You be You and I'll be Me
Prologue – Hancock and Delacroix"Hancock?"
He should have been used to the sound of the name by this time. The girl had been calling him that for weeks, but he still had to remind himself to respond when he heard it. "What now?"
"Do you think he can get it?"
"I don't know, Molly. Maybe, maybe not. We'll just have to wait and see when he gets back."
"How long have you known Delacroix?"
It took no time to answer that question. "All my life."
"Really? All your life?"
"Yeah. He was already there when I was born."
She had to give that a moment's thought. "That's a long time."
"Not as long as you might think." He pulled the spyglass open and watched the road from town. Still no sign of his brother. What was causing the delay?
"Hancock?"
"Hmmm?"
"Does he have a girl?"
"A what?"
"A girl. You know, a wife, a fiancé, a girlfriend, anybody?" The tone of her voice was casual, but the look in her eyes was pleading. 'Please let the answer be no.'
"Nope. At least he didn't when we got here." That was true. He didn't have just one. He had several, none of them of any great consequence; at least not the way Molly meant it. He wondered if that's what she wanted to be. His girl. He wouldn't be surprised if she did. There was only one problem. Molly was a little too . . . moral? The kind of girl you married and took home to Mother. If you had a mother to take her home to. She was the reason they were right here, right now, and even if he could have changed it, he wouldn't. That's the problem with being attracted to somebody else's girl. Even when the somebody else was your brother.
See, even he was thinking of Molly as his brother's girl. Why? There'd been no commitment made, one way or the other. No kissing in the moonlight, no hand-holding, no stolen glances. None of that had happened as far as he knew. It was just . . . the way his brother looked at her, when he thought no one was watching. The way he said her name. That he was crazy enough to ride all that way, just to get what they needed . . .
He pulled the spyglass open again. This time he saw something, far away at the base of the Sierra Estrella Mountains. Even with the spyglass he had to watch the object move until it got close enough to see clearly. It was the man he'd been waiting for, the one they were counting on to get it and bring it back. That didn't answer anything, of course, just that he was on the way back. And even if he got it, were they going to be able to make it work?
He hoped so. For everybody's sake, but mostly their own. Because if this didn't work, it was all going to be over before it really had a chance to get started. They could end up looking down the barrel of a Colt Peacemaker or, even worse, the end of a hangman's noose.
And to think it had all started so innocently . . .
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