open with a razor not that long ago.”
Cara came out of the bushes, straightening her clothes as best she could since the shackles still kept her from being able to move her arms very well.
“I’m sorry about that,” she said. “I didn’t know him then, and I was just loco to get away. I can’t stand to be cooped up anywhere.”
“You seem to be standing that wagon pretty well these days,” Bo pointed out.
“What choice do I have?”
She had a point there, he thought. Unless Hank Gentry and the rest of the gang showed up to rescue the prisoners, the odds of Cara LaChance ever again experiencing freedom were pretty slim.
She didn’t say anything else about Scratch. Bo took her back to the camp and escorted Lowe and Elam into the woods in turn. The prisoners ate supper and turned in for the night, stretching out on the floor of the wagon and wrapping themselves in blankets against the chilly night air.
Bo and Brubaker headed for their bedrolls as well. Scratch stood the first watch. He sat on a log near the fire, his Winchester across his knees, and let his senses reach out into the night, alert for anything that was out of the ordinary. He never looked into the flames for more than a second at a time, knowing that to do so would weaken his night vision. He knew he needed to stay as vigilant as possible.
Time passed slowly, as it usually did when he was standing guard. Scratch was a naturally gregarious sort. He loved talking to people and just having folks around him. He had company tonight, of course, but they were all asleep. He was glad it was cold. The chill probably helped keep him awake.
The sound that drifted to his ears was so soft that he almost didn’t hear it at first. Then it came again, and he realized someone was saying, “Psst!”
The little hiss came from the wagon. One of the prisoners was trying to get his attention. Maybe supper hadn’t agreed with whichever one it was, and he or she needed to visit the bushes again. In that case, Scratch thought, he would have to wake up Bo and Brubaker, and the deputy would likely be pretty annoyed.
He stood up and went over to the wagon. Putting his mouth close to the tiny crack around the door, he asked in a whisper, “What do you want?”
“Mr. Morton?” It was Cara’s voice on the other side of the door. Scratch could barely hear it because of the snoring that came from Lowe and Elam. “Scratch? Is that you?”
“Yeah, it’s me,” Scratch replied. He wondered if she had overheard the conversation between him and Bo and Brubaker earlier and had known that he was taking the first shift on guard. “You need somethin’?”
“Just ... some company, I guess. I’m havin’ trouble sleepin’.”
He didn’t doubt it. The wagon had to be as uncomfortable as all get-out, plus there was the fact that she was on the way to be tried and hanged. Knowledge like that had to weigh heavily on a person.
“I can’t let you out of there,” he told her.
“I know you can’t. But maybe ... maybe you can talk to me for a little while, until I get to feelin’ like I could doze off?”
Scratch glanced at the two bedrolls near the fire. Bo and Brubaker appeared to be sleeping soundly. As long as he whispered, he didn’t suppose it would hurt anything for him to talk to Cara for a few minutes. He couldn’t let it distract him from being watchful, though.
“All right,” he said. “What do you want to talk about?”
“I don’t know. I just needed to hear the sound of another human voice. You ever get like that, Scratch? Just so blasted lonely that you think you’re gonna shrivel up inside and die?”
“Not hardly,” he said. “Bo’s always around to talk to.”
“You’re lucky,” Cara said. “Growin’ up I never had any real friends.”
“You must’ve had family.”
She laughed, but the sound was bitter and humorless.
“Yeah, some family, tryin’ to make a livin’ out of a hardscrabble farm in the piney woods, down in East Texas. All my ma and pa cared about was how much work they could get out of me, and after I wasn’t a kid anymore, all my brothers cared about was what else they could get out of me, if you know what I mean.”
Scratch frowned.
“Sorry,” he said. “Must’ve been a pretty hard life. But that’s no excuse to go to robbin’ and killin’.”
“I never killed nobody!” Cara said, and now she sounded vehement. “I know they say I have, but that’s all lies. There’s nobody who can say they ever saw me kill anybody, because I haven’t. It was Hank and the other fellas in the gang who did all the killin’.”
“You were there for some of it.”
“Well, what else could I do? What happened is, Hank came along a few years ago and I met up with him, and all I could think about was how if I went away with him, I’d get away from that damn farm once and for all. And so when he asked me to, I did. It didn’t seem like I had any choice.”
“We’ve always got choices,” Scratch said.
“Yeah, but I didn’t know that then. I didn’t know what Hank was really like, either. I didn’t know he was an outlaw until I was part of the gang. And then it was too late. I had to go along with whatever he said. He can be ... well, he can be really nice when he wants to, but he can be really mean when he wants to be that way, too. I had to keep him happy with me, or else he would’ve turned me over to the rest of the men. Or worse, just left me somewhere to shift for myself.”
Scratch didn’t see how that could be any worse than what she was talking about, but obviously she felt differently about it. He said, “If all this is true, I’m sorry for you, miss. But you’ll have a chance to tell your side of it at the trial.”
“Do you think anybody will ever believe me?”
“Well, considerin’ how you came after me with that razor and how you’ve acted since we left Fort Smith ...”
“I haven’t done anything except yell some, and you’d yell, too, if you thought you were gonna be dancin’ at the end of a hang rope for things you didn’t do. And as for the razor, like I told your friend Mr. Creel, I was just about out of my head. I can’t stand bein’ locked up. I was loco to get away.” Cara paused, then continued in her soft whisper, “I’m sorry for what I done, Scratch, really and truly sorry. And I’m glad now that I didn’t hurt you.”
“Huh. You and me both,” Scratch said.
A big part of him didn’t believe anything Cara was saying to him. She was just playing up to him, he told himself, trying to make him feel sorry for her.
But what if it was true, even partially? Somebody living as hellish an existence at home as she had described might do anything to get away from it, even throwing in with a gang of bandits and cutthroats. And once she was a part of that gang, what else could she have done except go along with whatever its leader wanted? She must have been terrified of Hank Gentry.
So there was a part of him that actually did feel sorry for her ...
“You’d better try to get some sleep now,” he told her. This conversation had gone on long enough.
“All right,” she whispered. “Thanks for talking to me, Scratch. It eased my troubled mind a little.”
“I’m glad to hear that.”
She laughed again, and this time it was a more genuine sound.
“You probably thought I was gonna ask you to let me go, didn’t you?”
“It wouldn’t have done you any good,” he told her.
“I know that. That’s why I didn’t waste my time.
You’re not the sort of man who’d turn on his friends for a woman.”
“No, I sure ain’t.”
He started to turn away, when he heard her whisper, “But what about a woman who knows where there’s a fortune in greenbacks and gold?”
