~~Chapter 6

I convalesced over the next few days. The storm had stopped abruptly, the sun came out and the two feet of snow that had accumulated melted down to six inches of granulated ice. The air warmed enough that you could be comfortable working in shirt sleeves. James worked non-stop over those days before the real winter storms moved in and snow got too deep to navigate. I knew she just needed to keep moving.

She worked quickly and efficiently, preparing the farm for the long winter. She came in well after dark each day, made my dinner and medicated tea then collapsed into bed. I watched from the window as she dug the haystack out and stowed it in the hay loft using a platform pulleys and ropes tied to the burro and one of the goats when Buck refused to cooperate. Clyde the mule limped around the corral, looking on guiltily while the other animals did his job. James shooed all of the chickens into their barn roost after closing the coop for the winter then plucked twenty in one day to hang them high in the barn rafters for freezing.

I woke from an afternoon nap to see her leading my horse out of the trees with a 3-point buck slung across his rump. The next day, she gutted and skinned the buck, kneeling on the ground like an Indian woman, scraping the fat off the hide with a flat, sharp rock. In my current state, I couldn't do much to help – not that James would allow it – but she let me sit outside for a bit and bring her firewood, one stick at a time, while she dried strips of venison over a smoky fire in the yard. Mortimer sat at my feet and gnawed happily on the deer's amputated ears.

I kept her talking, asking innocuous questions, gently drilling down to the answers I really wanted.

"James is a boy's name," I said, handing her another piece of wood.

"Luc and I are twins," she said.

"That so."

"He came feet first. I came head first, two minutes later. Father named me James when I was only half out. My mother wrote my second name in the Bible but I never knew it until I learned to read."

"What is your middle name?"

"Anna," she said softly, looking embarrassed.

"James Anna," I said. I liked the feel of her full name in my mouth. There was no way I was calling her Jimmy.

"It's Jimmy, Marshal," she sighed.

She took off her battered hat and wiped her brow with the back of her wrist. Her hair was coiled in a bun at the nape of her neck. Some had escaped and curled in wispy ringlets around her face. It was the first time I'd seen her face, without the hat, in full sunlight. I had thought she was pretty in lamplight. Standing in the sun, dressed in a man's trousers and shirt, she was beautiful.

I immediately felt guilty. Many women were already married with a couple of children by the time they were James's age but at nineteen, she was too young for me - and too young for me to be thinking what I was thinking.

It was my curse to fall a little in love with every woman I met - my impulse to protect, Doc tells me.

She rolled the kinks out of her neck and loosened another button on her shirt. I dragged my eyes away.

"How long have you lived on this farm?" I asked.

"Since I was an infant. My father brought us here as soon my mother, Luc and I were well enough to travel."

Her eyes filled but didn't spill over. I hadn't seen her cry since the night I held her on my lap.

"It's a pretty little valley," I said. "A smart place to build a farm."

"Life in Louisiana was untenable, even with the Emancipation," she said, attacking the deer hide with the scraper. "New Orleans had a prosperous community of free people of color but it also had typhus, cholera and yellow fever. There were kidnappers and brigands everywhere else. We were luckier than most. My father could pass for white. My grandfather was a wealthy plantation owner. He loved my grandmother and indulged her lavishly. Freed her, bought her a house in the French Quarter. He sent my father to Paris to be educated – and to protect him from his grown sons, who would've killed my father or sold him into slavery if given the chance."

I'd heard about the families of plantation owners murdering or selling the master's mulatto children to keep them from receiving an inheritance. It got worse when people thought that freed slaves could file a claim against their father's estate – what was left of it after the war.

"I'm sorry to say that it hasn't got much better for Negroes," I said.

"I have not been beyond Fort Hardy since my mother died. We tried to get her to Denver but the baby came early. It was beyond the doctoring my father could do," she said.

"I'm -." I closed my mouth. I could tell she didn't need to hear "I'm sorry" again. I watched her grimly grind out an ember beneath the heel of her boot.

I looked around the orderly dooryard. It was a small farm but would need more than one person come planting and harvest season. The valley was isolated but more and more families were putting down stakes before they reached the California coast. There were competing railroad companies blasting through the mountains, now. Small towns built up around railroad trading posts. And with them came the killers and the spoilers.

This place would not stay hidden for long.

"You can't stay here," I said gently.

Her jaw hardened, a stubborn line appearing between her brows. "This is my home."

"James Anna -."

"I will not leave it," she yelled.

"You'll never be a doctor if you don't."

"Go to hell," she screamed, chucking the scraping stone at me. It grazed my ear, stinging, like a wasp. "You go to hell!"

She leapt at me, connecting with enough force to knock me off the stump. I landed hard with her on top of me, flailing and kicking and pounding me with her fists. The fall knocked the wind out of me and in my weakened state, I was momentarily paralyzed. When I got my breath, I tried to grab her wrists. I finally just enveloped her in a bear hug. She was lightweight but strong. She kicked and bucked and bit me hard on the flesh above my heart. I was going to have bruises on top of bruises and even got cracked a good one in the balls.

But I held on to her, letting her scream and beat her grief out on me.

"Shh, honey," I soothed. "Shh. I know."

Mortimer circled us, whining and letting out distressed little barks.

She finally calmed enough that I let her go. She scrambled to her feet, snatched up her rifle and sprinted into the trees. Mortimer ran alongside her.

I waited in the cabin an hour or so for James to return. It was late afternoon, the temperature was dropping rapidly and she'd left her coat draped on the porch rail. I was shrugging into my own coat to go find her when she walked into the cabin. Her braid had uncoiled and there were pine needles in her hair. There was a long, shallow scratch that followed the curve of her jaw. She stood at the threshold, shivering. I reached around her and closed the door. She ducked under my arm, flinching away from my touch. She sat down hard in the chair by the fire. I watched her for a moment then put on my hat and went out to put up the animals for the night.

Dark, fat clouds with flat bottoms hung heavily over the valley and seemed to sink toward me as I watched. This was the blizzard that would snow us in for the winter. I had hoped that the sunny weather might hold. A couple of days of that and I could make it down these mountains. But I was still too weak to ride very far. It was mid-December. I'd not get out of these mountains until the spring thaw. At this elevation, spring came as late as May.

My people in Dodge would think I was dead. My people. Doc, Chester, Quint, a new friend named Festus and … Kitty.

Doc was a practical man. After a reasonable amount of time, he'd accept the fact of my death, mourn my loss, perhaps, and move on. Chester would never give up hope. He'd die an old man, still waiting from me to ride down Front Street. Quint and Festus might come looking for me. When they didn't find me, they'd stop looking and get drunk in my honor once a year.

Kitty and I had a terrible row before I left - the same one we'd had for the past seven years. My last words to her were, "If I wanted a wife, I'd go out a find one." Kitty reared back like I'd struck her. It was a nasty thing to say. But I'd needed to end it with her and she needed a life without the hope of …me. Her hope was a burden that grew heavier and heavier as the years went by – for both of us. When I left Dodge, I rode by the Long Branch without a glance.

With me "dead", there was nothing holding Kitty to Dodge, not even the Long Branch. She could sell it today and retire to anywhere else in the world a wealthy woman. She could marry. She was still young enough to bear children, if that's what she wanted. She could be happy. I did love Kitty and I wanted the best for her.

What was best for her never was me.

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