Until Tomorrow

by Rosanne Bittner

  Nick sighed. “From what I know, Central is a mining town. I’ve never been west, but I’ve heard the mining towns can be pretty wild. Might not be a good place for a woman alone.”

  Addy picked up another potato to slice it. “I’ll survive. At least I’ll be able to teach, and I’ll be away from places that have only bad memories.” She glanced at Nick, seeing an understanding look in his blue eyes. “You see? I fully understand how you feel.” She looked back at the potatoes. “Except that I have never lost a child. Tom and I never had children. We were only married a short time before he went off to war. I do have an older sister in St. Louis, but she turned her back on my parents when my father joined the Confederacy. She married a Union man who is quite wealthy. They have two children. We are nothing alike, and I have no desire to live near her. I need to go far away and start my life over. That might be a good idea for you … to get completely out of this area. Your face is probably on wanted posters by now, since you announced your name so blatantly in the bank.”

  “I wanted Howard Benedict to know who was looking to kill him.”

  Addy set her knife aside and faced him. “Killing isn’t the answer any more and you know it. If you stop the robbing and killing now, maybe I can find some way to get the law to stop looking for you, tell them you died or something. You would have a chance to get away from here, start over.”

  “You’d do that?”

  “Maybe. You’d have to promise to stop going around robbing banks and hurting innocent people.”

  Nick sat up and began buttoning his shirt. “I can’t make promises like that yet.” The whiskey worked on his emotions. Addy Kane looked even prettier now, and he couldn’t get over how easy it was to talk to her. What were these strange feelings the woman stirred in him, old longings he had not felt in years. Talking about Patty had stirred the pain again, and he was surprised he’d been able to talk about it.

  Addy closed her eyes and sighed in exasperation. “What was your wife’s name?” she asked.

  Nick laid back down and turned to his right side. “Bethanne,” he answered. “Don’t finish that lunch yet. I’m not hungry.”

  Addy looked over at him, her heart aching for the man. She had brought back memories he really had not wanted to think about. She felt a strong urge to walk over and put her arms around him and tell him everything was all right, but that could be a dangerous move with such a man.

  After a few minutes he appeared to fall asleep. The weather had cooled considerably, and Addy walked outside and retrieved one of the blankets. She brought it in and carefully covered him. He pulled it over his shoulders.

  “Thanks,” he muttered.

  Addy blinked back tears. “You’re welcome,” she whispered.

  Nick slept and Addy baked bread. It was three o’clock when Nick began to stir and toss. He flailed his right arm and began mumbling, and Addy moved closer, realizing he was speaking Patty’s name in an agonizing groan. She could imagine how horrible it must have been for this man to listen to his little girl screaming for her daddy to help her, but not be able to get to her. It was no wonder he was so full of hatred, no wonder he was not concerned over his own death, but rather seemed to welcome it. He had lost his own parents, watched his wife die, lost his grandparents and a child to the ugly brutality that comes with a civil war.

  She stood staring at him, watching him thrash and groan. He called Patty’s name again, then suddenly woke with a gasp. He sat straight up and stared at Addy for a moment, as though he didn’t even recognize her. “Bethanne!” he whispered, reaching out his hand.

  Addy stepped back. “It’s me, Addy. You were dreaming and you aren’t fully awake.”

  Nick blinked, looked around the room. “Jesus,” he muttered. “I had the damn nightmare again. The flames, the heat … Patty screaming for me.” He rubbed at his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

  Addy turned away. “You had better eat something.” Why did her heart ache so for him, this near stranger? “I’ve baked some bread. I’ll cook some potatoes and pork.”

  Nick thought how he wouldn’t mind just staying here a while, days, weeks, letting Addy Kane clean the cabin and make his meals. He thought how she just might make a damn good wife, quiet, understanding, educated, pretty, and she could even cook. But then he was beyond the point of ever falling in love and marrying again, and what decent woman would want him now? Such thoughts were nonsense. It was just suddenly seeing her when he awoke, still dazed, her looking so much like Bethanne. He felt embarrassed and got up and went out to check on the horses, needing to shake away the cobwebs of the dream.

  Addy looked up when he came back inside nearly a half hour later. His tall, broad frame seemed to fill the cabin. He sat down and ate voraciously, warning her she had better take a nap in addition to getting a good night’s sleep. Addy could see he did not want to discuss the dream.

  “We’ll leave early in the morning, no time for more than coffee and bread,” he said. “I can have you close to town by late tomorrow night. Then I’ll be on my way.”

  For some reason Addy realized she might miss him a little. “How is your shoulder?”

  He drank down some coffee. “Still hurts like hell, but you must have done a decent job. I’m feeling good otherwise. I’ll bet a doctor would have laughed at how you got that bullet out.”

  Addy smiled. “I didn’t know how else to do it.”

  Nick leaned back in his chair. “I’m giving back your share of the money, but I’m keeping the rest. It’s the least Howard Benedict owes me. When you get to town you can tell the others that I came here and Jack killed me. If the law finds Jack’s grave out there somewhere, they’ll just think it’s mine. You can tell them they did you no real harm, and they finally let you go because you were slowing them down. Make sure they’re convinced you weren’t raped. People tend to treat a woman different after a thing like that, even though she’s entirely innocent.” He rubbed at the back of his neck. “Tell them you think they headed for Indian Territory. They let you go on the horse I stole so the owner wouldn’t keep searching for it. That should end the search, and I can get the hell out of this territory. You don’t need to tell anybody that you got your share of the money back. They’d wonder why. As far as the bank is concerned, it was stolen. If they want to make up for it, take it. You deserve the extra.”

  “After what you told me about Howard Benedict, I am inclined to agree with you.” She watched his eyes. “Does this mean you’ve decided not to kill the man? Are you going to stop your outlaw ways?”

  He smiled rather bitterly. “I won’t go back to Unionville and I won’t kill Benedict. That’s as far as I go with promises. Will you keep yours to convince them I’m dead?”

  She nodded cautiously. “If you’re being honest with me.”

  “I’m a lot of things, but I’m no liar.” Nick walked over to his saddlebags and took a thin cigar from his gear. He took it to the iron stove and lifted one of the burner lids, bending down and lighting it by the lingering fire inside. “I hope you find a good life in Colorado,” he told her, straightening and taking a deep drag on the smoke.

  “And I hope you find a way to change your life, Nick, a way to get over the past. You’re too young and too good inside to die with a noose around your neck.”

  He studied her soiled dress, still feeling sorry she had nothing to change into. “I’m thirty, but these last four years have made me feel much older.”

  He walked outside to smoke, and he stayed outside most of the afternoon. Addy felt time slipping away, wondered why she wished she could stop it for a little while. Later Nick came inside with a gunny sack in his hand. “Some of the smoked meat,” he said. “I’ll need it.” He set the meat near his saddlebags and walked over to the stash of guns, taking up his pearl-handled six-gun and whirling the chamber, adding bullets. Then he opened a rifle and peered down the barrel. “Most of these need cleaning, but I don’t feel like it tonight.” He laid his own gun plus
one other and two rifles near the meat. “Soon as we eat a little more, we’ll get some sleep. You strong enough to travel?”

  “Yes.” Addy wondered if she would be safe sleeping in the same cabin with this man now that he was much better. Still, he had been respectful of her all day. Part of her still feared him, yet part of her did not.

  “You should take one of those guns for yourself, not that you’d need it for protection with me along, but you might want one along on your trip west.”

  “I am not in the habit of carrying guns.”

  “Just a suggestion. Maybe you should buy yourself a small pistol when you get back to town—something that would fit in a purse.”

  “I’ll think about it.” She went to the door. “I’ll bring in the blankets. You might want to roll up a couple extras for your gear. I’ll take that nap you suggested after they’re folded.” She went outside, feeling strangely sad, and as though she was living in an unreal world, far removed from anything she had ever known. She brought in the blankets, still feeling sorry for Nick and his nightmares … a screaming little girl calling for her daddy. What a horror!

  She folded and rolled a couple of blankets for his gear, then went into the other room to lie down and try to sleep. The afternoon passed into evening, and they ate again. Nick grew quiet, and Addy wondered if he was thinking the same thing she was … that for some reason she didn’t want to leave him. He laid down to sleep and told her to do the same.

  “We have no choice but to get moving in the morning. The law will find this cabin sooner or later,” he told her.

  Addy felt an odd sense of disappointment. When she first came to this cabin, she could imagine nothing more wonderful than escaping and getting back to Unionville. Now there was a small part of her that did not want to leave, and she had no idea why, except that it would mean leaving Nick Coleman, who seemed so alone. Now that she knew he was a man once loved, and capable of loving in return, a family man who had loved and lost a wife and a little girl, he had become more human. No man should turn to murder and theft in his grief and need for revenge, but who was to say how any one person would react to such things? She had heard and read many stories of other men so changed by the war that they did the same.

  She went into the tiny bedroom and lay down, but it was not easy to sleep. She had her own conscience to deal with now. If Nick kept his promise and got her back to town, should she lie the way he asked her to and tell the law he was dead? Or should she do what was surely the honorable thing … tell the truth and let him be caught?

  Sun shone through a forest mist when Addy awoke. She was not sure of the time, but she could hear noises in the outer room. She sat up and poured water from a small bucket into a wash bowl and rinsed her face and toweled it dry, then quickly brushed her hair and twisted it into a bun. Taking a quick look at herself in the stained mirror, she saw a hollow-eyed, haggard-looking woman wearing a torn, filthy, bloodstained dress. She turned and peered through the curtains then to see Nick packing his saddlebags. He glanced her way.

  “I was about to come and rouse you,” he told her.

  “I fell asleep late, and now I have apparently overslept.”

  “We’ve got to get going. I have your money here. I believe you said four hundred dollars, so I’m giving you five. You deserve the extra hundred for what you’ve been through. More than that, actually, but I’ll need the rest to head into Indian Territory, maybe go even farther.”

  Addy walked closer, realizing this man could have used his strength to do whatever he wanted with her last night, but he had left her alone. “Farther?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe do the same as you—get a new start somewhere. I don’t know. I’m torn between wanting to die, wanting to kill and wanting to find the life I had once with Bethanne.” He turned with the money. “Here.” His gaze moved over her body. “You don’t want anyone in town to know that you got this back. They’ll figure men like Jack would never do that, so you’d have to explain, and you can’t explain it if I’m supposed to be dead. You’d better hide this somewhere under that dress, in your camisole or … wherever.”

  Addy reddened, more from surprise at the way his remark stirred womanly emotions than the fact he had alluded to her underwear. She walked closer and took the money, feeling a strange tingle when his fingers touched her own. She realized it was the first time they had touched at all in any familiar way. The only other time she had touched him was to dig her fingers into his flesh to search for a bullet. “I … don’t feel right taking the extra hundred. Doesn’t that make me a thief, too?”

  He flashed a handsome grin. “I guess so. But I’d say the town of Unionville owes it to you, wouldn’t you?”

  She could not help a smile of her own. “Yes.” She took the money and went into the bedroom, unbuttoning the front of her dress and spreading the bills evenly inside her camisole. She glanced at the curtain to be sure Nick Coleman hadn’t decided to take a peek, then chastised herself for worrying he would do such a thing. She walked back to the wash pan and picked up a small box of baking soda she had found the night before on a shelf, using some to rub on her teeth to clean them, then dipped a tin cup into the bucket of water and rinsed her mouth, spitting into the already-used water in the wash pan. “Would you like some baking soda for your mouth?” she asked Nick.

  “Sure.”

  She walked out and handed it to him.

  “Put some bread in this and we’ll leave,” he said, handing out a small cloth sack. “No time to cook breakfast. The horses are already saddled and my gear is packed. We’ll eat bread and drink water on the way.”

  He picked up his saddlebags and walked out to the pump with the baking soda, and Addy felt strangely panicky at being so rushed. She had planned on taking her time, making him breakfast. Again, she wondered why such a thing should matter. She picked up two loaves of bread and shoved them into the sack, thinking what a strange experience she had had here over the last three days, being so terrified, seeing murder and blood, digging a bullet out of a man with her bare fingers, learning to understand and accept a man who anyone else would consider worthy of nothing more than a hanging. She glanced around the cabin, wondering how she could be a little nostalgic over the memories she had here.

  She turned and went out, and Nick was already on his horse, a big, dark gray gelding that seemed just right for a man his size. He wore his duster again, and he looked every bit the dangerous outlaw he was supposed to be. How odd that she felt perfectly safe with him. “Are you sure you can travel?”

  “I’ll be all right.”

  “You’d better buy yourself a new coat. The tear and bloodstains on that one are a giveaway.”

  He nodded. “I will. Just a little chilly this morning. You’d better put a blanket around your shoulders. I left one on Charger’s rump there. Do you ride all right?”

  “Yes, I can ride.”

  “You remember what to tell the law?”

  She nodded. “You’re dead.”

  Their eyes held, both realizing that once he took her back he truly would be dead to her, to this part of the country. They would go their separate ways and never see each other again.

  Nick was also feeling odd emotions over things he had experienced the last three days. He had come here to help this woman, but he had not expected to end up with these strange feelings of attachment, or that it would almost hurt to let her go and never see her again. “You’re a strong, brave woman, Addy Kane. Thanks for digging the bullet out of me. You figured I was dying, and you could have let me just lay there.”

  Addy nodded. “I could have, but I needed someone to lead me out of these woods.”

  He grinned. “That’s the only reason you helped me?”

  Addy smiled wryly. “Of course it is.”

  Nick knew better. She was a decent, Christian woman who couldn’t let any man, even an outlaw, just lay there and die before her eyes without trying to help him. “Let’s go,” he tol
d her.

  Addy turned and climbed up onto Charger.

  “I shortened the stirrups,” Nick told her. “Are they all right?”

  “Almost a little too short, but they’ll do.”

  Nick nodded and turned his horse. “Follow me, Addy Kane. You’ll be back home by late tonight or early morning.” Late tonight, if I can swing it, he thought. I’m not sure I want to spend another night trying to sleep with you so close by. Damn if she didn’t look like Bethanne. Damn if she didn’t have his total respect. And damn if she didn’t stir memories of another life, family, love … He headed out It was too late for him now, and Addy Kane had her own plans. They sure as hell did not include running off with an outlaw. She was headed for Colorado and a new life, and she damn well deserved that.

  Five

  “She’s back, Sheriff Page, and she’s got my horse with her!” Brad Barlow barged into the sheriff’s office with the words. “She’s out here! Mrs. Kane! Her dress is all torn and dirty, but her face … well, she said she washed in a stream on her way. The outlaws led her in the right direction and then—”

  Sheriff Page sat up on his cot, rubbing at his eyes. “What the hell?”

  “Mrs. Kane. She just rode in, Sheriff!”

  Page looked at Brad, noticing it was barely light outside. “What time is it?”

  “Only about six o’clock. I was just opening the livery when Mrs. Kane rode by headed for your office. I followed along, took hold of my horse for her. She looks ready to fall off it.”

  Page stood up and ran a hand through his gray, thinning hair, then tucked his shirt into his pants and pulled the suspenders up over his shoulders. His pot belly hung out between the suspenders as he walked over to grab his hat, leaving his gun hanging on a hook. “I’ll talk to her myself.” He moved to the door, embarrassed he would not have a chance to wash his face before facing Mrs. Kane and the few people who happened to be up at dawn to see her ride into town. As he walked outside, a man was helping Addy dismount, and everyone had questions for her, but she answered none of them.