Beautiful Bad Man (5 page)

“Yeah, you did. That night in the wagon.”

Norah stared at the tall, lean killer across from her, unable to believe it. Not wanting to believe it. His hair was blond, but a dark blond, nothing like the boy in the night.

“No. You’re trying to say you were the wild boy. No. He was too small to be you. His hair was almost white.”

“Boys grow. Their hair gets darker. I probably started growing that night from the food I stole and what you gave me, and I didn’t stop for years.”

“He died. Everyone said I killed him by letting him go. He died alone out on the prairie.”

“I would have died without what you gave me, but a buffalo hunter found me a couple of days after the food ran out. He never had any trouble believing he saved my life, and he sure figured my life was what I owed him.”

“I didn’t really save him,” Norah whispered. “They wouldn’t have hung him. It was just talk.”

“They were drunk enough to do it, and it didn’t matter. They wouldn’t have let me go, and if they sent me back where I came from, I’d have finished starving to death soon enough.”

“Where did you — he — come from?”

She could not accept that the man sitting across the table from her was the Boy. She would not accept it.

“Henry Sutton’s place. I’m Cal Sutton — Caleb.”

Norah’s mind churned, trying to find a way to deal with what she didn’t want to believe. To deal with
him
.

“If the Suttons are your kin, how can you work for Mr. Van Cleve?”

“Easy. You saw me fifteen years ago. Do you think there’s a lot of family feeling there?”

“You ran away. You were out on the prairie alone for days. Weeks even. You.... He....”

“I got away the morning of the night you saw me.”

“No.”

He slammed his empty coffee cup on the table, and Norah flinched.

“Your choice. Don’t believe me. I met a fine fellow one day who told me about a girl who saved his life one night. So now you tell me, how did that girl grow into a self-pitying heap of a woman so useless she’d sit out here alone starving and freezing instead of saving herself?”

His contemptuous look was back. She wanted to slap it off his face.

“What do you think I could do? You murdered my husband and stole everything he had with him. I have no money, no horse, no gun. Nothing.”

“I told you I didn’t kill your husband. I came back here less than a month ago because I heard some rancher was running sodbusters off their land near Hubbell, Kansas. I figured if someone was going to part Uncle Henry from that land it should be me. Killing him knowing Van Cleve could keep it quiet would have been even better, but he was already dead.”

He said it as if he were joking, but Norah saw the truth of his words.

“You really are evil,” she whispered.

“The devil’s spawn, but you didn’t answer my question. How did the Girl with all the courage become a woman with none?”

“Don’t you judge me! What do you think I could do?”

“You have decent family. Go to them.”

“My family left here when Mr. Van Cleve first started running people out. Last I heard they were in Colorado and thinking of going to Texas.”

“So go to town. Find work.”

“Of course, go to town. I could walk. If a wagon can make it in a day, I could make it on foot in two days, maybe three, and let’s see, what could I do once I got there? Work in one of the saloons? They probably don’t want widows my age any more than anyone else, and if I’m going to hell, it won’t be for whoring.”

“You didn’t have any problem with what Preston and his men were going to do. What’s the difference?”

For months she had been suppressing anger, denying it. At his words, something broke inside, and it all poured out in a shrieking flood.

“The difference is they were going to do it to me. I wasn’t selling myself and my soul. That’s the difference, whether it happens to me or I do it!”

She wanted to smash that look off his face. She wanted to draw blood.

His expression didn’t change. “So it’s like sitting out here starving yourself and pretending you’re not committing slow suicide. Getting raped by a half a dozen men because you’re being stupid and cowardly would be fine, but whoring to save yourself would doom you to hellfire. You don’t want to believe I was the Boy because you don’t want to remember being the Girl.”

Norah jumped to her feet, planted her fists on the table to keep from hitting him and leaned toward him on stiff arms.

“You can’t be the Boy because you aren’t worth saving. Nothing was ever the same after that night, and I didn’t do it for the likes of you. You say you owed me. Fine! You paid. We’re even. Get out of here. Get out!”

He rose and moved toward the door. She prayed he’d leave without saying more, but of course he didn’t.

“Let me tell you something about those whores you think are all hell bound, Mrs. Hawkins. Any one of them I ever knew who wanted to die would have the courage to use a gun or a knife or even rat poison if she had to. Whatever their sins, they have more grit and gumption than you do.”

The door slammed so hard behind him, she looked up, expecting to see it fall from the hinges. No more than a minute passed before she heard the wagon leaving, but she stayed there, swaying slightly on braced arms.

That night in the wagon train had been a turning point in her life. No matter what she’d just said, she had never believed the Boy died alone on the prairie because of what she did. She knew he had lived.

Over the years she had pictured him many times. In her mind he had been everything from a farmer to a rancher, a banker, a doctor.

She had pictured him rich and poor and in every kind of situation, but the one thing she had been sure of was that he had grown into a good man. A decent man. The Boy could not have become a hired killer. He could not have grown into — that.

She grabbed her plate, still half-filled with congealing food, and threw it at the door. It broke in half and the mess fell to the floor. She threw her coffee cup with even more force, then swept the table clear with a crash and fell into her chair, burying her head in her arms.

The anger didn’t subside but grew, tearing at her until she shook with it. She wished for the release of tears and knew it wouldn’t come. Tears would never come again.

T
RYING TO FORGET
Caleb Sutton’s ugly words or tamp down their effect proved futile.

Through the next days, Norah fought the storm of emotions destroying her indifference the only way she knew how. She worked to exhaustion hauling water and laundering every scrap of cloth she could lay her hands on.

She pulled the peach-colored muslin strips off the dirt walls and took down the blue gingham curtains. Joe had hated moving back to the soddy and grumbled over the cost of her efforts to make the house seem like a home.

Of course if she’d known back then how much they already owed the stores in Hubbell she never would have bought any of it, but he hadn’t shared that, just complained.

Only other women and Sutton had ever noticed her efforts, much less uttered a compliment. For a moment she considered burning the cloth, but why give an evil, worthless man — who could not be the Boy — that power?

She scrubbed until her knuckles bled, ironed until her arm ached, rehung the muslin and curtains, and moved on to sweeping, scrubbing, and polishing.

She fed the stove firewood so generously she half-expected it to dance across the dirt floor and fed herself every bit as well. She
was
a good cook, and that was something else that only other women had ever remarked on. Oh, the devil take him.

The supplies Sutton had brought included five gallons of coal oil, and she used it recklessly, holding off the early darkness for long hours, darning stockings and mending clothes Joe would never need again. Maybe someday she could get to town with them. Maybe someone else could use them.

Catching herself making plans for the future, however tentative and vague, Norah accepted defeat. She was alive and probably going to stay that way for some time. Wallowing in misery had only left her vulnerable to contempt from a man lower than a bug’s belly. Blaming him and nursing anger could only disguise the truth for so long.

He still couldn’t be the Boy. He’d all but admitted to meeting the good man who had been the Boy somewhere and stealing the story.
Then how did he recognize me? I never told him my name. Maybe the real Boy heard my name and told him.

She’d never see him again anyway except as one of the crowd of Van Cleve’s killers, so it didn’t matter, but if he was the Boy, he had repaid her for saving his life by saving hers.

Of course the Boy had been willing to be saved, more than willing, eager, and she’d wanted to be left alone, but it was done now. She needed to start thinking about tomorrow. All the tomorrows.

On the first tomorrow, Norah wrapped up several layers deep from head to toe. In her mind she heard him again. “Don’t you have a coat that fits?”

Today, she answered cleverly, “Of course, I have six others, all custom made, but I chose this one today.” In fact, all she had was a much-mended old thing that even new hadn’t kept her half as warm as Joe’s coat.

She hiked past one deserted farmstead after another, all Van Cleve’s now. The burned out hulks of wood frame houses on two of the places attested to one of the ways Van Cleve convinced people to sell.

Norah knew all about sudden fire in the night. The blackened remains of the house Joe had loved so much sat on her property.

In the past she’d never paid attention to how far the Carburys lived from her. Today she calculated the distance by the quarter-sections of land she crossed, half a mile for each one. The Carburys were five miles away as crows flew.

Each of those empty quarter-sections represented neighbors who had wilted under Van Cleve’s onslaught, sold their land to him, and moved on. Most had been friends she and Joe had helped and been helped by, gathered with at christenings, funerals, weddings, barn raisings, and picnics.

So few were left now, no one from the wagon train except her. The families holding out were almost all like the Carburys, with enough menfolk to defend against Van Cleve’s killers. Occasionally the Carburys divided forces, half staying on guard at home and half making a trip to town for supplies — or to her house to urge her to accept the help she had refused.

Norah walked without fear, long past worrying about Preston and Van Cleve’s other men catching her in the open. They could just as easily come to the house again. Had she made Sutton as angry as he’d made her? If so, had he revoked whatever protection he’d granted her? She hoped so. She wanted nothing from him. Nothing.

Relieved in a way she didn’t want to admit to see Carburys’ comfortable house still standing and smoke rising from the stovepipe, Norah quickened her pace toward their door. One of the sons stepped out of the barn with a rifle cradled in his arms. He watched her for a moment, waved, and moved back out of sight again.

“Norah!” Mabel Carbury’s hug felt like everything safe in the world, and Norah hugged back fiercely.

“Oh, my girl,” Mabel said pushing Norah away by the shoulders, “you look so much better than last time I saw you. I should have visited again. I should have....”

“Don’t say that,” Norah begged. “Please don’t say that and make me feel any worse. I was inexcusably rude to you. You did everything you could. You were kind, and I was beyond awful.”

“You were grieving. Too many losses too fast. A person can die of a broken heart, you know. I’ve seen it, and I thought it was happening to you and there was nothing I could do. I should have tried harder. I should have....”

Norah hugged her again. “You were wonderful, and you still are. Please say you forgive me, and let’s not talk about it any more.”

“I don’t forgive you because there’s no need. Now come in and warm up. Archie and the boys will be in for dinner soon, and you’ll eat with us, and we’ll share the latest news, and it will be like old times.”

Mabel’s voice quivered on the last words. Norah had a small lump in her own throat.

“Maybe everyone would like to have a slice of this after dinner,” she said, handing over the cloth-wrapped package she’d brought with her and hanging Joe’s coat on a peg by the door.

Mabel stood in her parlor with its white-washed walls and wide board floors holding the package for a moment as if she didn’t know what to do with it. Finally she unwrapped a corner to expose the golden crust of the raisin-studded loaf of oatmeal bread inside.

“We worried about you starving. How could you make this? What happened while we were both being stubborn and foolish?”

“Later, when your men come in and I can tell you all at once, I actually have a story to share,” Norah said, realizing she did. She had an extraordinary tale and only had to decide how much to tell.

“I knew I heard someone talking to Ma down here.”

Becky, the Carburys’ only daughter and their wild child, skipped down the last of the stairs and hugged Norah as hard as her mother had.

Tall and blonde, with strong features that combined into an arresting whole, Becky was the image of what Mabel must have been before the years had laced her hair with gray and taken her figure from willowy to matronly. Seeing them side by side again, Norah wondered as she always did whether Mabel’s calm blue eyes had once danced with as much curiosity and mischief as her daughter’s.

“I’m so glad to see you,” Becky said. “Three of my own brothers are going to stay here and guard the house instead of coming to my wedding, but you’ll come, won’t you? Say you will.”

“Wedding? Last time I talked to you, you and young Mr. Butler had quarreled, and you were never going to forgive him.”

“But I did forgive him, and we’re getting married the day after tomorrow. Say you’ll come, Norah. Please, please.”

“I, I’d love to come,” Norah stammered, “but you know I can’t. I can’t stay overnight in town, and if I went, I’d have to.”

“You can too come, and you can squeeze in with us at the Butlers’ house overnight,” Mabel said. “Archie and the boys are staying in the hotel, but Becky and I won’t have to set a foot in that place, and neither will you.”