Marry Me. Jo Goodman

after being shot at on your last trip.”

      Cole was fairly certain he didn’t want to think about that. The bullet had shaved the bark off an aspen only a foot away. His mount, demonstrating more skittishness than the stalwart Dolly, unseated and abandoned him. He’d walked most of a mile before he caught up with the horse, wondering a good part of the way if he could expect a bullet in his back. “What about the miscreants?”

      “Uh? Oh, those poor bastards. Forgot all about them.” Will saw that the doctor was handling the pace he’d set well enough, so he increased it slightly as they rode the ridgeline. The goal he’d set for himself was to get where they were going and get home again with some daylight to spare. He didn’t think Monroe or Dolly would do nearly as well after dark. “Let’s see,” he went on. “That was about four or five months ago. They say trouble comes in threes, but these two didn’t need help. They rode out this way from Denver after getting drunked up and shootin’ off their guns in a fancy house. Killed one of the girls, though no one’s sure they meant to. Seems they were out of sorts with someone at their card table, and she happened to be sittin’ in the fellow’s lap. What I heard is that they finally got him and then they ran.”

      Cole glanced around. The landscape was as rugged and harsh as it was breath-stealing. Much higher up, snowcapped peaks glinted in the bright sunlight. Rocky crags made the climb to their summits appear unforgiving if not impossible. Around him, aspens shivered one after the other as the air stirred, their timing and execution as exquisite as a corps of ballerinas. Cocking his head to one side, Cole sought out the sound of a mountain stream. The swift rush of water made its own music, a steady percussive accompaniment to the occasional cries of birds and the murmur of the wind through the trees.

      There was a terrible beauty to the vista that could make a man admire it and be cautious at the same time.

      “Why did they come this way?” he asked, though he suspected he knew Will’s answer. A man could get lost here.

      “Lots of hidey-holes,” the deputy told him.

      That was another way of saying it, Cole supposed. In aid of suppressing a wry smile, he raised his gloved fist to his mouth and cleared his throat. “You found them, though, didn’t you?”

      “That’s a fact. Sheriff’s a member of the Rocky Mountain Detective Association. We went out as soon as we got the wire up from the Denver marshal, though I recollect now that there was a delay at the Denver end, and that gave them a good jump on us and every other lawman in these parts. Sheriff and I were out the better part of three days before we caught their trail. It wasn’t hard after that, what with them circling back on themselves. When it was all said and done, Wyatt thought we could have saved ourselves a heap of trouble if we’d stayed in one place and just let them come to us. O’course, that wouldn’t have really worked since they were dead when we found ‘em.”

      “Dead,” Cole repeated. “Shot?”

      “Hell, yes. That’s why I’m telling you this story, ain’t it? You asked about shootings, remember?”

      Reflecting on their conversation, Cole thought he probably had. There was a lesson in this, he decided, one of many he was likely to learn if he stayed in Reidsville: don’t ask that no-account Beatty boy a question if you didn’t have time for the answer.

      “One in the face, the other in the crotch,” Will said. “Wyatt thinks they had a falling out and turned on each other. Guns were right there beside them. The one shot in the face still had a cold grip on his. The one that took it in the privates dropped his Colt and was curled up like a baby, still clutchin’ his balls when he died. Guess that comforted him some, knowin’ he was leaving this world with his parts attached–even if he knew he was going to hell, which I think he must have suspicioned.”

      “I’m sure he did.”

      Will simply nodded. He pointed off to the right, indicating to Cole that he should start moving in that direction. “I guess it’s not all that odd that it should come back to me so clear now.”

      “What do you mean?” asked Cole, ducking under the low spiny branch of a pine.

      The deputy shrugged. “Don’t know exactly, except that I can see their twisted selves like they were lyin’ there on the ground in front of us. We found them in a scooped out section of hillside. Not properly a cave, on account of it not really going anywhere. Might have been a mine entrance once upon a time, though it didn’t look as though it had ever been shored up with timbers. Probably abandoned right off when there was a strike somewhere else. That happened a lot in these parts in the early days.”

      Cole remained quiet, letting Will sort out his thoughts. A sideways glance revealed the deputy’s contemplative profile.

      “What I mean about it not bein’ odd,” Will said at length, “is that it wasn’t but a piece from here that we found them. Seems like it might be natural to see it so clear like in my mind right now.” He fell silent again, then said suddenly, “I could take you there if you want. That is, after we get you introduced proper to the Abbots. There’s enough time for that, I reckon.”

      Coleridge Monroe had no idea what a proper response might be. He was saved from having to come up with one by the blast that reverberated through the mountain pass. He ducked instinctively.

      Will Beatty was careful not to laugh, though one corner of his mouth twitched. “Been expecting that,” he said. “That’d be Runt warning us off.”

      Cole was prepared to say that perhaps they should heed the warning when Will drew his rifle from the scabbard and fired a shot in the air. His ears were still ringing as the deputy paused for a ten count and fired a second round.

      “That’ll let Runt know it’s me,” Will said, sheathing the rifle. “He won’t know who you are, but he’ll give you the benefit of the doubt ‘cause I’m with you.”

      Cole looked to his right and left, peering back over his shoulder as much as he was able.

      “Don’t get all twisted there, Doc, and take a tumble. You won’t see him until he’s of a mind to let you. That’s how it is with Runt. He’s real cautious of folk. Always was more or less, but it’s worse now that his brothers are gone.”

      “Runt? I thought the sheriff said it was Ryan Abbot that most likely took a shot at me the last time.”

      “Ryan. Yeah. He’s the one. Call him Runt the same way folks like to call me that no-account Beatty boy. You get a name put to you around these parts and it pretty much sticks like pine sap.”

      “Things aren’t so different where I come from.”

      Will thought he detected an undercurrent in the doctor’s tone, not bitterness precisely, but something akin to resignation. “Reckon it’s a universal condition, Doc, unless you got something in your little black bag for it.”

      “No.” Cole shook his head. “No, I don’t.”

      “Well, then, back to Runt. You can guess how he got his name.”

      “Smallest of the litter?”

      “That’s right, though there aren’t but the three boys. Like I said, the older ones have moved on. Last I heard, Rusty–he’d be the oldest, about thirty-five or so, I’d guess–”

      Cole interrupted. “Redhead?”

      “What? Oh, his nickname, you mean. No, he was born Russell Abbot and has hair as black as a sinner’s heart. He was called that on account of a crick in his knee that sounded like a hinge needin’ some grease. Like I was saying, last I heard he found religion and two wives when a group of pilgrims came through here a while back. Settled himself in Utah.”

      “Mormons?”

      “Seems like. If Runt’s in a favorable mood, I might ask after Rusty.”

      The trail widened as they made a gradual descent. They left the relative protection of the trees for a gently sloping grassland.