Until Tomorrow

by Rosanne Bittner

  “Do you need help?” Addy asked.

  “No,” Nick grumped. He stumbled to the door and managed to take out the board that barricaded it, then went out.

  Addy turned the bacon, which she had found in the smoke house that morning, not yet sure if she should be relieved that Nick Coleman had lived. By the time he came back inside, the bacon was done. “Sit down at the table if you like. You can have some bacon and bread, although the bread is awfully stale. If we have to stay here long, I’ll bake some fresh bread for you, and I intend to air out all the bedclothes. There isn’t a tub around here big enough to wash them in. As for yourself, I can heat some water and you can bathe and shave if you like. I would like to clean up myself, if you will allow me some privacy.”

  Nick grunted as he sat down at the table. “Do what you like.” He noticed the guns and money were no longer on the table, and he looked around the room.

  “The guns are all stacked in the comer there,” Addy told him. “I stuck all the money under your mattress. I wasn’t sure what else to do with it. As far as I know, no one tried to come back last night. I managed to take the bullet out of your shoulder, although it certainly was not a professional job. Are you in a lot of pain?”

  Nick rubbed at the top of his shoulder. “Enough. How in hell did you get the bullet out?”

  Addy shrugged, bringing the bacon over to the table on a tin plate. “I just cut it open a little more and dug it out with my fingers. I made you swallow plenty of whiskey first, which seemed easy enough for you.”

  Nick caught the sarcasm in the words. “Some men reach the point where it goes down like water.” He watched her slice some bread, noticing how slender and pretty her hands were. It still almost hurt to look at her, that red hair and those green eyes, that slender little shape. She sure did look like Bethanne. She sat down near him and buttered the bread, then handed it to him.

  “When I find everything I need, Mr. Coleman, I’ll be able to cook better meals. This morning I am just too worn out to care.”

  Nick picked up a piece of bacon. “Call me Nick, and you don’t need to do anything if you don’t want. Soon as I feel better I’ll get you out of here, maybe even today.”

  Addy glanced at him, allowing herself to study his build. Nick Coleman was a big man, with muscled shoulders and arms, a body that equalled his face in handsomeness. Cleaned up and shaved, she realized he would look even more handsome, and she felt guilty for even thinking such a thing about a thief and probably a murderer. “I don’t think you’ll be going anywhere today. You had better rest a couple of days and build your strength.” She rose. “I’ll pour you some coffee.”

  Having a woman make him breakfast brought back painful memories for Nick, of days when he was a family man with a wife cooking for him, her belly heavy with his child. They had lived in a nice little house. He’d had a very decent farm back then. He was happy. It had been a long time since he’d known that kind of happiness, and now this Mrs. Kane had brought back a tiny hint of those good memories. “I expect your husband will be plenty worried,” he spoke up.

  Addy brought two cups of coffee to the table. “My husband has been dead for four years,” she answered, taking a chair again. “Killed in the war.”

  Their eyes met. “I’m sorry.”

  Addy was surprised to realize he really meant it.

  “The war did a lot of things to a lot of people,” she answered. “I suspect you are one of them.”

  Nick looked away, picking up another piece of bacon. “What side did your husband fight on?”

  Addy wasn’t sure what his reaction would be. “Confederate,” she replied. “He and my father both. You were a Confederate, too, weren’t you?”

  Nick swallowed the bacon. “My reasons were personal, not political.”

  Addy leaned back in her chair. “Did they have something to do with Howard Benedict?”

  A sneer came over his face. “A lot. Benedict led some civilian raids into Kentucky and Tennessee during the war.”

  Addy detected the growing anger and hatred in the words. “Against your family? Did he hurt your little girl?”

  His blue eyes looked at her in blazing affrontery. “You’re pretty nosey for hardly knowing me. Just forget about it. Go heat some water like you wanted to do and take it in the spare room there and clean up. I won’t bother you. I’m just sorry you don’t have a clean dress to put on.”

  It was obvious he wanted to change the subject. Addy sighed and rose, picking up a wash pan from the counter and taking a kettle of heated water from the stove. “I hope I can trust you.”

  Nick snickered. “You should know you can by now. Besides, I’m in no shape to go wrestling around with anyone, man or woman.”

  She carried the pan and water to the curtained doorway, then turned to face him. “When I’m through, I’ll come out here and help you wash up. I can shave you if you wish.”

  Nick shook his head. “I can do it myself.”

  “Whatever you like.” Addy hesitated again. “It might help to talk about it, Nick.”

  “About what?”

  Addy wondered where she was getting her courage, and why she cared. “About the war … what happened to you, your family.”

  “How do you even know I had a family?”

  “I heard Jack and the others talking about your little girl. Where is she, Nick?”

  He dropped a piece of bacon and rose. “She’s dead! And you’re a goddamn nosey woman! Considering the circumstances, the only thing you should care about is me getting you back to Unionville!

  Addy stiffened. “Fine. But tell me, why did you defend me in the bank, and later come here to help me? You risked being captured again, risked being killed by Jack or the other two. You could have been well on your way to Indian Territory, where you say it’s safer for outlaws.”

  He sighed in seeming disgust. “I told you. I don’t go in for taking captives, especially women. Besides, I had a score to settle with Jack.”

  Addy nodded. “You looked at me so strangely in the bank, as though you knew me. I don’t recall ever having seen you anyplace before.”

  Nick grabbed his cup and swallowed some coffee. “Forget about it. By the way, what’s your first name?”

  “Adrianne Rawlins Kane. They call me Addy for short.” Addy turned and went into the extra room, pulling the curtains shut. She set the pan and water on a bare, dusty table and sat down on the bed. There was a lot she wanted to know about Nick Coleman, but she realized none of it mattered. He was an outlaw, the kind of man some would call a desperado, and she was stuck with him for the time being.

  She got up and poured the water into the wash pan, then wet a rag she’d found on a shelf along with some towels in the spare room, relieved to discover they were clean and unused. She wrung out the washrag and walked to a faded, yellowed mirror that hung over a dilapidated chest of drawers. She looked at herself in the mirror, shivered at the bruised woman who stared back at her, then pressed the hot moist rag against the scratches on her other cheek, gingerly washing away as much dirt as possible without bringing herself too much pain. She caught a movement behind her then and turned to see Nick Coleman standing at the curtains. His bare feet against the dirt floor had made no sound. “You said you would leave me alone,” she told him, startled and alarmed.

  “I did and I will.” His blue eyes moved over her again. “I’m sorry for my temper. I didn’t used to be this way, and I just wanted you to know that. I used to be a normal, decent man with a family. And if you have to know, it’s my dead wife you resemble.” He looked around the room. “I’ll have you out of here soon as I can. Thanks for digging the bullet out of me. You’re a brave woman, Addy Kane.”

  He left, and Addy looked back into the mirror. So, she looked like his wife. She could not help feeling some pity for him. The war had probably somehow done all of this to him, something so terrible that last night he had wanted to die …

  Fourr />
  Nick looked into the self-standing mirror he had placed on the table beside the bed and carefully shaved his face, taking occasional glances at Addy. She was some woman. After washing herself and pulling her hair into a neat bun, she had begun pulling blankets off the beds and taking them outside to hang them over a clothesline and beat them. Now they hung there to soak up some fresh air while she walked around inside washing off tables and chairs. Whenever he returned to his shaving, he felt her looking at him now and again, probably curious to know how he really looked under all the dirt and the beard.

  He didn’t consider himself vain, but he damn well knew women thought him handsome. At one time all he had cared about was that Bethanne thought so, but she was long dead, and over the last four years since his little girl’s death had left him alone, he had quickly discovered how easy it was for a handsome man to find an easy woman. There had even been a few more virtuous ones, like Addy, who told him with their eyes they might be interested, women in homes where his troops would stop for help and food in the war. Still, he hadn’t been much interested in either kind of woman, except to get rid of built-up needs with a whore now and then. None satisfied him like Bethanne had.

  Now here was this woman who looked so much like her. And she had grit. He liked that. He also liked this little taste of living a normal life again, with a woman cooking and cleaning. Did she have any thoughts for him besides revulsion for the fact that he was an outlaw? Any concern for him other than the fact that he could lead her out of the forest? Her eyes met his. God, they were pretty eyes, green as fern.

  “How on earth did you and those men end up here?” she asked. “It’s obvious a family lived here once. Poor, no doubt, but carousing men don’t go putting up clotheslines.”

  Nick finished a last strike of his razor and took up a hot, wet rag from a washpan nearby to wipe off the soap. “We found it this way—abandoned. I have no idea why anyone would settle and build a cabin this deep in the woods. Maybe they figured it was free land and they could clear it. Maybe the woman died and the man just gave up, or the other way around. I don’t know. Just don’t go thinking we killed the occupants or chased them out. You can see by its dilapidated state that no one has really taken care of it for a long time. We were only going to use it ourselves for a few more days before heading into Indian Territory.”

  Addy walked to she door. “Is that where you’ll go when we leave?”

  “Most likely.”

  Addy did not like the feelings she had from looking at Nick Coleman. Now that he was shaved, his hair washed … he had a firm, square chin, high cheekbones, deep-set eyes so blue they were stunning. Dark lashes and brows outlined them, and his hair was also black. It hung in thick waves to his shoulders … broad shoulders. Dark hairs were scattered across his chest, growing thicker down over his flat belly. His lips were full, and the one time she had seen him actually smile, it had been a very handsome smile, with white, even teeth. The scar across his forehead did not seem to distract from his looks in the least. In fact, it almost helped his looks, made him seem more rugged.

  She looked away, chastising herself for liking the way he looked. He was a man no woman of decent reputation should care about in any way, and she had probably been wrong to take out that bullet. “I am going to sweep off the porch,” she told him.

  “Why bother? We’ll probably leave here tomorrow.”

  “I don’t know. I see things that need doing, and I do them.”

  “You should get some more rest.”

  “I will when I’m done.”

  Nick watched her go outside, and he wondered with a secret grin if she was just keeping herself busy because she had discovered she was attracted to him and didn’t know how to handle it. She kept herself busy for nearly another hour, then stood at the table and kneaded some bread dough she had mixed earlier.

  “It’s a miracle I found that old tin of yeast on the shelf. Some woman must have left it. I wasn’t sure it was any good, but this dough is rising just fine. Even if we leave tomorrow, we can take the fresh bread with us. When you leave me off near town, you can take it with you when you go. After what you did for me, I have to say I hope you don’t get caught.” She met his eyes again. “How did you escape?”

  Nick grinned again, and Addy felt a little flutter deep in her stomach she had not felt in years.

  “Your sheriff is not very professional. They left me at the doctor’s office thinking I was unconscious, and hung my gun over a chair. When I came to, what men were there were in another room talking. I managed to get up and get to my gun before they knew I was awake. One of the men had a fancy horse tied in the alley below. Name’s Charger. I’ll let you ride back on him and he can have his horse back. One thing I’m not is a horse thief.”

  Addy’s eyebrows arched mockingly. “Oh, how good of you.”

  Nick actually laughed lightly, and Addy found herself beginning to like him. “Tell me, Nick, where did you get that scar across your forehead?”

  Nick put a hand to the scar, and he lost his smile. “Raiders. Came to my farm in Kentucky. Burned my house. Shot me. They were led by Howard Benedict.”

  Addy stopped kneading the dough, surprised he had told her so much for once, more surprised that Howard Benedict, the fancy-suited man who ran the Unionville Bank, would have done such a thing. “How do you know it was Mr. Benedict?”

  Nick turned and picked up a clean shirt he’d taken out of his gear. Now that the whiskey had worn off a little and the sun was up, Addy thought he seemed to be in slightly better spirits.

  “I heard one of the raiders mention his name and where they were from. I went to Unionville and asked around. Everybody knew who Howard Benedict was. When I heard he owned a bank, I knew that one day I would get my revenge. I planned on killing Benedict.”

  Nick winced as he put his arm into the left sleeve of the shirt, and Addy was relieved to see that there were no new bloodstains on the material she had wrapped around the wound. It appeared to be about the same as last night.

  “Those men killed my little girl,” he added, his voice dropping from remorse. “They set my house on fire. They were just civilian rabble, following the coattails of Union troops that had attacked Forts Donelson and Henry, using the war as an excuse to plunder and steal. My own parents had been dead a long time, my wife dead five years … died in childbirth. My grandparents were helping me raise Patty.” He turned and picked up the bottle of whiskey that still sat on the table nearby, and it struck Addy that only a man who was a heavy drinker could down something like that in the morning … or a man so consumed by grief that he needed it to soothe his soul. He sat down on the bed. “They shot my grandfather dead. I was out tilling a field, couldn’t get there in time. When I did, the house was engulfed in flames. My grandmother and my little girl died in the fire.” He sat with his elbows on his knees, his shirt still open, the whiskey bottle hanging in his hand. “The worst part was my little girl was screaming for me to help her. I tried to get in …” He shook his head. “It was impossible.” His voice broke on the last words, and he drank down another gulp of whiskey. “I’ll never forget her screams … or stop dreaming about it.”

  Addy understood now where he had gotten the burn scars on his right arm. She understood a lot of things … a man consumed with revenge and hopelessness, a man who felt he had nothing left to live for. “I’m so sorry, Nick. I didn’t mean for my question to bring up such pain.”

  Nick raised his eyes to meet hers. He studied her bruised face, saw in her eyes true sympathy. Why did he find it so easy to talk to this woman he hardly knew? “It was four years ago. I buried what was left of my little girl and I buried my feelings and anything good about me along with her. I abandoned the farm and joined the Confederate army just to kill Union men. I took a bullet in my right leg, spent some time in a prison camp. That’s where I met Jack and the others. All of us had reasons to continue the war after it was over, except that Jack was just
plain mean. I didn’t care. I wanted to find someone mean, someone to match the meanness I felt in my own heart. After I leave you off I’ll go find some more men just like him. If I get lucky I’ll get shot down by some lawman somewhere and end the misery.” He set the whiskey bottle back on the table, and Addy left the bread dough to rise again.

  “Is that what you really want? Seems to me somewhere inside of you is a man longing for the life he used to have.”

  Nick shook his head, then turned and laid back on the bare mattress. Addy had taken away all the blankets. “I can never live like that again.”

  Addy picked up a potato and began peeling it. “I don’t believe that.”

  “Believe it. I don’t even know why I told you any of it.”

  “It needed telling. I know the feeling of being alone, Nick. I have no one now myself. My husband was killed in the war. I was living in Michigan then, going to school to become a teacher. We met there, but Tom was from Virginia and left to put on a gray uniform as soon as war became inevitable. When I finished school I came to Unionville to be with my mother. My father believed in states’ rights, and he had also gone off to fight for the Confederacy. Because of that, and the fact that my own husband was a southerner, people in Unionville treated me and my mother rudely. Old friends turned their backs on us and I couldn’t get a teaching job. I worked at whatever menial labor I could find to keep us going. My father was Phillip Rawlins. He owned a dry goods store, but people stopped coming, and Mother finally had to close the doors. In August of ’63 I received word that my husband was dead. Not long after that we heard my father had also been killed. My mother just went downhill after that and was dead herself a few months later.”

  She began slicing some potatoes into a pan, working vigorously to keep from breaking down. “I decided I had to get out of Unionville, start my life over someplace new. I’m twenty-five years old and totally alone and without friends. I answered an ad for a teacher in Central, Colorado, and they hired me. I was withdrawing what little savings I had in the bank in order to leave for Colorado when you and your men came in and … well, you know the rest. As soon as I get back and fully recover, I will be leaving for Colorado.”