by Carré White
“Couple hours’ ride seems about right. Since you were a babe, anyway. Back then, we were all around the panhandle before we settled.” William set his sledgehammer to the side, and leaned against the barn.
Ernie, Colton’s squat, mottled horse, stuck his head through the barn’s window to accept a nose rub.
The three of them quieted for a time, working away at their tasks. Colton chopped, Lottie arranged, and William drove stakes into the ground meant to hold lengths of sheet or net to keep snow from piling up around the house.
It all went quicker with Colton, and not just because of his muscles. Every so often, as they toiled away, Lottie looked over at him, at once amazed and calmed at the man she saw – the only person who ever promised to return then actually did it.
“Why did you come back?” she finally asked. “Surely you had somewhere better to go than all the way out here with winter bearing down.”
Swelling his chest with breath, Colton thumped his axe into the block of wood he used as a stand. He placed his hands on his hips, stretching his back as the handle of his axe wobbled.
“I said I would, didn’t I?”
Unbeknownst to either Lottie or Colton, Will had stopped pounding his stakes and looked in their direction with that same beaming smile from earlier. As he watched the two of them banter away, thoughts of his own youth ran through his mind; thoughts of the games he used to play, trying to get Lottie’s mother to pay him some mind.
“Well yes,” she answered, “but that’s no—”
He interrupted her with a smile and a hand on her shoulder that made Lottie visibly tremble, but only barely. “When I say something, it does have a meaning. I made the mistake of lying to someone I care about more than once. I’ll not do it again. Not...”
She touched his hand when he looked as though something caught in his mind. “Are you okay?” Lottie asked Colton softly.
He shook his head. “Sorry, got a little carried away with some memories. Anyway, what I meant to say is that I don’t do those sorts of things anymore. I’ve hurt people I didn’t want to hurt.”
Lottie studied his face for a moment, but Colton kept his mouth closed. Though he met her eyes with his, his gaze was far away. The whole of him seemed distant, but he didn’t make any move to say more.
A quick glance over to her father told Lottie to leave it alone, though she wanted nothing more than to prod him for a little more. After all, what sort of pain could someone like Colton have underneath that shimmering grin? Turning her eyes to the ground and staring at the toes of her boots, Lottie just squeezed his arm and stayed still.
Desperate for something to say that might ease his mood, she ran a thousand ideas through her mind, but he seemed so perturbed that she was too uneasy.
What do I even know of this man? Why do I feel like this if not for simple loneliness being pushed aside by a visitor? If anyone else had come, would I feel the same about them?
She pinched up her brow.
“I wanted to get away,” he said suddenly.
“Wh – what’s that?” Lottie replied. “Get away?”
Colton nodded. He retook her gaze, then looked to the ground and dug his boot into the ground before kicking a picked-out clump of red dirt off to the side.
“Yeah, I uh,” he trailed off, looking everywhere but at her face.
“Does this have anything to do with what your uncle said?”
Colton turned his face to hers and cocked an eyebrow. “My uncle?”
“Ranger Grant,” Lottie said. “He came through directly after you did. Looking for you. Although it took him a good deal of circulating to finally arrive at your name.” She giggled softly. “I only recognized that he was talking about you by his description of Ernie. You say you weren’t going to lie anymore, but you lied about where you came from. I only learned the truth from your letter.”
Realization dawned on Colton’s face.
“I did, huh,” he pursed his lips. “It’s easier than telling the truth. That’s what got me started down this path in the first place.”
Lottie’s gaze was soft, but she wasn’t going to back down, no matter what kind of glances her father shot her way. There was too much at stake, she knew, for her to just take what he said at face value, especially when he kept saying things that ended up false.
“I can tell you’re a good man, Colton. And,” she stammered slightly to regain his attention when Colton turned to the side out of unease. “And you certainly didn’t lie to me about anything but where you came from. I never asked if you were a gunfighter, so you didn’t lie about that.”
“Gunfighter?” Colton said with a hollow, distant voice. “My uncle said that?”
Lottie nodded, suddenly afraid that she’d gone too far too soon. She had to remind herself that this man was sharing their home. “You don’t want to hurt anyone, do you Colton?”
“No,” he shook his head. “And I never did. Never meant to hurt anyone. And I won’t hurt you. Things are different now,” he said.
“Getting away?” she asked again.
“I needed to get away from who I used to be.” He grabbed the axe off the ground beside his foot. “I’m not proud of everything I’ve done, Lottie,” he said. “But I’m not going to let that ruin what could be.”
From off in the distance, William whistled, apparently sensing the gravity of their conversation. “Snows’a coming,” he shouted. “Just felt a flake. Let’s get the last of this wood chopped and get back inside before we’re covered.”
Colton swung the axe effortlessly up to his shoulder. “We’ll talk more later,” he said. “I promise.”
Just as Lottie turned to gather more wood onto the sled, he grabbed her arm, surprising her. “Lottie?”
“Yes?” she twisted her hand a little, his grip was so strong.
“I mean it this time.”
“I can tell,” she said, looking into his burning, green eyes.
Instead of saying anything else, he gave her that smile, that dimple-chinned, disarming smile. As she bent to collect the freshly chopped wood, the scent of mesquite tickled her nose.
Somehow, that made it all better.
For the time being, anyway, it had to be good enough.
Chapter Six
“These sure are good biscuits,” Colton said, mumbling around a flaky mouthful.
“I keep telling her they’re famous all over the world,” William said, “but I don’t think she believes me.”
Lottie pushed her food around on the plate, jabbing a bite of egg with a fork, and cut a sausage into tiny pieces. The past few days had taxed her ability to stay focused on the winter preparation work, and although Colton’s presence made the actual act of working a great deal easier, he was also a constant distraction.
He’d been nothing but polite since he arrived. He never bothered to finish telling Lottie about his past though, which stuck in her mind. Why else would he hide his past unless he had some reason?
William was always around though, and there was plenty of work to be done leading up to high winter, so time was short. In the tiny slivers of moments when they were alone, Colton fixated on her, and any questions about him just fell by the wayside.
“Well, I told people about them in Kansas, so the legend’s gone that far,” Colton smiled in Lottie’s direction, but she ducked his gaze, continuing to prod the sausages on her plate. “Lottie,” he said, “you okay?”
“Oh sure,” she replied. “Just a lot to do, storm’s coming soon, right pa?”
Colton placed his fork on his plate and put his hand along beside it, just inches from Lottie’s. She glanced down, noted the distance, and pulled her hand away.
“Ah, I just remembered something outside. Colton, might I give Ernie a brush while I’m out there?”
Colton glanced back and forth between the two of them, clearly unsure what to do or say. “I—”
William was already most of the way to the front door, so Lottie and Colton were to be
alone, at least for a time. Her pulse quickened, and she flopped her hand back on the table to act as an anchor. When Colton’s hand warmed her palm, she gasped and pulled it away a second time.
“What’s going on, Lottie?” Colton seemed genuinely concerned. “Is there something wrong?”
A moment later, the door swung closed and no amount of determination kept Lottie’s intended stoicism in place.
“Please,” Colton said emphatically. “I need to know if I’ve done something to put you off.”
“I don’t know anything about you at all,” Lottie shot back. “I know that you came from San Antonio. I know that you apparently got in a gun fight?” She took a breath. “And I know you ran from the law for almost a year.”
Colton’s face drew up. “What?”
“Your uncle, he—”
He put his hands up in a defensive gesture. “That old jackrabbit,” he growled.
“Yes, he said—”
Once again, Colton cut her off. “He doesn’t know me. My parents,” he drew a deep breath. “Can we talk about this some other time? There’s work to be—”
“No there isn’t,” Lottie said. “For the last twenty years, every winter has been spent doing just about next to nothing except staving off boredom. As soon as the weather goes cold, we get our last harvest out and then we sit and wait.”
“But what’s all this work we’ve been doing?” Colton asked her.
“Pa’s way of keeping busy. He gets bored, so he works for as long as he can before it just gets too cold. A month from now we won’t be able to leave the house for more than an hour or two before it’s time to come back in and make sure the fire’s still going.”
Colton grunted and looked down at the table. “I just figured I’d be an extra hand in a tough time,” he grumbled. “Didn’t mean to intrude.”
“I don’t want you to feel like you’re intruding,” Lottie said, regretting her harshness. “I just don’t understand why you came back.”
“Because I said I would,” he said softly.
“Everyone says they’re coming back though, and no one ever has. All our friends, the distant cousins that used to live down the road, everyone just left. They said they’d be back in a year, but that’s come and gone.” She took a deep breath trying to still her trembling hands. “But here you are. You went, then you came back and the only thing you’ll say is that you needed to get away from something or other.”
With his eyes fixed on the table, Colton said, “I let my brother die.”
Outside, Ernie neighed. The room fell so silent that even the chickens scratching around the freshly-patched porch were clearly audible.
He and Lottie both opened their mouths at the same time, then they closed them in unison. A moment later, Colton wrung his hands, stood up and sat back down before he continued.
“I didn’t kill him,” he said hurriedly, guessing at her question. “He got himself in an idiot duel over someone’s daughter that he’d fallen in with.”
“But Colton,” instinctually she grabbed one of his hands, patting it and squeezing before she realized what she’d done. The warmth of his fingers, the heat of his palm, it both calmed her and surprised her with the feelings that crept through her belly. “That’s not your fault. What would you need to run from? Your brother’s sins aren’t your own.”
He stared for a moment. “It... I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t heard that about a thousand times.” Colton’s eyes had the same distant haze they’d taken the first day he was back.
“But?” she said.
“But,” he trailed off and pulled his hand away. “I don’t want you to think badly of me if I say.”
Lottie pursed her lips. “Remember what you said? No more lies?”
“No more lies,” he nodded.
“The shooting – my brother being shot, I mean – it was a mistake.” When he looked up next, Colton’s eyes were red. “I was the one. It was me. I should have been the one killed. But we look so much the same, and this fella, he’d never seen me when I’d...”
Lottie shook her head. “You don’t have to say anything you don’t want to say. I think I get the idea.”
“What I mean is that this man didn’t know what I looked like, only my last name. He came out of watering hole in the midst of San Antonio, shouting. He was shouting, yelling out in the middle of a crowd.”
His face was almost blank and expressionless as he recounted the events. Lottie watched his eyes flick back and forth like he was reading lines from a book.
“This man was carrying on, and then the next thing I remember was that he took out his gun and started waving it around.”
“How did you see all this? Why were you around this place where the man was drinking? San Antonio’s a sizeable place, isn’t it?”
Colton nodded, absently. “That’s true, but all the saloons are clustered up. When the ranch hands got out of work, we’d all go to the same few places, night after night.” He paused, reaching for a sip of coffee before he continued. “But I wasn’t drinking. He was, my brother was, but I’d skipped work that day, and—”
“You don’t have to say anything,” Lottie said, more for her own good than his.
He squeezed her hand. “I was with her – with Marietta – across the way in this kind of boarding house. That was where we met, two or three times a week. We were young, Lottie, in love, is what I thought. As it turns out, it wasn’t that. It was just... we were young.”
His voice had gone distant again, and Lottie wanted him to stop, but he seemed to need to tell her, or tell anyone, what he was saying.
“I heard him, out there carrying on and yelling. And the next thing I remember was my brother – my dear, sweet brother,” he paused a second to calm his cracking voice. “He heard the man raving, went outside, and then the older man just drew down and shot him dead.”
“Oh, Colton,” Lottie said, gritting her teeth through the pain of him crushing her hand in his grip, just to give him a center, an anchor against the pain he obviously felt. “I can’t imagine.”
“Next I knew, I was outside, blinking in the dying light and trying to find my brother. He was already... already dead. Nothing anybody could do, he just...”
He took another big swallow of coffee, eyes trained dead-set on the table. Rhythmically, he squeezed and relaxed on Lottie’s hand. “He lay there in my arms, me holding him against my chest, and I felt his last breath. He shook, Lottie, and then he opened his eyes wide, stared right into mine, and he let out this long, tremor of a breath. It was deeper than any breath a living man ever took, and then when he was finally done, he felt lighter and I knew he was gone.”
All Lottie knew to do was what her heart told her.
She stood up, cradled Colton against her chest and held him for a moment. His shoulders shook, and Lottie heard him sniff, then swallow hard. A moment later, he sat back from her and laughed nervously.
“I think I can see why your father busies himself with all that work,” he said with twinkling eyes. “It’s a lot easier than dealing with the pain.”
~*~
With a pile of wood lying in evenly stacked piles, Colton wiped the sweat off his forehead. He’d relaxed, quite a lot, Lottie noticed, in the way he carried himself. It was almost like letting go of all that agony he’d kept bottled up had a physical effect.
He had so much energy that in the couple of hours after they took their luncheon, Colton drove enough stakes to put up a drift net, split what looked like half a forest worth of mesquite, and even took Ernie down the road to a derelict farm, bringing back a load of canned goods, dried beans and chilies on a string.
“I want to apologize,” he said drawing near Lottie, “for my display earlier, I—”
“I won’t hear anything of it. Part of being friends is learning to rely on each other. If something hurts, you should tell me about it,” she said, brushing her hair out of her face as she tossed two more logs on the sled.
“Friends,�
�� he said in response, in a soft voice. “Are you sure that’s what we are?”
“I,” Lottie paused, almost dropping her current load on her toe. She yanked her foot away as the logs clattered to the ground. “I, think, uh, well...”
Colton, very satisfied with himself, almost shook with laughter. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I shouldn’t be so forward with my joking.” He looked past Lottie to where William, who was also laughing silently, stood. “It’s just that you tend to take it so well. I can’t help myself.”
A spark glinted in Lottie’s eye. “Your wood is all crooked,” she said.
“I... my what?”
“The logs you’re cutting,” she said. “You’ve been cutting it on an angle, so all the logs are crooked. I wouldn’t say anything normally, but since we’re being honest—”
“Now wait, what are you talking about?” Colton crouched, inspecting the stump he used as a platform. “I leveled out this ground before I put this stump here.”
She shook her head. “The whole place is on a slight incline. Comes up from the road. You can’t see it, but if you... here, watch.”
Picking up one of the smaller pieces of wood, she laid it on the ground at her foot and tilted one of her hands against the others to show him the angle. “It’s like this. Look, it won’t stop until it gets to the road.”
The log, just as she said, tumbled all the way to the road a hundred feet or more past where Colton stood.
Colton pursed his lips. “You pushed it with your foot, I saw.”
“I did not,” she said. “Your logs are all crooked. I’ll have to spend half as much time as normal arranging them in the stove or it’ll cook food unevenly.”
His shoulders slumped. “I just don’t see how,” he paused to squat down again and examine the lay of the land. He went around the other side. He couldn’t see any slant to the ground, but if that log really had rolled all that way then it must be true.
When he stood up again, he looked over at William, who simply shrugged. “I wasn’t going to say anything either. Hate to make a guest feel bad an’ all. And really, it isn’t anything terrible. It’ll just take an extra... what would you say, Lottie? An hour or so? Throughout the day to keep it from burning biscuits.”
