Twilight in Texas

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-four

Chapter Twenty-five

Chapter Twenty-six

Chapter Twenty-seven

Chapter Twenty-eight

Epilogue

T
HE AIR ON A WINDY
J
ULY DAY IN
A
USTIN
, T
EXAS
, had a way of weighing down against a man’s skin, heavy as a river made of sand. Wolf Hayward felt the thin layer of grit around his eyes crease as he squinted into the sun.

“Tuesday,” he mumbled, pulling his handcuffed prisoner off a horse. If possible the man was dirtier than he. “I think it’s Tuesday, Francis, but I can’t be sure.”

The prisoner shook like a long-haired dog, creating his own personal dust cloud. “Call me Francis again, Captain, and I’ll have to escape just to kill you. Ain’t no one but my mother ever called me that, and I let her live ’cause she could cook. Can’t say the same for you, Hayward.”

“I haven’t heard you complain about the grub all week.” Wolf checked the wrist chains one last time before they started down the street and into civilization. Francis Digger might be congenial enough right now, but Wolf had seen the man turn to killer in the blink of an eye. Francis and his brother had been in Texas since before the war. For years, they’d stuck to robbing their own kind. But with the state’s new growth, they’d taken to bothering respectable folks. Their last stagecoach robbery left two passengers dead and the driver without the use of one arm.

“It weren’t that your cooking’s so bad.” Francis followed behind Wolf, the chains allowing him little freedom. “It was just monotonous. Beans and sourdough twice a day for a week kind of makes a man long for a little variety. Ever’ night I fell asleep knowing what I didn’t finish for supper, I’d face at breakfast.”

“Well, they’ll give you whatever you want to eat before they hang you.” Wolf watched the street. If Francis’s brother planned to free him, there were only a few minutes left. In a hundred feet, the cold-blooded killer would be safely locked away in jail, and there were enough Texas Rangers in Austin to make sure that’s where he stayed.

The buckskin-clad prisoner swore as he raised his nose like a wild animal smelling trouble. “Tuesday, you say. Hell, it don’t matter to me, but you oughta know the day you’re going to die, Captain Hayward.”

Wolf chuckled. “I got you this far, didn’t I? In a few steps you’ll be in jail, and I’ll be having my first drink in a month. If your brother planned to save you, he would have done it long before now.”

Wolf pulled the prisoner along the covered walk. Signs advertising each business hung so low Wolf had to bend his huge frame slightly as they moved toward the jail. He glanced into the new mercantile as they passed. Austin was growing so fast, he couldn’t keep up with the stores. At the end of the war, cattle grazed in the streets; now stores popped up fast as weeds once had.

Two ladies strolled by. They stared at him, from his hairy face to his knee-high leather moccasins,
and giggled as they quickly moved along. Wolf realized he no longer fit in. He hadn’t reached thirty, but he felt like an old man. He now looked more like a drifter than an officer of the law. Four years ago when he landed here in Texas, this had been the place for him. Wild, and rough. A state where a man’s history didn’t matter as much as his strength and skill with a gun.

But now there were new businesses and respectable ladies. Austin had more permanent buildings than he could count. Curtains even framed the drugstore they moved past.

He glanced in the window at the line of bottles circling a mortar and pestle. For a moment he stared at the sun glistening off the display. Then, like a vision from an old nightmare, Wolf saw the reflection of Francis’s brother, Carrell Digger, in the window. The older Digger was crouched in the shadows between two buildings across the street.

As the wavy vision raised a rifle, Wolf reacted with lightning movements. With a mighty heave, he swung Francis by his handcuffs into the glass storefront and twisted to face Carrell with his Colt already springing to action.

Gunfire shattered the air. The women and Francis screamed. Glass fell like crystal rain into the sunlight. The ambusher crumpled, his second shot striking metal just above Wolf’s head.

Wolf had no time to exhale with relief or see if Francis was all right. A shingle flew from above and struck him hard across the forehead.

As the huge lawman folded to his knees, the remaining chain holding the pharmacy sign snapped. The sign hit the walk only seconds before he did.

The last thing Wolf Hayward saw before his world went black was Molly Donivan’s name carved on the sign with the word
alchemist
below it.

Molly Donivan, the one name he’d spent a war and what seemed like half his life trying to forget.

Memories danced in the blackness of his consciousness, drowning out the hard thud of his head against the walk.

First only as shadows, then clearer in his mind’s eye, came a vision from the past.

“Pardon me, miss,” he whispered to an angel dressed in Union blue. Hundreds moved around them at the crowded Philadelphia train station. New recruits anxious to go to war, returning heroes, families whispering tearful good-byes and crying heartfelt greetings.

She met his stare with shy green eyes.

He couldn’t tell her he’d watched her all morning as she moved among the arriving wounded. He’d never be able to explain how each time she touched a soldier in comfort, he’d felt a longing grow within him. Or how the sight of her warmed his heart as though he’d known he’d always find her.

“You don’t know me….” He stumbled over words. “There’s no time, and I don’t know if you’ll believe me.” He loved the way she faced him so directly. The intelligence in her gaze shook him to the core. He rushed ahead. “But my name is Benjamin and I know I’ve been looking for you all my life.”