Page 37 of Wyoming Tough

“You’d know this, how?” he asked, but with a smile.

“My uncle is a state supreme court judge,” she replied. “In Texas.”

His eyebrows arched. “Impressive.”

She smiled. “Yes, it is. He used to work for legal aid and donate time, when he was younger. He still believes everyone is entitled to proper representation.”

“I wish he sat on the bench in Wyoming,” Bascomb replied sadly.

“You should turn yourself back in,” she advised. “This is only going to make things worse for you.”

“They couldn’t get much worse,” he replied. “I lost my wife last year. She died of a heart attack. She was only twenty-nine years old. Who dies of a heart attack at twenty-nine?” he exclaimed.

“There was a football player at my high school who dropped dead on the playing field at age seventeen of an unknown heart problem,” Morie replied. “He was a sweet boy. We all mourned him. People get all sorts of disorders at young ages. You don’t think of little children having arthritis, either, do you? But some grammar-school kids have rheumatoid arthritis that limits them in all sorts of ways. Kids also have diseases like diabetes. We don’t only get things wrong with us when we’re old.”

“I guess so. It’s not a perfect world, is it?” he added.

She shook her head.

He finished the bottle of water. “Thanks. I’ve been going by my mom’s place for food, but they’ve got people watching it. I don’t want her to suffer for what I’ve done. I’ve been hunting for food.”

“What about water?” she asked gently. “It’s dangerous to drink water from springs….”

He pulled a packet of tablets out of his vest pocket and showed her. “It makes any water potable,” he said. “I was in the military. Tank and I served together in Iraq. That seems like a hundred years ago.” He grimaced. “He testified for me.

It was a real brave thing to do, when everybody thought I was guilty. The local boy’s family is known and loved, and that made it a lot harder for me to get an unbiased jury. In fact—” he sighed “—one of the jurors was actually an illegitimate blood relation. My attorney didn’t catch that on voir dire, either.”

She caught her breath. “That’s a disqualification. Grounds for a retrial.”

“You think so?” he asked, curious.

“I do. You should speak to your attorney.”

He laughed shortly. “She’s not my attorney anymore. I read in a discarded newspaper that she said she couldn’t represent someone who proved himself guilty by running away. So now I’ve got no defense and nobody to advise me.”

She moved a step closer. “I’m advising you. Turn yourself in before it’s too late.”

He shook his head. “Can’t do that. I can’t survive locked up in a cage. I’ve had months of it. I’d rather die than go back, and that’s the truth.”

She could sympathize. She didn’t like closed places, either. “It will go harder on you that you didn’t wait for an appeal.”

“I don’t care,” he said heavily. “My wife is dead…the life I had is all gone. I’ve got no reason to go on anyway. If they shoot me down in the woods, well, it won’t be so bad. God forgives people. Even bad people. I don’t think He’ll send me to purgatory.”

“You can’t give up,” she said, driven to comfort him. “God puts us here for a reason. We may never know why. It may be to inspire one person, or give another a reason to keep them from suicide, or be in the right place to give aid to save someone’s life who may one day save the world. Who knows? But I believe we have a purpose. All of us.”

“And what do you think mine is?” he asked with amusement. She was so fervent in her beliefs.

“I don’t know,” she replied. “But you have a part to play. I’m sure of that. Don’t give up. Don’t ever give up.”

“There was this movieGalaxy Questwith Tim Allen and Alan Rickman, kind of aStar Trekspoof,” he recalled. “Their running line was ‘Never give up, never surrender!’”

“I saw that one. It was terrific,” she replied, smiling.

He shrugged. “I guess it wasn’t such a bad credo, at that.” He shouldered the gun. “Don’t tell anybody I was here,” he said.

She bit her lower lip. It sounded like a threat.

He gave her a long-suffering look. “You might get in trouble for giving me food and water,” he added.

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