“She’ll be all right now.” A voice from miles away floated in and out of her consciousness.
Another voice said, “The son-of-a-bitch ought to be strung up.”
“Maybe he will be,” replied the first.
Teresa could feel a blanket both under and over her. As she began to stir, someone knelt by her side. “You all right, ma’am? I’m sorry you had to take such a hard knock. It was the only way to stop this fool.”
She opened her eyes to see a bearded man in a wide-brimmed hat and heavy coat silhouetted by a full moon. She rolled her head slowly to her left and saw Gene sitting in a snowbank. Another man stood nearby pointing a gun at him, the moonlight reflecting off a badge pinned to his heavy coat.
“How . . . how. . . .” Teresa murmured.
“We got a telegram from Albert about him,” the young deputy by her side explained. “We rode out to meet him. When we heard his horse we moved off the side of the road. William here is an expert with the rope. He was just supposed to lasso this crazy jackass.” The deputy gestured toward Gene.
“I ain’t too good in the dark, ma’am,” the deputy guarding Gene said apologetically. “I’m real sorry.”
“It’s all right,” Teresa said. “I don’t know what I would have done without you.”
“Bah,” Gene sneered. “You fellas know what that tramp is?”
Teresa’s heart leaped to her throat. If he told the deputies about her love for Blanche, what might they do to her?
A resounding slap of the gun barrel across Gene’s cheek knocked him backwards. “We know what you are, fella, and we don’t like it. So shut up.”
Gene pulled himself upright saying nothing more.
Inwardly, Teresa collapsed in relief.
The deputy helped Teresa to her feet and kept a blanket held snugly around her. “There’s a doctor not too far from here ma’am,” he said. “You need to get your arm tended.”
Teresa was put on her own horse. She ached agonizingly and wished desperately that she could lie down and sleep. But even more she wanted to get back to Blanche. She fought to keep a clear head. She pulled the blanket tighter around herself and nudged the horse into a highly unpleasant trot.
They returned to Albert by midnight and as they pulled up before the sheriff’s office, Blanche and Marie came running out. Behind them came Albert’s Sheriff Roberts, a no-nonsense man with a wide drooping mustache on a face weathered by age but by no means beaten by it. He stood lean and tall, made taller still by his high hat. The heavy coat he wore against the night’s bitter cold hid the ever-present gun on his hip tied with a thong to a long thin leg.
“Teresa,” Blanche cried. She ran to the half-frozen woman and tenderly helped her from the saddle.
Safe in Blanche’s arms, Teresa’s next thoughts were of Blanche’s aunt. “Irene,” she asked, “how is she?” Please God, she begged silently, let her be all right.
“Sleeping — but recovering,” Blanche told her. “Let’s take care of you now.”
Teresa’s knees sagged; she leaned heavily against Blanche. If she had been responsible for that woman’s death she couldn’t have lived with herself. She said another short prayer: this one of thanks.
A deputy hauled Gene unceremoniously from the saddle, dumping him in the street lit only by the light from the sheriff’s office. “There’s your man, Sheriff. He got a little chilly on the way back. But we figured as long as he was complaining, he was still alive.” Gene’s hands were tied behind him and he was shivering badly.
Without warning, Gene said through clattering teeth, “Them two women over there, they’re perverts, they screw each —”
With a quick and mighty arm, Sheriff Roberts grabbed Gene by his coat collar, cutting off his words, and hauled him roughly to his feet. He dragged the astonished cowboy away from the others. They couldn’t hear what was said, so softly did the sheriff speak, his face only an inch away from the outlaw’s. Then, returning with the outlaw, Roberts said gruffly, “Well, I guess that’s it, then,” and roughly pushed the badly shaken and deflated cowboy before him toward the jail.
Teresa stared at Blanche, seeing her own amazement reflected in Blanche’s face.
“I’ll put you men up at my house tonight,” Roberts said to the deputies. “Marie, you and Blanche stay with Doc Adams. His wife will expect you. Teresa shouldn’t go any further tonight, anyway. If the doc doesn’t tell you that, I will.”
Teresa insisted on seeing Irene before she would let Blanche put her to bed. Marie and Blanche stood back while Teresa walked to the prostrate woman’s bedside and gingerly sat down in a chair next to Irene, wincing from her own bandaged gunshot wound. Thank God, she had only been winged.
Irene lay very still, looking pale and weak in the subdued light of the lantern by her bedside. She stirred and turned her head to the woman seated beside her. “Teresa?”
“I’m back,” Teresa said softly and gave her hand a reassuring squeeze.
“Well, I’m glad,” Irene whispered tiredly.
“I’m sorry, Irene. I’m so very sorry.” Teresa burst into silent tears, her shoulders shaking with grief.
“Don’t worry, dear. We’ve survived other crises. We’ll make it through this one just fine.” Irene closed her eyes and fell into a restful sleep.
Teresa stood and Marie took her place beside the bed to watch over Irene.
“Lattimer will just send others,” Teresa said tearfully, looking down on the woman who had filled their lives with so much goodness and hope these last few months.
“No, he won’t, Teresa,” Blanche said, holding her close. “Gene was the last man who will bother you.”
Teresa looked questioningly into Blanche’s eyes.
“I told Sheriff Roberts what Lattimer was up to, the savages he had sent after us. . . .”
“The drifters?” A new fear gripped Teresa, and she had to grab onto Blanche for support. Blanche would go to jail. There’d be a trial. She’d be hung! There was no end to this. None!
“Don’t worry,” Blanche whispered soothingly. “The only thing Roberts did was nod and spit tobacco into his spittoon. He wired Sheriff Maynard in Starcross and gave me his word that Lattimer would be in jail by morning. He told me this is a free and law-abiding country we live in, no one can just hunt people down like animals and get away with it.”
“Are you sure?” Teresa looked at Blanche with questioning eyes, pleading eyes, eyes that begged for a halt to this madness.
“He pledged me his word.”
“I don’t understand about Sheriff Roberts,” Teresa said. “The way he’s helped us, the way he was with Gene, acting like he’d tear his head off —”
“There’s a simple reason,” Marie said with a smile. “His sister Emma. She’s a nurse up at the almshouse — and one of us.”
“Then, it’s all over.”
“Yes,” her lover answered, smiling. “It’s all over — except for the plowing, the planting, the harvesting ... which Grace Bowne must yet teach us to do.”
The three of them laughed quietly together while Irene snored gently.
“It’s been a long trail,” Teresa said looking into her lover’s eyes.
“Yes,” Blanche agreed. “It’s been a long trail. But we made it. Through it all. We made it.”
Teresa sighed and leaned contentedly against Blanche, thinking of all that had brought them here, to this point in their lives, to a place where they could finally stop moving, stop running. There was a coming depression to face, there was no denying that — and a necessity for buying more guns. But they’d be able to handle it. They’d conquered everything else the trail had thrown at them — and won. Compared to what they’d been through, the depression would be a mere pebble in their path.
Overwhelmed with emotion, with a burning love for the woman in her arms she said, “If we were alone. . . .”
“Yes?” Blanche looked down at the trembling woman in her arms, a playful half-smile on her lips.
“If we were alone. . . .”
“Go ahead, Teresa,” Marie suggested quietly. “Doctor Adams and his wife are in bed. As for the rest of us, well, we’re all friends, here.”
Blushing deeply, Teresa said, “I never have in front of another woman before, Marie.”
“Have what?” Marie asked innocently.
Blanche just shook her head and kissed Teresa, silencing her silly words.