"What's wrong with you, boy, you some kind of coward? What's a man got to say get a rise from you?" Barrett was leaning right in on that one.
He just shrugged and stepped around the man again. Ignoring him at his back, hoping he wouldn't start something tonight, too tired and sick to care what the man said to him. He heard him make some sort of comment about cowards. Since his voice was dropping further behind him, he let it go, tied his gear on Gal and led her away toward the main corral behind the big house.
He stood beside her while she drank her fill and studied the house. The windows were golden with the lamp light inside. He could see the shadows passing in front of the windows, of the family that might have been. He shook his head at his fantasy and had turned to mount Gal when he saw Nick walking across the yard toward him.
"All right, let's hear it," he said coming up into his face.
He just looked at Nick and for a wonderful moment he thought that perhaps Nick had recognized some kinship in him. But then he realized that Nick was furious and that the anger was directed at him.
"Well, you just name the tune and I'll try to hum it." He tried giving him a small smile to recapture some of that easy banter from the bridge a week ago, on that ride home from the ditch Saturday.
"Corning."
"Nice town." There was to be no banter tonight. He could feel the anger rolling off Nick in a wave he could almost see.
"Last place you worked?"
"That's right."
"That's a hundred miles from here."
"So?"
"I saw you shooting today. When that fight ended, there were fifteen of those railroad guns down, by my count you put eight of them there."
He knew where this was going now. He turned away from him toward Gal.
He felt Nick's hand on him but didn't even have time to put up his arm in defense before his brother had spun him around and let fly with a hard left punch to his midriff. The blow would have laid him on the ground had Nick not maintained his hold on his arm, pushing him back against Gal to hit him yet again.
"You're no more a cowhand than a Modoc. Let's hear it, boy—the truth. What are you doing here?"
He made an attempt to hit out at the bigger man but could hardly raise his arm, the dark closing in on his vision.
"Who sent you here, boy?"
"No man… sends me anywhere." The bravado would have sounded better had he been able to get it all out without stopping to struggle for a breath, if he hadn't been hanging from the other man's hand without the strength to stand.
Nick hit him again and he felt himself falling, his body falling to the ground, his awareness falling through a blackness of space. He felt tears in his eyes; his brother shouldn't to be doing this to him. His brother shouldn't be hurting him like this. Brothers didn't do this to each other.
When he was aware again, it was of someone half dragging, half carrying him, the pull on the wound such that he couldn't stop a small sound of pain from escaping. Then he knew it was Nick dragging him up the steps of the big house and into the bright light of a foyer as grand as that big hotel in San Francisco. Even hurting as he was and unable to pull his legs under himself, he could marvel at the sight.
"JARROD." Such a yelling in his ear. "JARROD GET DOWN HERE." Nick dragged him into another room and set him, not ungently, on the floor. "JARROD."
He pulled himself to his feet using a small table for leverage. He had to get out of there before it was all ruined. His lawyer brother came into the room, his arm in a sling from the morning's fight. "Nick, What in the name…"
He could see no means of escape except the door he came by. Bent almost double at the waist, his arm wrapped around his middle, he struggled toward the door. When Nick made a grab at him, he snatched one of the whiskey bottles on the little table, broke the end off and threatened them with it as he tried to back out the door.
"I've had me a day…" He had so much he wanted to say to these men but no breath to say it. The room was tilting around him. Had he not had his back to the wall, he would have been on the floor. He had to get out.
"Oh, well, now that's all…" Nick took a step toward him.
"Nick, what's going on here?" Jarrod demanded
"He was leaving. I asked him about this morning. Who he was? You saw him shooting."
He tried to edge further out of the room without turning his back on them. He was half out the door when he looked up the stairs and saw the two women. His eyes met hers and he feared it was too late from the look of horror on her face. Perhaps it was for the broken bottle; he dropped it to the floor behind his boots and turned his head away in the direction of that big front door. He took another half step in that direction and was brought up short by a hand on his arm. He tried to pull away, to wrap his arms about his middle more firmly, to ready himself for another blow.
"I asked him. He wouldn't answer. I got angry." Nick sounded strangely uncertain, but there was no uncertainty in that grip on his arm. He tried to move away and realized the hand was holding him up as much as it was stopping him. He felt his knees beginning to fold. "I think I did something awful to him, Jarrod. I hit him and there was blood all over the place."
He was falling again. Losing himself in the whimsy of his fever, he thought he could hear his sister's voice say, "He saved me in town last night."
"YOU, IN TOWN LAST NIGHT…" His last thought as he fell was one of pleasure that at least one of his gnat brained sister's brothers knew she was an idiot.
"Hey, boy." Someone was wiping his face with a wet towel. He opened his eyes. It was Nick. His brother was helping him. He gave him a half smile. The other, the hitting, it had been a mistake.
"Oh, Nick, get out of the way. What have you done?" Mrs. Barkley pushed Nick to one side and came into his line of sight.
Oh no. He had to get out of there. He couldn't be there. He tried to roll away from her. He tried to get his legs to bend, to get his feet under him. He had to go now.
"Jarrod, lay him down here." The world tilted again and he was falling back, but slowly, the ceiling over his head spinning a slow arc. Hands were trying to pull his arms away from his stomach but he held on fast, holding the pain close.
"Let go, boy. Let us get a look here." Jarrod's voice was soft and kind as he fought with him to uncover his stomach, but he held fast.
"I'm fine. Let me go." He was too close he needed to get out. He loved that he had memories of these people to take with him. But they were his memories. He couldn't get this close. He couldn't get in their lives, in their house. He didn't belong here on the inside he needed to get out, out to the edge of their lives.
"Don't fight, boy, we're trying to help you." That kind voice must be hers. He wouldn't open his eyes. He wouldn't meet her look. He had done her such a wrong, being born, coming here, being in her house. He couldn't look at her.
"Let me go," he begged. Men had beaten him unconscious and he wouldn't give them a word, but he would beg for this woman he had wronged so awfully. "Please, let me go."
"No one's going to hurt you. We just need to see what little brother has done to you here."
He could feel tears in his eyes; tears born of his fever and pain and of this kindness of brothers, tears for might have been brothers, dreamed of brothers. "Let me go."
Fingers on his buttons opening his shirt, her hands on his arms, "Move your arms, child, I need to look." He could not disobey this woman with her kind words and allowed her to move his arms away from his stomach, allowed her to open his shirt.
"Oh, Nick, I don't think you did this. This is an old wound. I think he was shot. But if you punched him there…" He put his fingers over the hole in spite of her hand on his wrist. He could feel the blood seeping between them, all that healing gone and fever to boot and him here. He'd made such a mess of this. He just had to get away from here.
"We need to help him, Mother. He helped me last night. I was afraid and then he was there and those men beat him up. If he hadn't been there…" He could hear the tears in her voice, tears for him he wondered? "Please, Pappy, please help him."
"Mother?"
He opened his eyes and met those of the woman bending over him, her hand still on his wrist. He had never meant this to happen. He was just going to look, maybe speak to the brothers, but never this. "Please, let me go." He wouldn't beg these brothers for anything, but maybe this woman would let him go. She would not want him here any more than he wanted to be here, in this place he was never meant to be, this place of real family and real brothers.
"I can't," she said to him. "I can't let you go."
He was so afraid she knew then. That by some miracle of wife knowledge she knew. That she had read the wrongness in him and knew what he was.