Blessing

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.