Jake Walker's Wife (23 page)

In a move that stunned and surprised him, she boldly reached out and grabbed the bandanna wrapped round his neck, drawing him near as surely as his artfully-tossed lasso had drawn runaway calves back to the herd, her soft yet insistent kisses imprinting on his heart as surely as his branding iron had seared ranchers' seals to cattle hide.

His knees buckled and his mind whirled as a sweet, soft moan sang from deep within her, its music moving over him like wind ripples on a still pond. "You're beautiful, so beautiful," he breathed.

“
Didn't your mother teach you it's not polite to stare?”

There wasn't another like her, not anywhere on earth. He considered himself lucky to have been given these precious few months with her, and knew he'd cherish them 'til he drew his last brea
th.

It was almost midnight when
Jake strolled from the bunkhouse, hands in his pockets. He'd tried to sleep, but images of that afternoon wouldn't allow it.

Mamie pawed the dirt and whinnied, commanding his attention. Smiling, he sauntered toward the corral
and absentmindedly slung a coil of barbed wire over his shoulder. "What's the matter, girl?" he said softly, leaning over the gate. "Jealous?" The horse bobbed her head, as if to answer in the affirmative. Thoughtfully, Jake stroked her nose. "Don't you worry. You'll always be my best girl...."

But Bess...Bess w
ould always be his
woman
, he thought, looking deep into the starry sky, where Orion and Perseus winked at him from the inky darkness. Silver in velvet, like Bess's eyes.

M
amie nudged his chest, and when Jake turned, his nose brushed his shirtsleeve...the same shirtsleeve where Bess had rested her head mere hours ago. The clean, sweet scent of her still clung to the fabric, and he closed his eyes, filling his nostrils with it."Yes," she'd whispered, long lashes fluttering as she bracketed his face with her palms.

Sudden and intense pain pierced his chest, penetrating his reverie and abruptly snapping him back to the here and now.
Jake looked down, puzzled at first by the dark circular stains rapidly spreading over the tight weave of his blue cotton work shirt. Instinctively, he drew his palm across the bloodstained garment, only to discover that his palm, too, had been punctured by the razor-like barbs he'd flung over his shoulder.

He jolted when a warm hand rested on his shoulder.

"What in tarnation happened? You're bloodier'n a new-borned calf."

Before Bess, the old farm hand
couldn't have come within thirty yards without being detected; ten years as a fugitive will do that for a man. "Guess I got a little careless with the barbed wire," he explained, grinning sheepishly.

The grizzled fellow shook his
head, muttering over his shoulder as he headed for the bunkhouse. "Better wash up them there cuts, ‘fore infection sets in."

Jake
hated to admit it, but the old codger was right. From the cock's first crow, it
had
been a difficult day….

His shin still smarted from the sharp kick of the unbroken horse he'd carelessly approached from behind, and his left thumb still throbbed from a misplaced hammer blow. He'd sliced through his trousers with the baling hook, nearly impaling himself instead of the hay bale in the process, and pulled a muscle in his shoulder while heaving a hundred pound sack of
oats.

Woodenly,
Jake walked toward the watering trough, stripped from the waist up and hung his shirt on top of the pump. Soaking his neckerchief with cold water, he daubed gingerly at numerous, stinging punctures crisscrossing his chest. Beneath them, his heart pounded with love and regret. His pa had drummed an old saying into his head, one Jake memorized long before his father died: "When you give a gift with no expectation of getting one in return, you get back far more than you give." It hadn't been a difficult piece of advice to understand, even as a boy, but he’d never experienced the impact of its meaning quite as he had with Bess in the loft. Her tears had cut him deeper than the barbed wire. When he’d asked what caused them, she’d grinned and said, “A woman is entitled to a bit of…a bit of dampness at a moment like that."

A moment like that….

Jake bowed his head and, taking a deep breath, grabbed his shirt and headed for the bunkhouse. It took every ounce of willpower to keep from looking toward the second floor of the farmhouse, because if he saw Bess there in her window seat, smiling at him, nothing would keep him from breaking down Micah's front door, taking the stairs two at a time, and barging into her room. To hold her one last time as her love wrapped round him like a mother's hug would be his only request.

It would be
come the dream that would keep him company all the days of his life.

***

Lubbock, Texas....

"I tell you, it
was
him!" The burly Texan jabbed his meaty finger into the seated man's chest.

Sheriff Chuck Carter examined the tip of his toothpick, then stuck it back into his mouth. Crossing one booted ankle over the other on the corner of
the battered desk, he folded his arms across his chest. "You saw W.C. Atwood, all the way out east?" Carter shook his head and snickered. "You don't really expect me to believe that, do you?"

"
Iffiny’don’t, you're a blamed fool," Yonker bellowed, pacing like a caged tiger. He threw both hands into the air. "Here's your chance to be a hero
and
make some easy money in the bargain."

Carter didn't move, save to flick his toothpick into the trash barrel across the way. Through narrowed eyes, he glowered at the bigger man. "When I hunt a man down, I go it alone."

Yonker stopped. "Well, you can’t go this one alone. Without me," he challenged, bending until he was nose to nose with Carter, "you'll never find him."

Grimacing and leaning as far back as the chair would allow, Carter waved a hand in front of his face. "When was the last time you washed out your pie hole, Forrest? Smells like somethin' crawled down your throat an' died."

In response to the reference to his rotten breath, Yonker's back straightened. "You want Atwood or not?"

Casually, Carter dropped both feet to the planked floor in a single
clunk
. Yonker was no less than three inches taller and outweighed him by at least fifty pounds. Still, the man took a step back when the sheriff stood. "You owe it to Horace’s widow and the good citizens of Lubbock to tell me where W.C. is...
if
you know...since it was you who lost the thievin' murderer in the first place. Besides," he added, almost as an afterthought, "if you don't, I'll arrest
you
."

"Me?"

He gave it a moment's thought, then shrugged. "That’s right. For aiding and abetting a fugitive, for starters. If you know where he is and don't tell me, it's the same as lettin' him hole up in your house."

Angry defiance thinning his lips, Yonker poked the sheriff's badge. "I don't owe you a
blessed thing, way I see it," he spat. "A snake spooked the horses, just like I tol’ you, and
that’s
why the wagon overturned. Weren't nobody's fault he escaped, least of all mine. But you went and fired me, all the same. Atwood's the reason for it all, so the way I see it, the low-down killer deserves to swing. And I deserve some of the bounty money for helpin’ make that happen."

From the other side of the room, a voice asked, "For what? He never kilt nobody."

Though toe to toe, both men looked toward the man who'd interrupted their verbal sparring. The bedraggled fellow continued to push a broom across the jailhouse floor. After a long, silent moment, the sheriff cut him a scathing glare. "You've been singin' that song for ten long years, Joe Purdy," he growled. "Nobody believed you the night W.C. killed Horace Pickett, and nobody believes you now."

Leaning on the broom handle, Purdy gave an exaggerated shrug. "
No harm in me singin’ the song again, then. ‘If you hang him,’" came his slow, soft drawl, "’you'll be killin' an innocent man.’"

Carter pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger and shook his head. A second ticked by before he sighed
. "Like I’ve been tellin’ you for years, the evidence said otherwise, and the evidence is what got him convicted. It's not my job to second-guess the jury. It’s my job to find him, see he pays the price." Frowning, he added, "Now get back to your sweeping or there'll be no whiskey money for you today."

Reminded of his purpose, Purdy licked his lips. "
Innocent, I tell you," he repeated as the broom
whisked
past the sheriff's boots. "Wouldn't want his death on
my
conscience...."

Yonker had heard about all he cared to hear from the town drunk. "Ain't nobody interested in what you got to say,
you old fool." Then, facing the sheriff once more, he bit out, "You want to get W.C., you get
me
." Snickering, he punctuated his statement by adding a last poke to Carter's shirt.

In the wink of an eye, the sheriff was behind Yonker, one big hand filled with shirt collar, the other firmly gripping his manhood. "The man ain't been born who can wriggle out of this here Bouncer's Grip," Carter said calmly. "You poke that finger in my chest again, I'll break it off and shove it down your throat. You got that?"

Squealing like a stuck pig, Yonker nodded. "Didn't mean nuthin' by it, Sheriff. I swear!"

"Smartest thing I ever did was to fire you. You were trouble ten years ago, and I can see time hasn't changed a hair on your ugly head." With the power of The Grip on his side, Yonker was little more than a willing puppet. He walked on tip-toes in his futile attempt to climb out of Carter's painful hold on him. With a rough shove, Carter released him,
and then turned him around. "If I get W.C.—and I think we both know that I will—it’ll be on
ly
terms, not yours."

"But...but you don't know where he is," Yonker whimpered.

Casually, Carter slipped another toothpick from the shot glass on the corner of his desk. “But I have a pretty good idea, thanks to you." He paused, walked the toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other. "And you don't know his whereabouts, either. Dumb as you are, if you did, it would-a been the first thing out of your mouth."

Yonker
sneered and patted his hip pocket. "Got me fifty dollars here says otherwise."

Shaking his head, Carter smirked. "Yeah. And Joe over there ain't a drunk, neither."If you w
ere half as smart as you think you are, you might just be dangerous. Now get on outta here. I ain’t got time for your fairy tales.”

"
Fairy tales!” Yonker's fists doubled up as he blurted, "He's in a town north of Baltimore, working as a foreman on a farm called Foggy Bottom."

Carter stared for a moment,
and then chuckled. "Hey, Purdy,” he said, “put that broom away and get a mop, so you can sop up this mess ole Forrest made when he spilled his guts."

Grinning at the sarcastic joke,
Purdy shook his head as Carter sauntered toward the door. "You a card playin' man, Forrest?" he asked, opening the door wide.

His reckless confession had humbled him, and like a disobedient pup trying to earn back his master's approval, Yonker followed. "What's cards got to do with anyth
—“

"Do yourself a favor," he said,
shoving the ex-deputy onto the boardwalk, "and stay away from the poker tables. You ain't got the
stomach
for it!" With that, he slammed the door and sauntered back to his desk.

The old chair squealed in protest as the sheriff slid onto its burled wood seat and leaned back, resting his boot heels on the corner of the desk once more. Unsheathing the hunting knife that hung from his leather belt, Carter began to trim his fingernails. "Like I said the day you ran off, W.C., you can run," he whispered, moving the toothpick to the other side of his mouth, "but you can't hide."

Old Joe continued to sweep as a worried frown etched his brow.

***

Forrest Yonker headed straight from the sheriff's office to the general store, where he bought himself passage on the next stage leaving Lubbock. Once he got to Kansas City, he'd buy a one-way train ticket to Baltimore, find some farmer with a nag for sale, and the rest would be like taking candy from a baby.

He rubbed the half-inch still-pink scar above his left eyebrow, the unconscious reminder of the beating Atwood had given him on the Baltimore dock. Years ago, when he was younger
—and dumber—he might just have bought himself a bottle of whiskey, chanced another pounding in the hope he’d win this round...and trade W.C’s body for bounty....

But he was older now. Older, and wiser, too.

Atwood hadn't been much more than a boy the day the jailer's wagon overturned. But time on the run had sharpened his wits, had toughened him up, and Yonker had the scars to prove it.

Alone with his own thoughts, he didn't mind admitting that Atwood scared him worse than any
imagined monster. He'd come at him like a madman, teeth bared like a wild animal, bloodlust in his eyes. According to the stories, Atwood was sly, had outslicked every lawman who'd come looking for him. Rumor had it he'd earned the nickname 'Widowmaker'. Yonker didn't have a wife, but he didn't relish the idea of being planted six feet under beside married men who'd tried to make a name for themselves by bringing in the elusive W.C. Atwood....