Deborah Bedford - Blessing

“I’m not likely to help you. I’m the one who saw you pull the gun on Olney. I’m the chief witness against you.”

“I’m not looking for a lifelong buddy,” he said tersely. “I’m just looking for an acquaintance who’ll go up to the Grand Central and bring me some stationery. I’ve got to write a letter to one person before they string me up. Old Ben Pearsall told me the mail goes out today.”

“This is why you called me down from the mine?” She was torn between being furious with him and feeling halfway important because he’d needed her. This was his dying request, after all. Maybe it was an important letter. Maybe it was a letter to the governor to confess his crime.

“Yeah. I tried to get Pearsall to go, but he wouldn’t do it. You’re my only hope, Uley. Will you go?”

She eyed him. “I don’t know.” He stood there, grasping the bars with both hands. They were big hands and, looking at him, she wondered how she’d gotten him to the ground.

“Why?” he asked.

His robin’s-egg-blue eyes seemed twice as blue with his face so dirty.

She didn’t know exactly why it happened. Maybe it was because Aaron Brown knew she was a female. Maybe it was because she’d considered her femininity so much during these past days. Whatever the reason, she felt herself blush, felt a spreading burst of heat fan her face the way flame spreads in a forest. “I don’t think it would be right, Mr. Brown. Me going through your personal things.”

“Uley Kirkland!” He hit the bars with his open hand. “Don’t you go all prim and proper on me now. You’re the one who pounced on me out of nowhere and left me sprawled in the dirt. You’re the one that’s got every poor depraved male in this town thinking you’re one of them.”

“You hush up, Mr. Brown.” Her face turned even redder. “You mustn’t say that.”

“Oh, mustn’t I?”

“No.”

He took a deep breath. “You leave me no choice. I’ve got to blackmail you, Miss Uley Kirkland. I’ll tell them all. I’ll tell every single one of them that you’ve had them duped.”

Uley grabbed the bars with both hands. “You wouldn’t do such a thing.”

He brought his nose level with hers. “I might. Because I’m desperate enough to do anything.”

“I would never forgive you.”

“Doesn’t matter. I’m gonna be dead on Wednesday. Doesn’t matter one bit how long you hold a grudge. I won’t be around to enjoy it.”

She saw he had her backed up into a corner. “You promised me. You’re a liar.”

“That isn’t the worst of my sins, if you’ll recall. But you’re right. I’ll confess—” he added the rest for emphasis “—ma’am.”

“Hush up,” she said, lowering her voice. “Somebody might hear you.”

“Does that mean you’ll do it?”

They stared at each other, the silence ticking away between them.

Aaron didn’t let up. Desperation ruled him now. “Get down there, Uley. The stage leaves for St. Elmo in two hours.”

She collected her wits. She had no choice but to do his bidding. With head held high, she sauntered out to the front office, where Harris and George Willis had their heads together, discussing the pretty Tin Can Laura, the hurdy-gurdy girl who kept her money stashed in a tin can. Uley walked up Grand Avenue to the Grand Central to tell D. J. Mawherter exactly what she wanted.

The hotel proprietor didn’t even hesitate before he handed her the key. “You tell Harris Olney somebody’s got to be responsible for that criminal’s room,” he hollered as she started up the stairs. “You tell Harris to bring that man down here to settle up before they hang him Wednesday. I can’t get any gold out of a dead man.”

She hurried up the steps to the second floor, thinking, If he dies, I’ll be halfway responsible for it.

No, she argued with herself. Aaron Brown is responsible for it. One hundred percent totally responsible for his choices. Just the way I’m responsible for mine.

She found the room, unlocked the door and stepped inside. In a tiny room with pine walls and no plaster stood an iron bed, a rickety bureau that looked as if someone who should have known better had tried to build it, and a washbasin. Mr. Aaron Brown’s satchel waited in the corner. She heaved it up and began to unfasten it, feeling more and more uneasy and curious as his private items began to tumble out onto the quilt.

He owned a beautiful black suit and a bolo tie made of leather and elkhorn. He owned two stiff-as-a-board starched shirts and several pairs of woolen socks. And—oh, goodness—he possessed white drawers just like her pa’s.

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?”