Wearing her pin-tucked blouse tucked into her old britches, Jodee headed down the stairs of Avinelle's house, wondering if her locket and gun were still at Quimby’s store. She could hold up the place and get them back.
Damn fool notion, she thought, disgusted with herself. She wasn’t going to hold up no damned store. Her heart hurt so bad she thought it might be nice to get good and drunk like her father used to do when he couldn’t bear another moment of missing her dead mother. She shook her head. She hated whiskey.
“Jodee?” came Corbet’s voice. “Are you all right? Did Tangus hurt you? There’s blood all over your back.”
Jodee went still. Corbet was talking to her? Asking damn fool questions like he hadn’t just shattered her heart? She dashed across the glass-strewn entry but Corbet was ready. He captured her in his arms and pulled her tight as she fought him.
“Let me go!”
“Wait. Stop it, Jodee. Listen to me.”
“Varmint!” she screamed. “I didn’t do nothing wrong. I didn’t help him. As God is my witness, I did not help Burl Tangus rob this house.”
She lunged for the door, but Brucker was there, leaning against the splintered frame, holding his bleeding arm. She saw Avinelle and her mother huddled in the parlor with a hiccupping Maggie between them. Hardening her heart, Jodee shoved past the deputy.
“Hold on,” Brucker said, grinning. “Didn’t you notice I was on the floor, waiting to help you? You didn’t see me? I heard every word you said, you know. You might try being a little friendlier to me now. I can vouch for your innocence.”
She didn’t know what vouch meant. She didn’t trust him an inch, either. Heard all she said? What did that matter? She couldn’t remember what all she said, good or bad.
Corbet touched her elbow. “Brucker says you risked your life to stop Tangus.”
Brucker flexed his wounded arm. “When you came in I knew by the way you moved you weren’t with that fleabag.” More blood dripped. He cussed softly. “One more place to ache when it rains.” He gave her a wink. “Where you going in that bloody shirt and old britches? You look half ridiculous. I say you would’ve died before letting Tangus take that loot.” To Widow Ashton, he said, “You ladies better get upstairs. Tangus tore up the place. Said he was sick of sleeping in your cellar, drinking peach brandy.”
Widow Ashton hiked her skirts and stomped upstairs to investigate.
“You’d better go with her,” Jodee said to Avinelle. “There’s papers you might find interesting.”
Brushing past Corbet without a glance, Avinelle followed her mother up the stairs.
Jodee went into the parlor where Maggie sat abandoned. “The bad man’s dead,” she said to Maggie. “He won’t bother us again. You don’t have to be scared no more.”
Maggie just looked at the floor, shivering.
“Jodee, I have to talk to you,” Corbet said, interrupting. “Brucker, can you make it to Doc’s or do you need help?”
“I’ll send someone for the body.” Brucker started out the door.
Jodee wandered out onto the porch after him and watched him walk, head down, toward town. She supposed she couldn’t dislike him anymore. Deputy Brucker had saved her life. She heard Corbet come out and stand nearby.
She didn’t want to listen to anything he might have to say. Trembling all over, her knees went suddenly weak. She made her way to the swing and sank down, leaning forward a little to get her bearings. Where had her fury gone? She felt exhausted.
After a moment Corbet crouched in front of her and looked into her eyes. Gone was the savage, mindless rage. His gaze was as open as she had ever seen it. She stared at him, feeling empty. She wanted to hate him. He’d let her down. When he moved to sit beside her, she tried not to notice how wonderful it felt to have him near.
Varmint.
He put his arm around her and sat quietly. Oh, that felt so good, she thought, longing to lean against him. She felt heart-sore, but he’d wounded her. She didn’t want or intend to ever forgive him. Loving him had made her foolish. It made her believe in wild hopes and impossible futures.
“I don’t know what to say,” Corbet began. “To see you with Tangus made me think I might accidentally shoot you again, or he would. And I felt like an idiot when I realized I’d seen him weeks ago.”
“You aren’t fooling me, Corbet. You thought I was helping him. You thought I was with him. I’ll always be an outlaw’s daughter. To you. To everybody. That’s because I am an outlaw’s daughter. And the daughter of a troublemaker. I did everything I could to prove I was better than that, but it wasn’t good enough. Not for this town leastwise. So go on. Leave me be. ”
Corbet went still. He took his arm from around her shoulder. He sat for a long time staring at his hands.
Jodee shivered. Was she wrong to condemn him for his moment of doubt? She doubted him now, and she still loved him. Would he condemn her for that and walk away forever? She wished he’d put his arm back around her. She might end up alone if she sat so stiff like her grandmother used to do.
He reached into his breast pocket and withdrew a thick fold of bank notes. “This money is yours.”
She’d never seen so much.
“I got it yesterday at the bank. I planned to tell you about it at the dance but—”
“I don’t want your money!”
“It isn’t mine, Jodee. Thursday morning I received a bank draft in the mail from Cheyenne City. A bank draft is a way of sending money in a letter. I cashed it for you. This is your money. You can do whatever you want with it, buy whatever you want. Go wherever you want. This is your new start.”
She didn’t believe it. It was a trick.
“They sold your father’s horse and his gun—the horse he was riding during the holdup. And his boots, his saddle—I’m sorry, Jodee, I know those things would’ve meant a lot to you, but you needed money for your new start. Your father would’ve wanted this for you.”
“Pa was buried in his stocking feet?” She fought tears, but they overwhelmed her. She shrugged off Corbet’s comforting hand when he tried to touch her.
Placing the money in Jodee’s lap, Corbet stood. She refused to look at him. All she could see was the money. He trudged back inside the house. She wanted to lie down someplace and sleep a long time. Instead, she rocked in the porch swing until Deputy Malone and the undertaker arrived with a buckboard to take away Burl’s body.
The cash money lay in her lap, taunting her, tantalizing her. It was all that was left of the father she loved. She was afraid to count it. It looked like enough to live on for a year. Maybe more. And Corbet, damn him, was right. Her father would’ve wanted her to make a new start with it. “Oh, Pa,” she whispered. “You damn fool.”
Scrubbing away tears, Jodee stood and straightened her back. She felt old. Going back into the house, she picked up her knapsack. Burl’s blood was all over the stairs, the floor, and on a corner of the knapsack’s flap. She saw his dried blood on her hand and felt it stiffening the back of her blouse.
Upstairs she changed back into her skirt and button shoes. After scrubbing the blood from the blouse in the wash basin, she put it on, still wet. She didn’t need the primer or the tattered bed dress. She turned her back on the torn, blood-stained shirt she had been wearing when she got shot at the cabin. She didn’t need her britches or boots. In fact, without those things she didn’t need her knapsack. She looked around the guest room. She felt blank as a new school slate.
Twenty minutes later Jodee checked into Burdeen’s Congress Hotel, empty-handed except for a handful of greenbacks, unconcerned that decent women didn’t stay in hotels alone. She asked for a room with a bath and paid two dollars for the privilege.
“Send a message to Mr. Quimby, if you please,” she said to the desk clerk. “I need a traveling outfit and carpetbag. No trade this time. I’ll be paying cash money.”
• • •
Where was Jodee? Corbet realized she was nowhere in Avinelle's house. Outside, he circled to where Bailey, his expression stormy, showed him the missing hinge pins in the cellar door. That was how Tangus gained access.
Worried, Corbet scrambled up the trail behind the house where he found Jodee that day after Sunday dinner—she wasn’t there. Back on the road, he looked for tracks. Nothing. Was she that angry with him? He couldn’t help how he looked, seeing her half falling down the stairs, fighting for her life, and Tangus with his bloody arm around her neck, all the house valuables spilling out of her knapsack. He knew she hadn’t been helping Tangus. Why fight him if she were?
Had she left town? If she hitched a ride with some passing wagon he’d never know where she went. Taking off his hat, he stood in the middle of the road, looking toward town and back, remembering dragging her to jail on that travois. In spite of everything he’d done, he’d failed her.
He ran all the way to the jailhouse. It felt like a lifetime since he’d carried Jodee into that cell and questioned her. Now Tangus was dead, and Jodee was free. She had money, and she could go anywhere she wanted. She wasn’t his little desperado any longer.
His heart hurt, his face hurt, and he couldn’t seem to breathe right. He didn’t want it to be over. He wanted to see Jodee, to say goodbye at least. He was a grown man who had marshaled an entire town and gunned down outlaws without a thought. Why should he want or need one scrappy female with a quirky grin? He stepped out onto the jailhouse porch, twitchy and miserable.
The hotel desk clerk loped across the street. “That girl outlaw, Marshal…she just checked into my best room! And she’s got cash money. Is it from the holdup?”
Corbet went weak with relief. Clapping the man on the shoulder, he forced a wry grin. Through his teeth he said, “Give her whatever she wants. It’s her money. She had nothing to do with that stagecoach holdup. Jodee McQue is innocent.”
The desk clerk frowned. “Then somebody ought’a tell her to keep that money out of sight. She could get robbed.”
• • •
At a knock at her hotel room door the next morning, Jodee paused in her efforts to do up her hair.
“Visitor to see you, Miss McQue,” called the morning desk clerk through the closed door.
Thanks to the night clerk, the entire town knew she was at the hotel. In spite of trying to sleep in big hotel bed, she felt tired. Over and over, she relived the battle with Burl. She still couldn’t believe he was dead for good and all.
“Yes? Come in.” She swallowed hard.
The door swung wide. There stood Avinelle holding her knapsack. Sighing, Jodee turned to face the young widow one last time. How would the woman think to bedevil her now? Thanks to Mr. Quimby, however, Jodee had on a pretty new blouse with a lace frill at the throat—no stains, no blood. And a seven-gore skirt—all the rage back east, he said. She looked presentable. She looked better than presentable. She looked decent. She met Avinelle’s eyes and didn’t flinch.
“I’m probably the last person you want to see,” Avinelle said, stepping into the room. “I brought this.” She put the knapsack on the floor by the door and handed Jodee an envelope. “My letter of reference. With it, you should be able to gain employment anywhere. What are your plans?”
Jodee wasn’t so sure she wanted to say what she intended to do. Avinelle’s voice was softer, deeper. Her hair was tied back. Her dress was plain.
“I’m leaving town,” Jodee said.
“I wish you well then. And thank you for telling me about Mother’s papers. They explained a lot. She would’ve gone on with her ridiculous charade forever if I hadn’t walked in. She denied everything, of course, but it seems she was a seamstress when she was young. Can you imagine?”
Jodee wondered if she should invite Avinelle to sit.
“And apparently Mother seduced someone’s nephew who refused to marry her. And here I am.” She smiled, but she looked tired, too. “Not high-born after all.”
Jodee didn’t know what to say.
“I was going to offer you something to wear, but you look well set. I thought about offering you a reward, as well. Thanks to you, that outlaw didn’t get my savings a second time.” Avinelle gave an inquiring look.
Jodee shook her head. “Burl was after your cash box?”
“I’ve wanted to escape this town since the day I arrived. Mother wouldn’t go, so I saved in secret. When she and I went to Cheyenne City this last time, I was planning to leave her but at the last minute I lacked the courage to step out on my own. My entire savings was in that cash box. When the stagecoach was held up and that outlaw got my key—I thought I was trapped here.”
“I’d pay all I owe you and your mother right now,” Jodee said, “but I don’t know how much I’ll need where I’m going.”
Avinelle waved her hand. “You owe nothing, truly. We were horrid to you. It was Mother’s idea, but I went along. I never loved Corbet. He’s nice, but…I thought you should know that. I’m sorry, Jodee. Really, I am.”
Jodee scowled. That was a damn fool lie. It was impossible not to love Corbet Harlow.
“Goodbye then.” Avinelle stepped back into the hotel’s hallway.
Following her to the door, Jodee watched the woman disappear down the hall. She felt oddly as if she were losing a friend.
• • •
An hour later Jodee waited for the morning stagecoach on the hotel’s porch. Her new hat was pinned in place. Hanna had stopped by earlier. She showed Jodee how to pull the hat’s veil to her chin. “This’ll keep dust off your face, honey.”
“I won’t forget you, Hanna,” Jodee said, hugging her. She could scarcely let go. “Say my goodbyes to Patsy, Bailey, and Maggie.”
“Maggie took tea in the dining room with Miz Theia this morning,” Hanna said. “Imagine that, a sister, all this time. She sent this.” Hanna produced a handkerchief trimmed in tatted lace. “Be happy in your new life, Jodee.”
The morning sunshine poured from a wide clear sky. Jodee breathed in fresh mountain air as deeply as her corset would allow and felt a nervous fluttering in her stomach. Did she have the courage to set out on her own? It was a fearsome thing, facing the open road alone. She planned to stay in Cheyenne City as long as it took to find her father’s grave and buy a marker. From there…
As she had weeks before from her jail cell, Jodee heard the stagecoach's rattling approach. This time she was going, and paying her own way. As the coach thundered to a stop, a cloud of dust boiled up. She looked around one last time. She’d done a good a job of rejecting Corbet, she thought, sick at heart. He wasn’t there to see her off.
“I’ll change out the team and be back in a few minutes,” the driver called down to Jodee, his only waiting passenger. He pitched dusty traveling cases to the ground and endured the annoyed glances of weary passengers debarking the coach.
To leave without seeing Corbet—Jodee wasn’t sure she could do it.
Everything that might have been with him was over. She closed her eyes. She wasn’t going to pull at Corbet’s sleeve for the rest of her life. There’d always be the past standing between them. She was done crawling.
The stagecoach rolled slowly away toward the corrals at the end of the street where the spent team was taken away to rest and a fresh team was hitched up. Jodee watched the coach make a wide turn and start back toward her. This must’ve been what it looked like for her father as he and the gang hid behind the rocks at Ship Creek Crossing to watch the approach of that Ashton Babcock stagecoach. She imagined Lee Rike riding into the coach’s path and Old man Rike and Mose shooting into the air. Witt probably rode around, crazy as he was. And Burl would’ve ordered everybody out. She could imagine the passengers’ frightened cries. Avinelle in her billowing cloak and Widow Ashton in her black hat. She imagined the driver throwing down his rifle and the strong box with Avinelle’s cash box tucked inside. She could just picture the struggle over the heavy new safe in the boot and the exchange of gunfire. Avinelle’s scream. The driver falling to the ground. Her father toppling from his horse and left for dead in the road.
Now they were all gone, and here she stood alone, as the Ashton Babcock stagecoach rolled to a stop in front of her. The driver set his long wooden brake, looped the team’s lines, and climbed down to help her board. Swallowing hard, Jodee savored the fresh morning breeze one last time. She felt the man’s hand cup her left elbow.
But she couldn’t move.
“Don’t be frightened, Miss," the driver said in a kindly tone. "Didn’t you hear? They kilt every last one of them thieving outlaws. You’ll be safe. No more holdups on this stage line.”
She took a step, and then another, down from the hotel porch to the dusty street. She placed her foot on the ornate metal step of the coach. She grabbed the edges of the door frame and dragged herself up into the coach that smelled of tobacco and leather and road dust. She sat herself on the thinly padded seat facing forward and remembered to arrange the back of her skirt to avoid wrinkles. Avinelle would be proud of her ladylike demeanor.
“You want your carpetbag inside or up top, Miss?”
She hardly heard the driver speak. She gasped for air. Tarnation, she was going to faint. She couldn’t do this. It was too hard.
Then she heard the thunder of hoofbeats coming up the street and the scrabbling halt of a horse nearby. Boots hit the ground. She held her breath.
Corbet grabbed the door frame and thrust his face inside the window.
Oh, that grand face, those wonderful dark eyes, those rosy lips—Jodee's heart exploded with hope.
“Jodee!” Corbet panted. He took a deep breath. His cheeks were red. His hair was standing on end. He had lost his hat. He wasn’t exactly smiling. “I thought I missed you.”
She drank in his face. Her eyes burned with unshed tears.
“Give us a moment, would you, Daniel?” Corbet called to the driver, who was settling himself on his high seat.
Tearing the door open, Corbet climbed into the coach and sat opposite Jodee. He grabbed her gloved hands. She couldn’t feel his warmth through the thin leather. He seemed to be memorizing her, from the veiled hat she wore to the snug bodice of her new traveling suit.
Tell me not to go!
“I’ve been at my campsite. There’s so much I want to say. And now there’s no time. You’re going, and I’m not going to stop you. You need to go back to your people and set things straight. We both know you need that. You must know that I wish you weren’t going. We’re not done getting to know each other. We need time to talk.”
“Ain’t no use in talk,” Jodee said, her voice husky. “I’m bound to go.”
Make me stay!
She wanted Corbet to propose. They’d get married that afternoon—she let the thought slip away. They were strangers really. If she stayed and they didn’t marry, she’d have to live somewhere. She’d have to work at something. She’d have to endure the questioning of her character for years—perhaps the rest of her life. If she left now, she was making a clean break.
She made a brave, unhappy smile. Finding her voice, she said softly, “I’ll come back someday, Corbet. I owe you and Artie and the doc.” She nodded with determination. “I feel beholden. You tell them I’ll be back. They didn’t have to help me. You didn’t have to, either, but you did. I won’t forget it.” She began to tremble.
Corbet's grip on her hands tightened.
She willed him to say what she wanted to hear.
“I want you to listen to me. This is the last time I'm going to say this. I did not think you were with Tangus or helping him. You were fighting him. We all saw that.” He spoke emphatically. “I was upset leaving Brucker to guard the house when I should’ve done it myself. When I saw him on the floor, bleeding, I thought, there’s another man, wounded on my account. Can’t you understand, Jodee? Can’t you forgive me? I was thinking only of my own damn self.”
Jodee didn’t understand, but she nodded anyway if only to ease the anguish on Corbet's face.
“Is Brucker all right?”
Corbet nodded. He looked so unhappy. Jodee’s heart overflowed with love for him. She pushed the annoying veil off her face, up over the top of her hat. “I love you,” she said softly.
Corbet blinked.
Oh, he did have the most wonderful coffee brown eyes, she thought, gazing into them. Corbet wasn’t going to stop her.
“It’s time for me to go,” she said. She sounded like a woman grown. Doc Trafford would be proud of her. She was proud of herself.
Looking into her eyes one last time, Corbet finally leaned forward and pressed a very chaste kiss to her cheek. He released her gloved hands and climbed out of the coach. He took hold of the door and closed it firmly, pulling on it to make sure the latch was secure.
Kiss me one more time!
The window opening was uncovered, affording Jodee one last look at Corbet's tortured face. She grabbed the window ledge and stuck her face out. Kiss me, Corbet Harlow, damn you, she said with her brimming eyes.
And he did finally. His mouth closed over her trembling lips. Stars went off in her head. Lightning flooded her body. It was like she was one with him, locked to him, drinking him in while pouring herself into him at the same time. The kiss lasted so long she felt like she was pitching into space, spinning.
Tears spilled down her cheeks. She was scarcely able to see as Corbet stooped and straightened. He was smiling now, really smiling, but his brows were tilted up in anguish, making him look boyish and dear. He reached through the open window to hand her a stone he had grabbed up from the street. It was nothing special, just a mottled tan rock with a vein of white quartz running through it. It was the most commonplace rock in all the west. She might find countless millions of them alongside any roadway.
When he handed it to her, she curled her gloved fingers around it. She squeezed until its hardness felt imprinted into her palm. She looked into Corbet Harlow’s eyes and basked in his love for her. He loved her. She could see it! She hoped he could feel her love for him.
But Corbet didn’t say he loved her, and he didn’t say he’d wait for her return. As he stepped back he waved to the driver. “Take care of my best girl, Daniel.”
Then Corbet stepped out of the way of the stagecoach’s big wheels. He grinned that fabulous grin, all his teeth showing. His eyes squeezed up, as if he was having trouble seeing. As the driver gave a yell and snapped his whip, Corbet lifted his hand, half wave, half salute.
Jodee held up her trembling fist with the rock clenched hard against the thin leather covering her palm. She had no thoughts in that last moment. All she knew was the look on Corbet’s face. He loved her, and he was letting her go.
The stagecoach began rolling forward, slowly at first, then faster and faster, past Ellis Brothers, Boots, Shoes, and Leather Findings; Stanley Holt, Seller of Whiskey and Cigars; and Munjoy’s Fine Furniture and Coffins—Jodee still had trouble reading the signboards. The stagecoach rolled out of Burdeen City to the road headed south toward Cheyenne City.
Jodee sank back stiffly in the seat, heart drumming so fast she couldn’t think. She was leaving, she thought, rocking uncomfortably in her hard seat. She sat like that a long time, stiff and numb and baffled that she had the courage to do what she was doing. Corbet’s smile was etched in her vision, blurring everything. She listened for him, but he didn’t follow.
In time, she turned her eyes to the piney vista passing outside the stagecoach windows. In time, she grew thirsty. In time, the driver halted at a stage stop for another change of horses. The stage stop was not too far from Ship Creek Crossing. Jodee got out to stretch her legs, not knowing if she was anywhere near the spot where her father died. She could still taste Corbet Harlow’s kiss.
• • •
That fifth of May, Ed Brucker took over as town marshal of Burdeen City. Some claimed Corbet Harlow was seen sitting in the Bale ’O Hay Saloon, staring at an untouched shot of whiskey. Then he was gone.
Corbet spent the summer building a cabin on the land he’d bought. All he thought about was laying foundation stones in a perfect square, felling the straightest pines he could find, and raising straight log walls. He ate in the open air, got sunburned, and his arms and shoulders swelled with aching new muscles. He began to think about the years he’d worked on the dairy farm in Wisconsin, milking, pitching hay, laughing with little Jenny.
When the weather turned bad that fall, before the cabin’s roof was on, Corbet slept in his tent. When the roof was done, and a porch stood across the front, wide enough for two rocking chairs to sit in shelter, Corbet realized the place reminded him of that cabin in the mountains where he’d first seen Jodee…after he shot her. He sat on the edge of his porch every night, remembering that fateful day. Jodee was in Arkansas now, he told himself. She’d gone back to her family. She was home and happy at last.
She hadn’t written. She’d never come back. He was certain of it.
One morning in late October, Corbet packed his saddlebags and headed into town. He rode slowly, taking note of the changes since Jodee left. Hobie had gone east. Several new stores were under construction. The place seemed colorless and devoid of spirit. He felt like a ghost.
He saw a man in a dark suit and bowler hat entering Avinelle’s house, so he kept going. Avinelle didn’t miss him. He didn’t miss her. His face itched beneath a summer’s growth of whiskers. Folks probably didn’t even recognize him. As he turned south toward Cheyenne City, Corbet retraced the route he and the posse took months before. He thought of Jodee and how she had looked that day in May, sitting in that stagecoach in her veiled hat and traveling suit. She’d looked older—except in her eyes. Those wide, wide wonderful blue eyes full of fire and hope.
Jodee was gone, and he had let her go, his girl with the outlaw heart.