by James, Terry
‘Hurry up,’ Jethro shouted. ‘I don’t know how long I can do this for.’
Matt didn’t need telling twice. With a fresh burst of determination, he continued his climb, aware that the mountain was angry now, larger rocks falling from its face as the supports inside the mine buckled. Somehow he reached the top, his relief mirrored by Jessie as she slipped her bound hands over his head and wrapped her arms around his neck.
Somehow, he managed to hang on as the ladder shifted and he fought to keep his footing.
‘Hurry up,’ Jethro shouted.
‘Jessie, I’m going to get you down,’ Matt said, sounding calmer than he felt. ‘I want you to climb across onto my back.’
She didn’t move and he recognized the same debilitating fear in her that he had seen the night Ethan Davies killed her grandpa.
‘Please, Jessie, I won’t let you fall.’
‘You’re not strong enough,’ she said, trying to pull her hands back.
He didn’t need reminding of the weakness gnawing away at his muscles and sapping what little strength remained in his battered body. If he thought about it, he wouldn’t be able to come up with one good reason why he wasn’t lying helpless and defeated in the stream. And yet, he couldn’t let her see his doubts and that in itself provided him with some untapped source of strength.
‘I’m all right, Jessie. Please, just do as I tell you.’
Still she didn’t move as tears leaked down her bruised and swollen cheeks.
‘Do this for me, Jessie, and I promise I’ll never leave you again,’ he said, in desperation. ‘I’ll hang up my gun, pack away my cards and settle down, anywhere you like. What do you say?’
The platform shuddered as the mine finally gave in to the pressure of the mountain, belching out dust and rock as it reclaimed the stolen space inside. Jessie flinched, the momentum of that small movement allowing Matt to grab her and drag her clear. Now with her arms choking him as she struggled to wrap her legs around him, he was unable to tell if it was the ladder or him swaying. As the platform started to shift, he wrapped his arms around the ladder, kicked his feet clear of the rungs and for the first time in six years, prayed.
The ladder fell away before they reached the bottom and without the support of the platform Jethro was unable to hold it. Matt tried to turn his body so that he hit the ground first but it was near impossible and he felt Jessie underneath him as they landed in the dirt. Then he felt hands on him and saw the flash of a knife blade. Without thinking, he swiped at it.
‘Easy, I’m just going to cut the ropes.’
The pressure around his neck eased and he rolled away, sucking in deep breaths of air as he watched Jethro wrap his coat around Jessie’s shoulders. It was difficult to say if the fall had done her any more damage than Stone’s beating. Damn it! If Stone weren’t already dead. …
‘Is she all right?’ he asked.
‘She’ll be fine, but I wouldn’t try to move, if I were you,’ Jethro said, glancing between Matt’s face and leg.
Busy catching his breath and concerned for Jessie, he hadn’t thought about himself. Vaguely, he recalled feeling a stabbing pain in his leg as they hit the ground. Now, as he stared disbelievingly at the bone protruding through his pants leg, it hit him like a sledgehammer. Suddenly, he felt light-headed and the scene around him disappeared behind a pulsating cloud of darkness as he finally succumbed to his injuries and retreated to a place where there was no past, no future and no pain.
CHAPTER 17
Sitting in a rocker on the front porch of a little yellow-painted house with a white picket fence, Matt could still hardly believe his luck. That he was alive was a miracle in itself, but the picture-book serenity of Weekesville only added an extra element of disbelief to that fact. With the sun coming up and a gentle breeze wafting his face, he should be feeling at peace, but despite everything that had happened, he still harboured doubts about his future.
Behind him, a door creaked on its hinges and he heard the light tap of footsteps before Jessie placed a tray on the table beside him and handed him a cup of coffee.
‘Peaceful here, isn’t it?’ she said, putting a voice to his thoughts. ‘The kind of place a man could settle and raise a family.’
Standing at his side, looking along the street and out towards the mountains, she sipped her coffee in silence. As usual, Matt’s gaze fixed on her. She had lost weight in the three weeks since her ordeal. And he suspected she was having trouble sleeping. He had heard her pacing about her room on more than one occasion when his own nightmares had kept him awake. Outwardly, all that remained to remind him of her ordeal at Stone’s hands were a few faint bruises and some light scars that would fade given time.
She turned to look at him. With the sun shining off her blonde hair, she looked lovely and fresh in her blue print dress and as she reached across to push a lock of hair back from his face, his nostrils flared to fully accept the gentle scent of lavender that always lingered around her.
‘How are you feeling?’ she asked, gently.
‘My leg still hurts like hell but the doc says it’s mending.’ He chuckled. ‘But I don’t need to tell you that, do I?’
She had been at his side day and night for the first week after they brought him back to town. The doc had told him that she refused to even let him tend her wounds until she was sure that Matt was taken care of. Sometimes Matt thought he recalled hearing her voice reaching out to him through the pain that seemed to live inside him like the Devil himself. Other times he would feel her cool hands on his skin and smell the scent of lavender before drifting off again into the darkness. Now, each time the doctor visited, he could hear her demanding a detailed account of his progress.
He clasped her hand, holding it between his as his thoughts took an unexpected turn. Here in this picture-book town with her standing at his side, he almost believed that a drifter like him could have a second chance. All he needed to do was ask her one question, and he already knew the answer to that. But a wall of excuses still stood between them, even if it was starting to crumble.
‘Where’s Jethro?’ he asked.
‘He went down to the sheriff’s office, but he said he’d be back for breakfast.’ She shaded her eyes against the brightness and looked along Main Street. ‘That’s him now.’
She waved at the lone figure coming slowly towards them. Jethro had changed since they got back. He walked like a man at ease with himself and his surroundings, nodding politely to anyone who passed him by. With his hair cut short, his whiskers trimmed and wearing a dark suit over clean boots, he could have passed for just another local citizen. But the most noticeable change about him was the absence of the Smith & Wesson.
Closing the gate behind him, he swept off his low-crowned, narrow-brimmed hat and grinned as he stepped up onto the porch. ‘Have you got a cup of coffee there for me, darlin’?’
Jessie picked up the pot from the tray and topped up the cup she had been drinking from before handing it to him. ‘Have mine. I need to go inside and finish breakfast anyway.’
He smiled at her affectionately but she bowed her head, barely glancing at him before she scurried away. Matt saw the disappointment on Jethro’s face. It would take a long time for her to fully accept him as her father, but she was coming round slowly and Jethro seemed content to wait. Leaning against the porch rail, he concentrated on drinking his coffee. Although the mistrust between them had been laid to rest, Matt still found it hard to talk to a man who, for whatever reason, had dogged his trail for six years.
‘What’s on your mind, son?’ Jethro asked, throwing the dregs of his coffee down into the roses.
Matt stiffened. Even now, after everything they’d been through together, it still unnerved him when Jethro spoke to him like an old friend. He forced himself to relax. After all, Jethro was the only man who could lay to rest the questions that had been keeping Matt awake at night.
‘Mind if I ask you something?’
‘Go ahead,’ Jeth
ro said.
‘How come you gave all this up to follow the outlaw trail?’
Jethro chuckled. ‘I wondered when you’d get round to asking me that. I’ve been giving it a lot of thought myself and the straightforward answer is: I never did. Somehow I just drifted away from it.’
‘I’m not buying that. One thing I do know about you is you’re no fool.’
Jethro smiled at the compliment. ‘I was a lot of things after Marianne died. I went crazy for awhile, started drinking. I blamed my brother Ethan for what happened, although when I look back I can see it was nobody’s fault, just an accident.’
‘That doesn’t explain how you came to be one of the most feared guns in five states.’
‘When Ethan left town, he abandoned Stone. The kid was devastated. He was only ten years old at the time and he begged me to help him find his pa. I guess I felt partly to blame for everything that had happened. You see, Ethan found this place and Marianne. They were going to be married and he wanted me there to see it. When me and Marianne laid eyes on each other, it was like that part of me that had been missing just clicked into place, you know what I mean.’
Matt shrugged non-committally.
‘She called off the wedding to Ethan and within a month we were married instead. Ethan never really held it against me, although I knew it must have hurt him. Anyway, we all settled in this valley. Ethan started mining for gold and I started work for Marianne’s pa, George Weekes. He was an architect, laid out all the plans and built this town from the ground up, but I struggled with it. I’d been running wild since I was a kid. Me and Ethan had been in trouble since we first stole candy from Old Man McGregor’s store in Stantonville. George, he tried to help me – you know what he was like, he believed there was good in every man.’
Matt remembered the first time he had met George Weekes. Jessie had dragged him into the house when he came to the Weekes’s kitchen looking for a free meal. He had been fifteen, recently orphaned and on the road to nowhere. His clothes were at least a size too small and he hadn’t eaten a hot meal in three days. The only work he had been offered was cleaning out spittoons at the local saloon. Already he had been shot at and beaten by a couple of drunken patrons. The money he had earned had not gone on food or clothing, but on a gun and two bullets, all he could afford.
‘Can you read?’ George Weekes asked, after Jessie told him Matt needed a job and insisted he be the one to give it.
‘Some,’ he said, knowing that signing his name wasn’t much to be proud of.
Matt had looked to Jessie, nine years old and standing behind her grandfather’s chair, all bright curls and a flashing smile. Even then she had believed in him as she bobbed her head and urged him on.
‘Yes, sir,’ he said, smartly.
Weekes sighed as if he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. ‘Well, I believe everyone deserves a chance,’ he said, winking at Jessie. ‘There are two roads you can take, Matt. My road, where you work hard, keep out of trouble and accept the challenge to make something of your life, or. …’
Matt didn’t need to remember where Weekes told him the second road would lead. He had been walking it for six long years.
Jethro cleared his throat. ‘Anyway, after Marianne died there was nothing to keep me here.’
‘Not even Jessie?’
‘I couldn’t look at her without seeing her mother. It hurt too much, so I told George I was going to help Stone find Ethan and rode out, intending to come back. Problem was, the longer I stayed away, the harder it got. Once I was out in the open, trouble just seemed to find me. Mostly, it was Stone’s doing. He had a big mouth and a bad attitude and I just tried to keep him out of trouble.’ He sighed. ‘We know how that turned out.’
Matt refused to think about Stone. ‘Didn’t you ever wonder about Jessie?’
‘Every day, when I was sober, which wasn’t often in the early days. Problem was, I earned myself a reputation and George didn’t like that. When he moved away from here, he just seemed to disappear. At the time, I thought it was probably for the best. Marianne wouldn’t have approved of the way I was living and I felt I owed it to her to let Jessie lead a normal life.’
Matt smarted at the similarities between them.
‘What happened when you caught up with Ethan?’
‘We never did. He was always one day ahead of us. One town away. Always within reach but never within sight. And then one day, we heard he was dead, killed by an unknown assailant. No suspects and no witnesses.’
Matt hadn’t believed it was possible, but even after his death George Weekes had been looking out for him. Within a couple of hours of shooting Ethan Davies, Matt and Jessie were on their way to Garner to start a new life.
‘So why not come back then?’
‘To what? Jessie was gone and Stone was out of control. Ethan dying just made my guilt worse. I thought I owed it to him to try and straighten Stone out, but … call it payback.’ He stood up and straightened the sling on his arm as Jessie shouted to them from the house. ‘If you’re wondering whether I’d do things differently if I had my time over again, sure I would. Hell, I’ve got a lot of ground to make up but I’ve already started by unbuckling my gun and opening this house up again.’ He looked at Matt with that strange piercing stare. ‘You can do it, too. It’s not too late for you. You’ve got a girl there who’ll walk beside you, no matter what, but unless you can put the past behind you you’ll never know what that means.’
It was the truth, but it didn’t make Jethro’s advice any easier to take. Trouble had been dogging Matt’s heels for so many years, he still expected Stone or someone like him to show up and force him into a fight.
‘I’m no good. She deserves someone who can keep her safe and make her happy.’
‘And you don’t?’ Jethro slapped his hat against his thigh. ‘Son, you’re a fool. You risked your life for her, twice. As for a man who can make her happy … speaking as a father and, I hope, as a friend, I think you’re as likely to make her happy as any other man. I’ve seen the way you look at her with a twinkle in your eye. And I’ve seen the way she looks at you; the same way Marianne used to look at me. Stop listening for the echoes of a dead man. Accept that your fate and Jessie’s are tied together and that pulling away will only tighten the knot and make you both miserable.’
Damn Jethro. He had a way of shooting from the hip, even without the Smith & Wesson, and hitting a man right where it mattered. And Matt couldn’t disagree, but he’d be damned if he was going to let Jethro back him into a corner. He finished his coffee to the last drop, before placing his cup on the table and picking his crutch up off the floor. Jethro’s fingers gripped his arm, pulling him up and holding him steady as he balanced on one leg and righted the crutch.
‘I’m giving you my blessing,’ Jethro said, walking away. ‘Don’t be a fool; just take it. It’s not often a man gets a second chance in life.’
By the Same Author
Long Shadows
Ghosts of Bluewater Creek
Copyright
© Terry James
First published in Great Britain 2010
This edition 2014
ISBN 978 0 7198 1389 4 (epub)
ISBN 978 0 7198 1390 0 (mobi)
ISBN 978 0 7198 1391 7 (pdf)
ISBN 978 0 7090 9024 3 (print)
Robert Hale Limited
Clerkenwell House
Clerkenwell Green
London EC1R 0HT
www.halebooks.com
The right of Terry James to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
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