Revealed in dim outlines, two men stood at
the edge of the field. He moved a bit closer, never forgetting that
he was basically unarmed. A flurry of obscenities erupted from the
pair, and he recognized the voice of Cooper Matthews.
“
You’ll get paid! Now do like I told
you and let’s get the hell away before Hicks catches us. We’re
almost done.”
“
You were gonna cheat me, Cooper. And
after I stuck by you through thick and thin! You told me she only
paid you ten dollars. Not twenty, like she just said! It’s been
hard work drivin’ that wagon all over this field in the dark, not
to mention spreadin’ this stuff over a plot this size. The sacks
weight fifty pounds apiece! I want my fair share of the
take.”
Sacks, Jeff puzzled, fury racing through his
veins.
“
Goddamn it, Floyd, I’m sick of your
whinin’!”
“
Well, you won’t have to listen to me
anymore! I’ve had a bellyful of you.” One of the pair—Floyd, Jeff
thought—broke away and ran to the wagon.
Jeff stepped forward. “Just stop right there,
Floyd!”
The man gaped at Jeff. “Talk to Cooper. This
was all his idea!” Throwing a pick into the wagon bed, he pulled
himself up to the seat and unwrapped the reins. He flapped them on
the horse’s back so suddenly the animal whinnied in surprise and
took off running across the field, narrowly missing Cooper in the
bargain. Floyd yelled, slapped the reins on the horse’s back again,
and then jerked hard to the left to steer the conveyance toward the
road. The wagon squeaked and rattled as it bumped over the plowed
earth.
Cooper stood motionless, and then flung his
hat down and stomped it. “Goddamn it all to hell! Just wait’ll I
get my hands on you again, you simple-minded bastard! Your own mama
won’t recognize you,” he yelled after the wagon.
“
It won’t be anything compared to what
you’ll look like when I’m finished putting my hands on you,
Matthews.” Jeff approached Cooper, filled with so much rage that
he’d forced himself to leave the axe behind in the blackberries. In
his state of mind, it seemed the smart thing to do.
Cooper whirled around and faced Jeff. “Hicks!
You ain’t the sheriff no more. You can’t arrest me for
trespassin’.”
“
Arrest you!” Jeff’s laugh was grim.
“I’m not interested in anything as formal as all that. I just want
to beat the shit out of you. Who the hell do you think you are, you
piss-ant, white-livered son of a bitch? You sneaked out here in the
dead of night and salted this field!”
“
You hold on there with your
name-callin’, Hicks. Miss O-livia Ford paid us twenty dollars to do
just that. If you don’t believe me, you can ask her
yourself.”
“
She never sets foot off this property.
I’m supposed to believe she went searching for you two?”
“
I don’t give a damn what you believe.
I’ll tell you something else—” Cooper said, chortling—“she paid us
to hang that spook in the barn too. She said she was playin’ a
joke, and by God, I guess it was a good one! Oh, damn, but I wish I
coulda been here to see your faces!” He laughed
outright.
Jeff clenched his back teeth. “Really—you
haven’t explained how she arranged all this without leaving the
house.”
“
I don’t owe you no kind of
explanation, Hicks. But just so’s you’ll know, she sent me letters.
Seth Wickwire, that tall, big-eared kid with the rabbit teeth who
delivered groceries out here once a week? He brought them to me at
the livery stable.”
“
Yeah? Where are those letters
now?
“
I did like she said—I threw ’em away.
But Floyd’ll vouch for me.”
As if Floyd Endicott were an upstanding
citizen whose word was his honor. Jeff clenched his jaw so tightly
his head ached. He wanted to call Cooper a liar and shove his words
back down his throat. But, even though the man had never given Jeff
a single reason to trust anything he said, in this case, he
believed him. God, was there no end to Olivia’s hatred of him? She
was willing to do anything, hurt anybody, including her sister, to
either get rid of Jeff or get even with him. He’d worked his ass
off, preparing and planting this stupid field. Now, just to spite
him, Olivia had destroyed the whole crop. To make matters worse,
while Allie pinched and saved every penny she possibly could,
Olivia had pissed away twenty dollars, no small sum. Obviously it
didn’t matter if it meant taking the food out of her own mouth—if
she’d thought that far ahead. It was just so damned senseless—and
maybe that was what enraged him most of all, the sheer stupidity of
it.
Jeff took a deep breath. His anger made his
hands shake, but his voice was steady and dead calm. He leaned
forward to look down into Cooper’s bony face. “You get off this
land right now, Matthews, and don’t ever come here again. Go fast,
like the devil was after you. And don’t look back, not even once—if
you do, I swear to God you might find me behind you.”
Nothing Jeff ever said or done seemed to have
made much of an impression on Cooper. He was stupid and mean, a
bully and a blowhard who enjoyed watching other people squirm. But
like all bullies, he was also a coward. Jeff’s anger rolled out of
him, as palpable in the air as the charged feeling right before a
lightning storm. He no longer felt any regret for taking Cooper’s
son—he still grieved for the boy, but not for his father. All he
felt was white-hot rage. Cooper must have sensed it too, because
Jeff smelled his fear now. It came to him in a sickening green
wave, from beneath the stench of the man’s sweat and body odor.
It felt good—freeing—to watch Cooper grow
pale with fear, his face suddenly pasty white in the thin light of
the breaking day. It was Cooper’s turn to squirm. Maybe a better
man would have risen above that kind of pettiness. If Jeff wasn’t
that kind of man, he didn’t care.
“
I a-ain’t afraid of you.”
“
The hell you aren’t. Go—before I take
you apart with my bare hands, you no-account, weaselly
bastard.”
As though spurred by a rowel, Cooper wheeled
and lurched into a run across the plowed rows, taking the same
general route that the wagon had. When the freshly turned earth
gave way under his plodding boots, making him stagger and nearly
fall, he didn’t slow, and he didn’t look back. Not even once.
~~*~*~*~~
Allie tried to go back to sleep, but she kept
listening for Jeff’s return. He was back in only a few minutes.
She saw his silhouette in the dim room and
watched as he shucked his clothes. When he climbed into bed with
her, tension radiated from him. He smelled of the night air and,
not unpleasantly, sweat.
“
Is everything all right?” she
asked.
He pulled her into his arms and sighed. “It
is now.”
She smiled and let sleep take her once
more.
~~*~*~*~~
Allie awoke to find herself alone in Jeff’s
bed. A sleepy-eyed glance around the room told her that the sun was
already up. Everything was bathed in the bright yellow-pink light
of a summer dawn.
Oh, had last night really happened? Had she
given herself to Jeff in that frenzy of heart-pounding passion and
tender intimacy? She rolled over and looked at the low ceiling and
smiled. Yes, she had and it had been wonderful. She’d given him her
heart and body, and in exchange, he’d offered her sanctuary.
It might be just the chance to change her
life that she’d dreamed of. Could she go with Jeff? Just the idea
of escaping from this place made her heart feel lighter. They’d go
someplace where no one knew either of them. No longer would she be
one of the crazy Ford sisters. He wouldn’t be the sheriff who had
fallen from grace. Maybe they could put all of the grim days behind
them now.
Then her happiness dimmed, and doubt crept
in. What if Jeff never opened his heart to her? The scars on his
spirit might be so great that no amount of love she gave him could
change that. Could she bear living with a man who not only wasn’t
her husband, but who didn’t even love her?
And even if she decided that she could accept
such a life, she would have to tell was Olivia she was leaving, and
Allie didn’t think her sister would receive the news with grace or
gladness. The promise that Allie had made her to father would
demand that she bring Olivia with her to her new home, wherever it
might be. It was her duty, regardless of whatever Olivia had done.
Dear God, Allie didn’t want to. She couldn’t. She didn’t believe
that Jeff or Olivia would want it either.
She loved Olivia, she assured herself
feverishly. She had to love her, she was her sister. Olivia
wouldn’t be destitute. There wasn’t much of their father’s money in
the bank in town, but she would have the farm. And although she
gave every impression of not knowing how to care for herself, she’d
watched Allie for years. Surely she’d learned something.
First things first. Clutching the sheet to
her chest, Allie swung her legs over the side of the bed. She had
to get back to the house and get dressed. Jeff was already up and
around, and he’d be wanting his breakfast. She was famished herself
this morning. And she didn’t want to risk having her sister catch
her out here. She threw back the sheet and pulled her nightgown
from the footboard where Jeff had thrown it. Wiggling into the
garment, she plucked her shawl from the floor and tidied the
bed.
Standing in the doorway, she took a last look
at the place where Jefferson Hicks had given her hope, and his body
and soul to hold, even for just a little while. Then, with a secret
smile tucked in her woman’s heart, she sped across the yard to the
house.
~~*~*~*~~
Allie hummed through her chores and created a
special breakfast consisting of cornbread, bacon, and fried
potatoes. Their redolence filled the kitchen. She decided that she
and Jeff would eat together here in the kitchen this morning, so
she set the table for two with nice napkins and the good china. It
might be a rehearsal for all the mornings to come when they would
do this every day. Well, maybe not with good china and table linen,
she thought as she poured the coffee. But she would make certain
that Jeff had a hearty breakfast to start his days.
It was a beautiful morning, warm but not too
hot yet. Outside the birds in the orchard were calling back and
forth, and a light breeze rustled the trees. Had there ever been a
more spectacular day? she wondered, her heart as light as
swan’s-down. She knew it was possible for one day to make a huge
difference in a person’s life—she simply had never considered the
possibility that the difference could be positive.
Expecting Jeff to come to the back door any
second, she served the food so that it would look welcoming. Except
for the one disastrous dinner, he’d never eaten in the house.
But the minutes ticked by and Jeff did not
appear. She put the bacon and potatoes back on the stove. When a
half hour had passed, an odd sense of foreboding crowded in on her,
and she decided to look for him. He wasn’t in the yard and the barn
door was closed, thank God. She walked the perimeter of the house,
in case he was working on some task, but still she couldn’t find
him.
At last she decided to check the field. As
she walked past her parents graves, she purposely averted her gaze.
If some weed had invaded again, or if the flowers planted there
needed water, she didn’t want to know. Not now, not today.
When the garden came into view, she saw Jeff
standing at its edge, tall and broad-shouldered, staring at it as
if he’d never seen it before. She was pleased to see that he wore
the shirt she’d made for him. Dear God, but he was a handsome
man.
“
Jeff?” she called.
He didn’t acknowledge her.
Well, what on earth— Her sense of uneasiness
grew as she approached him. “Jeff, didn’t you hear—” And then she
saw, and her light heart felt as if it had fallen to her knees.
“Oh, dear God—”
He continued to stare at the ruined garden,
an empty sack clutched in one hand at his side. “I’ve looked at
every inch of it, Allie. Nothing can be saved.”
It was obvious why not. All the rows, so
carefully plowed and seeded and well on their way with established
plants, were mangled and ground into the earth, and the soil was as
churned up as if an army had marched through here. Scraps of dirty
sacking lay here and there, and what was that white frost coating
everything and the peculiar briny smell?
“
What—what—?” She couldn’t even get the
question out.
“
Cooper Matthews and Floyd Endicott
came out here with a wagon during the night. They drove it back and
forth over the vegetables, and then for good measure they finished
off the job with bags of salt.” He held the white cotton sack out
to her. It had been torn down the middle, maybe with a knife or
some other pointed tool. When she held the two halves together, she
read Diamond Salt.
“
Salt!”
He just stared at the field, his arms cross
over his chest. “Yup. Nothing is going to grow in this ground for a
long time.”
“
How do you know it was
them?”
“
I saw them both. I woke up when I
heard their horse and I came out here with the axe to chase them
off. I was so angry when I realized what they’d done, I figured I’d
better leave it in the blackberries—I honestly didn’t know what I’d
do it I had it in my hands. They had an argument before I could
talk to them, and Floyd left by himself in the wagon. I threw
Cooper off the property and told him to never come
back.”
“
But—but, why would they do such a
thing?” She couldn’t control the quiver in her voice. “Do they hate
us so much?”