The Gallows' Bounty (West of Second Chances) (15 page)

She hopped out of bed and hurried into the kitchen.  She dipped a towel in the bucket of cool drinking water, wrung it out, and returned to the bedroom.  She sat down beside him on the bed and sponged his head and upper body.

EZRA AWAKENED TO THE
feel of a cool hand on his body.  It was the only cool place on him.  He was burning up with fever.  He saw Willow through hot, gritty eyes.  Her touch was comforting, and her face registered real concern.  Her hand even now slid along his chest.  He lifted a heavy hand and placed it over hers.

“Feels good.  Thank you,” he said.

He noted the startled expression on her face.  “Not used to being appreciated are you?”  he cleared his throat.  “He was a fool.”

She conceded softly, “He was.”

“Is that why you killed him?”  He wasn’t sure why he asked the question, dredged up her ghosts.  The fever obviously had turned his mind to mush.

She drew her hand back swiftly.

He moved to reassure her.  “From what little I heard in town, he deserved it.” He drew her hand back to his brow.  It felt so cool against his skin.

“Brett Roberts may have deserved death, but what I did tears me apart inside,” she confessed, rubbing the cloth over his forehead again.

Ezra knew how she felt.  Most likely, Roberts’ death ate at her, made her afraid to speak of it because if she spoke of it, it became real.  Her stilted words and averted eyes warned him she wasn’t yet ready to tell him the details.

“Come here,” he said, stretching out his good arm and pulling her against him.  She stiffened her body a bit and hesitated.  He waited, and when her body relaxed, he drew her into his side. And then he did nothing but fall asleep.

AFTER A FEW DAYS
, Ezra went back to his chores.  Willow protested the amount of work he did, but relented a little when he assured her his arm was healing fine.

He smiled.  It had been a long time since anyone had fussed over him.  It felt good.

It also felt good to share his time with her.  He enjoyed their discussions at meals and as they worked together throughout the day.  However, the time they spent reading together in the evenings ranked as his favorite.  They were currently working their way through the works of Emerson and Thoreau, and the discussions they had over the authors’ ideas were engaging.  His wife had a sharp mind, and it pleased him to see it at work.  He sighed.  The evening was already late, and she had most likely gone to bed.  He would miss spending a quiet evening with her tonight.

The day had been long, and he wondered briefly what he would make himself to eat before falling into bed.  He’d stayed up late with his ranch hands and supervised their pulling of a calf.  Pulling a calf was always messy business, and he was thankful he had ranch hands he could boss into doing the actual pulling.  One of the calf’s legs had been stuck, and Boden had enjoyed telling the newest Box B cowboy, Randy, how to get it unstuck.

Randy had made all sorts of faces as he’d put his arm up to the armpit in the birthing canal.  He’d had to find both legs and pull on them to get the calf out.  It wouldn’t be such a messy business if the calf were the only thing to come out.  The hands standing around watching Randy’s initiation got a good laugh out of the boy’s hopping about and swearing when he’d been splattered with the majority of the birthing fluid.

Boden grinned.  It had been pretty funny.  Besides, both the calf and cow had made it, and his mood was light.

He noticed a light shining in the kitchen and hoped Willow hadn’t waited up for him.  She’d had a long day and deserved to be sound asleep in their bed.

Their bed.

Now that phrase made him forget all about food.  He’d been sleeping with a beautiful woman for little over a month now, and his physical reaction to her increased with each passing day.  She smelled so good each night when he crawled into bed, and she felt so good sheltered in his arms when he awoke.

He’d caught himself touching her more often, standing a bit too close, breathing her scent when she neared.  The last thing he wanted to do was damage any of the trust he’d garnered. Willow was coming to trust him, but she wasn’t ready to deepen their relationship as yet.  What made it worse was that he understood why.

But there were other parts of him that weren’t quite so patient as his heart.

He stepped into the house.  Willow had gone to bed, but he didn’t need to prepare himself anything to eat.  A plate sat warming on the stovetop and a lantern rested on the kitchen table, casting a soft glow about the room.  Even in the semi-darkness he could see everything gleamed spotless.

Ezra sat down and ate in silence.  His wife worked herself to the bone.  He cast a casual glance around the room as he lifted a bite to his mouth.  The beef melted on his tongue, the mashed potatoes were smooth, and the gravy beyond reproach.  All in all, the best meal he’d ever had.

That is until he remembered.

His mother’s home had been spotless as well, the meals delectable.  And all because his mother had lived in fear of his father.  She had tried to keep everything perfect so as to escape his father’s beatings.  It hadn’t worked.  He had always found something wrong, complimented her on nothing.

The last few bites of his meal no longer appealed.  He scraped them into the scrap bucket.  Setting the plate aside, he blew out the lantern and walked to his bed, their bed.  The moonlight fell through the window and across his sleeping wife.  He leaned against the doorjamb and sighed.  How could he convince her to trust him completely?

He possessed little knowledge of how a true gentleman treated his wife.  His father surely was not the example to follow; his father had never done anything right.  It stood to reason doing the opposite of him would make Boden an ideal husband.

He climbed into bed, careful not to disturb his wife’s rest although her soft, sweet body continued to disturb him.

THE NEXT MORNING HE
knew what he had to do–get her out of the house.  She enjoyed the out-of-doors as much as he did if their recent fishing trip had been any indication. There was no reason she should be stuck indoors, cleaning an already clean house.

He absently let the door slam closed behind him.  The careless action resulted in a frightened yelp from
Willow.  He shook his head.  The woman sure startled easily.  He ambled into the parlor, the direction from which the sound had come.

Her grip on the dust rag relaxed when she saw it was him.  They’d made progress anyway.  She wasn’t shying away from him or hitting him over the head anymore.  He grinned.

“I suppose I am a bit ridiculous, jumping at every little sound,” Willow confessed.

Boden bit back a laugh when she turned a stiffened back to him and continued on with her dusting.  He should feel bad that he’d unintentionally hurt her feelings. He’d been grinning in satisfaction, not in amusement at her skittishness.  She didn’t know the difference, however.

“Willow?” Boden waited for her to turn and speak to him.

No such luck. She responded with a mere, “Hmm?”

He did laugh then.  She had a temper under all that shyness and fear.

She turned to face him.

“Seein’ as I’d hate to have your temper riled, I’ll explain that I wasn’t laughing at you just now.”

“No?”

“Well, not for the reason you think.”

“So, you were laughing at me?” she challenged.

“No,” he stated.  That wasn’t quite the truth either.  “Yes.”

“Which is it?” She didn’t look angry anymore, just frustrated.

Boden took a step forward.  She took a step back.  She might be coming out of her shell, but defenses were hard to lay aside once erected.  Getting her to trust him fully was like breaking a horse.  Some days she was all peaceful and trusting like, but on other days, she’d surprise him by being skittish. 

“I was laughing at the contradiction you are.  You jump at loud noises, yet you had the courage to hit me over the head.”

“You laugh about my hitting you over the head?” she asked, incredulous.

“I was plenty angry at the time. Now, remembering, it’s downright amusing.”  He laughed again.  “Good thing there’s no
Devils Lake newspaper.  I’m sure the headline would have read ‘Bride overpowers groom, Butcher Boden’.”

She saw the humor and laughed.  “If only we did have a town paper.”

“If only, what?” Boden asked, taking another step closer to his bride.  She held her ground this time.

“I’d write the article and send it in myself,” she boasted.  “It’d do my reputation a heap of good.”

He tugged her close.  “I think not.  My reputation couldn’t stand the blow.”

Willow
remained still and silent in his arms.  He released her.  She was opening up to him more and more, but he reminded himself to go slowly.  One didn’t make sudden moves around the horse one was breaking either.

“Change into some riding clothes,” Boden directed.  “If you want, I’d like you to ride out with me today.”

The discomfort that laced the air moments before dissipated. 

She smiled at him.  “I’d like to go with you.  Give me a moment.”

“I’ll be waiting outside with the horses.”

He tipped his hat and left the house.

THE DAY WAS HOT,
and Willow enjoyed the strong wind whipping across the plains, cooling her body.  She was glad for it, not desiring any more fainting spells.  She’d felt dizzy a couple of times over the last few weeks, but she hadn’t fainted again.

Boden rode silently at her side, seeming to enjoy the solitude. That left
Willow a lot of time to think.

She thought about her new life.  It was almost too good to be true and that scared her.  She'd grown so accustomed to living with pain and suffering, she wasn’t sure how to go about living without it.

It was like having been out in the cold too long.  She’d grown numb, sluggish in order to block out the pain of the cold.  And now she was being slowly warmed.  She’d begun to tingle with life.  And it was a scary and yet hopeful sensation.  It meant there was life left.  Hope.

Her mind conjured a strange image, one of Boden rubbing warmth back into her feet.  She laughed out loud at herself.  Boden cast her a questioning look.  When she just shook her head, he smiled.

She grew warm from the top of her head to the tips of her toes.  He may not be literally massaging frostbitten feet, but he was bringing her back to feeling.

Still, she was afraid.  Not afraid of him, but afraid of caring for him.  What if he cared nothing for her? Would his interest in her pass?  Worse yet, what if they grew to love each other, and she was ripped from him as she’d been ripped from her family?

She was scaring the hell out of herself with her thoughts.

She pushed them aside.  She’d enjoy the second chance at life she’d been given.  If her life went back to a living hell, she’d at least be stronger and have the memories of good times, however fleeting they may be.

Boden’s shout brought Willow out of her thoughts.  He’d ridden a bit ahead of her, his interest caught by a hysterically bellowing cow.  Could cows be hysterical?  Well, if they could, this one definitely was.

He waited for her to catch up to him before speaking again.

“It seems she—” he pointed to the cow now standing a few yards away and then to the washout in front of them “—has a calf trapped down there.” 

Standing in the stirrups,
Willow craned her neck, noting the depth of the ravine.  “A calf? It’d have a hard time getting out of there all right.”

“I’ve lost a few in there,” he said and nodded.  “I’m going down after it.  Keep an eye on the cow.  She’s a bit crazy when she’s got a calf to look after.”

Willow glanced at the cow, its head lowered as it pawed the ground, then back to Boden.  “I’d say that was a correct estimation.”

“Just wait until I dismount.”

He got down off of Beast, and Willow realized he’d been right.  As soon as his booted feet hit the ground, the heifer gave chase.  Boden dashed for the drop off and climbed quickly down the steep incline.  The heifer came to a skidding stop just at the brink and made a show of angrily shaking her lowered head at him.  Willow half expected the thing to follow her husband over the edge, but instead the heifer ambled off a moment later only to resume its bellowing from a small distance. 

Willow
had never understood how a rancher knew his cattle so well.   Her father had been able to remember his cattle’s dispositions like that too.  The more she came to know Boden, the more she realized he was as good a man as her father had been.

Boden’s shout drew her attention, and she rode as close to the drop off as she dared.

“Yes?” she called down to him.

“Catch the end of the rope I throw up to you and dally it around your saddle horn.  I need you to pull the calf up.  Can you do that?”

“Yes, throw it up here.” Willow caught the rope on the second try.

She looped the rope around her saddle horn and backed Kitty slowly.  Boden, who gave the calf a helping shove onto higher ground, followed it over the top of the incline.  He kept a wary eye on the heifer as he undid the rope and carried the calf a ways from the drop off.