A/N I apologize for how long it took me to get this chapter up. It's been an incredibly distracting month for me, I had a birthday, had to get 2 costumes ready for Halloween, and a family member was in the hospital. Oh and I bought a new computer game for my birthday (Fallout 3, if you were curious). Again, as a result I worked hard to give you all a chapter that is a nice long read, and I hope you guys find it satisfying. Thanks to everyone who took the time to write reviews. Your reviews are so awesome and help encourage me to write, so keep them coming.

Thanks also to Cathy, Anonymous2004 for her beta (she read the first half of this chapter a few times), and to the Pirate, who helped me with a word phrasing I'd been struggling with. The part of this story that is done from Joshua's perspective was not beta-ed. If you find any errors or typoes, drop me a PM or mention it in your review and I'll fix it. But if you do, please don't make the correction your review! It makes me sad when the whole review is nothing but pointing out an error I made...

Disclaimer: Not mine, wish it was, I ain't makin' no profit, and please don't sue me.

Alice started the tea kettle over the fire for the willow bark tea and abruptly realized that it was dark outside and well past the time they normally ate supper. So much had happened during the last couple of hours that it felt like it should be even later than it already was. Despite the fact that she had no appetite, her stomach still growled with hunger. It was unlikely that Mark would want to miss a meal, given the fact that the boy was growing like a weed, and Joshua might be hungry as well.

She walked toward the door, pausing to look in her bedroom where Will lay unconscious. The boy’s face was nearly as pale as the sheets he slept between, but she could still see his chest moving up and down as he breathed. At some point after she had left the room, Joshua had exchanged the boy’s loose wound dressing for a bran poultice. The chair had also been moved closer to the head of the bed, right in front of the window.

Joshua was sitting with his elbow propped up on the low sill, his chin resting against his knuckles as he watched Will sleep. His expression was inscrutable. For a moment she debated saying something, but decided that at this point, there was nothing she could say that hadn’t already been said.

When she continued on outside, Alice could see Mark walking toward the house and carrying the empty pot. Will and Joshua’s horses were no where to be seen, so the boy must have put them in the barn at some point. She went around back to the root cellar and selected a jar of preserved turnips leftover from the previous winter, butter, a round of cheese and some dried beef from the shelves. Combined with the remaining bread in the breadbox, it would make an adequate, if simple, meal.

Mark was leaving the house when she returned, hauling the pot of cloth strips. “He said I can go ahead and hang these up on the wash line,” he explained at her inquisitive look. “They’ll be good and dry by the time mornin’ comes.”

Alice nodded at his explanation, climbing up the single step porch. “I’ll have some supper ready shortly,” she informed him as she passed and went back into the house. The small tub she’d taken a bath in was still in front of the fireplace and when she walked by, she glanced down into it. Will’s bloodied clothing was soaking in the soap-clouded water and she had to forcibly direct her thoughts away from dwelling on what had led her to take a midday bath in the first place. Keeping herself busy with caring for Will’s wound had helped with that, but that immediate crisis was past. Now all she could do now was watch and wait, and so her mind had more time to wander down that harrowing path.

She focused on the routine task of preparing supper. After emptying the jar of turnips into a small pot, she set them on the stove to heat up and then finished brewing Will’s tea. While the bitter drink cooled, she prepared the rest of the meal, putting bread, meat and cheese onto plates and setting them down on the table. The vegetables were still not quite hot enough to serve but Mark and Joshua would both need time to wash up for supper anyway.

A slight frown touched Alice’s lips at that thought and after a moments hesitation she walked into her bedroom. Joshua did not appear to have moved from his position by the windowsill since she had last checked in the room. He shifted his gaze from Will’s still form to her, watching as she bent to open the bottom most drawer of her dresser and withdrew a man’s plain white shirt.

Alice turned to face Joshua, gesturing at the bloodstained shirt he was still wearing from when he had carried Will inside. “I thought you might want to clean up before supper,” she said quietly, and her smile was bittersweet as she added, “Dan’s clothes are still too big for Will, but they should fit you just fine.”

Joshua stared at the offered piece of clothing for a long moment before rising to his feet to accept it. “Thank you,” he said and began to take off his dirty shirt, turning slightly away from her as he did.

Initially, she had planned on waiting to take his stained shirt so that she could add it to the tub with Will’s clothes and let it soak, but as he shrugged one shoulder free of the fabric, Alice abruptly realized that it might appear as though she were staring. Flustered, she averted her eyes, murmuring, “Excuse me,” and left the room, cheeks flushed with embarrassment.

She headed outside to call Mark to the table, but he was already on his way back with the empty pot. “I got them all hung up, but I ran out of clothespins,” he admitted. “I don’t think the really long ones will blow off the line before they’re all dry, there’s hardly any wind now that the storm’s passed. Is supper done yet?”

Alice nodded, giving her youngest son a quick smile. “Yes, so go wash up and come to the table.” She followed him back inside and Joshua was just emerging from the bedroom with his soiled shirt rolled up in his hand.

“Is he doin’ any better?” Mark immediately asked Joshua, his face hopeful.

“Not yet,” Joshua told the boy with a shake of his head and then glanced up at Alice. “He’ll be needing that tea soon to help with the fever and pain.”

She immediately nodded. “It’s cooling now…do you think he’ll be all right in here by himself while we eat?” Alice wondered, worriedly peering past Joshua to Will. “I can eat in there with him…”

He thought about her question for a moment before answering, “He should be fine, I think. He’s lost a lot of blood, and that tends to make a body feel really tired and weak, so for now, the best thing for him is rest, so his body has a chance to heal. We’ll be right here in the other room, right?”

Inclining her head in agreement, Alice admitted, “That’s true.” She glanced down at the shirt he had in his hands and said, “Here, let me take that… I’ll let it soak overnight, but I’m not sure if those blood stains will ever come out.”

“It’s alright, it’s just a shirt,” Joshua said dismissively. “Shirts are easy enough to replace.”

Alice added his stained shirt to the bath tub anyway, but his words struck her oddly. For her family, clothes were hard to come by. Mark was still wearing Will’s old clothing, complete with seams from repeated mending and hemming. The only reason Will still had clothes that fit was that she had used some of Butterfield’s money to buy bolts of cotton to make her oldest son enough shirts and pants to last him for a couple more years. With any luck, they would last him until he had enough height and reach to wear Dan’s old clothing.

And now she herself was short one dress… Glen Hollander’s unwelcome visage suddenly popped into her mind’s eye and she could almost feel his hands groping her body and pushing her dress aside and the gloating, possessive look in his eyes as he…

“Ma, you ok?” Mark’s voice brought her back into the now and she had to physically take hold of the back of a kitchen chair to remain upright, closing her eyes to the sense of vertigo that nearly overwhelmed her.

“I’m fine,” she managed to say, her voice sounding strange and uneven to her own ears. She opened her eyes to find both Joshua and Mark looking at her. “Really, I’m fine.” She drew up straighter and released her death grip on the chair, mustering a reassuring smile for Mark’s sake. “It’s just been a very long day and I’m a little tired.” Her eyes briefly met Joshua’s worried gaze over the top of the boy’s head before skittering away.

Mark regarded her dubiously before slipping past her to the pitcher and wash basin in the server. He poured some water into the large bowl, quickly washed his hands and dried them on the towel there, then sat down in his usual chair at the table. Joshua followed the boy’s lead while Alice busied herself with serving up the rest of supper, adding the steaming turnip chunks to the food already on the plates.

A few moments later they were all seated at the table. Alice lowered her head to say the ritual prayer the Evans family always said before meals. “God our Father, Lord and Savior, thank you for your love and favor. Please bless this drink and food we pray, bless all who shares with us today.” Her head remained bowed as she finished speaking without saying, ‘Amen’, because the simple words seemed woefully inadequate given all that had happened. Outside of the fact that they had food on their plates, was there really a lot to be thankful today?

There was a second of silence and then Mark added to the brief prayer, “And thank you for sending the rain, and for sendin’ Joshua too, to help Will when he got hurt.” He peeked at his mother, gauging her reaction to his addition.

Joshua seemed troubled by his words, and stared at Mark from over his clasped hands.

Alice gave her son a slight nod of acknowledgement, as those were two things that they were definitely thankful for. “Amen,” she said, picking up her fork. She still had no appetite and even the lightly salted beef seemed unusually tasteless to her, but she made herself eat. There was no sense in her making herself sick by skipping meals when there was plenty to eat.

Mark immediately dug into his food with his usual enthusiasm. Joshua began eating a few seconds later, though with far less exuberance and his usual lack of table manners.

Alice watched as the man hunkered down over his dinner plate, elbows outstretched and using his fingers to pick through his food. If he would be continuing to eat meals with them, she’d have to have a talk with him about… She drew up short of completing that thought. Despite the fact that Joshua had been willing (though reluctant) to remove the bullet from Will, there was no telling how long he would be in the Bisbee area, or even if he would be staying at all. Dismay filled her at the thought of him leaving before Will got better. What if something went wrong and his wound got infected?

She peered at Joshua from beneath lowered eyelashes. From what she had seen, he seemed to genuinely care about her son’s well being and while the man was an enigma, she was reasonably sure that he’d stay until Will was well on the road to recovery from his injury. Alice comforted herself with that thought and resumed her meal.

They all focused on eating for time, each of them sparing occasional glances at the empty chair Will would have been occupying under normal circumstances.

Out of the blue, Mark suddenly asked Joshua, “Where’s your saddle?”

Alice blinked at the question and gave her son an odd look. “What do you mean, ‘where’s his saddle?’. Didn’t you put his horse in the barn? What’d you do with the saddle when you took his tack off?”

Shaking his head, Mark replied, “No, ‘cause Dawson didn’t have a saddle on him. Just the bridle, is all. So I was wondering where his saddle was.”

Joshua had straightened in his chair at the question and seemed to be considering an appropriate answer. His gaze flicked from Alice to her son as he finally responded, “I was in a hurry to get here when I left the Bar-H and didn’t know if I could spare the time to saddle him up. So I just left it and rode bareback.”

They both stared at him in disbelief. A saddle was nearly as valuable as a good horse, and it was almost unthinkable that someone would be in such a hurry that they’d leave it behind.

He must have known that Hollander was coming to pay her a visit and had been trying his best to get there in time to protect her from the landowner’s attack, Alice realized.

Mark had reached the same conclusion and his face was pinched with anger as he spoke. “You knew what he was gonna do to Ma? That he was comin’ here to beat her up?”

If only that’d been the extent of what he did to me, Alice thought, lowering her eyes to her plate. Her bruised cheek suddenly felt hot and swollen, stinging pain returned to her neck where she’d been choked, and the throbbing soreness at the juncture of her thighs… She nearly vomited again, right then and there at the table, and had to cover her mouth with her hand, swallowing repeatedly to regain control of her stomach. She could sense Joshua’s concern for her coming from the opposite end of the table and as the nausea subsided, she looked up to meet his gaze.

His eyes were filled with that helpless frustration and rage she’d seen in them earlier that evening when they’d been tending to Will, but somehow, he managed to keep his tone carefully neutral when he responded to Mark’s question, “Yeah, I knew he was comin’ here. Atkins told me.” A bitter smile twisted his lips and he added, “Right before he hit me in the back of the head with a shovel and knocked me out.”

“You got knocked out with a shovel?” Mark asked, his eyebrows arched with surprise.

Alice had been on the verge of forcing herself to eat another turnip but lowered her fork in consternation at that pronouncement. “I thought you said you weren’t hurt when I asked you earlier,” she said accusingly.

Joshua shrugged and popped a piece of cheese into his mouth. He chewed slowly and talked around the morsel, “I said I was fine, and I am fine, least ways compared to others around here who didn’t get off so lucky as I did.” He pointedly shifted his attention from her bruised face to Will’s empty chair. “And I’m not hurt,” he stated firmly. He lifted his hand and gingerly probed the area on the back of his head where he must have been hit, wincing. “It quit bleeding hours ago. You know, now that I think about it, I don't think Atkins told me Hollander would be coming here until after I woke up a few hours later locked in the grain room. Things got kinda fuzzy there for a while.”

Barely stifling an exasperated sigh at the hard-headed nature of men (quite literally, this time), Alice rose from her chair and walked around behind Joshua. “Let me see it,” she demanded and bemused, he obliged, tilting his head forward to grant her a better view. Great idea, once again you’re focusing on someone else’s injuries so that you can ignore your own, a nagging voice in her mind commented snidely. She suppressed that annoyingly accurate thought and gently rested her hand on his head.

His hair was thick and surprisingly soft—for some reason she had expected it to feel coarse to the touch. She combed her fingers through it lightly in search of his injury. A goose-egg sized knot indicated the general area of the shovel’s impact and as she parted his short hair, she could see the darker clump of a jagged scab standing out against the paleness of his scalp. “It stopped bleeding,” Alice noted critically. “There’s a fair sized gash, but there’s not really any blood here.”

Joshua started to shake his head, but stopped as she was still inspecting his wound. “No,” he replied. “I imagine most of the blood was washed off when it started pouring down rain on the way here.”

“Wait, so first, Atkins hit you in the head with a shovel,” Mark said, his brow furrowed as he worked out the order in which things had happened, “and then he locked you into a grain room while you was still out of it? Then you woke up, and he told you that Hollander was comin’ here to get Ma… So how’d you get out?”

“I slammed my shoulder against the door until it opened, and when it did, it hit Atkins and….” He shrugged as though that had ended it, and ducked his head away from Alice’s hands so that her brief inspection ended. “Like I said, I’m fine,” he said tersely.

She had tried to be gentle, but from his reaction, she figured she’d pressed down on the lump on his head harder than she’d thought. Alice took his none-too-subtle hint and returned to her chair. When she picked up her fork to return to eating, she glanced at the set of his face and tightened jaw, abruptly realizing that he wasn’t in pain. He was angry, though she had no idea why he would be.

They ate in silence for a few moments and the irritated expression gradually faded from Joshua’s face. He kept his eyes on his plate and seemed utterly focused on finishing his meal.

Mark tore off a hunk of dried beef and stuffed into his mouth, looking thoughtful. Eventually, he got around to asking, “So… what happened to Atkins? Did you kill him?”

Joshua had just taken a bite of bread, but even so she noticed his slight hesitation before he answered, “No, I didn’t kill him. Atkins was still alive when I left the ranch.” When both Evans regarded him with equally skeptical looks, he held up one hand and firmly said, “I swear he was alive when I last saw him. He was unconscious yes, but alive. I didn’t even shoot him… mostly because I didn’t have my gun on me,” he admitted with dark amusement.

Eyeing him from the opposite end of the table, Alice strongly suspected that his pause indicated there was some important detail that had been left out of the story, but either way the end result was the same. Joshua, for one reason or another, had chosen to let Atkins live.

“Did you kill Mr. Hollander?” Mark suddenly asked, looking intently at Joshua as he waited for the answer.

The question hung in the air like a dust cloud on a hot July day. When Joshua finally answered, he didn’t look at Mark, but at Alice. “Yes. I killed him,” he declared, his face grim and unrepentant.

Even though she had suspected it, had even wanted Glen Hollander dead from the moment he put his filthy hands on her, the exultation, the satisfaction she felt knowing that Joshua had killed him for what he had done to her was shockingly intense. But along with that acute jubilation, there was also a deeper, darker awareness that the landowner’s death could not erase the memory of his attack on her, though it did ensure that he would never touch her again.

Her face felt stiff and frozen, and it was as though the taste of the food had turned to ashes in her mouth. Alice knew that if she ate another bite, this time she really would throw up. She rose to her feet, evading both Mark and Joshua’s eyes and quietly announced in a strained tone, “I think that willow tea’s cooled off quite long enough.”

She didn’t even bother to remove her plate, just picked up the cup of tea with hands that trembled with pent up emotion. Alice fled to Will’s room, and when she got there, she closed the door behind her and set the teacup down on the dresser before she dropped it. Then she leaned back against the door, her eyes closed but streaming tears, her throat tight with pain, and her hands pressed firmly over her mouth to hold back a tumult of emotions that alternated with equal intensity between delighted hysterical laughter and wracking sobs.

Joshua sighed internally as he and Mark watched Alice hurry into the bedroom and close the door behind her. He couldn’t hear anything coming from the other side of the wood and the silence was more unnerving than the sound of her crying would have been.

“Is she ok?” Mark asked worriedly, his eyes on the closed door.

He turned to look at the boy and not for the first time that day, thanked God for having enough mercy to spare Alice’s youngest son from knowing the full extent of just what she’d been through. Was I ever this naïve and innocent? he wondered, then realized while he may have been at one time, whatever innocence he possessed had been lost back when he was in that train station, eight years old, hungry, and alone with nothing but a carriage bag with one change of clothes, the heavy black Bible he’d just finished reading, and a burgeoning knowledge that Mama would not be coming back.

Mustering a reassuring smile from somewhere, Joshua replied, “She will be, I’m sure.” At least he hoped she would, some women never really got past being raped from what he’d heard.

“I thought she’d be glad he was dead, but she’s acting…” The boy paused, trying to think of the right words for her behavior and finally shrugged. “I don’t know… she seemed happy and upset all at once, but I don’t know why she’d be upset.” He fidgeted in his chair and his voice was low and fierce as he muttered, “I’m glad he’s dead, ‘cause it means he can’t ever hurt her again, or have our water dammed up or have his men burn down our barn again or anything else.”

Pushing a turnip around his plate with his fork, Joshua considered a response that would make sense, given Mark’s limited knowledge of his mother’s attack. “I think she’s glad, but… even though Glen Hollander is dead, it still don’t make any difference on what he’s already done to you and your family, or what he did to her to her earlier today. You haven’t forgotten how you felt when Tucker burned down your barn, have you?”

Mark shook his head vigorously. “I ain’t never gonna forget that,” he stated firmly.

Joshua nodded. “It’s the same way with your Ma. Hollander’s dead, but she’s still got the bruises on her neck and her face, and she probably ain’t gonna forget the fear or pain from him attacking her for a while yet, even after the bruises fade,” he explained bleakly. “Some hurts ain’t just on the outside, where you can see them and fix them up like a doctor bandaging a wound, but on the inside, and those can take a long time to heal.”

Mark was listening attentively, and his nod was sad as he observed, “Kinda like having a broken heart? A heart can’t really be broken, can it? But I know when Pa died, my heart hurt.” He lifted a hand to rub his chest, “It hurt right here… It still does, sometimes, when I think about him.” A guilty expression crossed his face and he admitted, “I sometimes almost can’t remember what he looked like. That picture you drew helps, though.”

Exhaling slowly at the boy’s words, Joshua turned his face away as he was stricken by his own resurgent guilt over his involvement in Dan Evans’ death.

“Will told us it wasn’t your fault, what happened to Pa,” Mark informed him.

“If it wasn’t mine, then whose fault was it?” he demanded harshly. “It was my gang that killed him.”

“Did you shoot him?”

Joshua scowled at Mark, “No, but that don’t matter. Hollander didn’t burn your barn down, Tucker did… but he’s still the one to blame for it, ain’t he?”

The boy immediately nodded, pointing out, “That was different though, ‘cause Hollander was the one who told Tucker to burn down our barn in the first place.” He regarded Joshua solemnly, “Did you tell your men to shoot my Pa? Will said you yelled for Charlie Prince to stop, right ‘fore he pulled the trigger.”

Exasperated, he straightened in his chair, “Alright then, no, I didn’t tell my gang to kill him, but…”

“Will also said you saved them from those Apaches, and then again with the dynamite when you was tryin’ to get away from that mining boss who was torturing you…”

“I wasn’t saving anyone but myself those times, and if I’d had a gun I would have killed Will and Dan just as easy as I killed Byron McElroy,” Joshua declared ruthlessly.

“Oh yeah?” Mark raised one eyebrow and crossed his arms, leaning back in his chair to regard him with utter skepticism. “If that’s true, then how come you didn’t kill anyone when you had Pa’s shotgun and all the other guns, right after you killed the Indians, and Pa threw the key away instead of unlocking your irons?”

The question drew Joshua up short, and he had no ready answer. Why hadn’t he killed them all then? Certainly he had the opportunity and guns enough to do it. After a moment, he defensively stated, “Well, I didn’t kill any of them then, but I did hit your Pa in the face with the butt of the shotgun and knocked him out cold…”

“But you didn’t kill him,” Mark doggedly reminded him. “And you could have.”

“I… Fine,” Joshua conceded that point. “Okay, yes, I could have killed him then, and I didn’t. So what?”

Mark lifted his small chin challengingly, “And how many other times could you have killed him and you didn’t?”

He refused to answer that question, because in truth, there had been numerous opportunities he could have taken and didn’t, especially during that harrying run from the hotel to the train station, when his gang and the greedy townsfolk of Contention had been taking shots at them. Joshua glared at the boy before muttering, “You’re as stubborn as your Pa was. None of that stuff matters anyhow. The point I’m trying to make is, if it weren’t for me, he’d still be alive. Hell, if I hadn’t even come to Bisbee, I’d never have been caught and he wouldn’t have agreed to take that damn escort job in the first place.”

“If he hadn’t taken that job, we wouldn’t have had the money to keep on living here on our ranch, and woulda had to move. If he hadn’t said yes, I might’ve already died from tuberculosis from having to move back to the city,” Mark said sadly, grimacing. “If Hollander had never burned down our barn and dammed up our creek, he wouldn’t have taken the offer to escort you. That’s a whole lotta ‘ifs’.”

Joshua couldn’t argue with that. “Yeah, it is a lot of ‘what ifs’.”

“You can’t live your life based on ‘what ifs’,” Mark informed him with all the wisdom of his twelve years. “That’s what Ma told us, after Pa died. She’d say, ‘Life must be lived forward, but it can only be understood backwards.’ That means that it’s always easier to think back to what you shoulda done, than it is to know what you oughta do right then and there when you got to choose one way or the other.”

The obscure philosophical statement caught Joshua off guard, and he stared at Mark in disbelief.

“My father taught philosophy at Harvard College and that was one of his favorite quotations,” Alice quietly explained from the bedroom’s doorway. She was holding the teacup in her hand, and Joshua realized he’d been so intent on his conversation with Mark that he had no idea how long she’d been standing there, or how much of their conversation she’d overheard.

“Is he getting better?” Mark asked.

“I hope so honey,” Alice replied with a slight smile for her son as she walked into the kitchen and set the empty cup down on the table. A hint of worry tinged her tone as she spoke, “I think a fever is setting in, but I did get him to drink all of the tea, so hopefully it won’t get too high. He never really woke up, but he could still swallow it in little sips.”

“That’s good,” Joshua said and then suggested, “If he can drink that and keep it down tonight, you might try giving him some broth tomorrow.”

She nodded agreeably and looked at Mark, who was scraping up the last bite of turnip from his plate. “If you’re finished eating, you’ve got plenty of chores you need to get done before bed,” she gently reminded him.

Mark had an expression of acute dismay on his face. “I have to do the chores? All of them? By myself?”

With everything else that had happened and been said, Joshua had not even considered the effect Will’s injury would have on keeping the small Evans ranch running smoothly. There was no way that Mark could tend to all the normal duties and chores he typically shared with his brother all by himself.

“I know there’s some you won’t be able to do by yourself, so just do the best you can, all right?” she said encouragingly.

Nodding glumly, Mark rose to his feet and headed toward the door while Joshua hurriedly shoveled the last few bites of food into his mouth. He chewed and swallowed noisily, washing the last bit down with the cup of water before rising to his feet, intent on going to the barn as well to help the boy out.

“Mr. Mason? Might I have a word with you?” Alice quickly said before he had taken more than a couple of steps away from the table.

“Are we back to formal names already?” Joshua asked with dry sarcasm and turned to face her. The hint of alarm in her eyes made him regret his tone. After everything she’d been through that day, it was a wonder she hadn’t collapsed by now. She’d been raped and beaten earlier that afternoon, yet had enough fortitude to carry in relative normalcy despite the inner turmoil he knew she had to be facing. She’d courageously helped with the tending of Will’s injury without swooning or complaining, while providing loving support and encouragement for Mark, who had to be just as worried and scared as his mother was.

Then when she’d found out about how he’d been waylaid by Atkins’ shovel, she’d been concerned enough to check the wound… And if she’d even had an inkling of how his body had inadvertently reacted when she’d been trying to locate where Atkins’ shovel had walloped him on the back of the head, she’d be screaming and running from him, if she didn’t faint dead away from pure terror first. He’d been completely unprepared for how utterly sensual the touch of her fingers combing through his short hair and gently caressing his scalp would be, and was still disgusted and angry with himself for that total lapse in self control. Hell, he was pretty damn sure if he stood there much longer thinking about how it’d felt, he’d find himself in a similar state, and this time there wouldn’t be a table to hide his condition.

Joshua abruptly realized that Alice was staring at him wide-eyed and her trepidation seemed to increase with each passing moment. Shit, had she picked up on his lustful thoughts by reading his facial expression? He started to take a step back away from her, but when he moved, that panicky look on her face grew even more pronounced. “I’d never hurt you,” he said roughly, for all the good he thought it’d do to reassure her.

She blinked at his words, “What?”

“I said, I’d never hurt you,” he repeated. “You know, in case you were… afraid of me. If you were afraid I might hurt you the way that he did…I don’t want you to be afraid of me like that, is all I’m saying. I may be a thief and a murderer, and I know I’m rotten as Hell, but I ain’t no rapist.” His words sounded absurd even to his own ears.

Her eyes were brimming with tears and she crossed her arms defensively across her chest, looking away from him for a long moment. Suddenly, an uneven chuckle escaped her, and she pursed her lips when she looked back up at him. “That’s… very reassuring,” she managed to say through a watery smile of genuine amusement. “I’m just glad that you’re not a... a lying thief. Then I guess I’d be in some serious danger, wouldn’t I?”

Her unexpected humor at his ridiculous statement caught him off guard and reassured him with its simple normalcy at the same time. The fact that she could laugh at anything at all seemed nothing short of miraculous. Joshua found himself smiling along with her as he said with supercilious humor, “You certainly would. I’d have taken up lying too, but, well, I figure a man’s got to have some standards.”

Alice laughed again at his haughty tone. They both stared at each other in silence for a few seconds before she suddenly asked, “Are you leaving?”

Joshua hesitated before worriedly returning, “Do you want me to leave?” That tinge of fear was in her eyes again and now he thought he understood why. Did she really think he’d just up and leave them, now, of all times?

“No, I don’t want you to leave.”

Her simply spoken words filled him with relief. “Then, no, I’m not leaving,” he said bluntly.

She inclined her head and the barest smile touched her lips. “Good. As I was giving Will the tea, it occurred to me that given the events of the day, you were now out of a job. And with Will’s injury, we find ourselves in need of an experienced ranch hand.”

He studied her for a moment and considered an appropriate response for her offer—and that’s what it was, an offer of employment. She was an extraordinarily courageous woman, but she was far too proud to let him work for free, even though he was pretty damn certain she knew he didn’t need the money. “I could take on here as a steady hand, say for… ten dollars a month, plus room and board.” The price he quoted was a fraction of what cowhands would usually work for, but he thought it was worth a try.

Alice eyed him suspiciously, “We may not have ever hired on any hands here, but ten dollars for a month of hard work seems awfully cheap. I want to pay whatever the going rate for cowhands is.”

Her words indicated to Joshua that she wasn’t really sure what a typical cowhand made in a month’s time. That suited him just fine, as it meant that he could let her barter the wages upwards so she’d feel like she was paying him fairly, and he’d still end up being paid far less than the going rate. “I figured since there isn’t room enough here in the house, I’ll be sleeping in the barn. Since it isn’t a bed in a bunkhouse, wages lower than the going rate seemed fair to me.”

“Yes, but you’ll still be getting three square meals a day, and you’ll need to help with doctoring Will until he’s all better,” she pointedly reminded him. “How about twenty-five dollars?”

Her new offer was on the low end of fair wages for the labor, but Joshua immediately shook his head. “That’s way too much,” he lied easily. All right, so maybe sometimes, he really was a lying thief. “Fifteen.”

She scowled at him, stating firmly, “Joshua, I don’t want any charity, not from you or anyone else. Twenty dollars. That’s my final offer, and I refuse to lower the price any more.”

Joshua thoughtfully considered her offer. The pay was dirt cheap, and more than he had wanted her to pay, but from the determined expression on her face, he seriously doubted he’d be able to talk her down any lower. “All right, twenty dollars a month. So you can pay me that exactly one month from today.” She opened her mouth to argue that point, but he shook his head, “That’s how it’s done. I get paid after I work the month, not before the work’s done started. If a ranch owner paid up front, right after the hiring, the cowhands could pocket the money and go find someone else to work for, without ever doing a day’s worth of work.”

Alice frowned, as she had not considered that. She finally nodded and held out her hand looking up at him expectantly.

He stared down at her outstretched hand for a moment before he took a step toward her and gently clasped it with his own.

She gave his hand a firm shake to seal the deal, but when he went to tug it free of hers, she didn’t release it straight away and held on. Alice tilted her head back to look up at him and softly said, “You know… what’s happened to us, to our family… what Hollander did to Will, well, not just to Will, but to me…” her voice broke, but her gaze never wavered from his. “Don’t be blaming yourself for what happened. It really wasn’t your fault.”

He gently countered, “Then don’t you be blaming yourself for what happened. What he done to you… that wasn’t your fault neither.” He really hoped that she already knew that, but it was definitely worth saying out loud. God, he hoped she didn’t think she’d invited Hollander’s attack due to something she’d done or said in the past… some women did, he knew.

Lifting her free hand to curl against her mouth, she struggled to keep her emotions under control and nodded, saying hoarsely, “I know, I… it’s just…” She faltered and was unable to continue. She began quietly crying and held on to his hand as though it was the only thing keeping her from drowning.

Joshua extended his free arm to wrap gingerly around her shoulder, uncertain if the comforting hug he offered would be welcome or not.

Upon his touch, she released his hand but turned her body more fully into his embrace, pressing her face against his shoulder as she wept even harder now, not hugging him, for one arm was pressed against her chest and her other hand covered her mouth to muffle her cries, but not willing to decline or deny the comfort and support he was offering either. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she whispered amidst her sobs against his shirt front.

He had no idea why she was apologizing, because certainly she had nothing to be sorry for in the first place. And he told her as much, that she didn’t need to be sorry for anything, that he was the one who was sorry, that she’d be all right, and so would Will, for that matter, murmuring the words into her blonde hair as he rested his cheek against the top of her head and tried not to get choked up his own self.

Eventually, her tears subsided and she breathed in a few deep shuddering breaths, wiping her reddened nose against the back of her hand and drawing back to look at the front of his shirt, which was wet and tear-stained now. A smile quivered onto her face as she regarded it for a few moments and said in a shaky voice, “You’re going through shirts even faster than Mark, and that’s saying something.”

He grinned in response as he loosened his grip on her shoulders, though his eyes remained dark with concern for her. “Yeah, well, I’ll pick up a few spares the next time I head into Bisbee. Just to be on the safe side.”

She laughed weakly, resting her forehead against his chest, and this time she did give him a quick hug before she backed out of his embrace. “Well, I better get started on cleaning off the table,” she sighed with resignation, looking at the remnants of their supper.

Joshua walked a few steps away from her, grabbing his hat off of the back of a chair before he started for the door. He looked back long enough to say, “Just give a holler if you need anything,” and waited until she gave him a nod to indicate she’d heard him before he continued on outside.

The Arizona night air was chilly as he walked to the barn, especially where the wet fabric from his shirt touched his skin. He could have pulled it away to air it out so that it’d dry faster, but instead, he pressed the damp cloth even closer to his chest.

Trivia

“Life must be lived forward, but it can only be understood backward.” Attributed to Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1853), a Danish philosopher and theologian. While the phrase “Hindsight is 20/20” is far more familiar to us, I wasn’t sure when this phrase, which references 20/20 vision, was coined, so went in search of older wisdoms/sayings regarding hindsight.

Harvard University, located in Cambridge, Massachusetts (which is a few miles away from Boston) is the oldest college in the US and was established in 1636.

I know it's not really trivia, but as I was writing a scene in this story, I was asking my wonderful beta reader Anonymous2004 if she thought Alice was afraid when Ben Wade was at their house, during the movie. And I meant, not in a sexual tension kind of way, but a geniune fear kind of way. She said, "Yes." So I asked why. And she came up with this gem, which I giggle at just thinking about. Hopefully you are equally entertained. "Look, I'm just saying, if Ben Wade shows up on your doorstep, it's not exactly like he's bringing something good like Jolly Ole St Nick"