Chapter Twenty-Seven
Ruth walked along the road into town, a tight lump in her throat. The carpet bag in her hand grew heavier with every mile, and her shoes, never meant for walking such distances, had begun to rub raw at her heels. Yet, she pressed on regardless. What other choice did she have?
As she increased the distance between herself and the ranch, Ruth did her best to keep the tears at bay. Yet, despite her best efforts, they came, silently rolling down her cheeks and onto the dry ground.
Right now she should be in the kitchen with Lola, making supper for Henry and James. Talking and laughing together. But no, she was back where she’d started again. Alone, afraid and running off into the unknown.
A new beginning. The thought brought no comfort, only a curdling in her chest.
She thought of Henry’s face in the yard, torn between everything he could not say and the coin he had pressed into her hand instead.
The way he had looked at her had shattered her heart into a million pieces.
And, as if her heart could not break any more, she thought of Lola’s small voice trailing after her as she left. “Don’t go, Nora! Don’t go.”
She thought of James, and his easy kindness, and the ranch itself, weathered and imperfect and more like home than anywhere she had ever slept before. If she vanished into the next county, would Henry, Lola and the ranch still be safe?
Gideon was not a man who let a debt go unsettled, and pride, she understood now, was its own kind of debt. Running might save her. But would it save them? How could she guarantee Gideon wouldn’t go after them out of spite? That he wouldn’t hurt them to find out where she had gone?
The realization arrived with such force that Ruth stopped walking altogether, standing alone in the middle of the empty road. In that moment, she knew that she had to be sure Gideon wouldn’t hurt them. Before she left, she had to be sure.
Her hand moved into the pocket of her coat, her fingertips brushing against the pouch of coins that Henry had given her before she left. She did not know if it was enough, but she knew she had to try.
Ruth began walking again, toward the lights of Weatherford, her heart pounding now with something that was no longer only grief.
She had made the decision not to run from Gideon Walker this time.
Instead, she was walking straight toward him, and she intended, God willing, to buy her freedom, and theirs, once and for all.
***
By the time the first buildings of Weatherford emerged from the darkness, Ruth’s feet had gone numb inside her shoes.
The town looked nothing like the place she had grown to know by daylight.
The mercantile stood shuttered and dark.
The church sat quiet at the far end of the street, its steeple only a deeper shadow against the night sky.
For one aching moment, Ruth wished she had the courage to climb its steps instead and beg Pastor Luke for some other way through this.
But there was no time left for that kind of comfort.
Ruth paused, wondering where she would find Gideon. The boarding house, perhaps? Then, her eyes moved over the only building on the whole street that still blazed with light.
The saloon sat at the far end of Main Street.
Its windows glowed amber and the discordant plink of a poorly tuned piano mixed with the low rumble of men’s voices.
Decent women did not walk into a saloon alone at night.
But decent women, she reminded herself grimly, did not ordinarily find themselves in her situation.
And there was no version of tonight where she could afford to be particular about propriety.
Someone in there will know where to find him, she thought.
Weatherford was too small a town for a man like Gideon Walker to pass through unnoticed, especially dressed finer than any rancher for thirty miles.
She crossed the street on legs that did not feel entirely her own and climbed the wooden steps.
She paused, her hand against the door, before she made herself push it open.
The smell hit her first, tobacco smoke and spilled whiskey, sawdust and sweat, and then the noise.
It was so much louder and rougher than it had sounded from the street.
A few heads turned as she stepped inside.
Ruth kept her head down as she approached the bar.
A heavyset man in shirtsleeves was wiping down glasses with a rag gone gray from overuse.
“I’m looking for someone,” she said, doing her best to keep her tone level. “A man named Gideon Walker. Dark coat, fine horse.”
The bartender’s eyes flicked over her once before he tipped his chin toward the back of the room without a word.
Ruth’s stomach dropped as she turned, scanning the smoke-hazed room.
Looking past card tables and men bent low over their drinks until she saw him at the back of the room, in the shadows.
Gideon Walker sat with his boots crossed at the ankle atop an overturned crate, a glass of amber liquor untouched at his elbow. He was flanked by two broad-shouldered men with hard faces.
Ruth hesitated a moment. He hadn’t seen her yet.
He was entirely unaware that the woman he had ridden half the county searching for had just walked through the door of her own accord.
She pressed one hand flat against her stomach, as though she might hold herself together by force alone, and made herself walk toward him.
As she approached him, Walker’s eyes found her and a slow, satisfied smile spread across his face, as though she had simply arrived precisely on schedule. “Well,” he said. “I must confess that I expected you’d make me wait longer than this.”
Ruth’s mouth went dry as chalk as she reached into her pocket and withdrew the small pouch of coins Henry had given her. She set it on the table between them. “This is toward my father’s debt,” she said. “And I want you to leave Weatherford.”
Walker looked down at the pouch and then he laughed.
“Miss Turner.” He shook his head slowly. “Your father is dead.”
For a moment she thought she had misheard him. “What?”
“Your father is dead,” he repeated. “The drink finally did what the debt collectors couldn’t. He was found face-down in the dirt, so I’m told.”
Ruth’s knees went weak beneath her skirts and she gripped the edge of the table to steady herself. Grief and guilt and something uglier, something almost like relief, tangled together so tightly in her chest that she could not tell where one ended and another began.
“Then,” she said, when she could finally speak, “I owe you nothing.” Her voice gathered strength as she said it, the truth of it settling over her like armor. “Whatever debt existed, it existed between you and him. He is gone, and I never signed a single paper in my life promising myself to you.”
Something shifted behind Walker’s eyes. The lazy amusement drained out of his face all at once, replaced by something flat and cold.
“That’s an interesting theory,” Gideon said quietly, as he set down his glass. “Boys.”
The two men on either side of him rose. Before Ruth could so much as step backward, one seized her by the arm, his grip like an iron band closing around her wrist.
“You still owe me a wedding,” Gideon said, standing at last, straightening his coat with maddening calm. “Your father may be in the ground, but the arrangement stands and I intend to collect on it.”
“I won’t—”
“You will,“ he said, firmly.
He came around the table slowly, and the saloon around them had gone quieter, other patrons watching now with the wary interest of men who knew better than to interfere. “But first.” His voice dropped. “I believe I have some business to attend to with your first husband.”
The floor seemed to tilt beneath Ruth’s feet. “No,” she said, her voice rising. “Henry had nothing to do with this. He didn’t know anything—”
“It matters not,” Gideon said, his eyes gleaming in the candlelight.
“Mr. Foster made the mistake of putting his hands on me today. A man in my position can’t allow that kind of insult to stand.
Bad for business. People start thinking they can lay hands on Gideon Walker and simply walk away from it. ”
Ruth’s blood turned to ice water in her veins.
“Oh,” he said, smiling again. “Have you met my two new friends? I hired them to assist me. No point in me getting my hands dirty.”
Ruth’s stomach twisted violently. Gideon meant to send these two silent, hard-eyed men out to the Foster ranch. “No,” Ruth pleaded. “Please. Leave Henry alone.”
“You know,” Gideon said, reaching over and brushing her cheek with his fingers. “I have heard all about your precious Henry. The brave war hero who returned home to find his sister dead. Stuck with an orphan who he so selflessly raised… It’s a touching story.”
Ruth turned her head away, trying in vain to escape his touch. But as she did, Gideon grabbed her chin roughly, forcing her to look at him. “This is your punishment,” he hissed. “You chose to defy me, to run from me and marry another man. What happens to Henry now is because of you.”
“Please—”
“Poor Lola,” Gideon said, tilting his head in mock sympathy. “Who will care for her now?”
Everything in Ruth screamed to fight, to twist free, run through those swinging doors and back to the ranch. But there was no version of that plan that reached Henry before Walker’s men did, and Ruth knew it. So, she made herself go still instead.
Stillness, she had learned long ago in her father’s house, was sometimes the only weapon a woman had left.
“Killing him gains you nothing,” she said, forcing her voice to stay level, though her heart was slamming against her ribs.
“Think, Gideon. You’re a businessman. You didn’t build what you have by acting on temper. ”
His grip on her chin did not loosen, but something in his eyes flickered with the faintest hesitation.
“He humiliated you,” Ruth pressed on. “I understand that. But everyone in Weatherford knows your face now, Gideon. If Henry Foster turns up dead days after you rode onto his land threatening him, there isn’t a sheriff in Texas who won’t come looking for you first.”
She paused, allowing him time to think about what she was saying.
“And what happens to your business then?”
Ruth held his gaze, refusing to let herself flinch.
“Every debt you’re owed, every arrangement you’ve made with men too frightened to cross you.
All of it depends on you staying free to collect on it.
A wanted man collects nothing. You’d be trading everything you’ve built for one night’s satisfaction. ”
Gideon’s jaw tightened, but his hand had gone still against her face, no longer forcing, only holding.
“And there is no marriage left to avenge,” she added, quieter now, letting the words carry the last of her resolve.
“I told him the truth myself, before I ever left that ranch. In the eyes of the law, he is nothing to me, and I am nothing to him. Whatever insult he gave you, he gave it defending a stranger, not a wife. There is no debt of honor left to collect from him. There never was one.”
For a long moment, Gideon studied her. Ruth made herself hold perfectly still under the weight of his gaze, praying he could not see how badly her hands were shaking beneath the folds of her skirt.
“Then what,” he said slowly, “would satisfy me, instead?”
“Me.” The word cost her everything she had left, but she said it without hesitation.
“I’ll come with you tonight, willingly. No more running, no more hiding.
You’ll have exactly what you came to Weatherford for in the first place.
But only if you leave Henry and his family alone tonight, and every night after. ”
Gideon’s thumb moved once against her jaw, and the silence stretched long enough that Ruth could hear her own pulse pounding in her ears.
“You’d trade yourself,” he said, finally, “for that man?”
“I would trade myself,” Ruth said, “for the only people in this world who were ever kind to me without wanting something in return. That’s worth more to me than anything you could threaten me with.”
Something shifted in Gideon’s expression into a grim satisfaction, as though she had finally offered him something worth more than blood. “Very well,” he said, releasing her chin at last. “We leave within the hour.”
Gideon turned away from her, but the man did not release her arm. As she stood there, she closed her eyes for a moment. She had done it.
Henry, Lola, James, and the ranch would be safe.
It brought her a sense of peace, knowing that.
Yet another part of her, the part that now knew she belonged to Gideon Walker, filled with a sense of devastation.
Because it did not matter that they weren’t husband and wife in the eyes of the law.
Henry was her husband in her heart, soul, and every fiber of her being.
She loved him. Not the comfortable, convenient affection she had told herself she felt in the early days, when gratitude and safety had been so easily mistaken for something softer.
She loved Henry Foster in every possible way.
His stubborn silences and his crooked, reluctant smiles.
The gentleness he showed Lola even when his own grief threatened to swallow him whole.
She loved him enough to hand herself over to a monster if it meant keeping Henry breathing.
And she loved him enough to lose him forever, so long as he lived to raise that little girl, to find his way back to God and to stand in his own kitchen come morning with sunlight on the floor.
Whatever happened next, whatever Walker decided to do with her once they returned to Devil’s Hollow, it didn’t matter.
Because here in this smoke-thick room with a stranger’s hand bruising her arm, Ruth knew that she would never regret this decision.
She only prayed that Henry and Lola would somehow find a way to forgive her. And to find happiness again.