The sheer size and diversity of the West took J.D.'s breath away. If he rode out of Four Corners for half a day in one direction, he found himself in the heart of a desert. Turn the opposite way, and the same distance would put him in lush, forested foothills. At first, he'd been hesitant to leave town on his own--what with Buck filling his head with wild tales about how a man could take just one wrong turn and end up dying without water or falling down some crevice to starve or be food for the first mountain cat that wandered by--but lately he'd taken to doing a bit of exploring when he had the time, getting the feel of this vast, untamed land. By now, he'd trailed along with--or, in one case, simply trailed--the others to everywhere from the Seminole village to Eagle Bend to Purgatorio. He knew the major landmarks, and Vin had taught him how to work out his directions, even on a cloudy day. He could take care of himself.
Thus, he was a bit embarrassed to realize he was only a few-hours' buggy ride out of town, and he had absolutely no idea where he was.
As she grew more comfortable with his company, the last of Amelia's reserve had fallen away, and he was discovering how honest her self-assessment had been. She was a happy person, when life gave her a chance to be. They'd spent most of yesterday in each other's company, finding one trivial thing after another to do together, and by the end of the day, she had been chatting as comfortably, if not as frequently, as he was.
This morning, with the tensions of Four Corners left far behind, she was relaxed and chipper, and they were maintaining a spirited conversation about this and that and just about everything. He hadn't been paying attention to the countryside, or sometimes he had--when Amelia pointed something out to him--but he hadn't been thinking in terms of a trail that would get him from here to there.
He'd brought his own horse along, but it was hard to carry on a conversation with her driving the buggy and him riding along beside it. As soon as the little bay had had a chance to wear off her morning restlessness, Amelia had talked him into tying the mare to the back of the buggy and climbing up onto its seat beside her. She seemed perfectly content to sit back and enjoy the countryside, so he'd taken over driving to keep himself occupied. The buggy seat wasn't very wide, and he was continually aware of having her beside him, never more than inches away, sometimes a warm pressure against his arm or thigh when she shifted around or leaned forward to point out a landmark. You'd think that he'd be starting to get hold of his runaway awareness of her by now, but that just didn't seem to be happening. If anything, it was getting worse. He was lost in more ways than one, though he wasn't prepared to own up to it.
"Turn to the right up ahead, where the valley splits," Amelia broke into his thoughts, pointing ahead of them to where two cracks opened between the hills that surrounding them. She called them "hills," and they were small compared to the more distant, snow-covered peaks farther west, but to his eyes, they seemed like full-grown mountains. "Sam's place is in the next valley."
The road they'd followed out of town had given way to a rutted track, and even that had vanished a few miles back. Fortunately, the grassy land was open and flat enough for the buggy to handle so long as he was careful about picking his route. It was tiring for the coach horse, though, so when he reached the mouth of the valley she'd indicated, J.D. drew the buggy to a halt.
"Better let the horse rest for a bit. We've been climbing for a while now. Pretty gradual, but I bet he feels it."
"Just let's hang on for another quarter-mile or so. When we get to the top of this grade, we can see down into the valley. It's a wonderful place for a picnic. It's a little early for lunch, but if we wait until we're at the homestead, it'll be very late."
"Sure." Grinning, he added, "Never been one to object to getting fed early."
"Now, why doesn't that surprise me?"
He slapped the horse's rump with the reins and clucked at it to get it moving again. It turned its head to cast him a reproachful look, then plodded onward with the tired stoicism of its kind. As animals for hire went, it wasn't a bad horse, but it was probably more accustomed to taking couples out for short drives after Sunday meeting than to all-day treks across open country.
Amelia didn't have to tell J.D. when they reached the right spot. One minute they were driving over seemingly flat ground beneath the looming shadows of two enormous, rocky hills, then they came around a bend and a narrow valley fell away in front of them, miles and miles of grassland nested within a ring of mountains.
He pulled the horse to a halt again, tied off the reins and hopped down. From the flat summit where they were stopped, the slope fell away too sharply to drive straight down, but when he walked closer to the edge, he easily spotted the trail that wound its way down to the valley floor at a leisurely angle. At first the land below looked completely untouched by human hands, but eventually he spotted a small cluster of buildings farther down the valley.
"Wow, this is great! I was wondering how come Mr. Gainer just left your stuff out here, where people could come and steal it, but I reckon not too many folks come out this way."
"Not many. There's another road that leads out down at the far end, if you're on horseback. It'll get you to Eagle Bend eventually, but it's not exactly the shortest route from anywhere to anywhere. That's why there are no other homesteads."
"Must've been lonely for you out here," he guessed, after thinking about it for a bit.
"Yes." Her voice had turned quiet and flat. "It was."
J.D. knew he'd said the wrong thing, but he didn't quite know how to apologize or make it right, so he just kept his mouth shut. Coming back to the buggy, he automatically circled the rented gelding to check that its tack wasn't chaffing. He paused to give it a pat on the nose, a lump of sugar from the small hoard he kept in a pocket for his mare, and a few encouraging words about the road ahead. Going around to the back of the buggy, he made a similar check on the mare, who gave him a good thump in the chest with her nose, complaining in her own way about the indignity of being dragged around the countryside by her reins. She immediately started wuffling at his pocket for her own treat, so he decided she wasn't too annoyed with him.
"You're good with horses," Amelia said, as she watched the mare lip sugar from his palm.
"Better be by now, seeing as how I started working in the stable when I was seven, mucking out stalls and cleaning tack. Didn't like that part much--" He ran his hand affectionately along the mare's soft, dark nose-- "but I always loved horses. I taught myself how to ride when no one was paying attention. When my grandfather found out, he fair to had a seizure, but--"
"Your grandfather?"
J.D. shrugged. "He was head groom at the estate where I grew up. That's why they kept Mama on when she... When I came along. He'd been in service there his whole life, and my grandmother, too."
"It's nice that they stood by your mother."
"Wouldn't call it standing by her," J.D. admitted. "My grandmother never had a kind word to say to her or me right up to the day she died, and my grandfather... You'd've thought Mama went out every night and sold herself on the street corner, the way he harped on at her. And she was never like that. Never. One mistake she made in her life, and--"
He halted the flow of words abruptly, wondering how the hell he'd ever even started on them.
"Sorry. Ain't anything I should be telling you, and nothing you want to hear."
"But I'm very grateful to you for trusting me enough to tell me," she said quietly. "We have a great deal in common, don't we, J.D.?"
"Some, I guess," he admitted. Maybe that's why he found himself telling her things he'd never said to anyone since Mama died, just knowing somehow that she would understand.
"Is that why you were so bound and determined to help me?" J.D. went forward to the side of the buggy, looking up at her as she sat with her hands folded neatly in her lap. She was wearing another of her drab gray gowns. Yesterday, she'd admitted they were a kind of uneasy compromise to her situation. She couldn't bring herself to a pretense of full mourning for the husband she'd abandoned, yet to ignore convention completely had seemed too disrespectful. From the way she talked, he'd guessed she wasn't comfortable with the decision, but couldn't think of what else to do.
Amelia scooted over to the edge of the seat and he automatically reached up to lift her down. He set her feet down on the grass, but his hands lingered at her waist. He couldn't exactly feel her through the rigid layers of unmentionables women wore under their shirtwaists, but he could feel her warmth and the small, regular movements of her breathing.
Realizing he still hadn't answered her question, he said, "Part of it," in a voice that came out as a rough whisper. A sharp gust of wind tried to tear off his derby, breaking the moment in a way that filled him with both frustration and relief. Stepping back quickly, he caught it before it could blow away and jammed it down more securely on his head.
Amelia was holding her own straw bonnet in place with one hand while she tried to control her wildly fluttering skirts with the other. "Wind's picking up," J.D. observed, taking refuge in the obvious and praying that for once he'd managed not to wear his thoughts in his eyes, the way he seemed to do no matter how hard he tried to mask them. Maybe she hadn't even noticed that he'd held her too long and was wishing like hell he could do more. "J.D..." Amelia began, her expression quenching that comforting hope.
"We better find a spot in the lee of the hill." He turned quickly back to the buggy to retrieve the picnic basket Mrs. Turnbull had made up for them. "If we don't, everything'll get blown away."
"I know a place," she told him, her voice grown soft and thoughtful. When he turned back to her, she was walking towards the base of one of the overshadowing hills.
The spot she found for them was sheltered from the wind, but still gave a view down into the valley. The easy chatter that had flowed back and forth all morning was conspicuously absent while they spread out a blanket, tacked it in place with rocks and settled down to explore the contents of the big wicker basket Mrs. Turnbull had filled for them. Part of it must have been due to where they were, within sight of the home she'd hated, but whenever J.D. glanced over, he was more likely to find Amelia watching him than the valley in front of them. She wore an odd expression which disconcerted him so completely that he pretty much lost his appetite--something his mama or Buck or anyone else who knew him would've sworn meant it was time to bury him. "Guess Mrs. Turnbull thought I said ta make enough for six people," he joked quietly as Amelia began to pack away the leftover food.
"I suppose she must have."
The wind that had been fitful when they stopped had been slowly building until the harsh gusts were almost a constant presence. They tore at the pinned-down blanket, setting its edges fluttering like banners until one corner finally pulled free with an audible snap. While J.D. caught and re-anchored it, Amelia tilted her head back, drawing in a long breath as she gazed up at the clouds.
"There's a storm on the way."
The sky above them was brilliant blue, dotted with small, harmless puffs of white clouds.
"You think so?" J.D. asked, distracted from his current problem as he frowned at it. "Looks pretty clear."
"Can't you smell the rain?"
He wrinkled his nose, sniffed, and shook his head in exasperation. "Don't smell like rain to me."
"Perhaps the rain smells different in New York," she suggested, with a smile that was almost immediately replaced by a slight frown. "We'll have a storm before nightfall. I should've noticed it sooner, but I've been away for so long, I've forgotten the signs."
Out here, there never seemed to be gray, drizzly days like they got back home. Either the weather was bone dry or else the heavens opened up and poured down water in torrents that were like to drown a man. Usually, the rain didn't last, but he'd already seen the kind of destruction it could cause, turning dusty arroyos into deadly, swift-flowing rivers or washing away trails with streams of mud. J.D. had been caught out of town a couple of times when the rains hit, and it was one hell of an unpleasant experience, leaving a man chilled to the bone and soaked as a dishrag. The flimsy little sun canopy of the buggy would provide no protection against a downpour. Even the main roads quickly became nearly impassable to anything with wheels, and stayed that way until they dried out.
"Think we can make it back to town before it hits?" he asked uneasily.
"I don't know. They can blow in pretty fast. It's been my experience that when you race the weather, it usually wins." She hesitated. "If you don't mind, I'd rather go on. We're more than halfway, and we've enough food to last us tonight. We could stay at the homestead and drive back in the morning... If that's all right?"
J.D. glanced at her uneasily and discovered that the idea didn't seem to perturb her at all. He was pretty sure she had figured out that he was thinking about her way too much, so she must have decided she could trust him a lot farther than he would've expected. The knowledge made him feel both wonderful and uneasy. Her trust wasn't unfounded, because he wouldn't do anything to hurt her, but...
But maybe the next time Buck got to talking about women, J.D. had better stop the big drifter from rattling on about how to deal with women like Emily or the embarrassingly friendly Mrs. Call, and ask how the hell you lived with being around one who was so close you could touch her almost any time, yet was still out of reach. Lord knows, he'd looked at women before and longed for them, but not like this--not to spend this much time around one, knowing he wasn't courting her but utterly confused about what, exactly, he was doing.
Deciding that he needed to think about it for a couple of minutes before he said anything, because right now he was liable to just open his big mouth and condemn himself beyond recovery, J.D. rose quickly and picked up the picnic basket. Amelia was kneeling on the brightly woven blanket, and she confounded his attempted escape by rising with him. For a moment, they were very close together, his head tilted back slightly to meet the blue eyes that were just a little above his own, then he tensed in surprise as she laid her hand against his cheek. There was no glove in the way this time, just the softness of her palm against oversensitive skin which he'd scraped to stubble-free presentability before he went to fetch her at dawn.
She leaned forward to brush a swift, light kiss against his other cheek, just barely missing the corner of his mouth. Through his absolutely frozen perplexity, he heard her whisper, "It will be all right, J.D. We'll work it out," then she was gone in a rustle of silk.
Somehow or other, he managed to get the blanket and basket back under the seat of the buggy. Amelia had climbed up herself before he offered her a hand, and didn't question him when he unhitched his mare and mounted. He never did answer her question out loud, but apparently neither of them doubted what the decision would be. He had never liked to run away from anything, most especially when it was something that scared him, so like he had when he'd hopped off a moving stagecoach into the unknown, he'd work things out as he went along. He wasn't about to turn tail and head back to town.
Part of him would've felt better if he were driving when they made the descent down into the valley, but the trail wasn't that bad. Besides, Amelia knew it better than he did and if it got right down to it, she handled the reins as well as he did, too. He rode along in front of the coach horse, letting the bay pick her way and keeping an eye on the ground, so he could call back warnings of any spots that looked like they needed to be treated with extra care.
When they reached the floor of the valley, he reined back to ride beside the buggy, but the morning's easy conversation was gone, replaced by silence filled with low-key tension and something else he couldn't name.
The odd thing was, it almost felt like anticipation.
#######
Amelia had been right. Even if they'd turned back immediately, they never would have made it to town before the storm broke. They were about a quarter mile away from the huddle of buildings that formed Sam Johnson's homestead when the first irregular spots of rain began to drip from the lowering clouds which had built up overhead. Hunching his shoulders, J.D. turned up his lapels in a vain attempt to keep the water from dripping down his neck and hoped the worst would hold off for just another few minutes. The horse was tired and the ground was rough, so the buggy wasn't making very good speed.
That hope was dashed almost immediately. The drizzle built steadily, and within a matter of moments he was being drenched by the inevitable downpour. Catching the coach horse's bridle, J.D. coaxed it into a lackluster trot, hoping to get them across the last few hundred yards to the house before Amelia was completely soaked.
With streams of water cascading off the brim of his hat and getting into his eyes, he was having a hard time seeing. The outline of the small, wood-frame house and a couple of barns was barely visible ahead of them, though, and he'd had plenty of time before the rain started to look them over. There was nothing in the way of fencing around the homestead, just the outlines of a couple of horse paddocks out beyond the barns.
Using the house for a landmark, he didn't stop to consider that the rutted, grassy land they'd been driving over for the past hour might not continue right up to it. They were only a couple of hundred feet from the rails of the porch when Amelia called, "J.D.! You'd better slow down!" around about the same time he discovered a pool of standing water in the middle of the yard by virtue of riding right into it. Both horses sank up to their knees. J.D. cussed under his breath as a wave of muddy water washed over him, but he could already see comparatively dry footing ahead so he didn't slow down.
If the coach horse had had a bit more speed or a bit more enthusiasm, the buggy would have made it through without problems. As it was, the animal dragged to a halt as soon as it felt the added resistance of the wheels sinking into mud. J.D. didn't have time to let go of the bridle. He left his saddle with a yelp of surprise, and splashed down in wet grass up to his own knees.
His mare stopped a few steps farther along. After looking back at him with an expression that questioned the superiority of human intelligence, she trotted blithely off towards the gaping doors of the nearest barn, her reins dragging along beside her through the grass.
J.D. saw her departure out of the corner of his eye. He was too busy to worry about it, between trying to retain his footing on the slippery ground and trying to soothe the coach horse, which had chosen that moment to exchange its plodding disinterest in everything around it for a high-strung dislike of having him hanging off its bridle and a mired buggy at its back.
The wind was bringing the rain down nearly sideways, lashing the trees surrounding the yard into a frenzy. A strong gust crashed a branch against the side of the barn like a whipcrack, startling the horse into an awkward rear that was hampered by its traces and J.D.'s weight. J.D. hung on and went with it, feeling his feet leave the ground again. Dodging its flailing forelegs with the skill of long practice, he talked to it patiently until it finally settled down.
"Are you all right?" Amelia called to him anxiously before he even thought to ask her the same question.
She was hunched against the rain, but still holding calmly to the reins. J.D. didn't think he'd ever seen a woman in quite such a state. The muddy water that had soaked him had washed over her as well. Her neat hair was escaping the ruined bonnet in bedraggled tendrils that clung to her cheeks and neck. She didn't seem to have noticed any of that yet, so he ventured, "Sure, I'm fine. I'm gonna try to lead him out. Can you get down on the other side?"
Amelia leaned over to survey the side of the buggy he couldn't see with considerable doubt. Then she did something he just didn't expect at all: she laughed aloud, then stayed where she was.
"Give it a go. I'll steady him with the reins."
"Come on." J.D. tugged on the bridle, trying to convince the recalcitrant beast to move. "Come on, or I swear, I'll leave you standing right where you are all night."
It was a completely unfounded threat, of course, but fortunately the rental horse didn't know him too well. It danced and grunted and tossed its head, making a big deal out of the simple effort, but eventually he got it coaxed into forward motion. The front wheels of the buggy rolled free of the mud, and the rear axle followed with a squelchy splash. Once he had it in motion, he didn't stop until the little conveyance rolled through the sagging barn doors into shelter.
As soon as the rain cut off, he straightened his shoulders and dragged in a long, relieved breath. The building smelled of long-gone horses and last year's straw, all overlaid by the heavy damp of the air. Rain beat down so hard on the wooden shingles that he could feel the rhythm of it all the way to his bones. Loud as it was, it was drowned by the intermittent roar of thunder, and the irregular slap of tree branches beating against the boards in the wind.
"Lord..." J.D. muttered, staring out through the doors at the veil of water pouring down from the sky.
"Sorry I didn't warn you about the mudhole," Amelia said suddenly, breaking through the numbness of his thoughts. From behind him, he heard her jump down from the carriage. "It's usually so dried out this time of year that a little rain doesn't start it up again. Sam was always planning to fill it in or fix it so it would drain properly or whatever. Guess he never did get around to it."
"A 'little' rain?" he echoed. "I don't think..."
He turned to look at her, then stopped in mid-sentence, gawking at the close-up view of the bedraggled creature she had become. Before it even occurred to him that she probably wouldn't want to be stared at when she was in such a state, Amelia put her fists on her hips, tilted her head to the side and observed, "From the expression on your face, Sheriff Dunne, you'd think I looked a fright or something."
J.D. didn't need to know a whole lot about women to realize there just wasn't a good answer to that. As he floundered around for inspiration, her serious mien dissolved into laughter. "To tell you the honest truth, J.D., you're in no fine shape yourself." Her steps made awkward by the muddy, drenched skirts trying to trip her, she headed for the door, patting him on the chest with the palm of her hand as she passed him. She halted a few steps short of the opening and looked outside. "Sam better have left some wood inside the shed, because we're sure not going to get a fire started with anything that's been out in this." "Shouldn't last long," he suggested hopefully. "Not when it's coming down this heavy."
"Maybe, maybe not." She turned back to him. "I'll go see what I can do with a fire while you're looking after the horses." "You're going to go out in that again?" he blurted out in disbelief.
She spread her hands wide, indicating her waterlogged person. "I can't get any wetter, can I? And if I avoid any more mudholes, I might actually be cleaner by the time I get to the porch."
"But--"
"J.D..." Her face had suddenly turned serious again, the childlike merriment draining away as abruptly as it had come. "I think I'd like a few minutes alone to get used to the idea of being here. Take care of the horses. I'll do my best to have a fire and some hot coffee waiting for you when you come in." "Sure, um... sure." He nodded sharply, discovering that the brim of his derby was still full of water when it dripped down in front of his nose.
Amelia went back to the buggy to retrieve the basket, then hiked up her skirts in her free hand and left the shelter of the barn in a flat-out, unladylike run. He watched her until the gray wetness swallowed her up, then turned his mind back to the practical chores of attending to the coach horse and his mare. The mare had found a box of grain and was contentedly munching on it, tossing her head occasionally to protest having to eat with a bit in her mouth. He gave her a good talking to about wandering off on her own while he stripped off the saddle and bridle, then found an empty gunny sack to use for rubbing her down.
Settling the horses took him a lot longer than it should have, partly because he had to hunt around to find everything he needed, and partly because he wanted to give Amelia plenty of time to herself. But he was soggy and miserable and starting to shiver, so he finally braved the still-pounding rain for the short dash to the porch of the cabin. Pushing open the door, he called, "Mrs. Johnson?" through the opening before taking himself cautiously inside.
She wasn't in immediate sight, so he closed the door and stood dripping muddy water onto the square of floor just inside it while he looked around. Sam Johnson hadn't been dead long enough for the homestead to feel abandoned, and either someone had cleaned it up after his death, or he'd had been tidier than most men were when they were living on their own. The room in front of J.D. was a combination sitting room and kitchen, sparsely furnished but clean and neat. The air smelled faintly of burning wood, and he could feel warmth coming off the big cast-iron cooking stove set close to one wall.
Peeling off his derby, he ran a hand across his matted hair, shoving the stray tendrils that were plastered to his forehead back out of his eyes. The heat felt good after the chill of the rain, though it made him even more aware that his clothes were sticky and muddy and uncomfortable as hell. But they were all he had with him, so he was just going to have to put up with them. There were two other doors leading out of the room. One was off to the side and likely led into a bedroom. The other was in a corner beyond the stove, and would lead to a wood shed or straight into the yard out back. He was considering which one to try first when Amelia emerged from the bedroom and crossed the room to the table by the stove. Popping open the picnic basket, she began to spread its contents out on the wood while she checked on their condition.
"Sam must have been buried in his Sunday suit," she told him calmly, going on with what she was doing. "His work clothes are still here. I laid out a change for you on the bed. I'm not sure how well they'll fit, but they're bound to be more comfortable than what you've got on."
J.D. continued to stared at her blankly. Her chestnut hair cascaded loosely down her back, still wet but no longer dripping, and she had exchanged her soaked clothing for a pair of men's canvas dungarees and a well-faded work shirt. A bright, knitted wool wrap--it looked more like a throw rug than a shawl--lay around her shoulders in an attempt to disguise the fact that she didn't seem to be wearing anything at all under the shirt. He could tell because, while the garment was a bit too wide across her shoulders, it was not quite as wide through the chest as it needed to be.
When he didn't move, Amelia tilted her head up to look at him quizzically. J.D. fled before she could read whatever his eyes and his body were giving away on him.
The bedroom was as small as the one he'd slept in as a kid, barely large enough to hold the bed, a clothes press and a little chest-of-drawers that served double-duty as a wash stand. A small, high-set window let in a shaft of watery light that left most of the room in shadow. Blind to the mud and water that clung to him, J.D. sank down on the edge of the bed, knotted his hands in fists and drove them down against the feather mattress to either side of him. The soft, yielding surface reminded him where he was, and he bounced back to his feet as though someone had lit his tail on fire.
A couple of times, he'd saddle-broken horses in the cruel, damfool way they did it out here just because Buck had bet him he couldn't. He'd stuck grimly to the saddle, hating every minute of it for the horse's sake as much as his own, until the poor beast got so tired it settled down beneath him. He was beginning to feel exactly the same way now--like he was being tossed around by some crazy bronco, one instant caught up in the thrill of flying weightless, the next slamming back into the saddle with near crippling pain. Considering exactly where most of that pain was located, it was all too damned good a comparison, when he thought about it like that.
You got this all wrong, Buck, honest to God, you do. This just can't be worth it.
That was a lie, of course. He could've gotten himself out of this predicament at any point he wanted to, but he hadn't because it was worth it, most of the time. He couldn't remember a single moment of boredom since he'd met her. He enjoyed her company for its own sake and for the sense of pride it gave him. It was only his body's stupid, stubborn misbehavior that was making him miserable.
There was a blank timber wall directly in front of him. He banged his forehead against it a couple of times in frustration, then whirled around and slumped back against it, glowering at a point in the air in front of him. Well, hell, for all he knew, this all got easier with practice. Lord knows, Buck didn't really keep company with half the women he courted. J.D. knew that for a fact seeing as how they had rooms next door to each other at the boarding house, and Buck snored loud enough to make his presence obvious on the nights he spent in his own bed. Yet he never seemed to get annoyed or disheartened.
It must get easier with practice, elsewise, J.D. figured two men out of three would just have damned well shot themselves before they got much older than he was now.
Of course, knowing that didn't help him a bit. He was just going to have to go on the way he'd been, trying not to make too much of an idiot of himself for the next day or so. After that, Amelia would be gone, and he'd be left with... what? Regrets for his own inexperience. A ton of regrets for something that had never been possible in the first place.
Good memories, too, of her company and her laughter.
Sighing, he pushed away from the support of the wall and went to investigate the clothes Amelia had set out for him. He blushed to find they included everything he needed, including socks and summer-weight vest and drawers, but then she had been a married woman, after all, so it wasn't like she didn't know about such things.
There was a towel, a bathing sponge and a ewer full of lukewarm water on the dresser. He checked that the door was closed tight, then stripped and diligently scrubbed away the mud that had found its way to his skin. The late Sam Johnson had been taller than he was, but he'd also been thinner. As Amelia had predicted, his clothes didn't fit J.D. too well, but they were wonderfully clean and dry. There was enough excess length to the pantslegs that he had to roll them up, and it was a bit of a fight to close the buttons on both the shirt and the dungarees, but when he checked himself over in the mirror above the dresser he didn't look too much like he was wearing some cowboy's hand-me-downs--which, of course, he was.
He considered the dirty heap of discarded clothes on the floor, shrugged and bundled them together into a soggy ball, deciding he'd figure out what to do about them later. Slinging his gunbelt over his shoulder, he headed for the bedroom door, determined to pretend like there was nothing at all extraordinary happening.
