Bounty on a Baron

Chapter Twenty-eight

Almost afraid to breathe, Josephine had stood in a doorway waiting for something to happen in the Broadus House across the street. When Brand finally came out and started down the street she realized that she had been holding her breath.

Her first thought was to run after Brand and go home with him, but he wasn’t the same man she had known and loved for so long and home wasn’t home anymore, either.

Once Brand was out of sight, she hurried across the street and into the saloon. Seeing Decker sitting alone at a table, she approached him.

Decker saw Josephine enter the saloon. Somehow her presence didn’t surprise him.

When she sat across from him, he asked, “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

“Yes, please,” she said in a whisper. He noticed that her hands were shaking.

“Potts!” Decker called. “Can we get some coffee?”

“Sure.”

When Decker looked back at Josephine she was clasping her hands tightly together, as if she too had noticed that they were trembling and was trying to stop them.

“I saw him leave,” she said. “Was—was anything resolved?”

“Yes,” Decker said. “He said I won’t take him alive.”

She closed her eyes and bit her lip.

“I knew it,” she said, her voice barely audible.

“Josephine—”

“No,” she said, holding up her hand. “It’s all right. It surprises me, but I think I understand.”

Potts came over with a pot of coffee and two cups. Decker poured the coffee and pushed a cup across the table to her.

She looked at the cup but did not touch it.

“I—don’t know where to go,” she said finally. “I can’t go back to—to that house. I can’t go back to him…and yet I still love him.”

“Of course you do,” Decker said. “He hasn’t done anything to you.”

“But he has,” she moaned. “He’s ruined everything between us.”

“I ruined everything between you.”

“No,” she said. “If it hadn’t been you who came after him, it would have been someone else. You can’t take any blame for something he brought on himself.”

Decker didn’t reply to that. He sipped his coffee and waited for her to continue talking.

“I can’t go back to work,” she said. “I just can’t face anyone—” She looked at him and said, “This will be resolved today, won’t it?”

“Yes,” he assured her. “One way or another, it will.”

“When will you go after him?”

“I don’t know.”

“Didn’t you, uh, agree…”

“You mean didn’t we agree to meet in the street at a certain time?”

She nodded.

“It’s not done that way, Josephine. No doubt he’s gone back to your house to get his gun. He may wait for me there or he may come out. I might sit here for a while or I might go out into the streets. Sooner or later we’ll be facing each other, and that’s when it will happen.”

“How—how can you stand—to wait?” she asked. “Either of you?”

He smiled.

“A man can always wait to die, Josephine.”

“Are you prepared to die?”

He thought back to that day he’d stood on the gallows with a rope around his neck.

“I’ve been prepared to die for a long time.”

“You amaze me.”

“I shouldn’t.”

“Do you think I could stay here…until it’s all over? I couldn’t stand to see…”

“Potts!” Decker said.

Potts had been listening, and he said, “Sure. I could use the company.”

Decker wished she would get up and leave, because if she stayed he would have to leave. He couldn’t possibly sit there with her watching him.

“I don’t know…what to do…” she said lamely.

“Just sit here,” he told her, “and wait.”

He stood up, pushing his chair back. As he started past her to the door, she grabbed his arm with both hands, a desperate look in her eyes.

“Don’t—” she started, then her voice broke. Abruptly she turned away from him and said, “Be careful.”

Decker was sure that was not what she had intended to say.

After Decker left, Potts walked over to the table and asked Josephine, “Would you like me to heat this coffee up?”

For a moment he thought she hadn’t heard him, and then she looked at him and said, “May I have a glass of whiskey, please?”