by Jo Goodman
“I went through it all again. The train, the hotel, the bags, the saloon. Nothing. I want to remember.”
“If it was you,” said Happy, “what do you think you were carrying in those bags?”
“Clothes? Look, Happy, I am not a peddler. I never sold hair tonic or miracle cures or ladies’ necessaries.”
“Shame.”
Willa’s eyes narrowed sharply. “So you do remember how you made your living.”
“I told you it would come to me directly.”
“And?”
“It did. I’m a writer. A reporter for the Chicago Evening Journal. Or I was. I think I must have quit.”
This declaration was received with more silence.
“A reporter,” Willa repeated. Her head titled slightly as she continued to eye him with considerable skepticism. “You know that’s something that can be verified.”
“I will give you the name of my editor.” He corrected himself. “Former editor.”
Zach asked, “Why do think you must have quit?”
“Because I’m here. I can’t think of a story that I would have chased this far.”
“Because you got no grit?” asked Cutter.
“Because the paper wouldn’t have paid.”
Cutter sat back on his stool. “Oh.”
“Hmm.”
“All right,” Willa cut in. “So if it wasn’t a story that brought you here, what did?”
“Don’t know.”
“What’s the last thing you remember clearly?” asked Zach.
“Walking down Wabash Avenue on my way to the paper. I was coming from the bank. Jones and Prescott.”
Happy scratched his chin. “Did you have bags with you?”
“Why? Do you think I robbed the bank?”
“Hadn’t exactly occurred to me, but now that you mention it.”
“Did you?” Cutter asked.
“Did I rob a bank?”
“Well, yeah.” Cutter said this in a perfectly reasonable tone. He looked around the table for support. “Why not?”
“Because it’s against the law?” Sarcasm had crept into Israel’s voice. “I’m only hypothesizing, you understand.”
Zach put his large hand over Cutter’s leaner one and patted it gently. “He’s not likely to admit it just because you asked.”
Cutter was forced to agree this was true, although it was clearly not a vote of confidence in Israel’s favor.
“For the record,” said Israel. “I did not rob the bank. I withdrew money; hardly enough to paper the bottom of one bag, let alone fill two. I also believe I said I was walking, not running, down Wabash.”
Under her breath, Willa said, “Jesus and Jehoshaphat.” In spite of how softly she spoke, or perhaps because of it, she garnered everyone’s attention. “What we know is that a man wearing a gray vest embroidered with silver thread, sporting a new hat, and carrying two bags arrived in Jupiter and did not stay long enough to make much of an impression on anyone, or really, any impression at all.”
“Don’t know that to be strictly true,” Happy said, ruminating aloud. “Let’s say for argument’s sake that our man here is the same one who tried to register at the Viceroy. Take a look at him. That’s right, Israel, don’t turn away. Give them an eyeful.” After a moment, he continued. “Seems to me that to come by that pretty face he must have made an impression on someone. I’m reasonably certain it was not a good one.” He winked at Israel. “I’m only hypothesizing, you understand.”
Israel nodded. “Sounds about right, though.”
No one disagreed.
Cutter reminded them, “The sheriff said there was no to-do in town.”
“That supports what you said yesterday,” Willa told him. “Remember? You suggested that he rode out with the men who did this to him. He might have been coerced to leave Jupiter with them, or he might have been taken unawares.”
“What about you?” Zach asked Willa. “What did you see when you were out there?”
“A pair of varmints,” she said without hesitation.
Israel’s brow furrowed but everyone else nodded. “Varmints?” he asked.
“Two-legged kind,” Happy explained. “Malcolm and Eli Barber. Father and son.”
Zach said, “Malcolm owns ranch land north and a bit east of here. A large tract of it shares a boundary with Pancake Valley.”
Happy grunted and refolded his arms hard across his chest. “There’s not a thing we share with the Big Bar ranch.”
Willa looked sideways at Israel. One side of her mouth angled upward in a faint but clearly sardonic grin. “No love lost between our families.”
“I’m getting that.”
“I’d just as lief shoot them as look at them,” said Happy.
“I told Mal that you would.”
“You talked to them?”
“Couldn’t very well ask them to leave without speaking, now could I?”
Happy harrumphed this time.
Zach got to the bigger point. “What were they doing on this side of the fence?”
Willa recounted her brief conversation with Malcolm and the aftermath. Happy and the ranch hands were as skeptical of the Barbers’ explanation for their trespass as Willa had been. Only Israel did not have an opinion.
“Once they were gone, I rode up to Monarch Lake just to make sure they had not been doing mischief.”
“Huh. Mischief.” The manner in which Happy said it made it a curse. “Is that what we’re calling it these days?”
“It’s what I’m calling it,” said Willa. “I circled the lake and I saw nothing to suggest anyone was attempting to divert the flow again. Everything was the same as the last time I was there.”
Happy was not placated. “I wouldn’t mind seeing for myself.”
Willa was sorely tempted to forbid it, but she held her tongue. He was still her father, and she owed him some measure of public respect. Besides, when he started drinking again, he might forget all about it.
Willa pushed back her chair and stood. She felt their eyes on her as she walked over to her coat and figured they probably thought she was leaving. She was not, though. She went through her pockets and came away with the knotted length of rope she had found near the spot where Annalea discovered Israel. She held it up for them to see, then brought it back and dropped it on the table.
“What do you make of that?”
Israel only looked briefly at the rope before he rolled back one sleeve of his chambray shirt and studied the friction burn that almost entirely circled his wrist.
“Yeah,” said Zach, staring at Israel’s wrist. “Looks right. I guess we know what it was used for.”
“What about that knot?” asked Willa. “You know anybody who makes a knot like that?”
“Not a hitch for roping a calf,” said Cutter. He raised both eyebrows at Israel and gave him a significant look. “Not a noose either.”
Israel pulled his sleeve back in place. “Yes,” he said dryly. “I’m aware.”
Happy picked it up and turned it over in his hand. “Different, ain’t it?” He gave it over to Zach. “What do you think?”
Zach shrugged. “Seems simple enough, but not as simple as a half hitch. That would have done the trick quicker, I think. Makes you wonder.”
“It’s a Portuguese bowline,” Israel said.
Happy cocked an eyebrow at him. “You know what it is?”
“Sometimes it’s called a French bowline.” He pointed to the knot. “Gooseneck.”
“And?” asked Willa.
Israel shrugged, sucked in a breath that he blew out slowly. “I’ve seen it used on riverboats.”
“Riverboats,” Willa repeated.
“Yes,” he said dryly. “Boats. On the river.”
Happy looked him up and down.
“You been on the river much?”
“Some. The Mississippi. Thought I might find a story there, maybe write a book, but Samuel Clemens had that covered.” When everyone but Willa regarded him blankly, he said, “Mark Twain.”
There was some nodding then and murmurs of agreement.
Willa asked Zach, “Do you know anyone with riverboat experience?”
“Never heard anyone tell about it. It’s interesting, though.”
“I thought so.” Willa took the rope from him and tossed it on the bunk on top of her coat. “I’ll take it back to the house.”
Israel followed the arc of the rope’s flight and continued to stare at it.
Watching him, Happy said, “You think it’s gonna give up some secret? Hell, maybe it’ll prompt you to give up one.”
Israel had no response for that. What he did was address Willa and ask, “What’s next?”
Chapter Five
Of course she had the answer to what was next.
As Israel shoveled muck from Miss Dolly’s empty stall, he reflected on that night eight weeks earlier and was moved to wonder why he had even asked.
The oddly sweet scent of manure filled his nostrils when he turned over the shovel. His mouth twisted in a wry smile. He was getting accustomed to the odor, but not so much that he was willing to breathe too deeply. His ribs alone no longer accounted for his reluctance because they had finally healed. From time to time he felt a twinge in the muscles around his shoulder, but Willa had been right about the pain fading quickly, and now he barely recalled that first electric jolt that sent him reeling.
Scrapes healed, scabs fell away, and every swelling receded. His battered features began to assume a different shape, one that suggested a handsome countenance might eventually be revealed. He knew what he looked like before, and he knew more or less what he could expect to see when the mottling across his face faded, but he avoided looking in the mirror until the day Annalea accused him of hiding behind an unruly beard and threatened to have Zach and Cutter take a razor to it. Because he believed she would make good on her threat and that they would take perverse delight in obeying this particular edict, he shaved.
When he was done, when he had wiped the smear of lather from his jaw and the dab from under his ear, he turned to Annalea and dazzled her with a single-dimpled smile that made her blink as wide as a barnyard owl.
Yes, he recalled thinking while he stared at his reflection. How he looked was a little bit important.
If Annalea’s sister had changed her mind on the matter, she never hinted at it. When Willa deigned to notice him, it was usually to show him how to do a particular task and then to reprimand him for not doing it to her satisfaction. He was aware that she did not single him out for attention. How she treated him was no different than how she treated Cutter, although Cutter was masterful by comparison. Zach avoided reprimands altogether because he was masterful and because more often than not he was the one she turned to for advice.
Israel watched Zach a lot, although he was rarely charged with the same chores. He did the things that Happy had once told him would only require two hands and two legs. Israel could have added that they also required a strong back, but he kept it to himself because it smacked of ingratitude. He mucked stalls, pitched hay, dug postholes, walked horses, hefted feedbags, hung the tack, polished saddles, and made repairs to the bunkhouse roof and the front porch of the main house without hurting himself too badly.
At night he slept very well.
Happy asked him if he dreamed about revenge. Israel said no. He did not say that sometimes he dreamed about Willa. Neither did he admit that he sometimes dreamed about John Henry.
If that sad hound was not on Annalea’s heels, he was underfoot. Israel could not shake him, which amused Zach. “It’s like you have magnets in your boot heels and John Henry’s got iron in his nose.”
Israel set the shovel’s edge against the floor so he could lean against it and regarded John Henry with a rueful smile. The dog reciprocated with a doleful examination. “Don’t you have somewhere you need to be? Maybe a rabbit to chase?”
John Henry flopped on his belly and set his head between his paws. His long ears spread out on the ground while his raised brown eyes remained fixed on Israel’s face. The dog watched him from under a pair of thickly wrinkled brows.
Israel sighed. “If you’re going to stay with me, you need to learn how to use a shovel.”
From the open barn door, Willa said, “Who is going to teach him? You? Right now that shovel is doing a fair imitation of a crutch, maybe a lamppost.”
Israel managed not to jerk to attention, but only just. This was not the first time she had caught him unawares. Not only did she move with feline grace, but she padded around on silent little cat feet.
Just to confirm she was wearing boots, his eyes drifted from her face and took a meandering path to the floor. It was a brief but excellent journey, and at the end, yes, there were boots. His chuckle was silent, but it lifted his chest on an indrawn breath. Shaking his head, amused, he leaned more heavily on the shovel handle.
“What can I do for you?” he asked.
“It’s the other way around this morning. Zach is headed into Jupiter. Depending on the weather, it could be a spell before anyone takes a wagon back to town. I thought I’d better ask you if there is anything you need.”
He held up his bare hands. “Gloves. The pair Cutter gave me were fairly worn to start, and I’ve finally finished them off.”
She walked over to him. “Let me see them.”
“The gloves? I left them in the bunkhouse.”
Willa pressed her lips together in annoyance. “No, your hands. Hold them up again.”
He did, palms out. There was a lot that was familiar about the gesture. A little higher and it would have been surrender. Turn them over, and it was reminiscent of his mother’s inspection before dinner. Neither was a memory he wished to revisit, and he suffered Willa’s examination until she waved his hands down.
“You should have said something earlier, maybe before Christmas came and went. Something like that would have been a fine present instead of the dime novels Annalea said you should have, not that a few blisters are going to kill you.”
“The dime novels were a good distraction from the blisters.” Recovered now, he said it with a measure of dry humor, but if she heard it, she was not amused. She merely stared at him out of those black coffee eyes of hers without any hint of what she was thinking. He stared back, but it was all he could do not to shift his weight.
“You had soft hands,” she said, pulling her gaze. “There were the scrapes and cuts, of course, but under that, your hands were soft. I don’t believe you had a callus before now.”
He looked at his palms. The skin across the backs of his knuckles had thickened and the fleshy ball of his hand was rough. His fingertips, too, were coarse. They rasped across the fabric of his clothes when he dressed. Oddly enough, he didn’t mind.
“Even on the middle finger of your right hand,” she said.
He frowned. “How’s that again?”
Willa removed the leather glove on her right hand and rubbed the side of her middle finger with her thumb. “Right here. I would have thought a writer, a reporter such as yourself, would have a callus here. From holding a pen or a pencil. See? I don’t. But then I am not much for writing.”
“I have a gentle grip.” He did not look away when she regarded him again, this time with a thoughtfulness that he suspected was meant to be unnerving. Israel promised himself that he would take the sharp end of a pencil to his eye before he’d show her that it was.
“So,” she said at last, tugging on her glove. “A pair of gloves. What else?”
He plucked at his shirt. “One of these, and I think I have enough money for another pair of trousers.”
“Don’t worry about the co
st. I’ll pay.”
“And make me your indentured servant? I don’t think so.”
One of her dark eyebrows lifted in a perfect arch. “Is that what you believe you are?”
“No. It is what I might become. I don’t want to be any more beholden than I already am.”
Willa screwed her mouth to one side as she slowly shook her head.
“What?” he asked. “What did I say?”
“I guess I don’t know why you feel beholden. You’ve thanked everyone, Annalea more than once, and that balanced the books if that’s what you were looking to do. It’s a fact that folks in these parts tend to help one another.”
“When you’re not stringing them up.”
“Or shooting them,” she said without missing a beat. “Look. What Annalea did, what any of us did, none of it is extraordinary. I take you for a reasonably smart man, and I’d wager that you’ve known for a long while that you can leave anytime you have a mind to. Maybe you really do feel beholden, but maybe, just maybe, you’re hugging that the notion to your chest because you don’t want to go. Feeling like you haven’t made it up to us helps you stay put.”
Israel said nothing. He could not recall the last time he was silent because words failed him. Perhaps it had happened when he had been roped like a calf for branding and threatened with death by dragging, but he did not think so. He imagined even then, especially then because he would have been under pressure, that he had found the right words to mount an argument. That he had been unable to persuade his attackers to abandon their plan had more to do with the nature of his offense against them than a failure of his glib tongue.
Willa offered a single-shoulder shrug and hooked her thumbs under her belt. “Just something to think about.”
“Hmm.” She surprised him then by dropping her gaze and looking around, in fact looking anywhere but at him. She affected a casual stance, had spoken her last words as if they carried no weight, but then her eyes slid down and away, and in that brief unconscious gesture, she showed him something that he believed she would have preferred to remain hidden.
She was not indifferent.
Israel tucked that revelation out of sight so the knowledge of it did not show on his face. He waited patiently for her dark eyes to drift once more in his direction. When they did, he met them with interest, not a challenge.
