By Layne and Jo

(Layne writing Hannah, Jo writing Ben)

Chapter Twenty-six:

Lawson rode slowly into the town of Nogales.  He'd been riding pretty much non-stop since he'd left Lee, who was to take Jim's body back to Green Valley, and he was tired.  Worn out, really.  He thought he might find himself a room and get some sleep before he started asking around about Ben Wade and Hannah.

Coming to a small, weathered building on the very end of the street, Jed Lawson dismounted.  Tying his horse to one of the posts that held up the little, leaning front porch, he went in the

open door.  An older man with his boots propped up on a table looked up at him.

Norris frowned then spat on the floor. "That there badge o' yourn ain't gonna do you a lick o' good in these parts, Marshal. I think maybe you done gone 'n got yourself lost. Border's thataway."

"I know which way the border is."  Lawson had forgotten about his badge.  Now, he slowly removed it, tucking it into an inside pocket.  "I'm here on personal business, not legal.  There

a hotel around these parts, friend?"

"I ain't your friend, mister. Ain't no real hotel hereabouts, neither. Maybe get yourself a room over the saloon, maybe down the street at Juan's, maybe not."

"Thanks."  Lawson didn't use the word 'friend' again.

Then he turned back to the man.  "You seen a man and a woman come into town lately?  Travelin' together?  Woman's got red hair."  Beautiful red hair, he thought to himself, but didn't say it out loud.

"Maybe I did," Norris replied. "Maybe I sold the redhead some medical supplies. Maybe you should watch your back. Man she's with's pretty deadly...from what I hear tell."  Norris spat again. He wasn't fond of Ben Wade.  "Maybe you ask Juan about that there room.  Eatin' place.
Can't miss it."  He'd been interested in the fact that the marshal had pocketed his badge.

"Thanks," Lawson told him again, and went back out to his horse.

So they'd been here.  A redhead buying medical supplies could only have been Hannah.  Hopefully, they were still here.  Before he could look for them further, though, he had to have some rest.  Leading his horse, he walked slowly down the street.  Didn't have much trouble finding the eating place the man had told him about.

Tying up his horse again, he went wearily inside and stood looking around at the tables and the man working amongst them.  "Hear you might have a room for rent," he said.

Juan straightened from wiping off a tabletop, looking at the newcomer.  "Got one left, señor. Small, but in back. Quiet."  The man looked ready to fall over from fatigue.

"Sold," Lawson said immediately.  "There a place around here where I can stable my horse?"

"Alley beside saloon. Stable back there."  He sized the man up. Obviously a gringo but without the typical hunted look he saw on so many of them here in Nogales.  "You take horse; I bring fresh water to room."

Thanking him, Jed Lawson led his horse to the stable.  He unsaddled the stallion, rubbed him down, and gave him water and feed.  Afterward, he went back inside and trudged up the stairs.  The man had left fresh water for him, just as he'd promised, but Jed was too tired to use it.  He fell across the bed and into a deep sleep.

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It was nearing suppertime and Hannah had on her new green dress.  Standing in front of the small mirror, she brushed her long hair over and over again until it shone, leaving it down around her shoulders.  There was a healthy, glowing flush to her cheeks and a sparkle in her bright green eyes as they met Benjamin's in the mirror.  She didn't look much like a doctor

now, she thought to herself.

Ben was thinking something quite similar. He came up behind her, putting a hand on her shoulder. "I wish we was in San Francisco, little one, so's I could take you out to some fine eatin' place. You are way too beautiful to be in this here town."

Hannah tilted her head over to rub her cheek against that hand.  "I'm happy in this town so long as you're here, Benjamin," she told him.  "But if you want to go to San Francisco, we can go there, too."

He hadn't actually considered that. He had a lot of memories of San Francisco, memories of another woman. Did he want to make new ones? Did he want to live there?  "I was just wishin'

I had some place better'n Juan's to take you out to eat. You hungry yet or you wanna go walkin'?"

"Let's go walking."  Hannah took his arm happily. 

It was so nice, she thought, to be here in this place with him.  Where they didn't have to worry about him being caught.  Where they could go walking arm-in-arm,  just like any other couple.  She'd never thought she could be so contented just being on a man's arm.  Not working or taking care of patients, but just being someone's woman.

Her face was partially shielded from him by the new hat they'd bought in the dry goods store earlier. He liked that she'd left her hair loose, that he could see it against the green material covering her shoulders and upper arms.  She walked on his left, her hand through his arm, his right hand covering her small fingers.  The town was only four or five blocks long so it didn't take much time to walk the length of it. At this far end of it, there was a stone fountain in the middle of the street. He crossed toward the other side by the fountain, pausing near its low rim.

"You look like an emerald in that there dress," he smiled, "like you oughta be set in gold."  The dusty street, the old fountain, none of it was right, not for her. Seeing her in the dress, with the hat, brought it really clearly to him that she was an eastern lady, born and bred.  For a moment he looked back down the street, back toward the border, then sighed.

Hannah heard that sigh, wished she could make him feel better.  Looking at the old fountain,

she said with a grin,  "Why don't we throw in a coin and make a wish?"

Ben shook his head, trying to hold back a chuckle. At least she'd brightened his sudden mood. "You don't do things like that down here, Hannah. Soon's you toss a coin in that there fountain, it'd be full o' locals fightin' and scratchin' to get it out.  Wait 'til dusk, you wanna make a wish. Even in Nogales the folks can't grab the stars."

Hannah cast a flirtatious sideways glance at him.  "Are you asking me to go for a walk under

the stars with you, Mr. Wade?  That'd absolutely ruin my reputation!"  She wasn't sure what had gotten into her.  She'd never flirted in her life!  But he seemed to make it easy.

"I think I already done gone an' done that," he grinned, "but if you wanna look at stars, I

figger that can be arranged."  The late afternoon sky was crystal clear except for one low streak of clouds that would make a nice sunset in a bit.  He lifted her hand, kissing it softly.  "Doctor McLaren," he added.

"If I make a wish, do you think it will come true?" she asked, her eyes serious.

"Don't hurt none to try, I 'spect."  Personally Ben didn't put any stock in making wishes, but looking at the stars with a pretty lady, that right there was kind of a wish come true.  Long as there wasn't any Apache out looking at stars. "We can have us somethin' to eat then come back down here by the fountain. Ain't all that safe goin' stargazin' out from town."

"It sounds beautiful," Hannah told him with a smile.

She had completely forgotten, for the moment, that she was wanted by the law and so was Benjamin.  That if they crossed the border not far away, both of them could be arrested and thrown in jail and that Benjamin would probably hang.  Right now, her only thoughts were that the man she loved was beside her and they were about to have a wonderful evening together.

Ben led her carefully past the saloon, already lit up and getting noisy.  Once inside the calmer atmosphere of Juan's, he walked her to that table he liked so he could sit with his back to the wall, and pulled out a chair for her.  "I know it ain't San Francisco, Hannah, but it's the best

we got right now."

She sat comfortably in the chair and spread a napkin over her lap.  Tilting her head back, she looked up at him.

"Don't you understand yet, Benjamin?" she asked, smiling.  "What makes it the best is that you're here.  I could be dining in the finest restaurant in New York right now and the food would mean nothing if you weren't with me."

There she was, saying things to him he wasn't used to hearing, things he didn't know what to do with because deciding about the future was too blurry still. "You're right good company, Hannah," he said, hating that such feeble words came out of his mouth.

Hannah eyes shone at him.  "Thank you," she said softly, knowing that, from him, it was a great compliment.

"You know," she remarked, as they waited for their food, "you still haven't done a drawing for me.  I'd really like it if you would."

"You sit near a lantern tonight by the fountain. I'll sketch that." 

Miguela came by. "You want chicken tonight, my Benjamin?"

"Chicken'll do fine by me," Ben replied. "You?" He looked at Hannah, not noticing Miguela had used the possessive pronoun.

Hannah bristled at the woman's use of the word 'my'.  She longed to tell Miguela in no uncertain terms that Benjamin was hers and no one else's, but causing a scene would ruin the evening.

Instead, she said, "Chicken sounds delicious." 

When the other woman had left the table, Hannah spoke thoughtfully.  "I'll bet there are a lot

of small towns in Mexico that could use a doctor."

"Most like that'd be true," he agreed. "Thing is findin' a town that's fit for you to live in."  He tipped back in his chair as he liked to do. "You thinkin' that's what you want, to be a doc in Mexico?"

Hannah met his eyes.  "I've been thinking about a lot of things lately.  That's just one of the possibilities.  There are a lot of different possibilities, you know, Benjamin?  You don't have to be just one way your whole life."

"Well, for the last few days, you sure ain't been the way you started out." He set his chair flat again. "An' you got to know, Hannah, I understand that's my doin'. I just ain't sure what to do about what I done to your life."

"YOUR doing?"  Hannah had been taking a sip from her glass, but she set it down now.  "Why do you blame yourself?  It's my doing, Benjamin."

Reaching across the table, she lay her hand over his.  "I'm the one who held the gun on Sheriff Lawson and his deputy back there in Green Valley.  I had a choice, Benjamin...." 

She trailed off for a moment and then went on, determined, "And I chose you."

Hannah withdrew her hand and dropped her eyes, folding and refolding her napkin.  "You haven't done anything to my life, Benjamin, except make it really happy for the first time ever.  I'm not sorry I chose you over the way my life was before."

"Oh, Hannah," he sighed, "you done gone and got yourself so sure about that, but you ain't lived the life yet, not more'n a few days. You don't really know what you'd be in for. I...," he hesitated, "I think give it a while an' you'd go an' change your mind."

"You didn't."  She looked at him steadily.  "You're still living it."

"I been livin' this life since I was eight, Hannah. It's what I know, what I'm used to. You, it's less'n a week. You may think now that don't make no difference, but I'm tellin' you it does. It's

a hard way of livin'. Real hard. And I ain't sure at all some lady raised in New York is gonna take to it. Hannah, you need a home. You need a place to do your doctorin'.  You need a man who's gonna be there for you, come home at night and...be there."

"Before I met you, Benjamin, there was never going to be any man at all.  I-  I haven't told you this before, but I used to be engaged.  When I was halfway through medical school, he broke

our engagement.  He said he didn't want anyone who acted more like a man than a woman.  That being a doctor was man's work and that I couldn't do it and be a lady, too."

Hannah looked at him pleadingly. "I need you, Benjamin.  I can do my doctoring no matter where I am.  And-"  A tear ran slowly down her cheek.  "And you don't have to come home...every night...if-if you can't always."

"Finish up now, little one. I think it's about time we went out and looked at them there stars."  He cut off a small bite of his own chicken and with his fork, lifted it to her lips.

Wiping the tear away with her napkin, Hannah took the bite of chicken he offered her.  "Yes," she said softly,  "it's time we looked at the stars.  A walk under them is always soothing."

They finished their dinner and with her arm firmly tucked in his, they walked back down the street and out to the fountain. It was good the saloon was a couple of blocks away from that end of town as men kept coming and going from it, its swinging doors rarely still. They could hear piano music from where they sat on the fountain's edge and now and then a rider passed by.

Ben trailed the fingers of his left hand in the water then lifted it, looking at the light of a couple of lanterns not too far away as it made the drops sparkle golden in the gathering dusk. The sky at the horizon was a deep purple blue with a bare hint of rapidly fading rose peach cloud. With his damp fingers he pointed up where the purple gave way to black. "That there looks like a fine star for wishin' on."

"A very fine one," Hannah agreed, looking in the direction he was pointing.  Grasping his hand in her own, she stared up at the star for a long moment, then closed her eyes.  She opened them again to find Benjamin looking at her intently.

"It's a beautiful sunset, isn't it?" she asked, blushing at the look in his eyes.  She'd learned to interpret that look over the past few days.

"What I got right here beside me puts it to shame."  He kissed his fingertip then traced it along the lines of her lips, following it with his mouth, just a soft, warm kiss since they were in public.  "Make your wish," he whispered, "'cause my wish is that we was back in our room."

She'd made her wish and, while being back in their room sounded good, the wish had been for something a little more lasting than that.

"In our room?"  Her answering whisper was teasing.  "No drawing tonight?"

"Oh?" He'd forgotten about that.  But his small sketch pad was in the inside pocket of his jacket and he pulled it and a short pencil out.  He'd promised and ever since his mother had promised she'd get the tickets and be back, he'd known what a broken promise could feel like.  With
most folks it wasn't that important to him, but Hannah was different. It was also why he hadn't promised her more than a sketch.

"You turn your head a bit more to the left, little one, lift your chin so the light's more on your face."  Then silently concentrating, looking up at her from time to time, his pencil roamed the small page. He didn't shade much and took firm, rough strokes but somehow captured the essence of what he wanted to get down on paper. No one had ever shown him what to do; it was just an urge he got from time to time to record something that kind of struck him. And he never kept them. So when he was done, he took one final look at her then back at the paper, tore
it out and handed it to her, still not saying a word.

Hannah sat as he'd instructed her to, silently and watching his face out of the corner of her eye.  As he worked, his face was a study in concentration.  It was fascinating to watch him.  An artist at work.

Just how much of an artist he was was revealed to her when he handed her the drawing.  "Oh, Benjamin," she breathed, as she looked at the likeness of her own face.  "It's wonderful.  So-  so expressive!"

"That's only 'cause your face is expressive like that. An' the lightin' made nice shadows."  He'd signed it 'Wade' as he did all his pictures. "So you ready now to go back inside?"  He looked at her with a little grin.