A Hard Ride Home (16 page)

"Stay there," Jesse said, shuffling unsteadily. The tip of the iron wavered in front of him.

"How long can you stay on your feet?" Warren asked, pointing with the bloodied knife. He took two steps toward Jesse, driving him another stumbling step back.

Jesse's blood dripped in a sticky stream from his elbow. He blinked, trying to clear his vision.

Warren kept crowding him, staying just out of the sharp iron's reach. "Drop that, and I'll make it quick."

"Go to Hell," Jesse whispered, watching the way Warren limped, favoring his injured side. Warren might be torn up inside right now, bleeding into his guts.

Jesse's hands were still bound, but he'd only need a few seconds to get out of the ropes. If Warren faltered, when he faltered, Jesse would get his hands free.

Jesse blinked again, the library going dimmer, as if the sun had gone behind the clouds, and then Warren was on him, driving him back against the library door. The blade glanced over his ribs and lodged in the heavy door with a thud—and Jesse wanted to laugh, hysterically. The soft bits. Warren should be aiming at the soft bits.

Warren snarled and head-butted him, his thick skull cracking against Jesse's brow and splitting the thin skin there. The iron dropped out of Jesse's hands, his fingers startled open by pain. Blood started to run down his face, into one eye. Then Warren's hands were on his throat, rattling him against the door, choking him and thrashing him against it. The sound of his head knocking back into the wood drowned out the gunfight.

Warren's face was dark and contorted, crowding in and out of sight as he squeezed, cutting off Jesse's blood and breath. The hilt of Warren's knife scraped at Jesse's ribs. It was close. He could reach it.

He closed his eyes and twisted his wrists and flexed his fingers, and the rope fell to his feet. He didn't have to worry about Warren seeing what he was doing. Warren was too busy killing him.

Jesse felt blindly for the knife, hitched his arm up, and closed his hand around the handle. He used his arm like a lever, drove his elbow back against the door and pulled.

When the knife jolted free, he followed the momentum, slicing across Warren's middle to get the knife between them. The hilt met his other palm and he drove it forward like a chisel until he couldn't hold onto it anymore because he couldn't feel his hands.

Warren's grip loosened, and they both fell, tangled together.

Jesse tried to breathe. The air scraped and whistled down his throat. He clawed at his neck like it was still being squeezed, like he could force the breath down to his burning, aching lungs.

He felt a heavy shift against him and tried to see.

Warren.

"No—" Jesse's palms slipped in the blood on the smooth floor. Warren was still too fast and too big. He rolled Jesse over and pressed his forearm down on Jesse's throat, putting his weight into it, watching him madly. Jesse felt the knife between them, buried deep in Warren's gut, the hilt nudged up against him like a prick.

It was just a race now.

Jesse stopped kicking and clawing, giving in to the storm sounds rushing in his ears. A fuzzy, quiet serenity took over.

The gunshots had stopped. Or he couldn't hear them anymore.

With one eye glued shut with sticky blood, Jesse watched Warren's face slacken, rage giving way to a sleepy, disoriented expression. Warren stared down at Jesse, pupils shifting—going black, going empty. His wet breath puffed out against Jesse's lips.

Then Warren listed to the side, tucked up against Jesse like a lover, his quiet lips pressed to Jesse's cheek.

Jesse stared at the ceiling. It was paneled and fine. Someone probably had to clean it, reaching up to polish it like someday the world might turn upside down.

His tears mixed with the blood in his eyes, but didn't wash it away, and it stung. But not too much. And when he closed his eyes, it didn't hurt at all.

"Damn," he whispered, remembering too late that the library door was still locked.

*~*~*

Two of the men firing from the house looked familiar to Emmett. They'd been in the saloon with his father, but they hadn't been around any other time. One was drunk, judging by the way he hollered as he fired. Charley cut him down and the man fell on the porch, howling and screaming until Curtis shot him dead. He'd broken a window and fired from inside. Not as reckless as the other two who'd rushed outside like they were making a grand charge on a battlefield. The thinner one managed to hole up behind a trough full of herbs on the porch, and he was by far the better shot. Every passing second wound Emmett up more than the prospect of running out of bullets. He knew where to find more bullets, but he couldn't buy back the time Jesse remained with his father.

Emmett didn't have much of an angle, but he got lucky when the man came up to fire at Charley. With his two men dead out on the porch, Curtis kept firing, his big bald head visible every once in a while as he craned around to fire at Charley and Emmett.

Just as Emmett counted out his last few rounds, Curtis went crashing through the broken window he'd been firing out of, his body doubling over limply in the frame. From his vantage point behind his dead horse, Emmett could see that the top of Curtis's head had been shot open.

"That came from inside," Charley called out.

"I know," Emmett responded, standing and wiping the sweat of his eyes. "Who's there?" he yelled.

The front door opened and a stocky, dark-haired woman came out holding a pistol and waving, her skirt and apron billowing around in the hot breeze.

"Hurry," she screamed out, beckoning wildly. "Sheriff, hurry!"

Emmett set off at a run.

"You're bleeding," she said when he hit the porch. The woman's knuckles were white where she held onto the pistol.

"It's nothing." Emmett touched his hair where the scabbed-up furrow had broken open again. "You shot Curtis."

"He was a mean bastard, Sheriff." She looked down at the pistol as if she'd only just noticed it, and handed it over carefully, her hands shaking when she drew them back and wiped them on her apron.

Emmett examined the pistol. "This is my father's…"

"I can't get the door open. They've been in there for half an hour."

"What—where?" Emmett pushed past her, boots crunching on broken glass in the house. He heard Charley come up behind him.

"The library," she said. "They're in the library. The door's locked or jammed. I tried."

But Emmett was already there, throwing his shoulder against the door and rattling the knob frantically. "Father!" he roared out, going hot all over. His sweaty fingers slipped on the brass. "Jesse! God damn it. Jesse!"

He didn't know how long he fought the door before Charley took his wrists and pulled him away, saying, "Emmett. Stop."

Emmett started to fight him off until Charley jammed an iron crow bar between the door and the frame and puts his weight against it. There was a groan, and a clack, and then the door jerked open and jammed against something.

The soft felt weather stripping at the bottom of the door left a wide smear of dark blood across the floor.

"Don't," Charley said, trying to hold him back. "Let me go first."

Emmett wrestled him away and squeezed through the open door. The sour reek of blood and bile hit him first. He hung onto the door, gripping it to stay on his feet when he looked down.

They looked like they were sleeping, Warren's arm curled over Jesse's chest.

"No," he coughed out, dropping to his knees to get Warren off of Jesse. He pushed at his father's arm and shoulder, trying to roll him away, his breath catching on choking gags at the scents of violent death. His fingers bunched up in Warren's sleeve as he turned him over enough to see the knife-hilt protruding from his belly.

"Oh God," Charley said behind him. "Oh God. He's still alive."

Emmett shook his head. It was impossible. Warren dead eyes stared, blank and dull.

"I'll ride to town, tell the doctor to be ready," Charley was saying, prying the door open further. "Ma'am, I need water here, and rags if you have them."

His words began to make sense. Emmett stared at Jesse. "He's breathing."

Jesse's bruised throat bobbed as he moaned, his pulse visible where the skin was purple and distended.

Emmett started stroking Jesse's hair in a frenzy, touching his face, smearing the blood away to find more of his skin. His warm skin. "He's alive. You're alive. Jesse. We're here. I'm here." His voice hitched and broke when Jesse's eyes opened with a weak flutter. "It's okay now. He's gone, Jesse. I'm here," he said, shaking, opening Jesse's shirt to try to find where the blood was coming from.

Jesse's mouth opened. He made a quiet, croaking sound, and his hands begin to stir.

"Don't talk," Emmett said. "Your neck's hurt. You killed him, Jesse. He's gone."

The sound came again, torn and broken, as Jesse rolled his head to the side and saw Warren there. He made a sound like the rusted groan of old hinges, again and again, until Emmett realized that Jesse was crying.

"No, no…" Emmett bent over him close, turned Jesse's head back so he wouldn't look there again.

Charley bustled beside him, taking rags from his father's maid and wrapping them around Jesse's arm. "We need to move. Can you lift him?" he asked.

Emmett waved him off, just for a moment more, because there was no sense in dragging Jesse back down the hill if he wasn't going to fight.

"Look at me." Emmett cupped Jesse's face, making it only them, just them. "Look at me, Jesse."

Shadowed and close, Emmett saw Jesse's eyes change when he focused, when he really saw Emmett and started listening.

"Good," Emmett whispered. "Now. Those infernal women will hang me high if I don't bring you back. You do your part, you keep on breathing. You hear me?"

Jesse watched him, gaze unsteady, like he was struggling to stay awake.

"You did right. You did good," Emmett told him, wiping the blood from around his eye carefully.

Something flickered in Jesse's eyes. It wasn't a smile, but it was as close as it could get with his features drawn tight with pain. He reached his free hand and touched Emmett's ribs before his arm slumped back down and his eyes closed gently.

Emmett lifted him up, as careful as he could, and didn't look back.

The sun set as Emmett carried Jesse into Doc Milton's shop. Even with the lamps and a dozen candles lit, it wasn't bright enough to make sense of the mess of him. On the ride down from the big house, Jesse hadn't stirred or made a sound, and fear set Emmett's heart beating too fast, made him ache all over.

Milton cleared off his work table on account of Roscoe being laid up in his only cot. His apron was stained pink like a butcher's. Roscoe looked to be sleeping, his face pale and shiny, and Josephine sat beside him, holding his hand and looking at Emmett like she could see right through him.

When he laid Jesse down on the wooden slab, Emmett said, "I'm sorry," and his voice came out broken and hoarse.

It took Milton a moment to answer. He pressed his fingers to Jesse's throat and cocked his head like he was listening. "He isn't dead yet, Emmett. Though he looks like he ought to be. Fetch Miss Devaux and Miss Green—she's nimble-fingered. And wash your hands in that basin there when you get back. With the soap, mind you."

Emmett didn't want to leave Jesse's side, but at least he didn't have to go far to find the girls. They hovered together just outside in the street, solemn as shadows.

"Is he dead?" Evelyn asked, the words clipping out like she had to force them past her teeth.

"No, he's… Doc needs you—you and Miss Green. I reckon for mending," Emmett said, bile sour in his throat. He'd tried his best to keep Jesse's arm wrapped in a rag, but he'd seen how bad it was cut.

His belly and chest were wet with Jesse's blood. Wet right through to the skin.

"All right then," Sara said, looking between them. "I'll go in." She tutted something at the other girls, sending Rose and Delia scurrying back down the dusty street to the Weeping Willow. Delia dragged her feet and looked back every few steps, but minded Sara.

When they were alone, Evelyn approached Emmett like she aimed to strike him, and he didn't move, because he was certain he deserved it. If they'd only been faster, if he'd found some other way…

But she didn't strike him. She threw her strong arms around his neck and embraced him.

Emmett had never held a crying woman before and he was inclined to think Evelyn had never cried on a man's shoulder, but they made do, ever so briefly. When she finished, she drew away and wiped her face fiercely. "He's the stubbornest… most bull-headed. Best… Best man I know, Emmett. He's not meant to die today."

Emmett couldn't respond beyond giving her a shaky nod. Evelyn's tight, careful sobs had nearly rendered him incapable of controlling the uprising of grief in him.

Evelyn watched him with a considering frown and took his hand, tugging him back into Milton's single room, where it smelled of blood and medicine.

*~*~*

Evelyn Devaux first saw a man die when she'd snuck downstairs from her tiny attic room at the Weeping Willow to see her mother dance in her red skirts and fancy feathers from Paris. Instead, she'd witnessed a gunfight from the banister. Watched a man thrash on the floor like a fish stuck out of water. He'd gasped and wriggled until he finally stopped moving and his eyes remained open and shiny, just like a fish's.

She'd gotten a good beating that night for coming downstairs when Madame was entertaining, but it'd been worth it to learn something important about life: how it looked at the end.

Death didn't do anyone any favors.

Standing beside Doc Milton's work table, Evelyn considered Beatrice's blank, dead features. They'd bury the girl in the morning, out on the prairie where Silver Creek's little cemetery stretched out like a patch of weeds.

Evelyn considered Warren as well, wondered what the state of him was up at the big house—if they'd laid his body out somewhere or left him wherever he'd fallen when Jesse'd cut him down. She didn't grieve for her father, but she hurt. She hurt for them all.