Mittman, Stephanie (6 page)

"Shit,"
Sloan said as he took one last look at the grave and hurried off the hill
toward where his horse stood silently waiting.

So
Emily Tate was dead, God rest her soul. With a family like hers, she was
probably better off. Beloved daughter. It had never occurred to him that boys
like the Tates had folks of their own. Folks who might be grieving somewhere
for Emily. It made him wonder about his own folks.

By
now they must have given him up for dead.

Three
heavyset men carried crates and barrels from room to room at the Bar W Ranch.
Anna Westin directed the men from her chair, too weak and disinterested to care
which of their belongings went back east with them and which were sold or given
to those less fortunate than they. She had already told Ben which things
mattered to her, and she wished he would take care of the rest himself and
leave her to mourn her son in peace.

"Ma'am?"
Sunny, the foreman of the ranch and one of Sloan's favorites, approached her.
In his hand he held a gold pocket watch. He held it out to her and shrugged.
"Found this in his bottom drawer, Miss Anna. Be a shame to lose it now,
after all these years."

She
nodded, but nothing could make her hand reach out and take the watch from her
husband's foreman. It sat in the man's work roughened palm just the way it had
sat when Ben's father had given it to him, and when Ben had held it out to
Sloan on his sixteenth birthday.

"Well,
son," he had said. "Guess this is yours, now."

She
could picture so clearly the smile coming to her son's face, the dimples which
were her own creasing his cheeks as he reached out for the prized keepsake.

"Not
so fast," Ben said. "This is only yours in trust, son. You know what
that means?"

Sloan
nodded solemnly, but Ben explained anyway. Ben was always doing that. Needed to
spell everything out, dot every i, cross every t. That was why he couldn't
accept Sloan's death. No body. Only a lot of rumors, he said. But in her heart Anna
had no doubts. There had been no word from her precious son in over a year.

And
he wasn't without enemies. His easy way with women had him climbing out more
bedroom windows than Anna liked to admit. Husbands and fathers and brothers all
over the territory suspected him of messing with their women.

"Miss
Anna?" Sunny still stood in front of her, his arm still outstretched, the
watch still in his hand.

"Put
it away. Give it away. You keep it," she said, her voice an emotionless
drone.

"I'll
hold it for him, ma'am, if you don't mind. He'd be mighty angry if he was to
come home and find it gone."

She
shrugged. "Sunny," she said gently, closing her eyes and resting her
head back, "he ain't coming home. And if he did, he'd find us gone, lock,
stock, and barrel."

"Don't
you think that might be a mistake? Won't you listen to Ben and wait a while
longer?"

"This
wild land took everything that ever mattered to me," she said. "Took
my youth, my health, my babies, one after another. Then it took Sloan, the only
one I got to see grow up. Ben wants to stay? Let him. I'm gonna be on the train
to St. Louis come Friday, and there ain't nothing short of a miracle gonna stop
me."

The
argument had exhausted her. No doubt she was dying, and Ben simply wouldn't
tell her. He was trying
to protect her, as always. But he'd never been able to stop all the deaths and
the pain, and he wouldn't be able to hold on to her now. Doc Geiger didn't know
what he was talking about, saying it was all in her mind.

She
must be dying. Why else would Ben agree to leave the ranch, the land, the
horses? He claimed it was because he'd no heir, as if it had been for Sloan's
sake all along that he had built from nothing one of the best breeding ranches
in the west. Maybe so, but it had taken their son's death for her husband to
realize how much he had loved the boy.

Maybe
he wouldn't be dead, she thought, if Ben had cared enough to keep him on the
right path while he was alive.

***

A
baby without a mother. Mary Grace let her imagination soar as she held the
Tates' nephew in her arms. If only this were her baby. But she knew better than
to indulge herself in the world of "if onlies." She had spent a long
time in that world, and it had tortured her in the end.

And
now she had foolishly agreed to watch the baby while her hosts ran what they
called an important errand. What else could she do? The men had just lost their
sister, and there was no one else to take care of the child. She couldn't bring
herself to think of him as Horace. A baby as handsome as he was ought to have a
better name. Like Paddy. Patrick Sean O'Reilly. It had a nice ring to it.

Her
imagination was getting the best of her again, and she chided herself. People
didn't get second chances in this world, and she knew it. Knew it better than
anyone, maybe. If she couldn't change the past, she was determined to learn
from it at least. The baby in her arms clutched a fistful of her hair and
pushed it into his mouth.

"No,"
she said gently, pulling the hair out from
between his chubby fingers and kissing
his fist in payment. The baby turned his head in toward her breast, nuzzling
her and smacking his lips as he looked for nourishment.

"No,"
she said again, but this time tears choked her voice. She knew she had to leave
before this baby found the place in her heart she had closed and locked years
before. As soon as his uncles returned, she would have to be on her way.

Her
hope was that they would return with Benjamin. In their grief she was sure she
could make them understand that Benjamin belonged with his mother. Every child
had that right.

She
wiped a stray tear with the back of her hand and sniffed back the rest that
threatened. She was ready to kill Benjamin's father with her own bare hands for
putting her in this position to begin with. How could he have arranged to take
his son to the most backward place on the face of the earth? Even Appalachia
had TVs now, she thought.

Did
they still bury people outside of cemeteries anywhere but here? It reminded her
of the time she had trailed Jessica Chandler's kidnappers into the Ozark
Mountains. But there she'd been close enough to her car to alert the
authorities. She remembered looking down the barrel of a rifle and being told
to "git." The authorities had credited her with saving Jessica's
life. Jessica was too young for it to have any lasting effect on her, but Mary
Grace would never forget the cabin she had found the baby in—dank, dirty,
without electricity or running water.

And
behind the house, the old family graveyard had stood, a laundry line hanging above
it, a testament to the idea that life goes on. Not here, she thought as she
busied herself in the kitchen getting something for the
baby to eat.
Here, someone died. And whether the men brought Benjamin back or not, she was
leaving the moment they returned. The baby smiled at her and the mashed potato
she was feeding him oozed out of his mouth.

"And
I'll send the authorities back for you," she assured him. "This is no
way for a baby to live." She looked down at the skirt and blouse she had
on. How Emily had managed to stand her brothers' ridiculous old-fashioned ideas
was beyond Mary Grace. Mason had asked her nicely not to wear the jeans she had
come in around his brothers, and she'd complied, but what she could manage for
a couple of days was a whole lot different than what she could tolerate as a
way of life.

The
men didn't even have a car, as far as she could tell. They'd ridden off to town
like cowboys, and when she'd asked to accompany them, they'd promised to take
her to town as soon as they returned from their important errand. There, they
assured her, she could telephone her office. And so she waited. And waited.

She
and the baby were both asleep when the men rode up. She didn't hear them come
in until their voices filled the house and the baby began to cry. For a moment
she thought she was dreaming, like all the other nights when she had heard a
baby crying out for her and had awakened in her empty room alone. This time the
baby's cry continued in the darkness, and she reached over and pulled him from
his cradle.

"He
said he wasn't gonna kill no more women," Wilson shouted. "He swore
it, Mason."

"Keep
your voice down," Mason reminded him. "I don't want Miss O'Reilly
hearin' any of this."

"I
didn't mean to kill her, Mason, honest. The gun just went off...."

"Again?
The man can hit a tin can from two hundred
feet away, but he can't keep his gun
from goin' off by accident? Mason, he—"

The
room silenced when they noticed Mary Grace and the baby. She stood in the
doorway, her heart pounding, not believing what she had heard.

"Go
back to your room," Mason said. He stared at her, waiting for her to do as
she was told.

"Who
are you?" she finally asked, clutching the baby tightly as though one of
them might try to take him away.

"You
ever hear of the Tate Gang?" Harlin asked, the stupid smile she had seen
so many times lighting his face.

"Who?"

"Shut
up, Harlin," Wilson said. He opened his rifle, and her breath caught in
her throat. He began stuffing a rag down one of the barrels.

"Will
not," Harlin said. "I'm proud of who I am."

"Go
back to your room," Mason repeated, this time more ominously.

"I
can't," Mary Grace said, her voice smaller than she would have liked. She
sat down with the baby asleep in her arms. Maybe she had misunderstood. Maybe
her ears were full of sleep, her mind still full of dreams. "You'd better
tell me everything."

"You
ever hear of Jesse James?" Harlin asked, but before she could answer,
Mason was on his feet and in front of her.

"I
said go back to your room," he ordered between clenched teeth. This time
he put one hand under her elbow and lifted her out of her seat. "It's best
if you get some rest, and then we can discuss this all in the morning," he
said, ushering her to her door without her consent.

"Harlin's
crazy, isn't he?" Mary Grace said. She couldn't pull her eyes from the
scar that ran down Mason's cheek. It pulsed under her scrutiny.

Mason
shrugged. "Yeah, I guess that's it," he said, waiting for her to
enter her room. "But you ain't got nothin' to worry about." Then he
shut the door behind her.

Mary
Grace laid the baby in the cradle and paced the room nervously, finally sitting
on the rag rug beside the door with her ear near the floor, hoping to hear
anything else the brothers might reveal.

She
had some trouble understanding Mason's words, his deep voice rattling the
floorboards beneath her.

"Great,
Harlin. Just great. Now Miss O'Reilly's gonna want to leave."

Harlin
must have shrugged, or said "So what," because again it was Mason's
voice that Mary Grace heard.

"So
who's gonna stay home with Horace when we need to go out? Or were you plannin'
to take him? Strap him to your back and jump on the train, you idiot!"

She
could hear the boom of Wilson's voice but couldn't make out the words over
Harlin's footsteps and the jangling of his spurs.

"She
couldn't find her way back here if we drew her a map," Mason argued.

So
they'd gotten to the heart of the matter. She knew where they were. And if she
left, she could lead the authorities back.

Now,
were they just trying to scare her with all this bad-guy talk so that she'd
leave and forget about Benjamin? Or had Harlin really killed someone?

She
heard footsteps and quickly dove for her bed. They stopped outside her door,
and she heard the door knob being turned. Through slits in her eyes she saw
Mason Tate's silhouette fill the doorway.

"Miss
O'Reilly?" he whispered.

She
didn't answer.

"I
hope you ain't plannin' on goin' anywheres," he said quietly, watching for
a reaction. She gave him
none, and he quietly shut the door, leaving her alone in the darkness. Mary
Grace crawled further under the blankets. Suddenly she was very, very cold.

***

"I
guess you're a mite uncomfortable," the man behind her said, and Mary
Grace craned her neck around to glare at him. The saddle's pommel was drilling
a hole in her hip, and each step the horse took caused her agony. She still
couldn't figure out quite how it had happened. One moment she was down by the
river, putting the basket of wash down and reaching in to pick up the baby,
ready to make a run for it before Horace's uncles realized she was gone. And
the next she was tied up like a sack of potatoes and thrown over the neck of a
horse the size of a B-52.

"Look,"
the man said, and it was clearly an explanation, not an apology. "I wasn't
plannin' on takin' you with me."

She
grunted. It was the best she could manage under the circumstances.