Texas Angel, 2-in-1 (58 page)

Micah moved the beans around on his plate with his spoon, the only eating implement his jailers trusted him with. He wondered if he’d have an appetite for anything when supper came. Then he heard the noise of someone approaching. With a defiant flourish he scooped up some beans and stuffed them into his mouth, following that with a huge bite of corn bread. When his cell door opened, he nearly choked on the food.

“Hello, Micah.”

He just stared at the figure nearly filling the doorway, his mouth and throat working desperately to swallow the food that had suddenly become as dry as sawdust. But even without the food, he would not have known what to say. In fact, he wasn’t certain he’d say anything. He’d finished talking to this man six years ago . . . no, long before that. He’d quit having anything to say to his father the day he had dragged his family from their home in Boston.

Benjamin Sinclair ducked under the door lintel and stepped fully into the cell as the jailer closed and locked the door behind him. Micah continued to stare silently. But silence wasn’t going to make the man go away. His father filled the small cell with that presence he’d always had, some inner force that made people listen to him, fear him, and hate him. His preaching had often driven people to tears. His recriminations had made them tremble. Micah himself had trembled often in the man’s presence. There had been a time when he was a very young boy that he had even regarded the man with awe. Micah had thought that the fiery Almighty whom Reverend Sinclair had so eloquently preached about had actually been his father and that if he worshiped his father, his father would love him, but if he fell short, that same father would condemn him to hell. Then Micah had grown older and wiser, realizing there was nothing he could do to please either father—the one in heaven or the man now standing before him.

“Say something, son,” Benjamin said in a tone of soft entreaty.

It reminded Micah of how his father had claimed to have changed after his mother’s death. He had behaved kind of differently then, but the changes had come too late. For Micah, at least.

“What’re you doing here?” Micah could barely speak. The food was gone, but his throat still felt constricted.

“Tom got word to me about what happened. I . . . had to see you, Micah.”

“Why?”

“W-why?”h The man now returned the same gaping expression his son was wearing. “You’re my son!”

“You figure to take one last chance to save my soul?” Micah taunted.

“I don’t know what I figure to do. I haven’t seen you in over six years, had no way to find you. I guess when I heard you’d finally . . . well, lighted in one place, I just came.”

Benjamin continued to stand, towering over Micah. His legs were slightly apart, his hands clasped behind his back like a soldier at ease. He looked like he could and would stand there forever.

Micah resisted the urge to squirm. But he could not deny the inner sense of being an errant child awaiting deserved discipline. He knew if he stood, he’d be just as tall as his father. He knew if he wanted, he could engage in a physical battle with this man and win. Yet he wouldn’t. And he had no idea why. But he would not hurt this man, at least physically. Still, he grasped his spoon as if it were a weapon.

“I don’t want to talk to you,” Micah said stiffly.

“I’ve come a long ways to see you.”

“No one asked you to.”

Benjamin’s jaw began to work spasmodically, and a brief flicker of something like fire glinted from his eyes. Micah had seen that look before. It had usually come just before a particularly painful beating.

But Benjamin continued to stand like a statue. Finally he spoke, tightly at first, then seemingly gaining control of his ire, his tone relaxed. “Tom Fife tells me they have offered you a way out of this mess. I guess it wouldn’t help if I encouraged you to take his offer.”

The corner of Micah’s mouth quirked slightly into a hint of amusement.

Benjamin shook his head. “So you’ll let them hang you just to spite me?”

“Don’t flatter yourself, Pa. I got my reasons, and they don’t have nothing to do with you.” Deliberately, Micah laid down his spoon and pushed aside his tray, which was on his bed.

“Don’t be so stubborn, son!”

“You ain’t got no right to tell me how to be or what to do,” Micah rejoined.

“No . . . I suppose I don’t.” He paused, his eyes blue like the summer sky, blue like Micah’s, searching his son. “I know you’ll never believe it, but I have changed. I’ve made mistakes—I still make mistakes—but I’ve learned that God sees only a man’s heart, and I am trying to do that as well. Not always successfully, I admit. But . . .”

The fire was gone now from those incisive pools, replaced by some thing Micah could not read . . . or did not want to.

“Son, I know I am to blame for the parts of your heart that are dark and painful. But I know, too, that your heart is not all dark. I know that because, even more than me, your mother had a great influence upon you. Her love and her tender spirit are in you as well. And just maybe they are even stronger than my part. I think that is what Tom Fife sees, and that is why he is willing to take such a risk for you. I ask you—not for me but for your mother’s sake—to stay alive.”

“My mother is dead.” Somehow Micah’s flat monotone managed to convey volumes of scorn.

Then the statue of the man moved. Benjamin lifted a hand and raked it through his hair, blond like Micah’s.

“You know what I mean.” A desperate quality suffused his voice.

“Well, just remember this. If I live or die, it has nothing to do with you.” Micah’s voice rang clear and confident, though in his heart he feared the fate he chose would have everything to do with this man.

“I know.”

The pain in those two words made Micah’s stomach twist. “Now leave me alone,” Micah said.

Benjamin turned toward the cell door, then paused. “Do you care to know how your sisters and brother are, and my wife?”

Micah shrugged.

Benjamin, apparently taking that for assent, continued. “You’ve got a half brother and half sister now. The youngest was born a few months ago. The whole family is well. Isabel is growing into a pretty young lady. She wanted to come with me and told me to tell you she misses you—”

“Do they know about me?” Micah cut in, not really understanding the sudden concern rising in him.

“They don’t hear as much news as I, so I doubt it. I would never tell them.”

Micah shrugged as if he didn’t care, then said with the most sincerity in his tone that he’d yet used, “Well, tell Issy I miss her, too. And the other kids. And Elise.” He thought briefly of his father’s second wife. She’d been kind to him, and he hoped she didn’t one day suffer the same fate as Rebekah Sinclair had.

“I’ll do that, Micah.” Benjamin put his face close to the barred opening in the door. “Guard, I’m ready.”

His voice held a hesitancy, as if he truly was not ready, as if he had more to say. But he remained silent as he waited. Micah did the same.

It seemed to take forever for the guard to come. Micah did not realize he was holding his breath until the door creaked open, and he expelled a sharp burst of air.

“Good-bye, Micah,” Benjamin said in a tone that seemed rough and brittle, then he paused a moment before stepping outside.

If he had been waiting for parting words from his son, Micah disappointed him, remaining silent. The door then clanked shut, and Micah was left alone.

The next visit came just before sunset. Micah thought it would be Tom with one last plea. And Micah wondered what his response would be, desperately wanting a way out but believing that would not be possible.

When the door opened, it wasn’t Fife who stepped inside, but a dream. At least he wondered if he was dreaming while still wide awake. He’d had this dream several times since the Comanche attack, and it had been a welcome respite from his Goliad and San Jacinto nightmares. He’d dreamed of a beautiful, genteel girl with a smile that could melt stone or turn a dry riverbed into a rushing stream of water, dancing and sparkling in the desert sun. He’d dreamed that smile was meant for him, only him. And he’d wake with a gnawing ache, knowing he would only see such a smile in the netherworld of sleep.

That’s why Micah rubbed his eyes and stared, half expecting the vision to suddenly dissolve. But she was still standing there, all feminine in cornflower blue, her dark hair escaping the confines of her lace bonnet and falling around her lovely face.

The spell was broken by Tom Fife’s discordant voice. “Got a visitor for you, Micah.” Then he added, “I’ll be right outside here, miss.”

Before Micah could say a thing or give his leave, the door shut. This time, however, Tom did not lock it.

She smiled that smile, and Micah realized he remembered it perfectly from their last meeting.

“I hope you don’t mind my coming unannounced,” she said.

Mind? Micah could have been ready to die that minute just with the sight of her, feeling his life had been complete.

“Naw, I don’t mind,” he said casually. “It gets kind of boring in here.” Then remembering his manners, he jumped up. All at once he became acutely aware of himself and his surroundings.

He was still wearing the same dirty clothes he’d been wearing the day of the Comanche attack. And, of course, he hadn’t had a bath in all that time either. Nothing unusual about that. Not enough water on the trail earlier, and now no one cared to waste the effort if he was just gonna die in a day. He smelled like rotten onions, and his week’s growth of beard made his face look like he’d been kissing dirt. He didn’t have much of a beard, but what he had was darker and ruddier than his hair. Instinctively his hand shot up to his chin, then he grimaced, and instead of welcoming this visit, he decided that before he died tomorrow, he would kill Tom Fife.

“I don’t have a chair to offer you,” he said, as if this admission could account for everything else.

“I don’t mind standing.”

The corners of her lips twitched, and he realized she was just as nervous as he. She held her hands in front of her, twisting them together.

“Didn’t figure I’d ever see you again,” Micah said.

“I heard you’d been arrested, and I felt so bad, I just couldn’t stay away.”

Her dark eyes were like lumps of obsidian, only fluid and expressive. They glittered now with what Micah dared to hope was sadness.

“I don’t hold nothing against you,” Micah replied with just a hint of magnanimity in his tone. He thought about holding her that day when she had fainted and decided the experience was well worth arrest, maybe even hanging. “You had to tell the law what I done.”

“Please don’t think that!” The obsidian now flashed with passion. “I would never have turned you in after what you did for me. I prayed they would never find you. But it was Pete’s best horse you took, and, well, he was pretty upset.”

“I’m sorry I did that, and not just because of . . . well, what’s gonna happen tomorrow.” Micah shifted nervously on his feet. In truth, he wasn’t entirely sorry, but he couldn’t have her know that. “I didn’t know you was Texans, and . . . I wouldn’t have done it if it had been his only horse.” That, at least, was true. “Anyway, I am sorry.”

“I came to town to tell the constable about what you did for me, how you might have escaped free and clear with no one able to identify you if you hadn’t come back to see to me—”

“You shouldn’t have done that,” he broke in, horrified on several different levels, most of which he could barely define. But for certain he hated the thought that she had come merely out of pity.

“You rescued me at your own peril,” she insisted.

“I also took you hostage—”

“Pooh!” She gave a dismissive wave of her hand. “You never would have harmed me.”

“How do you know that?”

“I just do.”

Completely abashed, Micah said rather helplessly, “Well, at any rate, you shouldn’t have come here, because you’d likely ruin your reputation if folks believed you had any truck with a man like me.”

“I don’t care what people think. I owe you my life, Mr. Sinclair.”

“Still . . . it ain’t right.”

She then bestowed upon him such a look—part smile, part admiration, part impish rebellion—that it made him suck in a breath of shock.

“My father would have a conniption if he knew I was here.” A curl fell in her eyes, and that impish look had full reign for a moment before she lifted a hand and flicked the silken wave back into place.

She was the most beautiful thing Micah had ever seen.

She continued. “But I learned something about you the day you saved me, Mr. Sinclair, that no one else knows.”

“Y-you did?” He silently cursed the flustered squeak in his voice.

“You are a decent man, Mr. Sinclair. I know that and . . . and I can’t bear the thought of . . .” Her own voice broke with emotion. “Goodness!

I didn’t think I’d . . .” She fumbled with the reticule that hung from her twisting hands and withdrew a handkerchief.

“Miss! You . . .” But as much as Micah knew he should say something, he was speechless. This beautiful girl, this vision of sweet dreams, was weeping . . . for him! He didn’t even think how this would be the ideal opportunity to hold her once again, just to comfort her, of course.

Instead, he just stood there, gaping woodenly.

She dabbed her eyes daintily. “I’m so sorry for carrying on this way.”

“You oughtn’t cry, not over me,” he finally said.

“But . . . but . . .” her tears kept flowing.

“Tom! Tom!” Micah yelled, not knowing what else to do.

The door flew open, and Tom leaped into the cell like an avenging knight. “What’s going on?”

“It ain’t my fault!” Micah declared preemptively.

“No, Mr. Fife, it isn’t Mr. Sinclair’s fault.” She sniffed and her words trembled. “I just don’t want to see him . . . I can’t even say it! And I am to blame!”

“No you ain’t, miss.”

Tom reached out and did what Micah had been hungering to do. He put an arm around the weeping girl. But at the same time Tom made this gentle gesture, he turned blazing eyes on Micah.

“What’d you say to her, boy!” he accused more than asked.