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Chris lifted her skirt and began walking back to the tables.
“Chris,” Tynan called softly from behind her but she didn’t look back.
At the tables she began packing food away, trying to stay calm while the others put the injured Rory on a wagon bed and started back toward town. Since Rory was yelling that they were going to kill him and also he was raging that he was going to kill Tynan, Chris assumed that he was going to live.
Minutes later, Tynan walked past her, stopping within a few feet of her, but she didn’t turn around, instead, busying herself in putting the food away.
The women came to help her, working in total silence as they gave her looks from under their lashes. After a few minutes, Chris could stand no more. She put down the food, turned toward the road and began walking back to town. She didn’t care about Red’s buggy that she left behind or about anything else for that matter.
It was miles back to town but Chris walked all the way, shaking her head no at the people who stopped their carriages and offered her a ride.
In the hotel, people were watching her in such a way that she ran up the stairs and into her room, slamming the door behind her. She was so ashamed of herself that she wanted to climb into bed, pull the covers over her head and never come out again. For the last two days, she’d strutted around this town and, in essence, told them they were all fools, that they didn’t know a man who’d lived among them most of his life. She’d used the love she’d earned as Nola Dallas to tell them that they knew much less than she did after spending only a few days with the man.
Slowly, Chris began to undress, taking off the dress that Red had loaned her.
How vain I was, she thought, to think that I knew more than they did. And how conceited I was to think that I could reform a man who has chosen a life of crime and violence. How right my father was when he introduced me to men from my own background, men I could understand, not men who went to picnics and shot people who disagreed with them.
She packed her small bundle, put her riding habit back on and took the two dresses downstairs to the clerk. His eyes were different now. No longer was he looking at her with interest, wanting to know more about the young woman who worked for a big city newspaper. Now she was just one of many women who’d fallen for a cheap drifter.
She didn’t look at the others in the hotel lobby who were watching her with interest, waiting until she’d gone upstairs again so they could tell others what had happened at the picnic.
“Miss,” said a young man behind her, “I have a message for you.”
With her eyes downcast, Chris took the piece of paper, crumbled it in her hand and went up the stairs. Chris sat on the bed and thought for some time. She felt that she owed him this one last visit, to say goodbye, to tell him that she was returning to her father and that she would see that he was given his pardon.
She wrote a note to Asher telling him that she planned to start the journey home tomorrow.
With her shoulders squared, she went downstairs, leaving the note to Asher with the desk clerk, and went outside. As soon as she started toward the jail, she had a following of curious people, some of them snickering. So, the big city girl thought she could come to this town and tell us about someone we already knew, she could almost hear them saying.
Once, a man blocked her passage, and she had to look up at him, giving him her most withering look to make him step aside. He spit a big wad of tobacco juice at her feet, barely missing her.
One thing about people who made a fuss about someone they thought was better than they were, when their idol came to earth, they were very angry about it.
“May I see your prisoner?” she said to the deputy sitting at the desk.
“Oh sure, Miss Dallas,” he said, getting the ring of keys from a nail on the wall. “I’m real sorry about what happened. The sheriff should be here tomorrow and this thing will be cleared up. There’s someone to see you,” the boy said to Tynan as he let Chris into the cell.
Tynan turned around quickly, looking at her with eyes that examined and searched. He didn’t seem to like what he saw because he turned away again.
“I got your message,” she said, looking down at her hands.
“I’ve seen what I wanted to, you can go now.”
The coldness in his voice made her head come up—and her anger surface. “Tell me, are you innocent again? Like with the Chanry Gang? Were you perhaps protecting children from Rory? What was it this time that got you involved in a shooting?”
“Get out of here, Chris,” he said softly. “I don’t want to fight with you.”
“Because I don’t have a gun? Oh yes, I know the code of the West. You’d never draw on an unarmed man—or woman. How could you do that to me? Those peopletrustedme! They told me their secrets and I asked them to trust me more. I asked them to give you another chance, to let you start fresh. And theydid!But what did you do but show them just what you really are, what I was too stupid to see?”
He just stood there with his back to her, his arm up, pressing against the stone wall, looking out the cell window.
“Look at me when I talk to you. If you have no conscience, at least you can pretend to have manners.”
Slowly, he turned toward her and he seemed to be a man Chris had never seen before, one of coolness, as if he were far away and not there at all.
“I never lied to you about what I was. I always told you I wasn’t for you. But you never listened to anything I said. You were so busy showing the world that you could reform the criminal that you never thought about who I really was.”
“I guess I’ve learned now.” She walked toward the cell door. “I won’t bother you again. I just came to tell you that I, and probably Mr. Prescott, will be leaving early in the morning. I’ll make sure, though, that you will be given your pardon by my father. Deputy,” she called.
