Chapter One
Federal, Wyoming Territory
October 1880
Drake Adams swiveled his head to the saloon doors as they opened. He didn’t acknowledge the man who limped in, not even when that man made his way to Drake’s side. Instead, he poured out another drink from the half-empty bottle next to him on the bar and downed the bourbon in one neat swallow and waited for the recrimination to come.
“Don’t you think you’ve had enough?”
“That didn’t take a long time,” he said as he peered down into the empty tumbler. He weighed his next words and debated how much more he’d have to drink before he would be so drunk he couldn’t hit the ground with his hat in three tries. “No, not really, A.J. I haven’t had near enough.”
He poured out another drink and lifted the glass in a mocking salute. “Here’s to stupidity,” he said, before he emptied the tumbler in one gulp. At least, Silas kept a decent brand of Kentucky bourbon on hand. For what he paid the bar-owner for the bourbon, though, he should.
A.J. leaned heavily on the cane he was forced to rely on since he had been thrown from a green broke horse that summer. “Drake, you can’t keep doing this to yourself.”
“That from the man who would still be mourning his dead wife if Allison hadn’t missed a train.” Drake fired the accusation over his shoulder, even as he poured more liquor into the tumbler. “I’d offer you a drink, but I know you don’t want the nightmares that come with it.”
He heard his brother’s swift intake of breath. He knew he’d scored a point when A.J. said, in a perfectly level voice, “I’ll account for the alcohol when considering that last comment.”
Drake turned to fully face his older brother. Truth be told, he knew he was spoiling for a fight, and A.J. seemed to be the perfect target. “You’re a great one to tell me that I can’t keep holding onto the past. You held onto Cathy’s memory for ten years. You still have nightmares of a war that ended more than fifteen years ago, and you’re telling me I have to let go of what she did?”
“I finally did let her memory go.” A.J. took the alcohol filled tumbler from Drake’s hand and placed it on the teak bar top. “As to the other—you survive what I did and tell me you still wouldn’t have nightmares.”
“You held onto the memory of a dead woman. Jessie’s alive.” Drake grabbed the tumbler his brother took from him. “But, we all know Cathy didn’t just die. Why don’t you say what you really want to say, that Cathy was killed and it was my fault?” Drake gulped down the bourbon. He was starting to finally feel its effects, complete with a total loss of the ability to guard his words. “You’ve wanted to say that for the last ten years.”
His brother reared back and Drake saw a spark of anger ignite in his eyes. A.J.’s hand tightened on the cane and with the deep breath he drew, the fire faded.
“I’ve never thought her death was your fault. Stop being a martyr. Cathy’s death was the fault of the man who murdered her.” His brother leaned more heavily onto the cane. “Jessie left you and married another man. She didn’t die. There is no good reason to hold out hope she’ll come back.”
He wanted to kick the cane out from A.J.’s hands, wipe that neutral expression from his face. “You enjoy twisting that knife, don’t you?”
“You’re the one who’s using words as weapons tonight and twisting the blade, not me.” A.J. drew in another deep breath.
“I’m a martyr?” Drake wasn’t so inebriated that he saw the battle it was for his older brother to remain calm. That struggle pushed Drake over the edge. All the anger he’d harbored, that he had kept firmly in check with the betrayal he’d felt came raging to the surface and he repeated, “I’m a martyr? I’d say I have good reason to be acting one, if that’s the case. Who left your wife, your daughters, and me behind so that you could ride off to glorious battle? And, who turned traitor, betraying everything you claimed to honor and revere? That was you, wasn’t it?”
Movement behind the bar caught Drake’s eye but he wasn’t stopping the torrent of words even as Silas Kirk walked closer. The usual chatter in the saloon tapered off, became murmurs and whispers. Boot heels echoed over the rough-hewn floor. He didn’t even bother looking to see which of the many wranglers in the saloon approached, an approach that was halted with his brother raising a staying hand.
“That’s why you held onto Cathy’s memory for ten years, because you couldn’t stand the guilt.” Drake clenched his fists and spoke through clenched teeth. “It was easier to blame everyone around you, than to admit to your role in her death.”
“Drake, I think you’ve have enough tonight.” Silas said.
“Like I told my big brother here, I haven’t had nearly enough,” Drake said. When Silas picked up the nearly empty bottle, Drake snapped, “Put that bottle down.”
“Leave it there, Silas. He paid for it.” A.J. never looked away. “Let him have his say.”
“I don’t need your permission to get drunk.” Drake walked a few steps from the bar, and caught sight of Ben Houser, foreman at one of the neighboring ranches, standing in the middle of the floor with his arms crossed over his chest. Drake pivoted on his heel, stalked back to A.J. and stood behind his brother. “You led Oakten and his men to Clayborne when you told him where those payroll wagons were when you turned traitor. You weren’t there when they came to find the missing wagon. I was there. I tried to stop them. And, I was little more than a child then.”
“Drake, I don’t want to have to go get Harrison. I’m cutting you off now.” Silas picked up the bottle Drake and A.J. had told him to put down. Like everyone else in the small town, Drake included, Silas referred to the marshal by his first name.
“Maybe you better go get him. Or better yet, send Houser over there to toddle off after the marshal because sending someone out to get my brother to rein me in didn’t work, did it?” Drake paused for just a second. “This needs said between me and him.”
A.J. stood with his back to him, as stiff as if he were still in uniform and had been called to attention. Drake took another step closer to his brother’s back. “Anything you want to say, big brother?”
“You’re doing all the talking.” His brother’s rigid posture was as if he was carved of marble.
“I guess I am. Do you want to know what I got for my efforts trying to defend your wife and daughters?” Drake recognized his brother’s stance. Part of him screamed he needed to rein in his temper but the resentment he’d kept pent-up for too long had the bit in its teeth. “I was hit on the head, lost my memory, and ended up dragged all over creation by a man who routinely beat the hell out of me and made me steal from passing wagons. You looked for me for what—maybe a year? A year and a half before you gave up? Because it was easier to be the martyr, and cling to the memory of a dead woman and your daughters than admit your guilt in their deaths.”
Drake watched the effect his words had on his brother. A.J.’s posture tightened—though Drake would have doubted that to have been possible—his head lifted and he was braced against the onslaught of punishing words.
Drake circled around to face his brother. Less than an inch separated them in height, with Drake being the taller and he leaned in, a concerted attempt to make his brother back away. A.J. levelly met his gaze, his jaw clenched in his refusal to give ground.
“Yes, Jessie left me, because she believed I could betray her. The only reason I can think she would believe that, when I had never given her the slightest cause to believe I was capable of any betrayal is because of you. If you could so betray an oath and your honor, then I could too.”
“Are you through?” His brother spoke the words in a completely level tone.
Drake clenched his fists again. Realizing he was perilously close to taking a swing at A.J., he forced himself to step back and open his fists. “Yes, because I won’t hit a cripple.”
The saloon had become unnaturally silent. A.J. let go of his cane. It clattered against the brass foot rail before falling to the wooden floor. “I’ll tell you the same thing I was told when I wanted to take a swing at a man I thought to be weaker. Take your best shot. Make it count. You’re only going to get one.”
For a long moment, he stared at his older brother. Drake turned away and without warning, pivoted on his heel and shoved his brother as hard as he could.
A.J. stumbled backwards, knocking a stool over as he fell. The edge of the seat slammed into the small of his back. Ashen and struggling to catch his breath, he grabbed the brass foot rail, only to slump against the teakwood. Drake couldn’t move, couldn’t look away from his brother’s battle to pull himself to his feet.
Silas came around the bar as quickly as his arthritic knees would let him, the shotgun he’d named “Big Bertha” pointed directly at Drake’s mid-section. His inertia broke and Drake took several steps back. Silas gestured with Big Bertha at the saloon doors. “You need to leave, now.”
The shotgun’s appearance broke the tableau. Chairs scraped across the floor. Over the clatter, as if he spoke through a megaphone, Drake heard A.J. say, “Silas, you have to go get Doc. I can’t feel my left leg.”
Men Drake had known for better than fifteen years stood and closed ranks around his brother. Houser crossed the floor. As if he was little more than a snot-nosed kid, Houser grabbed Drake’s wrist, twisted it behind his back, and grabbed Drake’s jacket collar. Unable to fight him, Drake was marched in a scrabbling walk to the doors and pushed through.
Houser pushed him across the boardwalk and down the steps. Drake stumbled several feet into the street. He turned to the ranch foreman, reaching for the sidearm at his thigh and hesitating when he saw Houser already stood with his weapon drawn. He deliberately lifted his hand away from the revolver.
“Go home and sober up, Drake.” Without waiting to see if he would, Houser holstered his weapon, then turned and went back into The Thirsty Dog. Drake understood the insult with Houser exposing his back but the realization of what he’d done to his own brother was the harder slap.
Drake turned to his horse. Next to Rusty was a gleaming, newer buggy and his brother’s mare, Sugar, was in the traces. He was suddenly stone, cold sober.
Instead of riding to the Rocking Bar M, Drake pulled his horse’s head in the direction of Dr. Archer’s office. The pounding of Rusty’s hooves into the ground drove into his head, hammering home the damage he had done. When A.J. had been thrown that summer—from a horse Drake had done the initial training on—Doc said the fall had exacerbated the damage done to A.J.’s back while held in a Union run prisoner of war camp. Doc made him stop riding, told him any further injury to his spine could result in permanent paralysis.
At Dr. Archer’s office he reined in. A light was shining in the office and Archer’s spotted horse was hitched at the rail. Archer hadn’t left for the Running Diamond yet. Drake’s relief made him light-headed.
Drake flung himself from his mount and raced to the door. He threw it open, shouting for the doctor.
Archer emerged from a back room. “What’s the problem, Drake?”
“My brother…I…we…I shoved him. He went down and he said he can’t feel his leg.” Drake forced himself to draw a deep breath. “I think I’ve really hurt him.”
Archer’s brows shot nearly to his hairline. “When did this happen?”
“Just a little while ago at the Thirsty Dog. Doc, you’ve got to go take care of my brother. I lost my temper and…” Drake trailed off, realizing he sounded like a child making excuses, not a grown man. “Send me the bill.”
He walked from the doctor’s office, mounted his horse, and rode back down the street. Outside of Dan Sanders’s Golden Eagle Saloon he reined in. He had no intention of going back to the Rocking Bar M. More liquor was what he fully intended to find and maybe even buy himself one of Sanders’s girls for the rest of the night.
He snorted as he climbed the steps to the saloon. Yeah, like the alcohol was helping and while he told himself repeatedly he just needed to buy one of the “girls” for the night and get Jessie out of his system, he’d never been able to bring himself to actually even begin that sordid dance.
****
Jessica Depre lifted her head and looked into the night sky. Her short walk from the boarding house to this dark area of the high plains surrounding the town of Medicine Bow had only taken about ten minutes, but that distance was enough to get her away from the few lights that could dim the glittering canopy.
There was so much she had missed in Texas—the clear and defined changing of the seasons, the scent of the sage, this breath-taking display of the Milky Way as it stretched from horizon to horizon, her freedom—and she wasn’t going to think about how much she had lost because of that sojourn. She had so missed just sitting out on a clear night and looking up into the dazzling display, as if the stars were millions of diamonds strewn across a canvas of deep black velvet.
She pulled her thin overcoat more tightly around her and slowly sank to her knees onto the alkaline soil. Taking care to tuck the tails of the overcoat under her, she sat and pulled her knees to her chin. Her hand dropped onto the ground, the grit of granite sand biting into her palm. Jessica scooped a handful of the soil, clenching it in her fist. She opened her fingers, tilted her palm to the ground, and let the pulverized granite trickle out. It has always amazed her that this land was such a blend of opposites—the cutting grit of granite mixed with a soil so silky she often thought it had to be talcum.
A short reach and she held a sage brush plant. After breaking off a small branch, she stripped the leaves and rolled them between her hands. Cupping her palms to hold the fragrant silvery sage, she bent her face into her hands and inhaled deeply. This was what home smelled like—sage and the alkaline soil—and those scents brought to mind other images of home: the men and women here who lived the seasons of cattle, tied to the weathered land with its steep mountains, rolling plains, and deep arroyos.
Her hands fell to her sides. Jessica looked to the south-east, telling herself that the tightening of her throat was because of the sharp tang of the sage. She was so close and yet so very, very far away.
When the train had stopped in Federal to take on fuel and water, she had argued with herself for the whole twenty minutes the train had been halted. In the end, she didn’t get off the train, not wanting to take the chance that someone she knew would see her. However, when the train left the station on the way to the next scheduled stop in Medicine Bow, she had leaped across the passenger car and immediately found an empty seat next to a window that gave her a full view of the town. She had lifted her hand to the window glass, her palm pressing against it, as if she could reach out and capture those places she knew so well and hold them close to her heart: Gabe McKinnon’s law office, the Federal Gazette printing office, Thom Burlington’s Mercantile, Milton’s Candy Emporium, the Methodist church, the Federal Cattlemen and Stock Growers Association building. She had even recognized a few of the horses at the hitching rail in the front of the building, and the red dun dozing in the late afternoon sun had brought a lump to her throat.
All too soon, the train left Federal behind.
Jessica wrapped her arms around her bent legs and lowered her chin to her knees. The recollection of that red dun hitched to the rail at the Association building burned in her throat. It had been days since she saw that horse and more than once over that time she had wondered what she would have done if she had seen his rider.
She tilted her head back, trying to pick out constellations she had known since she was a child, willing herself to not think of him. She blew out a deep breath that hung for a moment as white vapor in the cold night. The stars blurred with the tears welling in her eyes. Every constellation she knew, every one that she could find in the glittery expanse were ones he had pointed out to her. There was Orion, and the Bull, and Draco…She blinked to try to clear her vision…the Big Dipper, always pointing to the North Star.
If you can find the North Star, you’ll never be lost and you can always find your way home.
NO! She wasn’t going to cry over him again. Heaven knew she’d shed enough tears because of Drake Adams when she first married Robert. But those tears soon dried when she realized what a mistake she had made. And, Robert had never seen her shed a tear over Drake. She learned very early how deadly that would have been.
Jessica dropped her head, looking to the south-east again. “Please, be happy. I have to believe you’re happy. If you’re happy, I can get through all of this,” she whispered, as if he might be able to hear her. In spite of her determination not to cry any more tears, several crept down her cheeks. “I should have trusted you. Please, be happy, Drake. One of us needs to be happy.”
Federal, Wyoming Territory
October 1880
Drake Adams swiveled his head to the saloon doors as they opened. He didn’t acknowledge the man who limped in, not even when that man made his way to Drake’s side. Instead, he poured out another drink from the half-empty bottle next to him on the bar and downed the bourbon in one neat swallow and waited for the recrimination to come.
“Don’t you think you’ve had enough?”
“That didn’t take a long time,” he said as he peered down into the empty tumbler. He weighed his next words and debated how much more he’d have to drink before he would be so drunk he couldn’t hit the ground with his hat in three tries. “No, not really, A.J. I haven’t had near enough.”
He poured out another drink and lifted the glass in a mocking salute. “Here’s to stupidity,” he said, before he emptied the tumbler in one gulp. At least, Silas kept a decent brand of Kentucky bourbon on hand. For what he paid the bar-owner for the bourbon, though, he should.
A.J. leaned heavily on the cane he was forced to rely on since he had been thrown from a green broke horse that summer. “Drake, you can’t keep doing this to yourself.”
“That from the man who would still be mourning his dead wife if Allison hadn’t missed a train.” Drake fired the accusation over his shoulder, even as he poured more liquor into the tumbler. “I’d offer you a drink, but I know you don’t want the nightmares that come with it.”
He heard his brother’s swift intake of breath. He knew he’d scored a point when A.J. said, in a perfectly level voice, “I’ll account for the alcohol when considering that last comment.”
Drake turned to fully face his older brother. Truth be told, he knew he was spoiling for a fight, and A.J. seemed to be the perfect target. “You’re a great one to tell me that I can’t keep holding onto the past. You held onto Cathy’s memory for ten years. You still have nightmares of a war that ended more than fifteen years ago, and you’re telling me I have to let go of what she did?”
“I finally did let her memory go.” A.J. took the alcohol filled tumbler from Drake’s hand and placed it on the teak bar top. “As to the other—you survive what I did and tell me you still wouldn’t have nightmares.”
“You held onto the memory of a dead woman. Jessie’s alive.” Drake grabbed the tumbler his brother took from him. “But, we all know Cathy didn’t just die. Why don’t you say what you really want to say, that Cathy was killed and it was my fault?” Drake gulped down the bourbon. He was starting to finally feel its effects, complete with a total loss of the ability to guard his words. “You’ve wanted to say that for the last ten years.”
His brother reared back and Drake saw a spark of anger ignite in his eyes. A.J.’s hand tightened on the cane and with the deep breath he drew, the fire faded.
“I’ve never thought her death was your fault. Stop being a martyr. Cathy’s death was the fault of the man who murdered her.” His brother leaned more heavily onto the cane. “Jessie left you and married another man. She didn’t die. There is no good reason to hold out hope she’ll come back.”
He wanted to kick the cane out from A.J.’s hands, wipe that neutral expression from his face. “You enjoy twisting that knife, don’t you?”
“You’re the one who’s using words as weapons tonight and twisting the blade, not me.” A.J. drew in another deep breath.
“I’m a martyr?” Drake wasn’t so inebriated that he saw the battle it was for his older brother to remain calm. That struggle pushed Drake over the edge. All the anger he’d harbored, that he had kept firmly in check with the betrayal he’d felt came raging to the surface and he repeated, “I’m a martyr? I’d say I have good reason to be acting one, if that’s the case. Who left your wife, your daughters, and me behind so that you could ride off to glorious battle? And, who turned traitor, betraying everything you claimed to honor and revere? That was you, wasn’t it?”
Movement behind the bar caught Drake’s eye but he wasn’t stopping the torrent of words even as Silas Kirk walked closer. The usual chatter in the saloon tapered off, became murmurs and whispers. Boot heels echoed over the rough-hewn floor. He didn’t even bother looking to see which of the many wranglers in the saloon approached, an approach that was halted with his brother raising a staying hand.
“That’s why you held onto Cathy’s memory for ten years, because you couldn’t stand the guilt.” Drake clenched his fists and spoke through clenched teeth. “It was easier to blame everyone around you, than to admit to your role in her death.”
“Drake, I think you’ve have enough tonight.” Silas said.
“Like I told my big brother here, I haven’t had nearly enough,” Drake said. When Silas picked up the nearly empty bottle, Drake snapped, “Put that bottle down.”
“Leave it there, Silas. He paid for it.” A.J. never looked away. “Let him have his say.”
“I don’t need your permission to get drunk.” Drake walked a few steps from the bar, and caught sight of Ben Houser, foreman at one of the neighboring ranches, standing in the middle of the floor with his arms crossed over his chest. Drake pivoted on his heel, stalked back to A.J. and stood behind his brother. “You led Oakten and his men to Clayborne when you told him where those payroll wagons were when you turned traitor. You weren’t there when they came to find the missing wagon. I was there. I tried to stop them. And, I was little more than a child then.”
“Drake, I don’t want to have to go get Harrison. I’m cutting you off now.” Silas picked up the bottle Drake and A.J. had told him to put down. Like everyone else in the small town, Drake included, Silas referred to the marshal by his first name.
“Maybe you better go get him. Or better yet, send Houser over there to toddle off after the marshal because sending someone out to get my brother to rein me in didn’t work, did it?” Drake paused for just a second. “This needs said between me and him.”
A.J. stood with his back to him, as stiff as if he were still in uniform and had been called to attention. Drake took another step closer to his brother’s back. “Anything you want to say, big brother?”
“You’re doing all the talking.” His brother’s rigid posture was as if he was carved of marble.
“I guess I am. Do you want to know what I got for my efforts trying to defend your wife and daughters?” Drake recognized his brother’s stance. Part of him screamed he needed to rein in his temper but the resentment he’d kept pent-up for too long had the bit in its teeth. “I was hit on the head, lost my memory, and ended up dragged all over creation by a man who routinely beat the hell out of me and made me steal from passing wagons. You looked for me for what—maybe a year? A year and a half before you gave up? Because it was easier to be the martyr, and cling to the memory of a dead woman and your daughters than admit your guilt in their deaths.”
Drake watched the effect his words had on his brother. A.J.’s posture tightened—though Drake would have doubted that to have been possible—his head lifted and he was braced against the onslaught of punishing words.
Drake circled around to face his brother. Less than an inch separated them in height, with Drake being the taller and he leaned in, a concerted attempt to make his brother back away. A.J. levelly met his gaze, his jaw clenched in his refusal to give ground.
“Yes, Jessie left me, because she believed I could betray her. The only reason I can think she would believe that, when I had never given her the slightest cause to believe I was capable of any betrayal is because of you. If you could so betray an oath and your honor, then I could too.”
“Are you through?” His brother spoke the words in a completely level tone.
Drake clenched his fists again. Realizing he was perilously close to taking a swing at A.J., he forced himself to step back and open his fists. “Yes, because I won’t hit a cripple.”
The saloon had become unnaturally silent. A.J. let go of his cane. It clattered against the brass foot rail before falling to the wooden floor. “I’ll tell you the same thing I was told when I wanted to take a swing at a man I thought to be weaker. Take your best shot. Make it count. You’re only going to get one.”
For a long moment, he stared at his older brother. Drake turned away and without warning, pivoted on his heel and shoved his brother as hard as he could.
A.J. stumbled backwards, knocking a stool over as he fell. The edge of the seat slammed into the small of his back. Ashen and struggling to catch his breath, he grabbed the brass foot rail, only to slump against the teakwood. Drake couldn’t move, couldn’t look away from his brother’s battle to pull himself to his feet.
Silas came around the bar as quickly as his arthritic knees would let him, the shotgun he’d named “Big Bertha” pointed directly at Drake’s mid-section. His inertia broke and Drake took several steps back. Silas gestured with Big Bertha at the saloon doors. “You need to leave, now.”
The shotgun’s appearance broke the tableau. Chairs scraped across the floor. Over the clatter, as if he spoke through a megaphone, Drake heard A.J. say, “Silas, you have to go get Doc. I can’t feel my left leg.”
Men Drake had known for better than fifteen years stood and closed ranks around his brother. Houser crossed the floor. As if he was little more than a snot-nosed kid, Houser grabbed Drake’s wrist, twisted it behind his back, and grabbed Drake’s jacket collar. Unable to fight him, Drake was marched in a scrabbling walk to the doors and pushed through.
Houser pushed him across the boardwalk and down the steps. Drake stumbled several feet into the street. He turned to the ranch foreman, reaching for the sidearm at his thigh and hesitating when he saw Houser already stood with his weapon drawn. He deliberately lifted his hand away from the revolver.
“Go home and sober up, Drake.” Without waiting to see if he would, Houser holstered his weapon, then turned and went back into The Thirsty Dog. Drake understood the insult with Houser exposing his back but the realization of what he’d done to his own brother was the harder slap.
Drake turned to his horse. Next to Rusty was a gleaming, newer buggy and his brother’s mare, Sugar, was in the traces. He was suddenly stone, cold sober.
Instead of riding to the Rocking Bar M, Drake pulled his horse’s head in the direction of Dr. Archer’s office. The pounding of Rusty’s hooves into the ground drove into his head, hammering home the damage he had done. When A.J. had been thrown that summer—from a horse Drake had done the initial training on—Doc said the fall had exacerbated the damage done to A.J.’s back while held in a Union run prisoner of war camp. Doc made him stop riding, told him any further injury to his spine could result in permanent paralysis.
At Dr. Archer’s office he reined in. A light was shining in the office and Archer’s spotted horse was hitched at the rail. Archer hadn’t left for the Running Diamond yet. Drake’s relief made him light-headed.
Drake flung himself from his mount and raced to the door. He threw it open, shouting for the doctor.
Archer emerged from a back room. “What’s the problem, Drake?”
“My brother…I…we…I shoved him. He went down and he said he can’t feel his leg.” Drake forced himself to draw a deep breath. “I think I’ve really hurt him.”
Archer’s brows shot nearly to his hairline. “When did this happen?”
“Just a little while ago at the Thirsty Dog. Doc, you’ve got to go take care of my brother. I lost my temper and…” Drake trailed off, realizing he sounded like a child making excuses, not a grown man. “Send me the bill.”
He walked from the doctor’s office, mounted his horse, and rode back down the street. Outside of Dan Sanders’s Golden Eagle Saloon he reined in. He had no intention of going back to the Rocking Bar M. More liquor was what he fully intended to find and maybe even buy himself one of Sanders’s girls for the rest of the night.
He snorted as he climbed the steps to the saloon. Yeah, like the alcohol was helping and while he told himself repeatedly he just needed to buy one of the “girls” for the night and get Jessie out of his system, he’d never been able to bring himself to actually even begin that sordid dance.
****
Jessica Depre lifted her head and looked into the night sky. Her short walk from the boarding house to this dark area of the high plains surrounding the town of Medicine Bow had only taken about ten minutes, but that distance was enough to get her away from the few lights that could dim the glittering canopy.
There was so much she had missed in Texas—the clear and defined changing of the seasons, the scent of the sage, this breath-taking display of the Milky Way as it stretched from horizon to horizon, her freedom—and she wasn’t going to think about how much she had lost because of that sojourn. She had so missed just sitting out on a clear night and looking up into the dazzling display, as if the stars were millions of diamonds strewn across a canvas of deep black velvet.
She pulled her thin overcoat more tightly around her and slowly sank to her knees onto the alkaline soil. Taking care to tuck the tails of the overcoat under her, she sat and pulled her knees to her chin. Her hand dropped onto the ground, the grit of granite sand biting into her palm. Jessica scooped a handful of the soil, clenching it in her fist. She opened her fingers, tilted her palm to the ground, and let the pulverized granite trickle out. It has always amazed her that this land was such a blend of opposites—the cutting grit of granite mixed with a soil so silky she often thought it had to be talcum.
A short reach and she held a sage brush plant. After breaking off a small branch, she stripped the leaves and rolled them between her hands. Cupping her palms to hold the fragrant silvery sage, she bent her face into her hands and inhaled deeply. This was what home smelled like—sage and the alkaline soil—and those scents brought to mind other images of home: the men and women here who lived the seasons of cattle, tied to the weathered land with its steep mountains, rolling plains, and deep arroyos.
Her hands fell to her sides. Jessica looked to the south-east, telling herself that the tightening of her throat was because of the sharp tang of the sage. She was so close and yet so very, very far away.
When the train had stopped in Federal to take on fuel and water, she had argued with herself for the whole twenty minutes the train had been halted. In the end, she didn’t get off the train, not wanting to take the chance that someone she knew would see her. However, when the train left the station on the way to the next scheduled stop in Medicine Bow, she had leaped across the passenger car and immediately found an empty seat next to a window that gave her a full view of the town. She had lifted her hand to the window glass, her palm pressing against it, as if she could reach out and capture those places she knew so well and hold them close to her heart: Gabe McKinnon’s law office, the Federal Gazette printing office, Thom Burlington’s Mercantile, Milton’s Candy Emporium, the Methodist church, the Federal Cattlemen and Stock Growers Association building. She had even recognized a few of the horses at the hitching rail in the front of the building, and the red dun dozing in the late afternoon sun had brought a lump to her throat.
All too soon, the train left Federal behind.
Jessica wrapped her arms around her bent legs and lowered her chin to her knees. The recollection of that red dun hitched to the rail at the Association building burned in her throat. It had been days since she saw that horse and more than once over that time she had wondered what she would have done if she had seen his rider.
She tilted her head back, trying to pick out constellations she had known since she was a child, willing herself to not think of him. She blew out a deep breath that hung for a moment as white vapor in the cold night. The stars blurred with the tears welling in her eyes. Every constellation she knew, every one that she could find in the glittery expanse were ones he had pointed out to her. There was Orion, and the Bull, and Draco…She blinked to try to clear her vision…the Big Dipper, always pointing to the North Star.
If you can find the North Star, you’ll never be lost and you can always find your way home.
NO! She wasn’t going to cry over him again. Heaven knew she’d shed enough tears because of Drake Adams when she first married Robert. But those tears soon dried when she realized what a mistake she had made. And, Robert had never seen her shed a tear over Drake. She learned very early how deadly that would have been.
Jessica dropped her head, looking to the south-east again. “Please, be happy. I have to believe you’re happy. If you’re happy, I can get through all of this,” she whispered, as if he might be able to hear her. In spite of her determination not to cry any more tears, several crept down her cheeks. “I should have trusted you. Please, be happy, Drake. One of us needs to be happy.”