Chapter Four

Jess sat in a chair on the porch, leaning forward, elbows braced on his knees, hands clasped together and head tilted down. Slim came toward him from the barn. Two tin cups, hooked over his index finger, clanged against each other.

He stepped up onto the porch and waited a moment for Jess to give some recognition of his presence. He didn't.

"How ya doin', pard?" Slim asked quietly.

"I'm fine."

His standard monotone answer. Slim shook his head. Why do I ever bother to even ask him? Whether it's a bullet in the back or a blow to the heart, the answer's always the same: I'm fine. He'll never admit to hurting. Well, at least askin' tells him I care.

Slim took a seat in the other porch chair. He waited. Jess hadn't moved, hadn't looked toward him. He clearly had no intention of starting a conversation. So after a time, Slim began, calmly stating the obvious. "Ain't every day that a man finds out he's a father."

There was no reply, but Slim took note of the ragged breath Jess drew and the twitching muscle in his jaw.

He let the two cups slide off his finger and onto the small wooden table that stood between their chairs, freeing his left hand to pull the cork from the flask in his right. "Figured you could use a little something for medicinal purposes."

Jess still didn't raise his eyes or turn his head. He didn't move his hands. His gravelly voice was low. "Jonesy or Daisy know you keep that in the barn?"

"Oh, I reckon they could guess. But they're not sayin' anything. Just so long as Andy and Mike don't know about it."

Slim splashed an overly generous shot of the whiskey into each cup, replaced the cork and slipped the flask into the pocket inside his vest. When Jess made no move to reach for a cup, Slim picked one up and held it out to him. Jess sighed and accepted it. After staring at it a long moment, he raised the cup as if making a toast.

"To secrets," he said bitterly.

He threw the shot back in one gulp and slammed the cup on the table. Then he stood and stepped to the front edge of the porch, staring out toward the corral where their horses, Traveller and Alamo, ambled around with several others.

Slim rose and took a place beside him. "To understandin' the reasons behind 'em." He drained his cup as well.

Jess made no further movement, except the rubbing of his index finger against his thumb as his right arm hung to his side near his holster, and the flexing and closing of his other fingers. It was a habit Slim knew well. Jess had had it since he first came to the ranch, and Slim suspected it was something that had been a part of him since his first days on the drift, maybe longer. Slim had come to recognize what it meant. Jess did it consciously, limbering up his joints when he was preparing to shoot, or unconsciously whenever barely restrained emotions roiled inside him.

It couldn't be related to the former this time. Nope, this was about an emotional teakettle with the lid about to explode off. Bothersome feelings like anxiety, worry, confusion, indecision, fear, sadness, anger, pain, grief... Jess was an expert at damming them all inside when he didn't know what else to do with them. The only evidence of his inner turmoil was often the twitching jaw muscle or the flexing fingers, especially on that gun hand.

"It might do ya good to talk about it." Slim stated.

"Not now."

Good. At least that wasn't a flat-out no. Jess wasn't slamming the door. He'd indicated that when he was ready, he might open up. Slim hoped that maybe, for once, Jess wouldn't feel like he had to keep all his hurt bottled up and deal with it alone. Maybe he'd finally feel he had someone he could trust enough to share what he was struggling with.

"Well, you know where you can find me." Slim picked up Jess's cup, hooking his finger through its handle so it hung next to his own. He walked away and went in through the front kitchen door.

He missed the brief look of gratitude that followed him.

Kathryn hesitated a moment at the front door, then stepped outside, making sure her footfalls would be heard. She pulled the door closed behind her, clicking its latch loudly. She knew better than to approach Jess without making some noise. Even with the shock of what he'd just learned and his apparent distraction, his instincts would react before his thoughts caught up, and he was still wearing his sidearm.

She'd seen him draw only once, against a hired gun from another ranch during a range dispute, but it was an action she never wanted to witness again. Not that she had really seen it anyway. It was too fast to truly be watched. One second Jess's gun had been in his holster, and the next it was smoking in his hand, its bullet having felled the challenger 30 feet in front of him. And while she admired his skill, its results certainly unnerved her.

She knew he'd never pull the trigger without making sure of his target, but she had learned years ago, and was glad she still remembered, to avoid putting him in that type of situation to begin with.

Jess stood at the far end of the porch, leaning forward with both hands on the cross rail that spanned the length of the structure, gripping it so hard Kathryn could see the muscles rippling in his forearms, bared by rolled-up shirtsleeves. He remained focused on some indistinguishable object off in the distance, and Kathryn paused, beginning to wonder if he actually had heard the sounds she'd made. But as she moved gradually toward him, he dipped his head slightly to his right to grind out a low, raspy rebuke.

"You should'a told me."

The ice dripping from his words froze her heart.

She had expected shock, even anger, and while there was an aspect of those emotions, there were also different, stronger elements mixed into the coldness. She tried to identify them. Disappointment? And what she could only label as… a desperate longing.

Before she could form a response, he pushed back from the railing and turned toward her. His eyes narrowed. His harsh words grated the air like a rake.

"Six? You kept her from me for six years!"

He dipped his head, his gaze focused on the floorboards of the porch, his breaths coming in deep gulps. He gritted his teeth.

Again, her lips parted to address his wrath, but before she could speak, he raised his eyes to hers. She didn't see anger there now. Instead, absolute pain filled the midnight blue depths.

"How could ya do that to me, Kate?" He shook his head slowly.

He drew a shallow, shaky breath. "How? When you know." The simple declaration sounded like an accusation of wrongdoing.

She began to tremble. The hurt in his eyes, the vehemence of his emotions jolted her with such intensity that she actually took a step back.

His voice dropped to a forlorn, coarse whisper. "You know what family means to me."

He turned away from her again, and looked out into the waning daylight. Every muscle in his body tensed, and she winced at the hitch she heard in his breathing, and the pain it indicated. She shuddered, watching him struggle to bring his emotions under control.

Though his words had been whispered, they echoed in her mind so loud it was as if he were standing there shouting them. You know what family means to me.

Indeed she did.

And hearing the heartbreaking loneliness in his voice brought back recollections of what he'd told her about his family.

She was one of the very few people with whom Jess had ever shared details of the deaths of his parents and three of his four younger siblings and two of the older ones. Along with Jess, only his younger brother Johnny and his older sister Francie had survived the massacre by the murderous Bannister gang. While a distant cousin had reluctantly agreed to temporarily take in 13-year-old Johnny and 16-year-old Francie after the fire, the cousin had expected 15-year-old Jess to be a man and make his own way in the world. And he had. He'd begun to drift as soon as his wounds from attempting to rescue his younger siblings from the fire had healed enough for him to go looking for work.

There also had been two brothers older than Francie and Jess. Brothers he'd looked up to and tagged along after from the time he was little. They had already left home before the tragedy, eager to enlist in the Confederate Army, and Jess had never seen them again. He'd heard years later that they'd both been killed during the first few months of the war. Jess had followed in his brothers' military footsteps close to two years after they'd joined up, although not with the enthusiasm they had when they left to take up arms. Near the end of the war's second year, he'd been coerced into the army shortly before turning 17. He hadn't felt a call to the Confederacy's cause. He didn't even know if his brothers had felt it, but he was Texan, born and raised; so, like them, he did what he was told a good Texas boy had to do. Besides, he was alone, filled with rage from the trauma of his family's deaths and felt he had nothing to lose. After a year and a half of fighting battles for Jefferson Davis, he'd ended up fighting for his life in a Yankee field hospital, shot through the leg and taking a bullet in the chest.

After a Union doctor dug the minié ball out of the upper part of his chest, he'd spent the next six months in a prison camp until they offered him freedom in exchange for dangerous duty out West, riding dispatch and scouting for the U.S. Army in Indian country. It was a job they couldn't spare or risk Union soldiers for, and a Reb like him who knew the West, could ride like the wind and shoot like he was born for it, was highly desirable. One of the Union majors had seen Jess during battle and was duly impressed, though infuriated, with the way the young Southerner handled himself. His horsemanship, marksmanship and courage were admirable, and an extreme menace to the North, until he was finally felled. The major had asked who he was, and when he'd recovered, with more dispatch riders needed, Jess had been tapped as a good candidate.

They offered to galvanize, him. Give him release from the prison if he'd swear allegiance to the U.S. and enlist in the Union Army. Promising allegiance was not a problem, but he could not, would not, agree to the term of enlistment. He refused to put himself in the position of possibly having to shoot at fellow Texans. The major acquiesced, and the dispatch position was offered without enlistment, just attachment to an Army unit. The offer was an extreme rarity, and it was a job Jess didn't want, but there wasn't really much of a choice. It was agree to ride as a messenger and scout for the Union or starve to death in the prison camp before his 19th birthday. It wasn't like it was a real soldier position, he told himself. More of a hired hand type of job. And he never really understood the whole secession reasoning anyway. So he'd swallowed his Southern pride to save his life.

Once back in Texas he heard Johnny had died of an illness at 14, and Francie had married and moved away, and no one seemed to know where. Jess Harper, one of eight children of a loving mother and a strict but fair father, as close a family as any in the Panhandle, was entirely on his own. Even the friends he'd known before the war were gone, a couple of them had moved away, but most were killed in battle or died as prisoners of war.

A while after the war ended and he'd managed a way out of the army job, he focused on finding the Bannisters, drifting from one area to another and all along the way honing the skills he'd need if and when he'd find the gang. His talent with a gun brought him offers of gun-for-hire jobs, and he took some. He always tried to be on the seemingly righteous side of the conflict, he'd told Kathryn, and not so sure he succeeded each time. Finally, he'd headed to Colorado, alone as usual.

He'd watched his family die. He'd been alone since he was barely 15. Yes, Kathryn most definitely knew what family meant to Jess Harper.

Knew that, desperate for some semblance of it, for some friendship at least, shortly after he'd hit the drift after the fire, he'd met up with an experienced, well known gunfighter and gambler, Dixie Howard. During about a year and a half before Jess was sent to war, Howard had taken the teenaged loner under his wing, for some reason Jess never did fathom. And, as Jess had told her, he'd shared with Howard most of the details about the loss of his family. Howard taught Jess all about gunfighting, fist fighting, card sharking, drinking—when to, when not too, and how much. And he'd taught him more. About life, about trust—and not giving it readily—and about survival. He'd done a good job of preparing Jess to someday take his revenge on the Bannisters.

For a long time Jess committed his life to the mission of finding and destroying the gang that had left him with nothing but memories of his family and haunting images of the raid and fire that took them from him. Whether anyone beyond Howard and herself had ever been allowed into that secret, hallowed part of Jess's memories, Kathryn didn't know.

She immediately recalled the one and only time she'd ever seen tears in Jess's eyes—that night she had held him in her arms, feeling him quake as he tried in vain to keep the loss inside. With her urging, he finally poured out his heart about why he'd gotten so choked up when he'd seen a visiting family arrive at her father's Tri-Bar S Ranch, where he was a hired hand. They'd come with two young boys and a small girl, all with dark hair and near the ages of his youngest siblings lost in the fire. The ones he'd fought to get to, and failed to save. If Francie hadn't desperately begged and dragged him back—nearly passed out, choking and with burn injuries himself—he'd have perished too.

Yes, Kathryn knew better than anyone, other than Jess himself, what family meant to him.

And the idea that now he thought she had purposefully denied him the chance to have a family, had willfully kept his child from him, tore at her soul.

"Jess, I would have told you if I could." Her voice quivered, and she drew a steadying breath. "But I didn't even realize I was expecting until after you'd gone. You left so suddenly."

He reeled around to face her, his eyes blazing midnight blue with anger. "Well, what did you expect I'd do after Molly come cryin', bringin' me your letter?"

Kathryn's forehead wrinkled in confusion.

"Do you have any idea how that made me feel?" He gritted the words out.

He drew a breath, and with an iron will forced his growling tone to soften. His eyes changing back to their usual deep cerulean with the replacement of ire with anguish.

"Tellin' me that you realized your father was right about me. That what I did… what I… was… a hired gun as much as a hired hand… meant we couldn't belong together. We're too different. Your upbringin', your family, too far above mine." He paused, as the memory of every hurtful word of the letter was dredged up from the place deep inside where he'd buried them.

His voice quieted even more. "That it'd be better for you if I'd hurry up and leave, so you could forget me… and forget everything that happened between us."

Kathryn's frown deepened, her own eyes reflecting the shock and pain she saw in his. She shook her head. "Jess, I never wrote such a letter."

Dumbfounded, Jess searched her face, struggling to comprehend her denial. "But… Molly was your best friend. She wouldn't 'a… made up somethin' like that."

Awareness dawned for Kathryn. With a sarcastic edge to her voice she said, "Oh, wouldn't she? And what about the note she gave me from you?"

"Note?" Jess's brows drew together, his scowl severe.

"The note my dear friend Molly brought to me, the one she said you begged her to deliver." Kathryn rolled her eyes. "Oh, she cried with me too. Said she'd peeked at the note, and she was so upset to have to give it to me." Kathryn raised her head so she could look directly into Jess's eyes. "It said that being with me… had made you realize you were still in love with a girl in Texas. And you were going back to marry her."

Jess drew a slow breath and let it out with a heavy sigh of resignation. "After your pa found out about us, and then fired me, he must'a figured we were still sneakin' around to be together. Maybe Molly told him. And he got her to help him git rid o' me for good."

"Paid her to help, I bet." Kathryn spat the words with venom. "Right after you left, she supposedly came into a large inheritance from some long lost aunt and was able to move to Chicago like she always said she hoped to. No wonder I never heard from her again."

She looked at Jess with hurt-filled eyes. "How could she betray me like that? I trusted her." Then, an overwhelming sadness seeped into her voice as she thought of the other who had caused her pain. "And how could my father hurt me so?"

Tears began to spill, and Jess stepped closer, smoothing a couple of fingers across her cheeks to wipe them away. "Guess he thought he was doin' what was best for ya," he said gently. "I 'spose he thought he couldn't trust me to be around ya anymore. And I reckon he had good cause to feel that way."

She looked at him and shook her head. "I pursued you every bit as much as you went after me, more actually. And my father could probably see that. He knew me well."

Jess sighed. "He just couldn't stand the idea of his daughter wantin' to be with a gunslick. He wanted better for ya than what I was."

"Oh, Jess, it broke my heart when you left. And despite the note, when I realized I was in a family way I tried to get in touch with you. But Texas is a huge state. I had no idea where you'd headed. I sent telegrams or letters to Dallas, San Antonio, Houston, Amarillo, El Paso, Galveston… and several other cities. Asking you to contact me, that there was something important we needed to talk about. I just hoped they'd be forwarded to a hotel where you were staying or some other place where someone would know you. None of them reached you?"

"Kate, after I left the Tri-Bar S, I didn't go back to Texas."

Feeling foolish, she shook her head again. "Oh, of course. It was a lie. Every bit of it. Orchestrated by my father. Played to perfection by Molly. They tricked us both. How could we have been so easily duped?" She looked up at his face. "And Jess, how could you ever believe I'd think that about your family?"

He looked down. "Couple reasons, I 'spose. First 'cause we were young."

Kathryn nodded, a wistful smiled accompanying her remembrance of their time together. "I'd just turned 18 a couple of months before you arrived at the ranch, and you were barely 20. I imagine we were thinking more with our hearts than our heads."

"Both of us mighty new to the ways of love," Jess agreed, the huskiness in his voice causing Kathryn to blush and feel momentarily breathless. "Not understanding much about neither the happy side nor the hurtful."

She watched his blue eyes narrow, as obviously distressing memories rose in his mind.

"And me… not long back from fightin' in that dadgum war and months in a Yankee prison. Then plenty o' gettin' shot at when I was ridin' dispatch and scoutin'. Didn't really expect anything good could last for me, I reckon. Seen too much to count on anything for long."

"You'd seen a lot even before the war. You had way too much pain to handle at such a young age. I hate that my father caused you even more."

"Wasn't your fault." Jess lowered his eyes, then raised them again to her face. "And even with that letter I thought ya wrote… after I'd been in the big open for a couple weeks I sent word back to you too. Wanted to let ya know I was still thinkin' of ya, so if ya did want'a get in touch with me, you'd know how. Over about three months' time, I sent those four letters and one telegram, ya know." He smiled ruefully. "And remember, I'd told ya how much I hate writin'."

He drew a deep breath. "I couldn't let ya go so easy." He paused, looking down. "Finally figured I had to, when I never heard nothin' back."

"Oh, Jess. I never got any of them. Father must have made sure of that." She eased the tension from her shoulders and gathered her poise. "I don't know if I can ever forgive him for what he did to us. For the pain he caused us. For what he took away from us."

Then, as another thought occurred to her, she clenched her hands together. "I just pray my mother wasn't in on it."

"Your ma always seemed to me like she'd be the type to be honest and direct with ya."

"Yes, you're right. She would. And she never mentioned having any reservations about you. She liked you." She looked up at him. "Mother could see the good in you."

Jess smiled. "Well, there sure is somethin' good came out of what we had, ain't there?"

"That's for certain! Oh, Jess, she's such an incredible little girl!"

"Can sure see that. I can tell you been raisin' her up real good. She's a li'l sweetheart."

Kathryn laughed. "Well, most of the time. But I tell you, she also can be hard to handle. A real spitfire!"

Jess tucked his thumbs into his gunbelt, leaned back against the porch pillar, cocked his head to the side and grinned. "Well now, Kate, I sure can't reckon where she would'a come by that."

Kathryn's eyes sparkled. She poked her index finger several times deliberately into his chest, right at heart level.

"I was talkin' 'bout you!" Jess chortled.

"Me?! Why, Jess Harper, one minute that child is as pleasant and soothing and irresistible as a cool breeze on an August night; and the next she's as wild and reckless as a bucking mustang. In appearance, personality and spirit, she has always been…" She gazed into his eyes, smiled and softly emphasized each of her next words. "…exactly like her father."

Jess absorbed her words. And he beamed.

Then he drew a slight breath and pressed his hand against her cheek. "Her name..." He swallowed hard. "You gave her…" He choked up with emotion and couldn't continue.

"I felt she deserved to have her father's name. Since she couldn't have your last name, I gave her your first." She placed her hand over Jess's and squeezed. "And I remembered you'd said your mother's name was Anna. So I combined the two. To honor the man who gave a new life to me, and the woman who gave life to him."

"I can't even tell ya how much that means to me… that you did that." His voice was whisper soft, his eyes glistening. "Thank you."

"I actually wanted it to be her first name, but… well…" her voice trailed off.

"I can just guess how your pa would'a took to havin' to say my name all the time. Bet he wasn't none too happy about it bein' part of her at all." He snickered a bit. "'Course, I don't 'spose he's so pleased that she looks like me either."

Kathryn smiled up at him and tenderly said, "I am."