Hang Your Heart on Christmas: A Clean & Inspirational Western Historical Romance (The Brides of Evergreen Book 1)

by Heather Blanton

  Dent recognized him. Casey Watson. There were half-a-dozen Wanted posters on him for his robberies. “You’re shot in the stomach, Casey. Not much I can do.” He peeled the thief’s hand away. “You with those boys that robbed the bank in Evergreen two days ago?”

  Writhing in pain, Watson nodded.

  “I’m lookin’ for them, Tom Packett especially. Where were they headed?”

  “Promise to put me outta my misery,” he labored to speak, “and I’ll ... I’ll tell ya.”

  Specializing in dyin’ ...

  He cupped his fist over his mouth, rested his elbow on his knee. The man was dying anyway. Probably wouldn’t even make it into town for Doc to put him down with morphine. He didn’t owe Casey the courtesy of a bullet, but the man was only a thief. He’d never so much as butted a bystander with his revolver. “Tell me and I’ll do it.”

  Sweat poured off the man as he writhed and dug his heels into the dirt. “Hole-in-the-Wall ... but it’s a ploy. They’re really headed to Arizona.”

  “And the boy, Israel. Was he there of his own accord?”

  Casey rolled his head back and forth and grunted. “No. His pa threatened to hurt the schoolteacher,” a shriek tore loose from him then he curled up like a possum, panting hard.

  “Go on.”

  “He—he said he had to come or else. Oh, gaaah …”

  “Did he have a gun?”

  Casey wagged his head. “I don’t know, I don’t know, now, please, God—please kill me!”

  “How’d you get into the safe? It wasn’t blown?”

  “Bank teller … left the combination … in a … brick beneath the bank.”

  “Which teller?”

  Casey writhed; sweat poured form him. “I don’t know!” he screamed.

  Dent rose and hurried back to his horse, shoving Casey’s rifle in between the saddle and blanket. He dug around in his saddlebag for a note pad and a pencil, scribbled a confession, and jogged it back to Casey. “Here, sign this.”

  Whimpering now, the pain was so excruciating, Casey didn’t question. Dent laid the paper on the ground and the outlaw scribbled his name, leaving a bloody print on it. Soul weary from this unending dance with death, Dent stood and pulled his .44.

  He aimed it as Casey, who suddenly spasmed like he’d been hit by lightning, then he relaxed, and a long, slow, final breath escaped him. His eyes glazed over, seeing nothing.

  Dent pounded on the hotel room door. Muffled complaints came from the other side, but shortly, Judge Swain opened up, still positioning his glasses, white hair tossed every which way.

  Dent shoved past him into the dark room. “I’ve got a confession here, Judge—”

  “Hold on, hold on,” the judge growled. “Let me see, where did I ...?” A moment later a match struck, illuminating the man’s boney, stern face. He tilted the shade on his lamp and lit it. “Now, what in the Sam Hill do you want?”

  Dent stepped closer, letting the light show his face. “It’s me, Judge, Dent Hernandez—Sheriff Hernandez. I’ve got a confession that will clear Israel Packett.”

  “Do you now?” The judge tugged a flannel robe on over his nightshirt and slipped his feet into a pair of sheepskin slippers. “Let me take a gander.” Dent handed over the note as the old man pushed his spectacles higher on his nose. He read it and scrunched his face. “This doesn’t prove anything. It just says Israel Packett was there under duress. That’s the kind of thing I consider during the sentencing, if it’s even true. It doesn’t clear him of riding with bandits. He could have alerted the town to the robbery if he’d really wanted to. I’m going to charge him with murder, and then see what the lawyers do with that.”

  Hopeless and deflated, Dent sank to the bed. “Judge, that boy was trying to make a new start for himself. He was going to the schoolteacher for tutoring. He was working to get away from men like his pa.”

  Judge Swain sank into a chair and pulled off his spectacles. Wiping them on his nightgown, he stared at Dent. “You care what happens to the boy?”

  Yes, he did. Not as much as he should perhaps, and Amy figured into his thinking right much. He didn’t want to see the boy convicted. More importantly, he didn’t want to see him hanged, by his hand or anyone else’s. “Yes sir.”

  “If I give you more time, can you find some member in that gang to swear the boy didn’t have a gun?”

  Dent leaped to his feet. “Yes sir.”

  “I’ll delay the trial for one month. Not a day more.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Amy pushed open the door to the sheriff’s office, her left arm supporting a napkin-covered tray. She supposed if Dent hadn’t ridden in during the night, she could eat the eggs and bacon herself and visit with Israel. She had time to do a lesson with him before school started, as well.

  As she peeked into the front room, she realized Dent was there, stuffing a saddlebag. “Oh!” He was shirtless, and Amy caught a glimpse of wide shoulders, powerful arms, and a stomach she could scrub her laundry on. She quickly spoke to the ceiling as he reached for a shirt. “Good morning. I was hoping you’d be back. I brought breakfast for you and Israel.”

  Buttoning his shirt, he hurried across the room to take the tray. His hands covered hers and, for a moment, they held each other’s gazes. She wanted to lose herself in his dark, mesmerizing eyes and the warmth of his arms. His hands jolted her and comforted her, and she longed for another kiss.

  “I’ve been thinking about you,” he said softly. A twinge in his brow told her he wanted to say more, but she knew he wouldn’t. He took the tray and set it down on his desk. “Amy, I have to ride out again, and I may be gone for a bit this time.” He lifted the napkin and stole a biscuit, plucking small pieces from it as he talked. “The good news is the judge delayed the trial for a month. The bad news is if I can’t bring in any members of that gang ... Israel may get convicted for McGyver’s murder.”

  “That would be a tragedy.” They both jumped at the mayor’s voice again. Amy suspected the mayor picked his timing carefully. He eyed her and Dent coldly as he stepped into the office. He pulled off his bowler and nodded at Amy, forcing a smile. “It seems I’ve interrupted another tender moment. But please take comfort, Miss Tate, in the fact that Israel won’t suffer if he’s convicted. We have the best hangman in the territory.” He tagged Dent on the elbow, almost playfully. “Eh, Sheriff?”

  Dent’s face drained of color as it hardened like stone. “That’s not something I care to discuss right now.”

  “Come now, Dent. Your skills with a rope can bring Miss Tate and Israel a certain amount of peace.” Clearly warned off the subject, the mayor persisted and he shifted to Amy. “If the boy has to hang, Dent’s the man to place the noose. He hasn’t botched an execution yet.” Mayor Coker snapped his fingers. “Just like that, and it’s over. No strangling, no decapitations—”

  “Mayor,” Dent growled.

  “Oh, I suppose that was rather callous of me.”

  And it was too late. At first, Amy hadn’t followed, but now ... she singed Dent with a burning stare. “You’re a hangman?”

  “Amy, he’s only saying these things because he wants me out of town. For good.” Dent scowled at the mayor. “I know about the oil. That’s why you wanted Pa’s ranch, and why you want Ben’s.”

  “Is he making it up then?” She felt nauseated, and her legs trembled.

  Dent squeezed his eyes shut against the mayor’s triumphant leer.

  “Oh, I’m sorry.” But the mayor didn’t sound sorry. The condescension practically dripped from his lips. “I thought you knew, Miss Tate. He’s famous. Many an outlaw has spent his last seconds on earth staring into the Sheriff’s face.”

  Dent tossed his biscuit down, and slugged the mayor so hard, Amy heard something crack. She wasn’t sure whose bone it was. Dent’s fist struck as quick and clean as a lightning bolt, snapping the mayor’s head back. He staggered, throwing a hand over his nose, but di
dn’t go down.

  Amy gasped, and stepped away from Dent. “What is the matter with you?”

  He flexed his fingers then rubbed his knuckles. “He’s playing us against each other.” The mayor sort of growled and glared at Dent. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and pressed it to his bleeding nose.

  “Is that why you hit him?” she asked. “Or were you trying to silence him?”

  “I’d say our sheriff would very much like me to quit talking,” Mayor Coker argued through the cloth over his face. “And you’re lucky there’s a lady present, Dent. I owe you one now.”

  “Anytime, Mayor.”

  “I came to tell you Judge Swain has granted a delay. And this is the thanks I get.”

  “We already know.”

  Mayor Coker’s eyes bounced uneasily from Dent to Amy and back again. “Fine.” He picked his hat up off the floor and left, slamming the door behind him.

  Dent faced Amy. He worked his jaw back and forth for a moment then straightened up tall. “I should have told you. I just hoped maybe you’d never need to know it.”

  Amy bit her lip and tried to calm her breathing. “Would you hang that boy?” Everything they had started building between them hinged on his answer. Please, say no. She looked at him directly. “Would you do that?”

  Pain etched itself in the lines on his forehead, the way he clenched his jaw. “Amy, I ...” He ran his hand through his hair and walked back over to his saddlebag sitting in a chair.

  “I’ve hung eighteen men,” the confession sounded ripped from him, but he didn’t stop. “In the process of arresting fugitives, I’ve killed twenty-two.” He closed the flap on the bag, threw it over his shoulder and faced her. “I don’t know anything el ...” His voice cracked. He swallowed, regained his composure, and started again. “I don’t know anything but death.”

  She rushed to him and put her hands on his chest. “It doesn’t have to be that way. You’ve got choices.” Tears choked her voice. “This town … me. You can throw off all the old things and choose a new life. But you cannot hang that child.”

  He gently clutched her arms as a storm of pain and indecision raged on his face. After a moment, his gaze drifted. His lips parted, but he bit back whatever had occurred to him.

  Abruptly, he side-stepped her and marched toward the door, snatching his hat from the hook.

  “Dent?”

  He stopped.

  “Please say you won’t hang Israel, if it comes to that.”

  He hesitated a moment longer, then slipped silently out the door.

  You can throw off all the old things and choose a new life.

  Amy’s words haunted Dent as he rode through the mountains, hunted in dry, red canyons, and tracked his way across the hills. Weeks passed. His time grew short, but he would not quit. If he had to lose her because he didn’t know how to choose a different life, then by God, the loss would mean something. He would find Tom Packett and his cohorts, and drag them back to Evergreen. Israel would not stand trial alone.

  He pulled Ginger to a stop and peered through a thin forest of blazing yellow aspens. A steep wall of rock rose to his right, and, off to his left, the trees gave way to a broad, rolling plain. His breath and tiny snowflakes swirled in the air as he listened.

  Had he heard something, or was it he’d felt something?

  A rifle shot cracked the air and bark splintered off a tree not two feet from him. Dent spurred Ginger and high-tailed it toward a boulder. He cut her in hard behind the rock, dirt and gravel flying. Gun drawn, he leaped to the ground, hunched down behind the mammoth slice of granite, and scanned the cliff’s ledge.

  Dent never missed when he fired because he never fired if he wasn’t sure of the shot. He watched the wall, silently, patiently. After several minutes, he decided to draw them out.

  Knowing she wouldn’t go far, Dent quietly pulled his rifle from the scabbard, smacked Ginger in the rear, and sent her bolting. Motion at the top of the wall drew his eye. A hat and the tip of a rifle. The man would have to stand higher to take the shot. Dent aimed his rifle. A head and shoulders appeared, silhouetted against the gray sky. Dent squeezed the trigger.

  The man screamed and plunged one hundred feet off the cliff. His life ended with a sickening, abrupt thud. Confident of his cover, Dent called out. “Boys, this is Sheriff Hernandez. You want to turn yourselves in or meet the same fate as your comrade there?”

  No answer.

  The snow picked up. Much harder and the cliff top would be shrouded from his sight. “If you know me, boys, then you know I don’t care how you’re sittin’ the saddle when we leave here. Upright or draped over, makes no never-mind to me.”

  He checked his revolver, cocked the rifle, and dashed to a big, branching cottonwood at the base of the cliff. He had a plan to sneak up behind these thieves, and the clouds would help him. He climbed stealthy as a mountain lion.

  Ginger milled about below, and a few times the outlaws shot at her. The first shot, he saw a man come out of cover, the second shot, the man was obscured by clouds, but Dent could find him.

  With intense deliberation, he worked his way up to the top till he was directly behind one of the men who watched the ground below.

  “You see anything?” the man called out.

  “I can’t see nothing ’cause of these dang clouds,” another man answered, and he sounded as if he were only a few feet away.

  Slow and easy, with the patience of Job, Dent started easing his way closer to the outlaw below him. He picked his path, moving slow and easy. Gravel started sliding and he knew he’d lost his advantage. He leaped down from the rock ... and had the jump on Tom Packett.

  Dent swung the rifle up and aimed it at the man’s midsection. Packett raised his hands, but only halfway. They hovered too near his gun. “You’re getting off this rock with me, Packett, and I don’t care if you walk or I drag your body. Now, pull your hogleg if you’re so inclined.”

  Packett chewed on the offer for a moment then raised his hands a little higher. Dent scanned the rocks. “How many of you are there?”

  “I’m not telling you anything. Stanton, I need help down here!” He bellowed. “It’s Hernandez—”

  Dent swung the butt of the rifle around and cold-cocked Packett. The man’s eyes rolled into the back of his head and he slithered to the ground. Ready for an attack, Dent lifted the rifle to his shoulder and watched the path above him. He heard the roll and skitter of rocks, but no one appeared.

  “Packet,” a voice called, “did you say Hernandez?”

  “Stanton Warbly? I know you. This is Dent Hernandez. Packett can’t answer any questions right now. I’ve come for him and you, to take you back to Evergreen. Give up your guns and surrender.”

  Dent heard a snort and a curse, the scrubbing of gravel. He waited for the man to make up his mind. A moment later, he heard the pounding of hooves fading into the snowy afternoon.

  Dent scratched his stubbly chin. There was no way he could stop Stanton from getting away. That was the drawback to leaving Ginger down below.

  Davis and Thomas, the two U.S. Marshals riding with him, might catch him. They were over on Devil’s Back Ridge, the only place a trail from up here could come out.

  But he had Packett. Surely he would clear his son.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Three weeks. Nearly three weeks had gone by in a daze for Amy. She stared at the roast and carrots, and sighed. Israel’s trial was only eight days away. Where was Dent?

  “Tomorrow, the decorating committee will get all the Christmas decorations out of stor—what’s the matter, dear,” Susan interrupted herself. “Dinner not to your liking?”

  “No, it’s not that.” Amy picked up her fork. Doc was on a call this evening, and Amy had decided to take advantage of the girls-only dinner to ask her friend for some advice. “Susan, I’m thinking about leaving Evergreen.”

  “What?” The woman nearly dropped her fork. �
��Leaving? You’ve only been here a few months.”

  “I can’t ...” Love a man who would hang a child. “I just can’t stay.”

  Susan regarded her with a wise, all-knowing expression. “It’s Dent, isn’t it?”

  Amy cut her roast into little pieces ... and then into even smaller pieces, thinking through her explanation. “What if he has to hang Israel? I think he’ll do it. I can’t love a man who would be so cavalier about death.”

  Susan straightened in her chair, like a mother about to give a lecture. “Israel Packett made some terrible choices, Amy, and choices have consequences. The fact is, if he’d hollered for help, or snuck away to get help while those men were in the bank, Mr. McGyver might still be here today. Instead, there’s a young widow two streets over, still crying her heart out, knowing her beloved won’t be with her and her boys this Christmas.”

  Amy pushed her plate away, her appetite long gone. “That’s terrible, I agree. But Israel’s a young boy who made a horrific mistake. Shouldn’t he get a second chance?”

  Susan laid her fork down and folded her hands. “All I know is if I was going to be hung by the neck until dead, I would want Dent to do the hanging.”

  “That’s what Mayor Coker said.” Amy rested her face in her hands, careful of her glasses. “And Dent said he doesn’t know anything but death.”

  “Because that’s the life he’s lived these last eight years. I think he needs you, Amy. I think that’s why God sent you here. To reach Dent and show him there’s more to life than death.”

  After Dent secured Packett in the jail, he sent a telegram to Judge Swain informing him of the arrest. He did not mention that Packett so far had said nothing to exonerate his son. But Dent had felt the stumble in Tom’s step as he dragged him to the cell next to Israel’s. The boy was pale from lack of sun, downcast from his predicament, but he had acknowledged his father with great joy, and the two had hugged through the bars.