Two Brothers by Linda Lael Miller Page B

the desk, reading by the light of a kerosene lamp. At Shay’s entrance, he put a finger to his lips, then pointed toward the cell, where Aislinn lay in a pile of frayed purple ruffles. He crossed to the bars and looked in, and something happened inside him, all of the sudden, a sort of shifting slide that changed the terrain of his soul. He suspected the sweet pain he felt was a lasting and elemental proposition, as much beyond his control as that spill of stars he’d admired moments before, and thatscared him more than anything ever had. This was an impervious force, beyond the reach of his wits or his fists or his .45.
    After a while, he turned, resigned to utter mystification, and went back to the desk. “You’d better go and get some sleep,” he said to Tristan. “It’s late.”
    “Thanks,” Tristan said, low, and with a small grin. “You want to read me a story and hear my prayers?”
    Shay didn’t bite the hook; it was too late and he was tired to the bone. He tossed a brass key onto the desk. “My room is on the second floor, over at Miss Mamie’s boardinghouse. In the back, to the right of the landing. She’s used to me coming in late, so she won’t bother about you.”
    Tristan looked at the key for a moment, then shrugged and picked it up. “I guess one of us might as well get some rest,” he said, and stood. “You have any luck over at the saloon?”
    Shay glanced ruefully toward Aislinn, slumbering so peacefully in the cell, and couldn’t forestall a brief twitch at the corner of his mouth. “I was making a little progress,” he said, “until Miss Lethaby decided to save me from the forces of evil.”
    Tristan laughed quietly and slapped his brother’s upper arm. “Don’t worry,” he said, in an exaggerated whisper. “I think that was Saint Aislinn’s last miracle.”
    “Get out of here,” Shay said. He hoped Tristan was right—he didn’t want or need Aislinn or any other woman taking stupid chances on his behalf—but he knew stubbornness when he saw it, and she had a plentiful supply of that.
    Shay blew out the lamps, settled himself in the desk chair, put his feet up and closed his eyes. “Night,” he said.
    “Night,” Tristan responded, and went out, closing the door behind him with a soft click.
    Shay meditated on the fact that if it wasn’t for Aislinn, he’d have been sleeping in his own soft bed, sober as an angel, instead of that hard chair. Miss Mamie kept strict rules in her establishment, and she could smell whiskey on a man from an alarming distance, which was why he’d passed many a night on the jailhouse cot. He shifted in the chair, trying in vain to get comfortable, and sighed, listening as the town settled down around him like a creaky old house.
    He hadn’t been asleep long when the sound of the back door being forced open brought him back to the surface of consciousness. He swung his feet down from the desk top, silent as an Indian, and rose. The .45 was in his hand before he thought to reach for it.
    “You must be loco, messin’ with that marshal,” whispered one of the two shadows lurking back by the cell. Shay couldn’t make out their features, just the shape of their framework, but he knew who they were all right.
    “You saw him leave,” Billy told O’Sullivan impatiently.
    “I still don’t like this. I’m tellin’ you, it ain’t right.”
    There was, Shay reflected, a moralist in every bunch.
    “We’ll get the girl and leave. That’ll teach McQuillan a thing or two.”
    “Teach him? You’re the one with a dick for a head, Billy. You didn’t learn nothin’ that other time, apparently.”
    That other time . The phrase was a crooked twig, shoved through Shay’s gills. He waited, hoping the exchange would continue, but once again Aislinn got in the way.
    “Who’s there?” she demanded crisply. There was a tremor of fear in her voice, but it was so faint you had to listen hard to hear it. Shay admired her grit even as he suppressed