Staring at the vast space in front of her, she thought about her life. And in the end she understood that she had been deceiving herself. Confining herself to a wheelchair wasn’t an attempt to atone for Payton’s death; it went deeper than that. She was running away from past mistakes and the fear of making more in the future. Not Payton, but pride and fear would make a recluse of her. Her punishment was not for setting in motion a chain of events that had led to her husband’s death and the loss of her leg. Her punishment was for all the wrong decisions.
Shrinking into her chair, she hugged her arms around her trembling body.
Less was expected from a woman in a wheelchair. There were fewer opportunities to make wrong decisions. Her chair was safe and familiar, a shield between her and a world full of expectations and wrong decisions that could lead to disastrous consequences.
But she loved him. She loved him so much that it was tearing her apart.
Covering her face, sitting alone on the prairie, she wept until no more tears came.
It was easy to be right. But it took courage to live with mistakes, with being wrong. Alex didn’t know if she possessed the courage to take that kind of risk again.
Time was running out.
They crossed the Chikaskia River, Slate Creek, the Ninnescah, and camped alongside the Arkansas River outside Wichita, Kansas.
Like all the boom towns along the trail, Wichita was wide-open with more saloons and gambling halls than churches or harness shops. Strung out along a bluff overlooking the wide, shallow Arkansas, Wichita was a good place to fatten weary stock on lush sedge grass and provision the outfit for the last push into Abilene.
Dal crossed his arms atop the pommel and let his shoulders slump as he watched Jack Caldwell canter toward town and a rendezvous with Lola. Lola was going to be very happy today. The injustice of it stuck in his craw like bitter fruit.
Clicking his tongue, he urged his horse into a circle around the King’s Walk herd, warning himself not to count the longhorns, but he did. And each time the number came up the same. Acid poured into his stomach, and he ground his teeth.
He knew Lola, and he’d recognized Caldwell for what he was. From the beginning he had known they would cheat. He had known this, but hadn’t been able to stop it. He had been counting on Emile Julie to arrive, kill Lola, and solve his problems.
For the rest of his sorry life he was going to blame himself that the Roark sisters had not won their father’s inheritance. He’d let them down, and he’d let Joe down. Dal couldn’t believe that Joe had wanted Lola to have his ranch, his stock, and all his holdings. Joe had gone to his final reward hoping his daughters would inherit their birthright. Wanting it to happen that way.
They would have if Dal had been better and smarter.
By the time the sun set, he was as low as he’d ever been. He had failed in every way a man could fail. He’d failed the woman he loved, he hadn’t done the job he was hired to do, and he had failed himself.
Damn, he needed a drink. The craving gnawed at him, turned his mouth as dry as a desert floor. What the hell did it matter now if he found some relief? He’d fallen as far as he could. What was one more failing?
Without a word to anyone, he rode away from his herd and headed for the lights of town.
The saloons were crowded, but he’d expected that. Several herds camped along the Arkansas, and the cowboys were spending their wages and cutting up along Main. Eventually, he found a saloon that wasn’t as jammed as the others, took a stool at the bar, and ordered a whiskey.
The hot pungent aroma strung his nostrils and he swallowed hard, gripping the shot glass and a promise of oblivion. He inhaled deeply, anticipating the long burn followed by an explosion of heat in his belly. One shot wouldn’t be enough, it never was. Escape required a bottle, maybe two. Surrender would be costly and would take most of the night.
Turing the whiskey glass between his fingers and staring down at the surface, he thought about that. Giving up. Worse than giving up was acknowledging himself as a quitter. If he swallowed this whiskey as his mind screamed at him to do, then the drive wouldn’t end at Abilene, it ended right here. He ended right here.
One swallow, he thought. That’s all it would take, and his problems dissolved. He looked at his fingers straining around the glass and saw the future. He’d smuggle some bottles back to camp. He’d be drunk when the herd entered Abilene. That way, the count wouldn’t matter. It wouldn’t matter when Freddy walked away from him. He wouldn’t give a damn that he’d failed to stop Lola and Jack or that he had quit when it looked like he was beaten. Nothing would matter, not the past, the present, or the future. And he wouldn’t matter, not even to himself.
Raising the glass to the light, he contemplated the golden promise inside. Surrender.
It was that, or… keep fighting. Refuse to give up.
He still had a week. The contest wasn’t lost until the longhorns were counted by the officials in Abilene. Unless he took the first swallow. Then, he was beaten.