8. Chapter Eight

Chapter Eight

"‘ O ne day on the prairie while riding along, my seat in the saddle, the reins on my dong—'"

"Junior. Stop."

"‘Who should I meet but the girl I adore, the pride of the prairie, the cowpuncher's whore—'"

Isa wanted to rip her ears off. She hated this song, and he knew it. "Stop singing, or I will shoot you off your horse."

As if unbothered by this threat of violence, Junior rode easy in his saddle and quietly hummed the next verse. They had wisely circled the dangerous town of Navasota, regularly checking behind them for unwanted shadows. Now, halfway to Anderson, Isa was a hair's breadth away from murder. They were suffering from entirely too much togetherness, compounded by his idea of prime entertainment—infuriating her.

"Don't hum it, either," she bit out. He was nearing her least favorite chorus.

Instead of listening, he sang, "‘I got off my pony, I reached for her crack—'"

"Junior!"

"‘The damn thing was rattling and bitin' me back." He didn't sing so much as shout as Isa began to furiously chase him on Mirage. "I took out my pistol, I aimed for its head, I missed the damn rattler and shot her instead!'"

They found a place to camp at a pond's edge, hidden from the main road by a thicket of trees. The horses and mule were watered, curried, and hobbled near a little clearing by their camp. Red brayed long and loud when his feed was brought out, a habit Junior said the mule exercised at breakfast and suppertime. It made Isa laugh.

Temperatures dropped, and the chill was brisk from the lingering dampness around them. Finding dry firewood was a chore, but Junior worked his cowboy magic and had a crackling fire sending red, glowing embers into the swaying treetops. The sky above changed from indigo to midnight blue, and stars appeared by the hundreds of thousands. Isa breathed in the air, her eyes closed. This was the best part of traveling: little quiet moments between tasks.

"‘Nature is the source of all true knowledge,'" she sighed, kneeling by the mound of their belongings at the foot of an oak. "City living is nice, but this is what poets speak of when they write about peace."

Junior crouched next to her and detached a skillet from the supply bags. "Cold, wet, and smelly?" He nodded at Mirage a few yards away; the animal's tail was high as she evacuated her bowels.

Nose wrinkling at his coarse lack of romanticism, Isa grabbed a horse blanket and her bedroll and laid them out by the fire. "No. Existing in nature is beautiful. Listening to every animal within a mile of you go about their business? Seeing so many stars that you could count them until your dying breath and you'd still never have tallied them all? That's beautiful."

There was no response from the figure by the oak tree, but his head was cocked her way, his movements slow. He was listening.

Bolstered, she asked, "What do you think the stars look like in Rome?"

"In Rome?" He filled the skillet a quarter full of a dry flour mixture, brought it to the fire, and poured water from his canteen into it.

"What are you making?" Curiously, she watched him mix up a batter in the skillet and pull coals to the side of the fire.

"Camp bread. Figured it's better than just dried beef and fruit. Want to make us some coffee?"

Together, they worked in silence for a time, and Isa forgot about being irritated with him. She put a handful of coffee grounds in an old metal percolator, filled it the rest of the way with water, and joined Junior by the fire. Soon, the aroma of coffee and cooking biscuits softened the air's cold bite. Isa settled on her bedroll to glimpse the stars through gaps in the darkening treetops.

"What were you saying about Rome?" Junior's deep voice cut through the stillness.

"I'd like to see it one day." She turned to look at him across the popping fire. His hair was leonine in the lambent light, the angle of his jaw sharp as a boomerang. She let her eyes drift along the edge that squared off to form his strong chin where a cleft lay, a tiny shadow in its center. "When…if I travel abroad, I want to sleep out in the open just like this. I want to see if it feels the same."

"I always figured you'd go off somewhere. See the world." The central tilt of his straight brows gave him an aspect of earnestness.

"You did?" This was news to her.

"Hell, look at you. You're not a woman who'd be happy staying in some little town with us common folk. You should've been a politician's daughter or some lady in a manor somewhere. Not a cowgirl." He said it as a revelation, some fact so long disputed that, once it could no longer be denied as false, it astonished the doubter.

It was the first time he'd called her a woman.

Isa lay speechless on her bedroll. As children, he'd told her more than once that she'd never grow up; she'd simply evolve into a taller version of a snot-nosed kid. When Isa said nothing, only stared, he shifted to his feet and muttered something about plates and cups.

They ate slightly scorched camp bread in silence. Afterward, they drank coffee while the horses and mule stood beneath the oak, heads drooping and eyelids closed in slumber. Junior sat, relaxed, on his bedroll, his saddle acting as a pillow at one end. His boots and stockings were off, his toes buried in the leafy grass.

Isa was far less relaxed.

Her stays dug into her armpits and stabbed at her hips. She had raw spots from riding in her corset for hours. Not caring that it was dreadful comportment, Isa began to unbutton the front of her blouse. Attuned as they were to each other's movements, Junior's relaxed slouch stiffened.

"What're you doin'?" The piece of grass he'd been stroking along his lips stopped moving.

"Readying for bed." She was down to the fourth button, and her breasts bulged against the constraints of her corset through the top of her open blouse.

"In front of me?"

Isa looked around. "I don't see a screen anywhere, do you?"

"Why don't you just sleep in your clothes?" He grabbed another blade of grass, his eyes looking anywhere but at her.

She scowled at him. "Have you ever slept in a corset? No? Then hush up."

"All I'm sayin'—"

"When did you become such a prude? Have you been attending church with my ma while I was away?"

That sealed the bigmouth's lips shut.

The sage-green blouse had a preposterous number of tiny buttons, so Isa untucked it and pulled it roughly over her head. Next came the stays. The corset arced high in the air, landing on their pile of bags at the base of the tree. Firelight cast a weak glow on the pile, turning the shadows and hills into something mythical, like a gnome colony or a fairy hideout. Sighing audibly, Isa stretched her back and sat cross-legged on her pallet.

"That's better." She settled her gun belt beside her pallet, close enough to grab in the night. Around them, the woods were black and eerie, and she kept her gaze firmly on the fire.

Junior's eyes were downcast. Once, then twice, his blue irises flitted to the hint of cleavage above the bodice of her combination underwear. An owl hooted above them, pulling his attention up, and his fingers unconsciously tugged his bandana high over the silvery pink scar beneath his jaw.

Without considering the wisdom of it, she said, "You don't have to hide it. Not with me."

Junior's head lowered until his gaze was level with hers. Slowly, he dropped his hand, letting the kerchief fall. He reached into his saddlebag, felt around, and drew out his tin of tobacco papers, and leather bag of tobacco. Isa's eyes lingered on the lean line of his side, noticing the wince when he sat up.

"Still bothering you?" She tried to forget that icy image of him dead somewhere had the bullet gone an inch or two to the left.

He didn't pretend ignorance.

"It's not so bad." Pausing from his task, he loosened the knot behind his neck and slung his bandana towards their bags in the same dramatic way she'd done with her stays.

She laughed.

Returning her smile with a devastating one of his own, he began to roll a cigarette. "Want to know what happened?"

Isa sat straighter. "Naturally. You've been very close-lipped about it."

"I was trailing after a pair of outlaw brothers about a month back—"

"By yourself?" Isa frowned. "Didn't you have a company of Rangers with you?"

"Do you want the story or not?"

Isa squeezed her lips shut between two fingers and held up a hand, a solemn oath of quiet.

Eyeing her dubiously, he continued, "As I was saying, I was following the Grenert Brothers…"

According to Junior, he had trailed the brothers in rain or shine. They had a bounty of a hundred dollars each, dead or alive. Isa squirmed on her bedroll. She wanted to ask if it was a normal occurrence for Texas Rangers to take mercenary jobs but held her tongue. The Grenert Brothers were wily and talented at covering their trail, leading Junior on a wild goose chase for two weeks before he stopped following them and took a risk.

"They knew I was gaining on them, and after weeks of running in circles, I knew they'd need supplies soon. I took a chance, left the area where they were campin' out, and made my way to Fredericksburg. It was the closest town big enough that they'd feel comfortable getting supplies and a drink without detection, so I put my horse up and waited them out. After about the third day, I thought I'd made a mistake. Then, halfway down the street on Champ, I saw their horses hitched in front of a cathouse. I took their horses, hid them, went inside, and gave the mistress a ten-dollar gold piece to get her girls out and not make a fuss."

The first brother was the youngest and dumbest. It hadn't taken much to sneak into his room, knock him over the back of his head, and tie him up.

"His, uh, lady friend made a ruckus, though." Junior carefully avoided her eye. "When I went next door, I'd lost the element of surprise, and his older brother was waitin' for me, gun cocked. He got me in the side, but I got him in the chest." He looked down at his rolled cigarette dispassionately. Isa's excitement at the story faded.

"Killing people never sat easy with you," Isa murmured.

"No." He pulled a match out and ran it along his boot sole. It flared to life. "No, it never does."

"What had they done?"

"Robbed a stage and made sure no witnesses were left alive. A young family was on it."

A sick feeling soured her comfortably full stomach. "The lengths people will go for money."

"Yep. It's usually money. Takes what little soul some people have left and obliterates it." The flame on the match had reached his fingertips, blackening them, before he lit his cigarette and shook it out. "Money. Power. Women. The people who want them but gotta run over folks in the process are weak. Work a little harder. Get it honest."

Isa listened raptly, having been unaware of this philosophical side of Junior. "And you help bring them to justice."

Two thick fingers pulled the slender, tightly rolled paper from his mouth. "Sometimes I feel just as bad as them."

"‘ Exigo a me non ut optimis par sim sed ut mailis melior.' " It was one of her favorite quotes by Seneca.

"You gonna tell me what that means?" he asked sardonically.

"‘I require myself not to be equal to the best but to be better than the bad.' And I believe you to be far better than the bad." Isa plucked a burning twig from the fire and studied it while he sat, oh so still, across from her. "Human beings are flawed creatures as a rule. Most are the result of careful rearing, indoctrination, and learned behaviors. Two siblings can be born to the same family and treated similarly, yet their realities will be far different from one another. At the end of the day, whether you are a good person or not is a choice."

He absorbed this, smoking, watching her with glittering eyes. "A choice?"

"Yes. For example"—Isa poked glowing coals with the end of her crooked stick—"you chose to stop drinking, say, a decade ago?"

He nodded, lids narrowing. Junior hadn't touched a drop of alcohol since he was eighteen, astonishing everyone who knew him. Since his first wispy facial hair had come in, he had caroused in saloons every weekend on his father's dime.

"And every choice you have made from then on has been affected by that decision. Lord knows, you could have continued. Who knows where you'd be?"

"I'd be dead." The utter surety in his voice scared her. He looked over her shoulder and into the velvety black night beyond the brush. "You know why I stopped drinking?"

Isa ceased poking the fire. The question could be a trick. Instead of answering honestly, he could say something smart-aleck and laugh at her disgruntlement. When he didn't tease her, her curiosity grew. Worried he'd change his mind, she said nothing.

Finally, his glazed eyes focused. "Remember when Ben, Sol, and I were on that cattle drive years ago? Everyone thought my brother drowned in the Red River?"

"Yes, I remember." She quivered with curiosity. Ten years ago, Junior's older brother's death by drowning had been announced. For almost a week, the townspeople had reeled before word had gotten out that Ben Stone had managed to swim downstream from where he'd been separated from his horse in the floodwaters. Having aspirated river water, he'd become ill and delirious and had holed up at an elderly couple's shack until he was well enough to travel. Before this good news was released, however, rumors that Junior blamed himself for Ben's death had spread. Lucy was oddly reserved about discussing this period in their lives, and Isa never pressed.

"I acted like a jackass the whole trail drive," Junior began. He threw the butt of his cigarette into the fire and began rolling another one. "Ben had his hands full with the herd—it was a good two thousand head—and I made it worse. Drank every day. Bellyached. Didn't work for shit. Stopped in a town and whored instead of helped." The spikes of his lashes were long against his cheekbones as he concentrated on rolling tobacco into another paper, one knee high, the other lolling wide.

"I even stampeded the herd one night because I hollered at Ben. God almighty, just remembering it—" He broke off, grimacing while he rolled each tip tightly.

Cautious of his mood, she offered, "You were just a dumb kid, Junior."

"Yeah." When he closed the lid to his tobacco tin, something was wrong with how he smiled. She didn't like that look on him, like he'd been possessed by something dark. Some specter trying to appear as him, a beautiful fa?ade hiding ugly insides. He stretched to the side to tuck his paper tin and tobacco back into his saddlebags, a move that had to put a strain on his healing wound. When he straightened, the ugly look was gone. Behind the golden halo of his hair, the woods were sinister; his shadow stretched eerily into the void. "Yeah. Just a dumb kid who almost killed his brother. My cousin Leonard was on the trail drive, too, and he was even stupider than me. We'd finally made it to the Red River. It had been raining for weeks; I'd never seen a river so flooded. Whole trees were doing flips in it."

He stopped to scrub his forehead. The bleak expression was back, and Isa wanted to smack it off him.

"Anyway, Ben saw I was drunk again. He grabbed my booze and threw it in the river. Leonard—he was even drunker than me—rode his horse right in like he was gonna get it. Well, that was the last of him. I tried to stop him." He paused.

When the pause stretched forever, she supplied, "And Ben tried to stop you." Her eyes were riveted on him.

Instead of answering, Junior put the tip of his cigarette between his lips and leaned forward. Taking the hint, Isa lifted the flaming point of her stick from the fire, lighting the end of his cigarette. Smoke streamed from his nostrils. It should have revolted her the same way Mr. Corner's pipe-smoking did. But it didn't repel her. Not one bit. Junior's gaze caught hers, and they sat, marionettes with their strings caught. She'd known him for most of her life, but it felt like this was their first meeting. Two strangers alone. Acquainted, yet unfamiliar.

Her lips were moving, an industrious mind speaking aloud. "You stopped drinking around the time you got that scar on your neck."

Firelight glinted off the sheen of the scar in question. He spat a leaf of tobacco away, lips flat. He neither denied nor confirmed her statement, but he didn't look away from her, either.

"May I look at it?" she asked, holding her breath, waiting for Junior to quip sarcastically that she was looking at it.

Instead of a jibe, he lifted his chin a fraction. She stood and walked around to his side of the fire, unhurried in case sudden movements changed his mind. Lowering herself to his bedroll, she felt her body react in response to his proximity. Her mind, however, was firmly on the puzzle of his scar. She'd seen it before, of course, but only in glimpses, as it had been hidden beneath the bandanas he never went without. Without looking at her, he took another drag of his cigarette. The fragrant smoke made her head dizzy, and she reached up to touch his neck as if she were underwater. As soon as she touched him, he went completely still. Not even smoke left his nostrils. The mark was similar to the scars Sol had on his wrists from when he'd been tied and dragged behind a horse. Rope burn . The ligature mark was in the shape of an inverted V, and several smaller scars riddled his neck. Scratches?

Mouth twisting, she studied them. The more she investigated, the more she disliked what she saw.

His Adam's apple bobbed. "What do you think?"

"You'd like me to…theorize?"

Junior's shoulder brushed against her wrists when he shrugged.

"Very well. I shall play Sherlock Holmes." Clearing her throat, she shuffled closer on her knees. "It's clear that you were either hanged or pulled by the neck, according to the direction of the rope burn. It is a rope burn, correct?"

"Mm."

She took this as an affirmation. Grasping his jaw, she turned his head and looked at the other side. Leather, tobacco, and horse sweat clouded her senses, drugging her. Besides their accidental entanglement in bed that morning, she hadn't been this close to him in years. "And these are scratch marks. Deep ones." Her heart began to race for a different reason. An ominous dread extracted all the fun from the game, and she sat back on her heels. "It appears that you were hanged by the neck. You struggled."

Cricket song and the pop of an occasional ember were the only sounds in response to this declaration. It was as good as an affirmation.

"Junior." She'd never felt so angry on someone else's behalf. So heartbroken. "Who was it? Who did it?"

She saw the answer before he opened his mouth. He looked at her, his lashes long, his lush lips turned down. " I did it, Izzy. I did it."