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“I’m going to be the dead,” Aaron said. “This is about the last chance to make noise I’ve got. I need to write a letter.”
The old guy shook his head. “Can’t help you. Marshal left me in charge here. Don’t have any paper for you to write on, and I can’t leave. How do I know you’re not trying to escape?”
“I can’t very well escape,” Aaron said dryly. “I’m in a jail cell.”
“You’re the first one we’ve ever had locked up in here. I’m not about to let you get away.”
“I have stationery and writing supplies with my belongings at the Grand Central Hotel. If you could just send someone, Mr.—”
“Pearsall. Ben Pearsall. Can’t do it. Ain’t anybody around to send. You’ll have to find somebody to get your stuff and post it for you tomorrow. The mail only comes in and out on Mondays and Thursdays.”
Aaron sat down on the creaky cot, defeated once more. Things sure hadn’t gone his way these past few days. He didn’t know anybody in town who he’d trust to go through his room and retrieve his belongings.
Ben Pearsall pulled up a stool and straddled it, apparently pleased to have somebody to talk to in the wee hours of the morning. “You know, you’re crazy,” he told Aaron. “The reason everybody turned out at the election down at Pettengill’s Drug Store and voted for Olney for marshal was because he told them he wouldn’t arrest anybody. Olney’s said all along the marshal’s duty is to give the town the appearance of law and order. The mayor told him the day he got his star that the first person he arrested would be his last. And that’s you, Mr. Brown. Olney didn’t have much of a choice, since he was the one you were holding a gun on.”
Aaron looked sour. “I guess not. I guess me and Uley Kirkland didn’t leave him much of a choice at all.”
“Uley Kirkland,” Ben said. “Now there’s a fine young man for you. But I can’t figure out why that kid ain’t started growin’ whiskers yet. You ever seen Uley’s skin close up? It’s as soft as a baby’s. ’Course, I imagine Uley would slug me senseless if he ever heard me say that.”
“Yeah,” Aaron said, unconsciously rubbing his elbow. She’d jumped on him like a wildcat and knocked him to the ground, and parts of his body were still smarting from it. “I reckon Uley would.”
Pearsall scooted the stool backward. “Got to get back up front. Wouldn’t want anybody to think I was talking all night to a criminal.” He tipped his hat. “Been nice conversing with you, Brown.”
Aaron sat down hard on his cot. Why didn’t Uley grow whiskers, indeed! It would be easier for a dog to turn into a horse than it would be for Uley Kirkland to grow whiskers. And, as he thought of her, he realized who could go through his belongings and retrieve his stationery from the Grand Central. Beth would have her letter, after all!
Aaron knew he probably couldn’t trust Uley. He also knew he could make her do his bidding. He knew the word for it. A bad, dark word. Blackmail. But just now he didn’t have any other options. “Pearsall!” he hollered, banging on the bars again. “Get in here, will you? I know who I can send to get my things.”
* * *
Uley received his message just after she arrived at the Gold Cup. “Uley! Uley Kirkland!” Charlie Hastings came shouting into shaft eleven, wagging a lantern back and forth, sending waves of light sweeping along the walls. “Old Ben Pearsall’s here with a note from the marshal. Olney wants you to get down to the jail for something.”
Uley groaned. There had been times during the past two days when she’d wished she’d just kept walking and let Aaron Brown go after Harris Olney. She was fast becoming a celebrity in Tin Cup, and it didn’t suit her one bit.
She left the mine astraddle her bay gelding. She gave the horse his head, letting the animal pick his way down the rocks on the steep hill while she fumed. When she got to town, she looped the horse’s bridle over the hitching rail and marched into Olney’s office. “What do you want with me, Harris?”
Olney waved toward the back. “I don’t want anything, Uley. Prisoner sent for you. I wouldn’t have called you out of the mine, but he says he’s got to see you today. Go on back.”
She stomped on through, and there sat Aaron Brown, all alone behind the bars, his head bowed as if in prayer. “I’m going to lose three dollars today because you won’t let me get in a decent day’s work,” she said.
He lifted his head, and his blue eyes were like deep, sparkling water. She figured he probably hadn’t slept all night. He looked awful. If she weren’t feeling so put-upon, she might even have been sad for him this morning. “You’re the only person I know in this place, Uley. I need somebody to help me.”
“I’m not likely to help you. I’m the one who saw you pull the gun on Olney. I’m the chief witness against you.”
“I’m not looking for a lifelong buddy,” he said tersely. “I’m just looking for an acquaintance who’ll go up to the Grand Central and bring me some stationery. I’ve got to write a letter to one person before they string me up. Old Ben Pearsall told me the mail goes out today.”
“This is why you called me down from the mine?” She was torn between being furious with him and feeling halfway important because he’d needed her. This was his dying request, after all. Maybe it was an important letter. Maybe it was a letter to the governor to confess his crime.
“Yeah. I tried to get Pearsall to go, but he wouldn’t do it. You’re my only hope, Uley. Will you go?”
She eyed him. “I don’t know.” He stood there, grasping the bars with both hands. They were big hands and, looking at him, she wondered how she’d gotten him to the ground.
“Why?” he asked.
His robin’s-egg-blue eyes seemed twice as blue with his face so dirty.
She didn’t know exactly why it happened. Maybe it was because Aaron Brown knew she was a female. Maybe it was because she’d considered her femininity so much during these past days. Whatever the reason, she felt herself blush, felt a spreading burst of heat fan her face the way flame spreads in a forest. “I don’t think it would be right, Mr. Brown. Me going through your personal things.”
“Uley Kirkland!” He hit the bars with his open hand. “Don’t you go all prim and proper on me now. You’re the one who pounced on me out of nowhere and left me sprawled in the dirt. You’re the one that’s got every poor depraved male in this town thinking you’re one of them.”
“You hush up, Mr. Brown.” Her face turned even redder. “You mustn’t say that.”
“Oh, mustn’t I?”
“No.”
He took a deep breath. “You leave me no choice. I’ve got to blackmail you, Miss Uley Kirkland. I’ll tell them all. I’ll tell every single one of them that you’ve had them duped.”
Uley grabbed the bars with both hands. “You wouldn’t do such a thing.”
He brought his nose level with hers. “I might. Because I’m desperate enough to do anything.”
“I would never forgive you.”
“Doesn’t matter. I’m gonna be dead on Wednesday. Doesn’t matter one bit how long you hold a grudge. I won’t be around to enjoy it.”
She saw he had her backed up into a corner. “You promised me. You’re a liar.”
“That isn’t the worst of my sins, if you’ll recall. But you’re right. I’ll confess—” he added the rest for emphasis “—ma’am.”
“Hush up,” she said, lowering her voice. “Somebody might hear you.”
“Does that mean you’ll do it?”
They stared at each other, the silence ticking away between them.
Aaron didn’t let up. Desperation ruled him now. “Get down there, Uley. The stage leaves for St. Elmo in two hours.”
She collected her wits. She had no choice but to do his bidding. With head held high, she sauntered out to the front office, where Harris and George Willis had their heads together, discussing the pretty Tin Can Laura, the hurdy-gurdy girl who kept her money stashed in a tin can. Uley walked up Grand Avenue to the Grand Central to tell D. J. Mawherter exactly what she wanted.
The hotel proprietor didn’t even hesitate before he handed her the key. “You tell Harris Olney somebody’s got to be responsible for that criminal’s room,” he hollered as she started up the stairs. “You tell Harris to bring that man down here to settle up before they hang him Wednesday. I can’t get any gold out of a dead man.”
She hurried up the steps to the second floor, thinking, If he dies, I’ll be halfway responsible for it.
No, she argued with herself. Aaron Brown is responsible for it. One hundred percent totally responsible for his choices. Just the way I’m responsible for mine.
She found the room, unlocked the door and stepped inside. In a tiny room with pine walls and no plaster stood an iron bed, a rickety bureau that looked as if someone who should have known better had tried to build it, and a washbasin. Mr. Aaron Brown’s satchel waited in the corner. She heaved it up and began to unfasten it, feeling more and more uneasy and curious as his private items began to tumble out onto the quilt.
He owned a beautiful black suit and a bolo tie made of leather and elkhorn. He owned two stiff-as-a-board starched shirts and several pairs of woolen socks. And—oh, goodness—he possessed white drawers just like her pa’s.
Purposefully she started digging in another area of the satchel.
She found what he’d sent her for, a box of blue stationery and a quill pen and a little bottle of ink, all tied up in a linen square. She pulled those items out and put everything else back in place. She folded his writing utensils into the cloth to carry them.
There.
That had been easy enough.
She was almost out the door by the time she saw his other belongings atop the bureau.
He owned a bottle of bay-rum aftershave. She pulled the cork and sniffed it. The scent, keen and exotic, pleased her. She found it difficult imagining anybody as dirty as Aaron Brown ever cleaning up and shaving and splashing on something that smelled this good.
He also owned a pocket watch and a Bible. She wondered, as she picked up the Bible and flipped it open, whether he was an Old Testament Christian or a New Testament one. Probably Old Testament, she decided. After all, that was where it said “An eye for an eye.” He was in jail, waiting to hang. She figured he probably hadn’t been listening in Sunday school when his teacher had brought up the Ten Commandments.
Uley set the Bible down and picked up the watch. She guessed, just from handling the timepiece, that it wasn’t worth much. Feeling only slightly guilty, she clicked it open. To my beloved son Aaron, the inscription read. May your heart always know when it’s time to come home.
She arranged everything on the bureau just as it had been when she arrived, thinking of her own ma and missing her beyond measure. How wonderful it would be, she decided, to know you had a mother...someone to go home to...no matter how old you were. For a moment, thinking of Mr. Aaron Brown and the awful fate awaiting him, she felt sadness. Rather, she felt sadness for his mother. She imagined hanging was a tragic thing when it happened to the baby you’d once cradled in your arms.
She gathered the belongings Aaron had requested and closed the door behind her. She walked back down Grand Avenue. Now that she’d seen the suit and the bay rum and the watch, she felt as if she knew him somewhat better. She didn’t stop to wonder at any of it. All her discoveries really proved was that attempted murderers read the Bible and smelled good and had mamas at home who loved them, too.
* * *
Aaron thought he’d go crazy waiting for Uley to get back to the jailhouse. He’d never heard anything so good as the sound of her soft voice in the front office. Harris and Uley came back to his cell together. “Here’s your writing supplies,” the marshal said, eyeing him. “You aren’t going to use that quill pen for a getaway weapon, are you?”
“No, sir,” Aaron answered with mock respect. “I’m gonna write a letter, Marshal. Do you have any problem with that?”
The marshal didn’t answer that question. He changed the subject instead. “Mawherter says you’ve got to settle up down at the Grand Central. I’ll take you up there next Tuesday so you can pay him.”
“That’s real kind.”
It became increasingly clear the marshal wasn’t of a mind to leave them, so Uley made the only comment she could think of. “You’ve got a nice suit, Mr. Brown. You want me to make sure the undertaker buries you in it?”
“Doesn’t matter to me any,” he told her, clearly wanting to be free of both of them so that he could begin his last correspondence. “Doesn’t matter what clothes I’m wearing. I won’t be around to see it.”
* * *
Harris Olney waited until Uley left the jailhouse before he went storming back into Aaron’s presence. “You’d better start thinking before you get innocents like Uley Kirkland involved in this,” he growled.
“I have a letter to write,” Aaron stated calmly. “Uley was the only person I could convince to go down to the Grand Central and get my things.”
Harris scowled at his prisoner. “I know you’re writing Elizabeth.”
“I surely am.”
“I knew it, Brown!” Harris said. “I’ll be glad when Judge Murphy comes over Alpine Pass and I can stop looking at your dirty hide. What’re you going to tell Beth?”
“The bad news. That I’m going on to eternity and I’m not taking you with me.”
Harris stomped out, and Aaron could hear him in the office, slamming drawers and cussing until, finally, the room grew quiet. Aaron Brown stood behind the bars, waiting. He knew what was coming next.
Harris returned. “No need to involve that kid Kirkland in this anymore,” he said. “I can post that letter for you on the afternoon supply wagon.”
Aaron stood there and laughed at him. “Sure you will. You’ll post it right into the rubbish bin. Uley’s going to do it. I’m going to make sure this letter stays safe from you.”
“What kind of a hold do you have over Uley, anyway?” the marshal asked. “How are you getting that kid to take such good care of you?”
Aaron couldn’t help grinning. He wouldn’t breathe a word to Olney. He’d promised her, after all. “Guess Uley just feels responsible for what’s going to happen to me come Wednesday morning.” He sat down, pen in hand, and started scribbling, and Harris finally left him alone.
“My dearest, dearest Beth,” Aaron wrote, beginning his letter. He didn’t have much time, but even so, he paused for a moment. He found joy in finally placing his words upon paper. He rolled the pen between his fingers and then dipped it again into the ink. Ah, he thought. Indeed the pen is mightier than the sword.
He began to write again.
I hope this letter reaches you posthaste. It is difficult to write, little one. You see, your Aaron is bound for the promised land, and very soon. I fear that Harris Olney has won out over us at last.
I know your tearful advice was given in love; however, I could not heed your wise words. You know what I came here to do. I did not succeed. I did succeed in placing myself in a good deal of trouble. I was thwarted in my efforts to capture Olney by a do-gooder who jumped upon me when my six-shooter was pointed directly at Olney’s back. (Yes, believe it, even out here in the lawless gold country, a few do-gooders have found their way.) The only law and order in this place is Harris Olney himself, and a faceless judge who is due to come back and convict me on Tuesday. My demise is scheduled for Wednesday.
I love you, dear heart. I write this so that you may have an answer to the questions you would have entertained when I did not return. Will there be a potluck supper next Wednesday night? Please have everyone at church pray for me that evening at services, even though I will already be gone.
Dear heart, break this gently to Mama.
Thank you for being such a precious and gentle spirit.
All my love,
Aaron
He stopped writing and gazed out the window at the sky. As the hours passed, he found it harder and harder to believe an angel of mercy would come to Tin Cup and snatch him out of his jail cell.
He turned away from the window.
He reread the letter, folded it and slipped it inside the fancy blue envelope he knew Elizabeth would recognize in the stack of mail just as soon as it came off the stage at Fort Collins.
With a flourish, he addressed it to her: Elizabeth Calderwood, Flying S Ranch, Fort Collins, Colorado.
Chapter Three
Uley was so mad right now, she wanted to spit in the dirt. All morning long she’d let her head grow bigger by the minute, thinking Aaron Brown was writing some important correspondence about his crime to the governor of Colorado—only to find out he had been wasting his time doing this instead.
The letter was addressed in the neatest handwriting she’d ever seen from a man, all perfectly drawn, without so much as one blot: Elizabeth Calderwood, Flying S Ranch, Fort Collins, Colorado.
She wanted to just spit in the dirt.
Uley decided Aaron Brown would go to his grave next week getting everything he could from her. Uley had heard the marshal offer, in as gentlemanly a way as possible, to post the letter so that Uley wouldn’t be put out of any more time. But Mr. Aaron Brown would have none of it. He’d made her promise, right there in front of the marshal, that she would deliver it herself and wait to see it safely out of town.
So here she stood, mad enough to hurt something, watching for the supply wagon to head out over Alpine Pass.
Elizabeth Calderwood. Uley didn’t know why it irked her so that he had taken up her whole day, said it was something important, then posted a letter that must be a gushing goodbye letter to some girl he’d been sparking back home. She thought about the aftershave and the handsome black suit and figured some girl would probably fall for him if she knew him all gussied up and smelling good. Too bad Miss Elizabeth Calderwood couldn’t see him now, all stinking and mean down in that jail, and being held for murder. Uley bet seeing him like that would take the stars out of any woman’s eyes.
“Yah!” Lester McClain hollered at the mules as he shook the reins and urged his freight team forward.
