"You said there was a message." His voice was dead. Dead like Beth. Dead like his soul.
The nun's hand had gentled on his arm until it seemed almost a caress, her voice low. "Mr. Jones wanted me to warn you that there are some men loose from prison. The men who shot him. I think Mr. Jones was afraid that they would come after you."
Garret raised his eyes to hers and felt hunger race through him. The hunger to ride long and hard, to face Kennisaw's murderers in a blaze of gunfire and killing fury. The hunger to get away from eyes too probing, too beautiful, too filled with an innocence Garret MacQuade could never know again.
"These men—who were they?"
"Mr. Jones said they were named Garvey. Cain and Eli Garvey."
White-hot rage swept through Garret with the fury of a flood-choked river, raking away all other emotions in its path.
"I'll kill the murdering bastards." Garret's fingers clenched over the butt of his Colt, as if the feel of the weapon against his palm could bring his quarry closer. "Damn it to hell, I'll kill them."
He stalked to the end of the wagon and leapt out of it with the killing grace of a stalking panther.
The children scattered like a flock of frightened birds, their eyes still steeped with dislike, distrust.
"Sister Ash," the lame one squeaked, "is he gonna kill—"
"Quit asking questions, boy, before I decide to kill you!" Garret snapped.
The boy hopped back, taking shelter behind the red-haired lad's shoulder.
"Mr. MacQuade."
He expected the woman to squawk at him, dared her to with his eyes. But she only looked at him, her slender body silhouetted in the lantern glow, framed by the oval opening in the back of the wagon top.
"About Mr. Jones... and about the land..."
"I'll bury Kennisaw before I send the Garveys to their graves. And as for the land—lady, if you and these brats are so eager to die, feel free to do it at Stormy Ridge. God knows there are enough graves there already."
He wheeled and stalked into the night.
Chapter Six
Garret slumped in the slat-backed chair, oblivious to the racket of the Double Eagle's more festive patrons as he drained the last of a bottle of whiskey and thumped it down on the spur-scarred table.
"Dead soldiers," Kennisaw had called the empty containers during the countless nights of carousing he and Garret had shared. The old man had lined them up with the precision of a general, taking inordinate pride in the fact that he could outdrink any man west of the Missouri.
It had been a vanity Garret had allowed him to keep, always surrendering the contest when Kennisaw's eyes had that unmistakable glazed look that warned him the old man was about to pass out.
Garret had always excused his actions, grumbling to himself that the reason he capitulated to Kennisaw was that if the old man did ever hit the floor dead drunk, it would take a team of six oxen to move him.
But now, as Garret stared at the empty bottle, at his empty life, he knew that seeing the blustery pride in Kennisaw and hearing his delighted bragging had been one of the few shreds of enjoyment Garret had ever allowed himself.
It had seemed fitting to send the old man off to the devil this way. Far more fitting than that nun's suggestion of listening to some dour-faced preacher extolling the beauties of heaven.
His mother had always looked a bit wistful when she told him and Beth about the church she'd gone to back east. But Garret had never understood the allure of stone and stained glass when there were mountains and skies filled with thunder. She had tried to keep him from being a heathen, but between his father's cynicism and Kennisaw's tales of the Great Spirit, Garret had woven his own strange mix of beliefs. Lily MacQuade's Catholic upbringing had seemed as far removed from him as the heaven she spoke of.
He grimaced at the memory of the picture of heaven he'd seen in her Bible. People running around in nightshirts playing golden harps and looking about as exciting as milk-sopped bread.
Kennisaw would've gone mad as a rabid bear in a place like that—if it did exist. Far better for him to be kicking up a ruckus with the rest of the hell-raisers in the devil's saloon.
But that woman—Sister Mary Ashleen—she'd never understand. Life to her was all good or bad, black or white, evil or godly. No shades of gray a soul could get lost in. She would probably have made the sign of the cross and sent up some petition to a saint or something if he had been so foolish as to tell her that heaven could be hell. A subtle hell that burned a man's soul just the same.
He closed his eyes, seeing her as she had been hours earlier in the dusk-shrouded cemetery as he had lowered Kennisaw’s pine coffin into the freshly turned soil.
She had stood some distance away, the four children clustered around her. All starched and pressed they had been, the girls' hair plaited in stiff braids tied up in ribbons, crisp gingham pinafores covering dresses Garret had known instinctively to be their Sunday best. The boys had squirmed, uncomfortable in pantaloons and white shirts, their unruly hair slicked down with a wet comb. Even then wisps had stuck up at both boys' cowlicks, giving them a flyaway, mischievous appearance that made Garret wonder what scrapes they were planning.
