Eternity Read online

  “My brother won’t care about your wormy old corn if I’m happy and—” She looked at the watch pinned to her bosom. “The stage is due in ten minutes. It will be here in ten minutes, and my brother will be on it.”

  Josh gave her a patronizing smile. “All right then, if he is, I’ll deal with him. If he wants us to remarry, then we’ll stall him until Nora gives me the paper and my divorce is final. Twenty-four hours at the most.” He put his hand under her chin so she looked up at him. “Can you forgive me? About Nora? I didn’t want to tell you that I’d failed at my first marriage. You can’t blame me for that, can you? I figure the corn made me look enough like a failure.”

  “You’re not a failure.”

  He kissed her. “You don’t know what that means to me. For the first time since I got saddled with that damned farm, when I look in your eyes, I don’t feel like a failure.”

  “I knew you needed me.”

  “I was too stupid to know it,” he said and bent to kiss her again, but Carrie’s head came up as she listened.

  “That’s the stage.” Disentangling herself from him, she got up and went outside.

  Sitting where he was on the bench, Josh smiled at her fondly. She was so trusting, so believing in other people, and now she honestly believed that the stage was going to arrive on the dot of four o’clock.

  When the sound of the approaching wagon came closer, Josh went outside. Carrie was standing at the end of the platform, where she could see everything should the stage indeed arrive.

  Josh looked toward the direction of the noise, and coming toward them was indeed what looked like a stagecoach. He glanced down at Carrie’s watch. “They’ll never make it. It’s two minutes to four, and they’re a long way off yet.”

  “ ’Ring will make it,” Carrie said without a great deal of interest.

  By this time most of the citizenry of Eternity was leaving the shops and streets to see what looked like the phenomenon of the stage being on time. Looking over Carrie’s head, Josh watched with growing fascination as the driver cracked his whip over his horses. He could see the man standing in the box now, could hear him shouting to the horses, and could almost hear the deep breathing of the horses as they ran full gallop toward the platform at the stage depot. Usually, the driver, almost always drunk, ambled into town at little more than a walk, not caring when he arrived.

  “I think they’re going to make it,” Josh said under his breath.

  “Yes, of course,” Carrie answered. “Four o’clock on the dot.”

  Josh’s eyes widened in disbelief as the stage drew into sight. If he wasn’t mistaken, those were arrows sticking out of the roof. Looking about at the ever-increasing crowd of people, he saw that they were pointing.

  At four o’clock exactly, precisely, on the nose, the big stagecoach came screeching to a halt beside the depot platform. There were not only arrows sticking out of the roof, there were bullet holes all over one side of the coach. Tied to the back of the stage was a very fine riding horse.

  “What happened?” everyone yelled at the driver at once.

  Josh didn’t think he’d ever seen a more tired-looking man than that driver. He was usually drunk, but today he was too sober, for there were black circles under his eyes, he hadn’t shaved in a week, and the left corner of his mouth was twitching.

  “What didn’t happen?” the driver said as he unsteadily got down from the box. “We was attacked by thieves; some drunk cowboys was being chased by Indians, and the whole kit and caboodle attacked us. We run into a herd of stampeding buffalo. There ain’t nothin’ that didn’t happen to us.”

  The driver was now beginning to enjoy his audience, and he warmed to his story. “But we got a crazy man on board. Name of Montgomery.”

  Carrie gave Josh an I-told-you-so look.

  The driver continued. “That man said he had a schedule to keep, said he’d set a date and he meant to be in Eternity on that date. I tell you, the man is crazy. We was travelin’ about a hundred miles an hour, give or take a bit, and he climbed out of the coach window, got on his horse, and singlehandedly kept them buffaloes off a the coach. He wouldn’t let me slow down for him to get back inside, either. When them cowboys attacked us, he shot their hats off. The Indians thought that was so funny they quit shootin’ at us. I tell you, the man is crazy.”

  By this time the driver had dismounted, pulled the steps down, and opened the door to the coach. At long last, the passengers began to disembark. They were a mess: dirty, frightened looking, the women in tears. They looked as though they’d been placed inside a small barrel and dragged from Maine to Colorado.

  The two women, shaking, their clothes torn, fell from the coach into the arms of townspeople. One woman’s hairpiece had fallen over her ear, giving her a lumpy-looking head.

  Three men got out of the coach, and they didn’t look any less frightened than the women. One man had a bloody cut in his coat sleeve, another had three holes in his hat. The third man tried to light a cigar, but his hand shook so badly he couldn’t get the match to the tip of the cigar. When one of the townspeople walked up to him with an offer of help, he said, “I need a drink.”

  “Which one is he?” Josh asked Carrie, surprised that she wasn’t going forward to greet any of the men. She didn’t answer him, but kept looking at the stage.

  After the others were off, another man stepped down. He was tall, over six feet, well built, and extremely handsome, and he was wearing a black suit that Josh knew had cost a great deal. Instead of being nervous and frightened as the other people were, this man looked rested and utterly calm, as though he’d just returned from a Sunday stroll instead of the ordeal of the stage, and there wasn’t so much as a hint of dust on him.

  As Josh watched, the man stepped onto the platform and smiled at the people around him. One of the women who had been on the stage looked at him and started crying, burying her face in the shoulder of an older woman. The man reached into his inside coat pocket, withdrew a slim cigar, and, with a very steady hand, struck a match and lit it. As he took a deep draw, he seemed to be oblivious to the way a hundred or so townspeople were staring at him in fascination, then flicked an imaginary speck of dust off his shoulder.

  “Guess which one is ’Ring?” Carrie said in a heavy voice.

  Reassuringly, Josh slipped his hand into hers.

  As though he’d known all along that they were there, ’Ring turned toward his sister.

  “Hello, sweetheart,” he said quietly, and Carrie ran to him.

  ’Ring caught his little sister in his strong arms and hugged her fiercely while the townspeople watched. If this man, this half-monster, half-hero was known by Carrie, then they were ready to accept him. After all, Carrie was providing jobs for them.

  “Let me look at you,” ’Ring said, setting her down. He was probably twice as big as she was, and one of his big hands caressed her cheek.

  Josh had never experienced jealousy before. He’d always believed in people living their own lives, and he’d never tried to tell anyone, man, woman, or child, what they should do. But then Josh knew he’d never really been in love before. Right now he couldn’t stand this man touching Carrie, and it didn’t matter that he was her brother.

  Moving next to Carrie, he folded her arm in his in a way of ownership.

  Carrie looked at her husband. ’Ring was a bit taller than Josh, but he wasn’t built better than Josh, and Carrie thought that Josh was about a thousand times handsomer than her brother.

  ’Ring looked at the two of them, at the way Josh held Carrie’s arm, at the way Josh’s mouth was set, as though he were ready to do battle with ’Ring if ’Ring so much as touched a hair on Carrie’s head again. He saw the way Carrie’s eyes looked at Josh, as though he were the bravest, finest man in the world, and ’Ring knew all that he’d wanted to know. He’d traveled all the way from Maine to see if his sister loved this man and if he loved her, and now he had his answer. For his part, he could have stepped back on the stage