Page 75 of My Heart Will Find You

Etta tried to stay calm, but she knew she was looking at Wyatt Earp. Legendary man. Movies, TV, books would be written about him. He was a handsome young man, but she knew from photos that he would look better as he aged.Is that fair?she wondered.

“Who are you?”

Nice voice!Etta thought fast. “I’m Urilla’s cousin.” Urilla was his late wife, Etta’s almost namesake. “And I want to say that I love ice cream too.” A man was standing behind Mr. Earp. She lowered her voice. “Is that John Shown? The man who is blaming you for everything?”

“It is.” He cocked his head to one side. “You seem to know a lot about my business.”

She kept her voice low. “I don’t think you stole those horses. His wife lied about you. On the stand. Under oath!”

Wyatt leaned forward. “Anna and I didn’t exactly tell him the truth about some other things, so maybe I deserved it.”

What he said wasn’t at all the modern philosophy of blaming others for any bad that happened. It was so good to hear and she smiled broadly. “I’m here to help you escape. Go to the corner and pry off the ceiling, then hoist yourself up. Crawl across the rafters in the attic until you come to a small window. Max and I will be there to help you get down.”

“Who is Max?”

“My husband.”

He nodded toward her shirt. “And here I thought those birds flew you down from heaven.”

“What a nice thing to say. Actually, I’m—Ewww.”

Max had abruptly pulled her down to the ground. His look said what he was thinking:Keep it to business. When he took off walking, she ran to keep up with him. They stopped at the back of the building.

High up was a small window. “I guess that’s it,” she said.

“You mean the one with the bars across it? The one no adult could get through?”

“Yes. We have to remove some stones to widen the space. The question is how do we get up on the roof?” She looked at the building next to them. “We can go up that way. I think we can make it if we step on the windowsills. It won’t be easy, but we can do it. Then we can leap across to the roof. We can—”

Max was gone. Her first thought was,He was so jealous that he left me? Or was he just fed up with all my difficulties?She didn’t blame him if he had walked out. He could—

Max came around the corner with a tall ladder and two ropes coiled around his shoulders. “Or we can climb up. With all the construction around here, I figured one had to be close.”

On impulse, she grabbed him and kissed him.

He stroked her hair. “You didn’t think I’d abandoned you, did you?”

“Well, I did think...”

He pushed her away with a grimace. “Go!”

She scurried up the ladder.

As soon as Max was on the roof, he went to the chimney and gave it a good kick. When it didn’t fall apart, he tied a rope around it.

Then, to Etta’s horror, with one end of the rope he started tying what looked like a hangman’s noose. “You aren’t going to...to...?”

Max looked at her with angry eyes. “What have I done to deserve this?” He held up the rope then slipped his foot in the looped end. “After all the things I’ve done for you, you still mistrust me.”

“Sorry. I apologize.” She kissed his cheek.

“That’s better.” He yanked on the rope, then walked backward and began lowering himself down. When his face was at the roofline, he said, “And just so you know, I think you look really pretty in that shirt. And out of it.”

“Thank you.”

He slipped down out of sight. Etta stretched out on her stomach and looked over the side of the building. Max was standing with one foot in the rope loop in front of the little barred window. Out of the back of his shirt he pulled one of those decorative iron sticks that Pat had made. It looked like he’d brought it with him. She watched as Max pried out a stone from around the window. It fell down.

Unfortunately, it hit one of the curious pigs and it ran away squealing, and that set off the other pigs.

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