by Jo Goodman
“Well, damn. That’s not much.”
Willa pushed the stool at Cutter and dragged a chair to the table for herself. She sat. “Tap him on the shoulder—the injured one.” The suggestion was enough to encourage Israel McKenna to open his eye. “See?” she said to Cutter. “Possum.”
He nodded. “Do you need help sitting up, Mr. Roundbottom?”
The eye narrowed, first on Willa, then on Cutter. “The name’s McKenna. Israel McKenna.”
“She told me, but I like Roundbottom. So, are you hungry? It’s stew. A little on the blackened side but still edible. Zach brewed some white willow tea to ease your pain. You should drink up. Now what about that help? Can you feed yourself?”
Willa tapped the bowl of her spoon against the table to get the ranch hand’s attention. When he looked over, she gave him an eyeful of reprimand.
“I saw that,” said Israel. “I can stand up for myself.”
“Sit up first,” she said. “Then we’ll see about the other.” Mr. McKenna was not amused, she noted, but Cutter chuckled. Willa decided to ignore them both and concentrate on her dinner. They worked it out before she finished sopping up the last of her stew with a warm crust of bread.
“Tell Cutter your middle name,” she said, leaning back in her chair.
“Court,” he said. “Are you testing me?”
“Yes.”
He shrugged, winced, and then massaged his injured shoulder. “I have to stop doing that.”
“For now.”
“How long before it’s better?”
Cutter broke in. “This a first for you?”
“I think so.”
“Wouldn’t have thought you could forget something like that.”
“Here we go,” Willa told Cutter. She stopped short of rolling her eyes. Her stomach was full and just now eye rolling seemed like too much effort. “The convenient inconvenient memory.” She turned to her dinner companion and saw he had chosen the white willow tea over the stew. Except for grimacing and the occasional smothered groan, he had been stoic about the pain. But whether it was silence born of experience and expectation or some need to keep it from her, she didn’t know. “Or is inconveniently convenient?” she asked him. “No matter. You’ll be out of the sling in a few days, and you will notice improvement in a couple of weeks, a month at the outside. If you don’t care for it, though, the muscles will tighten and you’ll have problems there for the rest of your life.”
“It’s true, Roundbottom,” said Cutter.
Willa tapped the table again, this time with the flat of her hand. “Careful, Cutter. If he listens to me, he won’t always be in a sling, and he might be a credible shot.”
Israel shook his head. “I’m not.”
“Are you sure?” asked Willa.
“I am. Did you find a gun or a gun belt?”
“No, but as I told you, we didn’t find any money either.”
Cutter asked, “Did you have money?”
“I don’t know.”
Willa closed her eyes briefly and rubbed the lids with a thumb and forefinger. “How did you get to Jupiter?”
“I don’t know.” He put his spoon down and pushed the bowl away. “You’re the one who thinks that’s where I was.”
“You agreed with me.”
“Because it seems likely, but I don’t know it for a fact.” He plowed his fingers through his hair again. “How does anyone get to Jupiter?”
When Willa didn’t answer, Cutter did. “Mostly train these days. There’s a U.P. spur from Denver. You know what the U.P. is, don’t you?”
“The Union Pacific.”
“That’s right. Do you think you might have taken the train, Mr. McKenna?”
“Israel. And I don’t know.” He ignored Willa’s sigh. “Did I hear you say back where you found me that I might have ridden out with some others?”
Cutter’s eyebrows laddered his forehead as they rose. He looked at Willa.
“I told you,” she said. “He was listening even back then.”
“I’ll be darned.” Cutter massaged the back of his neck. “Yeah, I said it could have been like that. I thought there might be three, maybe four horses. Stands to figure one of them was yours. I didn’t take a lot of time to look around on account of we needed to get you here, but I can do that tomorrow.”
Willa shook her head. “Jupiter tomorrow. I’ll go back. It’s Pancake land. It’s my responsibility.”
“Is that why you rode out to find me?” Israel asked. “Your land? Your responsibility?”
“I rode out because Annalea asked me to. I brought you back because it was necessary.”
“The right thing to do?”
“Yes.”
“My brother would approve.”
There was no mistaking the derisive smile on that battered face, and Willa remembered that he’d said his brother always did the right thing. His brother, the saint. Well, she was not that, and she doubted it could be said of the other Mr. McKenna. “What is your brother’s name?”
“Quill.”
“Quill,” she repeated. “I’ve never heard it before.”
“It means cub. That’s what he is. The cub. My little brother.”
“And is Quill in Indiana with your parents?”
His lips twisted briefly in a scornful smile that further distorted his features. “Illinois. You know my parents are in Illinois.”
She did not pretend that she had made a mistake, and she did not apologize for trying to challenge his story. Instead, she turned to Cutter and directed him to take the tray to the house. “And tell Zach to make a poultice for Mr. McKenna’s eye and bring it here.”
Cutter darted a sideways look at Israel and then leaned over, picked up the damp eye pad lying on the bed beside him, and pressed it into Israel’s hand. “You can put that back over your eye now that you’re done eating. Swelling’s about the size of an egg, and the color’s the same purple shade of sky just as night’s creeping in. It’ll be full-on black in the morning.”
“The tray?” Willa said, pushing it in Cutter’s direction. “Now?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said solemnly, too solemnly. He practically telegraphed his wink and nod. “Right away.”
Willa waited until he was gone before she sighed. “He’s not wrong, you know. About the size of the swelling or the color.”
Israel placed the pad over his eye and held it there. “He took some pleasure in telling me.”
“I know.” She stood, pushed the table back, and then helped him lie down.
“He did it because he likes you.”
“I know.”
“I mean that he’s sweet on you.”
“I knew what you meant.” She adjusted the sling, tucked the blankets, and then looked him over. “Odd for you to say, though.”
He shrugged then clenched his jaw against the pain. After several long seconds, he slowly released the breath he was holding and closed his eye. His lips parted around a curse but he did not give it sound.
“Hurts some, does it?”
His breath hitched on a short, almost inaudible laugh, and he grimaced. “Some. Yes.”
Willa wagered he had never paid much attention to his ribs. He would be a fool not to now. She pulled the chair closer to the bunk so that when she sat, her knees touched the thin mattress. She leaned forward, resting her folded forearms on her thighs. “I can’t say this easy,” she said quietly, “but it needs to be said. You were sorely abused today, and I don’t know how it will end for you. I’m not a doctor, and it never occurred to me that you would want me to send for one, but if you—”
“No.”
“All right. I don’t pretend to know the extent of your injuries. I know what I can see, and I know what can be done about that, but there’s things I can’t see and wouldn’t kn
ow what to do about if I could. You took some hard knocks to your head, and you have a couple of knots under your scalp that might be something or nothing. You have not said anything about your head, so maybe it doesn’t hurt as much, or at least any worse, than your shoulder or your ribs or your eye or—”
“Or my knee,” he said. “My knee’s wrenched.”
“Or your knee,” she repeated quietly. “Or any other part of you that’s scraped, cut, or peeled away. Some injuries are going to pain you worse before they get better, so you have to be prepared for that. I think—”
“If I live,” he said. “I have to be prepared for it, if I live.”
“That’s right.”
He turned his head a fraction toward her and opened his eye. “But you’re more worried about my head.”
Now that he could see her, she nodded. “I don’t know how to judge the state of your faculties without asking you questions and hearing your answers.”
“So annoying me with them was intentional.”
“Yes.”
“But the number of questions you asked . . .”
“To keep you awake.”
“And the kind of questions . . .”
“To learn as much as I could as quickly as possible.”
“So you will know where to send the body.”
“Do not flatter yourself that I would go to the trouble or spend the money. I am only sending notification. You’ll go in the ground here.”
He stared at her with his one good eye, and then a chuckle began to vibrate his chest. Wincing, he pressed the arm in the sling against his injured ribs to hold them steady.
Willa smirked. “About the only thing you have not strained, sprained, or swollen is your funny bone, but you keep laughing like that and it’s going to kill you.”
He caught his breath and waited until the pain in his side passed before he spoke. “I take your point.”
“Good.” She sat up. “Now tell me about your brother. Does he still live in Illinois?” Willa was not certain he meant to answer her, but it turned out that the reply was only a long time coming.
“Whatever happens, you don’t involve him.”
“But—”
“I mean it.”
She did not understand, but she acquiesced. “All right.”
“Ever,” he said.
“All right.” When he continued to eye her, she said, “I am not taking a blood oath.”
“Hmm.” He blinked once and then turned his head to stare at the roof.
She said, “When Cutter gets here with the poultice, you can rest. Sleep if you like, at least for a while. Zach will know how often to wake you.”
He nodded, said nothing.
“Do you want more white willow tea?” The cup had been empty when Cutter took it away. “Zach can brew more.”
“No. It was enough.”
“I am going up to the house to see what’s taking so long. Don’t let Cutter rile you when he comes back with the poultice. Rest. I’ll look in on you tomorrow morning.”
“Elm Street,” he said suddenly. “Twenty-two Elm Street. Herring, Illinois. The Reverend and Mrs. James McKenna.”
Willa’s lips parted. She stared at him while he continued to stare at the rafters.
“My parents’ address,” he said. “In the event you need it.”
“I don’t think I will. I’ve changed my mind. You’re too ornery to die on us.”
Chapter Three
Israel Court McKenna did wake the next morning and had to sort through several simultaneous thoughts to make sense of any one of them.
First and foremost, there was the fact that he was awake and wished that he was not. For the time it took to draw a full breath, he wished he were dead and meant it. There was no part of him that did not hurt. His hair hurt, for God’s sake. Every strand.
He grasped at another thought, scrabbling the sheet with his fingers as though the thought had real weight and texture and substance. The woman—Willa—had said he was too ornery to die, and she might have been right. Probably was. He had been cursed all his life for his disobedience, his willfulness, and he had never been in a position to claim he stood opposed to things as a matter of principle. Mostly he did it out of sheer perverseness.
Now he wondered what perverse thing he had done this time. It was not a thought he wanted to dwell on. Not at all. It pained him more than his hair, but he had to consider it. He’d been honest with the girl. The young one. Annalea. He had been truthful about the kind of man he was. A bad one. And he had also been honest with her sister. He did not know what happened to bring about this mean justice. He had no memory of Jupiter, although when Cutter suggested that he might have arrived by train, it resonated.
Why would he have gone to Jupiter when his destination was a ranch outside Temptation?
Cutter said Jupiter was a spur that started in Denver, which meant the town was on a dead-end route. It made no sense that he would have boarded a train to nowhere when there was somewhere he particularly wanted to be. But then again, he had done foolish things before, so there was precedence for this.
He had meant to change, had really believed he could, even thought he had begun, but here he was without ways or means, clearly past redemption. Was it an irony that he had actually, finally resisted Temptation, or only egregious wordplay? That errant thought made him chuckle, wince, and then recall that Willa had warned that his funny bone would kill him.
Israel removed the poultice from his eye and gently explored the puffy skin around it. If there was any change, he couldn’t tell. He searched for the cloth Willa had put over his eye before the poultice arrived, but he could not find it. He used a corner of the sheet instead to try to clear the crusty matter that filled the seam between his upper and lower lids. He did the best he could, but he needed a damp cloth and stopped before he did more injury.
“Good,” Annalea said. “You’re awake. I brought you breakfast.” She set a tray on the table. “Oatmeal and more tea. Oatmeal on account of Willa thinking you should have soft food and tea for your pain. I guess you had some trouble chewing the meat in the stew last night. Could be you have a couple of loose teeth. Better to keep them in your mouth.”
“Where is your sister?”
“That’s all you have to say?”
“It’s a start.”
“So is ‘good morning.’”
“Good morning. Where is your sister?”
“She rode out to the place where we found you.”
“Already? She said she was going to look in on me.” He wondered if he sounded disappointed. He was. A little.
“She did that earlier. You were sleeping and you were fine and she has chores. Cutter’s gone to Jupiter, and Zach is in the barn putting fresh hay into the troughs. Pa’s snoring. He’s the only one here who sleeps in. Willa says things go better if we let him.”
Israel cast his eye past Annalea to the doorway. “I don’t see your dog.”
“John Henry sniffed out a rabbit. He’ll come back eventually.”
“With the rabbit?”
“Probably not. He doesn’t have the bloodlust. I do, though. That’s what Pa says makes me so good with my slingshot. Your eye looks awful, by the way. Do you need help sitting up? Willa said you might but that you probably wouldn’t ask. Was she right?”
“I need you to leave.”
Her face crumpled and she thrust out her lower lip. “Why?”
“Because.”
“But I’m supposed to make sure you eat your breakfast.”
“And you can do that, but first you need to leave.”
Annalea’s lower lip began to quiver.
He was unmoved. “Can you also cry at will?”
She blew out a breath hard enough to make her lips vibrate and then gave him a saucy grin. “I can, you
know.”
“I figured. It’s a gift. Now go.”
Annalea rolled her shoulders so her twin braids fell forward. She tugged on them as she backed out of the bunkhouse, her gaze never straying from his. “I reckon I got it in my head now why you need privacy. Holler when you’re done. I’ll be right outside.”
“Wonderful,” he muttered. Lord, he would be grateful when he could walk to the outhouse.
* * *
Willa made a striking figure on horseback. She sat tall and straight in the saddle, relieving her mare of the full burden of her slight weight. She was a skillful rider and learned most of what she knew from her father before he became a slave to the bottle. He had her in the saddle before she could properly walk; at least that’s what she had been told. It might even have been true because she felt the most at ease while she was riding, whether she was flying with the wind or resilient in the face of it.
It was another cool morning, the fourth they’d had in a row, and Willa stopped once to pull a black woolen scarf out of her coat pocket and wrap it around her neck and the lower half of her face. In the east, the sun was climbing in a cerulean sky but not offering much in the way of heat, and to the north there was a front approaching, an endless gray cloud carpet unrolling in her direction.
Willa’s mount was a sleek, cinnamon-colored mare with an ebony mane and dark brown eyes as expressive as those of a heroine in a dime novel. Willa named her after her personal favorite, Miss Felicity Ravenwood.
Willa guided Felicity along Potrock Run until she came to the place where Annalea had found Israel McKenna. She dismounted, searched the area for what they might have missed the day before, and found a short length of rope, still knotted in the middle, with blood on it. She guessed that it was what had bound his wrists. There was nothing extraordinary about the rope itself—she had coils of the same back at the ranch—but the knot intrigued her because she hadn’t seen one like it used by cattlemen.
Deciding that it was worth studying later, she stuffed it in the pocket where she had kept the scarf and remounted to cross the run. Felicity picked her way across the shallow stream with the same delicate care for her hooves that her namesake might have shown for a new pair of kid shoes.
