Blessing. Deborah BedfordЧитать онлайн книгу.
his beard on fire? He had to wait four hours before Doc Gillette would come up out of the Bullion King and treat his burns.”
“Well,” Charlie Sparks said, “that just goes to show you how thankful everyone in this town is to Uley. This is one important trial around here.”
“Three cheers for Uley!” someone else joined in. “Hip-hip-hooray!”
Uley kept her eye on the timber, pegging it into the corner of the rocks with hammer blows so fierce they made the granite shiver. “I don’t like being the entertainment for the rest of this town. I’d just as soon I didn’t have to go down there tomorrow.” That was the understatement of the year. “Wish somebody else could go down there and testify in my place.”
“There isn’t anyone else can tell the jury what you saw, Uley,” her pa said.
She went after the pegs even harder. “I know that.”
On Wednesday afternoon, just when Uley thought all the hoopla was about to die down, Marshal Harris Olney himself came up shaft eleven wagging a lantern out in front of him. “Uley?” he shouted so loud that loose rocks fell off the ledges above them. “Is Uley Kirkland back here?”
Back here? Back here? Back here? The sound echoed all the way up the shaft.
“I’m standing right beneath your nose, Marshal. If you holler much louder than that, you’re going to make the whole shaft cave in.”
“I need you to come outside with me, Uley. You and me, we need to have a talk.”
“I don’t see as we have anything to talk about.”
“Oh, but we do.” Olney wrapped his arm around her shoulder and propelled Uley forward. “You saved my life, remember? I’m here to offer you compensation for all your trouble.”
“And what might that compensation be?”
“I’ll tell you when we reach daylight, son,” he said.
Then, at the mouth of shaft eleven, Olney began to lay out his plan.
“I know you are just as eager to do away with that foul murderer as I am, Uley. I know you have eyewitness testimony against Aaron Brown. I’m here to encourage you not to falter in any of it. I have a hefty reward waiting for you in my office for the day Aaron Brown is hanged.”
“I don’t need a reward, Marshal,” she said, feeling an odd twinge of guilt when she thought how Aaron’s hanging would absolve her of a problem, too. “I’ll just be glad to know that justice has been done.”
* * *
It was seven o’clock that night, and Uley was finishing up her father’s washing in the tub beside the warm wood stove, when there came a sharp knock at the cabin door. Uley straightened, leaving one last flannel shirt in the water to soak, and poked all the tendrils of hair up beneath her hat.
Sam opened the door and stuck his head out into the darkness. “Hello?”
Aaron stood on the rickety porch, his Stetson brim crumpled in his fists. “I’d like to see Uley, if I may.”
Samuel cocked his head, not quite knowing if he should let the man in or coax him off the porch with his shotgun. “Why on earth would you want to see Uley on the eve of your trial?”
“If you don’t mind, sir. It’s a matter of great importance. I need some private time with her, sir.”
When Aaron said “her,” Samuel’s eyes grew as big around as the twelve-and-a-half-bit pieces everybody used for exchange down at Frenchy’s.
“Yes,” Aaron said, still wringing his hat. “I know about Uley. Didn’t mean to find out, sir, I can assure you.”
Uley stood right behind Sam in the doorway.
Clouds hid the moon and the lacy formations of stars that hung over Tin Cup when the night stayed clear. It was as dark outside as a cast-iron kettle.
“Please, Uley,” Aaron said. “Come on out. Just for a minute.”
Uley stepped around her father awkwardly, knowing that he, too, was uncertain how to deal with this. Her entire life, she’d never had a gentleman caller.
Which was understandable, seeing as how everybody in this town thought she was one herself.
“Pa,” Uley said finally, saving them all. “No one knows what’s going to happen tomorrow. If Aaron Brown wants to say something to me, this might very well be his last chance to say it.”
Sam looked up at the empty night sky, as if he were expecting to find an answer there.
“It won’t take too long,” Aaron said, jumping on the opportunity. “She’s right. It might be something I’ll never get another chance to say.”
Uley was uncertain as to how she felt about standing out on a dark stoop with a man who’d pulled a gun on the marshal. But she’d already proven once that she could handle Aaron Brown if he gave her trouble.
Sam turned to the man on the porch. “I warn you, I’ll be waitin’ right inside this door, with my shotgun cocked and loaded.”
“Yes, sir,” Aaron said. “That was what I was expectin’.”
Uley tromped out onto the boards and pulled the door closed behind her.
When the door shut, they couldn’t even see each other, it was so black.
Aaron knew right where she was standing. He could hear her breathing.
Uley knew right where he was standing. She could smell his bay rum.
“Well, I must say,” she told him finally. “You smell a mite nicer than you did the last time I caught a whiff of you.”
“It’s amazing what a washtub will do for a man.”
“Well,” she said, “I’m surprised you were able to leave Elizabeth Calderwood long enough to come out here.”
“Elizabeth’s fine without me,” he said. “She’s safely inside her room at the Pacific Hotel. There are so many men on the lookout for her, she can’t make a move without having a good dozen of them following down the street after her. They’re looking after her like bees protect their queen.”
“So I’ve noticed.” Through the window, Uley could see her father lifting his gun off the rack and wiping down the barrel. “You’d best get on with what you came to say,” she said. “It doesn’t look like he’s going to give you much time.”
At precisely that moment, the moon moved out from behind a cloud and Uley saw his face.
“You make a habit,” she asked out of the blue, “of winking at every girl you see beneath a mule?”
He looked straight up at the night sky and guffawed.
“I was protecting our secret, Uley,” he said. “I didn’t know what else to do.”
“Well,” she said, crossing her arms, “I don’t think that was a very good way of protecting it.”
He stopped fiddling with his hat. He decided just to put it back on his head and go back to the hotel. “Forget it, Uley,” he told her. “I wasn’t winking at you, anyway. I was winking at the mule.”
* * *
Alex Parent rang the Tin Cup town bell in the belfry of the town hall at precisely nine on Thursday morning.
Cher-bong. Cher-bong. Of course, there wasn’t any reason to ring it. Some two hundred men were already jostling for position inside.
Miners and ranchers had been arriving from all over Taylor Park since just after seven. Another wagonload of men had just gotten in over Cumberland Pass from Pitkin. Judge Murphy had sent for them to come. He figured there wasn’t anybody in the town of Tin Cup unbiased enough to give Mr.