By Layne and Jo

(Layne writing Hannah, Jo writing Ben)

Chapter Twenty-five:

They were barely out of earshot, before Hannah began a tirade.  "For that man to call himself a doctor disgraces the entire medical profession!"  Her face was flushed with anger and outrage.  "I wouldn't allow him to treat a stray dog, let alone operate on a human being!  Why hasn't he been run out of town?"  She stopped, out of breath.

"Hannah, darlin', you gotta get used to the nature of things down here 'cross the border. Ain't nobody gonna be run outta Nogales. Most of the folks here who ain't Mexican are here 'cause they hafta be. Why you think you 'n me are here anyway?"

"But you and I are nothing like him, Benjamin!  We-!"  She stopped short.  Or were they?  They were all wanted by the law across the border.  Did she have more in common with Dr. Alvin Norris than she thought she did?

"It's all right, Hannah." Ben could see the emotions play across her face. "I know what you're thinkin'  an', no, you ain't like most of the folks down here. You, you're only here 'cause of me. You ain't a bad person an' you know that. You ain't never done a wrong thing in your life 'cept," he smiled, "decide you kinda like the likes of me."

She stopped walking to look up into his eyes.  "I don't 'kinda like' you, Benjamin.  I love you."

"And you're not like the other people here, either." She laid her hand against his cheek. "You..."  Her words trailed off.  She wasn't really sure how to explain to him what she meant--what made him different from anyone else she'd met since she came west, let alone here in Mexico.

"Ah, Hannah," he said, "you done gone an' dug yourself real deep into this, ain't you?"  He was still trying to figure out for himself where this was going, what lay for him in his personal future. He couldn't very well take her with him robbing stages or banks.  The last gang he'd assembled was scattered, some of them dead.  All he had right now was her...and that changed everything. But, as yet, he had no idea what to do about it.

Hannah eyes became clouded at his tone of voice.  Dropping her hand, she lowered them and said quietly.  "Benjamin-  if you don't want me here-  don't want me with you any more-  "

She looked up at him again.  "You don't have to worry about me.  I can take care of myself."

"Hannah, I ain't gonna leave you alone in Mexico. Don't you go and worry your head none about that. This is all just...different...for me an' I'm still findin' my way. Bear with me a while, little one.  You mean a lot to me, more'n I can say."

Calling her 'little one' seemed to have become a habit for him.  It made her feel warm all over. 

"I'm not so little, you know," she teased him.

"Little enough," he grinned, "'cept in certain right places."

Changing the subject, she asked him, "Have you ever been a, uh, patient, of Dr. Norris?"

"Once, 'bout five years back, he stitched up a knife wound."

Aghast, she looked up at him. "Did you get an infection?"  If the 'doctor' had used any instruments in that dirty little office of his, she couldn't see how he had escaped it.

"Was ok, Hannah. I'm still here. Ain't been killed by nothin' so far. Not yet."

"I came close, though."  Hannah almost mumbled the words, tears coming to her eyes.

"I'm sorry, Benjamin. I'm so sorry that I shot you, that you came close to dying because of me."

Wiping her eyes, she went on, "I'm raving about Dr. Norris, but I disgraced the medical profession, too.  I came close to taking a man's life out of fear.  If I had killed you-"

"I ain't dead, Hannah, an' I believe I done proved that to you more'n once lately.  You ain't a disgrace to nothing.  You're a good an' honorable woman an' you didn't have no intentions to

go an' shoot nobody.  The whole thing was more my fault 'n yours, so don't fret none, you hear me? We get back to the room, you stitch up my vest for me and that whole thing'll be behind us. You don't never need to think on that event, not never again. "

Taking his arm again, she smiled up at him through the tears.  "I'll do a better job stitching up your vest than I've ever done stitching up a patient, I promise!"

Then she gave him a grin, "And is that all you'd like me to do for you, Mr. Wade?"

"Not likely."  With a grin that matched hers, he walked along beside her toward the place where they were staying.

Voicing a thought that she had had over the past several days, Hannah asked him as they walked along, "Can I mail a letter from here?  My father-  I want to let him know I'm all right."

"Not so easy from here, Hannah. But like Naco, there's an Arizona Nogales 'cross the border just a bit, smaller'n this here Mexican town but the stage goes there. Either we find somebody goin' over there to take it for you or I can...."

"No!" she protested quickly.  "No.  Not you.  It's too big a risk for you.  I can do it myself."

"It's a risk now for you, too, little one. You write what you want an' I'll ask Juan to take it over. That sound ok?"

"That sounds fine.  But Benjamin-  if it comes down to you or me going across the border-  it's less of a risk for me.  I'm not as-"  What was the word she was searching for?  "As-notorious-as you."

He smiled. "I 'spect you've robbed a might fewer trains 'n banks at that, killed a few less men. But that there marshal from Green Valley, he just might come to Nogales lookin' for you."  Ben had seen the way the man looked at Hannah. Couldn't fault him for that. And then, too, the
word would be out that some little bit of a female had taken his prize prisoner out of his jail right under his nose. Not good for his reputation. But Ben suspected it was the way the man had looked at Hannah that would be uppermost in his mind.  "You go over there, he might well lock you up or somethin'.  You can't take no chances on that just yet. "   He had no idea where Lawson was at the moment. Maybe he'd given up and just gone back to Green Valley.  Be best

if he'd done that, but Ben wasn't counting on it.  Man wouldn't be happy he'd let Ben Wade escape, less happy about Hannah being a part of it.

Hannah wondered about that.  Would Sheriff Lawson lock her up?  Of course he would, she thought.  She'd broken the law.  He wouldn't have any choice.  But would he have followed them all the way to Nogales?

"You really think he'd come all this way?" she asked Ben doubtfully.  "Surely he'd be back watching his own town.  Especially after we crossed the border."

"No tellin' what some lawmen'll do once they get somethin' in their mind 'bout someone they just got to catch. I had me one once followed me for two months. Stubborn cuss of a man that'n was."

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Jed Lawson figured he wasn't more than a couple of hours out of Nogales now.  He was sure that was where Ben Wade and Hannah had gone.  For one thing, Nogales was right on the border.  From all that he'd heard over the years about Ben Wade, he went to Mexico after pulling a big job to rest up and spend some money.  But he stayed near the border, always ready to cross again when he was ready.  Other than that, Lawson only had his instincts, but he'd always trusted them.

He'd been thinking about Hannah during the long hours of riding, about how he felt about her.  He planned to tell her that Jim was dead and that he, himself, was the only one left who could tell anyone that she'd broken Wade out of jail.  That he wouldn't reveal it to anyone.

She could come back to Green Valley.  Back to practicing medicine.  They'd tell everyone that Wade had kidnapped her, taken her with him as a hostage until he got safely across the border.  She'd never go to jail.  No one would ever know the truth.

And when she was back?  Well, he planned to court her, but she didn't have to know that now.  It'd be enough for now if she just knew that she could come back to a normal life.  That she didn't have to be wanted and stay on the run.  Surely, after a little while of living on the trail, she'd welcome the chance at a normal life again?

He hadn't worked out what he'd do if Wade was still with her.  The man might kill him, even though he knew that he couldn't take him back across the border.  He'd play that one by ear.  Lawson rode slowly and determinedly on.
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Back up in their room, Ben set the parcels down on a table, sat on the edge of the bed and took off his jacket. Then he unbuttoned his vest and when it was in his hands,  fingered the bullet hole low in its left side.  He knew it would take something more like darning to mend it, not just a quick stitch-together job.  The vest had thin stripes and a little, silvered pattern, and part of a stripe and some of the design was missing,  as well as the black around them.  As he studied it,

he poked the tip of his little finger through the hole, his mind engaged in thinking about the pattern of his life. His eyes shifted to where Hannah was putting away her new clothing but his mind went back, pulled by something, to the moments before the payroll coach robbery.  He'd wanted something different in his life and now he had it, but he wiggled his fingertip, his gaze intent on the damaged vest as though it were some hole in the fabric of who he was.  He couldn't settle in one place, just...stop...just take up sharecropping or selling flour.  What was a man like him supposed to do with...? 

His free hand rubbed across his mouth and behind it, he sighed. When Hannah turned at the sound, he held out the vest. "You got two colors of thread? Pattern's blown out."  Yes, he thought, his pattern was definitely blown out.  And for the first time in years he wasn't sure

what to do next.

"Yes."  Hannah smiled at him.  "I got two colors of thread.  I saw what I did to your pattern," she said, nodding toward the vest.  "I'm not sure that it can ever be fixed perfectly again, but I think I can mend it so that it's barely noticeable."

Her smile faded a little at the look in his eyes.  "What is it, Benjamin?  What's wrong?" 

She didn't like that look he had.  It made her nervous, and it showed in the shadows of her green eyes.  It was an uncertain look and it didn't fit the man she'd come to know.

She was right, Ben thought. She'd been the one who changed his pattern. How far? How far, how much, would she change it? It was still changing, even as he sat there on the bed it was changing. How much would he let it change? How much did he want it to change? 

"I need me a drink," he said suddenly, not answering her question. How could he answer it when he didn't know what the answer was? He didn't like not knowing what the answer was. 

He thrust the vest into her hands and in the blink of an eye, the door had closed behind him.

Hannah worked on his vest for the next hour.  She'd sensed that he needed some time without her, but the troubled look that had been in his eyes worried her.  He'd looked as though something were very wrong.

Finishing with the vest, she laid it out on the bed and pressed it out with her hands as best she could.  She'd get an iron from that Miguela and press it properly later, she told herself.  Placing it over the back of a chair, she looked at the door.

Benjamin still had not returned, but something told her not to go looking for him.  He'd wanted to be alone.  Did he want to be alone from now on?  She hoped not.  Still tired, Hannah lay down on the bed and hugged one of the pillows close to her.  She fell asleep waiting for the door to open.

Ben sat alone at a table downstairs nursing a bottle of whiskey.  He had money right now, yes, but that would only last just so long and then he'd need to be getting more.  And how was he to go about that?  He glanced at the stairs that led up to his and Hannah's room, knew she was up there trying to fix his vest.  It was because of him she was here, because of him that her life had changed entirely, changed surely more than his had.  And he didn't know what he wanted to do about that, either.  He tossed back another glass of the whiskey but it didn't stop his thoughts from cutting back and forth rapidly through his brain. Drink never really dulled him at all. Sometimes he wished it did.

Miguela came up, leaning over the table, the tops of her large breasts bulging out of her low-cut blouse. "That skinny gringa, she give you trouble, my Benjamin?"

"Nothin' I can't handle," he said, not really looking at her.

She heaved her considerable bust line out even more. "You handle these, my Benjamin, and you forget all your troubles."

He looked up at her then, a small smile barely curving his lips.  "Not today, Miguela."

"Humph!" she snorted.  "That woman, she is not the one for you, my Benjamin."  Taking his hand that rested on the table top, she lifted it up, pressing it against her left breast.  "This you need, this.  When you decide this is true, you come."  Leaning more forward still, she kissed
his temple. "Miguela knows these things." 

Ben watched the sway of her wide hips as she walked back toward the bar.  Miguela was a simple woman, uncomplicated, always willing to spread her legs if that was what he wanted. 

But that wasn't what he wanted, not right now.  His eyes went back to the stairs again.  What
did he want?  He poured himself another drink, drank it slowly, his eyes still on the stairs, then scraping his chair back, he crossed the room. Opening the door to their room quietly, he pushed it part way into the room, seeing Hannah asleep on the bed. One bed. He and the doc had come to that, that only one bed was now expected to be the way of things.

She lay on her side, a pillow in her arms as though she'd needed to hold something.  He felt a rush of tenderness for her, stepped into the room and closed the door behind himself.  He managed to move the pillow without waking her, lying down where it had been, watching
her sleep, listening to the soft sound her breath made through her parted lips. Moving toward her, he pressed his mouth to hers, his arm sliding over her shoulder.

Hannah woke to the feeling of Benjamin's kiss.  She responded to it instantly, happy that he was back.  Tasting the whiskey on his lips, she thought that nothing had ever had such a wonderful flavor.  Drawing back a little she looked into his eyes.

"I was afraid you might not want to come back," she whispered, searching his gaze.

But Ben wasn't in the mood for talk and without saying a word, pulled her back to him, kissing her deeply, his hands gathering her up, pressing her firmly against himself.

Hannah welcomed his touch, responding to it wholeheartedly.  She felt what seemed to be some sort of question that he needed answered, some need that was asking for fulfillment.  Something that he couldn't tell her in words, but was asking in this way, physically.  And she gave herself completely, without reserve...hoping it was the answer he needed from her.

He was rather tender in the way he touched her, exploring as though it were his first time with her and even when he was inside her, he still moved slowly, watching her face.  Then when it

was done, he sank down beside her, his leg still over hers, and just held her, his eyes closed.
This was not Miguela, not some full-blown, well-worn flower. No, this was Hannah and she had only just begun to blossom into her womanhood, into her life as a whole.  And he had come and he had changed everything for her...and he'd let himself become attached enough to her that
that mattered.  So now it wasn't just that he didn't know what to do with his own life because

she was in it, but he didn't know what to do with hers.  He tried to think, squeezing his eyes so tightly shut that his forehead furrowed deeply, tried to see ahead, but he couldn't. At least what
he got a glimpse of was not all that pretty, not for her. 

He'd found himself alone before but always managed to gather another gang of men who were willing to follow where he'd lead.  He could do that again, he knew he could...if that was what

he decided.  But a woman, a woman who was with him, went where he did, stayed at his side,
what would...what could...he do with that?  In the beginning, the circumstances of life itself had dictated what they did, but now they were in Nogales and he needed to decide what came next.  That he couldn't seem to was eating at his guts, more and more.  He knew all too well the world was not some dream place where you got what you wanted.  He wasn't at all sure Hannah knew that.  His very awareness that she obviously thought he would simply take her with him from now on, that, too, ate at him because he didn't see a clear way for that to work. 

More and more, though, he found himself enjoying being with her and the thought of being without her wasn't all that appealing. Even now he could feel her snuggling against him like he was some harbor for her that would keep her safe.  But being with him wasn't safe. Being
with him could more than likely get her killed, or in jail, or left in some little hell-hole of a place while he went out to replenish their funds. This was the first time ever in his life he'd had to consider what was right for somebody else and he wasn't there yet, wasn't at the place where a decision, any decision, would come easy like.

Lying against him, feeling his presence warm and comfortable beside her, Hannah could see that he was struggling with something.  She saw the way he squeezed his eyes tightly and the way his brow furrowed.  Why wouldn't he talk to her, tell her what the problem was so that she could help?

Unless-  unless the problem was her?  He didn't want her any more, maybe?  No, that couldn't be it, she told herself.  Not the way  he'd just made love to her, as though she were some delicate piece of glass that might break if he gripped her too hard.  No, it couldn't be that he didn't want her.

Maybe he wanted to go back to his old life and she stood in the way of that?  He thought she was too soft for life the way he lived it.  But she'd go with him, she knew now, no matter what.  She'd bought those clothes that would make her look like a boy.  She was learning to ride better every day, and he could teach her to shoot.  She could learn to live life his way, if that was what he wanted.  Or maybe-

Running her hand over his brow, wanting to take away his troubles, she whispered to him, "Benjamin-  what if-  what if I opened an office here?  In Nogales?  They could obviously use a doctor.  A better doctor than Norris.  I could-  make a living that way."

Slowly he let his eyes open and just looked at her silently a long while.  She had made her choice. She'd been letting him know that for some time now. Why couldn't he make his?  "You'd do that?" he asked. "Give up everythin' you'd planned for your life? Stay down here in Mexico?
Be happy with that?"  Would he let her do that?

"I wouldn't be giving up everything, Benjamin.  I wouldn't be giving up you."  Her eyes were soft.  "You're the most important thing."  She smiled.  "And I'd still be practicing medicine.  Somewhere where I'm needed."

"But what about you?  Could you be happy with that?  Because I-"  She paused, then went on.  "I'll live life your way if that's what you want.  We can live on the trail.  I've got those clothes...  I can learn to shoot."

He thought about what she was saying, tried to picture her in the pants, firing a gun at some pursuing posse. It didn't fit. It didn't fit at all. He'd let her get the pants as it was amusing at the time, watching her try them on and all.  But living on the trail, that was reality, and it wasn't
right for her. She'd been blurring the edges of what he might consider to be right even for himself, but he knew it wasn't that. "No," he said, "not on the trail."  He was certain at least of that much.  But if she stayed in Nogales then he, too, would be tied to Nogales. He'd never been
tied to any place, no place at all.

"Let's just wait a bit," he continued, "wait a bit and see how it goes."  That was as far as he could see into the thing.

"All right."  She let it be.  It was what he seemed to need. 

Lying quietly, she looked around the room with its one bed.  Remembered that other little room, the little, dirty one back in Naco where there'd been two beds.  Where she'd nursed him through the infection caused by the bullet she, herself, had put into him.

Her entire life had changed from the moment he had robbed the stage she'd been riding on.  She'd changed it herself when she'd chosen to go to Green Valley to practice medicine.  But it had followed another tangent entirely when Benjamin and his men had held up that stage.

Vividly, she could remember how he had clutched her hand tightly during his delirium.  How he had called her 'Mama' and had cried out for her not to leave him.  She'd promised him that she wouldn't.  Then, she'd been telling him what he needed to hear.  Did he need her now?  As a woman herself and not someone he thought was his mama?

And what did she need?  When she'd come here, she thought her life was planned.  She'd be a doctor.  Since Richard had ended their engagement, she'd resigned herself to there being no man.  No husband or children.  The people she treated would be her children.  She'd take care

of them.

And then, this man lying beside her had come into her life.  He'd needed her.  She was used to people needing her medical skills, but not to people who needed her, Hannah, just as a woman.  She didn't want to be without that any more.  Didn't want to be without him.  In spite of all the things he'd done before in his life.  All the things he might continue to do.