Short of hogtying her what could he do?
Scanning the porch around him and hoping for an idea, Jeff spotted
the three-gallon water bucket that always sat next to the top step.
Inspired, he picked it up, flung open the screen door, and charged
into the kitchen where Olivia’s howling was even louder.
“
Jeff, no—” Allie protested when she
saw him. Ignoring her objection, he upended the bucket over
Olivia’s head, feeling as desperate as a man putting out a fire in
a dynamite factory. Water sluiced over both her and Allie and
flooded the floor. Olivia’s sobbing stopped abruptly on a shocked,
high-pitched gasp, and she sprang from her chair, spitting like a
cat.
“
How dare you?” she demanded, quivering
with indignation and, Jeff noted, in sudden and complete possession
of her faculties. Water soaked her elaborately curled hair and
fancy dress, but her eyes were as focused as they had been the day
she bit him. She looked down at her pink dimity, positively
stunned. “You have ruined my dress, you—you vagrant!”
If Jeff had been in a better mood, he might
have been amused by Olivia’s waterlogged appearance. But the
purpling bruise on Allie’s cheek and Olivia’s unmasked
deceitfulness with which she had controlled her sister for so many
years gave him nothing to laugh about.
Marshaling all the authority he’d used to
break up saloon fights, Jeff put his hand on her shoulder and
pushed her back into the chair. “Lady, you’d better sit down, shut
up and behave like an adult, or I’ll tie you to that chair! You’ve
done a lot of damage of your own.”
Apparently not defiant enough to challenge
Jeff, Olivia sat down, as sullen as a twelve-year-old. But she
raked him with a look that might have withered a weaker man. A
monster of selfishness and hatred lurked under her sweet face and
artful curls. She hadn’t fooled Jeff, but her sister had been taken
in.
Allie, her skirts and shoes also drenched,
gaped first at Olivia, then Jeff, then Olivia again. She could
barely grasp what she’d just witnessed. Oh, God. Realization knifed
through her mind like a blinding pain. Squeezing her eyes closed,
she clamped her hands over her face. It couldn’t be true. It simply
couldn’t. She refused to believe it. Olivia hadn’t faked her
illness all these years. To even entertain such a notion for a
moment would be despicable.
No . . . Allie drew a
deep breath and struggled for calm. There was another explanation,
she assured herself. There had to be. The water in the bucket had
been cold. Quite simply, the shock had ended Olivia’s hysterical
convulsion, much as a hard slap to the face would snap someone out
of a panic. It was shock. Yes, that had to be it.
Regaining her composure, Allie shoved all
other possibilities from her mind. To believe another reason was
just too horrible to contemplate. She clutched her sister’s wet
forearm. “Olivia, you’re better! How do you feel?”
“
How do you think I feel?” Olivia
snapped impatiently. “I’m soaked to the skin, thanks to your hired
hand.”
“
Tell her, Olivia,” Jeff prodded. “Tell
your sister that you’ve been faking these attacks just to run her
around in circles.”
“
I will do no such thing. I don’t have
to answer to you!”
“
Tell her.”
Allie’s heart felt as if it had stopped in
her chest. No, it couldn’t be true, she told herself again. It was
bad enough that Olivia had tricked her and Jeff with the episode in
the barn. But her illness—that had to be real. She truly was sick.
Otherwise Dr. Brewster would have been right. Lane Smithfield would
have been right. “Olivia—my God—”
Jeff put his foot on the overturned bucket
and leaned closer to Olivia, fixing her with a hard look that made
her shift in her seat. “Tell Allie how you double-crossed me and
that you’re the one who hung that dummy in the barn for her to
see.”
“
He’s lying!” Olivia shrieked, twisting
toward Allie. Her face was contorted, pulling her mouth into an
ugly pink slash. “I have not been faking! And I didn’t put that
horrid thing out there. I swear on Daddy’s grave. On Daddy’s grave!
Oh, God, I wish he was here. He wouldn’t have let his awful man set
one foot on our property so he could say these dreadful things and
turn you against me! I was his little princess, and I deserved to
be treated like one because you cheated me out of my mother’s love.
Daddy said it was all your fault and you know it!”
“
Yes, he did,” Allie agreed woodenly,
staggered by the terrible realization that had dawned upon her. “He
always did.”
~~*~*~*~~
“
I got word from that crazy Olivia Ford
about another job for us, Floyd. Seth Wickwire brought me another
letter from her. So you be ready a couple of hours after midnight.
There’ll be a half moon, enough to see by, but not so much to give
us away.” Cooper Matthews spoke to his companion over his beer
glass in a hushed voice. Nobody in the Liberal Saloon appeared to
be paying any mind to them as they stood at the far end of the bar.
The barkeep had his nose buried in a green-backed ledger, and since
it was the dinner hour, business was slow. But a man couldn’t be
too careful.
Floyd Endicott upended his mug to drain the
last dribble of beer into his mouth. “I’ll be ready. I hope she’s
payin’ a little more this time.” He dragged his grimy sleeve across
his foamy lip and smiled, revealing tobacco-stained teeth. “But I’d
almost have been willin’ to string up that scarecrow for free if we
coulda seen their faces when they found it danglin’ there in the
barn. Hoo-ee, I’ll bet they went whiter than a glass of milk in a
snowbank.” He straightened. “Still, a man’s gotta earn a livin’,
and I need beer and tobaccy money.”
Cooper closed his hand around the fragrant
stationary in his overalls pocket. It bore Olivia Ford’s message,
including the promise of twenty dollars for a job well done. He let
his gaze make another sweep of the saloon’s patrons and kept his
voice down. “She’s payin’ the same as before—ten dollars. You get
four after the job’s done, just like last time. Then there’s all
that satisfaction from gettin’ even with Hicks and the Ford
woman.”
“
I dunno, Cooper. Satisfaction won’t
buy me another beer.” He shrugged. “If I’m going to take the risk I
want it to be worth my while. Besides, why should you get more than
me?”
Cooper signaled the barkeep to bring another
round of beers, which he paid for himself. “There. Happy now?” he
asked as Floyd slurped down his drink with the noisy enthusiasm of
a thirsty dog. “Why do I have to keep remindin’ you, Floyd, that
I’m the brains of this outfit? This ain’t like the first time, when
the woman left us everything we needed out by the road. There were
supplies to buy for this job—am I supposed to pay for them myself
and you pay nothin’? That wouldn’t be right.”
“
I guess not,” Floyd replied, but
sounded unconvinced. “But if we get caught, we’ll both go to jail,
and I don’t think Will Mason is gonna care who paid for
what.”
Cooper slammed his glass down on the bar and,
with no little difficulty, defeated the urge to yell at Endicott.
“Goddamn it, Floyd, quit bellyachin’ and take what I’m offering
you. Now, I got the wagon loaded and tied up out back of the
livery. I’m goin’ out to the Ford place tonight, and I expect you
to come with me. If you don’t, you won’t even get four dollars.
You’ll get no dollars.”
Floyd looked up at Cooper from under the brim
of his greasy, gnarled hat. Pulling a small chaw of tobacco from
his pocket, he bit off a hunk and grumbled around it, “Yeah, I’ll
come. But I’m not sure I much like it.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Numb and yet beset with a strange kind of
grief, Allie stood at the back screen door, staring at Jeff’s
lean-to across the yard. A variety of emotions assailed
her—betrayal, astonishment, and a bone-deep hurt that she could
barely comprehend. The night was still warm but her hands were icy
with a cold that seemed to radiate from deep within her. She
reached for her shawl where it hung on a hook by the door and drew
it around her shoulders.
In the wake of the intense drama with Olivia,
she had asked Jeff to leave them alone, and he had done so. But
once he’d gone outside, Allie realized that she had nothing to say
to her sister. Olivia had followed her around the kitchen, weeping
and pleading, protesting her innocence and Jeff’s guilt. She had
even fallen to her knees and tried to soak up the water on the
floor with her skirt.
For reasons she still couldn’t define, Allie
had felt nothing. She’d simply stood there, staring down at her
sister with a sense of detachment that was with her even now. That
place within her chest where she normally felt pain or gladness had
turned oddly empty, leaving an awful, hollow nothingness. Unable to
bring herself to speak one word, she’d gone about the business of
mopping the kitchen floor.
Olivia, who was unaccustomed to being
ignored, had finally flown to her bedroom and slammed the door,
sobbing at the top of her lungs. Her wails could be heard
downstairs and out in the yard, reminding Allie of nothing more
than a spoiled, thwarted child having a tantrum. She had quieted
down as dusk gathered, and Allie thanked God for the peace.
Afterward, she’d gone to her own room to wash
and change into her nightgown, hoping to escape her awful
loneliness in sleep. But sleep would not come to her. Her cheekbone
ached where the cast iron pan had struck it, and it had positively
throbbed whenever she lay down. That pain, though, was nothing
compared to her sense of betrayal. All these years she’d devoted to
Olivia, defending her, deferring to her, believing that she herself
deserved no life beyond the this house and the farm upon which it
was built. The thoughts had kept spinning through her tired mind
and she’d left her bed again to come downstairs.
Now that full night had fallen, Allie was
certain she’d never felt more alone in her life. As she remained at
the door, her fingertips resting on the nubby texture of the
screen, she considered the fact that she had no family from which
to draw comfort. She never had. Her father and Olivia had always
been their own family, shutting Allie out in subtle but obvious
ways, both of them blaming her for a moment of inattention, a
single heartbeat of time upon which four lives had turned and
irrevocably changed. Father and Olivia had had each other. And
after Amos Ford died, Olivia had Allie.
But Allie had no one.
There was no familiar shoulder where she
could rest her head or her ice-bound heart, no one to help her pass
this night of terrible emptiness and disillusionment.
She glanced up at the cloudless, blue-black
sky and saw the moon, a buttery half-round, with stars flung around
it like jewels.
That’s your moon up there tonight,
Allie . . .
Jeff had given her a summer moon one night
when she had still believed she knew her world and everything in
it. One night a lifetime ago.
There was no light coming from the window in
the lean-to, so he was probably asleep.
In bed.
He was hardly more than an acquaintance.
She touched the tucks on the bodice of her
nightgown, letting her fingers trail over her breasts. To go to a
man dressed only in a nightgown and shawl was so inappropriate she
supposed it was downright immoral. And it seemed doubly so, given
the kiss they’d shared this afternoon and the thoughts she’d had
about him, hot and disconcerting. She had watched him all these
weeks gaining strength and rugged confidence. He was not the
broken-down drunk he’d been when she met him, dirty and needing
nourishment and a haircut. Now he was almost fully restored to the
tall, vital, lean-muscled man she’d once admired as he’d walked
down the street in Decker Prairie.
But he’d known pain and disappointment, and
the shock of a life turned suddenly upside down. It was almost as
if he called her, urging her to come to him.
Perhaps in the company of a stranger she
would find the understanding and consolation that her own kin had
denied her.
Allie tightened her wrap and pushed open the
screen door.
~~*~*~*~~
Jeff lay naked in his bed, a restless drifter
through the night, not awake but not asleep. The sun had pounded
down on the lean-to all day, and the tiny room was still like an
oven. His rough sheet seemed to brush the nerves raging just
beneath his bare skin, rousing him whenever he dozed. As he tossed
and turned, images of a red-haired woman floated through his
dreams. She was sweetly curved, with skin like honeyed cream and a
soft body that had never known a man’s touch.
In this twilight place, he imagined that she
came to his bed to lie beside him, her hair flowing over the pillow
like tongues of flame. His body responded, hard and keen, to the
feel of her smooth thigh against his. He could not move to embrace
her. Instead, he lay paralyzed in a helpless fever-pitch as she
caressed him and ran her hands over his chest and belly.
Jeff, I’ve been waiting for
you . . . waiting all my
life . . .
Her fingers trailed lower and he heard
himself groan.
I need you, Allie, to give me back my soul
again.
I love you, Jeff, more than you can
know . . .
The distant sound of an owl woke him, making
him aware of the sheet on his skin once again. Jeff lurched to
consciousness. He was alone in the hot darkness, slick with sweat,
uncertain of his surroundings. It had been just a dream, he
realized, a sweet, unattainable dream. A feeling of profound
disappointment settled on him like a stone.
Allie wasn’t with him. She hadn’t touched him
or called his name or said she loved him. Just this afternoon,
hadn’t she told him that she thought about him? Hadn’t he held her
and kissed her and fought the urge to take her right there, in the
tall grass? Yes. But the other events of the afternoon came
flooding back over him—Olivia, the bitchy, spoiled brat, and Allie,
confused and disillusioned by what she’d learned. For his own part,
Jeff sometimes thought of the hero in the old fairytale about Briar
Rose, trying to hack his way through a wall of thorn bushes to
reach the princess. The Fords had a whole briar patch of problems,
both literally and figuratively, and Allie stood at the center of
them. Jeff was certainly no hero—his saber was nothing more than a
history of loss and a future of uncertainty.