Excerpt from DRYGULCH TO DESTINY

A QUIET MOMENT

Now Morgan was alone—until Hanna Jameson finished the supper dishes and came out. A patch of yellow light flooded the porch, growing wider, then dimmed by a shadow. Morgan forced himself to calm. His first instinct, born from years of being shot at through doorways, was to reach for a gun, but he knew Hanna was the only one inside the house. He managed to keep his hands still, his left one on the arm of his chair, holding his pipe, his right one dangling a tad too close to his Smith and Wesson. His fingers tickled the smooth pearl of its butt.

“What a nice evening,” remarked Hanna, and she remained standing on the porch, hushing the door shut behind her. The dog, Curly, lay next to Morgan’s chair and thumped his tail a couple of times against the porch.

“Sure is.” Morgan said no more.

“Am I free to speak?” Hanna asked.

He turned his head. “Ma’am? Well, it is your porch.”

He could see her nod, although in the dim light it was very faint. “I have heard of you, Mr. Morgan. And Andy told me more. Is it true? These stories?”

Stifling a cough, he shifted around in his chair. “Don’t rightly know—since I don’t know what you’ve heard. Or what he said.”

“Some call you a town tamer. Others a killer.”

A long moment of silence. Then: “And you? What do you think?”

“We’ve only just met. It’s not fair to turn this back on me. What would I base a judgment on?”

“But yet you are bold enough to bring it up. So I’m asking again: What do you think? I have my offhand judgments about you. You must have yours about me too.”

Hanna folded her arms, drawing in a deep breath. She started to say something, then instead she laughed, embarrassed. “You’re right, Mr. Morgan. I do have my judgments about you. You flew into my house uninvited, because you felt there was trouble here. You saw the trouble, saw a man with a gun in his hand. The man Andy says you are, the man in some of the newspapers, I feel like that man would have shot him. You had call enough to—if you really were that man. You could have asked your questions later. And then again, when they both showed what kind of men they were—when I told you what they were up to—you could have decided to shoot them then. But you didn’t. That tells me you are not the heartless man of instant violence Andy claims you are.”

Morgan tried to smile, an expression that was all too rare for him. “I appreciate that, ma’am. I will tell you this, and I stand behind it: I have killed men. I’m not proud of it. But I go from town to town when I’m hired to bring peace, and some men only know the peace of being dead. They have been robbing and bullying and beating and killing for so long that they know no other way. No one can help those men—not in life. I come to help towns in need of peace and safety. When I find men standing in my way, I move them. And if moving them makes them dead, I don’t look back. I’ve never mourned the loss of a single one of them. I’ve never regretted that my gun was the thing that made them dead, because I knew they meant to kill me first. Does that fit what Hicks told you?”

Hanna stared as he talked, then stood there quiet. After a moment, she asked, “Do you mind if I sit?”

“Not at all. They’re your chairs, too.”

She laughed. “Yes, but you were sitting here first, and you deserve your solitude.”

“I’ve had a belly full of solitude, ma’am. Especially here of late.”

She pulled her chair a little ways from his and eased into it. He could see her looking at him, trying to read his face in the shadows. “It’s lonely here at night. I have Curly, and the sound of the horses. The stars. And the wind. Often the coyotes sing for me, and sometimes the wolves. Sometimes I can hear the cattle, out on the range. And the crickets are always here. That is my company, Mr. Morgan. Most nights.”

“Nate’s a good man. I’m sure he’d stay up longer and keep you company if you asked.”

She laughed again, and the musical notes were soothing as a birdsong. “Nate is like a father to me. And Andy is a boy who often doesn’t know his place. Sometimes a woman longs for more.”

Morgan cleared his throat. “All that is none of my business. If you’re trying to excuse being here with me, you don’t have to. You’re welcome, for my part.”

“Thank you. I hope it makes some kind of sense when I say it feels safer with you here.”

“Safer? Sometimes a man like me draws trouble where there otherwise wouldn’t have been any.”

“In a wild town, maybe. But not here. I was already in trouble. You came, and you made the trouble go away. Perhaps just the sound of your name made it go away.”

She paused for a long minute, and they both listened to the crickets in the yard. One lonely coyote began to yelp, far out in the brush. “There he is,” she said, her soft voice music in his ears. “I knew he would come.”

Morgan nodded. “Yep, there he is.” His voice was deep, throaty, a voice to match the depth of this night.

“I call that one Singer.”

Morgan raised a brow. “You name your coyotes? Ma’am, you are lonely.”

She laughed again. She seemed to like laughing, and he liked to hear it. It made him long for the kind of home he hadn’t known since he was a boy back in Virginia.

Hanna cleared her throat almost inaudibly. “Another question? A very personal one. And you don’t have to answer.”

“But you want me to.”

“Of course, or I wouldn’t ask. But it’s your choice.”

“At your service.”

“What happened in Frisco? It is said they intended to hang you. The mob came, and your deputies didn’t even stand behind you—but other friends did. I will never tell a soul, Mr. Morgan. You have my word on that. Men can change, and I know that. Today, I had my own chance to see the kind of man I believe you to be. Today, you saved me from something I don’t want to think about. If you had wanted to, you could have turned on me then and done anything you wanted. But I could see in your face that you wouldn’t. So I won’t turn on you, either. But I would like to know. What happened there? Why did they believe you did the robbery? And killed that man? Did you?”

The last question was point-blank, unabashed. Maybe the dark had made it easier for her.

“That’s more than one question,” he remarked, and she instantly laughed, realizing her folly.

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry.” He sat there for a few moments more, fiddling with the tobacco sack in his vest pocket, thinking about packing his pipe again. “Do you mind my smoke?” he finally asked.

“My father smoked for my whole childhood.”

He started to draw out the sack, then thought better of it and let it slide back in. What her father might have done gave him no right to force his habit on this woman. Her eyes followed his movements, and a smile formed on her lips as she appraised him anew.

“Ma’am, I don’t know who I’ve told about that night—about those days that followed. Not many. One, I guess. Maybe two.” He chuckled. “Never had anybody ask me direct like this. Reckon they’re all scared of me?”

“Maybe they are. They would have reason, I suppose.”

“I suppose.” He reached over with his right hand and popped the middle joint of his left trigger finger, then did the same with the right—a nervous habit he hated. “Well, ma’am, I’ll tell you what I know. What I remember. You can take it for what it’s worth. The jury thought it was enough for acquittal.”

“You don’t remember it all? I would think that isn’t something you could easily forget.”

“I didn’t either. Until the night of the robbery.”