Billy simply nodded. “I’ll live.” He jerked a thumb toward the back of the wagon. “But you might not, if we don’t figure out what to do with this.”

“The treasury gold?” Bart stole a nervous glance at the house before lowering his voice to a stage whisper. “I think your brothers are planning to keep it for themselves.”

Billy shook his head. “I’m afraid that just won’t do.”

Bart brightened. “You think I should keep it?”

Billy rolled his eyes and shook his head again. Esmerelda climbed to her feet, her nightgown whipping in the wind. Billy wished he was wearing a shirt he could take off and wrap around her.

She gave the wagon a despairing look. “Oh, Bartholomew, what were you thinking?”

Billy noted that this time Bart didn’t stammer an excuse or hang his head. He met his sister’s gaze dead-on. “I was thinking what a pitiful excuse for a man I’d been. I was thinking about how I let you sacrifice everything for me, including your own childhood. I was thinking that even if I went to college like you wanted me to, it would be years before I could afford to buy you the things you deserved.” He caught her by the shoulders. “Don’t you know that it drove me half-wild with shame to see you wearing Mama’s mended dresses while you taught those spoiled little merchant’s daughters in their Worth gowns and diamond pinkie rings?”

Tears glistened in Esmerelda’s eyes. “But I never wanted Worth gowns and diamond pinkie rings! All I ever wanted was children of my own and a decent man to love.”

Billy flinched. Her words cut to the bone. Decent wasn’t a word he’d ever heard used to describe a Darling. Decent was some store clerk or lawyer coming home from the office every day with his leather satchel tucked beneath his arm. Decent was Esmerelda greeting her husband at the door with a tender kiss, her apron smelling of fresh-baked peach pie. Decent was a batch of laughing, brown-eyed children gathered around a piano while Esmerelda sang shrill Christmas carols. The image made him feel funny—sad and mean all at the same time.

Half afraid of just what else he might hear, Billy gruffly interrupted. “What’s done is done. There’s no point in arguing about it. I can drop off the gold at the bank in Eulalie for safekeeping on my way back to Calamity. I’ll telegraph the marshal in Albuquerque and let him know it’s there. He’s a good man. He’ll see to it that Winstead doesn’t prey on any more tenderfoots like young Brat here.“

Their own quarrel forgotten, brother and sister both swung toward him and said in unison, “Bart!”

He simply shrugged.

“Isn’t that wonderful?” Esmerelda exclaimed. “Mr. Dar”—she slanted him a shy glance, plainly deciding that the delicious intimacies they’d shared at least entitled her to call him by his Christian name—“Billy will return die gold and you’ll be free to return home.”

Bart stiffened. “I’m afraid I won’t be returning to Boston.”

“Why, of course you will! It’s where you belong.”

Billy cleared his throat. This was the moment he’d been dreading. “Your brother’s right. He can’t go back. At least not yet. I can look after myself and you, but until Winstead and his men are behind bars, he won’t be safe.”

Bartholomew clasped his sister’s shoulders again, more gently this time. “You can’t keep me in short pants forever, Esme. It’s time for me to make my own way in the world.”

“But what about Boston College? Mama and Papa always dreamed you’d attend university and become a journalist like Papa.”

“Mama and Papa are dead,” he said softly. “I have my own dreams now. I don’t want to spend my life writing editorials and obituaries for people to read over their morning coffee. I want to write stories that come from my own imagination. I want to make people laugh and cry. I want to make them dream.”

“But where will you go?”

He looked toward the far horizon, the twinkle in his eye sharpening to a dreamer’s glint. “I always thought South America would be a lovely place to write my first novel.” He chuckled dryly. “I’ve certainly had ample inspiration in the past few months.”

Billy reached into the pocket of his trousers and drew out a wad of money. Instead of peeling off a few bills, he handed Bart the entire thing. “Winstead paid me this to kill you. It seems only fitting that you should use it to start a new life.”

“I’m in your debt, sir,” Bart replied, offering him his hand. “I won’t forget it.”

As they shook hands, man-to-man for the first time, Esmerelda stood blinking in bewilderment, as if everything was happening too fast for her to comprehend. Billy felt a twinge of pity. He knew exactly how it felt to be the one left standing outside when the door slammed.

Hoping to earn her some time to get used to the idea of losing her brother a second time, he nodded toward the house. “I’m sure Ma would be glad to fix you something to eat before you go. She seems to have taken quite a shine to you.”

Shooting the house another fearful glance, Bart reached up to massage his throat. “I believe I’ll just be on my way. I’ve got a long trip ahead of me. I can stop for supplies at the next town.” He turned to Esmerelda, drawing her limp body in for a swift, hard hug. She hung like a rag doll in his embrace. “I’ll write you, Esme, just as soon as I get settled.”

It wasn’t until he was striding toward the dun gelding that stood grazing on a sparse patch of grama grass halfway down the hill that she snapped out of her daze.

“Bartholomew Fine, you get back here this instant!”

He paused for a nearly imperceptible second, then resumed walking.

“Don’t you turn your back on me while I’m talking. I won’t tolerate such impertinence!“ Her voice broke on a quavering note.

Her brother was already throwing one leg over the saddle and turning the horse south.

Esmerelda caught Billy’s arm in an imploring grip, tears spilling down her cheeks. “I just found him. I can’t lose him again! Please, Billy, you have to stop him!”

He caught her shoulders in a grip as fierce as her own. “I’d shoot him in the leg if I believed you both wouldn’t hate me and each other for it later.”

“I don’t want you to shoot him. I just want you to talk some sense into the boy!”

He deliberately gentled both his grip and his voice. “He’s not a boy any longer, Esmerelda. He’s a man.”

Sobbing with frustration, she wrenched herself out of his grasp and went tearing down the hill. Bart had already kicked the horse into a canter. Soon he would be nothing but a puff of dust on the horizon.

Esmerelda must have realized it, too, for halfway down the hill, she stumbled to her knees, her shoulders crumpling in defeat.

Although Billy ached to go to her, he’d had plenty of practice biding his time. He leaned against the buckboard until the sun began to climb in the crisp blue sky. Until even the puff of dust had been scattered by the wind.

Only then did he start down the hillside. The brittle grasses crackled beneath his bare feet, warning Esmerelda of his approach.

She sat with one leg drawn up to her stomach, her mouth pressed to her knee. Her tears had dried to dusty streaks on her cheeks. Billy yearned to draw her into his arms, but she looked too brittle—as if one touch might scatter her on the wind as well.

He sank down on the hillside as near as he dared, leaned back on one elbow, and tucked a hollow blade of grass between his teeth. She surprised him by speaking first.

“Bartholomew’s little heart was broken when Mama and Papa died. I tried to make it up to him, but I guess I never did.”

Billy frowned, pained by her choice of words. “Hell, Esmerelda, you didn’t kill them.”

She turned to look him straight in the eye. “Oh, but I did.”

When she returned her gaze to the empty horizon, Billy could only stare at the bleak curl of her mouth. “I once had a friend named Rebecca. I was always a little shy and I didn’t make friends easily, so Becky was very precious to me. One evening, I overheard Mama and Papa whispering that she was sick. I begged them to let me go visit her. Mama turned white and Papa, who had never once raised his voice to me, shouted that I was to do no such thing and I must go to my room immediately.

“I ran up the stairs, crying. I rarely disobeyed, you see. I was a very good girl.” She slanted him a mocking smile, giving him a glimpse of the mischievous little girl she would have liked to have been. “But this time I managed to convince myself that my parents were just being selfish and mean. I knew I could make Becky feel better if I could only see her. I made her some roses out of yellow tissue paper.”

Billy knew what was coming next. He couldn’t begin to number the muggy summer nights back in Missouri when he’d crept out his window, shed his drawers, and plunged butt-naked into the icy cold waters of a nearby spring.

“I waited until they were all asleep,” Esmerelda continued, “then I slipped down the back staircase and out of the house, clutching my pathetic little bouquet. When I got to Becky’s house, I could tell there was something terribly wrong. Although it must have been near midnight, every lamp in the house was burning. I could see strangers milling about the parlor. Becky’s mother was crying, and her father was sitting with his face buried in his hands. Before I could duck, he lifted his head and looked right at the window. He didn’t look at me.“ She shivered. ”He looked through me.

“I ran, then, as fast as I could, to the back of the house where Becky’s bedroom was. I could see her through the French windows, laid out on her bed in her prettiest nightgown. An old woman I’d never seen before was napping in a chair in the corner.”

Billy had to clench his hands into fists to keep from reaching for her.

“I slipped into the room and crept toward the bed. Becky was always so pink and jolly. It scared me to see her lying there so still and pale. Then I felt ashamed for being afraid. So I reached up, ever so gently, and touched her cheek. Her skin was like ice. I must have made a sound because the woman in the rocking chair came awake with a start.

“”How did you get in here?“ she shouted. ”Get away from her, you wicked little girl!“

“She frightened me so badly that I dropped the flowers, jumped out the window, and ran all the way home. I threw myself into my bed without even bothering to take off my shoes and pulled the blanket over my head. It took hours for my teeth to stop chattering.” Esmerelda sighed. “I found out later that Becky had died earlier that afternoon. Of cholera.”

Billy lowered his head. He might have been able to stand it if Esmerelda had cried. But her eyes were as dry and barren as a desert that has survived centuries without even the hope of rain.

“I never told Mama and Papa what I’d done. Not even when they lay wracked by chills and soaked in their own sweat. Not when their lips cracked and blood trickled from the corners of their mouths. I nursed them the best I could. No one else would come near the house until the disease had run its course and they were dead.” Her words were edged with all the bitterness and self-loathing that had been festering beneath her composed exterior for thirteen years. “I never suffered so much as a sniffle.”

But she’d been suffering ever since, Billy thought. Suffering because a single moment of willful disobedience had left her spirit crushed like paper flowers beneath the indifferent heel of fate. She’d atoned for her sin by sacrificing her every dream and desire and becoming both mother and father to Bartholomew. Now that he was gone for good, Billy supposed, she wasn’t sure who she was supposed to be.

He rolled the tube of grass between his fingers, choosing his words with deliberate care. “When I was riding with Quantrill and Anderson, we lost more men to disease than we did to Yankee bullets—dysentery, typhoid, influenza… cholera. Almost every one of those sicknesses was spread through contaminated food or drinking water. I don’t believe you could have given your parents cholera by touching a dead girl’s cheek. They most likely just drank from the same -water supply as your friend.”

Esmerelda’s gaze was fierce, as if she wanted desperately to believe him, but wouldn’t allow herself. “You might assume that, but can you prove it? Can you swear with absolute certainty that I didn’t invite that monster into my parents’ house?”

Billy wanted to say yes, but knew she wouldn’t believe him anyway. He reached over to stroke her hair. “You were a child, sweetheart. With a child’s generous heart. Even if your parents had known what you’d done, do you really think they would have blamed you or wanted you to spend the rest of your life blaming yourself?”