Page 26 of Follow the Lonesome Trail
Ruby sat up first, shaking clumps of dirt from her curls. She looked a little rumpled and sported some minor scrapes, but as she stood shakily and brushed herself off, Jimmy could see that she was largely unhurt.
Frank moved slower, and his attempt to sit up was accompanied by a long, low groan.
“You poor man!” Ruby exclaimed, dropping back to her knees beside him. “Looks like you took the worst of that fall. And to think, you got yourself all hurt just to try and save me!”
“Weren’t no trouble.” There was a note of excitement in Frank’s raspy whisper that betrayed him. Jimmy had seen this before. Frank thrived on pity. He would’ve let himself get shot if it meant a pretty lady would fuss over him.
“Oh, but it was!” Ruby insisted. “Just think of how bad off I could’ve been if you hadn’t broken my fall.”
“Come on, Frank,” Jimmy urged. “Walk it off. We’re in the middle of a hundred-dollar job, remember? We’re so close!”
“Oh, shut up, Jimmy,” Ruby snapped at him. “You’ll get your money soon enough. At least let me fix Frank up before we go on. I can clean that cut with my hankie in two shakes. Here, why don’t you have something to drink?”
Drink .
The word sent off warning bells in Jimmy’s mind. He reached reflexively for his canteen laced with the tincture of laudanum, but it wasn’t hanging at his side like it should be. He’d handed it to Frank earlier, which meant…
Frank still had it!
“Ruby, no!” Jimmy shouted at her. He started a mad charge up the hill. “Don’t touch that!”
But it was too late. With all the tender care of a mother cradling a sick child, Ruby gently tilted Frank’s head and poured the contents of Jimmy’s canteen into his parched lips.
Frank swallowed the draft reflexively. The taste must have tipped him off that something was wrong, because after the second gulp, his eyes went wide and wild for an instant. Then they rolled back in his head, and Frank went completely limp.
“Oh!” Ruby gasped, snatching the canteen away. She gave it a timid sniff and immediately gagged. “Lands, Jimmy! What on earth have you been drinking?”
“Frank!” Jimmy shouted as he dropped beside his partner. “Frank, come on, wake up!” He slapped Frank’s face back and forth, but it only made him loll limply from side to side.
“Is…is he dead?” Ruby’s wide round eyes threatened to spill over with tears. “Did I kill Frank?”
“No, but I might,” Jimmy muttered. “Dagnabbit, Frank, you just had to let her baby you? Now I’m gonna have to do this all by myself while you take a nice little nap!
” Jimmy stood and kicked viciously at a pile of leaf litter, sending a spattering of dirt over Frank’s sleeping face.
He shook a finger at Frank. “I’m taking a percentage of your cut, ya hear? ”
Jimmy reached down and took hold of Ruby’s arm, pulling her to her feet. “Come on, we gotta go.”
“What about Frank?” Ruby protested.
“Leave him.” Jimmy shook his head. “Neither one of us can carry him like that. I’ll finish the job and come back for him. It’s anyone’s guess as to when he comes around.”
Ruby didn’t resist as Jimmy led her down the mountainside. It took only a minute more to reach the cache, but each passing moment made Jimmy feel more and more anxious to be done with the whole business.
“Down here, in the hollow,” Jimmy directed her. Ruby, for the first time since her stagecoach had been held up, seemed unsure. She hesitated, hanging back a few steps behind him.
“Look, you don’t gotta be scared of me,” Jimmy said, glancing back. “I’m not gonna bury you like a treasure. I won’t even tie you up, if you promise to stay put. I’ll wait in the trees and make sure they come get you, all right?”
Ruby didn’t answer. Jimmy couldn’t bring himself to look at her anymore. Technicality or not, this was kidnapping. He was about to leave a lady to an unknown fate, and pretend it was as routine as pawning a stolen watch.
He was also about to be a hundred dollars richer, he reminded himself. A hundred and twenty, if he counted the cut he intended to claim out of Frank’s share.
And that, he told himself, was worth it.
Jimmy pulled the paper from his pocket again to review how the cache would be marked.
But as he unfolded the note, his heart dropped.
He couldn’t even read the words; he was too focused on the rolling shape of the tiny, immaculate penmanship that blanketed the paper.
The spider of dread that had been lurking in the shadows of his mind now crawled out and bared its fangs.
He knew that handwriting. It was identical to the writing on Ruby’s love letter.
Soft hands.
“Ruby Hampton,” Jimmy said slowly. His voice felt like it was fighting through a mouthful of cotton. “Before we part ways, tell me just one thing. Who wrote this here letter of mine?”
But as he turned to face her, Jimmy found that while he’d been putting the pieces together, those soft hands had wasted no time pulling a loaded revolver from another one of those dad-blasted pockets.
“Oh, honey,” Ruby’s sugar-sweet voice carried a note surprisingly akin to pity as she sighted him down the barrel of the gun. “I think you know.”
“So it was all a setup?” Frank asked for the hundredth time.
Jimmy would’ve given anything to knock him back out, but Frank had managed to shake off the drug remarkably fast. Now they sat, tied back-to-back at the base of a tree, as the sheriff of Silverstone cleaned up the loose ends of their capture in the quickly fading twilight.
The little grassy hollow swarmed with members of the sheriff’s posse, all feeling mighty proud of themselves for winning the day.
“Yes, Frank,” Jimmy admitted through gritted teeth. “We got conned. We were beaten the minute we took the job.”
“But Ruby—”
“Ruby was the doggone mastermind!” Jimmy leaned his head against Frank’s and yanked up a wad of grass with his bound hands—the only outlet he had for his frustration.
“She was stringin’ us along from the get-go.
Baiting us with a job too good to refuse, making sure we wouldn’t hurt anyone, letting us think we pulled it off, all the while keeping us stalled and delayed so her accomplice had time to lead the sheriff straight to us, at the very spot she picked out herself!
She had us in the palm of her pretty little hand the whole time. ”
“She had an accomplice?” Frank wondered aloud. The slight slur of his speech revealed he was still fighting through the muddled aftereffects of the laudanum.
“She did, and you’ll never guess who—”
“Which one of y’all is Obed Birmingham?” the sheriff called out, cutting off Jimmy’s words.
“Right here, sir!”
“Guess you can see for yourself,” Jimmy muttered bitterly as Ruby’s man stepped forward. Slender frame, boyish features, and a head of strawberry curls. Birmingham, it turned out, was none other than their very own stagecoach driver, still sporting the bandage from Frank’s spot-on slingshot hit.
The sheriff handed Birmingham a small packet.
“This here’s the bounty for the capture of James Butler and Francis McCoy,” he said.
“Five hundred dollars. These two rascals have been hittin’ towns and stages all over this stretch of territory for the past three years.
The people of Silverstone are mighty thankful to you for your brave service, Mr. Birmingham. ”
“Five hundred dollars?” Frank yelped, loud enough to draw the sheriff’s attention. “Shoot, if I’d known you were worth that, Jim, I’d have turned you in long ago.”
“Not sure that would’ve worked out for you, Frank,” Jimmy said.
“Pipe down, you lot,” the sheriff barked, fixing them with a hot look. “As I was saying, Mr. Birmingham, we need more folk like you keepin’ the peace out West. If you ever get an inclination to be a lawman, I’d deputize you in a heartbeat.”
“Well, sir,” Birmingham said with a shy smile. “If you mean that, could I start tomorrow?”
The sheriff laughed. “You could start right now if you’re that keen!”
But Birmingham shook his head and glanced over at Ruby, who sat primly on a stump as the posse’s doctor bandaged her turned ankle. “Tomorrow’s just fine, sheriff. I’m actually gettin’ hitched tonight.”
“I can respect a man who knows his priorities.” The sheriff chuckled. “You take all the time you need, son. The job will be waitin’ for you when you’re ready.”
They shook hands, then Birmingham moved to join Ruby.
She slipped her hand into his the moment he stepped close enough, as if she’d simply been waiting for him to be nearby.
Jimmy felt bile rise in his throat. It was bad enough that he’d been captured, but having to watch the couple who’d ruined his life be so dad-blasted happy together was salt in the wound.
He closed his eyes, wishing he’d open them to find this had all been a bad dream.
Instead, when he looked up again, he saw the last person in the world he wanted to talk to standing not three feet away.
“Obed, allow me to introduce Jimmy and Frank,” Ruby said, once again putting on airs as if this was some sort of formal dinner party, not an outlaw-infested patch of wilderness.
“We met briefly,” Birmingham nodded at Jimmy with a slight smirk. “I have the headache to prove it.”
Jimmy tried to ignore them, but Frank mumbled a sloppy “how’d’y’do,” which was apparently all the invitation Birmingham needed to keep talking.
“My bride tells me you boys were downright gentlemanly toward her,” he said. “She expected to have to pull the gun a lot earlier in the operation, but you folks didn’t give her any reason to be afraid. For that, I’ll be forever grateful.”
“Aw, shucks,” Frank slurred. “Weren’t no trouble.”
“Shut up, will you Frank?” Jimmy groaned. “You’re embarrassing me.”
Birmingham knelt next to Frank and ran a finger over the ropes that bound his hands.
He let out a low whistle. “Bit tighter than how you boys left me, isn’t it?
Can’t be comfortable. Has the doc looked you over?
No? No provisions yet either, I reckon. I’ll see what I can do.
” Birmingham stood. “Listen, I don’t know how long they’ll keep you in Silverstone, but I’m a deputy now.
As long as you’re in my town, I’ll make sure you’re treated fair. ”
“He’s a good man,” Ruby murmured as she watched him stride off to talk to the doctor. “I’m sorry it went badly for you, Jimmy, but you’d understand why I did it if you knew him.”
Jimmy snorted. “ You don’t even know him, Miss Mail-Order Bride.”
“I know him a little better than I let on earlier,” Ruby admitted.
“It’s true, we’d only met through letters, but we’ve been writing for quite a while now.
” She sighed. “We would’ve gotten married sooner, but Obed’s on his own.
He didn’t have nothin’ to offer, he said.
But he promised me that if he could save up three hundred dollars, he’d bring me out here.
We’d have enough to live on…maybe even start a family.
That’s why I cooked up the plan to nab your bounty. It wasn’t personal, you know.”
“Well, good for you. Thanks to me and Frank, you got almost double the money you wanted,” Jimmy grunted. “Now go away, and take your happily ever after with you.”
Jimmy wanted nothing more than to be left alone in his misery, but that didn’t seem to be in the cards.
“Doc’s on his way,” Birmingham announced, walking back over.
“He’ll need to dress that cut, Frank. And he’s got water for you both.
Food will have to wait till you get back to town.
Speaking of town—” Birmingham turned to Ruby.
“They’ve got horses ready for us. We’ll need to get moving if we want to catch the parson.
” He gave the bandits a sheepish grin. “We’re getting married, ya see. ”
Jimmy barely suppressed a gag.
“But before we go—” Birmingham drew out the packet from the sheriff, containing the reward money. “Here. Payment in full, per our agreement. Doubt they’ll let you have it in jail, so I’m putting it here in your knapsack. Yours too, Frank.”
“What?” Jimmy sat up straight with a jolt. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Obed Birmingham counted out a wad of bills from his reward money, folded them neatly, and placed them inside Jimmy’s pack.
“Can’t say it’ll be the easiest hundred dollars you ever made, but I hired you for a job.
You held up your end of the bargain, and I’m a man of my word.
” He put a hand on Jimmy’s shoulder and locked eyes with him.
His kind face was the very portrait of earnest sincerity.
“I don’t know what brought you to this point, Jimmy.
But you don’t have to stay here. Pay your debts.
Do your time. You won’t be locked up forever.
And when a chance to make a choice comes round again, well…
maybe this money will give you a good start at an honest life. ”
Jimmy’s throat felt suddenly tight. “I…I don’t know what to say.”
“You could start with ‘thank you, Deputy Birmingham,’” Ruby supplied, beaming at her fiancé. Then she turned her smile on Jimmy. “See, Jimmy, you got your hundred dollars, after all.”
“Guess I did,” Jimmy said, still not quite believing it. “And you got your man to ride off into the sunset with.”
“That’s pretty much all a gal like me needs.” Ruby agreed, giving him an infuriating little wink. “That, and a dress with good, deep pockets.”
And with a toss of those walnut curls over her shoulder, the Hampton Ruby flounced right out of Jimmy Butler’s life, leaving an impression he doubted he would soon forget.