He managed to climb about three-quarters of the way up when his foothold crumbled beneath him. The rock broke loose and tumbled fifty feet down the incline. He hung onto a ridge barely wide enough for his two hands, his feet dangling.
From across the ravine, Clayton fired, and someone fired back, with Nate hanging by his fingertips in the crossfire. His legs flailed for a foothold and then he swung himself into a hollow.
Clayton continued to fire, while Zachariah aimed from another location. Zachariah fired, and the bullet hit the man in the shoulder, taking him out. It was good teamwork.
“There’s another man out yonder!” Zachariah had been discovered.
The man with Josephine fired at Zachariah, making Zachariah duck.
Nate couldn’t shoot because he needed to hold on with both hands to keep from falling. Where was Cadwell? He’d surely give them the advantage. Or, if Cadwell and Josephine were in love, give them the extreme disadvantage. Was he even here? Whose side was he on? The man was a mystery. But since Nate could see everything that was going on, he could help out. “Zachariah,” he called. “There’s a man by…” Could he say it? “…Sally’s Ledge.”
The place where Zachariah had carved Sally’s name into the rock long ago.
A few minutes later, Zachariah came up from behind Mel, surprising him. Mel dropped his gun.
Nate heaved himself onto the next ridge. Eight feet from the top, a bullet chipped the rock above his head. He was in someone’s sights. Cadwell, I could use you right about now. There was still no sign of him.
But then, there was no sign of Josephine, either.
Zachariah came through. He fired at the miscreant, missed, and rather than taking time to reload, threw the rifle down and snatched a revolver. He and Clayton hammered away at the man.
Nate pulled himself over the rim—and made it to Hattie.
She was breathing but barely moving. He covered her body with his to protect her from any stray bullets.
The shooting stopped.
“We got three of them, Nate,” Zachariah called out. “Any idea where the last one might be?”
Long gone with Cadwell would have been Nate’s best guess. He walked to the edge and found Clayton tying hands behind backs and Zachariah looking back at Nate. “No,” Nate said. “But I’ve got Hattie.”
“How is she?” Zachariah said.
“Not so good.” He remembered six-year-old Hattie Brown shoved to the school ground, her knee bleeding, her dress dirty. She’d always be that little girl to him. How Cadwell could have fallen for that harpy was beyond Nate’s comprehension. After what Josephine had done to Hattie, Nate wished he could dole out justice to her. He’d never hit a woman before, but he’d make an exception. When he turned back to Hattie, her eyes were wide with fear.
A shove from a rifle barrel nudged her head forward. “You tried to trick the wrong person, Nate,” Josephine said.
32
Nate followed the length of a rifle from Hattie’s blood-matted hair up to the stony expression of a cold-blooded murderer. His fingers tingled to grab the gun tucked in his belt, but he feared that by the time he drew, Hattie would have a bullet through her skull.
Zachariah and Clayton couldn’t see what was going on up here. They were likely leaving to bring their prisoners back to Ramsden… or on their way to get Doc. Nate was on his own. Unless…
Cadwell was nowhere in sight. The man was a wildcard.
Nate didn’t like not knowing whose side he was on or if he would decide to show up at the last minute. Hattie’s life was in Nate’s hands.
“Let her go,” Nate said to Josephine. She was nothing more to him than Joe Krugar, the cold-blooded outlaw he’d seen in the shadows that night, who’d ordered the killing of an innocent man. “If you’ve got to kill someone so you can have the last word, shoot me.”
“You’re too handsome to kill, Nate.”
“But she’s beautiful,” he said. “Inside and out.”
With ice for eyes, Josephine looked down at the ragged form strewn at her feet. Josephine was nothing more than an ogress getting some sort of twisted joy out of crushing a fairy princess.
Hattie feebly looked up at Nate, and he wanted to gather her in his arms and cry in her blood-matted hair. But he held up his hands hoping he could talk Josephine into turning her rifle on him. If he succeeded, his last game of wits would win him a bullet. “Let’s talk about Jacob Cadwell,” Nate said. “What did he do to you? Betray you? Abandon you? Did he fail to love you the way you needed him to?”
Josephine’s eyes became distant. Her silence said that Nate was right. Cadwell had failed her in all these ways. Otherwise Cadwell would have been with her now.
“Don’t take this out on Hattie. She doesn’t deserve this,” Nate said. “If you’ve got to hate someone, hate me. Because I did all these things to her.”
“There is something special about our Pearl, isn’t there?”
Nate’s eyes glazed as he looked at Hattie. Pearl. Yes, that’s exactly what she was.
“Even though she’s a simple sort,” Josephine said, “you can’t deny there’s something noble about her. I know she wouldn’t have done to you what you did to her.”
Was Josephine seeing in Hattie a little of the woman she’d once been? Nate hoped so. He smiled when Josephine lifted her rifle from Hattie and pointed it toward him. For the last time, he looked down at Hattie.
Her hair and forehead were caked with blood. Her leg jetted at an unnatural angle. Tears streaked her face as she whimpered, “Nate, don’t do this.”
He could barely see her through the glaze covering his eyes. If there was a last sight he wanted to take with him into the next world, she would be it. Just not like this. Because this, he realized, is what he’d done to her heart. “Go ahead. Kill me,” he urged Josephine as he gazed at Hattie.
Josephine’s eyes turned to steel. A shot rang out.
But it wasn’t from Josephine’s rifle.
Her hair tumbled down, the ribbon having been shot off. As she clutched where the ribbon had been, the cold calm in her eyes gave way to wide-eyed shock. She turned, looking for something in the rocky rim.
Cadwell stepped out and touched the rim of his hat to her.
“Jake.” There was a softening in her voice and eyes as she gazed at Cadwell for one vulnerable moment.
Nate drew his gun on Josephine.
Cadwell shot the gun out of Nate’s hand.
Josephine threw herself onto her horse, and hooves kicked up earth as she took off in a fury.
Nate looked to Cadwell, still standing on the rim. Why was he letting that killer get away? As though he was reading Nate’s mind, Cadwell shook his head and then disappeared in a different direction.
The wildcard had been played. It had been in both Nate’s and Josephine’s hands.
33
On his knees by Hattie’s side, Nate tore his shirt into bandages. He now had a fuller understanding of Hattie. She gave all of herself out of the goodness of her heart.
Zachariah thundered up on horseback. “What’s going on? I heard more gunfire.”
“That was Josephine.” Nate bandaged the gash on Hattie’s head. “You won’t catch up to her.”
Hattie lying on the ground, her hair and face crusted with blood, brought Zachariah down from his horse. “I’m sorry, Hattie. Nate was right. I never should have let you do this.” Zachariah fell to his knees, and she reached for him to hold her. Zachariah gathered her into his arms, and it was the first time Nate had ever seen her cry. But he knew by the way she sobbed into Zachariah’s shoulder that this wasn’t the first time Zachariah had seen her cry.
Nate hung his head. No, she’d never cried on his shoulder. It was always him doing the crying and her doing the comforting. He’d always thought she was unbreakable. How self-centered he’d been. He felt no jealousy toward the brotherly way Zachariah caressed her, rocked her. Zachariah was good for her. No wonder she couldn’t leave him.
Her sobs calmed.
“You don’t look so good, Hattie,” Zachariah said.
She spoke between a groan and a chuckle, “I don’t feel so good, either.”
“How about I bring you over to Doc’s?”
“I sure would appreciate it.”
She looked like a worn-out rag doll as Zachariah lifted her up.
Nate carefully took her from Zachariah, so Zachariah could get on his horse.
Hattie leaned her head against Nate’s chest. She felt fragile in his arms. She looked at him. “Jesus, please help Nate find his way to forgiving Zachariah,” she whispered.
Nate handed her up to Zachariah.
“You’ve got no horse, Nate,” Zachariah said. “I’ll send someone back for you.”
“Don’t worry about me.” Nate said. “It’s a nice day for a walk.” Watching Zachariah ride away with Hattie stirred some long-forgotten memories.
~*~
“Look at you with that wavy yellow hair.” The woman who cleaned his room at the asylum had said to Nate as he lay in bed. He didn’t mind her so much anymore. “You sure are one handsome child of God. I bet you’ve broken plenty of hearts with those light blue eyes of yours.”
Nate looked far away through the window where the drapes rippled with the breeze and the sun shone through. “Only the heart that mattered,” he said.
“So you did have a sweetheart.” The cleaning woman smiled as she mopped. “The woman who won your heart must have been beautiful.”
“She was the Song of Solomon,” Nate said, staring out the window. “I’ll never forgive myself for the way I treated her.”
“I don’t think anybody who’s really sorry for what they’ve done can forgive themselves,” the woman said as she swished the mop. “So that’s what I suppose Jesus is all about.”
He chuckled lightly. He was getting used to her. “You’re not preaching at me, are you?”
She held up her mop. “Do I look like a preacher, Nathan? I keep telling you. I’m just the cleaning woman.”
No. She was more than just a cleaning woman.
“I killed my sister.”
Now able to get out of bed by himself, Nate sat in the chair and stared out his window. The sky was overcast and raindrops tapped the glass.
“You killed Sally? On purpose?” The cleaning woman put a hand on her hip. “I don’t believe that one bit. You loved her too much.”
Nate watched as beads of raindrops filled the window. “She died because I was jealous.” He hung his head, and the cleaning lady set aside her mop and came to his side. She held him as he wept.
“You dear, dear child of God. Do you know what I think jealousy is?”
Leaning against her, he shook his head.
“I think jealousy is just plain not loving yourself.”
“I thought your Good Book said that you’re not supposed to love yourself.”
“It says not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to. But you ought to think something of yourself. How can you love your neighbor as much as yourself, if you hate yourself? Imagine that. What kind of a neighbor would you be then, fighting all the time like vermin? You’re created in the image of God, child. Not a lousy rat. The Good Book ain’t about hating yourself, Nathan. It’s a love letter from God to anybody on earth who wants to read it, and that includes you. Unless you think you’re from the moon. But that would make you a crazy person now, wouldn’t it?”
In the end, it wasn’t the doctor who’d healed Nate. It was the cleaning woman.
Nate sat on the edge of his bed, dressed in traveling clothes. He could have left four hours earlier, but there was someone he wanted to say good-bye to first.
The cleaning woman walked in with her mop, eyed him, and then her dark face broadened with a smile. “I sure am going to miss you, Nathan.” She set her mop in a corner and sat on the bed beside him. “Where’re you headed to?”
“Cambridge, Massachusetts. I have a year left of college, and I’ll finish my degree. After that, I’ll get a good job and buy a big house, and then…” He looked out his window one last time. It was a clear, sunny day. “And then, I’m going back for her.”
She patted his hand. “Good for you, Nathan.” She reached into a deep apron pocket. “There’s something I want to give you before you go.” She pulled out a Bible with a worn spine.
There was a time he would have thrown it back at her. He accepted her gift, but not without a comment. “I’m not exactly the ‘child of God’ you keep saying I am.”
“Oh, yes, you are. And someday you’ll figure that out.”
“I doubt it.”
“I don’t, because I pray for you every single day, dear Nathan, and I’ll keep on praying for you until the day I die.”
He shook his head and then came to his feet. “Is there a name I can remember ‘the woman who prays for me’ by?”
“You can remember me by the name of Hattie.”
He cocked his head. “Hattie?”
“Yes. That’s my name. Hattie.”
He snorted. “That’s a coincidence, because the woman I’m going back for just happens to have the same name.”
“Why, that is a coincidence.” She winked at him. “So I guess that means you’ll have to invite me to the wedding.”
He solemnly made her a promise. “If by some miracle she says yes to my proposal, I will personally pay for your train ticket to our wedding. You brought me back—Hattie.”
He fell on her shoulder, and as they hugged good-bye, she said, “No, Nathan, it was the Lord who brought you back. And He’s got some unfinished business for you to do.”
~*~
Nate’s walk ended with him in Ramsden, standing in front of that unfinished business.
~*~
The dose of laudanum Doc gave Hattie left a bitter taste in her mouth and was just beginning to kick in as he finished the last stinging stitch on her head. She wasn’t sure if she was glad he’d waited a mite longer before yanking her leg back where it belonged, because although the laudanum numbed her grit, the howl she let out was loud enough to wake the dead.
After the patching up, which seemed worse than the infliction, was over, Prudence, Doc’s wife, bathed Hattie and slipped her into a clean nightdress. They moved her to a bedroom where the walls were papered with flowers and the bed sheets were soft and smelled of lavender.
Prudence placed a soft hand on Hattie’s shoulder. “It’ll take some time for you to heal, but I’ve seen worse. In the meantime, you’re staying here where I can keep an eye on you.”
Hattie’s eyelids started getting heavy. “What about my pies?”
“Kate won’t go out of business if she’s without them for a while.”
“What about my chickens?”
“We’ll take care of them.”
“What about—”
“We’ll take care of everything, Hattie. You need to stop worrying and start healing.”
“You can talk to her now,” Doc said to someone outside the bedroom door. “But don’t take too long with her. She needs to rest.”
Prudence left to allow that someone some time alone with Hattie.
Zachariah entered.
Hattie eyed the way he reverently held his hat in front of him. “You don’t have to hold on to your hat like that, Zachariah. I’m in a bed, not a coffin.” Though if worse did come to worst, she didn’t have far to go. She looked out the window at the graveyard. Funny how it was right next door to Doc’s.
Actually, it wasn’t so funny.
Zachariah got rid of the hat by placing it on the dresser. “You came close, Hattie. Too close.”
“And I’ve got you and Nate to thank for saving my life.”
“You’ve got that half right. You’ve got me to thank for getting you into this mess.”
“As you recall, distracting the gang was all my idea.”
“And I shouldn’t have let you do it.”
“So you’d have done it instead? Strut arou
nd in the dress?” She smiled a crooked smile and then giggled at the image.
Zachariah picked up the bottle of laudanum on the bedside table. “How much of this did Doc give you?”
“A couple spoonfuls.”
Zachariah arched a brow.
She was talking silly, and she didn’t care. “You know what, Zachariah?” She snuggled into her pillow. It was soft and cool and smelled so heavenly nice.
“What Hattie?”
“This ain’t the first time you and Nate teamed up to rescue me, you know.” She gasped. “Did I say ain’t?” She snickered. “I ain’t said ain’t in years. I’d given it up to impress the Reverend, who never impressed me, but you know what, Zachariah? It sure feels good to say it again. Ain’t.” She let out a laugh.
Zachariah shook his head.
“You and Nate rescuing me. It happened on the school grounds. I was six years old.” She yawned, and the thoughts continued, though she wasn’t sure if she was talking about it or dreaming about it. Just that it was a bad memory that had somehow turned to a good one. One of the boys had shoved her, and she landed in the mud. It wasn’t because of all the scrubbing she’d have to put into getting her dress clean that made her eyes glaze over, it was what the children who’d gathered around her were saying.
~*~
Hattie ain’t got no pa.
That’s why she and her ma
don’t go to church,
’cause God would lurch
And strike them both down dead.
“Leave her alone!” One of the older boys barged into the ring. She knew he didn’t have a pa, either, but for some reason, folks took to caring for his widowed ma.
The boy who’d knocked her down challenged, “What are you going to do, Zachariah?”
“Whatever it takes to get you to leave that girl alone.”
“You can’t take on all five of us.”
“No.” Zachariah rolled up his sleeves. “But those I can take on, I reckon I can wallop good.”
A second boy stepped into the ring. He was light-haired with serious blue eyes in a face so pleasant it was hard to stop looking at him.
“And I can take on the rest of you,” he said.
Divided Heart Page 19
