Part Twelve

He tackled Lansing, knocking him to the hard ground and wrenching the still-smoking gun out of his hand. "What are you doing!"

Lansing lay there for a second or two, mouth open, too startled to move. Then he scrambled to his feet, eyes blazing.

"What do you mean what am I doing! That's the man who shot you! You remember his horse!"

"That doesn't mean you can just gun him down!"

"Was I supposed to let him finish what he started back at that camp!"

He stuffed Lansing's gun into his belt. "We could have stopped him! Tied him up, taken his horse and gun, anything, but not that! We could have taken him in to the sheriff!"

Lansing swore. "I told you, you don't want to do that!"

"Maybe I do!"

They glared at each other, chests heaving.

"All right. All right." Lansing braced his hands on his thighs and breathed deeply. "Okay, you're right. But it's done now. We'd better clear off before somebody comes along." He straightened up, smiling sheepishly. "Look, I'm sorry. I never did that to anybody before, but after what he did to you . . . Coop, I thought you were dead all this time. You're the only friend I got. I couldn't let it happen for real after that."

There was only pleading and regret in Lansing's face. Maybe he should be glad to have a friend who would go so far to protect him. Maybe he wasn't so sure he wanted a friend who'd shoot a man from ambush. Then again, maybe he was the type who wouldn't have any other kind of friend anyway.

"I'm no murderer." He remembered that, strong and clear now, and it was his own voice that had said it. Why had he been riding with a man like Lansing?

"No matter what he was going to do," he told Lansing, "I needed to talk to him. I needed to ask him what I've done and whatever else he knows. Things you can't tell me."

He started off toward where the bounty hunter had fallen.

"Coop, don't be a fool!" Lansing shouted. "He could be playing possum. Waiting for you!"

"He could be dead!"

"At least give me back my gun!" Lansing started after him. "Let me cover you while you go see."

He didn't respond. His brain was whirling like a tornado had ahold of it. Jared. Nick and Jared. "I'm your—" I'm your what?

His gun still at the ready, he moved close enough to really see the man. He was lying there crumpled onto his side, still and silent, blood pooled around him. Dead. His face was mostly covered by the arm that was flung across it. On that arm was a black band.

"Your father is dead."

Something rooted him where he stood. He could see that pinto clearly. It was the one he remembered. What else?

The pinto. The campfire. The skillet full of beans. The tree. He'd been behind a tree.

"My name's Barkley."

"Said his name was Barkley. Looking for somebody called Nick."

"It's me. Jared."

Nick and Jared.

"Nick, it's me. Jared. I'm your—"

"Your what?" he growled at the man, wanting to scream the words to the high heavens. "Tell me. Who are you? Who am I"

"I had a funeral to go to."

"Your father is dead."

He reached a trembling hand toward that black band and then froze. Behind him was the unmistakable click of a pistol being cocked.

"You can't do anything for him now."

Lansing.

"Where'd you get a gun?" he asked, not turning.

"Smart man keeps him an extra one in his saddle bags," Lansing said. "In the event of just this sort of emergency. Now you just turn right around and don't do anything stupid."

He held his gun out to the side. "I expect you'll be wanting this."

"You just keep it right where it is and turn around like I told you."

He did just as he'd been told.

"Now, you come on back where I am and don't be moving those hands."

Again he complied.

"All right," Lansing said. "Now, you keep that gun in your right hand held out just like it is and don't move it. And take your left and toss my gun over in those bushes there. I'll get it in a minute."

He tossed the gun.

Lansing nodded his approval. "Now here's how this is gonna work. You turn around so you're facing back the way you just come from. That's it." He moved so they were face to face. "Layin' in his blood like he is, I couldn't very well drag him anyplace else. This has got to look like the two of you shot each other and nobody else was to blame. Once the two of you boys are gone, there's nobody to say I was anywhere near where Tom Barkley was shot, and nobody to pay a bounty on me if there was."

"Barkley," he said on a breath.

"My name's Barkley."

His heart was running hard and he could feel the sweat trickling down his back. "What is this, Lansing? What are you doing?"

Lansing gave him an almost-sympathetic smile. "I reckon none of this makes you much sense, not remembering like you do, but I don't have the time to explain it all to you." He laughed softly and all the sympathy in his smile vanished, leaving only cold humor. He jerked his head toward the dead man. "I guess he can tell you all about it once you catch up with him."

He was still holding his gun out to one side. Maybe if he was quick enough—

"Uh uh uh," Lansing scolded playfully. "Don't try it. No use getting yourself all worked up now. But you can close your eyes if it'd give you any comfort."

Not looking away from Lansing's face, he squared his shoulders and lifted his chin. Lansing pointed his gun right at his heart.

Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner. It was all the prayer he had time for.

He lurched at the sound of the shot, but it was Lansing who fell.

The man who'd ridden in on the pinto was propped up on one elbow staring at him with piercing blue eyes, his gun in his hand. And instant later, the blue eyes slid shut, the gun dropped into the grass, and the man sank facedown onto the bloody ground beneath him.

"Mister!"

He made sure Lansing was dead, and then tossed his gun into the bushes with the first. Then he ran to the other man and flung his gun away, too. Maybe he had just saved him from Lansing, but things were too confusing right now. He didn't know who to believe. Who to trust.

"Mister?"

He stuffed his own gun into the back of his belt just in case. Then he knelt and turned the man onto his back. He was bleeding bad from high in his chest, far on the left side.

"Why'd you do that?" he asked, certain the man couldn't hear him. "Who are you?"

"I'm your—"

He tugged the man's blue bandana off his neck and stuffed it into the wound.

"Why'd you do it?"

After the gunfire, the pinto was a little skittish, but he managed to grab the canteen hanging off the saddle and brought it back to the wounded man.

"Mister?"

Kneeling again, he wet down his own bandana and wiped the man's face, bringing him around.

"Nick." The name was spoken on little more than a breath, and the man reached one blood-stained hand toward his face. "'s me. Jared. Nick . . . know me?"

Jared and Nick.

"Nick, 'm your . . ."

He grabbed the man by the upper arms, shaking him. "My what? Who are you? Who are you!"

The other man somehow managed to take hold of his sleeve, fixing him with those blue eyes he knew he should have known. "'m your brother."

Brother.

He could only stare at the man, lips trembling, his whole body numb. "Brother?"

He closed his eyes and saw it all as if he were flying through a long tunnel of images. He and this man had been setting fence posts. They'd found a body sprawled dead in a clearing. They'd carried that body home and then followed with a thousand other people to see it buried. They'd comforted— The woman in black. The little girl. In that house with the golden stairs. Together they had—

Jarrod and Nick.

Jarrod and Nick Barkley.

His eyes flew open.

"Jarrod."

Jarrod nodded shakily, and Nick pulled him up into his arms, crushing him close.

"Jarrod." Deep sobs tore through him. "Jarrod. Father's dead."

Jarrod hugged his arms around him as best he could and leaned his forehead against Nick's shoulder. "I know. 's all right. All right."

Jarrod's breath was coming harder and faster, and Nick knew he had to get him some help. He laid Jarrod back on the ground again and then tore off one of the too-short sleeves of poor Matty Hazlett's shirt to use for a bandage. Ma would understand.

"You're gonna be okay, Jarrod," Nick said with a shaky laugh. "Where we're headed, you'll get the best doctoring in the whole world."

Jarrod looked a little bewildered, but he nodded and closed his eyes.

Nick made quick work of binding him up. He'd lost too much blood already. There'd be time later for explanations. For mourning. For the grief that was as fresh for him now as it had been the day he'd left home.

"Can you ride?" Nick asked him once he'd gotten the bleeding stopped.

Jarrod looked pretty woozy. "Dunno."

Nick managed to get him up on the horse he'd ridden from the Hazlett place The same horse, he suddenly realized, that he'd ridden into Clinton's camp. "You hold on a minute, big brother. Just hold on."

Jarrod clung to the pommel, swaying only a little. Nick grabbed the two other horses, the pinto and the bay Clinton had ridden. The assassin himself would have to wait. Nick wasn't packing him out, even over a saddle like a piece of meat. The sheriff could deal with him.

Nick vaulted onto the horse's back behind Jarrod and headed as quickly as he could to the little ranch the lay not much farther down the road.

OOOOO

It was hardly two miles back to the Hazlett place. Nick saw Pa out working in the field behind the house and waved him in. Then he rode right up to the front porch.

"Ma! Ma!"

Jarrod looked at him blearily, but asked no questions.

Ma came hurrying out of the front door with that flushed look on her face that said she'd been baking. "Matty! What—" Her face changed when she saw his. Somehow she knew. "You remember."

He nodded, and there was sudden pain mixed with the relief he had felt just moments before.

She bit her lip. Then she drew a shaky breath and looked up at Jarrod. "You bring him into your room, Matty. I'll get Pa."

"I'm right here," Pa said, and he held onto Jarrod until Nick could dismount.

Between the two of them, they got Jarrod off the horse and into the bed that had for so long been Nick's.

Ma had spread the tarp over it again, and once Jarrod was situated, she began examining his wound.

"The bullet went through," she said after a few minutes. "I don't think you need to worry too much."

Jarrod murmured something and closed his eyes.

As Ma worked, Pa looked Nick over, both hands on his shoulders, worry in every line of his face. "What happened, son? Who is this?"

"He's Jarrod Barkley. My brother."

"You remember."

Nick nodded.

Pa smiled a little, but there was pain in that smile, the same pain that had come into Ma's eyes a little while before. "Then you know who you are. You know where you belong."

"Yeah."

Pa tried the smile again, this time a little more successfully. He understood. "You know who your folks are."

Nick nodded again, wanting to shout for joy, to laugh and cry and tell them how it felt to be whole once more, but he couldn't.

Jarrod was either asleep now or passed out, but Ma looked up from the bandaging she was doing.

"And you have a name."

Nick went over to her and gently kissed her cheek, wishing that could somehow be a comfort to her, knowing it wouldn't be.

"I'm Nick Barkley."

He wanted to tell her how much that meant to him, just knowing that name and knowing he belonged to it. He wanted to tell her and Pa both, but he couldn't. He couldn't because he knew they were already grieving again.