Chapter 2
Pa is dead now, and that means I’ve got to keep the boys safe, to keep them fed. We’ve been at Fort Stevens since he died. The plan is to head south, for gold.
—Austin Wilder’s journal, May 10, 1848
“C an you believe the audacity of that little mouse?” Austin hadn’t stopped ranting since Millie Talbot had left his house and taken herself back on down the mountain.
“Unbelievable,” his brother Carson said.
“Absolutely unconscionable,” his other brother, Flynn, said.
“I don’t know.” Cassidy, the youngest child and only girl, looked up at him with a sly expression in her eyes. “I think maybe you’re the asshole.”
“Is that so? Well, that’s the thanks I get for feeding and clothing you for the past fifteen years, you bratty little mite.”
Cassidy did not fear him in the way she should, because he’d had to reform when she’d come into his life. A good thing, he felt, but damn, it would be nice if she understood that he used to be intimidating. He used to scare women and children in the streets.
Not on purpose, but his very presence had been a dark cloud. A long shadow, etc.
It still was, he supposed. But to Cassidy he was just . . . her big brother.
She shrugged. “I’m just saying. This is actually what you want, Austin. You want people to understand our family better.”
“I don’t care if people understand our family. What I care about is the truth. And the jumped-up version of history this town consid-eres its claim to fame is just bullshit.”
“What does it matter?” Flynn asked. “I mean, seriously. Who cares if we’re the outlaws. Hell, it does me good when I go down to the bar and try to find a woman.”
“Operative word being try ,” Carson said, his voice dry.
“I do just fine, big brother.”
“Ew,” Cassidy said.
“Flynn,” Austin said, looking at his half brother, “I thought you’d enjoy the chance to poke at Danielle.”
Flynn snorted. “She’s basically a stranger. She and Michael have barely said a handful of words to me. Even when I did have to spend the holidays with them.”
“Your half brother Michael or her new boyfriend, Michael Hall?”
Flynn’s face contorted. “Oh. God. She’s really with. . . .” He shook his head. “Just when I think I can’t want more distance between myself and my mother’s side of the family. This is why I’d rather be an outlaw than ever be associated with one of them.”
Cassidy was also wrinkling her nose at the whole Michael/ Michael thing. “I don’t care about the outlaw reputation stuff.”
“It’s not the reputation,” said Austin. “I’m not doing this for reputation. I’m doing it because. . . .”
Because he was thirty-five. Because all the other men in their family had the bad luck to die before they reached this advanced age. And here he was.
Here he was staring down a future that he hadn’t really figured he’d have. Not that he had been living the kind of life that had killed those who’d come before him. But he had been sort of convinced that it was a family curse.
His namesake, Austin Wilder, had in fact been killed in a shootout on the main street of town. He knew, also, that Austin Wilder had been an outlaw. By any definition of the word. He had robbed stagecoaches, trains, banks—basically, if it wasn’t nailed down, he was happy to try to take it.
He hadn’t been a murderer, though. Austin was convinced of that. Because his great-great-great-great-great-grandfather had kept a detailed journal for most of his life, and if he had killed someone, it would have been written in those pages, in black and white. The journal had never existed to absolve the man. There were some damning things written in it.
But Austin knew there was more to the story than he had in those pages.
Millie Talbot had access to other letters. Journals. Artifacts. She had said so herself. That was the one thing that tempted him to play ball with her. Except . . . there was his pride. And pride was a pretty big factor in his life. Really, in everything he did.
He wasn’t that far removed from his bloodline.
He might not be a criminal—currently—he might not be a cheater, a gambler, or a drunkard, but he was bloody minded, with a stubborn streak wider than Outlaw Lake.
And the idea of agreeing to help out a Talbot with anything, the idea of going down into town and participating in that travesty they called a town council meeting, was enough to make his blood boil.
“I thought you were thinking you might find yourself a wife,” Carson said.
Austin regretted sharing that. He had gotten drunk a couple weeks ago and told his brother that he was starting to think about the future, which he had never done before. But once his birthday had passed and he’d turned thirty-five without incident, making him ancient in the Wilder timeline, he had begun to think about what life looked like on the other side.
So yeah, he had thought about a wife. Kids. He was trying to set the record straight when it came to the family. If there were no descendants.. . . Well, it made the whole thing seem kind of pointless.
Flynn was never going to have children. Flynn was never going to do anything but run around town, and indeed the entirety of Jackson County, being an abject manwhore. Carson had tried his hand at love and marriage, and it had ended so suddenly, and in such a devastating way, he knew full well his brother was never going to try again.
After Alyssa’s death, Carson had looked at him and said that he figured he was going to live well past thirty-five, because he was going to have to live with the grief, and the weight, of having lost his wife.
Austin wished he could have said something comforting in response. He wished he could’ve said he didn’t think fate worked like that.
But he did. So all he’d been able to do was raise a glass and get blinding drunk in a show of support.
“That’s not really a present action item,” Austin said.
“You’re on borrowed time at this point,” Cassidy said, cheerfully.
“You’re just smug because the women in the family don’t have a long history of dying at thirty-four,” Flynn said.
“Yes,” Cassidy said dryly. “The half sister who got left on your doorstep on Christmas Eve fifteen years ago is smug. Super smug.”
“So what exactly do you think I should do?” Austin asked, looking at Carson.
“I think you should consider giving her what she wants. Or the very least, go down there to that town hall meeting and cause a ruckus with your mere presence. Can you imagine?”
“To what end?”
“Why are we here?” Carson asked. “I think that’s the better question.”
“Because this is our homestead,” Austin said. “And it doesn’t matter how the town treats us, and it doesn’t matter that we will always be the bad guys, this land is ours. This is Rustler Mountain. On the banks of Outlaw Lake. This is our country.”
“So what exactly is the problem with putting yourself in a position where you can actually impact what’s happening in town?”
“Because I . . . don’t like people,” Austin said. “Present company excluded. Most of the time.”
“Yeah,” Flynn said. “Most of the time.”
It was the truth. Austin felt deeply entitled to his land. To the house that they still owned on Main Street, even though it was boarded up. The house that the original Austin Wilder had bought for his wife, so that she could have a beautiful home. So that their children could have a future. One that he had never gotten to see.
And he loved his family. His and Carson’s mom had left when they were little, because their dad was a cheating asshole and couldn’t keep a woman to save his life. Their mom had left them because they’d been wild hellions who had done whatever they felt like, whenever they felt like it.
They’d earned that abandonment, he supposed.
Flynn’s mom hadn’t lasted much longer, though she’d been in and out of his life over the years instead of being totally absent. And Cassidy was the product of an affair that had happened outside of town, which was how she had found herself abandoned on the doorstep as a little girl. But by then, their dad had already been dead, and it was up to the brothers to raise her.
They had done it. They’d stopped making moonshine—other than for their own private consumption—they’d stopped fighting, they’d stopped being menaces. Mostly. Because Austin had wanted to do something for Cassidy that no one in their collection of parents had seemed to be willing to do for them.
Change .
The truth was, Austin had loved his dad.
He had been a charming bastard. It wasn’t a mystery how he had managed to get all those women to have children with him. He had been likable. Rough, sure—he’d been the one who’d taught them how to throw a punch. But he’d taken a giddy pleasure in being a rebel, and he’d passed that on to his boys.
It was just that he didn’t have any staying power. He wasn’t reliable. He hadn’t done a very good job of running the ranch that Austin himself now ran. The ranch was the reason Austin had gotten so involved in reading.
Because he had been able to learn all the things he needed to know to be the man of the house. God knew he’d needed that information. It had been essential for him to figure out how to take care of everything and everyone. Because his dad might grill a mean steak and spin a great yarn, but he wasn’t going to make sure that there was enough money in the bank to pay the power bill and keep the lights on.
He wasn’t going to be there at night to tuck his kids into bed, he wasn’t going to make sure that anything other than steak was well-stocked in the larder.
He wasn’t going to get a designated driver to make sure he got home safely.
And hell, at the time Austin hadn’t thought anything of it. They’d all done stupid shit all the time. Austin had been a teenager, tall for his age and too strong for his own good. He’d gotten up to all kinds of trouble whenever possible, living down to his reputation, because why the hell not? He’d dragged his brothers along too, right with him into purgatory.
But then, like a one-two punch, their dad drove his bike into a tree, and Cassidy had been dropped on their doorstep, and he’d known it had to change.
He supposed there was a particular sort of masochism inherent in staying in a town where everyone had known from the day you were born that you were the bad guy.
But it was their land. It was their birthright. Along with their history. That was why he was going through all the journals of the original Austin Wilder. It was why he was writing his book. Incidentally, it was why he had checked out The Elements of Style .
The Jack Reacher book was just for fun.
He really hated to consider it, but he had to wonder if his brother had a point. If participating in the town meeting might actually make his life easier. If what Millie had actually been offering him was a path into . . . the future.
Maybe it was time for him to take his position in the group of founding families.
It would be better for all of them.
Because whether or not his brothers thought they were going to have families or futures including love and marriage and all that, he wanted to plan for the possibility that they might. He was the family patriarch, as dubious an honor as that was in this family, and it meant that the future mattered to him.
They were living the legacy of all the people who had lived on this land before them. And anyone who came after would be living theirs.
The sins of the father and the grandfather and the great-great-grandfather. On and on.
He was also curious as hell what information Millie Talbot had access to. Because he had some suspicions about what had actually gone down the day that his ancestor had been shot in the street. He would dearly love to get his hands on the letters and journals written from the Talbot side of things. She had said that the Talbots were the only ones with representation in the museum, but he had to wonder how curated that representation was.
“I’ll consider it,” he said.
He pushed up from the table and walked over to the oven, where he pulled out the chicken pot pie he had been baking. Not made by him, obviously. He had picked it up in Jacksonville, which was a town about thirty-five miles away. Sometimes he just didn’t feel like dealing with the dynamics in Rustler Mountain, in which case he took the long drive. And if he wanted to go to the Walmart, he had to take an even longer drive into Medford.
He didn’t mind rural living. In fact, he thought it was perfect. There was nothing but views for miles around, and he had his family to talk to if he was ever lonely. Plus, there were enough towns not too far away where he could find a woman for a little bit of company if the urge took him.
What would it be like to have a slightly easier relationship with the people about town? Was it even possible? Well, if he dug up the information he thought he might be able to find, he might even change history.
That, though, would probably not make him any more popular around here. The town’s heroes were enshrined in glory. Their villains firmly kept in the shadows.
He brought the pie tin over to the table and slammed it down in the center on top of a stone trivet. “Eat up, you filthy animals.”
Everybody grabbed paper plates and disposable utensils and ate the pie with relish. After which he brought out a second pie—this one blackberry—for dessert.
He dug into the pie and began to chew thoughtfully. “If I go down and give her our vote, they’re just going to continue with that Gold Rush Days nonsense.”
“It doesn’t really affect you,” Carson pointed out. “I mean, because you don’t participate in anything, and you don’t go to anything. So even if the end result is that it goes on, and they continue to take our family name in vain, what does it really matter?”
“Here’s the thing,” said Flynn. “They aren’t really taking our family name in vain. The Wilders were outlaws. I get that it bothers you, Austin, but it’s the truth.”
“No,” Austin said. “It’s not what bothers me. What bothers me is that the Wilder brothers were painted as being terrible people. In reality, they did what they had to do to survive. They were complicated. Austin Wilder loved his wife, he loved his children. He wasn’t only a bad man. He was . . . a good man who did bad things.”
And Austin needed to believe that was a real thing. A possible thing.
“I don’t know about that,” Carson said. “I think if you get all your earthly goods by nefarious means, you might not actually be a good person.”
“The mountain that we’re sitting on was bought with stolen gold, Carson. If you’re going to be all high and mighty about it, then maybe you shouldn’t have a seat at the table.”
He was mostly kidding. Mostly.
“Hey, I am Team Wilder,” said Carson. “I swear on the name of Butch Hancock the Traitor.”
At the mention of Butch Hancock, Flynn raised his middle finger to the sky and Cassidy pantomimed spitting on the ground. Butch Hancock the Traitor was notorious in their family lore. The town might not think much about him, but as far as they were all concerned, he had abandoned his friends when they needed him most.
And Austin suspected, he had betrayed them.
Based on some of the things in the diaries . . . he was just suspicious.
“All right,” he said. “I’ll do it. But I’m not happy about it.”
“I am,” said Cassidy. “This is interesting. Nothing interesting ever happens around here.”
He didn’t say that, in fact, too many interesting things happened to them. The problem was that they tended to be bad. Tended to involve loss.
But maybe this was his opportunity to make something good happen for their family. Hell, that would be a boon.
And if he actually got his book written and published, a real, in-depth look at the complexity of a Wild West outlaw who had been a good husband, a good father, a caregiver to his siblings....
It might change the way people thought of the Wilder family.
Maybe it did matter to him. More than he had realized.
Maybe their reputation was more of a factor than he had previously believed.
But either way, Millie’s proposal might be the first step to changing it.
He just wished it didn’t mean joining forces with a Talbot.