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“He’s my father,” Chris said, then waved her hand in protest as Red started to apologize. “I know him better than anyone. For some reason, he got Ty out of jail to kidnap me from where I was visiting and take me home. Tynan said that it was because he knew the rain forest, but I don’t think that’s all of it. I think my father had another reason and I have no idea what it is.”
Chris lowered her head. “I never met anyone like Ty and I like him a great deal. I sense that there is more to him than one can see right away. I…I’m afraid I threw myself at him. He told me that if he touched me my father would send him back to jail. Needless to say, I stayed away from him for the last few days of the trip.”
“I told you that Ty never touches innocent girls. The last time he did, he got thrown in jail and would be dead now if some of us girls hadn’t stepped in.”
With an expectant look on her face, Chris waited for the woman to speak. She was older than Chris had originally thought, but her skin was well cared for and soft looking.
Red got up to get another drink of well watered whiskey. “I don’t usually drink this time of day but seein’ Ty again and havin’ him to worry about makes me wanta get drunk and stay that way. You were right when you said that I seemed to know him. I’m one of four women that are the closest thing to a mother that boy ever had.”
She sat down across from Chris. “He wouldn’t like me tellin’ you this but you give me a lot of pleasure in them articles of yours and I wanta do somethin’ for you. About twenty-nine years ago when I was just startin’ out in this business—and I was little more than a kid myself—a miner brought a newborn baby to the house where I was workin’ and left him to us girls to take care of. That old man was as bad as they come, nobody could stand him. He’d cheat cripples if he could. Well, he brought this baby in and he hadn’t even cleaned it, it still had the birth filth on it and it was weak from hunger. We ran around real fast and found a woman to feed the baby and we took care of him as best we could for as long as we had him.”
“And that was Tynan? How had the miner come by him?”
“He wouldn’t tell us until we’d given him free whiskey, but he said he’d found a pregnant woman wandering in the forest, out of her head. She stopped in front of him—I’m sure he didn’t volunteer to help her—and delivered the baby herself. She whispered the single word of Tynan, then died. Knowing the miner, it’s a wonder he didn’t just walk away and leave the dead woman and the baby. But I guess he had plans to get what he could so he wrapped the boy up and brought him to us.”
Red stood, her back to Chris. “We did the best we could but a whore house ain’t no place to raise a kid. All the girls adored him and I’m sure we spoiled him rotten, but we had problems we couldn’t help. When Ty was about two, we dressed him up in a little suit and escorted him to Sunday School. The ladies of the congregation ran us off. They wouldn’t believe that Ty wasn’t one of our byblows.”
Red paused a moment. “He stayed with me until he was six years old. I never loved anybody more than I loved that boy. He was all that I had.”
“What happened when he was six?”
Red gave a resigned sigh and looked back at Chris. “The miner that’d found him came back with a lawyer, said Tynan was legally his and took him away. Two towns away, he stood Ty on a table and auctioned him off to the highest bidder.”
Chris sat still for a moment as she let this sink in. A little boy stood on a table and auctioned off as if he were an animal. Slavery had been abolished years ago. “Who, ah, bought him?”
“Some farmer on his way east. I didn’t see or hear from Ty for twelve years. By then he was the strappin’ big, good-lookin’ thing that he is now, but he’d changed. I got him to tell me some of what had happened after he left the farmer’s.” She paused to smile. “I don’t think the farmer was too happy with Ty’s leavin’ ’cause Ty had a couple of scars on his legs and when I asked him where he got ’em, he said it was caused by differin’ opinions about whether he should leave the farmer’s or not. I think the man worked Ty like a draft horse. After he left, at twelve, he was on his own. He traveled around, took odd jobs, got into a bad crowd a couple of times, learned how to use a gun, all the things a boy does. Then for a while he seemed to be headed for real trouble but something changed him. I don’t know what it was or if it was anything special. A friend of his, an outlaw, got hisself hanged and that may have had an effect on Ty, I don’t know, but whatever it was, somethin’ made him go straight.”
Red closed her eyes for a minute. “Goin’ straight just about killed him. He took all the jobs nobody wanted or was too afraid to take on. He’d even go into towns run by outlaws and clean them up. But, since he always left dead bodies behind him, one after another, the good townspeople would always ask him to please leave.”
“But that’s not fair,” Chris said.
“Honey, we ain’t even come to unfair yet. Like I said, Ty never did fool around with clean girls, he always had sense enough to stay away from ’em. But that didn’t keep the girls from swarmin’ around him. They like the way he ignores ’em. Well, one of ’em, a real pretty little thing used to twitch her tail around Ty till he was about to break. Then one day she come into the saloon to get him. I saw her cryin’ and he was holdin’ her. He’s always been a sucker for tears, couldn’t stand ’em on a woman. Next thing I knew he was saddlin’ a horse and takin’ rifles out of a cabinet. This girl said that a big rancher around here was attackin’ her father and could Ty help.”
Red took a drink of her whiskey. “I told him not to go, that it wasn’t his fight, but he wouldn’t listen. There was a gun battle and when the dust and gunpowder settled, the big rancher’s son was dead and Ty was being hauled off to jail.”
“And that’s when you rescued him.”
“Heard about that, did you? Yeah, we rescued him. He didn’t kill that man’s son, that girl did and he was gonna hang for it rather than turn her in. It seems that she’d been sneakin’ out to see the boy and had only been usin’ Ty to make him jealous. But, even knowin’ that, he wouldn’t turn her in. I got to thinkin’ that maybe he didn’t mind dyin’. Sometimes he acts like he don’t think he’s worth much.”
“He said he wasn’t good enough for me,” Chris said softly. “He said I deserved more than somebody like him.”
“Don’t you believe it, honey, there ain’tnobodybetter ’n him.”
“That’s exactly what I thought too,” Chris said with a grin. “Do you think there’s any way I can tempt him into giving me what I want?”
“And what you want is Tynan?”
“With all my heart and soul.”
For a long while, Red stared at Chris. “You know, you may be just what he needs.” She stopped and narrowed her eyes. “I feel like I know you from years of readin’ your stories, but I’m warnin’ you that if you think Ty’s just one of those cases of yours and you get rid of him after a little while I’ll—”
Chris burst out laughing. “This is a turn of events, isn’t it? Isn’t it usually the father who warns the prospective young man?”
Red returned her smile. “I ain’t too good at bein’ a mother.”
“It seems to me that you’ve done a fine job. At leastIlike what you’ve done. My problem is that Ty doesn’t like me. At least not the way I like him. How can I get past the threat of prison and the memory of how another so called ‘good’ girl treated him? And, besides, I think he really likes another type of woman better than me.” Chris looked down at her own slight curves.
Red didn’t get to answer because of the voice at the door.
