The sun was setting in a riotous blaze of crimson and pink when they reached Aurora. Shaye felt a growing sense of urgency as they threaded their way through the noisy crowd on Main Street, dodging wagons and carts and hundreds of people who were all in an itching hurry.
Hoffman pulled up in front of the nearest hotel. Shaye stared at the building. She was weary right down to the bone yet certain she would never sleep a wink.
She slid gratefully out of the saddle to stand on legs that felt like overcooked spaghetti.
Hoffman reached down and took the reins from her hand. “Why don’t you go get a room? I’ll look after the horses.”
“Thanks.” She lifted her backpack off the saddlehorn.
With a nod, Hoffman rode on down the street toward the livery barn.
With a sigh, she stepped onto the boardwalk. She brushed off her skirts, ran a hand through her hair, then opened the ornate front door and entered the hotel. Crossing the carpeted lobby, she approached the front desk.
A short man with a balding pate and a handlebar mustache greeted her with a smile and a friendly, “Hello, can I help you?”
“I’d like two rooms,” she replied. “And a bath.”
“Yes, ma’am. That’ll be five dollars. In advance.”
Slinging her backpack over her shoulder, she pulled a handful of crumpled greenbacks from her skirt pocket and placed five of them on the countertop. Slipping the rest back into her pocket, she signed the register for herself and Hoffman, picked up one of the keys.
Room 122 was small and square, with whitewashed walls, gingham curtains, a single ladder-back chair, and a brass bed topped by a wedding ring quilt. She dropped her pack on the floor, took off her shoes, then fell back on the bed, legs hanging over the edge of the mattress, arms stretched out at her sides, and immediately fell asleep.
She woke with a start, not knowing what had awakened her. Sitting up, she glanced around the darkened room, her heart pounding wildly. And then she heard it again. Alejandro’s voice, whispering her name.
“Rio?” She glanced around the room. “Rio?”
“Shaye.”
His voice again, filled with a yearning that reached into her very soul.
“I’m coming!” Rising, she hurried toward the door, stumbling in her haste.
A single lamp lit the hallway. Hoffman had the room across from hers. She knocked on the door and when there was no answer, she knocked again, harder.
A moment later the door swung open to reveal Jim Hoffman, clad in a pair of faded red longjohns. Seeing her standing there chased the sleepy look from his face.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“We have to leave.”
“Now?” He blinked owlishly. “Hell, girl, it’s not even daylight yet.”
“We have to go. Get dressed. Hurry!”
He frowned at her. “What’s wrong? The hotel on fire?”
“Please, just get dressed. We have to go. Right now.”
“All right, all right.” He scratched his jaw and then his chest. “Give me ten minutes.”
“Make it five,” she said, and hurrying back to her own room, she splashed some water on her face, put on her shoes, grabbed her backpack.
When she stepped into the hallway again, Hoffman was waiting for her. “Do you want to tell me what the hell is going on?” He shoved his shirttail into his pants.
“I don’t know. I can’t explain it. You wouldn’t believe me anyway. All I know is we have to get to Bodie right away.”
He looked at her as if he thought she’d lost her mind, and maybe she had, but he didn’t argue.
Ten minutes later, they were riding out of town.
* * * * *
Alejandro took a deep breath as a clock chimed the half-hour. It was nine-thirty. He hadn’t slept the night before; had done nothing but pace the floor, or stare out into the darkness. How quickly the last hours of his life had gone by! He had few regrets. He had lived his life as he pleased, and if it had been less than perfect, he had no one to blame but himself. He had ridden some lonely trails, seen some beautiful country, always found work when he needed it, always had money in his pockets. But it was Shaye who had made the deepest impression in his life. Shaye, with her beautiful deep-green eyes and earth-brown hair. Shaye, with her sweet spirit. She had shown him that there was more to life than whiskey and cards. She had shown him what love was, made him realize that, until he met her, he hadn’t really been living at all.
“Shaye.” He whispered her name, hugging it close, remembering how easily she had fit into his life, how quickly she had become important to him. He wished he could have held her one last time, told her how much he loved her. His biggest regret was that they had had such a short time together. Did she know how much he loved her?
He closed his eyes, his mind conjuring her image. She was all woman, from the top of her head to the tips of her funny shoes. Would she go back to her own time when he was dead? He wished he had asked her more about the future. He was intrigued by the things she had told him about; vehicles that moved without horses and, even more astonishing, vehicles that flew through the air. Pictures that moved and talked. Indoor privies. Hot and cold running water. Machines that washed and dried clothes.
But Shaye was the most amazing thing of all. It wasn’t only iron bars that kept them apart, he mused, it was a hundred and twenty years.
Damn. He couldn’t believe she had been sent to him, only to have it end like this.
The sound of Conner’s footsteps proved how wrong he was. The sheriff regarded him a moment. “Do you want to see a priest?”
“No.”
“Cigarette?”
“No.”
“All right then, let’s go. The hangman’s waiting.”
* * * * *
“Empty? What do you mean, empty?” Shaye grabbed Hoffman’s arm. “Where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
Shaye stared at Hoffman. Was she too late? Where could he be? He wasn’t dead, couldn’t be dead. She would know it, feel it, if he was.
On the edge of panic, she stepped out of her hiding place. He was here, somewhere, and she would find him. She frowned as she watched a bunch of men hurrying down the street, felt her heart drop when she overheard a man telling his friend that if they didn’t hurry, they would miss the hanging.
With a cry of despair, Shaye followed them. Turning a corner, she came to an abrupt halt. The top of the gallows rose above the hundreds of men crowded around it. She pushed and shoved her way through the throng, hardly daring to breathe. And then she saw him, standing on the platform, his arms tied behind his back, his expression blank as he stared into the distance. The sheriff stood on one side of him, the hangman waited on the other.
Frozen by the horror of the moment, she watched the hangman drop the noose over Alejandro’s head, saw him arrange the knot behind his ear, take up the slack in the noose.
She had to do something, but what? Tears welled in her eyes, blurring her vision. Her heart pounded frantically. It couldn’t end like his. It couldn’t! She glanced at the people around her. It didn’t make sense. Why had she been sent here, if not to save him?
She looked up at the platform again felt her heart skip a beat when she met his gaze. He shook his head, and she knew he didn’t want her to be there, didn’t want her to watch him die, but she couldn’t leave, not when she would never see him again.
“I love you.” She mouthed the words, hoping he could read her lips, hoping he knew the feelings of her heart and soul.
He smiled faintly, his eyes dark, smoldering, filled with a thousand things unsaid between them. And then he mouthed the words she had waited so long to hear.
“I love you.”
She filled her eyes with the look of him, imprinting his image in her mind as he stood there, tall and straight, with the early morning sun casting gold highlights in his black hair. He must have been terrified, she thought, yet he looked calm, at peace.
The courthouse clock chimed the hour. It was time.
A man standing next to her shouted, “Get on with it, Conner, some of us have got work to do!”
Shaye turned to look at him and found herself staring into Dade McCrory’s cold blue eyes. “You!” she hissed. “It should be you up there.”
“Me? What the hell for? I didn’t kill her.”
Shaye stared at McCrory. He was telling the truth. She knew it. But if not McCrory, and not Alejandro… “Then who did it?” she murmured.
“She killed herself.”
Shaye’s eyes widened. She had suspected Daisy committed suicide, but there had been no proof, no note. “How do you know?”
Dade pulled a crumbled piece of paper from his pants pocket. “She left a note.”
She looked up at the platform again, hope rising within her. If Daisy left a note, they would have to free Alejandro. “You lied!” she exclaimed.
McCrory laughed coldly, bitterly.
“If you’ve got any last words,” Conner said, “now’s the time to say ‘em.”
Alejandro shook his head, his dark eyes fixed on Shaye’s face. “Just get on with it.”
The sheriff took a step backward, one hand resting on the butt of his gun, as the hangman slipped a hood over Alejandro’s head.
“Wait!” Shaye screamed the word, but no one paid her any attention. She was Alejandro’s woman, after all.
The hangman reached for the wooden lever that would spring the trap door and put an end to a man’s life.
“No! Wait! He didn’t do it! I can prove it!” She grabbed the note from McCrory’s hand and raced toward the platform, but it was already too late.
As if in slow motion, she saw the hangman’s hand reach for the lever. She screamed as the trap door beneath Alejandro’s feet fell away. There was a collective gasp from the crowd as his body plunged through the opening.
“No, no.” Her hand fisted around the note. Too late, too late.
It should have been over, but it wasn’t. He was still alive, his legs twitching convulsively as the rope tightened around his neck.
A hush fell over the crowd as they watched the life being slowly strangled from his body.
“No. No. No!” Hardly aware of what she was doing, Shaye ran toward him, the note falling from her hand as she wrapped her arms around Alejandro’s legs. Lifted upward to ease the awful tension on the rope. He was heavy, so heavy.
Why didn’t someone help her? She couldn’t support him much longer. The world began to spin out of focus, the faces of the crowd blurring, fading. She staggered beneath his weight, tears of frustration running down her cheeks. Why didn’t someone help her?
Bright lights exploded behind her eyes and she felt herself spinning down, down, into a deep black void.