Chapter 26
By the time Jonas reached home, darkness had settled over the ranch.
He had ridden harder than he should have.
Though he had been healing well, the doctor had been clear that he was to keep rides to slow and easy ones for a while, not to walk too far with too much weight, and to take a break if and when he needed to.
But he knew he needed to leave the inn. There was no other choice.
His leg had begun aching before he was halfway there, but the pain gave him something simple to think about.
Each jolt of the horse beneath him sent a dull throb through his thigh, and concentrating on it was easier than thinking about Martha standing beside the worktable with flour on her dress, telling him she had been part of the Voss Gang.
He had spent weeks wondering what she was hiding.
He had imagined a dozen possibilities, most of them having to do with Amos.
A bad marriage. Debts her husband had left behind.
Something she regretted from her youth. Even after she admitted she had once been a criminal, Jonas had not imagined anything close to the truth.
Perhaps he had not wanted to.
He rode into the yard without calling out. Light showed through the windows of the house, and for a moment he considered going inside. Reuben and Tobias would be there. There would be food and a fire and questions about why he had returned so late.
Jonas could not answer any of them yet.
Instead, he turned toward the pasture.
The horse beneath him resisted at first, tired from the ride from Willow Crossing. Jonas slowed him to a walk and followed the fence line while the house receded behind them. He had no destination. He simply kept moving.
The cattle were dark shapes scattered across the pasture, some lying down while others shifted through the cold grass. Spring had begun making promises the land was not ready to keep.
Snow remained in shaded places, and the ground had softened enough during the day to freeze unevenly again after sundown. Jonas let the horse choose the easiest path through the spots of lingering snow and obstacles.
He had told Martha about his father.
That was the thought he could not escape.
He had not offered that story easily. Even his brothers rarely spoke about the day their father died.
There had never seemed much purpose in pulling apart a grief they all carried.
But Martha had asked about his family, and Jonas had wanted her to know him.
He had told her about raising Reuben and Tobias.
He had told her what the Voss Gang had taken from them.
She had listened.
She had looked at him with sorrow in her eyes.
And she had said nothing.
Jonas tightened his grip on the reins.
He could still hear her voice in the kitchen.
I wasn't with them when your father was killed.
He believed her.
That was almost the worst of it.
If he thought Martha had been lying about that too, anger would have been easier. He could have taken everything he had come to know about her and discarded it. He could have told himself he had been fooled from the beginning.
Instead, he believed almost everything else she had told him.
He could easily imagine the frightened nineteen-year-old she had described. He believed Amos had married her before she knew what he was. He believed she had been lonely enough to mistake the gang for a family. He even believed that she had never killed anyone.
But he also believed she had helped them.
Messages. Watching. Planning robberies.
The train.
She had fired arrows to scatter the men pursuing them. She had helped Amos escape. Then she had gone with him and begun a new life while Silas went to prison.
Jonas stopped the horse near the far fence and stared into the darkness beyond it.
He tried to picture Martha as she had been then.
He couldn't.
Every image of her came from the woman he knew now.
Martha carrying a feverish child through the crowded common room during the storm.
Martha crouching beside his bed to check his wound.
Martha riding through the cold because he had asked her to find his brothers.
Martha putting food into Percy's hands and then giving him some more from her own plate.
Martha at the river, looking down at her sketchbook while she told Jonas that she had once dreamed of having a family.
Had that been true?
The thought came so quickly that he hated himself for it.
Of course it had been true.
The fact that it was true wasn’t the problem. The problem was that he could no longer tell where the truth ended and the things she had hidden began.
Jonas urged the horse forward again.
He rode until he lost track of how many times he had followed the pasture fence. The moon rose higher, silvering the patches of old snow and catching along the rails. His horse had long since stopped expecting to go anywhere in particular and simply walked where Jonas guided him.
The cold eventually worked through his coat.
Still, he did not go back.
He heard another horse before he could make out anything in the dark.
Jonas turned toward the sound. A rider emerged from the darkness near the gate, moving slowly until moonlight caught his face.
Reuben.
His brother pulled up several yards away and looked at him.
“You planning to spend the night out here?”
Jonas turned his horse toward the fence again. “Maybe.”
Reuben followed.
For a while, neither of them spoke.
Jonas appreciated that. Tobias might have done the same, but Reuben had never been particularly talented at silence. The fact that he managed nearly half the pasture before speaking again told Jonas that his brother had already realized something was wrong.
“You've been riding in circles,” Reuben said.
“I know.”
“I thought maybe you couldn’t tell.”
Jonas glanced at him.
Reuben shrugged. “It's dark.”
Despite himself, Jonas nearly smiled. It disappeared before it could fully form.
Reuben saw that too. “What happened?”
“Nothing.”
“Then you're riding around a pasture after dark for the pleasure of it?”
“I wanted to think.”
“Looks exhausting.”
Jonas exhaled and stared ahead.
Reuben let another stretch of silence pass. “Is this about Martha?”
Jonas's hand tightened around the reins.
That was answer enough. Reuben's posture changed. “What happened?”
Jonas stopped his horse, and his brother did the same.
For a moment, Jonas did not know how to say it. He had heard Martha confess it twice, and still the words felt wrong in his own mouth.
“She was part of the Voss Gang.”
Reuben stared at him in shock. “What?”
Jonas gave a humorless laugh. It was nearly the same response he had given Martha.
“She was part of the Voss Gang.”
Reuben's face went blank.
The silence that followed was so complete Jonas could hear one of the cattle moving through the grass nearby.
“You're certain?” Reuben asked.
“She told me herself.”
“When?”
“Tonight.”
Reuben looked toward the distant house and then back at Jonas. “What does that mean, ‘part of them’?”
“She helped them.”
“With what?”
Jonas looked away.
“Robberies. Messages. Keeping watch. Planning.” He swallowed. “There was a train robbery. She helped plan it.”
Reuben went quiet again.
Jonas was grateful he did not immediately defend her. He did not know if he could have listened to that.
“Amos, her husband, was one of them,” Jonas continued. “She didn't know when she married him. She found out afterward.”
“And then she stayed with him.”
“Yes.”
Reuben rubbed a hand over his jaw.
“She said she never killed anyone,” Jonas said. “I believe her.”
“But she helped people who did.”
“Yes.”
Reuben nodded slowly.
There it was. No easy answer. No assurance that none of it mattered.
Jonas started the horse walking again. Reuben fell into step beside him.
“We spoke about Father. About all that happened to him,” Jonas said.
Reuben looked over.
“I sat there and told her what happened. I told her the Voss Gang killed him. I told her about raising you and Tobias afterward. She knew she had been one of them, and she said nothing.”
“Was she with them when Father was killed?”
“No.” The answer came immediately.
Reuben waited. Jonas knew what he was doing.
“No,” he repeated. “She wasn't. She hadn't met Amos yet.”
“So she didn't have anything to do with Father's death.”
“I know that much, at least,” Jonas snapped.
“Do you?”
Jonas turned sharply toward him. “I just said I did.”
Reuben held up one hand. “I'm not trying to fight with you.”
“Could've fooled me.”
“I'm asking because you're talking about two different things like they're the same thing.”
Jonas's jaw tightened. “She was part of the gang that killed him.”
“Later.”
“That doesn't make what she did right.”
“I didn't say it did.”
Jonas looked away.
Reuben's voice was quieter when he continued. “If she helped rob people, that's on her. If she helped Amos escape after robbing a train, that's on her too. But Father isn't.”
“I know.”
“Then don't put him on her.”
Jonas stopped again.
Anger flared hot and immediate, but underneath it was something worse because he knew Reuben was right.
“I didn't,” he said.
“You're thinking about him.”
“Of course I'm thinking about him.”
“So am I.”
Jonas looked at his brother.
Reuben's face had hardened in the way it always did when their father came up. He had been young when it happened, but not young enough to be spared the memory of what came afterward.
“You think hearing that name doesn't do the same thing to me?” Reuben asked. “It does. I hear Voss Gang and I think about Father. I think about you coming home and telling us he wasn't coming back. I think about how everything changed after that, how much harder life became.”
Jonas swallowed.
“But Martha didn't do that to us,” Reuben said. “That's all I'm saying.”
Jonas turned his attention to the pasture. “I know she didn't.”
Reuben nodded. “All right.”
“But it doesn't make the rest disappear. She lied to me.”
“She did, and that’s a hard thing to move past.”
Jonas glanced at him, surprised by the easy agreement.
Reuben frowned. “What? You want me to tell you she didn't?”
“No.”