“Just like old times when we finally hit a decent-sized town on the trail. You tellin’ me to wash my cock before and after visiting a bawdy house or warnin’ me not to gamble all my wages at the card table.”
“It’s a lot different, Silas. We’ve never had iron bars between us before.”
His brother didn’t say anything after that.
He felt damn ridiculous watching Silas like a hawk as he removed his clothes and boots inside the tiny cell. After Silas tossed his clothes out, Jonas locked the metal-barred door.
“How many nights a week do you sleep in here?” Silas asked.
Fewer than you might imagine. “Enough to know you ain’t gonna be comfortable.”
“Where will you be sleepin’?”
“At my desk. But I don’t know that there’ll be much sleepin’ as I’ve got paperwork to fill out on account that my brother killed someone.” He paused. “But in truth, he didn’t kill someone and that don’t make a lick of difference, ’cause I still gotta do the goddamned paperwork.”
“I killed Zeke, Jonas.”
“Like hell you did.”
“I might not’ve pulled the trigger, but I’m the one who bought her the damn gun. I made her carry it in her pocket. Way I see it…I’m fully responsible for his death.”
Jonas took off his hat and tossed it on his desk. “You ain’t gonna tell the truth of what happened? You ain’t gonna even try to defend yourself?”
Silas snorted. “Even if Dinah were to try and take the blame—which I’d never allow—it’s too risky. Yeah, West had acted untoward several times, previously payin’ her a visit when she was alone and scaring her, but she had no witnesses to the fact, then or now. West took her away at knifepoint yesterday. Stabbed her in the back. Manhandled her enough to bruise her, yet she didn’t voice a single complaint to you when you were right there. Why not?” He paused. “Because West could’ve explained his actions away just like he did about that knife not bein’ his. Then he would’ve tacked on that Dinah had ‘misunderstood’ his intentions and I overreacted like I always do. So yeah, I gotta swallow the truth that she didn’t report what he done to her to keep me from killin’ him.” He looked at his brother. “See how this is gonna go?”
“Silas—”
“I ain’t done. I suspect Zeke told Ruby exactly what sick fuckin’ things he planned to do to Dinah before she’d stopped him from takin’ her, but it woulda been her word against Zeke’s. A man she’s kicked out of her brothel multiple times, if Jimmy’s been tellin’ the truth. The word of a whore ain’t worth much, sadly.”
Jonas flinched at the word but his brother didn’t catch it.
“Then there’s the threat against Dinah that Zeke leveled at me—after I tried to beat his face into the dirt, a threat that no one except me heard. Whatcha think my word is worth? Given the fact Zeke West and I have been doin’ the who’ll be first to the hangman’s dance for over a fuckin’ year. Oh, and let’s not forget that I threatened to kill him yesterday. Anyone who was there knew I meant it. Add in me holdin’ the gun that killed him, Zeke never getting a shot off from either of the guns he had in his hands, and it looks as if I done the cowardly thing and shot him in the fuckin’ back. Even in his goddamned death he’s pointing the finger at me.”
“Then tell the judge Dinah did it.”
Silas shook his head. “I’ll hang for a crime I didn’t commit long before I’d ever let her hang for one she did.” He closed his eyes and his grip tightened around the iron bars. “She’s gonna hate this. It’ll ruin her. Savin’ me from Zeke plugging me full of holes only for me to die anyway.” He laughed harshly. “The one goddamned time Mrs. Agnes decides to leave the house, the one goddamned time I’ve ever seen her outside, it had to be today, of all days. Christ. That’s just my luck, ain’t it?”
“Is what you told Doc true?”
“About how badly Zeke hurt Dinah? Yeah.” Silas’s eyes were haunted when they met Jonas’s. “She cowboyed up all day yesterday. You saw her. She was in agony and she hid it from me because she was tryin’ to keep me from doin’ something stupid. And I ended up doin’ something stupid anyway.”
Jonas waited for Silas to continue, his heart in his throat.
“We had a fight last night. Not about her bein’ hurt and lyin’ about it, but about the talk me’n you had yesterday.”
“You told her about that?”
Silas shook his head. “She guessed the part where I asked you to marry her and take care of her if something happened to me. Christ, Jonas, she was pissed. She pulled a goddamned gun on me. She said I had no right to demand that of you. That you had your own life, your own love story to live.”
Last night, Jonas’s biggest fear in going to see Ruby had been that she’d intended to give him the boot, but he’d found out she’d returned to Deadwood—probably for good—to run her mentor’s brothel.
His biggest fear today was watching his brother die because of some perverted sense of honor he’d recently ascribed to.
Jesus. This was about the most fucked-up situation he’d ever been a party to.
“We were supposed to get married tomorrow,” Silas said softly.
“What?”
“Even before I knew how much Zeke had hurt her, she understood that I’d be frantic about his threats toward her. She said no amount of money she could earn was worth me not havin’ peace of mind that I could protect her. The promises she’d made to Doc weren’t as important as the promise she’d made to me when she agreed to become my wife.”
“That’s why you had the wagon at Doc’s,” Jonas said.
“Yeah. We were movin’ everything of hers to the cabin.” Silas paused. “For what it’s worth…I was gonna ask you to stand up for me tomorrow. But I guess that don’t matter now.”
He let a minute pass…and he was done.
“Fuck that.” Jonas pushed to his feet. “I’ll stand up for you now.”
Silas squinted at him. “What?”
“This is all bullshit. You hangin’ to save Dinah when she saved you, and me just sittin’ by and watchin’ it happen because I’m such an upstanding deputy who follows the fuckin’ rules. What kind of man would I be if I let my own brother die when I have the means to prevent it?”
“You been hittin’ the bottle when I ain’t been lookin’, bro?”
“Nope. I feel like I’m seein’ clearly for the first time in ages.” He stormed over to the cell and curled his fingers around the bars, nearly coming nose to nose with his twin. “Here’s the truth. I don’t like this job. I never have. Big Jim is a dipshit—and a mean one at that. I’ve stuck around because you’re my brother and because…” Just say it. “Because I’m in love with Ruby Redmond.”
Silas’s eyes widened. “You and Madam Ruby? I’ll be damned.” Then he sent his brother a sad smile. “That’d explain why you’re mopey half the time. That’s a hard row to hoe.”
“Yeah. I don’t begrudge you bein’ with Dinah. She’s good for you. But it’s just driven home the truth that this…ain’t no kinda life for me, Silas. Solitary lawman. Pinin’ for the woman I can’t have. I’d be relieved to move on from Wyoming.” He swallowed hard. “But you wouldn’t. You love it here, you’ve got a woman who loves you even when you’re a hotheaded fool. There’s no doubt in my mind Zeke West would’ve succeeded in killin’ one of you. What Dinah did was defend her family against a threat. I know it, you know it, she knows it…does anyone else really matter?”
Silas stared at him for a long time. “I guess not when you put it that way. That don’t change nothin’.”
“It changes everything.”
“How?”
“Remember when we were kids and we used to switch places and see how long it took our folks to notice?”
Silas snorted. “They never caught on to that game, if I recall correctly.”
“Exactly. So let’s me and you switch places. Not for a day or a week, but permanently.”
Wariness entered his b
rother’s eyes. “What?”
“Silas McKay makes a jail break. He beats the shit out of his too-trusting brother, locks him up in jail and takes off for unknown parts, never to be seen again.” When his confusion didn’t clear, Jonas said, “Meaning I leave as you; you stay here as me. The land deeds are in the name McKay, so you’d still be doin’ what you’ve been doin’. No one would fault Jonas for resigning as deputy after he let his murdering brother escape. The fact you’d stick around here after that throws off any suspicion we’d cooked something like this up.”
“What about Dinah?”
Jonas shrugged. “You can still court her and marry her. I doubt she’ll have an issue with the name change when her other option is that you’re dead.”
“True. What about you and Ruby?”
That was a harder pill to swallow. “She and I aren’t meant to be. I could move on from her.” He never would, but saying that sounded pathetic.
“There’s just one wrinkle in this plan, Jonas. You and me? We could never see each other again. Ever. For the rest of our lives. Silas McKay will always be a fugitive. The McKay boys, the McKay twins, the McKay brothers would be no more.”
“I know. But if I don’t do this, we’ll never see each other again anyway because they’ll hang you.”
They stared at each other for the longest time. Then Silas said, “You think anyone will believe that I’m you?”
“My damn boss thought you were me just a few weeks back. Plus you’ve been a hermit besides your few forays into town to play cards, so no one really knows you. You can be me…but a better me. Because you’ll be happy. I can live with that, brother, pretty damn easily.”
“I feel like you’re getting the short shrift, Jonas. I get to keep my ranch and my woman and get the respect I haven’t earned, and what do you get?”
“A chance to figure out who I am when I’m not trying to live your dream. I’ll have the freedom to find my own.”
“You mean that.”
“More than I’ve ever meant anything.”
Silas didn’t try and hide that his eyes had filled with tears. “I’m gonna miss you every day for the rest of my life. Every day.”
Jonas rested his forehead to his brother’s through the bars. “I know, brother, me too.”
After a bit, he stepped back and wiped his own tears. Then he unlocked the cell. “I really hafta do the paperwork first. While I’m doin’ that, open the gun cabinet drawer and lift up.”
Silas crouched down and jerked the drawer. The false bottom gave way and loose bills of every denomination spilled everywhere. “Christ. So this is where you’ve been keepin’ your money.”
“Well, someone else in the family already claimed the good spot under the fencepost by the creek.”
He laughed. “Dinah called it ‘The Stinky Old Boot Savings and Loan’ last night.”
“She’s got a smart mouth—I like that about her.”
Silas went still. “Thank you for this…chance.”
“Don’t thank me. It’s my chance too.”
Silas didn’t speak again until he’d stacked all the bills and secured them in his leather fold-over wallet he’d taken from his jacket pocket. “Now what?”
Jonas exhaled. “At some point we’ll have to fight. So the jail break is believable.”
“Do we need to do that right now?”
He shook his head. “There’s a few things you’ll need to know about the office in order to maintain credibility, just for one day.”
“Okay.”
Afterward, they allowed some time to reminisce. To laugh and bullshit and remember.
Jonas peered out the window. “Sackett’s is closed.”
The time had come.
Silas sat on the floor of the jail cell, dejected.
“I don’t know that I can actually hit you,” Jonas admitted.
“You have to. It’s the only way this will work.” Silas raised his head and managed a small smile. “Make it hurt, so the outside matches the way I feel inside.”
They were both bleeding by the time they were done.
Crying too, not just from the cuts and scrapes and bruises.
Jonas locked his brother in the cell. “Toast us on our birthday every year, yeah?”
“Yeah.” Silas waited until Jonas reached the door until he said, “Be happy, brother. That’s the only way I can stomach doin’ this is if I know you’ll have a better life.”
“I will.”
When the sun came up three hours later, “Silas” McKay was an outlaw.
He kept his horse headed south and didn’t look back.
Chapter Twenty-One
Silas had spent all day building fence. He was hot, sweaty, hungry and more than a little heartsick not knowing if he’d—they’d—done the right thing.
It wasn’t something he could talk to Dinah about. Mostly because he and Dinah weren’t talking. They’d agreed to remain apart for a while. The evolution of a relationship between them would be more believable to the community if they stuck to a traditional courtship.
All social situations Silas had avoided.
But he wasn’t Silas anymore. He was Jonas. And Jonas had been a sociable guy. Hence, Silas masquerading as Jonas meant he’d have to become that. Embodying his twin just drove home the pain that he missed his brother something fierce.
Even when it’d only been two weeks since they’d said goodbye, he knew this hole in his life wouldn’t heal. He feared it’d only expand as the years went on.
Years Silas would spend living as Jonas McKay.
Years wondering how his brother’s life had played out.
If he’d discovered a new occupation.
If he’d settled into one place and had become part of a community.
If he’d found a different woman to love.
If he’d raised children.
If he’d missed his brother like Silas missed him.
While he understood brooding solved nothing, he couldn’t help it.
This switch had worked out easier than he’d thought possible.
Even Henrikson had bought into the ruse, sharing a couple of disparaging remarks about Silas when “Jonas” stopped over to inquire whether he still needed a ranch hand.
Robbie O’Neil had ridden out to the McKay Ranch to share gossip about how the townsfolk felt about Zeke’s violent end and Silas’s disappearing act. How no one had been surprised, but everyone felt sorry for Jonas and Zachariah West for the damage their brothers had done to both families. Robbie had been tight with Jonas and hadn’t guessed he wasn’t Jonas, so that had been another test passed.
Robinette offered “Jonas” a line of credit at the general store as he acclimated to his new life on the ranch.
McCrae Lumber offered “Jonas” a longer-term payment plan on a bulk order of fence posts.
The only people not happy to see the ass-end of Silas McKay were Dickie and Darby at Sackett’s Saloon.
Sobering stuff to acknowledge that Jonas had made a bigger mark in the two years he’d lived in the area than Silas had made in twice that long. No one ever stopped by the ranch to see if Silas needed anything.
But already Sheriff Eccleston had popped over to ask if Jonas would consider changing his mind about working for law enforcement in some capacity after everything leveled out. Silas figured it was some kind of test, so he’d been firm about being done with that.
As far as he’d known, no one had put out a reward for Silas McKay’s capture. If Zachariah had money, he might’ve done it, but he didn’t have the kind of cash that would warrant interest. Although Zeke had worked for the railroad, since the murder hadn’t affected the railroad’s operation, they wouldn’t put up a reward either.
Every night Silas prayed his brother used his knowledge of the outlaw system to stay one step ahead of—or a thousand miles in front of—the law.
His bad day got worse when he noticed a lone rider approaching. Before the man dismounted, Silas ambled over with hi
s hands in the air. “I ain’t armed, Zachariah. Like I told you twice before, I don’t know where my brother is.”
“Like I said twice before, Deputy, I ain’t about to shoot an unarmed man.”
“I’m no longer a deputy.” A pause. “What are you doin’ here?”
Zachariah’s jaw tightened. “I have no fucking idea.”
Silas waited.
Finally Zachariah sighed. “He was all I had. He’s dead and buried and I’m pissed off and I don’t know what the hell to do with it, okay? It’s screwed up, but the only person who came to mind to talk to about it was you.” He paused. “I see know how stupid that was. I’ll just go.”
“No. Stay.” Silas moseyed closer. “As long as you’re here and not lookin’ for revenge, we may as well drown our sorrows in whiskey.”
“Why would you need to drown your sorrows, McKay?”
He locked his gaze to West’s. “Because you ain’t the only one who lost brother. Mine ain’t dead, but he may as well be, because I know in my gut I’ll never see him again.”
Zachariah seemed to take that in. Then he nodded and dismounted.
“I’ll grab the bottle.”
When Silas returned, West had turned his mount out into the corral. He seemed to be studying—and judging—the house, barn and paddock. For once, that didn’t bother him. He’d been so happy to be home after getting dismissed from the jail that he’d fallen to the floor in gratitude.
“You got a flask?” Silas asked.
“Yeah.” West pulled it out of his inner vest pocket.
The lack of weight indicated it was nearly empty. Silas poured the amber-colored booze into the flask and passed it over, keeping the half-empty bottle for himself.
After West took the first pull, he grunted. “As least you got good taste in whiskey, McKay.”
“Silas left it.”
West grunted again.
When it didn’t appear Zachariah intended to start the conversation, Silas did. “You and Mary O’Brien still getting hitched?”
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