Jake Walker's Wife (10 page)

As
Jake steered the wagon as close to the opening as possible, he noticed a big man, leaning against a piling on the pier nearby, frowning at him from beneath a dingy sailor's cap. "Don't mean to bore holes through ya," he said, squinting through the blue-grey haze of cigar smoke, "I'm just tryin' to recollect why you look so familiar."

Jake
didn't have to figure out why he looked familiar to the man...last time he'd seen that ruddy face, it had been unconscious on a deserted road just outside of Lubbock.

Climbing down from the wagon seat, he pulled his hat low on his forehead, walked a wide circle around the former deputy, and handed the bill of sale to the warehouseman. "I'll give you a hand getting that monster into the wagon," he said, grinning and gesturing toward the crate. He tried hard to sound jovial and matter-of-fact, like a man who'd simply come here to pick up his piano
, like a man with nothing to hide.

The foreman followed
Jake's gaze. "Yep. Gonna take a couple of strong backs to load that one," he agreed jovially. "Jasper," he hollered into the bowels of the musty warehouse, "get your sorry self out here an' help us, why don't ya?"

Jasper, wiping his hands on a grimy rag when he rounded the corner, took his time crossing the dusty floor. "What's in the box?" he wanted to know.

"None o' your bu'iness," his boss said. "Just grab that cart over there and let's get the beast loaded."

Jasper seemed in no hurry to wrench his back, and took his time delivering the metal-wheeled skid.
Jake pretended he'd forgotten all about the ex-jailer, and focused on Jasper. On Jasper's boss. On the boxed piano. But he couldn't help wondering what Yonker was doing so far from Texas. Couldn't help wondering what would happen if the man should remember who he was....

Jake
and the dock workers slid the huge crate onto the skid, then rolled it up a make-shift ramp into the wagon. Half an hour later, after a fair amount of huffing and grunting, the piano was safely secured to the wagon and ready for its long ride back to Foggy Bottom. Jake shook each man's hand and thanked them for their help, then climbed back into the driver's seat and breathed a sigh of relief. He thought for sure the Texan would put two and two together, but it seemed he'd been spared...this time.

He released the brake stick, and just as he prepared to flap the reins to spur the team forward, the big man sidled up to the wagon.
Jake held his breath. His heartbeat doubled and his palms grew damp as he waited for the inevitable to begin.

"I'd recognize a Texas drawl anywhere."

Jake swallowed hard.

The ex-jailer lay his hand on the brake stick and
frowned, as if trying hard to remember.

Jake
licked his lips. "I'm from Texas, you've got that much right," he said, smiling nervously. He extended his hand. "Don't run into many folks from back home way out here," he added, increasing his drawl.

"Where you from in Texas?" he asked, suspicion glinting from his dark beady eyes.

"Eagle Flats," Jake lied smoothly, withdrawing his still unshaken hand. "Little town just—“

"
—east of the Mexican border," he finished, as if to brag he knew the big state like the back of his hand.

Jake
nodded. "You?"

"Lubbock." Warning and danger mingled in his deep, gravelly voice. He spat a stinking wet wad of tobacco onto the dusty dock and put a finger to the corner of his mouth to dam up the black liquid oozing from the chaw of tobacco bulging from his cheek. "I gotta tell you...you're the spittin' image of a man we tried to hang back there."

Jasper whistled. "Hang? For what?"

"Because he was a mangy, no-good dog," Yonker answered. "Jail wagon overturned on the way to the gallows, and the polecat ran off and left us out there to die in that heat."

But he hadn't left them to die; he'd left them with two full canteens…
and
their hats!

"We lost our jobs for lettin' him get away. Why, I been huntin' him for more'n ten years now. If there weren't a fat reward for draggin' his sorry bones back to Texas, I'd hang him myself, wherever I found him."

The ex-deputy stepped away to grab a coil of rope, hanging from a piling on the dock, and swaggered back toward Jake. "I bet that bounty has doubled by now," he said, forming a lasso with the rope. "I bet I'll be a hero when I bring in W. C. Atwood...." The Texan's harsh laughter echoed, then faded, into the deep, dark bowels of the open warehouse.

Jake
had been wrongly accused of murder, and it had altered the course of his entire life. He'd hated running from the law all these years, because running had made him look guilty as sin. But he hated the idea of dying for a crime he hadn't committed even more. Did he hate it enough to kill this man, if it came to that, to guarantee he could continue to live his life...miserable as it was?

In the next moment, he had his answer.

  The guard doubled up his fist. "Y'can't fool me, Atwood," he steamed, reaching for Jake's shirt.

"I don't know what you're yammerin
g abo—“

"Get your sorry
self down here so I can hog-tie y—“

"You don't wanna do that,"
Jake warned, his eyes mere slits, his voice dangerously low as he wrapped callused fingers around Yonker's wrist.

"Why, you low-down back-shooter," he said malevolently, grabbing
Jake's neckerchief.

"I never shot a man
—not even in self-defense, not here, not in Lubbock." He increased the pressure on the deputy's wrist. "But if I did," he snarled, glaring into the man's fear-widened eyes, "man like you'd be smart to watch his
own
back, don't you reckon?"

Jasper had summoned a constable at the first signs of a fight. "What's goin' on here?" the officer demanded. Sun glinted from the polished brass buttons of his dark blue jacket.

"This here fella is a killer," the Texan growled. "Been on the run fer ten years." Facing Jake, he repeated, "You ain't Jake Walker. You're W. C. Atwood, and you killed Horace Pickett in Lubbock, and if you laid the wanted posters with your face on 'em end to end, you could walk on em, all the way back to Texas. You
deserve
to swing." Without breaking eye contact with Jake, he told the policeman, "The Texas Rangers
and
the U.S. Marshalls will back up my story. Just wire the sheriff in Lubbock if you don't believe me."

"That's the smartest thing anybody has said so far."

At the sound of her soft, musical voice, every man's head turned toward Bess. How long had she been standing there? Jake wondered. How much had she seen...and heard?

She faced the uniformed officer and, hands on her hips, said, "This appears to be a clear-cut case of mistaken identity. If a telegram will clear the entire matter up, then I think we should send it." She glared at the dirty, burly Texan and added, "Immediately."

She turned to Jake. "Well, have you done what Pa told you to do?" she asked, forcing a bossy, sassy tone into her voice. Without waiting for his response, she rolled her big eyes at the officer. "Good help is
so
hard to find these days." She smoothed her skirts and daintily tugged at her high, lacy collar. "He was supposed to come down here to fetch a delivery for my father, not pick a fight with the likes of
him
," she said, her voice icy and deliberately haughty. Suddenly, Bess was all sweetness and light again. "Do you know my father?" she asked the policeman. "Micah Beckley...."

The constable stood a little taller in response to what appeared to be blatant flirtation from the pretty young woman. "'Course I do, miss," he said. Then, with a jerk of his thumb, he gestured toward
Jake. "You say this man works for your daddy?"

With a tired sigh, she nodded. "He's worked for my father for years...since he was practically a boy."

The gruff Texan began to protest.

"He's from Texas, I'll give you that much." And cutting a glare in the deputy's direction, she tacked on, "He never managed to lose that low accent, I'm afraid...."

A moment of tense silence passed before she added, "Well, now, shall we head on over to the telegraph office? I'd like to get home before dark, and that'll never happen if we stand here bickering like children all afternoon."

"That won't be necessary, Miss Beckley." The constable removed his high-domed hat and tucked it under one arm. Then, grinning, he added, "It is
miss,
isn't it?"

Bess smiled and fluttered her long, dark lashes. "Why, yes, it is. But please, it's Bess. Just plain Bess." She avoided looking at
Jake's eyes when she said it, but could see by the way he shook his head that despite the heat of the moment, he, too, remembered what he'd called her on his first day at Foggy Bottom.

The policeman blushed and grinned and twirled his nightstick.

She stepped up to him and hid her mouth behind a white-gloved hand. "I don't want that filthy man bothering my foreman for another moment," she whispered. "It's hard enough to get an honest day's work out of him without a lot of unnecessary distractions...."

The officer glared at the Texan. "I don't recall seein' you in town before."

The beer-bellied ex-deputy retrieved his cap, slapped it against his thigh a time or two to shake off the dust, then plopped it onto his head. He pointed to a ship, docked a few piers down in the harbor. "I'm a merchant marine, takin' a tour of your fine city, officer. That's all." Then, almost as an afterthought, he tensed. "Hey, why are y'all treatin'
me
like the criminal.
I'm
not the one who was s'pozed to hang for murder...."

"Hang?
Murder?
" Bess echoed, her voice trembling almost as much as the hand, pressing against her forehead. "I'm afraid all this shouting and violence has made me feel as if I might swoon...."

The constable was beside her in an instant, one arm around her slender waist, one hand supporting her elbow. "You're upsetting the lady," he growled at the Texan. "Now, get on out of here, or you'
ll get a tour all right...of the inside of the Baltimore jail!"

As he lumbered toward his ship, the Texan leaned close to
Jake and rasped through clenched tobacco-stained teeth, "Keep your back to the wall, Atwood, 'cause one of these days, you’ll be alone…."

Splinters of steel glinted in
Jake's eyes and the muscles of his jaw tensed, relaxed, tensed again, but he said nothing.

Bess didn't know what had been said during the quick, heated exchange between the men, but
Jake's narrowed, hateful glare frightened her more than she cared to admit.

She had waited for him in front of the bank for ten minutes, and couldn't imagine what could be taking him so long. But it was a beautiful, breezy day, and since it was only a short distance from the bank to the harbor, Bess decided to walk to the dock and save him having to steer the wagon back through the bustling city streets.

She'd heard the unmistakable sounds of a fistfight long before she saw it. Worse, she heard that horrible man say, "You ain't Jake Walker. You're Walker Atwood, and you killed Horace Pickett in Lubbock."

The man insisted
Jake looked like the fellow he'd been hunting for...for ten years, and hadn’t Jake been away from Texas...for ten years? Mistaken identity? Coincidence? Bess didn't think so.

It was going to be a long ride back to Foggy Bottom, that much was certain.

She thanked the officer for his assistance as Jake helped her onto the wagon seat. They rode in silence toward the main road, and she couldn't help but notice that Jake hadn't looked her in the eye, not once since she'd arrived on the dock.
Just as well,
she told herself. Because Bess had seen the way he'd looked at that Texan and didn't know what she'd do if he aimed the murderous glare in her direction.

She wondered
, too, when he'd explain himself.
If
he'd explain himself. As they rode along, she thought about all the odd and peculiar things that made up this man named Jake Walker—or was he Walker Atwood?—the sullen silences. The distant, forlorn expressions. The unexplainable mood swings. That occasionally frightening, angry look in his eyes.

Suddenly, she felt very far from home. Very alone. And very unprotected. Bess wondered if she'd done the right thing in helping him out of that mess. After what she'd witnessed there on the dock, she honestly didn't know what to think any more.

So she prayed.

She prayed she'd been right when she told herself something good and decent lived inside this man.

Mostly, though, she prayed she hadn't made the worst mistake of her life when she allowed herself to fall in love with him.

Bess couldn't get the scene on the dock out of her mind.

Jake's dark, malevolent look had been frightening, as if he had it in him to kill the Texan.

Kill....

If that man had been telling the truth--and he'd seemed mighty sure of himself--Jake had
already
taken a human life. Was he capable of such fury?