Chapter 20
“Here.” Once Ben had hitched the horses back onto the wagon, he changed his clothes. He hadn’t brought much to spare with him, but he held out a clean shirt to Hattie. “You can put it over your dress until we find a place to wash up.”
“Thank you.” She slipped it on and buttoned it up before putting her blanket around her shoulders again. It, at least, had remained in the wagon during their altercation, and though it was a little damp and dirty, it wasn’t bloody.
Ben guided the rig out onto the road. He looked carefully around, wondering if any other unexpected visitors might arrive. “I’ll be glad to get back to civilization. I’m tired of all the people here who want to kill us.”
“Maybe they still will even in a town,” Hattie mumbled as she pulled the blanket up a little tighter around her neck.
“Why do you say that?”
“Hm? Oh, no reason. I suppose I just don’t really trust anybody right now. Not after that.”
Ben’s breakfast threatened to come back up as he thought about the three bodies they’d left behind.
He’d dragged them into the center of the clearing and covered them with snow.
It was the best he could do, with the ground too frozen to bury them.
They ought to be turned into the authorities, but the arm of the law wasn’t long enough to reach up into the mountains.
They rode in relative silence for a while, with only the constant shush of the skis over the frozen ground. They were quickly putting distance between themselves and their campsite, but the miles weren’t enough to erase what he’d done.
Ben blinked, and he saw Coonskin’s wide eyes and purple face. On the next blink, it was Beaded Jacket, his guts steaming in the snow. Then there was Hattie, lying face up and looking just as dead as the rest of them for a moment.
They were alive, though. Ben inhaled the sharp air. He thought about the way his body felt inside his clothes, the way the wagon-turned-sleigh bobbed and dipped underneath him. He concentrated on the glistening ice on the tree branches that sparkled in the sun now that the clouds were gone.
He was alive. The current moment was reality, not the past. He just had to get to Antelope Springs.
But what was he going to do about Hattie? Would she just go with him for supplies and then come back to the orphanage? She didn’t seem to have anywhere to go, but he couldn’t just look out for her forever.
Then again, Hattie seemed surprisingly capable of looking out for herself.
She pulled the blanket aside just long enough to check that the little pistol was still tucked into her belt.
“We should get you a holster for that at some point,” Ben suggested. They probably should’ve taken the holster from its original owner, but Ben hadn’t been too keen about scrounging around on a dead body. “You don’t want to lose that when we go over a bump.”
“It’s all right for now. It’s not as though I have money to buy anything like that.” Hattie’s face was unreadable as she put the blanket back in place.
He cleared his throat, wishing they’d been able to make a hot cup of coffee before taking off. There was no point in reviving the fire, though, nor staying near the awful scene. “I suppose we should get back to discussing where you’re going.”
“You keep asking me that, but I don’t really have an answer.” She fiddled with her skirt, straightening it around her legs even though the breeze just stirred it up again.
Ben rolled the problem over in his mind. “I know your family is gone, but what about more distant relatives? Isn’t there a cousin or an aunt that might let you stay with them?”
She leaned away from him slightly and her brow creased. “No. No, there isn’t.”
“All right.” Ben had not found out much about Hattie, and it was truly starting to bother him. He was traveling with her, and he felt responsible for her, but she had shown some remarkable skill and bravery that he hadn’t expected. “I think there’s something you’re not telling me.”
“Such as?” she challenged, giving him a sour glare.
Maybe questioning her would be upsetting, but she’d just have to live with it. Hattie couldn’t exactly go anywhere. “Such as why you can handle a gun so well? You said you couldn’t shoot.”
Hattie rolled her eyes. “I told you, that man wasn’t paying attention. I could bite and kick, but he didn’t expect me to grab the gun. And you don’t have to be a good shot when your target is only six inches away from you.”
“Not just him.” Although he was impressed that she’d managed to defend herself so well. “The Apache, too.”
“Those Winchester rifles are very good. Papa always used to say so. That didn’t have anything to do with me.” She flicked her fingers in the air as if she could flick away his questions.
But Ben was tired. He was sore. The trip had been an awful one so far, and it wasn’t even halfway over.
Ben had run out of patience and good manners.
“If we’re going to be stuck with each other, then we might as well at least be honest. I’m not asking questions because I want to get into your business.
I just want to know what I’m dealing with. ”
“Oh, what would you know about any of it?” she asked, bracing her chin on her hand. “You’re just an innocent little orphan boy.”
She’d aimed the insult to hurt, and she’d succeeded.
Ben clutched the reins tightly as he tried not to let it get under his skin, but the truth in it galled him the most. The part of him that had grown up on that orphanage was pretty innocent, just a boy who’d been left alone in the world and had made the best of some terrible circumstances.
There was another side of him, too. The orphan boy couldn’t pull the trigger and didn’t want to kill anybody, no matter how bad they were. The soldier in him had other ideas, and sometimes it took over when the moment called for it.
There were some situations in his life that hadn’t been so clearly defined.
As Ben stewed over these thoughts, they passed a small wooden sign. “Traveler’s Rest, 4 miles.” Just four more miles until he could find a hot meal and a little fresh water in the small settlement that awaited them. He needed to know the truth before this went any further.
“I know more about it than you might think.” Asking her outright wasn’t working, so Ben was ready to make a sacrifice.
“I doubt it,” she grumbled.
“I told you I was in the army,” he began. “I was no great soldier. I didn’t do anything that’ll go down in the history books. I was a courier, and I did my best until I got hurt.”
She eyed him warily, her brows low as she hunched inside her blanket. “Okay.”
That part was easy. It was even a bit boring. Remembering the rest of it was like drowning in his own thoughts. “I made a friend while I was in the service, Elliot. He helped me when I was injured—”
“You were injured?” That had her attention.
“Stabbed with a bayonet.” Ben didn’t go into the details of that gory day, even though he could still smell the iodine. That wasn’t important.
Her gaze swept over his body. “I can’t tell.”
“Well, I could certainly tell while we were fighting those men.” He unconsciously brushed his hand over his lower stomach. “If they’d hit me in just the right spot, you might’ve been driving this rig on your own.”
She opened her mouth to reply and then clamped it shut again.
“What I want to tell you about is after the war,” he continued. “Our unit had traveled all the way to North Carolina. Elliot and I decided we would return West together. We were good friends, and we were heading in the same direction. It made sense.”
If only Ben had understood the truth about Elliot. He’d told him, hadn’t he? He’d told him about those days with his father, but Ben had taken them as childhood fancies, exaggerated because he was a bored and lonely soldier.
“Elliot was from a family of outlaws. He taught me how to pick locks, how to walk quietly, how to find the right houses or stores to steal from.”
Hattie’s jaw dropped.
“The orphanage taught me a lot, but Elliot taught me even more,” he admitted. “Elliot swore we could make a lot of money in Tombstone, but things were bad by the time we got close. We hadn’t eaten in a week. I thought every day might be my last.”
Hattie had turned her whole body and lifted her knee up onto the wagon seat so that she faced him.
“We came across a family.” Ben choked on the last word.
A family. Two parents who’d kept their children and wanted to raise them, who hoped for a better life out West.
“They had food and water. They had a little bit of money. Elliot could tell at a glance. His plan was to approach them as the starving travelers that we were and ask for help. Then we pulled our guns and demanded everything they had.”
“You?” Hattie breathed. She looked at him with shock, her mouth still slightly agape.
“We weren’t going to hurt anybody, though. Elliot had promised.” He’d promised. The only difference between it and the other times they’d stolen was that they were doing it while someone was watching. Clint and his family would be upset and a little shaken, but fine.
“We really just needed some food, but Elliot got greedy. The wife, Jessica, had a pearl necklace. Elliot saw it, and he had to have it.”
He could still see her so clearly, her hand clutched against her neck as Elliot shook the gun at her. It was her mother’s, she said, the only thing she had left of her family. But sentimental value didn’t mean a thing compared to the almighty dollar.
“The necklace wasn’t enough,” Ben told Hattie. “He figured if she had that, then she must have something else. He kept at her, with his gun in her face, demanding more.
“Then one of her boys ran at Elliot, trying to protect his mama. Elliot pulled the trigger, and that first bullet started a cascade of events that I couldn’t stop.”
He’d tried, though, hadn’t he? Ben had screamed at Elliot, his voice tearing from his throat and trying to rise over the sound of the bullets. The horse had spooked, nearly tipping the wagon with him on it, but Ben hadn’t cared. He just wanted it to stop.
“Elliot killed the woman and the kids, one right after the other.”
He’d never said it out loud. Ben hadn’t had the courage to tell anyone.
At one point, he’d wondered if he might be able to confess to Father Tillman.
Once he’d gone back to St. Thomas and seen the old man, though, he knew he’d never be able to tell him.
What Ben had seen had broken his heart, and it would break Father Tillman’s as well.
Now he’d never have the chance.
“Ben…” Hattie whispered.
But he had to press on while he still had a little inertia.
He had to get it all out now that the floodgates had opened.
“It happened so fast. The father, Clint, had a moment to pull his gun, but it was too late for him to save his family. I had my gun on him, and then Elliot was aiming at him as well.”
Tears had streamed down Clint’s face. Hot, angry, flooding tears at the horror he’d just seen.
“Elliot told me to kill him,” Ben went on, his voice ragged and tight. “He said we might as well just finish them off and take what we wanted.”
The tears he’d seen on Clint’s cheeks now raced down his own. Ben swiped them away, leaving cold tracks.
“I’m not a killer, Hattie. I never wanted to do any of that. I never even wanted to steal, but hunger convinced me. Then Elliot was standing there, telling me to finish off the job that he’d started. I shot Elliot, instead.”
Hattie sucked air through her teeth.
“He looked so surprised,” Ben whispered. “Betrayed. And maybe he was. If my aim had been off, he’d have probably used his last breath to take revenge on me. But he died, and it was because I killed him. I killed my best friend.”
Ben had been carrying his burden around for so long that he didn’t know how to put it down. “That wasn’t the end. Clint was ready to kill me after that. He’d lost his family, and even though I hadn’t shot them, I couldn’t blame him.
“But it was either me or him. Truly, at that moment, I could choose to live or die. I pulled the trigger, but there are times I wish he’d been faster.”
“Ben.” Hattie scooted a little closer. She laid her hand on his forearm. “That wasn’t your fault. You didn’t know it would be like that, and Elliot had promised you nobody would get hurt.”
“Yes, but I should’ve seen it coming. With all the things Elliot had told me, I should’ve known that he’d never have been content to just grab what he wanted and run. He was trying to live up to his daddy’s reputation. He wanted to be a killer.”
Hattie shook her head, and a few flakes of snow fell from her curls. “That doesn’t mean you are.”
Ben considered that for a moment. “I wasn’t.
I didn’t even want to kill anyone in the war.
The only man who died directly at my hands was the one who tried to kill me.
I realized later, though, that I’d still killed plenty of them by relaying messages about where our troops were going to be.
I did my part to put those soldiers in the ground. ”
He looked her in the eyes, but he felt ashamed to do so. “Whether I meant to be or not, I’m a killer, Hattie.”