Texas Born (44 page)

She stared at him. 'Still. I wish you
wouldn't go.'

'I have to. You know that.'

She nodded and came into his arms. He held
her close, a feat which was becoming increasingly difficult with
her pregnancy. He could feel her trembling.

He smiled down at her, his eyes tender.
'Let's stop worrying, and go upstairs. I've got an hour to kill and
I intend to put it to good use.'

She laughed in spite of herself. 'The baby
might kick you,' she warned teasingly.

'Then let it kick.'

She laid her head against his chest and gazed
at the setting sun. It was huge and orange, poised above the roof
of the rooming house across the street. For a moment it seemed to
hang there hesitantly. Then suddenly it slipped down, down, down
until it was a mere thin curve along the roof; then it was
gone.

She felt his hand tugging at hers.

'But the girls!' she protested weakly.
'Really, Zaccheus!'

'Rosa will keep them busy. Come on. It's our
last chance until tomorrow morning.'

She felt the warmth of him pressing against
her body and her own answering warm tremor.

He kissed her deeply, urgently. 'Time's
a-wasting.'

She stared into his eyes. 'Yes,' she
whispered in return. 'It is.'

It was after midnight and Zaccheus had been
sitting cross-legged in the weeds for hours now, a bottle of cold,
sugared back coffee beside him. Fifty feet in front of him, that
morning's newly delivered pallets of lumber, piles of copper
plumbing pipes, and giant rolls of electric wiring were black
shadows against a dark sky.

The fields all around were eerie, moonless,
and dark. Field mice scurried in the high dry weeds; in the
distance a coyote howled. Cicadas and crickets shrilled and trilled
their night songs.

It was in the hour after midnight when he
finally heard the distant, labored rumbling of approaching trucks.
As they neared, the insects and animals stilled a moment before
continuing their nocturnal cacophony. Three sets of headlights
dipped and rose on the dirt road.

Zaccheus crawled forward to get a better view
and squatted behind a thorny bush. He blinked his eyes at the
sudden brightness and froze as the vehicles made the turn in the
road and came straight toward him, momentarily blinding him. The
front vehicle, he saw now, was a car— a brand-new Cadillac, all
chrome and shiny red paint. His heart beat like savage jungle
drums. He knew that car. It was the only one like it in the entire
county.

It was Roy Sexton's. Roy . . . Tex's younger
brother. He should have known.

Then he heard the squeal of brakes and the
slamming of doors. The vehicles' headlights were left on to bathe
the construction site, and men were moving about, unhooking the
tailboards of the trucks. He saw Roy Sexton climbing out of the
Cadillac and stretching, then hooking his thumb in his belt. Six
men, all Sexton ranch hands, ambled up to him.

'I don't know,' one of the men drawled. 'What
if they left somebody here to guard this stuff? They must be wise
to us by now.'

'Don't be a chickenshit, Billy,' Roy said
derisively. 'Them Hales is a bunch of shitheads. Wouldn't know a
tit from a pecker.'

The other men laughed.

' 'Sides,' Roy went on, 'the workers is all
Mexes. Anybody steals, it's them gets blamed.' He chortled and let
fly a wad of spit.

It was all Zaccheus could do to keep from
jumping forward. His eyes were like silvery pinpoints in his face,
and a killing anger and mortal outrage consumed him. So this was
how they perceived the Hales, was it? Well, they would learn
differently soon enough.

The theft was well-coordinated and efficient.
Roy, obviously in charge, led the way to the stacks of that
morning's delivery and gestured to what the men should take. From
his vantage point Zaccheus watched as they formed pairs and began
carrying building supplies to the trucks.

It didn't take them more than half an hour.
Then Roy shouted, 'That's enough,' and they hooked up the
tailboards and climbed back into their trucks.

'You comin', Roy?' one of the men called out
of the cab of a truck as he raced the engine.

Roy flapped a hand, signaling for them to
drive off. 'I'll just poke around a few minutes. You all go on.
I'll catch up with you later.'

The heavily laden trucks roared off, their
headlights rising and dipping back the way they had come, leaving
behind air foul with the stench of exhaust.

Roy was alone, prowling around in the light
of the Cadillac's powerful bug-eye headlights.

Zaccheus hesitated, then rose from his hiding
place and started walking toward him. He felt blinded by anger and
it was as if his heart and pulse were furiously running away.

'Roy!' The name came out as a sharp bark.

Roy Sexton turned around in surprise and
Zaccheus eyed him murderously in the glare of the headlight beams.
He saw the lean, tanned face, the almost black, squinty mean little
eyes, and the strong cleft jaw. He also sensed, not for the first
time, the tense brute strength and animal cunning coursing through
Roy's taut, wiry physique.

'You been stealing from us a long time, Roy?'
he asked softy.

Roy had tensed for a moment when he heard his
name called out. Now he relaxed slightly. 'You gonna do something
about it, boy?' He grinned.

Zaccheus looked at him coldly. 'I want back
what's ours, Roy.'

Roy looked at him with a bored expression and
turned away.

The words tore venomously from Zaccheus'
lips: 'You Sexton son of a bitch! You're thieves and liars and
racketeers, the bunch of you! And you, you lowlife son of a bitch,
are the worst sneak thief of them all!'

Roy Sexton turned back around. 'I'd watch my
mouth if I was you, Bible salesman,' he warned quietly. 'One more
word outta you and you don't need to bother reporting to work
tomorrow.' He gave a low, ugly laugh. 'You can peddle Bibles
again.'

'Yeah? What're you going to do? Fire me?'

'Maybe.'

Zaccheus laughed softy. 'I quit yesterday, or
hadn't you heard? Now, get in your car and get off my property. I
don't want a yellow-bellied thief like you despoiling it any
longer.'

Roy came at him in a blur, fists flying, and
Zaccheus quickly ducked. He tackled Roy around the chest and the
two men went sprawling to the ground and rolled over a few times.
Roy buckled and threw Zaccheus off and jumped nimbly to his feet.
Spying a foot-long iron pipe on the ground, he grabbed it and
wielded it threateningly at Zaccheus, a wild kind of joy burning in
his mean little eyes.

Zaccheus was back on his feet now. Tempted
though he was to watch the moving in. n pipe, he kept his gaze on
Roy's eyes—they, better than his weapon, would signal his attack
when it came.

It came then. Zaccheus saw it coming and
threw himself aside; the pipe thudded into the ground where he had
been crouching a moment before. He walked cautious circles around
Roy.

Roy, crouching, laughed confidently as he
kept turning to face him. He feinted a few moves and got the pipe,
keeping Zaccheus back with it. Then he lifted it high and brought
it whistling down.

Zaccheus barely leapt aside in time. Even so,
the pipe came down on his shoulder and there was a sickening crack.
Lightning bolts of pain shot through his arm and down his chest and
back, and he stumbled.

Roy Sexton laughed and thrust forward with
the pipe, forcing Zaccheus to dance back against a four- foot stack
of lumber. Zaccheus' eyes darted about in panic. Now he could no
longer spring backward; he was concerned.

Gritting his teeth against the pain in his
shoulder, Zaccheus swung himself up to the top of the lumber stack.
He leapt to his feet and stood there a moment, looking down at Roy.
Then he turned and ran nimbly along the ten-foot length.

Behind him, Roy threw the pipe onto the stack
of lumber and hoisted himself up. Grabbing the pipe, he ran after
Zaccheus.

There was another, lower stack of lumber six
feet away. Zaccheus took a leap and jumped down onto it, his sudden
weight shifting the boards. He could feel them collapsing under his
feet; he jumped down to the ground and leapt clear.

It was a moment later that Roy did the same,
but the result was disastrous. The lumber had shifted precariously
under Zaccheus' weight, and it was now unevenly distributed. The
moment Roy's feet landed on it, the stack gave way under his weight
and he found himself falling backward, arms flailing.

'What the . . . ?' he grunted, and those were
the last words Roy Sexton ever uttered. Then the ground rose up to
meet him and the back of his head hit an exposed pipe.

Suddenly there was silence.

With a racing heart Zaccheus slowly
approached him.

The headlight beams of the Cadillac still
stabbed into the night, floodlighting the eerie scene.

'Roy,' Zaccheus whispered.

There was no reply, and a cold sweat began to
pour from his body.

'Roy!
'

Roy Sexton stared up at him with unseeing
eyes. Blood poured forth from a gaping hole in the back of his
head.

Zaccheus' stomach began to churn convulsively
and he jerked up and turned away, clapping a hand over his mouth to
stifle the sickening bile rising up in his throat. After a few
moments he took deep lungfuls of air and then slowly looked at the
body again. He felt for a heartbeat.

There was none. Roy Sexton, Tex's little
brother, was very, very dead.

Finally he stood up wearily and walked in a
daze over to Roy's car. He steadied himself against the car's open
door. For several drawn-out moments he stood there breathing
deeply. Suddenly he was very tired. Sighing deeply, he closed his
eyes.

He knew what he had to do. He might as well
do it. Get it over with.

Elizabeth-Anne read the note for what must
have been the thousandth time.

My dearest wife and children,

By the time you read this I will be gone from your
lives forever. It was Roy Sexton and his men who have been stealing
from us. When I confronted him, he tried to start a fight out at
the construction site and fell, splitting his head open on a piece
of pipe. He is dead.

I did not kill him, but you know as well as I do
that the courts around here are controlled by the Sextons, and that
I would surely be sentenced to death for something I did not
do.

I am so sorry for this twist of fate which forces us
apart, but I must leave, and alone. I cannot ruin your lives by
taking you with me.

Elizabeth-Anne, I plead with you to stay in Quebeck
and finish the tourist court. You must nurture this dream of
yours—this dream that we started fulfilling together.

Regina, Charlotte-Anne, and Rebecca, I plead with
you to help your mother and to remember your father as the good man
that I hope you believe he was.

Never doubt that I love all of you and always will,
but that I must do what I am doing. Please forgive me.

Your loving husband and father, Zaccheus

With a moan Elizabeth-Anne let the note slip
soundlessly through her fingers. Once again the tears slid down her
cheeks and a lump rose up in her throat. The house seemed so empty
. . . so unbearably empty. It was as if with Zaccheus gone, its
very soul had departed.

In the days following Zaccheus' flight, she
had been as brave as she knew how. Sheriff Parker had questioned
her, and she had shown him the note, which he had kindly let her
keep. Search parties had been sent out for Zaccheus, but they had
found no trace of him whatsoever. It was as though he had
disappeared into thin air.

But perhaps the most frightening aspect of
the nightmare was the fact that she had heard not a single word
from Tex and Jenny. She could only wonder what their ominous
silence meant, but she knew Jenny well enough, and Tex's reputation
for retribution, and knew they must be planning some awful sabotage
to get even.

She had tried to clear her mind of these
dark, swirling thoughts and concentrate on her most difficult
task—giving the girls comfort. They were heartbroken, as was she,
but they proved themselves true Hales. Like herself, they were
determined to put a brave face on their sorrow and help each other
through this period of emptiness and misery. Each of them harbored
the hope that someday Zaccheus would be able to return.

But deep down inside, Elizabeth-Anne realized
that was an impossibility. He could never return to Quebeck. Ever.
Not if he cherished his freedom. Not if he didn't want to hang.

That terrible truth was horrible to
comprehend.

He could never return.

Not if he didn't want to hang
.

Elizabeth-Anne's life had suddenly become
living agony. One day Zaccheus had kissed her, had made love to
her. Now she found herself alone. The girls were fatherless. She
was husbandless. They were all of them alone.

Alone
.

The terrible ache was enough to shatter her
heart. Were it not for the girls and the child within her, she
would have tried to kill herself. She wouldn't even have had to use
a weapon, of that she was sure. She would simply have died slowly,
little by little, grieving herself to death of a broken heart.

She shut her eyes painfully. There was a name
for women whose husbands, for whatever reason, had left them.

She shuddered as the name sprang into her
mind.
Grass widows.
That was what they were called. And that
was what she had now become.

A grass widow.

She knew how people pitied grass widows. Yet
how, at the same time, they eyed them with deeply rooted suspicion,
as they did divorcees. There was a stigma attached to being a grass
widow. Grass widows, it was said, were always on the prowl. They
were after any available man, even other women's husbands.