Refuge Saga(WT)

Chapter Three

Chapter III

The scene was unfolding beneath him, as if he were watching it from above. He knew it well and wanted to screw his eyes shut to somehow stop the inevitable, but that was impossible and the events barreled on like a train descending a grade.


Malcolm lay prone on the dirt next to the younger version of himself. The sun beat down and Billy had the ethereal experience of both watching and feeling everything the prone version of him did. 


A crunch of rock under hard leather brought him around abruptly and Billy stared down the barrel of his rifle and back up the barrel of Uriah’s colt. Cold, gray eyes looked back at him and he could feel his lip curl even as he watched it happen. Anger burned like brimstone in his gut as he played this game of chicken with Refuge’s newest deputy, waiting for a flinch he knew would never happen. “Go ahead. Do it. You know you want to.” The taunt spilled from his mouth as he let the weapons weight push his right arm toward the ground.


He could see the vein just below the seventeen-year-old’s jaw pulse with each heart beat. Uriah’s gloved hand covered his revolver’s hammer, he cocked it back with a measured movement. He never took his eyes never wavered. Billy secretly wished the kid would pull the trigger.


“Uriah.” Billy’s eyes flicked over Uriah’s shoulder. Sid White had appeared and was standing behind his deputy. “He’s not worth it Uriah.”


“Cam is dead Sid, my brother is dead.” Uriah said.


“Cameron made his own choice Uriah.” Sid answered.


Billy could see Uriah’s mind working, weighing the other man’s words. His finger eased off the trigger, only to tighten again. “No... no. He’s the reason Cam chose the way he did. Billy screwed up Cameron’s head just like he screwed up his own brother. Billy’s just as guilty as if he pulled the trigger himself.” Billy could feel his breath coming in short gasps as he waited for that hammer to drop as Uriah's finger squeezed the trigger further back.


“That’s not for us to decide Uriah. We’re not the judge and jury.” Sid's voice was calm and measured.


Uriah’s stance didn’t change.


“Please, Uriah, don’t make me arrest you for murder.” There were a tense couple of seconds before Sid’s words seemed to penetrate.


Billy watched and waited. Calculating as he always did. And he saw. Saw the decision the second it had been made. A little smile crossed his eyes, He knew what Uriah would do, and he knew what he would do. Unfortunately only the Billy watching knew what Malcolm would do.


Uriah’s gloved finger eased off the trigger and his body relaxed a little. An audible sigh left Sid’s lips. Billy brought his gun up, but Malcolm had had other ideas, he launched himself at the dream Billy in effort to force the gun off target.


The sound didn’t register in Billy's brain. From his ethereal vantage point, Billy watched the bullet cut through the air on collision course with his brother. He wanted to close his eyes, but he saw regardless of whether his eyes were shut or not. He saw the bullet impact; he heard the soft sickening oomph it.





William “Billy” Connor jerked awake. He sucked in air, reduced by the dream to just struggling for breath, he fell back on the straw tick and stared up at the beams holding up the roof. He blinked and breathed as reality seeped in on the terror of the dream. Slowly his trembling subsided, with the present replacing the vacuum of the dream with black grief, cold and unyielding as iron. “Oh God.” The prayer was pulled from gasping lips.


Billy swung his legs over the bed and got up. It had been a long time since the dream had come; it left him shaking and weak in its wake. He passed a callused hand over his stubble covered face, then stood and snagged his pants off the chair. Bending over with a groan he stepped into them and hauled them up the not brief expanse between his ankles and waist; thumbing the suspenders over broad shoulders.


He heard Beth Anne stir behind him and a sleep fogged voice call his name as her hand raked the spot he’d just vacated. Billy turned and smiled down at her. The unsettling distance he felt between them made him want to scramble back under the covers and pull her close. But it wasn’t physical distance he felt and no matter how tightly he held her there would be a gulf between them. The dream always did that, ripped everything away leaving him emotionally naked.


Billy reached out a hand and stroked her soft strawberry blond locks with his rough, blunt fingers. He leaned over and planted a kiss on the fading freckles dappling her cheek. “Shhh, go back to sleep it’s not time to get up yet.” He soothed and she snuggled back down into the warmth of the blankets


Righting himself again he walked the two feet to the roughly cobbled table. He reached for the leather bound book sitting in its center and drew toward him. Billy shivered as a deep sense of unworthiness rippled through him. He had learned to ignore that feeling and force himself to read any way. It was somewhat disquieting to him that studying the Bible was still a matter of wills even after years of following God.





The Conner property was about two miles outside Cold River just as Armando had said. Even from this distance Uriah could see Billy had done well for himself. The house was built of stone and log, much like the one Uriah’s father had built. There were a few out buildings and the shelter that housed the blacksmith furnace.


Closer now, Uriah could see the smoke, barely visible in the gray morning sky drifting on the light breeze. A man came out of the house and walked back toward the shelter. The man looked up in response to the sound hooves crackling frost clothed grass.


Uriah almost didn’t recognize Billy with such an open, friendly look and his boyish face. Billy had always seemed significantly older than him. This man in front of him couldn’t have been more than a year older. Uriah recognized the puckered scare that split Billy’s full bottom lip, Uriah’d been the one that put it there.


Billy recognized him about the same time and his expression changed, just a touch, as though he pulled himself a way a bit. “Uriah,” Billy said evenly. He traced his  gaze to the left of Uriah’s chest, found the star and nodded at it, “You here on business?”


“I am.” Uriah answered keeping his tone measured.


The door opened and a woman with red hair stepped out. She paused when she saw Uriah and their eyes met. He saw her weight shift as if she wasn’t sure which way to go, back in or come out.


“Beth Ann,” Uriah he hadn’t meant to say her name out loud. Now that he had they were both trapped.


“Mr. Hope,” she responded, “I hope you won’t keep my husband long, his breakfast is getting cold.” Beth Ann looked from Uriah to her husband before she opened the door to go in. A baby was fussing in side and she disappeared into the house.


Uriah blinked, this wasn’t what he’d expected. He’d come to arrest a criminal. Now he was arresting a husband and a father.


Billy shifted, his feet crunching on the stone that floored his work area. “What’s your business Uriah?”


“There was a bank robbery in Refuge,” Uriah stated. Billy just waited. “A kid said he did it.” Again Billy just waited. “He said you helped him,” Uriah finished. Uriah waited, sitting on horse. Billy waited standing on the ground. “Are you going to say anything?”


“You are just stating facts, you haven’t asked me a question and you haven’t accused me of a thing,” Billy replied. Uriah cocked his head at his long time adversary. This was not the Billy Connor he had grown up with.


A half smile flitted across Billy’s face. “We all grow-up sometime Uriah.” He said as if he’d read Uriah’s mind.


“Where were you Thursday morning?” Uriah asked, reminding Billy who held the power.


Billy seemed to think about that for a minute before letting out a cynical snort. He nailed Uriah with his green eyed gaze and answered, ”Refuge, out at the Wheaton place.”


“That’s about a quarter mile from town.” Uriah said. Billy concurred with a nod. “Can anybody corroborate that?”


Now it was Billy’s turn to cock his head. “I don’t know what that means.”


“Anybody there with you to back up your story?”


Billy closed his eyes, “No.” He answered. “Beth Ann had to stay home. Angel, my son was sick with a fever. The Wheaton’s are three days on the road. But I didn’t rob that bank.”


Uriah held Billy’s gaze, “Did you have your horse with you? The roan with the blond tail and main.”


Billy furrowed his brows, “Yes.” Billy answered slowly.


“Did you lend it to anybody?”


“No.” Billy’s tone indicated a “but” was forthcoming so Uriah waited. “He got loose though.”


Billy shrugged, “I can’t explain it.”


Uriah shifted in his saddle, “Well there is one way to know for sure if you were at that bank.”


Billy looked a little startled at that, and a little relieved. “How’s that?”


“Your horse or its twin was at that bank. In the firefight, it got winged.” Uriah began. “So I look at your horse


Billy’s eyes widened and his face paled to the color of ash.  “Where exactly was this horse… um… winged.”


“On his left haunch.”


Billy passed a trembling hand over his face. “My horse got out Uriah. I told you.”


“You’re horse got out.” Uriah repeated. He didn’t believe Billy for a second. Billy was a liar and a thief.


“I found him in the morning in the yard, with a small wound…” Billy let his voice trail off. “But you don’t believe me.”


“Why should I believe you Billy?” Uriah asked.


Billy drew in a breath and visibly battled to get a hold of himself. “May I say good-bye to my son?”


Uriah relented and nodded. “Have Beth Ann bring him out. Have her pack up some food and a change of clothes, but don’t get clever.”