Free The Violent Peace by George G. Gilman Page A

the former category. Thus, when Ed and the others heard the approach of the horse soldiers, she had agreed without reluctance to play the part allotted to her in the plan. Only when she saw the bodies of the troopers slump to the ground, spouting blood, did her life-long revulsion for violence trigger the impulsive action which ended the slaughter. Now she withdrew into her shell again, awaiting the actions of others to sweep her along in the next phase of her life.
    “Ma'am?” Blake said softly when they had put two miles or so between themselves and the farm.
    She turned towards him, and he quickly looked ahead at the moonlit trail. “Yes?”
    “I don't hold it against you - what you did back there. He's your husband and you ought to help him out of a jam.”
    Mona felt a stab of pity for the boy's ignorance and it showed in her green eyes. But he was too embarrassed to look at her and didn't see it. She did not enlighten him verbally.
    Blake cleared his throat. “Fact is, I wouldn't feel right locking you up, ma'am,” he said. “Now when we get to Washington, I'm going to have to hand you over to the law. Guess we won't be staying long in Foothills, but I can imagine what the goalhouse is like. Lady didn't oughta spend even a minute in it, I'd say. Any place more comfortable you can stay if I put you on your honor not to run away?”
    The offer did not lighten Mona's mood. She thought of Ed's brother Harry and the comfortable rooms above the drapery store. She thought especially of the snug bedroom where she had spent so many happy hours, both passion-filled and gentle. It would be nice to be with Harry again for awhile. Her love affair with him had started on an impulse and had provided the only moments of happiness she could remember in a long time. But what would it be like, being with Harry and knowing she was in danger of never seeing him again?
    “What do you say?” the pale faced young trooper urged.
    Mona reached her second, decision in one night, and nodded emphatically as Blake glanced at her. “I've got a place I can go,” she said.
    “And you won't try to run away?”
    “No, I promise,” she said, and meant it.
    It was a paradox that Harry Binns was the sole reason why she would make no attempt, to escape. For it was his solid respectability and determination to succeed in his Foothills drapery store which had first impressed Mona. Unlike the plan-a-day, anything for-a-fast-buck methods of Ed, Harry was a stick-in-the-mud plodder. He had taken over the family business and was quite happy within its limited horizons. And even his love for his brother's wife did not alter the main course of the life he had plotted out for himself. If he had allowed it to do so, they would have run away together long ago. So what was the use of escaping when the only person in the world who meant anything to Mona was as firmly fixed in Foothills as the church and town bank?
    “I'll trust you,” Blake said after a few moments of silent thought.
    Mona nodded vacantly, her unintelligent mind concerned with Harry's possible reactions to the news she would bring him. And this worried her so much that when Blake halted the buckboard in the plaza of the silent and darkened town, she could not bring herself to knock on the front door of the store. She went to the rear, hopeful of finding the door there unlocked. It was not. So again she put herself in the hands of fate, and crouched down in the shelter of some empty cardboard cartons stacked against the wall. She silently rehearsed at least twenty ways to give Harry the news before sleep overtook her.
    At a first floor window of the hotel, Adam Steele watched the buckboard come down the street and halt in the plaza. He saw the woman climb down and walk slowly towards the store bearing the name of one of the men he intended to kill. He didn't move, maintaining his vigil as the soldier angled the buckboard towards the funeral parlor appropriately sited next door to the