CHAPTER TEN 

4:06 p.m.

On his knees and bent double, Jared put his good hand to his side, felt blood flowing through his fingers and wondered through the morass of pain if the wound was mortal.  In the next instant, Mary Beth was beside him, her hands pressing a cloth to the wound.

“Go,” he tried to tell her.  “Get out of the street.”

“It’s over, Jared,” she said.  “He’s dead.  His cousin, too.  The others are riding out.”

But it wasn’t over.  The shadow of death would always be with him.  Perhaps he had not killed today, but others had killed for him.

Struggling to sit back up, he drew a painful breath.  He felt so weak, felt blood draining from him.  He looked down at his mangled right hand.  He doubted he would ever be able to use it properly again, much less draw a gun.

“You . . . left . . .,” he began in a rasping whisper.

“I had to have some time,” Mary Beth said.  “You had lied to me, at least by silence.  And I was so afraid of losing you, of watching Jonny lose yet another father.”

He met her gaze. 

“But then I realized how unfair I was being,” she continued with tears streaming down her cheeks.   “I realized how hard you’ve tried to make a new life since you’ve been here.”  

The blacksmith who sometimes doubled as a doctor kneeled on the other side and busied himself with packing the wound in Jared’s side.  “Don’t think it hit anything vital,” he said.  “That hand . . . ”

Jake didn’t care about the hand.  He fought the pain, as Mary Beth took his good hand and squeezed it.  “I’m sorry, Jared.”

He took his hand away and touched her face, wiped the tears away.  “You are so . . . damned pretty.”  He knew that had nothing to do with her anguished confession, but he felt the need to say it.  He knew she understood that it was his way of telling her how much it had meant to him to see her standing there, in the bank doorway, reaching out to him with her smile.

“I love you,” she said brokenly.

“The killing never stops,” he said, his gaze holding hers.

“It stopped today,” she said.  “You stopped it.”

Cal Baker, the minister, kneeled next to him.  “Aye, lad.  We all saw it.  Everyone here saw you unbuckle that gun belt.  You made the decision to stop.”

“But – ”

“They voted, you know,” Reverend Baker continued as if he hadn’t heard the muttered protest.    “Mary Beth visited every man in town, and they voted to back you, every last one of them.  They just ran it a little close,” he added dryly.

Jared looked back at Mary Beth.  God, but her eyes were blue.  Looking at them, he nearly didn’t feel her hands busily helping the blacksmith.  He looked beyond her.  The other men, about two dozen of them, were standing apart, and he looked at each of them, one by one.  Bill Dale.  Holt Winslow.  John Curry. . . they all gave him a brief nod, telling him that they, too, had made a choice that day and were satisfied with it.

“Some men will do anything to get out of a wedding,” Mary Beth said.

He nearly chuckled, but it sounded more like a groan.  His head fell back and he was looking at the sky.  A few clouds had appeared and were floating lazily eastward.

“I . . . can’t,” he said, a harshness in his voice that he hoped covered the anguish in his heart.   “There will be others . . . there are . . .always others.”

Bill Dale squatted down beside him.  “There won’t be if we tell anyone who comes looking for you that Carter was wrong.  That you aren’t Tom Garrett and that you, Jared Walker, have been here for years.  Carter didn’t believe us, and when he threatened the peace, we had to kill him to protect our town.”

“We all made a pact.  No one will never know any different,” John Curry broke in.  “Not from any of us.”

Jared couldn’t believe what he was hearing, an entire town of people willing to lie to protect him.  “What about the others Carter brought with him?” he asked.  “By now, they’re halfway to Kansas where Carter’s got more cousins than this town’s got people. They’ll spread the word that he’d dead, and then – "

“Same story,” Bill replied.  “If you’re not Garrett, then Carter was wrong and we had every right to protect ourselves.  If we have to, we’ll get the federal marshal to escort any Carter who decides to pay us an unwanted visit back to Texas.  I have a few friends in the state.  But I don’t see it as likely that they’ll pursue a grudge against a whole town of people.”

Jared shook his head, barely trusting himself to speak.  “I can’t let you all risk your lives for me.”

“You’d do the same for me, wouldn’t you?” Bill replied.  “Or John or any of the rest of us.  In fact I think you did exactly that out there in the street.  You wouldn’t let him try to burn the town.  You risked your life for each of us.”

Jared’s silence brought a smile to Bill’s face.  It said what Jared could not.

“We protect our own, Jared,” Bill continued.  “The day I met you, when you rode in looking to buy a ranch.  I liked what I saw, and I haven’t changed my mind.”

Before Jared could reply – if he could have replied -- Harry and Jonny arrived.  The big yellow mutt bounded into the circle that surrounded him and frantically swiped Jared’s face with his tongue.  Mary Beth gently pushed Harry aside, and Jared saw Jonny, hovering over him, anxiety squinching his youthful features.

The pain was receding, or maybe it was only disguised by stronger feelings, feelings like hope and gratitude – and love.”

“We have to get you inside,” John Curry said.  

Bill put a hand under his good arm and tried to help him up.  

Jared shook his head.  “I just need a hand.”

             CHAPTER NINE 

4:05 p.m.

“You always have a choice.”

Mary Beth’s words echoed in Jared’s mind as he stood waiting for Billy Joe Carter to make his move.

The wagon had stopped somewhere behind him.  He dared not look to see who was in it, or if they were in the line of fire.  The wagon’s occupants, if they had any sense, had darted into the nearest shelter. 

Carter’s gaze refocused on him once more.  Soon, he thought, any second now, Carter would go for his gun.  And then he would have to go for his.  If he shot Billy Joe, then he would have to face the Carter’s companions.

“You always have a choice.”

Again, the words taunted him.  He didn’t believe it, but the very fact that Mary Beth seemed so certain it was true gave him pause.  His love and respect for her were great enough that for the first time, it occurred to him that maybe he was wrong.  Maybe there was another choice besides kill or be killed.

The sudden barking of a dog drew his attention – though not his gaze.  It was Harry’s bark.  He loved that damned dog, had become attached to him the instant he’d picked him out of the litter.  And it seemed the feeling was mutual; Harry followed him everywhere, which was why he’d tied the animal in the back of the livery before walking out to meet Carter.  Harry had never been tied, any more than he’d ever been scolded and only the fear that he might get shot had convinced Jared of the need to tie him now.   Harry was voicing his indignation at being left behind, and the loud, forlorn barking ate at what was left of Jared’s heart. 

Carter’s lean body had jerked with the first bark, and the continued barking was obviously distracting him.  His gaze darted to the right, then the left; then Jared saw Carter focus briefly on a spot behind him before swinging upward toward the second story of the saloon.

Out of the corner of his eye, Jared saw one of Carter’s cousins step out from behind the corner of the bank and start looking around.  A shutter slammed.  There were other noises that were quite normal for a town this size.  Yet, under the circumstances, they seemed out of place.  Only a moment ago, it had been utterly silent.

Jared took a step to the left and tried to block Harry’s barking from his consciousness.  Tried hopelessly not to think about anything –not Harry, not Mary Beth or Jonny, not his long and sorry list of regrets.  Tried, instead, to concentrate on the task at hand.  It was far past time to end it.

What was Carter waiting for, anyway?  He would have sworn the younger man had been ready to draw a moment ago.

Heat shimmered in waves coming up off the street, and though there seemed to be no wind at all, dust balls bounced along, heading out of town.  The sun burned the exposed skin on his neck, bore into his head, scorched the shirt on his back.  A hint of hell.

Harry’s barking turned into a howl, a lonely, anguished sound that seeped into Jared’s bones. 

Carter was still looking around.   So was his cousin.  What did they see?            

“Come on, Garrett, draw,” Billy Joe yelled. 

Why did Billy Joe care who drew first?  He had his witnesses.  They both knew every eye in town was glued to some window, peering out through the curtains or shutters.  Once the gunfire died away, the good residents of New Hope would emerge from their burrows.

He couldn’t really blame them.  He had lied to them.  He had brought gunfighters here.  He had brought death here.

Was Mary Beth watching.  Would he ever see her again?  Would he hear her voice or see her smile?

Jared felt a burning behind his eyes, and suddenly, his throat went dry.

“Garrett?  Did you hear me?”  Billy Joe was visibly sweating now.  “Draw, dammit.  Don’t stand there like a coward.  Draw!”

Live or die.  Kill or be killed.

You always have a choice.

Did he?

Maybe.  And maybe now was the time to find out.

One thing Jared knew for sure: he couldn’t kill a man in front of all the people he’d come to think of as his friends and neighbors.  Or in front of Mary Beth.  He did have at least one choice, and that was not to kill.

In that moment of decision, relief rolled through him, lifting an immense weight from his shoulders – and from his soul.  He felt a kind of freedom he had never known before.

“I won’t draw, Carter,” he said – loudly, clearly – at the same time he turned away.  Not much.  Just enough to make his point.

In the next instant, he heard more noise behind him.  The sound of rifle bolts slamming closed.

He guessed it was the rest of Carter’s men, come into town to see what was taking so long, and he waited for the bullets to hit.  He even mumbled a small prayer, something he hadn’t done since the day, all those years ago, that he’d shot the men who killed his family.  He’d never uttered a prayer nor asked a favor, figuring the devil already owned his soul.  Yet he prayed now.  He prayed Mary Beth and Jonny would be happy – and they wouldn’t see him lying in the dust. 

Carter’s gaze moved rapidly from side to side.  His companion, who had been standing near the bank, began backing away.  

Wondering what the devil was going on, Jared risked a glance at the source of Carter’s distraction.  His body stiffened when he saw Mary Beth standing in the bank’s doorway beside Bill Dale, who was holding a rifle.

How long had they been there?  His concentration had been so centered on Carter that he’d been unaware of anything but this man and the heat and the dust.  For a fraction of a second, his gaze met Mary Beth’s, and, incredibly, he saw the flicker of a smile cross her lips.

A movement to the left brought his gaze snapping in that direction.  Jared saw Holt Winslow, another rancher, moving up beside him.  With Holt was John Curry, the blacksmith, and next to him the gunsmith, and the saloon owner.  All of them held rifles.

          CHAPTER EIGHT 

4:04 p.m. Continued

Carter had been waiting for him when he rode in to make the final arrangements for the wedding.  They were to meet with the minister at noon.

Instead, Billy Joe and two companions confronted him on the street after Jared had tied his horse in front of the general store.

Carter and two companions emerged from the saloon.  Carter stepped into the street, calling him Tom Garrett and challenging him to a gunfight.  It didn’t even occur to Jared to deny his identity.  He knew then that his dream was over.

Jared was unarmed, and when Carter told one of his companions to hand him a gun, he refused it.  Then he walked away as Billy Joe baited him.  In front of the whole town, Jared  just turned and headed for the general store.  With each step he took, he died a little inside.

Mary Beth was at the door.  Her eyes were wide as she searched his face.  “All those things that man was saying – they aren’t true, are they?”

When he didn’t respond, she went on.  “Jared, tell me you’re not wanted by the law.  Tell me you haven’t killed twenty men.”

He couldn’t bring himself to answer.  If he’d killed all the men attributed to him, he would have had to be in ten different places at once.  But he’d killed enough to horrify her.

“Tell me, Jared,” she said again, the blue of her eyes misting, her mouth trembling slightly.  “That man was lying.  You’re not Tom Garrett . . . are you?”

Even in this remote piece of Texas, she had heard of Tom Garrett.

“He wasn’t lying,” Jared said, hearing the ache in his voice and unable to hide it.

Unable to bear the disappointment in her face, the disbelief, he left her, and she didn’t try to follow him.

But Billy Joe Carter did.  He rode out to Jared’s ranch with his companions, including  two cousins and two friends.  Jared met them on his front porch, unarmed.  Carter hadn’t come to kill him, though.  He wanted to do that in full view of the entire town.  He wanted to prove himself the best, the man who had killed Tom Garrett in a fair fight.  

If Jared didn’t face him the following afternoon, Carter said, he and his band of outlaws would burn the town.  And he added with a smirk, he would take particular pleasure in servicing Jared’s woman, “the purty widow.”

A few hours after he left, Mary Beth appeared at the ranch house door.  Jared knew he had to tell her he was going to meet Billy Joe Carter in a gunfight, and he also knew he wasn’t going to tell her why he was doing it.  The men of New Hope were no match for a band of murdering Carters, even if they were willing to fight them.  Billy Joe Carter wanted him, no one else.  And to protect the people he loved, he would give Carter what he wanted.

But how was he supposed to explain it to Mary Beth?

He should allow her to believe the worst and forget him, but somehow he couldn’t bring himself to do it.  He could not let her believe he was a hired gun, a cold-blooded killer.

Still, he didn’t spare himself.  Yes, he admitted, his name was Tom Garrett.  Yes, he had killed men.   No, he had never been a hired gun.  No, he had not killed twenty men.

Then how many, she wanted to know.

He knew.  They each haunted him.  But he could not force himself to say the number.  So he stood mute, unable to defend the indefensible.  What difference did it really make whether it was five or ten or twenty? 

He watched the tears glint in her eyes, the disbelief register.  He knew she had hoped he would deny it all.  He wanted to take her in his arms, wanted to hold her and kiss away the tears.  Instead he turned away so she wouldn’t see the wetness in his eyes. 

“I love you.” she said in a voice that quavered.  “I love you, but Jonny . . .  ”  She paused, then added, “I don’t really know you, do I?”

He shrugged, concealing his agony.  She knew him better than anyone ever had.  He’d thought she understood the need in him, the longing for peace and family and belonging.  He had thought that understanding those important things, she hadn’t felt the need to ask questions, to prove and pry into his past.  Now he wondered if she simply had not wanted to know the answers, had been afraid to know.

His fingers clenched at his side.  God, he wanted – needed – to hold her.  But he felt unclean.  Unworthy.

“Why, Jared?”  she asked, still trying to understand.  “Why?”

He stood silent.  He could mouth excuses, but none of them would erase the fact that he had killed, not once or twice, but many times.

“Go home,” he finally said.  “Go home to your son.”

“I want to understand,” she pleaded.

“What is there to understand?” he said.  “I’ve killed men.  It wasn’t by choice, but that doesn’t change anything, does it?  Once a man gets a reputation, they keep coming.  They will always keep coming.”

She studied him for a long moment, then asked in a quiet voice.  “How did it start?”

His jaw tightened.

“Tell me,” she insisted.

“Will you believe me?”

“Yes.”

But understand?  He doubted it.  He couldn’t understand himself.

His tone was expressionless as he spoke.  “I was eighteen and a farmer’s son.  My father was a Quaker.  Didn’t believe in violence.  One day, some Jayhawkers raided my family’s farm and murdered my mother and father, and my little sister.  They were getting ready to burn our barn when I rode up.  I shot three of them, but one got away.  Billy Joe Carter.  He was a kid then.  And the men I’d killed were his brothers.” 

Jared looked out over the hills and drew a deep breath before continuing.  “Their cousins started coming after me, and I killed them, too, in self-defense.  Before long, I had a name and men looking to make a reputation found me.  I tried to find a place where no one knew who I was, but some gunman always tracked me down.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

           4:04 p.m. Continued

What followed the afternoon Mary Beth tended his wound was a most proper courtship.  For five and a half months, Jared made twice-weekly trips to town for the express purpose of visiting Mary Beth.  They took walks.  He played with Jonny, whom he came to love nearly as much as he did the boy’s mother.  He even helped New Hope build a church for its new minister when he realized it was Mary Beth’s fondest wish that the town have one – though he felt like a hypocrite the entire time and wondered if God would want his blood-stained hands involved in the construction of HIS house.

The times he liked best, though, were when Mary Beth invited him to supper, and he got to sit at her perfectly set table with her and Jonny – the three of them together, like a family.  Jared wanted them to be a real family.  He wanted to help Mary Beth raise her little boy and he wanted a child or two more.  He wanted to go to bed with her at night and make love to her until they were both too exhausted to do anything but sleep.  And he wanted to wake up with her beside him every morning for the rest of his life. 

He told himself it was impossible, but the thought that it might not be impossible wouldn’t go away.   And, finally, one night five months and sixteen days after the horse’s hoof had sliced open his arm, he made up his mind.

Supper was over and Jonny was in bed, asleep, and it was time for him to leave. He always left early so folks wouldn’t have anything to gossip about.  Instead of leaving, though, he tugged Mary Beth down to sit beside him on the sofa in her parlor.  Then he took her hand in his and asked her to marry him.

Her eyes widened, and for a moment, she just looked at him, apparently stunned.  He held his breath, heart pounding, waiting for her to say she couldn’t marry him because she didn’t know anything about him, didn’t know who he was or what he’d done before arriving in New Hope two years ago.  He’d convinced himself that it was safe, at last, to take a wife, but he wasn’t planning to reveal his past to her.  If she asked him to explain all his secrets, he didn’t know what he’d say.

She didn’t ask.  She simply looked at him with her heart and soul shining in her blue eyes and said, “I love you Jared.  Yes, I’ll marry you.”

Then he kissed her.  Tenderly at first, then with a hard desperation.  He had always been a gentleman with her, had made his caresses gentle, harnessing the fierce desire and the demanding need inside.  But when her arms went around his neck, her breath coming in short gasps as she melted against him, he was lost.

             CHAPTER NINE 

4:05 p.m.

“You always have a choice.”

Mary Beth’s words echoed in Jared’s mind as he stood waiting for Billy Joe Carter to make his move.

The wagon had stopped somewhere behind him.  He dared not look to see who was in it, or if they were in the line of fire.  The wagon’s occupants, if they had any sense, had darted into the nearest shelter. 

Carter’s gaze refocused on him once more.  Soon, he thought, any second now, Carter would go for his gun.  And then he would have to go for his.  If he shot Billy Joe, then he would have to face the Carter’s companions.

“You always have a choice.”

Again, the words taunted him.  He didn’t believe it, but the very fact that Mary Beth seemed so certain it was true gave him pause.  His love and respect for her were great enough that for the first time, it occurred to him that maybe he was wrong.  Maybe there was another choice besides kill or be killed.

The sudden barking of a dog drew his attention – though not his gaze.  It was Harry’s bark.  He loved that damned dog, had become attached to him the instant he’d picked him out of the litter.  And it seemed the feeling was mutual; Harry followed him everywhere, which was why he’d tied the animal in the back of the livery before walking out to meet Carter.  Harry had never been tied, any more than he’d ever been scolded and only the fear that he might get shot had convinced Jared of the need to tie him now.   Harry was voicing his indignation at being left behind, and the loud, forlorn barking ate at what was left of Jared’s heart. 

Carter’s lean body had jerked with the first bark, and the continued barking was obviously distracting him.  His gaze darted to the right, then the left; then Jared saw Carter focus briefly on a spot behind him before swinging upward toward the second story of the saloon.

Out of the corner of his eye, Jared saw one of Carter’s cousins step out from behind the corner of the bank and start looking around.  A shutter slammed.  There were other noises that were quite normal for a town this size.  Yet, under the circumstances, they seemed out of place.  Only a moment ago, it had been utterly silent.

Jared took a step to the left and tried to block Harry’s barking from his consciousness.  Tried hopelessly not to think about anything –not Harry, not Mary Beth or Jonny, not his long and sorry list of regrets.  Tried, instead, to concentrate on the task at hand.  It was far past time to end it.

What was Carter waiting for, anyway?  He would have sworn the younger man had been ready to draw a moment ago.

Heat shimmered in waves coming up off the street, and though there seemed to be no wind at all, dust balls bounced along, heading out of town.  The sun burned the exposed skin on his neck, bore into his head, scorched the shirt on his back.  A hint of hell.

Harry’s barking turned into a howl, a lonely, anguished sound that seeped into Jared’s bones. 

Carter was still looking around.   So was his cousin.  What did they see?            

“Come on, Garrett, draw,” Billy Joe yelled. 

Why did Billy Joe care who drew first?  He had his witnesses.  They both knew every eye in town was glued to some window, peering out through the curtains or shutters.  Once the gunfire died away, the good residents of New Hope would emerge from their burrows.

He couldn’t really blame them.  He had lied to them.  He had brought gunfighters here.  He had brought death here.

Was Mary Beth watching.  Would he ever see her again?  Would he hear her voice or see her smile?

Jared felt a burning behind his eyes, and suddenly, his throat went dry.

“Garrett?  Did you hear me?”  Billy Joe was visibly sweating now.  “Draw, dammit.  Don’t stand there like a coward.  Draw!”

Live or die.  Kill or be killed.

You always have a choice.

Did he?

Maybe.  And maybe now was the time to find out.

One thing Jared knew for sure: he couldn’t kill a man in front of all the people he’d come to think of as his friends and neighbors.  Or in front of Mary Beth.  He did have at least one choice, and that was not to kill.

In that moment of decision, relief rolled through him, lifting an immense weight from his shoulders – and from his soul.  He felt a kind of freedom he had never known before.

“I won’t draw, Carter,” he said – loudly, clearly – at the same time he turned away.  Not much.  Just enough to make his point.

In the next instant, he heard more noise behind him.  The sound of rifle bolts slamming closed.

He guessed it was the rest of Carter’s men, come into town to see what was taking so long, and he waited for the bullets to hit.  He even mumbled a small prayer, something he hadn’t done since the day, all those years ago, that he’d shot the men who killed his family.  He’d never uttered a prayer nor asked a favor, figuring the devil already owned his soul.  Yet he prayed now.  He prayed Mary Beth and Jonny would be happy – and they wouldn’t see him lying in the dust. 

Carter’s gaze moved rapidly from side to side.  His companion, who had been standing near the bank, began backing away.  

Wondering what the devil was going on, Jared risked a glance at the source of Carter’s distraction.  His body stiffened when he saw Mary Beth standing in the bank’s doorway beside Bill Dale, who was holding a rifle.

How long had they been there?  His concentration had been so centered on Carter that he’d been unaware of anything but this man and the heat and the dust.  For a fraction of a second, his gaze met Mary Beth’s, and, incredibly, he saw the flicker of a smile cross her lips.

A movement to the left brought his gaze snapping in that direction.  Jared saw Holt Winslow, another rancher, moving up beside him.  With Holt was John Curry, the blacksmith, and next to him the gunsmith, and the saloon owner.  All of them held rifles.