Rigid with exasperation, Ethan swung his bare legs over the side of the bed, yanked his pants over his hips and paced to the window.
Rising up on one elbow, she watched as he leaned against the wall and stared through the glass. In the dim moonlight she saw his shoulders tighten as he raised his hand to his face and tried to scrub away the tension. Finally he said, “Would you stay if I asked?”
Something hard and needy passed between them, and her pulse quickened with dread. “Are you asking?”
Turning slowly, he said, “Yes, I am.”
His eyes glistened like obsidian, hard and black, and she wondered where this stranger had come from. Pushing to a sitting position, she untangled her nightgown from the sheets and pushed her arms through the sleeves. “If I don’t go tomorrow, then when? Next week? Next year?”
Ethan shook his head. “LeFarge is still a threat.”
“But we don’t know that.”
“I know it. If he thinks you have Dawson’s money, he’ll come back for it. He could hurt you, Jayne, and the baby, too.”
Tremors shot down her spine. She raised her hand to protect her belly and yet it was the baby that spurred her on. “I’m sorry, Ethan. But I don’t want this child growing up in a house where every sound makes her jump like a scared rabbit.”
Sliding his gaze from her face, he turned to the window where the moon had dropped below the mountains and the sky absorbed the light like black velvet. She saw him grip the sill as if he could push back the night, but nothing moved. His fingers turned white. Then his shoulders sagged and he dropped his chin to his chest.
With a startling clarity Jayne saw the brutality of the choice she had asked him to make. He could follow his instincts and protect his wife, or he could go against that urge and trust her judgment. For a man who had blamed himself for his first wife’s death, the choice was cruel.
But his plan was just as harsh. She had trusted one man’s judgment and lost everything. Sometimes a woman had to stand on her own in spite of the cost. It was a matter of principle. Her heart thumped against her ribs as she stepped to his side and touched the tight muscles in his arm.
“I don’t want to hurt you, Ethan, but I have to go tomorrow, just to prove that I can.”
He shook his head. “One more month. If we don’t hear anything by then, I’ll forget the man ever breathed.”
It was a reasonable request, but she had already made plans with the Chandlers. “I need time to do a good job. I want the dress to be special.”
“All right,” he said, heaving a sigh. “Then I’ll go with you.”
“No,” she said firmly. More than the dress was at stake. Ethan had married a capable woman, and she hadn’t changed just because he’d slipped a ring on her finger. She touched his arm. “That won’t solve the problem.”
“You’re being stubborn.”
“Call it whatever you want, but I’m going tomorrow and I’m going alone. You have to understand. I’ve got a mind of my own and I’m going to use it.”
“I know,” he said, shaking his head. “That stubbornness is one of the things I love most about you. I won’t stand in your way, but I’m going to ask you to please be careful.”
“I will. I’ll be back long before sundown. I promise.”
“If you’re not, I’ll be all over this mountain looking for you.”
He had made his voice light and she loved him all the more as she slipped into his arms. As he pulled her close, she felt a stirring deep in her body. It was small and alive, a feather-like tickle, and she caught her breath. “I feel the baby!”
Belly to belly, they stood with their foreheads touching. Humming with contentment, she leaned against her husband.
As he tightened his grip around her waist, his breath grazed her ear. “Are you sure you have to go?” he said.
“Yes,” she answered. “More than ever.”
Ethan woke up with a pounding headache. Three cups of coffee didn’t take it away, and neither did Jayne’s promise to stay alert. As he walked across the yard to saddle her horse, he squinted up at the gray clouds and tried not to think about bad weather.
He had asked her to take the buckboard and follow the main road, but she had been adamant about riding over the ridge. It was the same trail they had taken to Raton, so she knew the way. It was also shorter, a fact that gave him some comfort.
After cinching the saddle and checking it twice, he led the gelding into the yard where Jayne was waiting on the porch. Dressed in a split skirt and a brimmed hat, she looked liked an ordinary ranch wife calling on a friend. This morning he’d watched her pack the red sewing bag dangling from her hand. It held a tape measure, a packet of pins, a sketch book and two pencils. For the hundredth time, he wondered if he had made the right decision.
“I could still go with you,” he offered.
She shook her head. “I’ll be just fine.”
With an air of confidence he envied, she mounted the horse and settled into the saddle. He knew what it was like to be left with things unsaid and undone, and so he forced a smile as he handed her the reins. “It’s a beautiful day for a ride,” he said. “Enjoy yourself.”
Smiling sweetly, she leaned down and kissed him on the lips. “I’ll be back before you know it.”
Ethan doubted it. He was in for the longest day of his life. “You have the gun in your pocket, right?”
She nodded. “Yes, but I’d rather leave it here.”
He almost agreed with her. The woman couldn’t shoot worth a damn. During their lessons, half the bullets had ended up in the dirt and the other half had flown over the stack of tin cans and into the trees.
“Keep it where you can reach it,” he said firmly. “You might need it to scare away a coyote, or if you get lost, or if—” If he didn’t stop thinking, he’d never let her go. “Just take it.”
When she glanced at her pocket as if it held a live snake, Ethan worried even more. Finally he said, “Have a good day.”
“Thank you,” she said. “For everything.”
He forced a smile, but he didn’t deserve her gratitude. He wanted to pull her down from the saddle and lock her in the cabin.
She was being foolish, and he hated it.
She was being courageous, and he admired her for it.
She was doing what a normal wife would do, and he envied her that confidence.
After nudging the horse into a fast walk, she turned in the saddle, waved goodbye with a smile and disappeared down the trail.
Timonius couldn’t believe his good luck.
Sitting like a statue on the broken-down gray, he watched the Dawson woman ride off alone. He’d been spying on the couple for two days now. Yesterday, when she’d fallen asleep on the porch, he’d been about to strike when those do-gooders had shown up and ruined his plans.
Shaking with fever, he endured another fit of coughing. His lungs felt like wet sponges and his bones ached like he’d been in a fight. He belonged in bed, preferably a clean one, but the past few days had been well spent. He’d learned that the rancher was expecting him, and he kept the woman in the cabin as much as possible. He probably fancied himself to be in love with her, a notion that Timonius intended to use against him.
The woman wasn’t nearly as cautious, and Timonius watched like a buzzard as she rode away from the ranch and took the right fork, probably to visit a neighbor. Wanting to put distance between himself and the rancher, he decided to shadow her for a while.
A good hour passed.
It was time…except he had a catch in his throat. He knew what was coming. To cover up his coughing, he buried his mouth in the crook of his elbow. When the spasm hit, his chest shook so hard that he nearly toppled from the saddle. His ribs felt close to cracking and he tasted blood from his torn-up throat. When the fit finally passed, he was so weak that a child could have knocked him flat.
Through the thinning trees, he saw the Dawson woman ride out of the forest. The path led to a ranch with a two-sto
ry house and a couple of boys playing mumblety-peg in the yard. Let her have her day, Timonius thought. He’d ambush her on the way back.
As soon as Jayne vanished over the hill, the air in Ethan’s lungs turned sour. His head throbbed worse than ever, but he wasn’t about to sit inside the cabin nursing a headache. He’d go crazy if he thought too much, so he looked around for something to do.
The problem was that he had finished every job that kept the cabin in sight. He didn’t want to ride out and check the cattle, though he should have. Somehow the cabin connected him to his wife, and he couldn’t bear the thought of being more alone than he already was. The barn was nearly done, too. The men had put on the first coat of white paint just before dusk, and he needed to buy more before he could finish the job.
Looking at the new building, Ethan felt a rush of gratitude. It rose from the landscape like a child’s first tooth, and he thought of the one chore that still had to be done. The black mountain of debris hadn’t been touched, and next to the white barn it looked like pure filth.
Yesterday, John had been blunt about it. “When are you going to get rid of that mess? It’s an eyesore and it stinks to high heaven.”
“I’ll get to it,” Ethan had replied. He’d turned away before the Reverend could see his eyes. The mountain of debris was a reminder to be careful, to hold tight to each day, and part of him didn’t want to tear it down.
Now, standing in the yard with his hands on his hips, Ethan looked long and hard at the rotting wood. In his mind’s eye, the misshapen heap took on the face of the devil himself, of LeFarge threatening Jayne, and even Ethan’s own dark side—the part of him that would have broken his wife’s spirit because of his own fear.
He didn’t like what he saw. If Jayne could get on with her life, so could he. It was just a matter of doing what had to be done.
Striding into the barn, he snatched the pickax, marched up to the rubble and swung the blade high and hard. He flashed back to digging Dawson’s grave and seeing Jayne for the first time. As the metal head bit into a rotting timber, a chunk of debris flew six feet in the air.
Ethan swung the ax again, even harder this time. He worked in a fury until sweat soaked his shirt and black dust clung to his face and hair. The stench of rot filled his nostrils, and he tasted particles of burned wood in the back of his throat.
Picturing the outlaw’s gaunt face, Ethan drove the ax deeper into the debris. Rage consumed him. Strong, putrid and nearly blinding, it pulsed from his spine to his fingertips and into the head of the ax as he tore the mountain apart. Every blackened board and every brittle nail, every grim reminder of LeFarge, had to be plowed back into the earth where it would erode into the soil and even do some good.
Birds cawed as Ethan worked. A buzzard circled over the ridge, but he refused to follow its sweeping arc with his eyes. The sun peaked in the noon sky, but he didn’t stop to eat the meal Jayne had left for him. Instead he guzzled water from the well and hurried back to his task.
The debris pile was nearly level now. Using a shovel and hoe, he spread the dross throughout the meadow. Before he knew it, he reached the rocks marking Dawson’s grave. Looking down, Ethan took in the green grass growing between the stones and a scattering of orange poppies reaching for the blue sky. Yellow sunshine warmed his shoulders, and he paused to take in both the vastness of the earth and the smallness of a single human life.
The grave might have been Laura’s resting spot, or Jayne’s, or his own. He closed his eyes, wishing with every breath that he’d hear his wife’s horse coming down the trail. He counted to ten, then twenty, but nothing happened.
There was no breeze, no sound, no sense of time or space or life of any kind. Then, in that long, unearthly quiet, he heard first one gunshot, and then another and another, ringing across the land like thunder coming before a storm.
Chapter Nineteen
A s long as she lived, Jayne would remember lifting Priscilla Chandler’s wedding dress out of the old-fashioned cedar chest. The dress had yellowed with age and it needed a good pressing, but the wrinkles only made her mother seem closer. A quiet joy filled Jayne’s soul as the older woman reached across time to bless her daughter’s marriage and the baby in her womb.
Feeling both lonely for her mother and joyous, Jayne held the dress up to the sunlight pouring through the bedroom window. “It’s beautiful,” she said.
“I knew your mother well,” Priscilla replied. “I always thought she poured her love into wedding dresses because someone had broken her heart.”
“My father died when I was three. She married again, but her second husband wasn’t a good man. I don’t think she trusted anyone ever again.”
“That’s a shame,” said Priscilla. “It’s not easy to start over, but it’s worth the effort, don’t you think?”
“I definitely do.”
She had started over today by making this trip to the Chandler ranch and so had Ethan. Longing swelled in her chest. Since her husband had given her this moment, she wanted to return the consideration by arriving home sooner than he expected. Moving with familiar precision, she took Amy’s measurements, sketched the dress and sat down for a quick lunch with Priscilla and her daughter.
The three women talked about the wedding.
“At least two of my friends are getting married next year,” Amy said. “They both want special dresses, but the seamstress in Midas says fancy things take too much time, and she doesn’t like to do them. Do you think you could sew for my friends?”
“I’d love to,” Jayne replied.
Priscilla chimed in. “The town’s growing every year. If you want the business, we’ll pass the word and you won’t know what to do with all the work.”
A slow smile spread across Jayne’s face as she imagined the pleasure of sewing for new brides in Midas. “I’d like that,” she said. “Maybe wedding dresses only. I’ll be busy with Ethan and the baby.”
“He seems like a good man,” Priscilla said. “I’m glad to see him happy.”
“We’re good for each other,” Jayne replied. “I’m happy, too.”
A pure and honest contentment poured from her heart. She had everything a woman could want—a loving husband, a baby on the way, friends and meaningful work for her hands. She could hardly wait to get home, just to tell Ethan how much she loved him.
“I have to go,” she said when the dishes were done. “Ethan will be worried.”
“Of course, he will,” said Priscilla. “All men worry from time to time. Tell him Luther and I are expecting you two for Sunday supper sometime.”
Jayne bid the two women farewell, climbed on Buck and headed for home.
An hour later she was glad she had taken the precaution of leaving early. The ride was more uphill than downhill and the gelding’s pace slowed with each weary step. The shadows in the forest were thickening with each passing minute.
“Come on, Buck. It’s not much farther.”
As she leaned forward to pat the horse’s neck, a shimmer of gray caught her eye. The flash had come from the trees a few paces ahead of her. It was too pale to be a shadow and too dull to be a ray of sun.
Her skin prickled as she scanned the sides of the trail where pine branches formed a net of sorts. Turning the gelding, she peered down the road she had just taken and waited for muted hoofbeats or the stirring of a bird, but she didn’t see a thing.
With a breath to steady her nerves, she nudged the gelding into a faster walk.
“Hold it right there, Jayne.” The dry voice drifted through the pines like smoke.
Every instinct told her to make a run for it, but LeFarge had picked the spot well. Steep slopes marked both sides of the trail and the path stayed straight for several yards. If she bolted, he’d have plenty of time to aim and fire before she vanished around the bend.
Acid churned in her stomach. Ethan was waiting for her, and he’d be worried sick. She couldn’t let him down. She had to escape before LeFarge shot her dead or dragge
d her home with a gun pressed against her temple.
Trust God and stay strong.
Her mother’s advice rang clear and true, and Jayne knew what she had to do. If she couldn’t outrun the outlaw, she’d have to bluff him.
Squaring her shoulders, she peered straight into the forest until she spotted him between two Jeffrey pines. His duster hung like a rag from his scrawny shoulders, and his skin was the color of damp flour. Even his horse was gray, a dappled nag that looked as exhausted as he did. Only his orange hair, dirty and unkempt beneath his dusty hat, convinced Jayne that the ghost in front of her was human and not a specter rising from the grave.
“What do you want?” she demanded.
“You already know what I want.”
He guided his horse between the two Jeffreys and rode up next to her, putting them face to face. The stench of his breath filled her nose. Nearly gagging, she forced herself to look into his eyes. The blue irises were glittery with fever, and the whites were covered with a sickly pink film.
The man was ill and possibly delirious with fever. Her only hope was to play to his greed. “You want the money Hank Dawson stole,” she said evenly. “It’s in a bank in Los Angeles. I’ll give you his will and a letter.”
“It’s a little late for the truth, isn’t it, Jayne? You didn’t tell me about the bank account before, and I have to wonder what else you’re keeping from me.”
“Nothing. Hank left me with the train tickets. That’s all.”
He cocked the hammer of his gun and aimed it at her face. She had to buy time. “Okay,” she said calmly. “You’re right. There’s more money.”
“Where is it?”
“You’ll kill me if I tell you.”
“I’ll kill you if you don’t,” he said, stroking the trigger.
“It’s hidden,” she said. “You can have it all, but I want something in return.”
“You’re in no position to bargain.”
West of Heaven Page 21
