Blessing. Deborah Bedford

words made her mad. Here she sat in the muck, a full-grown woman, strong enough to take him down, nineteen years old, well into marriageable age. How dare he call her just a girl?

      She locked her arms around his neck again.

      She couldn’t think of anything worse than this, having someone find her out after all the work she’d done in the Gold Cup Mine. Just now, the only thing more humiliating than being a woman would be having them all find out she was one. “You don’t tell anybody, you hear me?” She waggled a tiny, clenched fist at him. “You don’t tell anybody, or I’ll give you what’s coming myself.”

      The horde of men from Frenchy’s flocked toward them. The stranger didn’t move his glinting eyes from her own. “Okay. Yes, ma’am.”

      * * *

      By early morning, it was all over the new town of Tin Cup that Uley Kirkland, one of the most spry young fellows in Tin Cup, had apprehended a man trying to murder the marshal. Everyone talked of a hanging. They couldn’t hang the scoundrel, though, until Judge J. M. Murphy came back from visiting his daughter in Denver.

      All day, fellows clapped Uley on the back and talked about a trial. Others deemed the stranger should just be shot. After all, sidearms had kept the law in the valley for a long time before Harris Olney ever wore his star.

      As Uley worked alongside her pa at the Gold Cup, she found herself wishing somebody would shoot the murderer and end this entire contemptible affair.

      If the stranger died, her secret would die with him.

      But then, she reasoned, that wasn’t quite true. She wouldn’t be dead. She would still have to live with it.

      Oh, Father, wishing somebody dead is not what I should be thinking, either. What a vile sinner I am!

      Around lunchtime, word filtered out that the stranger, Aaron Brown, was registered up at the Grand Central Hotel. When Uley first heard his name, she and her pa were working side by side as timbermen in shaft eleven. Uley knew this work almost as well as her father knew it, how to square off the lumber with a broadax, how to chink the fittings so that the joints stayed watertight in the shaft. “Don’t you go worrying about Aaron Brown,” Sam told her. “You did a good job last night. I’m proud of you. That criminal will be dead before we get our next paycheck.”

      But what if Aaron Brown talked before then? What if he sat on the back of his horse right before they hanged him and shouted, “Uley Kirkland is a girl! Uley Kirkland, who has cut timber right alongside you and who you’ve invited to play poker in gambling dens and who you’ve talked to about all sorts of private fellow things, the one who tries to talk to you sometimes about the Lord and His ways, is a girl!”

      How can you live one part of your life hanging on to the truth when the other part of your life is a lie?

      They would likely hang her, too, right beside him.

      Uley’d certainly fooled these men. If they knew who she really was, they’d get all tongue-tied and red in the face and flustered. She and her pa had only deceived them for propriety’s sake, a necessary little white lie so she could come West and they could stay together. Uley had not known that a small deception could carry such a heavy weight.

      All day long, she could only think of a man in jail named Aaron Brown. All day long, she could only think that he knew her secret.

      By the time she’d finished her day’s work, she figured she knew what she had to do with him. As soon as the four-thirty whistle sounded, she headed to town. She walked right into the jailhouse and sat down.

      When Harris Olney saw her, he about pumped her arm off. “Uley Kirkland,” he said, grinning. “If it weren’t for you, I’d be six feet under today. Thank you, son.”

      “You’re welcome, Marshal.” Uley paused. It was time for her to save herself. “I came by wondering if you’d do me a favor.”

      “Anything I can do for you, I’ll do it. You’re a fine young man, Uley. I’ll always do you favors. I’d especially like to see you happy today. What is it?”

      “I’d like to see the prisoner.”

      Harris furrowed his brows, sending deep creases alongside his nose. “Why on earth would you want to do that?”

      For one brief moment, Uley faltered. “It...it was dark outside. I really didn’t get a good look at him. I thought I’d just like to see who I tackled by the light of day.”

      Harris thought about it a minute. “Well.” She could see him hesitating. Of course, she would be the one to testify in court and convict him. “Odd request, it is. But I did promise you a favor.” Harris hoisted an iron key ring off a peg. Then he led her through a door and pointed to one of the cells. “He’s right over there. You stay as long as you want. Holler at me if he gets ugly.”

      She saw the stranger sitting on the stained blue ticking of his cot, his knees spread wide, his feet planted firm. His muddy brown Stetson lay upside down beside him.

      He didn’t see her coming. He’d buried his face in his hands.

      “Hello.”

      He lifted his head and gawked up at her, eyes wide with surprise. In the daylight, she saw they were blue.

      “I came to see how you were doing.”

      “I’m doing dandy.” He didn’t stand up. “Just dandy.”

      “Looks like it.”

      Aaron Brown appeared younger than she’d thought last night. She figured him to be somewhere in his thirties. He didn’t look as mean now, either. He just looked sad.

      A shock of chocolate-brown hair hung down over his forehead like an arrowhead. He plopped his elbows against his knees and let his clasped hands hang down between them. “You ever going to get tired of looking at me like I’m some kind of animal caught in a trap?”

      She shook her head. “No.” He wasn’t really bad to look at. If he hadn’t been the sort of person to creep into town and go after the strong arm of the law, she might have given him a second glance. She amended that thought. Even though he was that sort of person, she gave him a second glance.

      “So you’re Uley Kirkland,” he said softly. “Miss Uley Kirkland.”

      “That is correct.”

      Imagine it. He knew she was a woman, and he treated her like one. If a murderer could be respectful, then Aaron Brown was. It wasn’t the way he spoke to her, exactly, but the way he kept his eyes on her. She’d never before seen anyone peruse her with such respect, such open amazement. But then, she’d never before taken a flying leap at anyone, either.

      She remembered why she’d come. She leaned closer to the bars to take care of the task at hand. “Judge Murphy’s due back from Denver next Tuesday,” she told him. “You’ll be off this world by Wednesday morning.”

      “I’m painfully aware of that.”

      She leaned in even closer. “Since you will be gone off this world then, and it is absolutely no concern of yours, Mr. Brown, you must promise me you’ll tell no one about the horrible fact you discovered last night.”

      He knew exactly what she was talking about. “When you lost your hat.”

      “Yes.”

      “Good grief,” he said, sounding mildly exasperated. “Here I am fixing to hang for murder, and all you’re thinking about is covering your own hide.”

      “Yes.”

      “And I didn’t even get the chance to go after Olney.”

      “You would have, if not for me.”

      He cradled his banged-up brown Stetson in his palm as if he’d just tipped it to her. “Now, you don’t know that, do you, ma’am?”

      It was the most amazing thing,