Pieces of Sky (27 page)

Brady closed his eyes, but still couldn’t get away from it—the pleading, the reek of blood, the rasp of his brother’s breath. And the flies—God, the flies.

Beside him, Jessica wept, her sobs muffled by her free hand.

Desperate to distance himself from the pictures in his mind, he focused on the dark silhouette of a nighthawk looping through the darkening sky. “So I did what he wanted. What he asked me to do.” He glanced over to gauge the impact of his words.

Her eyes glistened silver in the starlight but she didn’t look away. That gave him the strength to tell her all of it, to make her understand why he did what he did.

“He was just a little kid, Jessica. He was hurting so bad. And he kept begging and begging, and the flies—I didn’t know what else to do.”

Help me, Bray
.
Make it stop.
That’s all Sam wanted. All Brady could give him.

“I thought about shooting him, but I couldn’t. A bullet is . . . so . . . impersonal. But I had to do something. I couldn’t let him suffer any more.”

The nighthawk dipped down then up, a moth trapped in its beak. “So I waited until he passed out. Then I picked him up and put my hand over his mouth and held him tight against my chest. As tight as I could.” He didn’t realize he was acting out the motions until he felt his palm pressing with such force against his chest he couldn’t breathe. He jerked it away and dragged air into his lungs.

Jessica’s head pressed against his arm. He heard her crying, felt the hot wetness of her tears. She squeezed his hand so hard he felt tremors in her wrist.

“It didn’t take long. Or maybe it did. I don’t remember anything but sitting there, rocking him, telling him everything would be all right. It seemed forever.”

Somewhere in the roses, a cricket chirped. From under the porch came Bullshot’s snore. The nighthawk dipped and soared. Life went on. Uncaring. Unchanged.

His vision clouded. He knew his voice shook, but he couldn’t seem to steady it. “He didn’t struggle. He just . . . left. I’m not sure when. One minute he was there, then he wasn’t.”

Suddenly the horror of it sent him to his feet. He made it no farther than the porch rail before words tumbled out. “Why didn’t I know, Jessica? How can someone die in your arms and you not even know? Jesus—”

Breathing hard, he braced one hand high on an upright post and stared blindly out into the night. “He was my brother. I should have known.” He took a deep breath. The air was so thick with the stink of dying roses it made his stomach roll.

He waited for her to speak, but she didn’t. After a while her silence wore him down.

“It changes things, doesn’t it?” he asked, without turning. “Knowing about Sam. Knowing what I did.”

She didn’t answer.

And still he waited, choking on hope and unspoken words, silently demanding that she stay, that she answer him, that she not walk away.

Then he heard her move up behind, and felt her arms snake around his waist.

“I’m so sorry, Brady,” she whispered against his shoulder, her body pressed so tightly against his, he could feel the vibration of her heartbeat against her back. “I’m so sorry.”

He looked down, saw the pale hands gently stroking his chest, and strength left him.

He didn’t want this.

He didn’t deserve it.

Dropping his forehead against his upraised arm, he closed his eyes. It was just a touch—but coming now—from this woman—it nearly broke him.

Fourteen

SANCHO CROUCHED IN THE SHADOW OF A CREOSOTE BUSH AND watched the two men in the road. He had seen their wagon leave the rancho earlier and had followed them to this boundary gate. Now the wagon had stopped and the men were walking toward the rear.

He thought about killing them. There were only two of them. He could sneak up, tie them, then set them on fire. He smiled, picturing it in his mind.

Another picture intruded and his smile faded.

The smoke might alert Wilkins. Sancho had seen the patrols. He knew they hunted him, and he did not want Wilkins to know he was still in the area until Paco came back with more men. A sudden memory sparked in his cloudy mind. Frowning, he looked around.

¿Dónde está Paco?
He should be back from Mexico by now.

Movement drew his attention back to the men on the road.

They dragged a long canvas bundle from the bed of the wagon. Staggering under the weight of it, they carried it to the side of the road. As they dumped it on the ground, the canvas unrolled to reveal a man’s body.

After tossing the canvas into the wagon, they climbed back into the driver’s box and reined the horses in a wide arc through the brush, circling back the way they had come.

As soon as they disappeared down the road, Sancho crept forward.

It was Paco. For a moment Sancho was so stunned he just stood there, staring into the bloated face of his half brother. Then rage exploded.

¡Pendejo!
How could Paco do this to him? What about the men he was to bring back? The injustice of it rocked him, sent his mind spinning. Cursing and shrieking, he kicked Paco again and again until his half brother’s face was a pulpy mass and Sancho’s bad knee ached. When pain overrode fury, he lurched back, panting from his exertions.

The coward had probably told them everything. Even now Wilkins and his men could be on their way to the cave . . . unless he was out there now . . . watching him. The idea sent Sancho lurching in a circle as he scanned the brush. He could almost feel those icy eyes boring into him. In the fading light, shadows seemed bigger, closer, almost alive. Fear sent him into a blind panic.

Racing back through the brush, he threw himself into the saddle and kicked his horse into a gallop. After riding hard for several miles with no sign of pursuit, he pulled his winded horse back to a trot. He needed to think, to make a plan. A better plan.

He could do it without Paco. He had planned to kill him anyway for daring to call himself brother. Wilkins had saved him the trouble—and the enjoyment—of doing it himself. Another debt that
cabrón
would pay. But for now, because of Paco, Sancho had to start again. He would go to Mexico and gather his own men, promising gold, land, anything to gain their help. It would take time to find the right men, but when he did, he would come back and then . . .

He frowned, trying to remember the plan he and Paco had devised. The details kept slipping from his grasp, but the end was as certain as death.

Fire. Bright dancing flames roaring straight up to God. Just picturing it in his mind made Sancho laugh out loud.

 

 

JUST BEFORE DAWN, BRADY LED HIS BROTHERS AND A DOZEN ranch hands out the gate toward Blue Mesa. He set a fast pace, so driven to find Sancho and end the feud, it wasn’t until Hank dropped back that Brady realized he was pushing the men and the horses too hard. He slowed and tried to curb his impatience, but his mind raced on.

It had been a shocking thing last night on the porch with Jessica, telling her about Sam and what he’d done. He’d wrestled with it most of the night and still couldn’t believe he’d blurted out the whole sorry tale. It spoke of a loss of control that was at odds with his usual way of doing things. He should have been relieved to have finally gotten it off his chest. Instead he felt ragged and unsure, like the man who carried a heavy load for so long, when he finally got to set it down, he didn’t know what to do with his empty hands. His mind didn’t know how to deal with the unburdening of that terrible secret. Or her.

It must have been the whiskey. He normally didn’t drink that much. Still, he shouldn’t have unloaded all that misery on her. He could hardly face it himself—how could he expect her to deal with it?

He’d expected her to bolt. Instead she’d put her arms around him.

A voice jarred him from his muddled thoughts. He looked over to see a rider angling toward them. Recognizing the sheriff’s big buckskin, he motioned for the others to rein in so the horses could blow while they waited for the sheriff to reach them.

“Found Alvarez,” Rikker said once his buckskin had settled. “Someone stomped his face in. I’m thinking it wasn’t you.”

“It wasn’t.”

Rikker reached into his vest pocket for the makings and built a smoke.

It tested Brady’s patience, but he didn’t push it. He could see the older man had something on his mind, and the sooner they got through it, the sooner he could go after Sancho.

Once the sheriff had the smoke drawing well, he flicked the ash into his cupped hand, shook it to cool it, then tossed it away. “Appears he was hanged.”

“His choice.”

Rikker’s bushy brows rose. “He hanged himself?”

“More or less. He told us where Sancho is. You’re welcome to ride along.”

Rikker pinched out his smoke. After rolling the butt between his thumb and forefinger to make sure no spark remained, he dropped it to the ground. “Figure Sancho will hang himself, too?” he asked, nudging the buckskin into step beside Brady’s bay.

Brady smiled grimly. “Sancho’s a knife man. He’ll probably slit his throat.”

Sancho did neither, because he wasn’t at the cave. And even after Brady’s men did a thorough search of the whole canyon and the ridge above, there was no sign of him. Brady was so mad he couldn’t even speak for most of the ride back to the ranch.

 

 

JESSICA HAD SPENT A RESTIVE NIGHT. WHEN SHE HAD FINALLY dozed off, she slept so hard she hadn’t heard the men ride out and didn’t realize Brady had gone after Sancho until Elena told her over their morning cup of tea.

“They will be fine.” Elena held up her rosary beads. “I pray for them. This time it will be Sancho who will die.”

Jessica didn’t know what to pray for. She just wanted this terrible feud to end.

It was the waiting, she decided later as she wandered through the house. As the end of her confinement approached, she was often plagued with restlessness, but today, there was a feeling of presentiment as well, a sense that something awful was about to happen and she could do nothing to stop it. No doubt it had something to do with the terrible things Brady had told her about Sam.

Her heart ached for him.

It had taken her most of the night to come to terms with it. She understood why he’d done what he did. She even admired his courage in facing such a terrible decision. But it wasn’t until the wee hours of the morning that she fully realized the extent of his sacrifice. To ease his brother’s agony, he had put his own soul at risk.

It was astounding. Blasphemous.

Yet could there be greater love than that?

She knew of no one who would willingly put those he loved above his own salvation—not her father, not George, not herself. But Brady Wilkins had done it without hesitation. What a gift it would be to be loved by a man like that.

As the day wore on, her unease translated into a nagging headache and an inability to sit still. She had little appetite, no interest in gardening, and no inclination to sit and sew. She decided to walk. Because thoughts of Sam had haunted her all day, the path she chose led up to the graveyard on the hill.

The tree beckoned, limbs drooping toward her, luring her into eyelet shade.

It was a dusty windswept place—two new graves and two-dozen older ones enclosed within a rusty fence. A sad place, eerily quiet except for the squeal of the hinges as she pushed open the gate and stepped through.

Like most everything at RosaRoja, this little graveyard needed tending. Cactus tangled with the iron bars of the fence, weeds crowded the headstones. Several of the tilted stone markers were so worn by time and wind, the words were barely legible. The oldest bore long Spanish names and dated back into the last century. Those added later had heavily carved borders of twining roses with back-to-back
R
’s chiseled across the top. The two most recent graves carried temporary wooden crosses and were so new the earth was still slightly damp. As she wandered the rows of this forlorn and lonely graveyard, Jessica realized it was as much a history of the feud as a resting place for those it had claimed.

She found Sam in a shady corner beside the other Wilkins family graves. Three were clustered together and carried the same year, 1859: Samuel Adams Wilkins, Katherine Brady Wilkins, and Rachel Charlotte Wilkins. Off to the side stood a gravestone dated two years later: Jacob Nathaniel Wilkins.

She hadn’t realized so many were lost in so short a time. Brady had buried two-thirds of his family and taken responsibility for his younger brothers and this vast ranch, all within the span of two years.

Bending awkwardly, she set a small bouquet of roses beside Sam’s marker, then straightened. Elena said Brady never spoke about what happened when Sam died. Yet he told her. She had never spoken about her rape. Yet she told him. It made no sense.