Lisa Plumley (21 page)

He couldn’t. Not if all he had to do was set aside his own heartache for a night and ask Violet for some information.

“If I get all the details about Mrs. Larkin,” Cade asked Blackhouse, “will you do what you can to find her?”

Equably, his friend raised his whiskey. “I promise I will. If your faith in me and my money is justified, I might even succeed.”

Blackhouse’s lopsided grin gave Cade hope—one more morsel of that precious stuff than he’d entered the train car with. As a gambler, Cade knew that meant his odds were improving. From here, no self-respecting sporting man would have failed to push the limits. Not while there was still a chance of winning.

“Fine.” Cade nodded. “Then I’m off to get more details.”

“Wait.” Blackhouse raised his hand, a frown marring his privileged, irksomely perfect face. “Am I dreaming? Or are you actually planning on engaging in an act of selfless generosity?”

Judah shuddered. “That sounds suspiciously like charity work. I hate charity work—and charity workers, too.” He made a face, undoubtedly prompted by bad memories. “Bunch of damn good-for-nothing nuisances. They should mind their own business.”

“That’s what I used to think,” Cade told his brother. “Until I met one who wanted to be with me more than she wanted to change me.”
It was true,
he realized as he said it. Violet had never honestly tried to reform him. She’d never pitied him, even after he’d shared so much with her. In fact, with her zest for sinful romps in his bed, Violet had mostly engaged in the opposite of reformation and pity. She’d
adored
him. Openly.

In return, Cade had made her leave him after the first mistake she’d made. His own hoary doubts—his fears that he could neither love nor be loved—had forced him to do so.

Those fears had been too strong to resist. After all, Cade realized, he’d spent years polishing them up. He’d worried over them like crooked dice in his pocket, turning them over until their sides were worn smooth and familiar. Then he’d rolled his fixed dice and spoiled his chances in the worst imaginable way.

It was almost as though it had been fated to happen. Cade hadn’t even granted Violet the same easy tolerance that a dissolute bachelor and a travel-weary youth had managed to grant
him
tonight, when his need for friendship had overcome his need to be hardened and remote. When he’d needed them, Simon and Judah had been there for him. If he was lucky, Violet might be there for him again, too.

If not for his sake, then at least for Tobe’s.

“Have fun at the party. I may be gone awhile.” Cade hesitated, then gave Judah another heartfelt hug. “I’ll make this up to you later, I promise. In the meantime, don’t get too pie-eyed yourself.” He nodded at his brother’s third—fourth?—dose of whiskey. “If I can convince Violet to forgive me—” which at that moment he realized he’d have to do to enlist her help “—I’ll want you sober enough to meet her—and remember it later.”

Accepting his brother’s careless nod, Cade left behind his mescal bottle, left the train car and left his damnable doubts in the dust. In their stead, he set out to face the only woman who’d ever made him want to become a better man—and to try to convince her that he was well on his way to doing so now.

Paradoxically, Violet had changed him by
not
trying to change him, Cade realized as he reached the road beyond Blackhouse’s parked train car. Violet’s openhanded acceptance, all on its own, had been enough to free him—to make him want to do more with his life. But now none of that mattered. All that mattered to Cade, as he loped off into the cold autumn night, was that he found Violet, begged her forgiveness and asked for the answers he needed: new answers, to new questions.

He had to do this. For his own sake. For Violet’s sake.

Most of all...for Tobe’s sake. Because if Cade could save that dirty-faced, fast-talking, craps-playing, itinerant shyster of a boy from a life spent wondering about his own ability to love and be loved...well, that’s what he damn well planned to do. And no one had better try to stop him.

Chapter Thirteen

C
ade’s newfound courage lasted
almost
all the way to the Bensons’ snug, cozy home on the other side of Morrow Creek. It lasted him past the train depot and the saloon, past the stable, past the Lorndorff Hotel and the jailhouse and the telegraph station and the homespun idyll of the central town square. It lasted as he strode through drifts of dried fallen scrub-oak leaves. It lasted as he clenched his hands at his sides to warm them—he really had to replace the overcoat he’d lost to Tobe—and it lasted as he pushed past gossiping townspeople with their friendly faces and even friendlier greetings. It lasted...

Hell. It lasted until the moment when the Bensons’ modest house came into view down the street, with its lace-curtained windows aglow with lamplight and its chimney puffing wood smoke. Then his damnably fickle courage fled like the fair-weather friend it really was. When the chips were down, Cade’s bravado deserted him in two seconds flat. Frankly, he resented that.

Grumbling a swearword, Cade quit walking. His boots thumped on the hard-packed dirt street for a final time. There, shielded by darkness, he squinted at the Benson household and tried to imagine what it would feel like to be welcomed inside it.

His mind turned blank. Hellfire. Panicked and impatient, he tried again. Again he could not conceive of being forgiven.

It’s too late,
Violet had said.
I already am hurt.

Feeling regretful and beleaguered, Cade frowned anew. What he needed was an approach, a maneuver, a fail-safe plan of the variety he’d managed to spin for half his lifetime now. But faced with a real problem—with a real need—Cade felt stymied.

Maybe he was no good at selflessness. Maybe among all his other faults, self-interest was seated as king of them all.

Or maybe he simply needed a new dose of courage. With his mescal forsaken, he’d have to look elsewhere. Casting about for a solution, Cade glanced to the church. That would have to do.

* * *

Gussied up, polished up and not entirely comfortable with either process, Violet stepped into her family’s front parlor. The skirts of her second-best gown rustled softly. The gems in her borrowed earrings and necklace sparkled. The hammering of her heart was most assuredly, she thought, audible to everyone.

Her father sat reading in his armchair. Tobe squatted on the rug, frowning in concentration as he assembled a painted jigsaw puzzle that the McCabe family had given him. Between them, Papa and Tobe were the very picture of warm conviviality.

Loath to disturb them, Violet turned—and almost ran smack into poor Adeline, who’d been following close behind her. Her best friend, undoubtedly sensing what Violet had been thinking, firmly took Violet’s shoulders and spun her to face her family once more. It wasn’t for nothing that they’d been chums since girlhood. Adeline Wilson knew exactly what she needed.

“Look, everyone! Doesn’t Violet look beautiful?”

Reverend Benson glanced up. He smiled. “Very lovely!”

Behind his assurance lay several unasked questions. Violet could glimpse them in his drawn-together brows and pensive look. But she was grateful, just then, that Papa didn’t push her.

“Tobe?” Adeline prompted. “Did you see Violet?”

The boy nodded. He inserted another puzzle piece.

“Doesn’t she look nice? She’s going to a party tonight.”

A shrug. “Git goin’, already. I ain’t gonna applaud you for leavin’, if that’s what you’re waitin’ for. So just go on. Git.”

“Tobe.” Feeling an enormous tug of affection for him, Violet plunked down on the rug. Heedless of the need to protect her fancy dress, she crawled close to him. “I’m coming back, you know. If that’s what you’re worried about, you don’t have to.”

“I ain’t worried.” His little face screwed up tight. “I done survived bein’ deserted once already. I can do it again.” Tobe refused to look at her. But he
did
drag something forward from around his neck—something grimy, hung on a tied length of twine. “See? I got me the trophy to prove it an’ everythin’.”

Violet squinted. “The ‘trophy’? What’s that?”

Confused, she caught hold of it. It appeared to be a rectangular scrap of paper, printed with dates and destinations, punched with a hole for the twine to fit through. It was almost too discolored to make out its original function. Almost.

“Where did you get this? I’ve never seen it before.”

“Sure you have.” Tobe tucked it beneath his shirt again. “It’s on me every single day.” He shook his head as though she was being silly. Peevishly, he went back to his puzzle. “I don’t never take it off. Well, ’cept for sometimes, for them baths you make me have, even though I don’t want no part of
them
—”

“Tobe, that’s a train ticket,” Violet said.

“So?” His one raised eyebrow formed a perfect pint-size imitation of Cade’s oft-cynical demeanor. “You want one? Git it yourself, why don’t you? Maybe after your blasted party.”

Aware of her father’s and Adeline’s gazes fixed on her, Violet inhaled. Sometimes she had to fight to remember that, despite having survived partly on his own, Tobe was only a little boy. He was neither mature nor capable of true cynicism.

What he was, she remembered, was vulnerable and alone.

“Can I please see that ticket again?” Violet asked.

Tobe raised his skinny shoulders in a shrug. “I reckon.”

With his permission, Violet shakily brought her fingers to the loop of twine around his neck. Carefully, she pulled the train ticket forward. She read the issuing date. The price paid. The departure and destination stations. This could only be...

“I don’t know why you’re so int’rested,” Tobe complained. “That ticket didn’t help me none, not when I was in the clutch. Not like it was s’pposed to. Not like my mama promised.”

“Your
mother
gave this to you?”

Tobe nodded. “In case I got lost or missed the train.”

Violet gawked. “But you
did
miss the train!”

“No, I didn’t,” Tobe insisted with the inimitable indignation of a misunderstood child. “My
mama
did. Not me. I was right there, at the train, and she wasn’t. I looked.”

Openmouthed, Violet gawked at him. Tobe must have gotten confused about which train to board, she realized. On a crowded platform during a hasty stop, it was easy to get separated and confused. Especially for a woman and her son traveling alone.

“Did you ask the stationmaster to help you?”

Another boyish shrug. “He tole me the train I needed was gone already. He tole me he’d have to call the sheriff about it.” Tobe frowned. “I didn’t want him to turn me in to some mean ole’ lawman. I’d heard some older boys on the train talkin’ about what
that
meant. That meant I wouldn’t never see my mama again, if the law got me and sent me away someplace. So I skedaddled away when nobody was lookin’.”

In dawning enlightenment, Violet stared down at her hands. She held the key to locating Mrs. Larkin. It had been so close, all this time. All she’d needed were the right questions to ask.

“Why didn’t you ever show this to me before, Tobe?”

The boy gave her an impatient look. “Can I do my puzzle?”

“In a minute. Please, Tobe. Why didn’t you show me this?”

Now he only seemed perplexed. “T’weren’t no big secret or nothin’,” Tobe said blithely. “I figured you’d rifled through my stuff when I was havin’ that very first bath on chicken-dinner night. That’s what people do, you know, if you don’t keep watch over your kit—they pilfer things. When you didn’t pinch that ole’ trophy of mine, I reckoned it didn’t mean nothin’ to nobody.”

Violet could scarcely believe it. “
This
,” she said, “is everything we need to reunite you with your mother, Tobe.”

He scoffed. “No, it ain’t. You’re pullin’ my leg.” He set another puzzle piece in place. “My mama was wrong ’bout what that dumb ole’ train ticket could do for us. I know that.”

There in the parlor, Violet held her breath. Beside her, Adeline stood stock-still, doubtless sensing the drama of the moment. Her father clutched his copy of the
Pioneer Press
newspaper, gazing from Tobe to Violet with evident solemnity.

“Tobe,” the reverend said, “that ticket can take you home.”

In the flickering lantern light, the boy glanced up. His gaze swerved to Violet’s face, obviously seeking confirmation.

She gave a brief nod. Tobe swallowed hard. His chin wobbled. Wearing an impatient frown, he grimaced peculiarly.

He was trying not to cry,
Violet realized.
He was trying to remain strong—to remain fierce, just as he’d done for so long.

“You ain’t fibbin’?” Tobe asked in a choked voice.

Silently, Violet shook her head. So did her father.

“I can really go home?” Tobe asked. “To my mama?”

“Yes,” Violet said. “Just as fast as we can get you there.”

Suspiciously, Tobe examined her face. He frowned once more.

“I’d like that,” he said simply, then he began to sob.

Soon the whole room was ablubber with tears. Violet bawled with happiness and relief, Adeline cried with sentimentality and sympathy, and Reverend Benson...well, he was the worst of all.

“I don’t know what I was thinking, reading that awful heartrending story just now,” her father complained as he dabbed at his red-rimmed, tear-filled eyes. “It’s plainly affected me.”

“Papa, that was just the boring newspaper,” Violet said.

“Tsk-tsk, daughter. You go on to your party now. I’m going to help Tobe with this puzzle, then look up train schedules.”

Still concerned, Violet glanced at the boy. She’d been hugging him close until quite recently, but Tobe had finally wiggled successfully from her grasp and gone back—contentedly—to his waiting puzzle. He truly was an irrepressible, rascally boy.

“Will you be all right if I go, Tobe?” she asked.

“
Pshaw.
Go on. I’ll be right as rain now!” he said in an immodest tone. “Nothin’ could get me down now that I done solved the mystery of how to git myself back home to my mama again.”

“
You
solved—” On the verge of correcting him, Violet stopped. Instead, she smiled. “Is that what you’ll tell your mother? That you solved the problem all by yourself?”

Tobe gave her a mischievous grin. “Nah. My mama ain’t half so credulous as you, Miss Benson. She won’t never believe me. I’ll tell her the truth—that a kindly spinster helped me out.”

Flabbergasted, Violet stared at him. Then she laughed.

She would have expected no less from such a unique boy.

“All right, Tobe.” After giving him another hug and a quick tousle to his hair, Violet stood. “I guess I’m off, then!”

* * *

Stepping into the humble clapboard church that stood closely adjacent to the Benson household, Cade held his breath.

He didn’t make a practice of seeking divine guidance. Undoubtedly, a repeat sinner like him would have been denied it. And although he’d come here not long ago to donate his gambling winnings to the church collection plate as a means of seeing Violet again, Cade did not feel comfortable inside the church.

Ostensibly, it was peaceful. Even he could appreciate that. From the bracketed wall sconces, lamplight filtered over the pews. On the air, the aromas of old hymnals and lemony furniture polish lingered faintly. Underfoot, the floorboards creaked as Cade stepped forward. Belatedly, he snatched off his hat. Holding it in hand, he made his way to the rearmost pew. A short prayer couldn’t possibly hurt. If the Almighty took pity on him...

Well, if the Lord took pity on him, Cade would be equipped to help Tobe
and
himself—and maybe Violet, too, by dint of loving her. He would have to try very hard to make things up to her.

Guardedly, Cade stepped into the row of pews. He held his hat over his heart. He bowed his head, preparing to begin.

Tarnation. He didn’t remember how to pray.

Surely he’d done this as a boy. Urgently, he tried again.

“Well, if this don’t beat all,” a man said from nearby.

Cade recognized that voice—that laconic drawl and that elusive tone. Instantly alert, Cade wheeled around.

A tall, well-dressed, partly gray-haired man stood inside the church’s entryway, studying him with what appeared to be cynical detachment. It shone from his eyes like the glimmer of fool’s gold, obscuring his true emotions in a fashion that Cade recognized well. He’d used that tactic himself a time or two. Like that worthless rock’s shine, the man’s expression was meant to mislead. Doubtless it usually succeeded—especially when aimed at the gullible. But Cade didn’t count himself among them.

“Whittier.”

A nod. “That’s what they call me.”

Muddled by the man’s appearance in church, Cade stared. He lifted his weapon a mite higher, realizing just then that he’d automatically drawn it. His hat, which he’d been holding, now lay sideways, abandoned on the pew where he’d dropped it.

“I should have known you’d sneak up on a man,” Cade said.

“That’s rich, coming from the boy who’s been tracking me all this time. I can barely turn around without seeing your face.” Whittier strode farther inside. His boot heels clunked against the pristine floorboards. “You sneaked in here just like I did the first time,” he observed with a sidelong glance, “as if you expected the whole place to go up in flames.”

“With you in it? I still do.” To Cade, it felt as though Whittier’s presence sullied the church. A man like him didn’t belong there. Not after everything he’d done. Not when he was probably packing firepower—never mind the pistol that Cade had drawn. He’d never killed anyone with it. “Show me your hands.”

A head shake. “That’s not necessary. I’m not armed.”

Cade aimed his chin at Whittier’s hip. “I can see your gun belt from here.” He felt curiously disappointed as he added, “Your bluffs aren’t what they used to be, old man.”

A frown. “I mean I would never draw on you.”

Well, there was that.
Why
hadn’t Whittier drawn on him? Cade wondered suddenly. By all accounts, he was a dangerous, amoral professional gambler—one who backed down from no one.