Return of the Outlaw (2 page)

“I knew I
’d find you here,” said Alice. “You know mother doesn’t like you coming here anymore. She knows why you come.”

Anne made no comment.

“Have you been crying again?” asked Alice, chiding. “Oh Annie, it won’t do any good to cry, it’ll just get you into more trouble with mother, and she’s so displeased with you lately.”

Anne squared her slender shoulders
. “I have the right to cry if I like. It’s probably the only thing about my life mother can’t control.” The defiance in her eyes and a controlled tightness around her mouth imbued her face with strength. This, combined with something akin to world-weariness made her seem older than her nineteen years.

The two girls walked in silence for a few moments,
then Alice asked, “Do you think he’s dead, Annie?”

“No;
I would’ve heard.”

“Maybe not;
Mr. Jenkins told father that sometimes there’s too many of them and they bury them all together in a big pit. Then there’s deserters and soldiers in hospitals who don’t remember who they are and sometimes they get blown up and…”

Anne spoke sharply, “That
’s enough, Alice. If he was dead I would know it. I think I could feel it.”

“
Then why doesn’t he answer your letters? Maybe he just doesn’t love you anymore.”

“
Then he would write to me and tell me. He’s not a coward.”

“But what if…”

Anne interrupted again, “I don’t want to talk about this anymore, Alice. You do this on purpose. Anyway, you know you’re just going to go back and tell mother everything we’ve said.” She stopped and turned and looked back at the grove of trees—her trees and Jeff’s. She wished she could go back and stay there and never come out. She felt that somehow the trees and the memories could protect her. She stood, unmoving for a moment, squinting her eyes against the brightness of the day, which only heightened her craving for the cool shadows and security of the grove.

“Anne,”
came the harsh, demanding voice of her mother. “Anne, where are you?”

“We
’re coming mother,” said Alice. In an urgent whisper, she said, “Hurry Anne.”

Anne
stood immobile, gazing at the trees, as if watching a departing loved one disappear in the distance. She lifted her shoulders, and her face void of expression, turned and walked toward the house.

The stage stop
sat squat and brown, like a wart on the desert floor, shimmering heat waves dancing around it in the still air. The food, however, was about the best the tall man had seen so far on this long trip. After eating, he had stepped outside to exercise his knee, which always stiffened up during the long hours of riding in the close quarters of the stage. Now he was sitting on an empty nail keg, leaning back against the rude pole corral with his bad knee extended, feeling weary and sick. He looked out across the desert in wonderment at the contrast between this sun baked brown and the lush green of the eastern states, which he had so recently forsaken.

“She
’s fryin’ lizards out there today.” It was the stage driver, Horace Vine. He stepped up beside the tall man and leaned his angular frame forward, resting his forearms on the top rail.

“Hot one,” agreed the tall man.

“You’re from out here, ain’t you?” said Vine.

The tall man nodded, “How
’d you know?”

“I can te
ll. Westerners are different, ‘specially desert people. People from other places marvel at the heat, like they knew it was goin’ to be hot but they just can’t believe any place short of hell could get this hot.” 

“They’re probably r
ight about that,” the tall man said. 

They stood in silence for a moment, watching a dust devil whirl itself across the terrain
—a miniature hurricane whose life cycle lasted less than a minute and made no appreciable impression on the impassive desert. Vine broke a long splinter from a corral post and began picking his teeth with it. “Comin’ back from the war?”

The tall man turned to face the old driver. It was for this very
reason he had discarded his uniform in favor of a suit of civilian clothes. Having fellow travelers constantly ask him about the war and his wounds had made him uncomfortable. Now the driver was doing it. But for some reason he didn’t mind. He liked the westerner’s easy openness.

“What else you figured out about me?”

“Got yourself shot in the knee.”

Jeff Havens shook his head,
“Bayonet.”

Vine
’s response to this was a furrowing of the brow. “What else?”

“Head wound.”

“Thought so. Notice you rub it a lot.”

Almost unconsciously Jeff moved his hand to his head, rubbed the small, still-tender scar and reali
zed for the thousandth time he was lucky to be alive. He thought back to the military hospital where he had lain for so many weeks. Mercifully, he had been comatose for the first few of them, but slowly, by degrees, consciousness had returned to him. During most of that time he was one of the numerous unidentified soldiers who were stretched out on the bare floors of makeshift hospitals without even a blanket to lie on. During all this time there had been no word from Anne. Still, he did not doubt her. Besides, if her feelings had changed or she had found someone else she would have written to tell him. To break off without informing him would be cruel, and Anne was incapable of cruelty. It had to be something else—probably the slow and inefficient military mail service.

Vine had now turned his back to the corral and stood leaning against it with one boot heel hooked on the bottom pole. “Guess it makes a man
feel mighty proud to fight for his country and make the kind of sacrifice you made.”

Jeff looked away. He had a momentary vision of the battlefield:
tens of thousands of young men lying dead, his friends, Bob Webb and Ham Keyes among them, their bodies torn and dismembered trampled underfoot by fresh waves of men surging forward to be killed or maimed themselves. 

He just nodded.

It was almost dusk when the stage pulled in to town, on schedule after an uneventful trip. Vine pulled the coach to a stop in the middle of town. The leather throughbraces creaked one final complaining sigh, Vine tasted the last of the dust he would swallow that day and savored, for a brief moment, the silence and the motionlessness. “You’re here,” he croaked to the passengers below, through dust-caked vocal cords.

Jeff waited for the other passengers to disembark so he could take his time stretching out his right leg. The knee would be stiff from the long hours of cramped immobility. It had been a long and arduous trip for him. It was a long and arduous trip under the best of circumstances, but Jeff had not completely recuperated from his wounds. It could be worse, he considered, as he endured the acid pain in his knee on taking his first few tentative steps outside the stage, at least now he could walk without a crutch, and the headaches were almost gone.

The small group of people who had gathered to greet the incoming stage was dispersing. Jeff’s eyes searched and found no familiar face there to greet him. “Must not have gotten my letter,“ he thought. He forced himself to keep the excitement that had been growing within him through the entire journey, from turning to disappointment. The warm homecoming he had anticipated would have to wait a little longer, that was all.

Suddenly he felt light-headed and weak. He stepped back over to the stage and steadied himself against the wheel.

“This one’s yours.”

It was Vine, holding the small carpetbag in which Jeff carried his few belongings. The bag could have staye
d on the stage for all he cared; it contained little that mattered to him now, its main bulk consisting of his blue Union Army uniform which had been replaced by the now travel-stained civilian clothes.

“Thanks,”
he said as he accepted the bag.

“You got a place to stay? You don
’t look too good.”

Jeff nodded. “I
’m fine. I’m home.”

“Good luck,” said Vine, and
he turned toward the saloon, which did double duty as the stage office.

Jeff turned away and his eyes again swept the boardwalk on both sides of the street, searching for someone he no longer expected to find. Again disappointment welled and again he forced it back. After being gone for over two years and traveling across most of the continent, he could wait a little longer and travel a few more miles to see her. He limped up the street toward the livery stable, scanning the few faces on the street and finding none that were familiar.

The town had changed little in the time he had been gone except that it seemed a little older, the paint on the buildings—the few that had been painted—more dull and cracked. The place wore an air of listlessness as if idly awaiting some anticipated event. There were no new buildings, and some of the old ones had been boarded up, but Ollie’s Livery was still there and as Jeff rounded the corner and went inside, his nostrils caught familiar, earthy smells that were pleasant to him. Ollie Shepard was pouring grain into a feed bucket. He looked up and his face remained neutral for a few moments, then warm recognition spread over his leathery features. He grabbed Jeff’s hand and pumped it vigorously.

“Welcome back boy, welcome back. He looked Jeff up and down
. “You look a sight. I’d say you’ve lost thirty pounds. Look like you’ve been hard wintered.”

Jeff nodded. “Doin
’ better now.”

Ollie said, “
Didn’t know you were comin’ home yet.”

“Didn
’t John tell you?” asked Jeff, surprised.

“No;
he didn’t know.  I saw him yesterday, said he didn’t know when.”

“I wrote.”

“You didn’t send the letter to him did you? ‘Cause that would explain it.”

“No, of course not.
” Jeff was well aware that neither his grandfather nor Amado knew how to read. They had agreed before he left, that Jeff would write to Anne, who would relay appropriate messages to his grandfather and Amado.

“I sent the letter to Anne,” Jeff said, “just like always, but I haven
’t heard from her in a while.”

Ollie dropped his gaze, his expression changing, “Oh well, they
’ll be glad to see you anyhow.” Turning toward the stalls he said, “Guess you’ll be wantin’ to get out there.” He lifted a bridle from a peg and walked to the first stall. The bay gelding inside reached his head over the top rail of the gate and nuzzled him fondly. Ollie slipped the bridle on, opened the gate and led the gelding out and saddled him for Jeff.

“Fine lookin
’ animal,” Jeff said.

“He
’s the best I’ve got and that’s what you’re going to ride home. The best.”

Jeff was unsure of what to do now. He reached tentatively in his pocket and withdrew a small leather coin pouch
, but quickly replaced it when Ollie said, “You know better than that.”

Jeff stepped into the saddle. “Thanks Ollie.”

Ollie had an odd smile on his face and there was a look in the wise old eyes Jeff was unable to interpret. “Get out of here kid,” he said, and slapped the horse on the rump.

The desert was cooling off
now that the sun was down and the heat of the day was past. It was good to be in the saddle again; it had been a long time since Jeff had ridden a horse. The excitement he had been repressing had returned, dispelling some of the sickness and fatigue he felt. It was only two and a half miles to the Hammond farm and he could scarcely wait to see the look on Anne’s face when she saw him. Soon she would be in his arms again and all would be well. The long ordeal would be over.

In the moonlight
the Hammond farm seemed unchanged, and this was reassuring. It helped to quell the small, gnawing fear that sometimes rose up from within and worried him. As he approached the house, the anticipation he had been feeling turned to anxiety. This was normal, he reasoned; he had been away for so long. Still he began thinking of reasons to delay going in. For the first time he thought of his appearance. His ill-fitting and travel-stained clothes were an embarrassment and he was self-conscious about his thinness. Maybe he should go home first. He could clean up, have a good night’s sleep, a good breakfast and a change of clothes and come back in the morning. After two years couldn’t he wait one more night?

His mind asked the question, and his heart answered it
. No, he couldn’t wait one more night or even one more minute. Not now—now that he was this close.

He dismounted and almost stumbled from the jolt of pain in his knee. He limped up the steps to the porch
, and with pounding heart, knocked on the door.

In a moment the door opened
, and Anne’s sister, Alice stood before him, plump as always but with two years growth on her since he had last seen her. A shaft of moonlight stole through the doorway and shone on her straight, dark hair.