Brokken Yesterdays

by Lynda J. Cox

  “—two boot knives, six throwing knives, and two pocket advantages. That was just what the Irishman carried.”

  Flannery. Had Colbert really expected him to put up that much resistance? No. It wasn’t about resisting the return to prison. He’d heard the stories from other convicts. Only two had ever escaped but they had been quickly recaptured. One was dead before returning to the prison, the other died within hours. When Jon first arrived at Watonga, Colbert told him no one ever escaped his prison for long, and those who did, didn’t live to tell about it.

  “What’s a pocket advantage?” He recognized Knight’s voice and the doctor sounded genuinely confused.

  “A derringer. Personally, I’d never carry one. I’ve heard of the things going off in someone’s pocket or reticule.” Victoria’s voice drifted further away, as if she crossed the room. “The one who broke Jon’s collarbone had another blackjack in his coat pocket.”

  Roland DeLindsey. The guard he had incapacitated when he escaped.

  “I hope you kept all their toys when you ordered them out of town.” The clipped edge to Abigail’s words conveyed her disgust and anger as clearly as if she telegraphed it to the New York Times.

  Jon walked into the kitchen. Victoria was near the sink, one of the Knight twins cradled in her arms. The length of her hair was unbound, tumbling over her shoulders. Though she was dressed in a faded chambray shirt, a pair of denim trousers, with her revolver still riding her hip, the softness about her stirred a longing in him for something he wasn’t even aware he’d wanted.

  Victoria met his gaze across the room. The curl to her lips with her smile ignited a fire in his veins.

  “You look good with a baby in your arms.” The words broke from him before he could stop them.

  A faint blush highlighted her cheeks and she lowered her head, her loosened hair spilling over the baby’s legs. Jon reined in hard on the sudden conflicting emotions racing through him.

  A family wasn’t in his cards. Not now. Not any time soon. Probably not ever. Best get that through his head as soon as possible.

  Knight pushed away from the table. “How’s the shoulder? Any numbness or tingling in your fingers? Have a seat, and I’ll get you some coffee.”

  “It’s painful, but there isn’t any numbness or tingling.” Jon walked to the table and sat across from Abigail. She held the other twin, the infant’s tiny head resting on her shoulder. He wasn’t sure if this was the baby Knight had been walking the floor with the other night.

  “That’s good. Fortunately, it was a clean break.” The doctor made his way to the stove and the coffee pot.

  “We didn’t wake you, I hope?” If Abigail was disconcerted with his presence in her state of dress, as she wore a dressing gown of faded calico and paisley, the doctor’s wife certainly didn’t reveal it.

  “No, ma’am, you didn’t.” Jon looked over his shoulder to Victoria. “What time is it?”

  “A little after midnight,” Knight answered, setting a cup in front of Jon. He walked to Victoria. “I can take him, now.”

  With obvious reluctance, Victoria returned the baby to his father. Motion on the other side of the table pulled Jon’s attention from Victoria to the doctor’s wife, who stood, never once disturbing the infant asleep on her shoulder. Jon bolted to his feet. While it was more than apparent that some social conventions weren’t in force in the privacy of the doctor’s home, he wasn’t going to forgo this one.

  “Now that these little ones have been cleaned up, are in fresh diapers, and have full tummies, they need to be put back to bed,” Abigail said. “Any time you two are ready to turn in for the night, the upstairs bedroom next to Ethan is open.”

  A deep, not fully comfortable yet not awkward, silence fell between Jon and Victoria when the Knights left the kitchen. The rose tinting Victoria’s cheeks deepened yet she didn’t look away. He asked, “She does know I’m not Jonathan, doesn’t she?”

  “Yes.” Victoria took a single step closer to him with her whispered response.

  Jon held his arm out to her, and she raced the last few feet to him. He managed not to wince with the force of her embrace. “Why did she prepare a room for us? Why aren’t we at your house?”

  “Our house,” she corrected. “Safety. When I turned Colbert’s two men loose three hours ago, I gave them five minutes to get out of town, but I don’t trust either of them.”

  His chest tightened with the tension filling him. “Where is Colbert?”

  Victoria tilted her head back, one hand on the right side of his chest. “In a cell. Klint, Karl, and Yancy are guarding him in shifts.”

  Yancy. The candy shop owner. The one who told everyone to call him “Yank.”

  She rose up on her tiptoes and feathered a kiss on the underside of his chin. His breath caught with the trailing of her fingertips along the side of his neck. She added, “He’ll stay there until Judge Davis gets here to straighten this whole mess out. Curt is on his way to the Indian Territory to find Carroll Martin, if he’s still alive.”

  Jon slid his hand under her hair at the back of her neck and gently pulled her head back. The weight of her hair against his skin was no more than silk. He skimmed his gaze over her upturned face, lingering on her lips. “Vic, I’ve got a broken collarbone. That rather precludes anything either one of us might be thinking right now.”

  “I know. I just want you to know that this mess is going to be straightened out.” Her brow furrowed and she tilted her head slightly.

  The sound of a distant bell clanging over and over crept into the kitchen. Victoria’s brow furrowed deeper. “That’s someone ringing the school bell because of an emergency.”

  “Duty calls?” Jon released her, though he allowed himself a lingering caress along her cheek. “I’ll come with you if you think you need help.”

  A pounding on the front door forced them further apart. A young boy yelled through the closed door. “Help! Anyone! We need help.”

  “That sounds like Calvin.” Victoria said, a short, huffing breath escaping her.

  That breath told Jon all he needed to know. He gestured to the hallway leading to the front of the house. “After you, Sheriff.”

  The discordant clanging of the bell continued.

  He, Victoria, and Dr. Knight arrived in the foyer at the same time. Abigail hovered in the doorway of what Jon took to be a bedroom, as he caught sight of a large, turned-down bed. Knight pulled the front door open with what sounded like a growl. “Calvin Meyers, if you wake any of my children, I’ll tell your mother to give you a daily dose of castor oil.”

  The rain appeared to have stopped. In its stead was a thick, cloying fog that swirled with snaking tendrils around a boy of perhaps twelve or thirteen who hopped from foot to foot in his impatience. The boy’s expression filled with a wide-eyed horror at Knight’s threat.

  “Dr. Knight, I ain’t trying to wake anyone other than the grown-ups. Miz Walsh sent me. Miss Rebecca’s ringing the bell. The livery’s on fire.” He backed a step. “I gotta find the sheriff.”

  “I’m right here, Calvin.” Victoria stepped into the doorway. “Run down to the jail and tell Mr. Brokken, Mr. Caper, and Mr. McCoury we need them at the livery immediately.”

  “But Mr. English done that already, Sheriff.” Calvin’s mouth dropped open, gaping, resembling a fish out of water as he stared up at Jon. The boy blurted out, “How’d you get back here so fast? How come I didn’t see you going by me? You said you were going to the jail to get them men for help.”

  Victoria’s sharp intake of breath was her only reaction to Calvin’s startling claim. The chill that raced the length of Jon’s spine felt as cold as water from a spring-melt mountain stream. “I think you’re mistaken. I haven’t left the doctor’s all evening.”

  “Are you absolutely certain you saw Jonathan?” Victoria asked.

  “I know what Mr. English looks like.” A frown marred the boy’s features. “I ain’t seein’ things or talkin’ to imaginary friends, like
Devon.”

  “No one is saying you are.” Jon shot a hard glance out into the night, quelling the shudder that tried to roll over him. “We’ll figure out what happened later. Right now, we need you to go start knocking on doors and get people down to the livery. Hopefully with all the rain we’ve had, we can save the building.”

  The boy leaped off the porch without touching a single step and melted into the fog. With Calvin gone, some of Victoria’s façade cracked and she gulped in several shallow breaths. “The livery,” she whispered, as if reminding herself what needed to be done.

  “I’ll go to the livery,” the doctor said, “and you two take care of the other.” Knight obviously knew more than Jon thought he did, and he wondered just how much Victoria had told the doctor. He slipped past Jon, onto the porch, and into the swirling fog.

  Jon started toward the door, only to be stopped with Victoria’s firm grasp of his wrist.

  “Stay with Abby.” Victoria said. She released her hold on his wrist, and then pulled her revolver, opened the cylinder, and ticked past each chamber, verifying it was fully loaded. She methodically closed the cylinder, and then shoved the revolver into the holster. “I’ll go to the jail.”

  “Vic, you’re not going by yourself.” Jon blocked her path out the door.

  The doctor’s wife added her voice to the protest. “I agree with Jon. You are not going by yourself. He should go with you.”

  “I’m not staying here,” Jon continued after he sent a terse nod in Abigail’s direction, “hiding in the shadows like some coward.”

  Victoria reared back with narrowed eyes. He had stepped over some line for her.

  “In the dark, in this fog...if you run into Jonathan, I wouldn’t be able to discern which one of you is which. I’m not asking you, Jon. I’m telling you. Stay here.” She tried to shoulder her way past him. When he refused to give ground, she tried what seemed to be a new tactic. “Please, stay here. If anything happened to Abby...or you...I couldn’t live with myself.”

  Jon wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her against his chest, hoping he hid his grimace when the hard contact of their bodies jarred his collarbone. “Either I go with you or you don’t go. There isn’t anything he could possibly do at the jail that three armed men can’t handle.”

  “Victoria, listen to him,” Abigail said. The doctor’s wife glanced up the stair case into the darkened second floor. “I can take care of myself. Nothing is going to happen here.”

  The rigidness in Victoria’s frame softened. Thinking she was surrendering to the combined reasoning, Jon let his guard down. Victoria shoved him away, her push jarring the broken ends of his collarbone.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, even as she darted out the opened door.

  Jon staggered back, falling to a knee with the intense, breath-taking pain searing through him. By the time Abigail helped him to his feet, and he’d recovered his breath, Victoria had vanished into the thick fog.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Victoria ran along the boardwalk, then skidded to a halt. Just what was she going to do if Jonathan was at the jail? Legally, he was still her husband. She could throw him in a cell on some trumped-up charge, but what would that accomplish? If anything, he could cast even more suspicion on Jon.

  On the other hand, if he was locked in a cell, he would be there when Judge Davis showed up, and it might make her argument carry more weight that Jon had been mistakenly identified as the culprit for all the things Jonathan had done.

  Lock him in a cell, then. Somehow, someway, she’d sort through it.

  She approached the jail with a mixture of trepidation and anger. Why couldn’t he be dead?

  The darkened jail made her halt. Even if Jonathan had sent Karl, Klint, and Yancy to assist with the fire at the livery, one of them would have insisted on staying to guard Colbert. Several of the town’s citizens rushed past her, buckets in hand to assist with the brigade. Even if all three of her guards were at the fire, they would have left a single lantern burning.

  She looked over her shoulder at the other end of town, where the livery stood. Flames tinted the low-hanging clouds in hellish shades of orange and red.

  Fear of the unknown kept her frozen. If Jonathan had sent all three of them to the livery, had he also released Colbert? If he had, had he also convinced Colbert he wasn’t the man Colbert wanted—it was Jon Andrews?

  She had to do something. She couldn’t continue to stand in the middle of the street like an addled nincompoop. Her hand closed on the grip of her revolver, the cool wood steeling her flagging courage.

  Every step made her repeat he would not hurt her again. She was not going to allow it. She would put a bullet into his black, vicious heart.

  Her resolve melted away when she glanced at the barred windows at the front of the jail. The black holes raised gooseflesh on her arms and lifted the hair at the back of her neck. This was fool-hardy at best and dangerous at its worst, walking into a darkened building, not knowing who might be there.

  “We do this together.” Jon’s voice slipped over her with as much comfort as a heavy quilt on a cold December morning.

  The sense of comfort vanished as quickly as her resolve, replaced with anger. “I thought I told you to stay with Abby.”

  His voice was teasing. “We aren’t married and I’m not really your deputy. You can’t tell me what to do. Not yet.”

  Victoria choked off a short laugh. How had the usual roles in a marriage become so reversed? “I think when we are married, I still won’t be able to tell you what to do.”

  “No, you won’t, because I’d like to be the one in charge.” He stood at her side, his white shirt gleaming with a strange iridescence in the thick fog.

  “We can discuss that later. Maybe, a partnership, instead of someone giving orders.” She looked up into his face, asking herself for what felt like the thousandth time how she had ever mistaken him for Jonathan. “You still left Abby and the kids alone.”

  Jon’s teasing smile waned. “Miss Abigail is armed—to the teeth, I might add—with a rifle she assures me she knows very well how to use and a revolver. We moved Ethan down to the bedroom by the parlor and she and the three kids are there, safe behind locked doors.” He took her hand into his. The warmth of his fingers around hers mitigated the painful chill. “We do this together, Victoria.”

  She still hesitated. “Will you really marry me?”

  He bent to her, a renewed smile flashing across his features. “When this is all over, no matter how it goes, if you’re free to marry me and even if it’s the last thing I do before they fit me with a hangman’s noose, I will marry you, Victoria English.”

  Her town was in chaos, the livery was burning, and at that moment, all that mattered to her was the man who held her hand and had just promised to marry her. “I love you.”

  A single dip of his head acknowledged her claim. “I love you, too. Now, let’s do this.”

  She took a step forward, halting when Jon pulled her arm.

  “If he’s in the jail, like you and I both think he is, if we go in there together, we’re done.” Jon’s gaze turned to the darkened jail. “If I said I would go first, you’ll argue with me. So, give me your revolver and you go first. I’ll follow a few seconds behind you.”

  Without any hesitation, Victoria dragged the weapon from her holster and handed it, grip first to Jon.

  “Holster, too. Let’s not tip him off.”

  She unbuckled the leather, surprised with how vulnerable and undressed she felt without that familiar, comfortable weight on her thigh. “You’ll be right behind me?”

  “No more than three steps. He’s not going to hurt you again. I won’t let him.”

  Victoria startled to hear her own whispered words repeated. Somehow, she knew Jon wouldn’t allow it. He’d put his own life on the line for hers. That gave her the fortitude to close the distance to the jail.

  She opened the door. Heavy, black smoke roiled out the door, forcing her
back. A weak “Help” sounded from the back of the building, from the cells.

  Jon rushed past her, into the smoke. She followed, unable to see. The smoke brought immediate tears to her eyes and choked her. She startled with the sound of a single shot. Her heart leaped into her throat. Before she could even question if Jon had been shot, another shot pierced the smoke.

  She pushed her way through the smoke. Jon’s form, hazy and indistinct in the blinding, choking smoke bent over someone in the second cell. When she reached Jon, he struggled to pull Karl off the floor. Klint was trying to help, but he was hampered by deep, wracking coughs.

  Victoria pulled her blouse over her mouth and nose and grabbed the door of Colbert’s cell. The man was slumped in a corner, unresponsive. The swirling smoke parted enough to see Klint and Jon pulling Karl’s form toward the front door. She rushed into the cell, shaking Colbert.

  When that didn’t get any response, she grabbed his arm and tried to pull him out of the cell. The man was no more than dead weight. Pulling his arm didn’t budge him, and the exertion choked her further.

  She whirled to the back room of the structure when a flicker of flame caught the corner of her eye. A sudden explosion flung her backwards into the metal bars separating the two cells, left her ears ringing, and head spinning. Stars rained over her vision as she slid down. The wall between the back room and the cells was engulfed. Flames danced across the low ceiling.

  Her hand closed on the bars in an attempt to pull herself to her feet. Black spots grew in her vision while the heat licked at her skin. Colbert was too close to the flames. The stench of burning hair cut through the odor of the smoke. With an effort she didn’t know she had, she pulled herself to her feet.

  She was not going to die here, and neither was that man.

  The heat and smoke drove her back, down on her knees, again.

  And, then, Jon had his arm around her, lifting her, pulling her. He pushed her toward the opened door. To fresh air. To life.