by Bill Brooks
Louisa was next to Billy, trembling now.
“He hurt you?” Billy said.
“No,” she said.
Teddy knelt next to the boy, searched his pockets for identification, found a wallet with a card on it that read: Robert Parsnip #1187—Lawson Private School for Boys. There was a spot of blood on it. Teddy slipped the card back into the wallet and returned it to the boy’s pocket. Teddy guessed the boy couldn’t have been more than seventeen or eighteen years old. Too damn young to die.
Billy walked Louisa into the house and came back out with a blanket and covered the body of Bob Parsnip. His girls stood at the window, trying to see what the commotion was, now that their mother had freed them from a locked closet.
“Jesus,” Billy said as he drew the blanket over the boy’s face. “Just a damn kid.”
Teddy went out into the yard and looked off toward a line of trees in the distance, but instead of seeing trees, he kept seeing the face of Bob Parsnip—that youthful innocent-looking face and how it grew slack when death took him.
Billy came out into the yard and said, “I’m sorry as hell it was you who had to kill him and not me.”
“I don’t guess it made any difference to him who killed him,” Teddy said.
“No, I don’t reckon it did. I think if he was anything like his daddy, though, he was ready to die.”
“I don’t see how any man is ready to die,” Teddy said.
“Indians, the ones I know personally at least, the fighting Indians, are born ready to die. He died brave, if foolishly.”
“I feel bad about it, Colonel.”
“I know you do, old son.”
A murder of crows flew overhead, their black wings oily against the emerging sun, their caws echoing over the land.
“Might be them crows is carrying off that boy’s spirit,” Billy said.
“You believe in that sort of thing?”
“I do, yes, sir. I sure do.”
Then the sky was quiet again.
“I’ll get the wagon,” Billy said. “So we can take that boy in to town for a proper funeral.”
“You hold no animosity toward him then?”
“No, sir. He was just doing what he thought he needed to do to honor his daddy. Can’t blame him for that. I lost my boy this last spring. I’d been proud of him if he had done the same thing for me that boy yonder did for his daddy.”
Teddy thought of his own father and of his late brother. What Billy was talking about was family, and what family blood meant.
“Too bad he didn’t find another way to defend the honor of his father than to have to die for it,” Teddy said.
“Maybe he just didn’t have no choice in the matter,” Billy said. “Indians believe their fate is writ in the stars for ’em, even before they’re born.”
Teddy and Bill stood silent for a moment, letting the wind speak a prayer for them and for the dead boy. Then they went and got the wagon and loaded Bob Parsnip into the back of it and rode into town with him.
Chapter 36
Louisa had just finished washing the blood from the porch when she saw him riding up the lane—John Sears. She splashed the bucket of rinse water over the stain she’d scrubbed as best she could and set the bucket down, wiping her hands upon her apron.
John reined in and said, “Ma’am.”
Louisa didn’t know quite what to say.
“This for you,” John said, handing her a small package wrapped in butcher’s paper.
“Thank you,” she said.
“For the kindness,” John said, and she knew that he meant for that afternoon they’d sat on the porch together drinking tea and talking.
“It is very thoughtful of you,” she said. “But not at all necessary.”
He sat his horse as though waiting for an invite to dismount. She did not offer him one.
“We had a real rough time of it out there on that hunt,” he said. “I reckon you may have heard by now.”
“Yes,” she said.
He looked toward the house.
“The Colonel home?”
“He was here, but he and Mr. Blue have returned to town.”
“I see.”
John saw the girls standing in the window watching him, their bright young faces pretty and curious.
“I just wanted to say something,” John said.
“Perhaps it would be better if you didn’t,” she said.
“I got to thinking when we was out there on that hunt and things were at their worst how nice it would be to know somebody was home waiting for me, caring about me and whether I was safe or not, caring to have me return home to them again.”
“Is that not something you’ve had before?” Louisa asked.
“Once, I did. A long time ago.”
“I’m very sorry you don’t have that now, Mr. Sears.”
“Ma’am. I am very sorry too. The Colonel’s a mighty lucky man. That’s all I wanted to say, I guess.”
“It’s not wrong to want such things, Mr. Sears.”
“Ma’am. Could you call me John, just this once?”
“John,” she said. “It’s not wrong to want someone to care about you and want you with them, someone who worries about you when you’re gone and loves you when you’re not.”
“It just needs to be right,” he said.
“Yes,” she said. “It just needs to be the right one.”
“Well, I best be getting into town. I suppose…”
“I wish it were different for you, John.”
He smiled.
“Someday, maybe,” he said. “It was kindly of you to be so nice to me. You’ve got a nice family.”
She watched him turn his horse back toward the lane. And she kept watching him until he’d ridden out of sight.
Then she opened the package John had given her and saw that it was a music box. And when she turned its key the music made her cry.
Chapter 37
Teddy was in his room waiting for John when there was a knock at his door. Thinking it was John, he didn’t bother to put on a shirt.
“May I come in?” Anne said.
He stepped aside and she came into the room and he closed the door behind her.
He could see her eyes were red from crying, no doubt.
“I’m sorry about Edgar,” Teddy said.
“You don’t have to apologize; it wasn’t your fault.”
“I feel responsible.”
“Don’t be,” she said. “Does your shoulder hurt terribly?”
“It will heal.”
“What will you do now?”
“John sort of wants to go down to Mexico.”
A silence fell between them. Time itself seemed to stop.
“It’s too early for me to know what my true feelings are,” Anne said. “I must have a period of mourning for Edgar, as much for myself as out of respect for him.”
Teddy nodded.
“But afterward…after time has passed and I reach a point where I know my life must go on, that’s when it will be the hardest for me—not having you in my life.”
“I could always come to visit you,” he said. “If that’s something you think you’d want.”
“I think it is something I’d want.”
“Then that’s what I’ll do.”
“I don’t want you to feel you have to wait for me to make up my mind. I mean, I know you have to live your life as well…”
“You don’t have to tell me,” Teddy said. “I’m my own man and you’re your own woman. Take the time you need, and if and when you’re ready to see me again, let me know.”
She stepped close to him, her hand reaching to touch the bandages on his shoulder so tenderly they felt like feathers brushing across his skin.
“Teddy…” she said.
He lowered his head until their lips touched.
It was a good kiss. A nice warm kiss that would seal their feelings for each other within their hearts for whatever time it took to work through
everything they were each facing.
“Here’s my address,” she said, slipping a piece of paper into his hand.
“I’ll write you,” he said.
“No promises, remember.”
“No promises,” he said. “But I’ll write you anyway.”
She smiled. They kissed again. She left. He felt alone, but not completely, for her spirit was still there in the room with him.
And the next morning he walked down to the station with the trio—Anne and Emma and Rudolph Banks—and waited with them until the train came. And before it arrived, Billy rode up on his high-stepper and dismounted and said, “I’ve come to see you off,” and Rudolph Banks discreetly handed him a bank draft for the full amount plus a bonus, saying, “I’m sure you’ll see that the others are taken care of, Colonel.” The two shook hands. Then the flier arrived and Billy and Teddy and John stood on the platform until the others boarded. Farther down, workers loaded Edgar Rivers’s coffin into a baggage car.
The three of them stood there listening to the hiss of steam from the locomotive and were still standing there until the train shuddered and set into motion, slow at first, then soon enough picking up some speed.
Teddy saw her face there in one of the windows and their eyes met and held for as long as was possible before the train carried her and the others away toward the East.
“Well, boys,” Billy said. “It has been one hell of a week, to say the least. I know it’s early, but I could use me some breakfast, preferably one that included an eye-opener, couldn’t you?”
And John said, “Hell, yes, I could.”
So all three of them started up the street and got close to the hotel, where they saw Yankee Judd and Jane Nebraska coming out holding hands and practically moon-eyed over each other. White Eye Anderson was tagging along behind them, not sure at all how he felt about life these days, but not unhappy entirely because he was still part of it in the main—a living, breathing human soul who’d seen much tragedy and known a little love and wouldn’t mind knowing a little more someday.
They all went to the restaurant together and ate and drank cocktails and Billy said afterward they’d traipse over to the bank and he’d pay them all plus a bonus.
And once out of the bank with the others paid off, Billy offered Teddy and John his hand and they shook it.
“Boys, I owe you my bacon,” Billy said. “I wish you’d join my new combination and come East with me.”
“Maybe in the future,” Teddy said, remembering that he and John were still wanted men.
“Well, anytime, anywhere is fine with me,” Billy said. “You’ll always have a job with me if you want one.”
“Much appreciated, Colonel,” John said.
They stood there for a moment, then Billy waved adios and he and the others went off down the street to whatever their own particular future held for them while Teddy and John went to get their things from the hotel.
“I wouldn’t mind being one of those show people,” John said, “the more I think about it.”
“You wouldn’t like it much after you’d done it awhile,” Teddy said.
“I don’t know, I’m sort of changing in my ways,” John said, allowing himself to think about Louisa Cody, what it would be to have himself a steady wife and children.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Means a feller can change his ways if he wants to, is all it means.”
“We’re still wanted men.”
“I ain’t forgot.”
“How long do you think we’ll have to lay low?”
John looked at him.
“You think I’m some sort of expert on such matters?”
“I reckon, more than me.”
John grinned then.
“Three, four months, maybe. I guess Hoodoo Brown ain’t caught us by then, he’ll find something else to occupy his time.”
“I need to send George Bangs a telegram before we leave town.”
They walked a little farther.
“You get that thing worked out with her?” John said.
“I could ask the same thing of you, couldn’t I?”
“Shit,” John said.
And they walked on.
About the Author
BILL BROOKS is the author of eleven novels of historical and frontier fiction. He lives in North Carolina.
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Also by Bill Brooks
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Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
LAW FOR HIRE: DEFENDING CODY. Copyright © 2003 by Bill Brooks. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
ePub edition August 2007 ISBN 9780061748233
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