was talking to. Jeff’s own jaw clenched, but he simply stared back at Eli and said nothing. “W-well, it was a shame, of course, the Ford girls losing their mother and all.”
The transaction came to a swift end after that, and Jeff found himself back out on the sidewalk with the paper-wrapped package under this arm. The afternoon sun was heading down the sky and he knew he should get back to the farm. The Liberal Saloon was just a few paces across the street, closer than he wished now.
Somehow, learning about Althea’s mother put a different face on things. Jesus—suicide. A chill rippled through him. As desperate as he’d felt at times, he’d never thought of putting a gun to his head. Or a rope around his neck. When he died, he expected something else—or someone else—to do the deed. What a hell of a thing to happen to a kid, to lose her mother that way.
Jeff walked down the plank sidewalk toward the side street, kicking up dust as he went, and the wagon and Smithfield’s mule came into view. Kansas turned a baleful look on him, but he barely noticed. He was looking at the
wagon.
It was an old wagon, he realized. Old enough to have served as Lucinda Ford’s hearse. Drawing closer, he looked at the seed sacks on the rough-planked bed and could easily imagine a woman lying there instead, wrapped in a quilt. And up there on the sprung seat, a scared little girl had sat who now bore the responsibility of a sister who would never really grow up. Suddenly his heart ached for Allie—Jeff’s own life had taken a seriously wrong turn in the last few years, but at least he’d had the chance to be a kid. The chance to grow up and know love, and the soul-deep satisfaction of physical closeness with another person, even if it hadn’t lasted. Allie had known none of that, he was certain. Her innocence and almost fearful modesty were so obvious.
The ache in his chest made Jeff realize that more of his feelings were coming to life again. Damn it all, he didn’t want that. All feelings ended up being the same one eventually: pain. And God knew he’d had enough of that to last the rest of his life. It had flowed over him like a swift-running river rushed over rocks, wearing away, wearing away. He didn’t think he could stand any more.
Only one thing had made him forget that pain. Sighing, he reached into his pocket and fingered the change left from the seed and his clothes. He looked at the side of the building next to him. Painted in yard-high yellow-and-black letters, The Liberal Saloon.
Just one drink—what could one drink hurt?
Just one and then he’d go back to the farm.
His hand closed around the money in his pocket. Just one—
“Well, Floyd, look who we got here. I do believe it’s our old sheriff.” Jeff didn’t need to see who was behind him to recognize Cooper Matthews’ voice.
Jeff’s spine stiffened and every defensive instinct came alive in him. He glared at both of them but kept moving, hoping to walk away from them without another confrontation. He knew neither man was very smart, but how far would they push him right here on the street in broad daylight?
“I guess he ain’t so brave when he don’t have a gun strapped to his leg, huh?” Floyd taunted, dogging Jeff’s steps.
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