Into the Light (4 page)

The emotions Trey had felt as a boy would only make a fool of him today. Still, to hell with collapsing. He’d collapse after he beat Sutton, and Jamie could decide whether to drag him to a doctor or the graveyard.

The field was clear. The Mayor shouted, “Fire at will!” Trey raised his rifle, snugged the stock tight against the scar on his shoulder, and sighted as if this were a life or death shot.

Only four men qualified for the sixth round. Only two for the eighth.

Trey hobbled to the new position on shaky legs, his jaw clenched. His shoulder radiated pain as if it had been beaten with a sledgehammer. If only he’d thought to fasten some kind of pad over the scar before signing up for this, his chances of getting through the next round would be better.

The Mayor hustled up to him, carrying a chair.

“Here. There’s no rule that says you can’t sit for a minute while the targets are checked.”

The chair looked inviting. Sitting for a few minutes would make it possible to continue. Trey waited for Sutton to object, but Sutton just shrugged.

Sitting did help. Enough he hit his target, even if a little off center. Trey managed the ninth round by force of will but couldn’t pry himself from the chair for the tenth, much less lift the rifle.

Losing was bad enough, but losing to Sutton? A bitter taste flooded his mouth as he shook his head at the Mayor, unwilling to concede defeat in words.

Leaving his position, Sutton sauntered over to join Trey and the Mayor. Trey’s hands tightened on his rifle as he imagined jamming the barrel in the man’s stomach and pulling the trigger at the first gloating word.

Sutton reached in his pocket, brought out a single, gleaming two-and-a-half-inch brass cartridge, and held it in the palm of an outstretched hand.

“I got a little overconfident this year and only brought a dozen of these with me. Used two warming up. How about we each take a last shot and call it a draw? Next year when you have some meat back on your bones, we’ll show them what real shooting’s like.”

Trey couldn’t believe the offer, or the civil, straightforward way it was made, or the fact he didn’t have the strength to accept it. “It’ll be half an hour before I can get to my feet even with the cane,” he admitted.

“The rules only say you have to shoot from the line. They don’t say you have to be standing when you do it. I killed your father’s men stretched out on my belly. I bet you can hit that target from yours.”

Trey didn’t have to go down on his stomach to make the last shot. Pure fury surged hot through every vein, lifted him to his feet, and gave him strength.

He fell back in the chair, sure he’d hit the target dead center. Sutton didn’t have any doubts either.

“Give Mr. Van Cleve the trophy, and I’ll take the cash prize,” he told the Mayor. “Norah doesn’t need another one of those things to dust, and Mr. Van Cleve doesn’t need the money.”

Sutton didn’t wait for anyone to agree but strode away toward the viewing stand. More than a dozen of the spectators poured off the platform and met him halfway.

He lifted a dark-haired woman right off the ground, knocking her wide-brimmed hat askew as he spun her in a circle and kissed her on the mouth. Age and child-bearing had stolen any slimness of youth, but her face lit up as she hugged him around the neck and kissed him back, laughing up at him when he finally released her. That would be his wife, the one Trey’s father to this day referred to as “the Hawkins woman” and blamed for involving Sutton in the land war.

The rest of the men and women crowded around, slapping Sutton’s back, hugging. How could a cold-blooded killer provoke admiration, hugging, and celebrating from anyone, even family?

How would a man feel surrounded by a family like that? How would it feel to kiss a wife in public and have her laugh and kiss back? Better than sitting here alone in an exhausted heap that’s how.

Except Trey wasn’t alone. The Mayor, who had hustled off after the last shots, returned, carrying the trophy, a large wood carving of a rifleman with an engraved plaque at the base. After handing it over, he hovered, oozing concern.

He’d be on the Van Cleve payroll. The Mayor of Hubbell always was. He must be a minor crony, however, one who didn’t know helping the son wouldn’t earn favor with the father.

Then again, maybe he was a genuinely kind man, and cynicism was out of line.

“You sit right here, and I’ll find someone who can bring a buggy for you. Are you staying at the new hotel?”

“I’m staying with a friend, and he’ll come looking for me soon. You’re due to lead off the parade, aren’t you? You go on, and I’ll just sit here until Jamie comes.”

The Mayor dithered a few minutes, but in the end he left.

Trey slipped off the chair, stretched out on the grass, and closed his eyes. A trace of the scent of gunpowder lingered in the summer air. A reminder, not bad at all.

The sun beat down hot, red on the inside of his eyelids, but it felt good now that he wasn’t fighting to stay on his feet. Jamie would show up sooner or later, and with luck he wouldn’t have the giggling Miss Caroline Tindell with him.

Trey was half asleep when a shadow blocked the sun and a hand closed over his shoulder. Jamie. The horse he had with him must be borrowed or stolen, and Trey didn’t care which.

“You said you were coming here to watch,” Jamie said, frowning. “And I take it from that ugly wood thing, you went and got your rifle and wore yourself to a frazzle instead, didn’t you? At least you won.”

“Tie. He got the cash. I got the trophy.”

“Better than losing.”

“It is. Where’s the lovely Miss Tindell?”

Jamie gave up the disapproving air and grinned. “She decided she’d toyed with me enough for now and went off with some of her lady friends.”

“Is she toying with you?”

“Of course. You don’t think that girl is serious about an Irish Papist who does the lowest kind of manual labor at the mill, do you?”

“You could stop being stubborn, come back to work for me for twice the money, and save your back.”

Why did he even bother offering? Jamie had quit the day they’d reached Hubbell and found a job at the local flour mill. Except for driving Trey out there the first time, Jamie had never set foot on the V Bar C.

“And live with you at your da’s big ranch with my stomach in a churn the way yours is all the time? Taking your money would be stealing when you don’t need help.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, I need help right now, and here you are helping when you could be charming Miss Tindell into taking an Irish Papist seriously.”

Trey grabbed Jamie’s offered hand and used it to haul himself off the ground and back on the chair.

“Helping a friend now and then isn’t a job,” Jamie said, “and I don’t want her to take me seriously.”

“I thought Miss Tindell was your true love.”

“The only lady I’ll love will be a good Catholic girl, and even here in this heathen place there are a few. Caro is using me to get her family to let her go to Europe with some cousins, and they’ll probably pack the clever girl off tomorrow. Her grandmother almost had an apoplexy in the street today when she saw the girl with her hand on my arm.”

Trey searched his friend’s face for signs of injured pride and couldn’t find any. Even so.

“You shouldn’t let her use you like that.”

“Why not? I’m enjoying it and getting an education on the workings of the female mind.” Jamie led the horse close. “Now can you get on this noble beast by yourself, or do I have to pick you up and throw you across the saddle?”

“Give me one chance to crawl up on my own, then throw me.”

Jamie didn’t exactly have to throw him, but Trey didn’t make it on his own either.

T
HE DINING ROOM
in Hubbell’s new hotel was everything Deborah had heard rumored. Deep carpet underfoot. Pristine starched white linen on each table. Gleaming silverware and crystal at each place.

Every year Cousin Caleb spent his prize money on dinner for the whole family in a nice restaurant, at least for the adult Suttons. It was another family tradition, but nowhere they’d been in years past had come close to this.

Conversation from other tables provided a low, contented hum in the background, accented by the occasional chink of a fork or knife against china. The rich scent of roasted meat filled the air.

Deborah took a seat between Aunt Emma and Miriam in happy anticipation, smiling to herself at the sight of Uncle Eli and Aunt Lucy with their heads close together, consulting over a single menu. Plump, blonde Lucy had gentled Uncle Eli in ways no one had thought possible and everyone appreciated.

Years ago Deborah’s uncles had looked as much alike as she, Judith, and Miriam did now. They were tall men with dark hair and eyes, olive skin, and strong features. Nowadays, no one would mistake Uncle Jason, with his deeply lined, careworn face and stooped shoulders, for his younger brother. Nothing would ever stop Uncle Jason from worrying about the entire Sutton family and trying to fix everyone’s problems.

Too bad Uncle Jason wasn’t sitting right beside Aunt Emma because Aunt Em looked a little too impressed with their surroundings. Downright intimidated even.

Aunt Em’s once red hair had faded to gray years ago, but reading emotion in the color suffusing her pale redhead’s complexion had always been easy. Right now two bright red spots flared on her cheeks.

A fierce wave of protective love washed through Deborah. Aunt Em could be infuriating in her attempts to reshape Deborah into the image of Judith or Miriam, but she was also the woman who had taken in her husband’s three orphan nieces with open arms and done it less than a year after her marriage. No fancy restaurant should ever be allowed to intimidate Emma Sutton.

“Judith was right about how we should dress, wasn’t she?” Deborah whispered to her aunt. “Look. Not one lady here is any more elegant than we are. Your blue silk is perfect.”

Aunt Em stopped staring fixedly at the tablecloth and took in the room and people around them. Her rigid posture slowly relaxed.

“You’re right, and you and your sisters are the most beautiful young women here, although it’s time we made you something as stylish as what your sisters are wearing.”

Just like that, Aunt Em’s initial awe disappeared.

Content in the gold bengaline that had served as her best summer dress since she was Miriam’s age, Deborah studied her menu.

The food listed matched the elegant scrolled printing. Oyster soup. Usual fare such as beef and pork, but also baked pickerel in wine sauce. What would that be like?

“How does roast
domestic
duck differ from not domestic duck?” Miriam asked.

“You can chew without worrying about breaking a tooth on a shotgun pellet,” Deborah said.

Miriam switched her disapproval from the menu to Deborah. “Well, I’m having roast beef, and it better not come drowned in some silly sauce.”

Unlike her sister, Deborah regarded the Fourth of July dinners as opportunities to experiment. She’d have the soup and the pickerel, and her mouth watered at the thought of chocolate pudding with sabayon sauce, whatever that proved to be.

Oyster soup was — interesting. She wouldn’t order it again, but now she knew. She half-listened to the conversations swirling around the table until Miriam’s husband Joseph caught her attention with a question to Caleb.

“Miriam says the Mayor always stops rambling when you bring out your handkerchief. How did you ever get such a windbag to agree to that?”

“I had a little accident with the rifle the first year,” Caleb said. “I started rubbing a spot of dust on the barrel, and somehow I shot the heel off of one of the Mayor’s boots.”

Smiles broke out on Sutton faces around the table. Judith laughed out loud. Joseph’s stunned look marked him as new to the family.

William Dalton, an easygoing blond bear of a man, had been married to Judith for almost five years. He merely looked resigned.

Those who married into the family got used to Cousin Caleb, but you had to be born a Sutton to really appreciate him — or love him the way Norah did.

“Speaking of the contest,” Uncle Eli said. “Why give a tie to Van Cleve’s son of all people? He’d already quit, or as good as.”

“He earned a tie. I had to provoke him a little to get him out of the chair for the last shot, but he hit the target dead center.”

“Well, I don’t think you should have let his father have even a tie to brag about. Nobody ever went shot for shot with you at the end like that before. You should have let him quit.”

“I don’t figure to hold who his father is against him unless he makes me. In your shoes I wouldn’t judge a man by his father either.”

Anxiety knotted in Deborah’s stomach. The family usually stayed away from the subject of her grandfather. Henry Sutton had been as bad as her own father in a different way and done terrible things to her mother, her uncles, and Caleb, who didn’t even know who his father was.

Pushing Caleb on the subject of fathers was like poking a grizzly with a stick, and Eli knew better. Norah patted Caleb’s arm, and Deborah relaxed. A touch like that from Norah always gentled Caleb.

“Why judge by his father when you can judge by his own actions?” William said. “I heard the reason he ran out of steam today is he took a bullet in the back in that little war in Cuba.”

Judith ought to touch
her
husband. Better yet she ought to pinch him or throw water on him.

“Men who have been in wars would tell you they get knocked around and turned around, and the site of a wound means nothing,” Deborah said, letting aggravation starch her voice.

Everyone at the table went still and stared at her. She hardly ever spoke up at family gatherings. Now that she had started, she might as well finish. “I heard all sorts of gossip about him from Mr. Lawson and Mr. Ascher before the contest started.”

She ticked off the accusations on her fingers. “He’s called Trey because he’s Webster Van Cleve, III, and Trey sounds foreign, so it’s a sign of putting on airs.”

She paused and gave her Uncle Eli, no slouch with a deck of cards, a knowing look. “He’s an ungrateful son who left home as soon as he could but came crawling home for help when he was hurt. Of course they didn’t explain how walking on crutches is crawling. He’s taller than his father and looks like his mother, so he can’t be his father’s son. In fact looking like his mother means he’s so pretty he can’t even be a man. Oh, and as William said, since he was shot in the back, he’s a coward.”