The Bride And The Boy (Western Hearts and Promises #9)

Prologue

It was late.

Boone kept to the shadows along the side of the feed store and counted his own breaths to keep them quiet.

Fox Hollow at this hour belonged to dogs, and drunks, and one boy who should have been asleep in the bunk at Mr. Barclay's ranch.

He was none of those things. Not a dog, not a drunk, and notably not asleep.

He was wide awake and walking on the balls of his feet, and the only drunk thing about him was his heart.

She had said to meet her by the willow at the bend in the creek. She had said after the second hour past midnight, when her father's snoring shook the house. She had told him this would be the only night.

He pulled the brim of his hat lower and crossed the alley behind the laundress's.

His breath fogged once at the corner. A cat darted out of an ash bin and he nearly cried out.

He bit his lip until it hurt, then kept moving.

He'd never lied to Mr. Barclay before tonight, and the lie sat low and cold in his stomach the whole way down the alley.

Not exactly lying, he supposed. He had said he was going to bed, and he had gone to bed.

Then he'd got up again, put on his boots in the dark, and climbed out the window.

The window hadn't asked him any questions.

She was sixteen, and quick and clever, and had laughed at the dumb joke he made about the price of nails.

Nobody had ever laughed at his jokes before.

He would walk to the willow, then walk her along the creek, and say what he had been rehearsing for two straight days.

Then he would go back to the ranch, put his boots beside the bed, and his lie would be over.

The general store rose at the corner with its squared false front and its dark window.

Sippy Wardell's place. Boone had stood at that counter two days ago and bought a packet of bluing for Mrs. Letts's wash.

Sippy had counted the change into his palm and called him son the way old men called any boy. The window above the door was black.

Boone stepped past it.

The first gunshot came out of the air itself.

He flinched so hard the back of his neck struck the wall behind him.

The crack rolled up the street and stopped against the church.

The second shot came right on the heel of the first. Pistol.

Close. The word arrived in his bones before his head caught up.

Then his legs were moving and he didn't remember asking them to.

He ran.

He did not choose to run. His body chose for him.

The dark windows above the storefronts had been black a heartbeat ago and now they were not.

Lamps were being struck. A baby started crying in a room above the saddlery.

Somewhere a dog set up a howl and another answered it from the far end of town.

The smell of pistol smoke hadn't even reached him yet. He was outrunning it.

The boardwalk thundered under his boots.

He took the corner at the milliner's too fast and skidded and caught himself against the post, and his hat came loose and he grabbed it and shoved it back down.

The whole town was waking up around him.

A shutter banged open above his head. A voice somewhere yelled. He did not look. He could not look.

A door opened. A square of lamplight fell into the street and a man stepped into it in his stockinged feet, suspenders hanging, and the man's eyes caught his.

"Hey," the man called. "Hey, boy. You there?—"

Boone did not stop.

Another door. Another lamp. Mrs. Lacey from the bakery, in a shawl over her nightdress, her broad pale face stretched wide. "Boone Keaton?" she said. Her voice carried. "Boone Keaton, what in heaven's?—"

He passed her. He passed two more.

A third face leaned out a high window above the saddlery. He didn't know whose. A fourth voice yelled his name from behind. The street was no friend tonight. The dirt under his boots was the same dirt he had crossed at noon to fetch a bag of cornmeal, and it was a different dirt now. It had teeth.

By the time he hit the edge of town his lungs were on fire and his hat was crushed in one fist and his other hand was pressed flat against his side where the stitch had bitten in.

The willow was the other way. The willow was behind him.

She was standing under the willow right now, her bravery running out.

She'd walk home alone. She'd decide he hadn't come.

And she’d be right, but for the wrong reasons.

He stopped at the rail fence at the edge of the McAfee acre and bent over and let himself feel it. His knees shook. His eyes burned. The burnt-powder smell caught up to him, sharp at the back of his throat. He pressed his fist against his mouth to keep any sound inside it.

Somebody had fired a pistol in Fox Hollow tonight. Somebody had stood in that street with iron in his hand. And every shutter that opened, every lamp that lit, every face that leaned out into the dark had seen exactly one boy running away.

Boone stood up. He put the hat back on his head. He turned his face away from the willow and toward the long dark road home.

There would be a price for tonight.

He started walking.

Behind him, shutters kept banging open, one and then another, all the way down Main.