William Johnstone - Bounty Hunter

“That’s a good idea.” Peabody stood stiffly, both hands tight on the rifle again.

The Yankee officer hesitated, then said, “Sir, you have heard the news, haven’t you?”

“What news?”

Luke had a hunch he knew what the answer was going to be even before the lieutenant spoke.

“The war’s over, sir,” the young officer said. “General Lee offered his surrender to General Grant nearly three weeks ago at a place up in Virginia called Appomattox Court House.”

Luke closed his eyes. He’d been right.

And Potter and the others had been right, too, about the Confederacy collapsing. They hadn’t been traitors, after all.

Just murdering, back-shooting rogues.

“The fighting is all over,” the lieutenant went on. “There’s no need for you and your son to worry, sir. We’re all countrymen again.”

Peabody didn’t correct the man about Luke being his son. He just said, “The river’s up yonder.”

The lieutenant nodded. “We’ll be going, then. Good day to both of you, and thank you again.”

The cavalrymen rode around the cabin and headed north. Luke listened to the sound of their hoofbeats fading as Emily came out of the cabin.

“I’m sorry, Luke,” she said.

“About the war being over?” He shook his head. “Don’t be. I’m not. I knew that was how it was going to turn out. Better to have it end before more good men were killed for no reason.”

“Amen to that,” Peabody said.

Luke took the revolver from under the blanket and handed it to Emily. “I guess you can put that away again.”

“All right.” She hesitated, then said, “Luke . . . what are you gonna do now?”

He looked up at her and realized he had no idea.

CHAPTER 16

Luke balanced himself on the crutches, reached into the bag he held, and slung grain onto the ground for the chickens clustering around him. The fowl went after the stuff with their usual frenzied enthusiasm.

He draped the bag’s strap over his shoulder, got a good grip on the crutch handles so he could turn himself around, and stumped back toward the cabin.

Emily came out onto the porch before he got there. “I was gonna feed the chickens,” she told him with a grin.

“No need,” Luke said. “I took care of it.”

“There’s just no stoppin’ you, is there?”

“Not when it’s something I can do.” He changed course, angling toward the side of the house where the big stump they used for splitting firewood stood. The ax leaned against the stump, handle up.

“What are you fixin’ to do now?” Emily asked.

“You said you needed some wood for the stove,” Luke explained.

“I didn’t say you had to split it!”

“I don’t mind.” He reached the stump and propped the right-hand crutch against it. With only a small amount of awkwardness, he picked up a piece of wood from the pile beside the stump and set it upright in the middle. Then he took hold of the ax and lifted it one-handed.

“You’re gonna miss and cut your leg off one of these days,” Emily warned.

“No great loss,” Luke said.

“Unless you bleed to death!”

Luke swung the ax above his head and brought it down in a precise stroke, splitting the cordwood perfectly down the middle. He used the ax to brush the two pieces off the stump, leaned the ax against it, and picked up another piece of wood to split.

Emily blew out her breath and shook her head in exasperation. “You are the most stubborn man I ever saw, Luke Jensen.”

And that was a good thing, Luke thought, otherwise he’d probably be dead. The wound he had suffered a few months earlier would have killed him.

The late summer sun blazed down, and it didn’t take Luke long to work up a sweat. His damp linsey-woolsey shirt clung to his back. He lifted his arm and sleeved beads of perspiration off his face.

When he’d first started shaving himself again, rather than relying on Emily to do it, he’d been shocked at the gaunt, haggard face looking out at him from the mirror. That man looked at least ten years older than he really was, Luke thought.

Since then his features had begun to fill out some, and he thought he looked more like himself. Most of the time, the strain of what he had gone through painted a rather grim expression on his face. When he laughed, though, he didn’t feel quite as ugly. Still ugly, mind you, he told himself, just not as much.

Recently he had stopped shaving his upper lip and let his mustache grow. It gave him a certain amount of dignity, in his opinion, and Emily didn’t seem to mind. How she thought about things had taken on a lot of importance during the months he had spent on the Peabody farm.

She came down from the porch to gather up the chunks of wood he had split. “Breakfast is ready. Come on inside and eat.”

She didn’t have to tell him twice, and she didn’t have to help him up the steps. He made it just fine with the crutches.

He had carved them himself, putting quite a bit of time and effort into it. He’d wanted the crutches to be as comfortable as possible, since it looked like he’d be using them for quite a while. Some of the feeling had started to come back into his legs, enough that he could get around a little with the help of the crutches, but he was still pretty helpless. He didn’t let himself think too much about how long that might go on. He still held out hope that one day his legs would work again, the way they were supposed to.

Because of that, he’d asked Emily to help him exercise the muscles in them. He knew it wasn’t fair to place that extra burden on her, but she didn’t object. He had seen what happened to Clyde Monroe back home. Doing nothing after his injury had made him worse. Luke wasn’t going to give up like that ... which led right back to that stubbornness Emily had accused him of.

He fed the chickens and gathered eggs and split wood and hoed the vegetable garden and shucked corn. Anything he could do sitting down or balanced on one crutch, he would do. The work put thick slabs of muscle back on his arms and shoulders and back.

He was damned if he was going to be useless. He would die first.

Emily and her grandfather had both asked him if he wanted to send a letter to his family back in Missouri letting them know he was alive. Luke only had to think about it for a second before he shook his head.

After failing the Confederacy and his friends, he didn’t want his pa and Kirby finding out about that. One day, if what he planned came about, he would return home, but not until he had done the job he had set out for himself.

Once his legs worked right again, he was going to track down Potter, Stratton, Richards, and Casey and kill each and every one of them. He knew he probably wouldn’t be able to recover the gold they had stolen—there was no Confederacy to return it to, anyway—but at least he could even the score for what they had done to Remy, Dale, and Edgar.

And to him.

Then and only then, when he had reclaimed at least a vestige of his honor, would he return to his family. Until then it was better to let them think he was dead, even though they would mourn him.

It had to be that way. On his darkest nights, he admitted to himself there was a very strong possibility he would never walk normally again, no matter how much he tried. In that case, he would live out his life on the Peabody farm, unless Emily and her grandfather kicked him out.

The way he and Emily had started to feel about each other, he didn’t think that was likely.

And yet that thought tortured him, too. Emily might be falling in love with him—Lord knew he’d been in love with her pretty much from the moment he first saw her and mistook her for an angel—but was it fair for him to saddle her with a cripple for a husband? He wasn’t even sure he could be a real husband to her, although lately he’d begun to feel some stirrings that told him it might be possible.