28

“Logan?” Jack Simmons’s irritating voice shattered the holiness of the moment. “Ya get lost back there?”

Logan scrambled to his feet, rubbed the moisture from his eyes, and dragged his hat forward to hide the evidence of his encounter with the Almighty. His heart was too raw, and Jack was too flippant. Better to hide until he could find some privacy to chew over what had just happened.

“There you are,” Jack said as he approached the last stall. “I brought you a feed bag if’n you still want it. Two bits.”

Logan nodded and dug a quarter out of his trouser pocket. “Thanks.” He accepted the bag without meeting Jack’s gaze. “I’ll be done here in a few.”

“No rush.” Jack patted Shamgar’s hindquarters. “You gonna stick around for some cards at the Seven Ponies later tonight? That braggart Bellows can’t wear his hat no more with how fat his head’s swole up since he raked in those winnings from you the other night. He needs someone to shrink him back down to size.”

Logan slipped the feed bag over Shamgar’s nose and fit the strap behind his ears. “Not tonight. Got some unfinished business back at my place.”

“That business got something to do with a female?”

Logan’s head whipped around.

Jack chuckled. “Don’t look so shocked. There’s only one thing that gets a man worked up enough to race his horse to a lather when there’s no prize money at the end of the line—a woman.”

“Yeah, well, this particular female is worth the exercise.” Logan settled the saddle blanket back into place. Shamgar had rested enough, and Logan was more than ready to be away from the nosy liveryman.

“Got it that bad, do ya? No wonder yer turning us down for poker. The little woman’s got her reformin’ hooks in ya already.” Jack shook his head. “Pity.” He grabbed the saddle from where it straddled the half wall on the far side of Shamgar, then came around to swing it up onto the gelding’s back. “Just remember, you know where to come for medication when she ties your guts in a knot. Guaranteed to unravel what ails ya and erase troubles from the mind.”

“And create a few dozen more,” Logan grumbled beneath his breath.

Jack must have heard, for he chuckled as he sauntered down the center aisle toward the front of the livery.

Logan patted Shamgar’s neck. “Time to get out of here, old boy.” He had changes to make. A life path to renavigate.

He had to get right with God before he could get right with Eva.

He removed the feed bag, cinched the saddle, and placed the bit back in Shamgar’s mouth. Then, without more than a wave to Jack and the rest of the gathering, he led his horse away from the livery and back to the road. Back toward Eva and the Hamiltons.

When Ben Franklin lay a handful of miles behind him, Logan slowed Shamgar to a walk and returned his thoughts to where they’d been before Jack had interrupted.

“I screwed up.” Not the most elegant prayer ever uttered, but he figured it needed to be said. “Sorry, Lord.” And he was. Down to his bones.

He ached with remorse. With self-derision. He’d listened to the serpent, just like Eve had so long ago in that garden. He’d chosen to ignore the Lord’s instructions and instead focused on the message that matched what he wanted to hear. You’re not seeking revenge. You’re seeking justice. An eye for an eye. It’s your right.

How conveniently he’d forgotten Jesus’s teaching of turning the other cheek, of doing good to those who persecute.

“I need to make this right, Lord. With the Hamiltons. With Eva. But what do I do about Mama?” His throat clogged at the thought of his mother alone in her room, closing herself off from the world.

Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.

The words of Jesus echoed in his mind, a pointed reminder that it was Logan’s job to live for God, and God’s job to take care of the rest. Letting go didn’t come easy, not where his mama was concerned, but all his efforts to fix the situation thus far had failed. Time to bring in the big guns, the ones he should have engaged from the start.

“Help her, Lord.” Logan squinted against the sun as his face lifted heavenward. “I don’t know how.” His fingers tightened on the reins. “Heal her heart, and show me how to be the son she needs.”

An idea whispered into his heart. He should write to his mother and apologize for being so consumed with his selfish schemes that he’d left her alone and neglected. Eva had recognized his mistake from the very start, and like a blockhead, he’d waved off her concerns as if she didn’t know what she was talking about.

He had a lot to atone for. With his mother. With the Hamiltons. With Eva.

His head brimming with thoughts of letters, apologies, and reparations, Logan clicked his tongue at Shamgar to increase their pace. Yet when they turned down the lane to his unfinished cabin, all higher-plane thoughts narrowed to the sharpened point of the physical.

Someone had been in his yard. The sawhorses he’d set up by the lumber pile were missing.

Logan moved the reins to his left hand and reached for his revolver with his right. His knees tensed, sending Shamgar’s ears pricking forward at attention.

He scanned the area. Nothing else seemed amiss. He turned his attention to the cabin, and his gut tightened. A dark shadow loomed in the kitchen. Not moving, just . . . waiting.

Logan dismounted, careful to keep his gaze as well as his gun trained on the doorway. Still no movement inside. He jogged closer, until the shadow took shape.

A man. Definitely a man. Seated.

Odd, since Logan had no furniture.

“Who’s there?” he called.

“Holster your weapon, Fowler. This ain’t that kind of ambush.”

But it was an ambush. Zacharias Hamilton was waiting for him. In possession of Logan’s full name and his intentions, as well.

Logan lowered his revolver and straightened his stance. The moment he’d been planning for seven years was upon him, and instead of satisfaction and triumph, he felt only dread and regret.

Fitting his revolver into its holster, Logan breached the threshold.

Zacharias Hamilton sat on a crude stool fashioned from a log from Logan’s woodpile. The missing sawhorses supported four wooden planks from his lumber stores to create a tabletop, and a matching log stool of dubious height sat close to the door, waiting expectantly for Logan to join the tableau.

“I understand you want to challenge me to a game. High stakes.” Hamilton’s face showed no emotion beyond a sardonic confidence designed to inspire the opposite effect in his opponent. He thumped a knuckle against the top of a thin leather pouch sitting on the table to his right. “I brought the deed.”

Logan shook his head. “Put it away. We won’t be playing.”

Hamilton raised a brow. “I thought that was your endgame.”

“It was, but not anymore.” Logan stared his nemesis straight in the eye. “I forgive you.”

He hadn’t known what to expect from Hamilton after uttering those words, but it sure as shooting wasn’t for him to leap from his stool like a wolf out for blood.

“You forgive me? No. That’s not how this works.” Hamilton advanced around the table. “You initiated this game when you came to Pecan Gap, when you courted my sister as a way to get close to me.”

Logan’s jaw clenched. “Leave Eva out of this.”

Hamilton jabbed a finger at Logan’s face. “You’re the one who brought her into it. The one who broke her heart and left her crying in your wake.”

Logan’s gut twisted at the image Hamilton painted. Eva, cheeks stained with tears he’d caused, her heart aching, the wings of her beautiful spirit clipped and sore. “I never wanted to hurt her,” he murmured through a clogged throat. “I love her.”

“Well, I love her too, and unlike you, everything I do and have ever done is to protect her. To provide for her.” Hamilton curled his hand into a fist and, with deliberate slowness, lowered it to his side. “Yes, I cheated your father out of his land. And I’d do it again to provide a permanent shelter for an asthmatic kid who was so thin you could see the outline of his bones through his skin and a little girl who prayed for a real home every night in her bedtime prayers.”

A growl rumbled in Hamilton’s throat as he pivoted away from Logan and stalked to his side of the table. “I’m sorry you and your ma lost your home,” he admitted, his back turned as he braced his hand against the framed wall studs, “but I ain’t sorry Seth and Evie found theirs.” He dropped his hand and turned to face Logan. He picked up a small, rectangular case from the center of the table and tossed it to land faceup in front of Logan. Two initials were tooled into the russet leather.

“J.M.?”

Hamilton’s face gave little away. “Jedidiah Mitchell.”

Logan’s brows shot up. “The riverboat gambler?” Mitchell was a legend. Even in Texas, people knew of him. Just as young hotheads with pistols sought to make a name for themselves by challenging experienced gunslingers to duels, young cardsharps sought to establish their expertise by taking down legends like Jedidiah Mitchell at the tables. At least they had, until a poor loser back-shot him in an alley in New Orleans.

“My father.”

Logan met Hamilton’s eyes.

“Those are his cards. The only thing of his I have left. I haven’t touched them since . . . well, since the game I played with Rufus.” Hamilton glanced away, leaving the horror of Rufus Fowler’s suicide unspoken. “Until today. You deserve a chance to win back what your father lost, and I deserve the chance to prove I can keep it without tarnishing what honor I have left by cheating.”

“I’m not going to play you,” Logan stated. “Not today. Not ever.”

Hamilton frowned. “But Evie said—”

“Eva said a lot of things, many of which crawled under my skin and took root this afternoon.” Logan widened his stance and forced his voice to ring with a confidence he wanted to feel but couldn’t entirely claim. “I’ve changed my mind. I’m letting the past go.”

“Because of Evie?”

Logan shrugged. “Partially. But mostly because it’s the right thing to do.”

Hamilton’s face hardened. “Deal the cards, Fowler.”

“No. I don’t want the game anymore.”

“But I do.” Hamilton regained his seat and snatched up the card case. His fingers trembled as he extracted the playing cards and started to shuffle, the cards moving choppily at first, then smoothing out as he repeated the motion and regained his flow. “I need to.”

To banish Rufus Fowler’s ghost. He didn’t say the words, but Logan could see the truth in his eyes. Hamilton was haunted and grasping at straws to escape the past, just as Logan had been.

Should he play? Not for revenge, but to help Eva’s brother exorcise his demons? It seemed like the right thing to do. But then, his barometer on righteousness had been less than accurate lately.

“Sit!” Hamilton demanded.

At sea in his own mind, Logan sat. Cards appeared in front of him. He picked them up and stared blankly at the red and black markings. Coins hit the plank table, clattering against the wood. Logan blinked.

“Ante up, Fowler. Time to put the past to bed once and for all.”