The Gunslinger's Bride

“Ruth’s right. I’m glad to see you. About damned time is all I have to say.” Caleb handed the baby back to his wife. “We’ll talk at supper.”

With that, he turned and left the house, the door banging shut in a gust of wind.

“He doesn’t have a coat on,” Ruth commented.

“I think he was a little distracted,” Brock replied.

“He is glad you’re here.”

“I hope so.” For some reason it seemed easier to talk to this woman than to his brother. “I spent too long on the trail and I’m ready to settle in somewhere. Make up for the lost years, if I can.”

“Well, you’re welcome here. This is your home.”

He didn’t know if she’d feel the same if she knew what he’d been doing all those years, if she knew the things he had to put behind him: the violence and the bloodshed and the wavering line between right and wrong that he’d walked for so long. Too long.

Brock didn’t know if it was possible to put all that behind him, if the man he’d become could be the man he wanted to be. Even if he cut himself off from every person who’d known him or known of him, and started over, could he ever live at peace with himself?

“I’ll have the tub and water brought to your room.”

Brock thanked his new sister-in-law and climbed the stairs, his gun hand riding the glossy banister.

Catching up took Brock and Caleb most of the day, half a bottle of rum and several cigars. Ruth prepared lunch, something she claimed to enjoy, since Caleb normally ate in the bunkhouse with the hands at noon.

After telling the story of his and Ruth’s romance, Caleb related how Will had come home a year ago, wanting to return the gold. Caleb hadn’t wanted it, didn’t want money to be a factor between them, so they’d secretly buried it in a cornerstone of the Double Deuce Saloon, which Caleb owned.

“That doesn’t sound like the Caleb I remember,” Brock told him. “I can’t picture you doing something like that.”

Caleb grinned. “Hopefully I’ve changed—for the better.”

“I saw Zeke yesterday,” Brock told him.

Caleb slapped a hand against his thigh. “Are you the stranger he saw outside the hardware store?”

Brock grinned. “That’s me.”

“He was taken with the revolvers you wore. I see you don’t have ’em on today.”

And he had no idea how difficult it was for Brock to leave them in his room, even while in this house.

Caleb’s eyes narrowed and he pierced Brock with a look he remembered too well, a look that said he’d see through him if he tried to lie. “So what have you been doing all these years, little brother?”

Chapter Two

Brock brushed his fingertips across the empty space on his denim-clad thigh where his holster should have been. The absence of that familiar weight kept surprising him. “I hired on in a range war in Wyoming after I left here. Occasionally I rode shotgun for Wells Fargo on special runs. But the ranchers kept hiring me to do their dirty work, and they paid too well to say no. After a while it seemed I was getting so many offers that I could choose.”

Brock stood and stretched his legs, striding to the window and gazing out at the snow-covered mountains. “I traveled with army details to recover stolen horses. Took a couple of U.S. Marshal jobs. Things like that.”

“You never wrote.”

The words hung in the air, more of a hurt-revealing question than an accusation.

Brock hadn’t written because he hadn’t wanted his enemies to be able to track him to his family. The sugarcoated version of the past he was feeding his brother was enough. The less Caleb knew, the better. “I didn’t know what to say.”

“You could have said you were okay.”

“You were mad that I left, weren’t you?”

“I was mad at your hotheaded foolishness that got that boy killed.”

Brock stiffened and turned his gaze to Caleb. “I didn’t go looking for that kid, he came gunning for me.”

“Because you dishonored his sister!”

“What happened between me and Abby was our business.”

“Something like that becomes family business, Brock. Her father would have come after you himself if he’d known first. But it was Guy who found out and Guy who tried to protect his sister’s honor.”

“I never even had a chance to make it right,” Brock argued.

“What would you have done? Married Abby?”

The question sucked the tension from Brock’s body. He drew a palm over his face, then hung his thumb in his belt. “I don’t know.”

“You wouldn’t have,” Caleb answered for him.

“I was young.”

“You were a hothead.”

“Maybe I was, but I didn’t want to kill Guy.”

“I know that.” Those words were laced with sincerity and regret. “And things were ugly here, too. I knew why you left. I always knew. It wasn’t just the boy. You’d have been found innocent of his death—there were witnesses. You were protecting yourself. Guy was just the last straw.”

“I was all mixed up. You and Will were fighting…and then he left with the gold.”

“Don’t forget Marie,” Caleb added.

“And Marie,” he agreed with a nod. Caleb’s understanding eased away the burden of Brock’s worries. His brother had changed, and it was a change Brock liked. “You’re different now than before I left.”

“Maybe that’s why I understand that you’re different, too. It’s been a long time. We all change. And grow. Thank God.”

“And Zeke is so big, I can hardly believe it. He looks like you did.”

Caleb grinned and agreed.

Brock’s thoughts switched to the other boy he’d seen the day before. “What is Abby doing at Watson’s Hardware, anyway? Working there? Seems like an unlikely place for a female.”

“Might be an unlikely place for a female, but she’s been doing a fine job of running it since Jed passed on.”