Chapter 4
Desperation makes a man do things he never thought he’d do. Winning makes a man feel invincible. The two put together make a man dangerous. Or so I’ve found.
—Austin Wilder’s journal, October 15, 1848
T his whole thing had gone to hell in a handbasket. And as a Wilder, he was more than familiar with that state, but he hadn’t exactly been thinking it was one he was going to get himself into here .
Maybe he should have guessed that the old courthouse would be the site of his demise, just as it had been for earlier Wilders.
Hell and damn.
He had managed to get himself ensnared in running this thing. But he had walked into some kind of . . . high-school fever dream, and he hadn’t liked the way people in that room seemed to think they were better than Millie Talbot. Any more than he liked the way they clearly thought they were better than he. The way they thought they could change the rules just because it suited them.
No. If there was one thing he didn’t like, it was a lack of fairness.
He was too intimately acquainted with it. He had been tarred by a very specific brush from the time he was born. Black sheep since day one.
And for a while he’d actually lived it. Why not?
He’d walked around like he owned the place. An outlaw who could go wherever he wanted. Who would ride his horse down Main if the mood struck him and damn all the motorists honking behind him.
Being the bad seed was the birthright of every Wilder who had ever come into the world and Rustler Mountain. His inheritance. And he supposed today was the ultimate expression of the stubbornness that kept them all here anyway.
He knew it would seem completely unhinged to somebody who didn’t live here. Hell, maybe it seemed unhinged even to people who did live here. But he refused to be run out, on a rail or anything else. Just like all the Wilders who had come before him.
They were stubborn, and he aimed to honor that legacy.
Or maybe they all died so young, they didn’t have the chance to get as sick of all the bullshit as they should have.
Well. That was an interesting thought. He might be less amused by all of this when he was ninety.
Or, he had to change the script.
He’d done it once. When they’d cleaned up their act to raise Cassidy, he and his brothers had done it.
So what if they did it on a broader scale? What if the name Wilder meant something different in the town going forward?
Of course, the town had no real motivation for letting it mean anything different. Because it was just so damned convenient to have this outlaw legend. Danielle might not have an interest in history the way Millie did, but she clearly gave a shit about tourism. And he had overheard snippets of those wine trail tours.
When they went down Main Street, the guides hammered on how Austin Wilder had bled out right there in the dirt.
He was used to hearing his own name in connection with that horrific image. It didn’t really jar him anymore.
Yeah, basically nobody had an investment in changing that narrative.
Nobody but him.
What if he settled down? What if he had children? What if he was able to pass on a different legacy to them? If he could finish his book . . . he could change the story.
He just had to survive Gold Rush Days first.
“Don’t you go scampering out of here like a mouse that got caught in the grain sack. You need to stay and talk to me.”
“I do?” She looked up at him, her eyes wide. “Please don’t call me a mouse.”
He blinked. “Don’t scurry like one.”
She shook her head, her dark hair swishing with the movement.“No. That’s what they used to call me in school. Millie Mouse. Because I was. . . .” Her nose twitched, her gaze darted off to the side.
“I cannot see why they would call you that,” he said, his tone dry.
“Then why did you do it?”
“It’s obvious why they called you that—sorry you didn’t get my sarcasm.”
“Well. That’s. . . .” People started to filter out of the meeting hall, and he could feel her becoming increasingly uncomfortable.
“Come on,” he said.
Still holding her elbow, he propelled her out of the building, down the front steps, and around the corner. His boots sank into the soft ground, and he cursed the overly watered grass. They could use that water for the ranches, but instead it was being used here to make this lawn as green as possible. All right, maybe he could understand the axe that Millie had to grind with the way the funds were allocated in this town.
“How do you see this thing working?” he asked.
“Which thing?”
“I have to help you plan Gold Rush Days. What does that even mean? I’ve never even been to one of these events, much less planned one.”
“You’re the one that jumped in,” she pointed out.
He looked past her head, across the near-vacant side street at the little restaurant on the corner, filled with snug, cozy diners enjoying soup and hamburgers in peace.
He wished he were them. Instead he was standing outside in the wet grass trying to figure out what in the hell he’d gotten himself tied up in.
Because it turned out he had a heart.
What an inconvenient time to discover it.
“Yeah, I did jump in,” he said. “Because I couldn’t stand . . . all that .”
“Are you telling me that you volunteered because you felt sorry for me?”
He sighed. “A little bit.”
Her cheeks went pink. And for the first time, he looked at her and saw something other than a Talbot.
Something other than the town librarian.
She was pretty. Maybe in a mousy way, but still pretty. Her dark brown hair was glossy, and she had freckles on her nose. Her eyes were hazel, with flecks of green and gold fringed by dark lashes. She was petite. He tended to prefer tall women, and she was....
A Talbot.
He gritted his teeth. “And I want access to anything you have about your family.”
“I don’t understand what you think you’re going to find.”
“I think that Austin Wilder was betrayed.”
“By who?”
“Well, Lee Talbot for a start.”
“How can an outlaw be betrayed by a sheriff?”
He chuckled. “Oh, honey. That you even have to ask that question shows me you don’t poke your head up out of your hole all that often. Mainly, I don’t think that the Wilder brothers ever killed anybody.”
“But they were tried for murder.”
“William and Jesse were. Austin wasn’t. He was shot dead in the street.”
“He had a gun.”
“It was the Wild fucking West, Millie. The goddamn preacher had a gun strapped to his hip. That’s not notable. Austin was never tried. He was never convicted. And he was definitely betrayed by someone . I think it was Butch Hancock. I think he’s the one that told law enforcement of the Wilder brothers’ identities, so he could skip town with the loot they got from their last robbery.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Some things in the journals I have. And I want to see if you have anything that corroborates my hunch.”
“I have never seen anything to suggest . . . anything like that. The story I have is . . . the story. That there were witnesses to the last robbery Austin and his gang committed, and their reports led authorities to the house on Main Street where Austin, Butch, Jesse, and William were hiding. Out of respect for Austin’s wife and children, they took it outside, where things got violent.”
“I don’t believe it. I never have, and I never will.”
“I don’t see what difference it makes.” She shifted, her arms wrapped around herself like she was clinging to all the preconceived notions that lived within her. “They were cattle rustlers. All the ranching success the Wilders started with has a basis in stolen cattle. And frankly, once the town found out about that they would have taken vigilante justice into their own hands.”
They both knew that back then cattle rustlers often found themselves strung up a neighboring tree, without ever engaging the judicial process.
“This is Rustler Mountain,” Austin said. “It was a wild time in a wild town. I don’t think they were the only rustlers hiding out in the hills around here. The West was wild, and that was one thing. It’s another to accuse them of murders I don’t think they committed.”
“I just don’t see how it would change anything to go kicking over rocks.”
“Of course you don’t. Because you’re held up as a good citizen because your bloodline goes back to a great lawman. And I’m supposed to be bad because my ancestry is filled with outlaws and villains. Believe me, it’s much more complicated than that.”
“I’m . . . sorry if anyone made you feel that way.”
“That’s a weak-ass statement.”
“I am sorry that they’ve made you feel that way. I know they have. I live here too and know how judgmental everyone can be. It’s wrong. Even though you did cause a lot of trouble back then. . . .”
“And you barely made a squeak,” he said.
She glared at him. “Fine. I’m mousy. You’ve made your point. And I’m actually not arguing that.... If there are incorrect things in public record, they should be corrected. I don’t think there are.”
“Based on?”
“Extensive research. I’ll give you access to everything,” she said. “But I’m telling you, if anything like that existed, I would know. I volunteered during Gold Rush Days when I was in middle school and high school. I worked in the museum. I handled a lot of the artifacts. I’ve read most of the letters.”
“And you think that’s everything?”
“Obviously it isn’t everything. For one thing, there’s not enough information on the miners that came from China. They were definitely erased from the history of the town at first. And Heather’s family just found a lot of new documents when they were cleaning up their property.”
“And that’s my point. You don’t have everything . Or at least, you can’t know if you do.”
“But the account of the shooting would be with my family. And I’ve been through my father’s things.”
He realized then that he hadn’t actually considered how recent her father’s death was. His own had been dead more than fifteen years. It had been a hard loss. But one he had dealt with more or less. He didn’t think much about it anymore. The loss wouldn’t be distant for her.
And he wasn’t a total monster.
“I’m sorry. About your dad.”
She blinked. “Oh. Thank you. I’m . . . not really okay.”
But she was here. Fighting for this museum.
“It’s hard to believe how things just keep moving. Even when you don’t want them to.”
A mystified expression passed over her face. “Yes. It is. That is exactly how I feel. Like everything keeps moving at a relentless pace, even though I don’t really have the energy to deal with it. I showed up today thinking that I was going to lose.”
“Why does it matter so much to you to win?”
“I mean, partly because my fiancé cheated on me with Danielle, and I don’t want her to win.”
Right. He’d pulled that one out in the meeting. It had been town gossip so widespread, it had made its way up Wilder Mountain, and that was saying something. That Sheriff Talbot’s daughter had been jilted less than two months after her father had died, and only a couple of weeks before her wedding.
It was funny, because he didn’t know Millie. But he had seen her. Every week since she was nothing more than a sprout. And he hadn’t been much more than one himself. He remembered her mom always being at that desk, sitting behind a big box of a computer that was probably older than he was. She had always been kind to him. One of the few people who had never treated him as if he was inherently bad. Ironic, because she had married into the Talbot family.
He had been sad when she passed. He had felt as if he’d lost a member of his own family, but he didn’t have the words to articulate that feeling, or anyone to share it with.
He didn’t much feel inclined to share it now. Because she had actually been Millie’s mother. And to him she had just been the lady at the library. But the library meant more to him than it did to most people.
When he’d first gone in when he was a fifth grader, a grumpy old man had told him he should get out because the Wilders weren’t welcome.
He’d shouted very loudly, in the high soprano of a ten-year-old boy: Fuck you, asshole, I’ll go where I want!
And Millie’s mother hadn’t gotten mad at him. Instead, she’d given him a library card, and said everyone was welcome at the library.
No one had ever told him he was welcome before.
Millie had taken her mother’s spot at the desk. Her hands were always efficient as they passed quickly over the keyboard, checking out his books. And he could remember the day that a diamond ring had shown up on her left hand. But he hadn’t commented on it, because he didn’t make comments to her about her personal life, or really much of anything.
He remembered feeling a little bit perturbed by the sight. Irritated that she had a life outside the library. She was a whole human who didn’t just stop existing when he wasn’t around. He couldn’t articulate why.
Much as he couldn’t articulate the grief he had felt over her mother’s death.
He also remembered the day the ring disappeared. Which was when he had pounded the ground for information, provided to him by his brother Flynn’s best friend, Dalton, who always seemed to know what was going on around town.
“I might be from a family of ne’er-do-wells,” he said now, “but I don’t like cheaters.”
That was one of the few sins he hadn’t committed in his day. Of course, he’d never been in a relationship that was more than physical.
“You don’t?” she asked.
“I’d stay single if I thought I couldn’t stay faithful. Hell, the thing is, you end up single if you behave that way. My dad is a prime example.” He snorted. “Well. He was.”
“Right.” He could see that she was withholding a whole lot of commentary. Everybody knew about their dad’s philandering. And if they didn’t know every detail, they at least knew about how Cassidy had been left on their doorstep only ten months after their dad’s death, the product of some out-of-town affair that he’d had.
“They won’t last,” he said.
She looked up at him, and suddenly he saw that same core of steel in her eyes that he had first seen when she came to his house. Totally at odds with the way she had been scurrying to safety earlier.
“I don’t care if they do,” she said. “I’m not heartbroken. I’m angry. I’m angry that I almost married somebody who was doing that to me. That if he hadn’t stopped caring about what I thought, I would have walked down the aisle and made vows to somebody who was lying to my face for months. That is actually so scary, and so much worse than catching him in bed with somebody else.” She shook her head and looked up at the sky. “It’s actually kind of convenient. Because she is my political nemesis in many ways.”
“Are you aiming for politics?”
“No. If I wanted to be a politician then I would’ve become one. I want to be a librarian. And I want to restore the historical programs in town. I don’t want to run anything, and I don’t want to engage in machinations. I just mean . . . Danielle and I have different goals for the town, I think.”
“It’s a good thing you aren’t planning to go off and be the mayor, I suppose. The library needs you.”
The assertion was a little more heartfelt than he had intended.
She looked down, her cheeks going slightly pink, and he was sure she looked . . . pleased. Even though she didn’t smile, her eyes sparkled with a different sort of light. Just for a moment.
“I do have plans for Gold Rush Days. I’m not actually starting from nothing.”
“That’s good to know.”
“I have all the plans that previous organizers used in a little folder.”
“Great,” he said. “A folder.”
“You can’t pretend that you won’t actually be really good at this,” she said.
“Why do you think that I’ll be good at this?”
“How many books have you read on adjacent subjects? Budgeting, running businesses, all that kind of stuff.”
He didn’t like that at all. He’d never given it one thought, all the years he’d been checking books out, that the librarian might remember, and be putting a case together about his character based on what he read.
“No, that’s not fair,” he said. “Isn’t my library activity proprietary information?”
“Maybe, but I’m the person it’s proprietary with.”
“Touché,” he said.
“Let’s get together tomorrow,” she said. “We can meet back at the courthouse. I got the keys to the basement from Donna, who kind of unofficially still heads up the historical society.”
“Why is it unofficial?”
“There hasn’t been any funding. So when the museum closed, and all the programs ended, she didn’t really have anything to do.”
“I did like the living history stuff.”
“You said that you never got involved in anything like that.”
“Well, when I was in school, I didn’t exactly have a choice. It was mandatory to go to Gold Rush Days. I’m pretty good at gold panning.”
“Good. Maybe you can run the gold panning demonstrations for the kids.”
The idea of actually trying to influence youths sent a shock of fear through him. Not much scared him. Kids . . . a little bit.
“You don’t look keen,” she said.
“I’m just fine. I’ll see you tomorrow. We’ll go look through all those different things in the basement.”
“Austin,” she said, just as he turned to go.
“What?”
“Thank you for being my hero.”