Twilight

“Christian, shut your mouth at once.”

“He couldn’t sit without a pillow for a week. Mama was so mad. She said she wouldn’t make him supper till he sold that horse. But he said no and she made him supper anyway, ‘cause Miss Beecher says a good wife don’t send her family to bed on an empty tummy.”

“Doesn’t send,” Jessica said quickly. “Not don’t. Now, keep quiet.”

“Who’s Miss Beecher?” Rance asked.

“Mama has her book.”

“Of course I do. Miss Beecher projects sound views on thrift, morals, and improved diet. We could all stand a good browse from time to time.”

“Mama always looks in it.”

“I most certainly do not.”

“Yes, you do, Mama. You have lots of books to help you be a good wife. You’re lookin’ in them all the time.”

“Christian, I don’t want to hear another sound from you.”

“You were afraid of Pa’s horse, Mama.”

“Anyone of sound mind would have been. Give me those.” She reached one of those pristine white-gloved hands across her son and grabbed the reins. Rance had the impression that she did so solely to quiet her son. She didn’t seem the sort to want it known her departed husband’s hind end had once been fodder for some animal. Still, the image brought Rance a certain deeply felt satisfaction, as did her sputtering. He had to struggle to keep a bemused look from his face, and he directed his scowl at nothing in particular.

Jack would have kept to any pace simply on Rance’s verbal command. It mattered little in whose hands the reins were gripped. But Jess didn’t know that. And damned if Rance didn’t detect the slightest softening of her mouth, a decided satisfaction in the angling of her silly hat down at her son. No, but she wouldn’t allow her eyes to even alight upon him. Damned proud woman. He wondered if she had any idea how beautiful she looked with that ribbon fluttering like wings about her and her hair ablaze with prairie fire.

She kept the reins all the way to Twilight, smack down the center of Main Street, and even managed to haul back on them with a bit too much fervor when they pulled before Ledbetter’s General Store. Perhaps because of all those curious stares they’d drawn since the moment the buggy rolled into town, stares that seemed to force Jessica’s nose up another notch. But Rance had far more to occupy his thoughts at the moment. Far more, in the form of his own Wanted handbills, fluttering in the hot midmorning breeze upon nearly every storefront, amid all the other handbills. Twenty-five hundred to the man who could bring him in alive. A thousand for his dead body.

Spotz must be itching to watch him die to offer bounty like that.

He’d purposely cropped his hair short to fall over his forehead, and he’d shaved and pulled his hat well over his eyes. Had even chosen a light-colored shirt and kerchief, the better to go unrecognized. No, he looked nothing like some artist’s rendering of the long-haired, black-garbed, bearded outlaw Rance Logan. Yet his own bleak stare seemed to taunt him from every handbill as he alighted from the buggy and attempted to assist Jessica. But she’d already hopped down, obviously spurning his attempt at gallantry. Surely this was not in deference to his shoulder.