Beautiful Bad Man

In 1866 on the empty Kansas prairie, two children shared a few desperate moments that changed their lives. For years afterward, each nursed a secret dream — that the other had grown into a special person — brave, good, kind.

When Norah Hawkins and Caleb Sutton cross paths again, dreams die. She is a bitter, suicidal widow. He is a gunman with little conscience and few scruples. Alternately angry, repelled, and attracted, the two form an uneasy partnership to hold land she owns and he covets against a marauding neighbor. Their bargain never included love, or did it?

Spring 1866

Hubbell, Kansas

N
ORAH STOPPED STIRRING
and dropped the spoon in the beans, watching open-mouthed as Jim Shanks and Isaiah Flood dragged a boy to the center of the wagon circle. No one that small and scrawny ought to be able to put up such a fight or provoke that kind of cursing and shouting from grown men.

“Ow, the little devil bit me.”

“Watch your language around the women, damn it.”

“You watch your language. He’s probably got hydrophoby and killed me.”

Norah glanced across the fire at her mother, who continued to tend to supper as if such an extraordinary thing happened every evening.

“What do you think is happening? Where could that boy come from?”

“He’ll be from the town we passed by, and from the look of him, he came to steal. Your father and the other men will take care of him.”

The population of the miserable collection of shacks and tents called Hubbell, Kansas, resembled nothing so much as a den of thieves and worse, all right. Norah couldn’t imagine families there, or children.

She squinted through the gathering dusk. The men had subdued the boy at last by trussing him up like a Christmas goose. Mr. Flood had a sleeve rolled up, presumably examining his bite wound, but Mr. Shanks still held the boy. As Norah watched, Mr. Shanks shook the small form like a rag for no reason she could see.

“I’m going to talk to Papa.”

“Norah.” Her mother lifted her gaze from the food, her face serious. “Don’t embarrass your father with forward behavior. Tell him supper’s ready so he has a reason to leave the other men if that’s what he wants. He’ll at least send the boys here, and I’ll find the girls.”

Her sisters were hiding on the far side of the wagon, determined to keep their distance from the stink of a fire fueled by dried buffalo dung, but Norah didn’t tattle on them. She joined her father and brothers on the outskirts of the cluster of men surrounding Mr. Shanks and the boy.

“I’m telling you we caught him sneaking around the wagons. No reason to sneak except thieving,” Shanks said.

“Yeah, and how many of us could afford another horse right now?” Flood asked. “You think he was after a hundredweight of flour? He was after any cash he could find and then the horses.”

“If we’re settling in this part of the country, we need to make sure the people around here know we won’t put up with thieves,” said another voice.

“I say we hang him.” As he spoke, Flood accepted a bottle of whiskey from one of the other men and poured it across the wound on his arm. Then he took several swallows. “For the pain,” he said, laughing and passing the bottle to the man on his right.

“For the pain,” said one man after another before taking a swallow or two and passing the whiskey.

Norah didn’t know most of these people well. They’d only grouped together after leaving the train at Wamego and purchasing wagons and supplies for the journey to their new land. The sales agents described the soil here as so fertile even clerks like Papa could make a living farming it. Of course those same agents described the town of Hubbell as a growing center of commerce where settlers could buy anything they needed and sell anything they produced.

Shanks shook the boy again. “You got anything to say for yourself, horse thief?”

The boy spit and kicked, catching Shanks on the knee, and the man yanked the boy around and tripped him. With his arms tied behind his back, the boy fell hard. Norah saw something fall out of one of the many rips in his ragged shirt.

Ignoring her mother’s instructions, Norah darted forward, grabbed the biscuit and held it up. “He wasn’t trying to steal a horse. See, Mr. Shanks? See, Mr. Flood? He was after food. Look how skinny he is.”

“Norah.” Papa pulled her back to his side. He smelled strongly of whiskey, but she knew he hadn’t had more than a swallow or two to show the other men he was one of them. That’s all Papa ever drank.

“Hang him. I say we hang the little thief. Soon as we find a tree that is.” Flood spoke slowly, but not slowly enough to disguise the slur in his words.

Was he mad? The Flood boys were constant troublemakers. Their father ought to be willing to turn a blind eye to anything any boy got up to short of murder. Sounds of agreement rippled through the crowd, but Papa always did the right thing.

“Talk some sense into them, Papa,” Norah whispered. “He’s just a skinny, hungry little boy looking for food, and hurting him isn’t right. Tell them we’ll give him some of our food. Tell them to let him go.”

“You go to your mother and stay out of this. He’s older than he looks, and the devil’s in his eyes. Go on. Get now.”

Unable to believe his words, Norah tried again. “Please, Papa. They’ll listen to you. I know they will. It’s in the Bible to be merciful and not to cast the first stone. Don’t let them hurt him because they’ve been drinking.”

“Don’t argue with me, girl. Get back to the wagon and stay there.”

The other men watched Norah’s pleas with varying expressions. Her own brothers sniggered and elbowed each other. Flood’s bleary-eyed stare made Norah’s stomach clench even with Papa standing right there.

Shanks said, “That girl should be a boy. Make you proud he would.”

Shanks’ words all but guaranteed Papa would never listen, but Norah couldn’t make herself stop. “Please....”

Papa left disciplining girls to Mama and saved his belt for the boys, but now he shook Norah as hard as Shanks had shaken the boy.

“No more,” he snapped and shoved her toward the wagon.

As she walked by the fire with her head bowed, Norah didn’t even look at her mother. Mama never argued with Papa in any way, and she wasn’t going to become a different person tonight.

Norah hurried to the far side of the wagon and leaned against the rough wood, unwilling to climb inside and try to find a place to sit amid the piles of supplies and the few possessions they had been able to bring from home.

Home. A lump rose in her throat at the thought of that orderly, safe place where Papa never smelled like whiskey, never went along with something he knew was wrong, and never shook her like dogs did rats.

The lump turned into a knot of anger. She didn’t want to cry. She wanted to stop whatever those stupid, drunk men were going to do, even if in the end they only dragged that pitiful boy back to Hubbell. That excuse for a town probably didn’t have any kind of law officer anyway.

Cook fires burning near each wagon and the thin light of the new moon showed the shadows of Shanks and the other men as they dragged their prisoner to one of the wagons across the way and threw him inside.

Whatever the men did to keep the boy there caused another flurry of cursing and shouting. She hoped the boy bit every one of the men, including Papa and both her brothers.

Things quieted after that. Most of the men returned to their own supper fires, but a few still stood together talking. One of them tipped his head back in a distinctive way.
Still drinking too.

Norah turned her head and closed her eyes, unwilling to identify her father or brothers among the shadowy figures. Those men would have to live with whatever they did tonight for the rest of their lives.
And she’d have to live with whatever she didn’t do.

Before she had time to reconsider, Norah climbed into the wagon, rummaged in boxes and sacks, and threw food in her apron as it came to hand — hard biscuits, dried fruit, jerked meat.

When she had as much as the apron would hold, she tied it into a bundle and fumbled around in the toolbox for the knife kept there. It wasn’t as sharp as what Mama had by the fire, but it would have to do.

Sliding back to the ground by inches like the thief she’d just become, she took off around the outside of the wagons at a run. She slowed beside what she thought was the right wagon, but how could she be sure? If she chose wrong and someone was inside or heard, he might raise an alarm.

Nearby, men argued about how to hang someone without a tree. When one voice spoke out, wanting to take the boy back to Hubbell and hand him over to whatever law was there, hisses of disapproval drowned him out.

Norah ran her hand over the canvas wagon cover, scratching lightly. Nothing. At the next wagon, her touch provoked a frantic scramble inside. Staying as close to the wagon as possible, trying to blend her form with the bulk of it, she slid slowly to the back gate.

The argument continued, even Flood’s slurred words carrying clearly, but the men were invisible in the night. She had to trust if she couldn’t see them, they couldn’t see her.

Afraid to climb inside with the wild boy unless she could calm him, she whispered, “Can you hear me? I’m the girl who argued about you before. I have a knife and some food, and I’ll cut you free if you’ll let me.”

“Yesss.”

Barely audible, that single word resonated with fear; the interior of the wagon reeked of dirty boy and desperation. Norah almost fell over him as she stepped inside. He had worked himself to a sitting position against a stack of crates, and her reaching hand hit his shoulder. When he stiffened, she almost jerked away, knowing he could reach her hand to bite.

Trying to quell her own fear, Norah kept her hand on him.

“They aren’t evil men, but they are drunk, and I’m afraid for you.”

His bones felt as light as a bird’s. Skin over bones, that’s all there was to him, yet warmth radiated from his shoulder to her palm. His small size gave testament to how wrong Papa and the others were. Whatever they thought they saw in his eyes couldn’t make him older than eleven, maybe twelve.

Even in the dark of the wagon interior, she could still see pale blond hair falling into dark eyes gleaming with a feral light. She let go of his shoulder and brushed his hair back across his forehead before squirming to where she could reach his wrists and saw at the rope.

“As soon as I get you loose, run. There’s food in that bundle. Take it and run and keep running.”

Blood, slick on the knife handle, told her she’d cut him. He made no sound.

“I’m sorry.” Afraid time would run out, Norah didn’t slow down but kept sawing with all her strength.

At last. The rope parted. He didn’t leap and run but closed one bony hand over her wrist with surprising strength and pulled the knife away with the other. Before she could react, he was gone. So was the food.

After a moment, Norah climbed down and sat against one of the wagon wheels, waiting. Pretending she hadn’t been the one to free him would be the same as a lie. Now that it was done, the unknown consequences of what she’d done loomed large in her mind. What would drunk men who wanted to hang a boy of eleven or twelve do to a girl a few years older who thwarted them? What would Papa do?

No matter. Whatever happened next, she wasn’t sorry. Remembering the sound of that one word, the unnatural, fragile bones, and the scent of desperation, she shivered in the warm night. She hoped that boy used the chance she’d given him wisely and lived to be a man. A good man.

Summer 1871

Fort Worth, Texas

C
AL SLUMPED ON
the wagon seat, using the lazy posture to hide the stew of resentment boiling in his guts.

Jake Kepler, self-described champion buffalo hunter, had tied his saddle horse in front of the hide yard and disappeared into the shack of an office sometime ago. His skinners, the ones who counted, had left their wagons and followed him.

Glancing at the wagon shadow, now shrinking as noon approached, Cal tried to estimate how long the others had been gone. They’d be back after a couple of drinks with the hide man — and way too much jawing.

Tying the horses of the other two wagons to hitch racks had been good enough, but Kepler had ordered Cal to stay put and hold his restless team while hordes of flies buzzed and bit. High on the wagon seat, close to the load of stinking buffalo hides, Cal knew exactly how the horses felt.

After five years, he also knew how the rest of the day would go and the next weeks and months. Last year he’d made the mistake of trying to quit Kepler as if this was a job, and the hunter had stomped him good. Remembering, he rubbed the knot where one of his broken ribs had healed imperfectly. Lesson learned.

Kepler, Billy, and Hank finally emerged from the shack, all but on fire from the whiskey and the knowledge of how much the thousands of hides in the wagons would bring. Rumor had it hides were bringing three dollars each this year, fortunes for Kepler and the skinners, even if the hunter would take the lion’s share.