Chapter 15 #2
“Stay in your chair. It’d please me to have your wife along if she didn’t think I cared about her opinions, and Rabbit over there is a little too bold for my tastes.
Now Finn here, depending on how you look at it, either pissed on Marcie or pissed him off.
Maybe he did both. That makes him the best one to come along, seeing as how Marcellus is staying here. ”
Jane opened her mouth to protest and clamped it shut when Gideon cocked an eyebrow at her.
“That’s right,” he said. “I don’t care for your opinions, and if Dix shoots the boy because you have it in your mind you can talk now, I’ll just take the other one.” He jerked his chin at Morgan. “How the hell did you meet this one?”
Morgan did not look at his brother. He only had eyes for Jane. The slender smile that lifted the corners of his mouth touched his gaze. “She answered my personal advertisement.”
“Mail-order bride? You don’t have another one in that crate in the front room, do you?”
Morgan waited until Gideon was done laughing at his joke.
“No. That’s a sewing machine.” Still watching Jane, he said, “She told me once that she had one when she lived in New York.” He saw tears well in Jane’s eyes and watched her bite her lower lip to keep it from trembling.
She, too, was remembering their first morning in this house, in this kitchen, when he was critical of her apple green dress with the white polka dots and ruffled neckline because it was too pretty.
I shall miss the sewing machine I had in New York, she had said, but I do well enough with a needle and thread.
She told him she would make aprons, and she did, and every time he saw her wearing one, he thought of the sewing machine.
“Unlike you, Gideon, I care a great deal about the things she says.”
“Huh.” He scratched behind his ear. “You always were a ladies’ man. Now I know why. You poke them and listen to them. I just poke ’em.”
“Shut up, Gideon.”
A soundless chuckle made Gideon’s shoulders rise and fall. “Let’s go. Take your hat.” He walked behind Morgan to get his hat and coat. “Finn, you got anything you want to say to your brother before you go?”
Finn nodded and stared at Rabbit with solemn regard. “I reckon we should’ve ate more of those cookies. Maybe had some of the pie.”
Rabbit nodded. “I had that in my mind, too.”
“Touching.” Gideon finished buttoning his coat. “C’mon, Finn. This way. Morgan, you follow. Dix, you’re the caboose. Marcie, I’ll fire one shot to let you know when to start that hundred minutes. You have your pocket watch?”
“I do.”
“Then we are out of here.”
* * *
Jane thought she was prepared for the report from Gideon’s gun, but when it came, she shuddered from head to toe.
Rabbit was lifted out of his seat. She slid a hand toward him.
With his brother gone, there was no reason not to accept her offer.
Apparently he thought so, too. He slipped his hand under her palm and allowed her to give it a squeeze, and then he turned his hand over and took hers in his.
Jane had no words. It was as lovely a gesture as there ever was.
Marcie put his gun away and sat at the table for the first time. He set his pocket watch in front of him. “You think he can do it, Mrs. Longstreet?”
“Of course he can.”
“Good to know. I have to say, I’ve had my doubts about this plan all along, but Gideon had it in his head that it had to be done this way. Just desserts, he called it.” He glanced at the stove. “Is the coffee still hot?”
She nodded and started to rise.
“Sit. I don’t mind doin’ for myself, not when there’s no gang to serve.
” He got a cup and went to the stove. “Now on the trail, it’s a different matter.
Someone gets up to get himself a cup and suddenly you got someone else yellin’, ‘Man-at-the-pot.’ That means you’re obliged to carry the pot and give a fill-up to anyone who wants one.
” He returned to his chair and sipped his coffee for temperature before he took a swallow.
“This is real good. You have any fancy fluff-duffs?”
Jane frowned.
Rabbit said, “He’s talkin’ about fancy cakes, doughnuts, food like that. Must be the just desserts that got him going one way on that track.”
“Nothing like that,” Jane said evenly. “But I understand there is a pie and cookies in the wagon in the barn.”
“I heard that, too. Guess I’ll be leavin’ them there.” He drank more coffee. “You haven’t asked. That surprises me a little.” When Jane did not respond, he said, “You haven’t asked me how I come to throw in with Gideon.”
“I do not want to know.”
Marcie spoke as if she had not. “Prison.” He slowly traced his scar with a fingernail. “I wouldn’t want to say what I did to get there in front of the boy, but I could take you in the bedroom and show you.”
Jane showed no reaction that she could control. It was not possible to keep blood from draining out of her face.
Marcie glanced at the pocket watch. “One hundred minutes is a long time for some things. Not enough for others. What do you say, Mrs. Longstreet? Would you like to buy some time for your husband?”
* * *
Morgan and Finn rode abreast. Gideon led the way.
Dix was still the caboose. Morgan rode Condor, the same saddle horse he’d had under him all day.
He would have preferred a fresher mount, but Gideon insisted on the gelding.
Finn, though, got Sophie when she proved too recalcitrant for Gideon to mount.
She was used to someone lighter in her saddle these days, so Morgan suggested Finn, but he already had it in his mind that he would be the one riding her back to Jane.
She would fly for him, and she had the heart to do it.
“We can cover the ground faster,” he told Gideon. “Finn can keep up.”
Gideon looked over his shoulder. “Worried that there won’t be enough time?”
There was no point in responding to his brother’s mockery, so Morgan didn’t.
He glanced over at Finn. The boy was staying in the saddle, and that was the best that could be said for his seat.
The only animal the Collinses owned was the mare that pulled the station buckboard.
Finn and Rabbit spent considerably more time behind her than on her.
Sophie was taking her lead from Condor, not Finn.
“There’s the graveyard,” Finn said, pointing up ahead.
“I guess I know the shape of that cottonwood. It’s about as gnarly as my gran’s hand.
” He cupped a hand around his mouth so his loud whisper would be sure to carry ahead to Gideon.
“Hey, mister, you know the quickest way to get to the bank, or do you want me to show you?”
Gideon slowed so Finn caught up to him. “I got a way figured out.”
“And I probably got a better one. I’ve been all over this town one time or another on adventures with my brother. You tell me how you want to get there, and I’ll tell you if it’s good.”
Gideon looked over at Morgan. “What do you think?”
“I’m for listening to him. He’s got a stake in this. His brother’s back there.”
“All right,” said Gideon. “Out with it.”
Finn laid out a route that would have them skirting the edge of town and then turning sharp and heading straight through the alley that would bring them to the bank.
“It’s roundabout,” said Gideon.
“It’ll be quick on horseback,” said Finn. “The other way, the best way if you don’t want to be noticed at all is on foot, but I got it in my head that bank robbers want to have their horses close by the bank, not tied up at the graveyard.”
By the time they reached the edge of the cemetery, Gideon had made his decision. “You take the lead, Finn. I’ll be right behind you.”
“I need to be with him,” Morgan said. “He can’t control Sophie.”
“Go ahead. As long as I control you, I don’t figure we have a problem.”
Morgan caught up to Finn and grabbed Sophie’s reins. When he leaned over, he spoke as loudly as he dared. “When the time comes, Finn, you listen to me.”
Finn’s widening eyes were the only indication that he heard.
* * *
Jane watched Marcie tear two of her tea towels into long strips.
She knew what he would do with them, and she warned Rabbit not to fight.
He sat there like a stoic, accepting the restraints as Jane was ordered to bind his feet to the chair legs and then bind his hands to the spindle rail at his back.
Marcie stuffed part of his handkerchief in Rabbit’s mouth when Jane’s hands began to shake. He finished off binding the gag with the last strip from the towels and checked Jane’s work.
“There’s no reason we should be disturbed by the boy carrying on, and it’ll make that other fella crazy. Shall we go, Mrs. Longstreet? There’s five minutes waiting for you on the other side of paradise.”
Bile rose in Jane’s throat. “You said ten. You agreed to ten minutes.”
“What I agreed to is that ten minutes with me gets you five. You want ten, then you have to give me twenty. You think you can bring me up twice? There’s a whore in Rawlings who could do that, but I think she gave me the pox.”
Rabbit started to wrestle with his bonds. The chair jerked and bounced on the floor. The table jumped.
Jane shook her head. “Rabbit! Stop. Ten minutes. I can get us ten minutes. It could mean everything.” She bent and waited for him to meet her eyes.
“You will not cry.” She kissed his forehead and brushed back his hair at the temples.
“Whatever you hear, you will not cry.” She forced a smile.
“You will get a stuffy nose and not be able to breathe. I am buying ten minutes so we can all breathe. Do you understand?”
He nodded. He closed his eyes when Jane used one corner of her apron to dry his wet lashes.
“That’s it, Rabbit. Keep your eyes closed.”
He did, and when he could stand it no longer, he opened them. Jane and Marcie were gone.
* * *