Chapter Seventeen
Evelyn woke in her bed with no memory of getting there.
She lay under the quilt in her clothes from yesterday and her boots still on.
The last thing she recalled with any certainty involved stitching ribbon trim onto a scarf—the fourteenth or fifteenth one.
The lamplight had gotten fuzzy around the edges while her fingers slowed on the needle.
She'd put her head down on the table for just a minute because her eyes had quit cooperating.
That minute had apparently lasted the rest of the night.
Which meant Sam had carried her up here.
Again. After slamming the door and calling her Miss Granger and riding off to town without explanation, he'd come home in the middle of the night, found her asleep at his sewing table, carried her upstairs, put her to bed, and pulled the quilt over her.
Of course he had. Sam Cooper could tell a woman she hadn't earned the right to know him and then tuck her in as if she mattered more than anything else in the house, and the contradiction would never once register as contradictory inside that thick, impossible, infuriating skull of his.
She sat up, pulled off her boots, unpinned what remained of yesterday's hair, and rebraided it.
Downstairs, the kitchen smelled like coffee. Sam sat at the table with his cup. The Winchester leaned against the wall beside the door while the Colt rode buckled at his hip. He looked up when she came down the stairs, looked at her for about a second, then looked back at his coffee.
She poured herself a cup and sat down across from him. The coffee tasted strong, brewed to Sam's proportions, which amounted to roughly twice the beans any reasonable person would use. She drank it anyway because the morning required fortification.
"You toted me upstairs last night."
He looked at his cup. "You fell asleep at the table."
"I know good and well I fell asleep at the table. I'm askin' whether you carried me up to bed."
"I did."
"After what you said to me. After slammin' that door and ridin' off to Lord knows where. You come back in the dead of night, and you carried me to bed."
He turned the cup between his hands. "You were gonna wake up with a crick in your neck if you stayed at that table till mornin'. I reckoned the bed was a sight better."
She should leave it alone. She should drink her coffee, go back to her scarves, maintain the distance he'd put between them last night with two words, Miss Granger, and let the silence smooth over things that needed addressing until they rotted underneath.
"We got to talk, Sam."
He looked up.
"We can't go on this way. You hollerin' at me one minute and tuckin' me into bed the next.
Me sewin' scarves in the kitchen while you pace the house with a rifle and won't tell me why.
" She set her cup down. "I ain't askin' for your whole life story.
I'm askin' for the truth about what's goin' on, because I can see plain as day it's eatin' at you, and pretendin' I can't see that does neither of us a lick of good. "
Sam stared at her for a long moment while his jaw worked once. He pushed his coffee cup aside, reached into his coat hanging on the back of the chair, pulled out a folded paper, and laid it on the table between them, smoothing it flat.
A bounty poster. She saw a man's face sketched in black ink with an angular jaw, broken nose, and dark eyes. Below the sketch:
AMOS WILKES. WANTED FOR MURDER, ROBBERY, ARSON. REWARD: $500 DEAD OR ALIVE. LAST KNOWN TERRITORY: MONTANA.
Evelyn's stomach dropped.
"I went to town last night. I been askin' around about a stranger I spotted a couple weeks back, a man I reckoned might be, well…
him." He tapped the poster with one finger.
"I didn't trust my own eyes on account of I been seein' this man's face in strangers for twenty years, and it ain't never once been him.
But last night, Foster come into the saloon and handed me this here.
Fresh off the territorial marshal's office. "
Evelyn looked at the sketch. She remembered the man at the fence line—the dark coat, the hat pulled low, the clipped voice telling her he'd gotten himself turned around. Her skin prickled the same way it had prickled yesterday.
"That there is him. That's the man I saw at the fence line. The one what told me he was lost."
Sam's knuckles went white against the table, relaxed, then went white again. "I know it."
"How long you known? How long you been reckonin' he was out there?"
"Since the first week. I spotted a man in town who put me in mind of Wilkes, but I couldn't be sure of it.
Then I spotted him again at the flea market.
Then the tracks along the fence, the gate standin' open, Haskell seein' a stranger askin' about the homesteads.
" He stopped and drew a breath through his nose.
"I didn't aim to tell you on account of I didn't want you caught up in it.
This here's my business. My past. My fight.
You didn't come all the way to Montana to get tangled in a twenty-year-old blood feud, Evelyn. "
"That ain't your decision to make for me."
"I reckon I made it anyhow."
"And look where it got us. You prowlin' the house armed to the teeth, me sewin' scarves in the dark wonderin' if you'd plumb lost your mind, and a murderer standin' at the fence line while I go about my evenin' chores without knowin' there's danger ten paces off.
That's where your decision got us, Sam."
He rubbed his face with both hands, pressing his palms against his eyes.
Evelyn recognized exhaustion when she saw it.
The orphanage had been full of exhausted people carrying loads too heavy for their frames, and every one of them had that same look when they'd reached the bottom of what they could carry alone.
"I want to help you, Sam. Whatever's comin', I'd sooner face it alongside you than sit in that kitchen stitchin' and wonderin'."
He shook his head. "This here ain't your fight. Wilkes is dangerous, Evelyn. He killed my folks. He burned our home to cinders. He ain't some petty horse thief I can run down and haul in. He's a man what'll do murder as easy as breathin', and I ain't fixin' to put you anywhere near him."
"You ain't puttin' me anywhere. I'm already here. He done already saw me. He done already spoke to me. Pretendin' I ain't part of this won't make me safe, Sam. It'll just make me ignorant."
He held her gaze across the table. She could see him turning it over, weighing her words against his instinct to shield her.
"I take your meanin'. I do." He folded the poster and put it back in his coat. "But I'm askin' you to let me handle Wilkes. You tend to the fair, tend to Mrs. Montgomery, do what you come here to do. Let me do what I do."
She wanted to push harder. But the look on his face, the raw tiredness of it, told her this particular wall had a door in it, and Sam Cooper stood at the threshold. If she pushed too hard right now, he'd slam it shut and brick it over.
"All right. But you tell me if things change. You don't shut me out again, Sam. I'll not abide that."
"I'll tell you."
"You give me your word on that?"
"I give you my word."
She held his eyes a moment longer, then picked up her coffee and drank, because the morning had moved on and work remained.
Sam pushed his chair back. "The fair. We ought to ride on out to the fairgrounds today. I been studyin' on it. A crowd that size… If Wilkes is fixin' to show himself, the fair's where he'd do it."
"So the fair serves double duty. We sell our goods for Mrs. Montgomery, whilst you keep your eyes peeled for Wilkes."
"That's about the size of it. Foster's postin' deputies at the grounds. I'll be armed. But I need you to stay close to the stall, Evelyn. If you clap eyes on a man fittin' that poster's description, you come straight to me or straight to the sheriff. You savvy?"
"I savvy."
"I mean it now."
"I said I savvy, Sam. I ain't hard of hearin'."
He almost smiled. His mouth got about halfway there before he remembered they were discussing a murderer, and the smile died on the vine. But she'd seen the start of it.
***
Sam rode the mare while Evelyn took the gelding who'd become her horse in every way except legal title.
She'd named him Henry, after Mrs. Montgomery's late husband, because naming things helped Evelyn claim them, even temporarily.
She'd named the stray cats at the orphanage, named the old sewing machine at Mr. Ridley's shop, and named the crack in the ceiling above her bed in Springfield.
You named a thing, and it became yours, at least until somebody took it away.
Sam found their assigned stall about halfway down the left row.
Evelyn walked the space, calculating where to put each item.
Mrs. Krauss had taught her about display: eye-catching goods up front, staple goods behind, expensive items at eye level.
You made the stall inviting from twenty feet away because, by the time a customer got close enough to touch the merchandise, you'd already half-made the sale.
"Scarves up front, spread out so folks can take in the colors. Gloves beside 'em. Hats up on a higher shelf, if we can rig one. Mrs. Montgomery's jam along the side where the light catches them jars."
Sam tested the stall frame for sturdiness. "I can knock together a shelf from scrap lumber tonight. Won't be fancy, but it'll hold."
"Fancy ain't what we're after. Sturdy'll do right fine."
They worked through the arrangement for another half hour.
Sam measured while Evelyn directed. He handled the physical labor while she ran the strategy.
He'd accepted the arrangement without complaint around day three of the sewing operation, which either meant he'd recognized she had the better head for planning or he'd gotten tired of arguing. Evelyn suspected both.
***
Mrs. Montgomery opened the door so fast she must have been standing behind it. She took one look at the two of them on her porch and her whole face lit up.
"Well, ain't this a blessed sight! Both of y'all together! Come in, come in, supper's on the stove!"
The stew tasted better than it had any right to.
Sam ate two helpings without being asked and accepted a third when Mrs. Montgomery spooned it into his bowl before he could object.
They talked about the fair, about the stall, about pricing, about how early they'd need to arrive.
Mrs. Montgomery had finished four more jars since Evelyn's last visit, bringing the total to twenty-seven, all lined up in a crate by the door.
"You know what I reckon?" Mrs. Montgomery set down her spoon and looked across the table at the two of them sitting side by side.
"I reckon you two make about the handsomest couple in the whole of this here territory.
I surely do. Puts me in mind of me and Mr. Montgomery when we was young and comin' up. "
Sam inhaled a mouthful of water and choked on it so hard the cup rattled against the table.
He pounded his own chest twice, and his face went a shade of red Evelyn had never seen on a human being outside of a fever ward, then grabbed his napkin while the coughing subsided into strangled throat-clearings.
Evelyn's own cheeks burned so hot she could have pressed a sad iron against them and produced steam.
She looked at her stew, then at her cornbread, then at the blue flowers on the rim of her plate, cycling through every available surface that did not include Sam Cooper's face or Mrs. Montgomery's pleased expression.
"We ain't—we're not—Mrs. Montgomery, we ain't no couple. We're just—"
"We're friends, is all." Sam's voice came out scraped raw from the coughing. "Miss Granger here is Sarah's friend. She's been helpin' out whilst Sarah's away. That's the whole of it."
"Mhm." Mrs. Montgomery picked up her spoon and went back to her stew, looking about as convinced as a woman who'd been married fifty-three years and reckoned she could spot a courtship from the next county over. "Friends. Why, of course. Well, you make right fine friends, I'll say that much."
The old woman hugged them both at the door. Sam accepted the embrace the way a man accepted a tooth extraction, rigid from hat to boots.
"You take care of each other now, you hear?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"And Sam?" Mrs. Montgomery held onto his arm a moment longer. "That girl there's a keeper, Sam Cooper. I'd hold on right tight if I was you."
Sam put his hat on, took Evelyn's elbow, and walked to the horses at a pace that suggested he intended to outrun the conversation entirely.
They rode back to the homestead in silence. The kind of silence that had a texture to it, thick and warm, the kind that two people produced when they'd both been called a thing they wanted to deny but couldn't quite bring themselves to deny it convincingly.
Evelyn stared straight ahead at the trail between the gelding's ears. She did not look at Sam Cooper riding beside her. She did not think about Mrs. Montgomery calling them a couple, or about Sam's face going red, or about the word "keeper."