“No, I don’t.” And she was quite certain she didn’t want to know.
“Well, suffice it to say, he has been a thorn in my side for quite some time.”
“You’ll have to promise me not to say anything to him about it.”
This time he balked. “Aw, Miss Clayton—”
“Please.”
“He wouldn’t be so considerate of me,” Neil grumbled.
“Promise me.”
She could see by his handsome face that he didn’t want to, but she was determined.
“Preacher, do you have your Bible?” she asked.
“It’s in my tent.”
“Swear to me, Neil,” Jessi said firmly.
“What’s he swearing on?” Two Shafts asked, as he came into the barn.
Jessi wondered if the day could get any worse.
Neil replied, “I’m swearing not to tell anybody about Griff asking Miss Jessi to marry him.”
It could.
An incredulous and outdone Jessi stared at him. He’d betrayed her confidence already, then he actually had the nerve to wink at her.
“Hot damn,” Two Shafts yelled. “Give me my money. I told you he was in love with her.”
Upon hearing this, a thunderstruck Jessi watched a disappointed Neil slap two gold coins onto his grinning brother’s outstretched palm. “Did she say yes?”
“Nope. She laughed at him,” Preacher explained.
“It wasn’t intentional,” Jessi told them all firmly.
“No wonder he rode out of here like a bat out of hell,” Shafts said with a chuckle. “Never heard of a woman telling him no like that. Actually, never had a woman tell him no.”
“You’ll have to swear not to say anything to him about this!”
He looked at Jessi as if she were loco. “And miss this opportunity to tease Don Juan? I’m sorry, Miss Jessi. Can’t do it.”
Jessi looked over at the Preacher. He must’ve seen the plea in her eyes, because he walked out of the barn only to return moments later with his Bible. All he said was, “Boys, gather round.”
With the Preacher’s help, Jessi swore them all to a reluctant silence.
“So where do you think he went?” Two Shafts asked, after the Preacher closed the book.
Jessi told them the truth. “have no idea.” But she dearly wished he would return, so the whole incident could be sorted out and she could make amends.
But he didn’t return for supper. By nightfall she was both anxious and worried. She knew he could take care of himself, but she wondered if he were gone for good.
Griffin set his bedroll down on the ground and prepared to spend the night under the stars. Jessi’s reaction to his proposal still hurt like hell. He’d never had a woman laugh in his face. Ever. As much as he hated to admit it, he still loved her, still wanted her in his life, even though she’d made it quite clear she didn’t share his feelings. He had no idea what to do. His friends would probably laugh themselves sick if they ever found out about this, and well they should, he supposed. After all, he had a reputation for being irresistible, and they’d all lost more than a few women to him over the years.
With his arms behind his head, Griff looked up at the stars. Even though the sting in his heart hadn’t faded, he wondered how he could convince her to change her mind. Being around her had him thinking about his future, something he’d never done before. An outlaw most of his adult life, he hadn’t needed a future—giving the railroads hell had been all he’d needed. Now, something inside of him seemed to want change, roots, stability. Growing parts of him wanted to be by her side so he could help her get the ranch back on its feet and watch Joth grow into a man. Sampling señoritas and robbing trains were no longer the sole focus of his life, and he’d no idea when the change had come about. Yes, he did, he told himself. He began to change the very first night he saw her up on the roof with that rifle, only he hadn’t known it until now. Did this mean he was growing up? he wondered.
So, what to do? He could still see the desire in her eyes, there’d been no masking that. How could he woo his rawhide woman and be successful? Had he not been so undone by her laughter, maybe he’d’ve opted to stay and talk instead of hightailing it out of there. As he replayed the whole scene, he heard her say something that he’d been too angry to hear at the time: she’d called him darling! He sat straight up, then went over in his mind those last few seconds with her again, and dammit if he wasn’t right. Jessi Rose Clayton had indeed called him darling. That meant she cared. Jessi was not the type to throw around words she didn’t mean. It also meant there was hope. His confidence back, Griff smiled and turned over to go to sleep.
That night he dreamt about a big hand-carved bed, and atop that bed, he and Jessi were making love as if neither of them could get enough. There’d been bandages wrapped about his chest for some reason, but he was paying more attention to the sweet, willing Jessi, riding hotly astride his heat, than to the dream-induced injury.
He awakened at dawn, hard with desire and resonating with the memory of her riding him so wantonly atop that big hand-carved bed. Gathering his gear, he mounted the pony and headed back to the ranch. He now knew what to do.
Jessi couldn’t lie to herself. The sight of Griffin riding up to the porch made her heart sing. He dismounted and removed his gear from the saddle.
He nodded at her. “Morning, Jessi.”
“Good morning, Griffin.”
Jessi felt as if he’d been away for months, instead of overnight. She thought it best to get this over with. She walked over to him. “I laughed because I thought you were teasing.”
“I wasn’t.”
“I know that now,” she said, taking in the seriousness in his eyes. What would she do without this man in her life, she wanted to know. Surely he hadn’t been around long enough for a sensible woman like herself to become attached so strongly, yet his absence had kept her awake most of the night, worrying and wondering. “I’m sorry.”
“Apology accepted,” he replied genuinely.
Jessi still found it hard to believe he’d proposed. She was all but certain that in spite of any pledges his heart might make, the urge to move on would call to him one day and he’d be gone with the sunrise, leaving her with a broken heart. “Griffin, I’m flattered by the proposal, but I don’t think marriage between us is a good idea.”
“Why?”
“You’re very easygoing and I’m—” She searched for a word to describe herself.
“Tough? Prickly?”
She narrowed her eyes, not sure if he was poking fun. She said, “I suppose I can accept that, but most men don’t want their wives to be tough.”
“I’m not most men, Jessi Rose…”
The power behind his words singed her senses. “I can’t give you children.”
“I’m not asking you to marry me for your childbearing. We have Joth.”
That made her heart sing.
“Are you afraid?” he asked.
“Yes,” she confessed. “I’m afraid of the past and the future.”
Griffin could see the truth in her eyes.
He reached out and stroked her cheek. “There is nothing in your life we can’t discuss, so when you’re ready, I’ll be here.”
She looked away so he wouldn’t see the tears standing in her eyes. He coaxed her chin back around, kissed her on the forehead, then went inside.
Chapter 9
Later that afternoon, Sheriff Hatcher rode up to the Clayton place. Jessi’s eyes were emotionless as she stepped out onto the porch. “Yes?” she asked simply.
“I need to talk to you, if I might,” he requested quietly.
His tone gave her pause and she looked him over. For the first time in a long while, there was no crabbiness or anger in his face. He had his hat in his hand and he seemed pensive, reflective.
Jessi nodded. “Go ahead.”
“Today’s Betsy’s birthday. Had she lived, my beautiful bride would have been sixty-one.”
/> He went silent for a moment, then turned his gaze on the horizon as if there were something out there only he could see. “She loved you a lot, Jessi Rose.”
Jessi couldn’t deny that. “She loved you very much too, Cap.”
“I miss her.”
Jessi did too. His late wife, Betsy Hatcher, had been both a special lady and a treasured family friend. In addition to being one of the few women who’d been kind to Violet Clayton when she first came to Vale to be Dexter’s bride, Betsy did her best to step into Jessi’s and Mildred’s lives after the accident had claimed Violet’s life. When Betsy first became sick a few years back, Jessi had done all she could to help in an effort to show her how much she cared and to repay her for the many kindnesses, but she’d died in pain.
“My Betsy was a fighter,” Hatcher was saying now. “In that way you and she were a lot alike. I guess that’s why the two of you got on so well.”
Silence came between them again, then Hatcher said, “She’d be proud of the way you’ve been fighting Reed. Dex would be too.”
“This land may be the only thing I can pass on to Joth. It has to stand.”
He confessed softly, “When they told me Dex was dead and how he died, I felt like my guts had been cut out.”
Jessi’s pain awakened once more.
“Forgive me for not standing beside you, Jessi Rose,” he whispered raggedly. “I was a foolish and scared old man. I let you down, I let Betsy down, and more important, Dex Clayton was my best friend in life and I let him down too.”
In spite of the chasm now separating them, Jessi couldn’t hate this man. How could she? She’d known him her entire life; he’d helped raise her. Under his easygoing tutelage, she learned to ride, fish, hunt; how to properly pitch horseshoes and to throw a good punch. Her father hadn’t come to Violet’s funeral, so Cap Hatcher had stood beside Jessi and held her thirteen-year-old hand when they’d lowered her mama into the ground.
“When you were born, Jessi, your pa might’ve been disappointed, but your mother, Betsy, and me, we were proud. Real proud. Betsy and I couldn’t have children, so you were our Baby Jessi Rose, and the bigger you grew the prouder we got. You were smart, brave, beautiful.”
Jessi felt the sting of tears.
He looked out toward the road again as if the memories were there. “I’m going to get a good cussing when I see Betsy again because of the way I deserted you. I was scared, can you understand that—scared and lonely and alone. When things around here starting going wrong, it all happened so fast, then when Darcy told me if I interfered and tried to arrest someone, he’d replace me, cut me off, I had to look the other way because Betsy needed those treatments and the medicine.”
Jessi knew that watching Betsy die so slowly and in such agony had torn him apart.
He reached into his pocket and withdrew a folded square of paper. “So here, take this.”
Jessi stepped down and took the offering. “What is it?”
“Take a look.”
She unfolded the square and saw it was the Wanted poster they’d talked about that day in town, the one featuring Eula Grimes. She looked up, puzzled. “Why are you giving me this?”
“Because I believe that’s Minerva Darcy.”
Jessi’s eyes widened.
“I locked up a drifter about a year ago for being drunk and disorderly over at Auntie’s. As I was hauling him to the caboose, we passed Minerva and Roscoe going into the hotel. The drunk looked at her and stopped.”
“Did he say anything?”
“Yep. He was drunk, mind you, but he said, ‘Eula! Last time I saw you was in Kansas City. What the hell are you doing here? That your new pigeon?’ and Jessi Rose, she turned white as a sheet.”
“What did she say?”
“Told him he had her confused with someone else, then told me I should do something about all the drunks in town. Then she and Roscoe went on inside the hotel and I threw the drunk in jail.”
Jessi mulled over this startling news for a moment, then asked, “What happened to the drunk?”
“Early that next morning, one of the Darcy hands came in, saying he’d heard his cousin was in town and in jail. He paid the man’s fine and the drifter left Vale right after that. I didn’t pay much attention to any of it until that bulletin came in about a month later. I believe she was the one who paid that fine.”
Jessi looked at the face again. Could this really be Minerva Darcy? “Are you sure about her reaction to him?”
“Granted, it was dark, but when we met up with Minerva and Roscoe, we were right by those big lamps Reed has out on the front of the hotel, so I saw her face real plain. She knew him, and seeing him scared her stiff.”
Interesting, Jessi thought to herself. “Why tell me this now?” she asked warily.
“Because I can’t live with myself anymore,” he confessed plainly. “I want Reed Darcy to fry in his own grease.”
Jessi studied him silently.
“I’ve been holding on to that poster hoping I’d find a way to use it against him somehow, but so far nothing. Maybe you and your man can.”
If Eula Grimes were really pretending to be Minerva Darcy, did Reed or Roscoe know about the charade? She’d have to talk this over with Griff and the others when they returned. This might be very important to Hanging Judge Parker’s investigation. “Thank you,” she told him genuinely.
Hatcher nodded. “You’re welcome, and just so you’ll know, I’m leaving Vale for good in a few days. My widowed sister has a place up near Dallas and I think I want to live out my last years up there with her. Too many painful memories here, especially the ones I’m responsible for.”
Now that they were struggling to close the distance between them, he was leaving. Jessi wanted him to stay. “But you’ve lived your whole life here.”
“And buried my wife here, had my best friend die here, and turned my back on someone I would’ve loved to have called daughter. It’s time.” He then looked at her and said, “You just keep on fighting him, Jessi Rose; don’t ever give up. Not like I did.”
She nodded, saddened because of the memories they shared and by the hands life had dealt them both.
“Is that cocky man of yours here?”
Jessi smiled. “No, and he and the others are out on an errand, said they’d be back before supper.”
“Well, tell him I said thanks for that lecture the other day, and to give Reed a fit or two for me.”
Hatcher reached into his shirt pocket and withdrew his star. “Give him this too, will you? He’s right, I shouldn’t be wearing it.”
Jessi took the tarnished shield and slid it into the pocket of her skirt.
Having been taught by the Good Book that forgiveness frees the soul, Jessi went to him and let herself be engulfed by the hug of the lonely old man who before he lost his way had given her nothing but patience, guidance, and love. She returned that hug fiercely; she couldn’t hate him, not after this. “Good-bye, Uncle Cap.”
Casper Hatcher whispered with tears in his eyes, “Never thought I’d ever hear you call me that again.”
Jessi smiled, her eyes just as full as his.
“We can’t bring Dex back, so let’s go forward.”
After she watched him ride away, she went into the house and sat in silence. She knew her relationship with Casper Hatcher would never be the same, but deep down in her heart she would miss him because he’d once been an important part of her life.
Griff and his friends came back with a buckboard piled high with new lumber. Curious, Jessi stepped off the porch to investigate. Griffin hopped down off the seat. “Did you miss us?” he asked grinning.
“I’m not sure. I’d forgotten just how quiet my house used to be.”
His mustache framed his smile. “I think that’s a no, men,” he said to the others.
Amused, she gestured at the wagon. “What are you going to do with all of this lumber?”
“Didn’t you say you wanted the roof fixed?” he asked,
as they began unloading the wagon. “Put it next to the barn,” he told the Twins and the Preacher.
“Well, yes, but I didn’t expect—”
“Always expect, Jessi Rose. If I can manage it, you can have it.”
His words left her speechless.
Jessi just stood there looking at him, his words resonating inside her head like an echo in a canyon.
She stood there so long, he chided gently, “Darlin’, either grab some wood or get out of the way.”
Jessi shook herself free of his dazzling smile and grabbed a board.
The unloading took a while and during one of the trips to the barn, Jessi asked Griffin, “Where’d you find lumber?”
“Mill owned by a gentleman named Garland Findley.”
Jessi stopped. “Garland Findley?”
“Yeah. He was a friendly enough fellow.”
Jessi set the armful of wood by the barn with the rest. “Garland Findley is one of Darcy’s close friends. You’d have to flip a coin to determine who’s the greediest.”
Two Shafts echoed Griffin. “Seemed nice enough to me too.”
Jessi didn’t understand: first Lydia Cornell and her eggs, and now the lumber man Findley. What in the world had come over them? Since when did folks start defying Darcy law? She was certain Findley knew who Griffin and his friends were. “Did you threaten him?” she asked.
“No,” Griffin answered, chuckling. “Told him who we were and what we wanted and he seemed eager to help.”
No, Jessi certainly didn’t understand this.
After the wood and its accompanying paraphernalia, such as nails and hammers, had been unloaded, they all retired to the kitchen. They refreshed themselves with cups of Neil’s lemonade and while he went about dinner, she told them about the sheriff’s visit. Griff immediately asked to see the Wanted poster. She passed it to him.
Griffin studied it. “He really thinks this might be Minerva?”
“Yep.”
Two Shafts took the bulletin from Griffin’s hand and scanned the face. “Too bad we don’t know who the drifter was.”
Preacher added, “Or where he is now.”