It was as dark as the east side of midnight
in there. Working from memory—and he knew that wasn’t very
reliable—he reached out and let his hand trail through straw and
God knew what else, feeling for a nest box. An angry squawk and a
hard, sharp peck on the back of his wrist told him he’d found what
he was looking for.
He plunged his fingers under the chicken and
she let out a series of outraged clucks while he rooted through
feathers and straw in search of his prize.
“
Shut up, you old bitch,” he whispered
irritably. “You’re sitting on my breakfast. And quit pecking!”
Finally his hand closed around a solitary warm, wet egg. He
withdrew it and put it inside his shirt. After thinking about it
for a moment, he stuck two fingers into his tight front pants
pocket, pulled out a penny, his last, and shoved it under the
chicken. The biddy set up a caterwauling that was loud enough to
wake both the living and the dead.
As if someone had rung a fire bell, a dog in
the yard began yapping along with the chickens. Farley always kept
his dog in the house at night. What was it doing outside? The
animal apparently rushed to the henhouse because Jeff could hear
the heavy, deep-chested woofs just outside, moving around the
perimeter. The rest of the hens added their panicky cackling to the
racket and flapped blindly around him. He backed up through the
coop with his hand outstretched behind him, groping for the
door.
Oh, hell, that dog was probably standing on
its hind legs with its front paws and full weight resting on Jeff’s
only escape route. A clammy sweat broke out all over him that glued
his dirty shirt to his body and inched over his scalp. He knew he
was trapped. Fast thinking wasn’t one of Jeff’s more adroit
abilities these days, but by God, if he couldn’t out-think a
dog—
Suddenly, the door flew open and glaring
lantern light filled his field of vision. Jeff found himself
staring down the double barrels of a shotgun.
“
Just hold it right there, mister!” At
the other end of the weapon stood Farley Wright, half of his angry,
weather-seamed face covered with shaving soap, the other half
scraped clean. One strap of his suspenders looped down next to his
leg and brushed against the head of his still-barking
black-and-white sheep dog. “You stand right there now so’s I can
get a look at you before I blow you to kingdom come!”
Jeff took a couple of dragging steps forward,
keeping his eyes on the shotgun, while the dog circled him and
jumped at his feet. He wasn’t afraid to die—in fact, he didn’t care
one way or the other if he lived. He’d just never expected to be
shot for raiding a henhouse.
The farmer raised his lantern and squinted at
Jeff. After studying him closely, Farley lowered his shotgun a
notch, then scowled.
“
Sheriff Hicks. I mighta knowed you’d
stoop to chicken stealin’. His expression disgusted, the farmer
looked Jeff up and down as though he were lower than a dog’s
pizzle. Well, the old man was right about that.
Jefferson Hicks had fallen as low as a man
could.
CHAPTER TWO
“
I caught him red-handed and I’m
pressing charges, Will. To the full hilt of the law. I got rights—I
can’t have this man helping himself to my henhouse whenever the
notion strikes him. And I’ll warrant it’s struck often enough.”
Farley Wright stood before Sheriff Will Mason’s desk, brimming with
moral indignation.
“
Have you got proof that anything was
stolen, Farley?” Will Mason asked. He glanced at Jeff and shifted
in his chair, making the badge above his breast pocket flash in the
early morning sunlight that came through the window.
“
Well, just look at that!” His
weathered face vermillion with anger, Farley pointed to a big wet
spot on the front of Jeff’s shirt, just above his belt. “That’s
where he hid the egg ’fore it broke. Besides, isn’t it enough to
catch someone rummaging in my henhouse before dawn? I don’t suppose
he was there for a social visit!” The picture Farley presented—half
shaved, one suspender still dragging around his knee, his hair
sticking up like a privet hedge—rather detracted from his oration,
but not its vigor.
Jeff Hicks guessed that Farley even fancied
himself as something of a hero for bringing in the big, bad egg
thief. His own head already thumping like a hammer on a rock, Jeff
shut out the sound of the farmer’s voice. He’d had to endure the
man’s outraged, nonstop monologue all the way into town. Farley had
tied Jeff’s hands behind his back and forced him at shotgun point
into the back of his wagon. He hadn’t needed to. Jeff had offered
no resistance.
In fact, he hadn’t felt more than a twinge of
self-consciousness when Farley marched him in here, still under
cover of his shotgun. At least he kept telling himself that. He’d
sensed the curious stares from shopkeepers and people on the
street, but what the hell—Decker Prairie had been talking about him
for a long time. He’d given them lots to talk about.
From his vantage point in the corner by the
stove, he let his gaze wander the confines of the sheriff’s office.
He hadn’t seen the inside of this place for more than two years,
but it seemed like twenty. Some of it looked familiar—the wall
clock, the blue enamel coffee pot on the stove, the rifle rack, the
scarred oak desk. With his hands tied with a rope that cut like a
saw blade, it was hard for him to recall that he’d once occupied
the same swivel desk chair that Will Mason now sat in as he let
Farley ramble on. He’d worn the same silver-star badge, and a
long-barreled revolver strapped to his thigh. That had been another
life. Another Jefferson Hicks.
Finally Sheriff Mason leaned back in his
chair and turned a wry gaze on Jeff. “Well? Is this just about the
way it happened, Jeff?”
Hearing his name, Jeff dragged his attention
back to the moment and shrugged. “I guess. I left a penny in one of
the nests to pay for the egg.”
“
A penny!” Farley exploded. “By God, I
don’t know where you’ve been, boy— Well, yes I do—you’ve been
chasing the bottom of a whiskey bottle. But I get more than a penny
for my eggs, and on market day—”
Sighing, Will lifted his hand and motioned
Farley to silence. “Hold on, now, let’s stick to the subject. Do
you want to sign a complaint?”
The farmer drew himself up as straight as a
rake handle and adjusted his one suspender strap. “Hell, yes, I’ll
sign! If that’ll ship Jeff Hicks off to Salem, I’ll sign a whole
pile of complaints.”
“
Jesus, Farley, we don’t send men to
the state penitentiary for stealing an egg. I’ll just keep him here
for a while.” Will sat up in his chair and rummaged around in his
desk for several moments before bringing out a big key ring. “Come
on, Hicks.”
While old man Wright grumbled on about
justice, Will Mason led Jeff to the back of the building that
contained two jail cells. He unlocked one of the cell doors and
opened it.
“
Turn around,” Will ordered, and Jeff
turned his back to him. Following a faint sawing noise and a slight
tug, Jeff felt the rope around his wrists fall away. “All right,
get in there.”
Jeff walked to the bunk and sat down on the
same stained tick he remembered from his days on the other side of
the desk. Behind him, the door clanged shut.
Will folded his pocket knife and turned it
over in his hands while he studied it. Then he gazed at Jeff
between the bars. “What the hell are you doing to yourself? You
look like something the dog puked up and you smell just as bad. And
stealing eggs, for chrissakes?”
Jeff hunched forward, his elbows on his
knees, and stared at the gouged plank flooring between his feet.
The last thing he wanted to hear today was another lecture. And he
sure didn’t want to hear one from the man who had succeeded him in
his own job.
Apparently realizing that he wasn’t going to
answer, Will Mason sighed again. “I’m going to let you sit here for
a few days to sober up and think about things.”
Jeff lifted his head, surprised. “A few
days—” His voice came out as a croak. He wouldn’t have kept someone
longer than a day for such a paltry offense, if he kept him at
all.
Will turned to leave, then said over his
shoulder, “At least you’ll get fed, courtesy of Decker Prairie and
Elmira’s Café.” Then he was gone, pulling closed a heavy oak door
that separated the office from the cells.
Jeff stared blankly at the bars and the brick
wall beyond. If he’d had any humor left in him, he might have
laughed at this turn of events. He could even envision the
newspaper headline: Former Sheriff Jefferson Hicks Jailed For Egg
Theft.
He’d lost count of the number of times he’d
cursed himself for taking the damned job in the first place, for
coming to this town. Nothing about his life had been the same
since. And while the days and weeks now blended together into a
dateless, unchanging blur, he remembered with exquisite detail the
moment when his life had turned. The fourteen-year-old boy with a
gun . . . the deafening blast when he had
pulled the trigger . . . the bullet nicking
Jeff’s chin . . . the following events that had
snowballed in a roaring avalanche, engulfing all the good things in
his life and finally consuming him . . .
He sighed and cradled his tender head in his
hands. A few days in this place? Hell, what did it matter? It
wasn’t as if he had somewhere important to go.
He didn’t have anywhere to go at all.
~~*~*~*~~
Althea stood at the kitchen window watching
the road. Now and then she looked over her shoulder at the clock in
the parlor. She looked again, for what must have been the fiftieth
time this morning.
Late. Cooper Matthews was two hours late. He
had told her he would arrive at seven o’clock sharp, and now here
it was almost nine on the second clear day they’d had in a month.
Half the morning was already gone, and still there was no sign of
him.
It had been hard enough to get him to agree
to do the work. He’d been rude and insulting, and more than a
little intimidating. When she thought about talking to him
yesterday, her stomach felt icy. All Althea wanted was to get the
kitchen garden planted and the roof patched before it rained
again.
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.