Jake Walker's Wife

Lubbock, Texas, 1840....

Between the prisoner's shackled ankles, a beetle wriggled skinny black legs in a futile effort to get back on its feet
. It wasn't hard to empathize with the pitiful thing, struggling to survive in a world turned upside down. Reaching as far as the chain binding him to the wall would allow, he flipped it over and watched it disappear between the rough-hewn floorboards of the jailer's wagon.

If only his own miserable life could be righted as easily.

His temporary, rolling cell was hot as an oven. He swallowed hard, trying not to think about his dry lips and parched throat. Earlier, he'd asked for a sip of water as the deputy shackled him to the jail wagon wall. "Do you good to suffer a bit," Yonker had snarled, "like the widow Pickett is sufferin' right now on account of you."

His thirst was forgotten as he recalled the way they'd hauled him from bed weeks earlier, shouting "How can you sleep after killin' a man in cold blood
!"

Killing a man
? his sleep-dulled mind had repeated.

But he'd been unable to protest aloud, for one of his captors had stuffed a sweaty neckerchief into his mouth as another hog-tied him. Thoughts flit like wasps, each with its own stinging barb:
Who's been murdered? And why do they think
I'm
the killer; I don't even like shootin' rabbits for the soup pot!

Later that night, alone in the dimly-lit, cramped
compartment behind the Lubbock sheriff's office, disjointed memories attacked all through the long, restless night. In one dream, he was four years old again, watching the cowhands brand cattle on the ranch his mama had inherited from her folks. Straddling the corral fence, he'd winced when the red-hot iron seared cowhide with a big, bold W. "Don't it hurt 'em, Pa?"

"Nah...."

"
My
name starts with a W, don't it, Pa?"

His father had scooped him up and said, "Yup
. W for Walker, in memory of your mama's daddy." Then he'd scanned the horizon. "Someday," he said, "this'll all be yours, son. That's why every one of them cows is gonna get a 'W' burnt to his rump, so's folks'll know
they're
yours, too."

From that time on, whenever young Walker Atwood rode the range, holding tight to the saddle horn as he nestled safely between his father's chaps, he'd point to the branded cattle and call out proudly, "Look, Pa, a 'W', see? Jus' like me!" He'd said it so often that his father took to calling his little boy 'W.C.' The nickname caught on, and soon everyone, from the hired hands to his own mother called him W.C.
, too.

His father had taught him many
lessons. Among them, "Never lie or steal, and you'll always do me proud." Even at the tender age of four, W.C. wanted few things more than earning his pa’s trust. "Don't worry," he’d promised, "I'll never take anything that ain't rightly mine, and I'll always tell the truth."

And that night,
as he lay on the lumpy jail cell mattress, he'd hoped that when the ruffians came back to interrogate him in the morning, his pa's advice would see him through.

It had not.

Like a ferocious thunderstorm, the days passed....

"Guilty," the jury foreman had droned.

Then judge's gavel fell with a sickening
thump.
W.C. believed he'd hear the hollow echo of the man's monotone for the rest of his life: "I hereby decree that the prisoner, Walker Atwood, be remanded to custody until next Tuesday at two o'clock, when he shall be hanged by the neck until dead."

And so now, as the wagon rattled toward the high, treeless ridge on the outskirts of Lubbock known as Dead Man's Hill, W.C. wondered if the townsfolk would gather at the gallows to watch him swing, or if he'd die with no one present but Smitty and Yonker, the two tobacco-spitting deputies
in charge of his fate.

Die....

A shudder passed through him, and W.C. did something he hadn't done in years:

He
hung his head and prayed.

His
prayer was interrupted by the frantic voice of one of the deputies. "Pull ‘em up, man!" Smitty hollered. "That there's a rattler up ahead in the road!"

W.C. had spent every one of his eighteen years around horses, and knew without a doubt that if the
men
had seen the snake, the animals had seen it, too.

Quick as a blink,
the wagon's left side lifted. Higher, higher it rose as W.C. held on for dear life—what precious little was left of it—to the thick chain that tethered him to the coarse interior wall. Held his breath, too, as the wagon teetered, this time on its two right wheels.

He felt the rig pitch forward, heading down...into what, he had no time to guess. Anything but the river, he hoped, because he'd never learned to swim. But then, did it matter how he met his end?
Better to meet St. Peter by drownin'
, he thought as his body slammed into hard wood,
than at the end of the hangman's noose!

The wagon skidded on its side as the high-pitched sounds of nails
, ripping from boards and splintering wood, mixed with the trumpeting of terrified horses and the shouts of the panicked drivers.

When at last all was quiet, the chain that had tethered him to the iron ring bolted to the wagon wall dangled from his
bruised and bloodied wrist.

Slowly, he crawled from the wreckage and squinted into the bright Texas
sunlight. The thunder of horse's hooves made him look up in time to see all four stallions running full-out toward the flat, barren horizon, leaving nothing but a cloud of brown, sandy grit in their wake. Oh, how he envied their newfound freedom!

But
…why envy it, when he could
take
it...?

Licking a droplet of blood from the corner of his mouth, he noticed
the deputies, sprawled beside the wreckage. The steady rise and fall of their chests told him both survived the accident. From the look of things, they'd come to soon, compare their aches and pains, and cuss their bad luck as they headed back to Lubbock to round up the posse that would help them hunt down the notorious W.C. Atwood.

For an instant, he considered sparing them the trouble, because if he lit out now, he'd be looking over his shoulder for the rest of his days. The shade of the overturned wagon looked mighty inviting. He could hunker down and take a short nap, if he'd a mind to, sipping cool water from one of their canteens until they woke up....

But W.C. didn't want to die. At least not at the end of a rope, and certainly not for a murder he didn't commit. He'd seen a man hang once. Took a full fifteen minutes for the poor fool to give up the ghost as the gathering crowed watched him twist helplessly in the wind, kicking for a foothold on his quickly-ebbing life...

...like a bug on its back....

Smitty groaned softly, and W.C. knew he didn't have much time. First order of business, get rid of the iron manacles on both wrists that branded him an inmate. He rummaged in Yonker's pockets for the key, and with trembling hands, unlocked the prison bands.

The blistering sun beat down hot on his head. He'd die of heatstroke by day's end without his hat
. They'd taken everything, right down to his longjohns on the night they'd arrested him, including the gold pocket watch handed down from father to son as his pa lay dying. He didn't care that some said it looked peculiar for a twelve year-old boy to carry it everywhere. Didn't give a whit that his tormentors had labeled the timepiece as some sort of cockeyed proof that he'd committed the murder.

Three water-filled canteens swung, pendulum-slow, from the wagon's cracked brake stick. He shook all three, took the emptiest, and limped over to where the drivers lay unconscious
. Yonker's sweat-ringed hat looked mighty tempting right about now, more tempting, even, than the shade beside the wagon.

Rifling quickly through the deputy's pockets he found his watch
, a wedding gift from his ma to his pa. For a moment, he cradled it in his open palm, then pressed the tiny knob and read
"Till the end of time
"on the underside of its lid. Curly-queue black hands pointed at twelve and three. Quarter past noon, he thought, snapping the lid shut.

He hated to part with it. H
ated the thought of breaking his promise to his pa even more. Closing his hand around the watch, he ground his molars together and slid it into his trousers pocket.
I'd rather have the sun bake my brain like a biscuit than part with Pa's watch!

Slowly, he straightened to his full six-foot height, and winced. He'd broken a few ribs in his day. Once, at eight, when he'd fallen from the barn loft; again at ten, while branding ponies. The searing pain in his lungs told him that when the wagon hit bottom, he'd
cracked them again. He looked at the swollen fingers of his left hand; in all likelihood, he'd broken a few of those bones, too.

But he'd faced pain
—the physical and the mental kind—plenty of times before. And he'd beat it. W.C. poked his chin out in grim determination, and started walking.

He wondered, as he limped along, how long it would take them to find his trail. An hour? Two?
More'n likely, they'll call in the Texas Rangers. The U.S. Marshals, even
....

He hitched the canteen's leather strap higher on his aching shoulder. They were a determined lot, those U.S. Marshals, and
few things riled them more than losing a prisoner. He'd heard-tell of one bank robber who'd been on the run for eight years before they managed to wrap a noose around his neck. The thought made his own neck hairs bristle, and he cast a furtive glance over his shoulder.

Better get used to doin' that
, he told himself, stepping up his pace.

The way his life had been going lately, he believed he'd earned a kiss from Lady Luck.
Seems that li'l gal is always puckerin' up for somebody else. Why not me for a change?

Maybe, with her on his side, he'd be south of the Rio Grande by this time tomorrow....

Freeland, Maryland, 1850....

The distant sound of wagon wheels, crunching down the gritty drive, was swallowed up in a fog of memory as thick as the dust from the work horses' hooves. Sometimes, it seemed an eternity since the Beckley clan had buried their beloved Mary. Other times—like this—Bess missed her mama so much it felt like only yesterday that she'd placed wild roses atop the burnished mahogany coffin.

The wagon and its passengers came into full view, waking Bess from her daydream. She waved as it rounded the last bend in the long, narrow lane that ribboned from the main road to the house, and returned her father's weary smile.

This year, as every other, she watched the newcomers' gazes flit from the two-story stone house, to the big red barn, to the acres of green, hilly fields beyond. Later, as the hired hands devoured their first meal at Foggy Bottom Farm, they'd ask the questions that churned in their minds, and her father would, as always, let his own food grow cold to answer each in turn.

And this year, like every other, one of the unmarried hands would
no doubt try to woo the farmer's daughter. He'd pretend to love her, listing her beauty, her sweetness, her intelligence as reasons for his ardor. But in reality, he'd see marriage to Bess as the quickest cut to a slice of Foggy Bottom.