Beautiful Bad Man (4 page)

“You do that, and you pay.”

“Sure, that sounds fair,” Cal said, knowing his easy agreement would aggravate Preston, but unprepared for how much.

“I killed Henry Sutton,” Preston said in the tone a man used to insult and provoke. “I grabbed him one night on his way to the privy and threw him down his own well.”

“Was it cold?”

“What?”

“Was it cold the night you did it?”

Preston seemed flummoxed by Cal’s unexpected reaction and the question. “Not like tonight,” he said finally. “It was late spring. Cold enough, I guess.

“Good. I hope he lasted long enough for the cold to get to the center of his bones until he could feel everything that made him alive dying an inch at a time.”

Cal turned and strode toward the bunkhouse, not caring that a man with a grudge was behind him. His hatred for Henry Sutton seldom slipped out of the dark place inside where it lived. Ashamed that it had gotten away from him tonight, he shoved the feeling and the memories back down deep and forced his thoughts to the equally disturbing names on the map.

Much as he didn’t want it to be true, the Hawkins woman had to be the Girl. When he dreamed of what happened all those years ago among the wagons, he dreamed it the way it had happened. Sometimes when he was wide awake, though, he dreamed of the kind of woman the Girl must have grown to be.

He didn’t picture her as an elegant, icy beauty like Van Cleve’s wife. The Girl would be pretty as nature made her without needing to be cinched in under a dress made by someone else. Her eyes would shine with a quiet strength, and if she saw him again, she would know him.

He lay on his bunk fully dressed, knowing he’d be lucky if sleep came by morning, and angry that he couldn’t stop his churning mind. How could the Girl, who had the courage to defy her father and a crowd of belligerent drunks, have grown into a gray woman all used up and bleached out?

Why was he even thinking about it? She was none of his business. Whether she liked it or not, today he had repaid any debt he owed her.

He’d take Yost’s body and Beason to town tomorrow, bring the wagon back, and maybe he’d move on. He didn’t want to see any kin, and Van Cleve could find someone else to “talk” to the Hawkins woman. Maybe Preston’s kind of talk would jolt her out of that spineless resignation.

N
ORAH HUDDLED IN
bed under every quilt and blanket in the house, all her clothes, and the saving grace, a buffalo robe.

Without the robe, she’d have frozen in the night. Which meant she should burn the thing today. It would probably last longer and smell better than any cow chips she’d have the strength to gather.

The problem with that, of course, was where to draw the line. If she could just decide where to draw the line.

All she wanted was to see Joey again, hold him, hear him laugh, and for that to happen, her death couldn’t be her own fault. If God ruled that she had caused her own death by not trying hard enough.... Well, that wasn’t going to happen, so the buffalo robe would have to stay.

The pale light of early morning strengthened until a bright square of sunlight appeared across from the east window of the soddy. She turned away, unwilling to watch the beginning of one more day. Soon she’d drag herself up, go out, and gather enough cow chips to cook another of the few squash left in the root cellar, fry the last of the corn meal into a mush.

For a while yesterday, it seemed as if Preston and his men would make it unnecessary to decide where to draw the line. Even if he and his men hadn’t killed her, after what they were going to do, no one would blame her for crawling off and drifting away.

Then that interfering, evil man had ridden out of the mob. They were hired killers, all of them. They had killed Joe. The interfering one had shot the reckless young one without batting an eye or changing expression, yet he had to have qualms about attacking a woman.

No man who looked down at her with so much contempt did what he did because of her in particular. She shivered, not because the cold penetrated her mountain of blankets but because of the memory of the cold eyes in his cruel face. The curt dismissal in the words he’d thrown at her repeated over and over in her mind.

She’d taken comfort in being beyond feeling, yet he’d made her feel small and no count. What right did he have? The others could have killed him for what he did. He should have minded his own business. If only he had minded his own business.

Pounding on the door exploded through the house.

Norah jerked upright under the pile of bedding, heart in throat. Van Cleve’s men wouldn’t knock. It must be a neighbor, and how was she going to convince a nosy neighbor to leave her alone when they would be able to tell she’d still been in bed this late with the house cold as a grave? As rude as she’d been to Mabel Carbury the last time the poor woman had shown up, it couldn’t be her.

Frantic, expecting more pounding or even hollering, Norah dug her way out of the bed. She peeled off several layers of Joe’s wool stockings so her feet would fit into her icy shoes and tried to smooth her hair into place as she stumbled across the room.

Yanking the door open, ready to be as rude as necessary, she stared at the empty space where a helpful neighbor should be standing, then at the bloody thing hanging from the edge of the roof.

Van Cleve’s men
were
back! Who else would hang something like that from the roof, and if they thought it would scare her into leaving....

She scanned in every direction. There. She spotted a wagon in the distance, across the creek already and appearing to grow smaller and smaller as it retreated across the dull yellow winter prairie.

Up close, the thing hanging from the edge of the roof didn’t resemble the body of some hapless animal. Well, yes, it did. It was part of an animal, a prime piece of what had been a cow.

Worse yet, a pile of boxes sat below it, boxes Norah knew without looking contained food. She kicked at one, hot with resentment. No neighbor ever had beef to give away. Only Van Cleve could give away beef, and she knew his evil, interfering, hired killer had brought these things.

She knew it, and she knew in a day or two he’d be back. He’d claim she owed some enormous sum for the food, or he’d pretend surprise at finding beef on the place and threaten to have her jailed for rustling.

He’d use the threats to try to frighten her into signing the property away. When she didn’t frighten, he’d hurt her. As if she cared. A brittle little laugh escaped, her breath puffing white in the cold air.

She went back inside, slamming the door with anger-driven strength. That food could all sit out there and rot, or the coyotes could carry it off. Her chest heaved as she leaned against the inside of the door, struggling to repair her shell of indifference.

The dull, gray place inside eluded her, and she had to face a truth every fiber of her being rebelled against. When it came to food sitting available in her front yard, the line she worried about was drawn so dark no one could mistake where it lay.

Time passed. Her small flare of temper receded, and resignation returned. She carried the food inside, picked up her sack, and went to gather cow chips for the stove.

The next morning Norah rose early and heard the jingle of harness and creak of approaching wheels bearing a heavy load. She made it outside as the wagon disappeared around the side of the house and hurried after it.

The driver pulled the horses up, set the brake, and jumped down. The sight of firewood piled high in the wagon bed distracted Norah. She could barely remember the scent of wood smoke. Like beef for the table, settlers on the treeless prairie did without wood for their fires.

She forced her attention back to the man — sure enough, the interfering one. Too tall and broad in the shoulders for comfort. Evil-looking, with empty dark eyes. Several days’ beard growth emphasized the predatory, hawkish look, as did that noticeable crook in the bridge of his nose. As if she cared. He didn’t scare her. Couldn’t.

“Take that away. I don’t want food from you, and I don’t want wood.”

He gave her the same contemptuous look as two days before. “Don’t you have a coat that fits?”

“You’re trespassing. Go away and leave me alone.”

He ignored her, gathered an armload of wood and carried it past her. Frustrated, she followed him into the house and watched him drop the firewood beside the stove with a clatter.

“What’s the matter with you? Are you deaf? I don’t want that wood. Go away.”

“I wish I could. The trouble is I owe you, and we’re both stuck dealing with it.”

That made no sense. He couldn’t owe her anything. The only way he could owe her was if....

A wave of dizziness had her groping for the edge of the table for support. “You killed Joe,” she whispered.

“No, Mrs. Hawkins, I did not. Here. Sit down before you fall down.”

He pulled out the closest chair, but she darted around the table and dropped to the one on the opposite side. The quick movement brought back the light-headed feeling, but he didn’t need to know that. She set her jaw and glared at him, letting the hate show.

“I’m going to unload that wood and stack it,” he said, ignoring her attitude. “Why don’t you take a crack at doing something useful, like cooking some of that food you don’t want. Then we’ll talk.”

Norah listened as pieces of wood bounced first off the frozen ground and then off each other. What right did a killer have to talk to her like that, to look at her with such contempt? So she was tired and discouraged and had decided life wasn’t worth living. How she felt and how she lived her life or didn’t live it was none of his business.

If she didn’t cook, would he do it himself and try to force her to eat? If he hadn’t killed Joe, or at least helped others do it, how could he owe her anything? He had to be lying, but why would he bother?

She rose to her feet and stood a moment, relieved when the dizziness didn’t return. She needed to visit the privy, and after that maybe she’d fetch water and make coffee. That might satisfy him, and it would take her mind off the regular thuds coming from outside.

Once the coffee was ready to boil, Norah’s hands kept working as if they had a mind of their own. Biscuits, a man-sized steak, gravy, fried potatoes. After all, the more food he ate, the sooner it would all be gone.

At first she tried to cover the sound of him working outside any way she could, cutting meat and potatoes with vicious whacks of the knife, banging pots and pans, rattling cutlery.

The house warmed, not only as the temperature rose but with the familiar scents of cooking food. Gradually Norah relaxed, accepting the symmetry of the man working outside as she worked inside.

She gave up trying to guess what debt he could believe he owed her. “We’ll talk,” he’d said. He would explain, and she would set him straight.

The sounds outside stopped. She filled a plate, refusing to turn as he walked in without knocking. Her plan to feed him and ignore him went awry immediately. He dropped another armful of wood beside the stove, and she all but dropped the coffee pot she had just picked up.

“Don’t you have a wood box?”

“Of course not. We never had wood.”

“Huh.” He draped his coat over the back of a chair, left his hat on the table, and moved to the washstand near the door, washing his hands with the last of the water she’d hauled in earlier as if he did it every day.

Seeing him there, in the place where Joe had performed the same ritual hundreds, no thousands, of times, Norah realized how much bigger Joe had been. They were both well above average height, but Joe’s head had reached an inch or so closer to the top of the door, and their bodies — the difference was like that between a draft horse and a race horse.

He stood there, drying his hands, taking in everything in the single big room that was her house. His mouth no longer curled with contempt, and the expression on the hawk’s face was curious, as if he’d never seen such a place before. She waited for a belittling remark about houses made of dirt or people who lived in them.

“This is nice. You fixed this house up nice. I like those blue curtains.”

The compliment disconcerted her. She wasn’t used to compliments. Even faint ones. Was that one? Before she decided, he returned to more familiar behavior.

“If you’re going to set one plate on the table like that, you could have put it outside in the dirt. That way you could pretend you’re just feeding a dog.”

Crazy. Now she had an explanation for it all. He was mad. Talking to him would be useless, and she couldn’t think of anything to say anyway.

Crazy or not, he found another cup, plate, and utensils fast enough.

“Sit.”

Norah sat and watched him push a share of everything she’d piled on the one plate for him onto the empty plate. He finished by cutting a piece off the steak and slapped that on the plate too. “Eat.”

“Or what?”

“Or nothing. Eat it. You can commit slow suicide by starving yourself to death some other day.”

Her breath caught in her throat. “I’m not.... Don’t you say.... Don’t you dare say.... I am not....”

“Good. Eat that and prove it, and then you can drink this.” He poured coffee, sat across from her, and began to eat.

After a few mouthfuls, he said, “You’re a good cook, Mrs. Hawkins. You ought to have the sense to enjoy your own cooking.”

Another compliment. He made her want to take her knife to him. Instead she picked up her fork and began eating.

After all, she had eaten a little yesterday. Just enough to prove.... She banished the thought.

She pushed her plate away after eating no more than half of what he’d put on it.

“I hope that’s good enough for you, because I can’t eat any more. Would you please tell me what you think you owe me? I’m sure whatever it is, we’re even now.”

The corners of his mouth pulled straight back, but his lips turned toward each other, keeping the smile inside and controlled. “I owe you for saving my life a long time ago.”

“I never saved anyone’s li....” Her voice tapered off.