by Rita Hestand
Maggie felt as though things were getting too cozy between them. Her mixed emotions had her flustered. “I need to get back. Abby could wake up.”
“All right,” Jesse agreed and they strolled home slowly in the moonlight. “I’m glad you’re here, Maggie. I didn’t think you would come, after I….”
She stopped dead in her tracks and looked at him. “After you turned me in?
Well, I might not have, but after Abby was born and I couldn’t deny she belonged to you, I figured you owed me. But you are a strange man, Jesse. Me and Abby bein’ here isn’t going to help you, you know? No one in these parts will condone a marriage between us. They’ll call you trash, just like me. You’ll probably never get a white wife now.”
“I want you as my wife, Maggie.” He stopped to look at her. His anger marred his handsome face. “If you’re worried about Constance, don’t. There’s nothing there.” He frowned. “I told you a long time ago, color don’t matter to me. In fact, your color is beautiful, same as you’re beautiful in here.” He reached to touch her heart.
She started to pull away, started to argue, but she closed her mouth. After they resumed their walk, she added, “I came here for one reason: protection. Not to be your wife.”
“And you’ll get it. How better than bein’ my wife?” His chin jutted sharply.
She hated the fact that he was already back in her heart, but she couldn’t deny the way he treated the baby or that Abby returned his affection. Not only that, but he didn’t seem to mind her rules so much, either.
What hurt was that she still loved the man as much or maybe more than before because she began seeing what he was made of. He was courageous, strong, kind, a good father, and deep down, in the corner of her heart, she still loved the man.
And he could easily end up dead with her there. Stubborn pride held her away from him. It was best she stayed away. At least that’s what she told herself. So why did she catch herself staring at him at odd times of the day? Why had her heart gladdened when he announced he was going to marry her? She knew the answer and feared he might, too.
“Guess I got a lot to learn?” After that they walked in silence for a while.
“Maybe we both do.” He nodded. “So tell me about the prison and what it was like.”
“Why? It was a prison, a stinky little room with rats as the only visitors and food fit for a dog.” Maggie grimaced. “I don’t like to think on those times. They are over, and I want to forget them and go on with my life.”
Jesse nodded. “I thought about you every day, Maggie. Sometimes you were the only thing that got me through the war.”
She stopped and looked at him, firming her lips in a pout she didn’t feel. Darn Jesse’s hide for making her love him so much. “Well, that makes me feel real good, Jesse.”
“Did you think of me?”
“No more than I could help, no. At first I felt a hate I didn’t know I was capable of,” she admitted aloud. “I damned you for everything. Until I faced the fact that I was guilty, too. After all, if I hadn’t hauled you to the cabin, none of this would have ever happened. But meeting you made me look at things differently, at the people I was hurting, the rebels. Some young and innocent. That part was hard to live with…still is. Livin’ in that little room, I did a lot of thinkin’. It wasn’t right what I did. And I really didn’t pay enough for what was done.”
“You paid, baby. You paid. But hate? You hated me?” He turned his head toward her.
“Hate.”
“Hate is a strong emotion, almost as strong as love.” He grinned.
“What I wanted to do with you then had nothing at all to do with love.” She frowned into his eyes. Yet in her heart, she had ached to have Jesse hold her again, too.
He nodded. “At least you’re honest. I can appreciate that. I’m sorry. I never figured a woman as beautiful as you would be sent to a prison, though.”
“Beauty has nothing to do with being a spy. A black spy at that. At first they wanted to execute me. Most of the guards just wanted me dead. One way or another. Sometimes I wish they had killed me. I was found guilty and sentenced to hang. That part was as it should have been, but I was petrified. However, at the time the war was picking up, and they threw me in a cell and forgot me for a while. By the time they decided to carry out the sentence, I was clearly with child.
They realized they couldn’t hang me without hanging an innocent.”
“I guess you really hated me when you found out you were going to have my baby.”
“I should have, but to hate you would be to hate the baby, and I couldn’t do that. Besides, being pregnant also kept me from hanging. The war was about over when I had her. The captain’s wife helped me birth Abby. I had an easy time of it.
The captain’s wife said I had hips made for making babies.”
“You have beautiful hips, and I guess she was right about that.” His eyes traveled over her.
Maggie blushed, remembering his love that she swore she had tucked far away from her heart. No man had ever loved her like Jesse had. She hadn’t let them.
When the Union soldiers acted as though they were interested in her, she’d play escape games with them. Even a black soldier tried to seduce her, but the spark wasn’t there. She’d already given her love away.
She shook herself mentally for even going there. “And everyone loved Abby.
She was just a ball of cute, fat, baby,” Maggie recalled with a smile.
“How long were you there after the war?”
“I hung around a while, as they needed my work. They told me it’d be safer if I stayed on a while, then moved out, as some of the guards had threatened me.
After a few months, trying to decide what to do, where to go, they told me I was free, but I didn’t have anywhere to go. So I decided to come here. When some of the soldiers left the fort after the war, they threatened to hunt me down and kill me. The captain’s wife was pregnant and she was so good to me, she made me feel so much better about myself. I stayed on and made a little money so Abby and I could travel here. I told the captain I was going to try to find you. That you owed me.” Maggie’s voice went to a whisper. “He and his wife agreed.”
“So we live the life of hell because I owe you, and I must live with a woman that hates me,” Jesse said with a smile.
“Is it hell to live with me?” she questioned.
“No.” He looked at her hard, but his voice lowered, softened, and he
whispered. “It’s hell to live with you and not have you, honey.”
And he walked off.
Maggie stood transfixed for a long moment, her heart thumping madly against her chest, her love swelling once more for the man she declared off limits by love rules.
Chapter Nine
The next day Jesse began building the room for Abby. Although it looked small, not much would go in it for a while. He laid the foundation and set up some of the walls, but he ran out of material. He’d have to go see Mr. Jenkins.
Maggie went to the creek to do the wash. She hauled the clothes in an old basket from the shed while Jesse watched her. How long would it take to bring Maggie around to his thinking? She’d been through a lot, and he was more than sorry for her troubles, but he couldn’t change the past. All he could do was look to the future. He’d learned some patience through the war and he could wait. She was well worth waiting for.
His loins still tightened in the same old familiar way when he looked at her, and calming his responses was not always as easy as he tried to make it look.
Sometimes he could barely walk. Maybe she would learn to trust a little more when they were married. Despite what she might say about marriage, Maggie wanted it. Deep down she was that kind of woman. When he thought on it, he found it odd that he knew Maggie almost as well as she knew herself.
He couldn’t worry about her feelings all the time. He had to consider building his place back up and making a go of it again. He’d get Maggie all the seedlings she nee
ded for her garden, secretly glad that she looked on this as a long-term investment.
The next day he would take her and Abby over to Jenkins’s place and
introduced his new family. Strange how little Abby had grown into his heart so deeply, but they already established a camaraderie that made Maggie jealous. He wasn’t fooling himself. Living with Maggie and Abby wouldn’t be easy. For everything they accomplished, there would be setbacks, some made by people, some the ordinary kind that most farmers faced in Texas.
He wondered why Lucy and Constance had come out to the place; they never had before. He had realized long ago that Constance wanted his land for her father, nothing more. At one time he’d liked her a little. Smiled at her, talked to
her, but when he found out she only wanted to romance him for his land, he lost interest. Perhaps Mr. Jenkins had spoken of Maggie and they were curious. On the other hand, perhaps they heard he’d come home from the war and decided to come calling. Maggie got upset, but there was little he could do about them.
People would come, go, and think what they wanted. It wouldn’t change anything as far as he was concerned. Once he’d met Maggie, other women ceased to be in his mind. Even after he turned her in, he still wanted her, still wished he could protect her from what he had done, but it was something he couldn’t change.
He wondered if they would ever get back to the kind of trust Maggie once showed him. He sure hoped so because that trust was about as sacred as anything he’d experienced.
Jesse wanted to run beeves on the land, but there was so much to do and little help. He’d start slow and build. But with a family to care for, he had more reason than ever to make a go of it. He’d even be willing to relocate if need be for Maggie and Abby’s sake. He wished they could have more children, but he’d have to break through the barriers of being unforgiven to accomplish that. He wanted a houseful of happy children, children he could teach to love the land and care for it. Children he could love and grow old and happy with. Most of all, he wanted to reclaim Maggie. And he wanted her to want him, too.
Love rules. Would time alone heal the wounds of war, or would they be trapped in a love/hate relationship forever? Jesse didn’t care. He was still glad she’d come, very glad. Moreover, nothing she would do or say could take away from that gladness in his heart. Jesse had the one thing he’d always wanted—a family.
He continued trying to scrape together enough supplies to do just a little more to the room. Then once he was sure there was nothing left, he went to the shed to consider his supply list.
Maggie hung clothes and sang. Jesse smiled to himself. She might act as though she was unhappy, but unhappy people rarely sang. The thought lifted his spirits.
Suddenly, gunshots rang out in the yard. Dust flew as bullets whizzed through the air toward the house. He started to run out, his first thought of Maggie, then
Abby. Maggie gathered Abby in her arms and tried to run to the house. He watched from the window of the shed. She made it and slammed the door. She’d bolt the door and keep their daughter safe. That made him proud, the way Maggie protected her baby above everything, their baby. God, he loved her!
Jesse sighed heavily then glanced about for the source of the trouble. It didn’t take long to spot the three men who had taken cover by the barn.
One he thought he recognized. The other two he’d never seen before. The man he recognized had long hair, and carried a knife on his hip. The other two were tall and thin. One had sandy brown hair that stood out around his hat. The other might have been bald; he couldn’t tell. He tried to gauge where they were exactly.
A seething contempt built inside him. How dare men ride into his yard bold as brass, with one aim in mind—killing his Maggie?
“Get inside the barn. See if you can pick her off from there,” one of the men shouted.
Jesse clenched his jaw and watched as the man sneaked into the barn, the one with the long hair. If he remembered correctly, the man could shoot, too.
Apprehension crawled up Jesse’s spine. He would not allow them the
advantage of ‘picking her off.’ They obviously didn’t know Jesse was there at all.
He had an advantage. He could sneak around the back way and get the one inside the barn before anything else happened.
Jesse took cover behind the shed and worked his way over to the back of the barn.
By then Maggie had the rifle loaded, shooting at them through the closed shutter. It was just enough distraction to gain their attention and let him get to them.
Jesse went through the rear of the barn and crawled through the door there.
He spotted the shooter fast enough. He stayed low, crawling in the hay, but instead of giving himself away, he pistol whipped the man in the head so the others weren’t alerted. He hit him hard enough to knock him out and watched as blood oozed from the gash. That should keep him out a while. Satisfied he wouldn’t have to contend with that one, he concentrated his efforts on the other two outside. Jesse picked up the gun and tossed it into the corner of the barn. He
spotted the second shooter through the far window and he turned in time to see him. He took one shot at him and the second shooter fell dead, got him right in the forehead. One out, one dead, and one very much alive, he assessed with quiet determination.
One more, Jesse counted, as the one with a long beard began shooting into the barn, and then scurried through the doorway to meet the blast of Jesse’s gun. A hail of bullets flew and Jesse took one in the leg. The other man had yelped too, so he figured he got him at least once before he could scramble for cover. “Might as well come on out. I’m determined to see you die unless you do,” Jesse called.
“Look, I don’t know who you are, but that woman in there is the Black Widow, a spy for the Federals. I aim to see her dead before the sun sets,” the man called out. “She was the most dangerous woman in the war. A dirty rotten spy that told the yanks who we were. She’s responsible for the men who died at Pea Ridge, Chalk Hill and bunch of other places. That’s a fact. I ain’t in the habit of killin’
women, but she deserves no better after what she done. So if you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay out of this, mister. Understand?”
“And I aim to see her unharmed.” Jesse chuckled. “Understand?”
“Why you want to protect a woman like that?” the man asked as though trying to figure him out. “I done told you what she did. You got any idea how many men she’s killed?”
“To tell the truth, I don’t. Did you see her pull the trigger? Were you there? She didn’t kill them. The Federals did. Put the blame where it belongs. And war is never a woman’s fault. But the war’s over, and she certainly wasn’t responsible for everyone’s death. Besides, she’s my woman.” Jesse laughed. “For better or for worse…”
Just then the man who’d been knocked out regained consciousness and Jesse spotted him out of the corner of his eye. The man grabbed his head but he spotted Jesse and quickly rolled behind a stub wall. “Throw me your gun, Joe! I see him.”
A pistol flew through the air, bumping against the stall and Jesse scrambled for different cover.
Bullets flew. Jesse’s heard the definite whiz of the bullet a second before fire burned his ear. He wiped blood from his check and hunkered down to wait them out. Sooner or later they’d make a move, and he’d get them.
For a few minutes all was quiet. Not one piece of hay stirred. Then suddenly the man he’d bashed in the head flew out and began firing in his direction. Jesse got off a shot. The man fell. Whether he was dead or not, Jesse didn’t know, and didn’t have the time to check.
The third man cocked a pistol behind Jesse. “Turn around. I want to see what kind of filth would protect a woman like her,” the man said as he spat his tobacco into the hay.
Jesse firmed his lips and turned around.
“Drop your gun,” the stranger demanded.
Jesse dropped it even though he considered trying to get off one more shot. It an
gered him that someone got the drop on him. He should have lasted a little longer.
“Well, I’ll be damned. Ain’t you the lieutenant that brought the Widow in?” He relaxed his gun hand.
Jesse’s eyes flew to the new position of the barrel, but the angry renegade was still eyeing him closely, so he waited. “That’s right. I turned her in.”
“And you’re protectin’ her? That don’t even figure.” The stranger lifted the gun level at Jesse and frowned.
The angry expression triggered Jesse’s memory. “I know you, don’t I? You’re Billings, Corporal Billings. Sure, you’re the one who wanted to kill her when I brought her in. Said she didn’t deserve to live. Said she didn’t deserve a trial.”
Jesse’s lip curled in disgust.
“That’s right. My brother died right out there in the sticks of Arkansas, all because of her. I swore on his grave that I’d get her. Left up to me, she’d have already hung.” The man spat, and cocked his gun. “I reckon you jest lowered yourself to white trash, Lieutenant. I be doin’ everyone a favor by takin’ you out, too.”
“Well, in the first place, I retired a captain.”
“A captain, huh? Always did want to kill me an officer.”
“I don’t think so,” came a throaty voice from the open doorway of the barn. “I don’t think you’re going to be taking anyone out.”
Jesse sighed with relief and grabbed the corporal’s gun as he whirled around to meet Maggie face to face.
“You better kill me now ‘cause that’s what I aim to do to you if’n I get the chance,” he said as he stared at the rifle Maggie held on him. Blood was everywhere now, and the man barely grimaced as he edged closer, eyeing her.
Maggie stood ready to blow his head off. Her lips curled in fury.
“Easy, honey. We’re sendin’ this fella back where he came from,” Jesse said, going to Maggie’s side.
