speak her objections. Still, every time she looked over toward the lean-to, it was clear how much she hated Wes Hardin for putting her family in such danger with the law.
Daddy and me sat up with him all that night. Just before Barnett had gone off to the woods to watch the roads, Daddy’d had a whispered talk with him, then gone to the shed and got a pick and spade and placed them up against the lean-to door. If Wes had died in the night, he would have been in the ground before sunrise, and nobody but us would have known whatever became of him.
I was brought out of a doze just before dawn by Wes saying, “I could sure do with a drink of water, Billy-boy, if you don’t mind.” Billy-boy was what he always used to call me in our school days. Daddy was sleeping with his chin in his chest in a chair by the door. I dipped some water and held Wes’s head so he could sip at it. I could feel his fever was down. He smacked his lips like he was tasting the most delicious thing in the world, then said, “So, Billyboy, what’s new?”
He was with us about ten days all told. After a week, Barnett figured Wes was safe enough with us and decided to get on back home. He had his own family to tend to, and they were sure to be worried about him. He’d cleaned and loaded Wes’s pistols and put them on a chair by the bed. They shook hands and looked serious for a moment, then both laughed—which made Wes wince with pain. Barnett said, “You let me know soon as you feel up to having some fun in Trinity again, hear?” And Wes said, “You can count on it.” Then Barnett left for back home. He was as fine a kinsman as a man could ask for.
Three days later we got word from a close friend and neighbor named Charles Crosby that a State Police patrol had come into town that morning and was passing around a reward poster. “Somebody’s probably already talked to them,” Daddy told Wes. “They’re likely to be all around us by tonight.”
Wes had some friends called the Harrels who owned a small farm some thirty miles away, deep in the Angelina Forest. He figured he could hide out there till he finished healing. He’d have to ride, though, and he wasn’t even up walking yet. Daddy bound his wound as tight as Wes could stand it, then helped him to his feet and into his clothes. He was bent nearly double, and it was all he could do to hobble on outside to his horse. Charles held the animal next to a stump that Daddy and I helped him to step up on, and then we shouldered him up on the saddle. It all took a good while to do, and the whole process left Wes sucking for breath and pouring sweat. Worse than that, it had opened his wound some. I could see the blood seeping through his shirt just over his gunbelt. Momma gave me a sack of food she’d fixed for us and kissed me on the cheek, and Daddy squeezed my shoulder and said to take care.
We couldn’t ride hard but we rode steady. Charles rode in the lead about fifty yards, keeping a sharp eye for lawmen and bands of vigilantes. I stuck right next to Wes in case he started to fall, but he hung on tight. More than once we had to rein up and hide in the trees while small groups of riders passed us by. Wes would sip water and wet his face some. The bloodstain on his shirt kept getting bigger and his eyes were red with pain. That night we camped without a fire in a thick stand of oaks and supped on jerky. Wes was able to sleep a bit with the help of a bottle of bourbon I’d thought to bring along. In the morning the blood on his shirt was crusted, but it started flowing again as soon as he mounted up.
We arrived at the Harrel farm early next evening. It was a family of four—Dave, Louella, and their young twin sons, Jack and Mack. They were happy to see him, but were alarmed by the sight of his bloody wound. We helped get him into a bunk in the side room of their enclosed dog-run cabin. Louella sent one of the boys for a kettle of steaming water and the other for her needles and thread and a clean sheet she could shred into bandages. “Dang, woman,” Wes said, “I been sewed up so many times in the last couple of weeks, I’m starting to feel like somebody’s poorly made shirt.” Louella told him to hush his mouth or she’d start by sewing up his lips.
The Harrels were fine people. When Charles and I left in the morning, I felt sure Wes would be safe there for a while. But he wasn’t. He was never safe anywhere for long.
Dave put a shotgun and extra loads next to Wes’s bed, and every morning and afternoon him and the boys went out to work the fields, same as always. I kept a big pot of beef-and-bean soup simmering and would spoon some into Wes every time he awoke. By the fourth day it was clear how quick he was getting his strength back because he was feeling better enough to start peeping at me in a mischievous manner.
I was good-looking in my younger days, take my word on it—but I’m not and never have been a loose woman. I always did love my husband, first to last. I’m not making excuses for what I’m about to tell. I don’t think it needs any excusing, no matter what anybody else might think.
I was wearing a big loose shirt of Dave’s, and when I bent over Wes to adjust the bedclothes and his pillows, I knew he was getting a good look right down into it. He smiled up at me and I guess I smiled back. He put his hand up behind my neck and pulled my face down and gave me as good a kiss as ever I got, so wet and full of tongue it was like a living sin in my mouth. He slipped his hand up under my shirt while he was at it and my teats got tight with excitement. Then my shirt was bunched up under my arms and his mouth was at my nipples and I went dizzy from the sweetness of it. Next thing I knew, he was hard in my hand and his hand was all the way up under my skirt and we were panting like dogs against each other’s neck. He started twitching in my fist and it felt like hot wax flowing over my fingers just as a shiver slid up through me like a snake.
My tongue still gets a bit dry when I think on it.
We kissed and stroked each other real gentle, and a minute later he was back asleep. We never talked about it after that. I don’t know why I did it. I guess because I married so young and always thought I was missing some secret excitement in life. I’d get these
Pretty soon he was getting out of bed by himself and getting dressed with only a little help from me. After breakfast he’d take a chair outside and sit propped against the front wall and whittle and sing softly till Dave and the boys got back from working the cotton patch, then he’d join them at the pump to wash up for dinner. One day I was at the stove listening to them all laughing and joshing each other out at the pump when suddenly they fell quiet. I looked out the window just as the first shots cut loose.
Wes was headed for the house, running hunched over as two policemen came riding hard out of the sweet gum grove a hundred yards away, shooting their repeating rifles as they came. I couldn’t see Dave or the boys, but I heard the horses nickering loud in the corral around back. A bullet ripped splinters off the edge of the window and whanged into a skillet of corn bread on the table and knocked it to the floor. Ten feet from the house Wes got a leg shot out from under him. He hit the ground hard but kept rolling right up to the door. I stepped out and grabbed him by the shirt collar with both hands and yanked with all my might as he scrabbled to all fours. A round passed through my hair and clanked on the stove. Wes tumbled in on top of me, then pulled me with him away from the open door.
The policemen reined up in front of the house and kept firing through the door and windows as fast as they could work the levers. Wes shouted, “Shotgun!” I was already running to get it from his bedside. I heard the slam of the rear door, and when I got back, Dave and the boys were hunkered down beside Wes. “Horse,” Dave yelled at him, “in back!” He had his pistol in his hand but I knew he hadn’t fired it at another living man since he’d been in the War. His face was pale and tight as a bare skull, and for the first time since the shooting started I felt scared. I shoved the gun and a handful of loads across the floor to Wes, then threw myself over the twins and held them down on the floor while bullets kept whizzing in and biting into the walls and blowing open the canned goods on the shelves and ricocheting off the stove and pans.
Wes scrabbled up next to the window, stood up with his back to the wall, and cocked both hammers. The new wound was low on his thigh and bleeding steady but not hard. It looked like the bullet had ripped clean through the muscle without hitting bone. But the wound in his side had opened again and was bleeding free all the way down to his boot.
The policemen were laughing like they were at a turkey shoot as they fired and fired into the house. A bullet ricocheted through the room and Dave yelped and grabbed his backside. Wes gave him a glance, then looked at me and winked.
Then—all in a heartbeat—he spun into the window and fired both barrels and jumped clear again as a bullet buzzed in and whacked the wall. A horse started screaming and the police let off shooting. One of them yelled,
