Page 64 of West Wind

“She married?”

“Nope.”

Jacob tossed his cigar into the dirt and ground the stub with the tip of his plain work boot. “Shame,” he muttered. “If you don’t, somebody else will.”

Shelley looked toward the window of the loft. “Most likely.”

Jacob tried to convince him that he should marry the girl he was so obviously smitten with, and who obviously cared for him, but the preacher’s reasoning fell on deaf ears. Shelley displayed no anger, but the more Jacob talked the more withdrawn he became. He didn’t argue, he didn’t agree. He just didn’t listen. Jacob finally gave up and retired for the night, leaving Shelley standing in the open doorway to the barn, lighting another cigar.

He lifted his eyes to the window of the loft again just in time to see Annie’s hands. With the light, that’s all he could see. Her hands. She placed the dreamcatcher in the windowsill, propping it against the pane. He continued to stare for several long minutes, assuming she’d gone to bed, but then her palm pressed against the glass. Beyond the dreamcatcher and her hand all was dark, but she was there, watching him. What was she thinking? Was she scared? Or was she pleased with herself?

A large part of the responsibility for this mess was his own. He should’ve seen it, should’ve seen her in that lousy drawing on the wanted posted, should’ve smelled a rat from the start. But he hadn’t. He’d been blinded. Fooled. Snookered.

His Annie had played him as expertly as Jacob played his fiddle. She’d gotten what she wanted, Annabelle St. Clair had, she’d wrapped him around her little finger and steered him halfway across the country.

Once a fool, always a fool.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

“I don’t think they’re coming.” Mordecai sounded unusually tense. “We’ve been in this Godless town for nearly a week⁠—”

“They’ll be here,” Wendell assured his partner calmly. “I feel it in my bones.”

Their hotel room was well short of adequate, cramped and not as clean as he’d like. The noise never stopped, not even in the dead of night. There had been three shootings in the street since their arrival, and the screams of revelers were constant.

Mordecai had said again and again how he hated Virginia City. The sin, the sinners, noise. Wendell didn’t care for the constant noise himself, but more than that he was sick to death of hearing his partner complain.

“They might’ve decided to pass Virginia City by,” Mordecai reasoned. “If that’s the case, we can only hope the Walsh brothers catch up with them before they reach San Francisco. If it’s not too late.”

Wendell stood at the window to look down upon the street. From this vantage point he could see the main street from one end nearly to the other. If… no, when Shelley and Annabelle St. Clair rode into town, he’d know it.

“She’s still alive,” he insisted.

Mordecai shook his head. “Do you feel that in your bones, too?”

He turned to Mordecai and smiled. “Common sense. Easier to guide a live woman through the Sierra Nevada than to carry a body.”

The search for Annabelle St. Clair had changed for him in the past few weeks. He’d almost forgotten about the assignment, and now concentrated almost entirely on the man who’d punched him out in the Brayton alley. Had tricked him. Had taken the woman out of his reach. As his hate for Shelley grew his mission changed, though he never mentioned it to Mordecai. Wendell no longer cared if they returned Annabelle St. Clair to her uncle, or if she was turned in for the reward by some bounty hunter. She was a killer, after all.

“We may have to kill the bounty hunter.” He broached the subject carefully, casually. He was never certain how his partner would react to such ideas.

“That shouldn’t be necessary,” Mordecai said coldly. “We might be able to reason with him. If he becomes a problem he can be taken out with a bullet in the foot or the leg. There’s no reason to⁠—”

“How in hell did you end up in this line of work?” Wendell snapped. “You ain’t got the stomach for it. Why? I’d really like to know.”

Mordecai stared at him with pale eyes which were more often than not sad and self-condemning. “I found myself unsuited for my true calling so I turned to this profession. ‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall sit at the hand of God.’”

Wendell laughed harshly. “Is that what you think we are? Peacemakers? You’re deluding yourself, Butterfield. We’re not peacemakers, we’re executioners.”

Mordecai drew himself to his full height and glared at Wendell through narrowed eyes. “I’m leaving,” he whispered, turning away to gather his hat, his holster, and his Bible.

“Well, don’t be too long,” Wendell snapped. “I’m going out for a bite to eat later on, and I haven’t slept in twenty hours so you’ll have to keep watch.”

“You don’t understand,” Mordecai replied calmly. “I’m not coming back.”

Wendell turned a stern face to Mordecai Butterfield, a man he was beginning to consider weak and ineffectual. He should be annoyed by the desertion, but instead his first thought was good riddance. He could take Shelley alone.

He turned again to the window. There were no farewells for his partner. Even after the door closed and he was alone, he felt no trepidation, no regret. It was meant to be. Shelley and Annabelle St. Clair would come riding down the street sooner or later, and he’d be ready.