"Deal me in." Marston said as he sat down on the rickety, hard chair and crossed his arms on the table. The dealer, an eldery gentleman employed by the saloon, nodded and when he dealt the next hand of five card draw he included Marston.

Marston won the first hand he was dealt and earned himself an angry look from one of the other three players at the table. When Marston won the second and third hands as well the man grew angry and threw down his cards.

"How do you keep winning?" he demanded. Marston shrugged and used his cards to scratch at his beard before tossing them down.

"I guess cuz you keep folding." he replied. The man's eyes flashed with anger as he threw back his chair and stood. Marston noticed that he wobbled a little on his legs and knew that liquor was to blame.

"I say it's cuz you're a cheat!" the man exclaimed. Marston felt his own temper rise.

"You don't call a man a cheat unless you're willing to die for it." he warned as he stood much more slowly than the other man had and unbuttoned the holster on his gun belt. The first mans eyes flew to the gun and then back at Marston's face and he swallowed hard.

"A man shouldn't cheat at poker unless he's willing to die." he replied, with a shakiness in his voice that hadn't been there before.

"Is that so?" Marston asked as a smile curved his mouth. The man didn't reply, instead he lowered his hand toward his own revolver. The men surrounding them quickly scattered to the left and right, out of the path of flying bullets.

"You say when." Marston said, the smile never leaving his face. He had been told once that it was the smile he kept on his face, even during life threatening situations that made everyone fear him so much. He had been told it was unnerving to have a man smiling at you as you threatened to end his life.

Marston could hear the dead silence of the crowd. His saw the twitching in the other mans hand as he rested it just above the handle of his revolver. He watched the mans throat bob up and down as he swallowed hard. Marston saw the muscles in the mans shoulder tense as he went for his gun and Marston didn't give him a chance to clear leather before he put a hole straight through his chest.

He holstered his gun as the man fell and his blood pooled around him, soaking into the dirty, dry wooden boards. Marston shook his head, gathered his winnings from the poker table and then downed the last of the dead mans whiskey. He gave a wave to the dealer, tipped his hat to a whore and then walked out into the night.

There wasn't any law in this town. Marston never played poker in towns that had lawmen on hand. He was walking toward his hitched horses when an angry voice called out behind him.

"He was drunk you know! You didn't have to kill him!"

"I beg to differ with you." Marston replied, without turning around.

"My brother didn't know what he was doing! You could have just walked away!" the man exclaimed. Marston rolled his eyes as he unhitched the gray and climbed up in the saddle. Still he didn't glance at the angry brother of the dead man.

"Your brother wanted to die or else he never would have called me a cheat." he replied calmly. He heard the sound of the metallic gun rubbing against the leather of its holster and knew the man was drawing on him, and hoping to shoot him in the back. He sighed and pulled his own gun before turning in his saddle and firing a single shot that caused the man to meet the same fate as his brother.

Marston rode out of town before any more family could show up. It wasn't that he liked killing people. As a matter of fact he didn't enjoy it and avoided doing it whenever possible but sometimes a man had to do what he had to do. And in those times when he was forced to take another mans life he didn't waste time feeling remorse or guilt. Those things would only serve to get him killed the next time someone attempted to pull a gun on him.

He rode several miles out of town and off the beaten path to set up camp and as he sat in front of the small campfire he'd made he thought about the man he'd found by the railroad tracks four days before. That mans words had haunted him since then and try as he may to ignore it, the guilt of his broken promise weighed heavily on him. Marston wasn't a man of his word. He wasn't honest or trustworthy and had never pretended to be, yet he had also never made a vow to a dying man before. The trust in that mans dying eyes kept working its way into Marston's memory.

He hadn't even sold the other mans horse or used any of his money yet. Maybe he should just return it to the mans wife and son the way he promised. It would be one of the only decent things that Marston had ever done. He didn't make a habit out of doing them since they gave him indigestion.

He took a long draw off of the dead mans cigarette and stared into the dancing flames, willing them to tell him what he should do. He couldn't believe he was having such thoughts and doubts. He was a man who prided himself on doing what he wanted, when he wanted and everyone else be damned.

"Lord, you know I don't like you and I'm sure as hell that you don't like me but right about now I'm kinda stuck and unable to come to a decision. Now that man thanked You for having me find him that morning and well I ain't sure about that but if You did want me to find that man and if I am supposed to take this money back to his family why don't You give me some sort of sign?" Marston felt more than a little foolish as he talked to the cloud covered sky.

He listened close for some sort of noise and his eyes stared off into the night watching for a sign. Most people believed he had savage blood in his veins since his sight and hearing had always been better than most others. He could tell when someone was going to move by the tension in their muscles. He could read posture and body language and tell when someone was lying. He supposed it was possible that someone in his family had been an Indian.... After all he had never known any of them and he was dark skinned.

He snorted and cursed himself for a fool when no sign magically appeared. He grabbed a stick and began to poke at the fire. Jabbing mercilessly as if desperately wishing that the burning sticks were his own guilt and he could let the fire do away with it. He stilled instantly when a large droplet of rain plopped onto the brim of his hat followed by more droplets sizzling in his fire.

Soon the droplets began coming down by the thousands and the drought hardened ground soaked them up like a sponge. Marston cursed and jumped to his feet. He went to his saddlebags and pulled out his duster coat, sliding into it and pulling it tight around himself. They hadn't had rain in these parts for at least six weeks.

"Is this my sign, God?" he demanded up at the sky. "A little rain shower is the best you could come up with?" A flash of lightning filled the night and the accompanying thunder rumbled so loudly that Marston felt the vibration in his chest. He chose to pretend as if the lightning and thunder hadn't followed his mocking of the Almighty and he made sure the horses were secured to the sparse tree beside him.

"Still waiting on that sign." he grumbled as he hunkered down against the rocks and rain ran in rivers off the brim of his hat. Just then the wind kicked up and a strong gust grabbed his hat off his head and sent it flying through the air. Marston chased it, his long duster coat whipping around his lean legs. He snatched his hat out of the air and clutched it to his chest.

Now Marston was not a religious man by any means but one of the women at the orphanage had always been preaching about the Lords will and signs. Even Duke, as cold-hearted as he was, had believed that there were times the Lord sent you a sign to tell you what to do. Maybe Marston should listen just this once.....

888

The rain had stopped falling by the time the sun began to rise over the horizon the next morning. The clouds were still gray and heavy with the promise of more rain however as Marston cleaned up his camp. His fire had died soon after the rain had started and every inch of him was soaked to the bone.

He sniffed as he climbed up into the grays saddle and turned his nose toward the east. Though he knew he was a fool for believing a rain storm was a sign of the will of God, he was going to listen. He could be in Harper, Louisiana in three days time and just as soon as he dropped the money and horse off with the old lady, his guilt would be gone and he'd be able to get back to hunting down Jeremiah.

He wasn't going to give them all the damn money though. They didn't need six hundred dollars. He had taken half the money out of the leather bag and stuck it inside his saddlebag. The old lady and the boy never needed to know there'd been more than three hundred dollars in the old leather sack.

888

Marston rode into Harper three days later just as he had figured he would. Harper was a single muddy street with four buildings lining it. The livery/blacksmith shop, a diner/hotel, doctors office and a mercantile. Marston had no idea where to find this Rose or her son so he hitched his horses to the porch of the mercantile and walked over to the steps, his boots sinking into the mud. He had mud up to his ankles as he stepped into the dimly lit mercantile and two older women looked up from the catalogue they'd been looking at behind the counter.

"Can we help you, sir?" one of them asked. She was short and stick thin. She had a mouth that seemed to naturally pucker as if she'd been sucking a lemon and her glasses were at least half an inch thick, making her blue eyes seem to be roughly the size of a cows.

"I'm hoping you can." he replied with his normal friendly smile. He knew it would be barely visible beneath his beard but the beard covered the identifiable circular scar on the side of his jaw.

"My name is Hester." lemon lips said before motioning to the woman beside her. "And this is my sister Hattie." Marston nodded. Hattie was short and so plump he wondered if maybe they had a bigger door in the back that she came in and out of. He held out his dirty hand to the ladies who seemed to wonder whether or not it was worth shaking before both smiling warmly and taking it in turn.

"Fine store you have here." he lied as he looked around at the dusty interior. Clearly the H&H Mercantile didn't see a whole lot of business. Things looked as if they'd been sitting in here since the wrinkly women had been born.

"Well aren't you just a proper gentleman?" Hattie asked as she adjusted her skirt on her ample belly. Marston bit his tongue to avoid saying anything insulting and winked.

"It's hard to be anything but a gentleman in the presence of such beautiful ladies." he replied. The sister looked at each other and then began giggling like a couple of schoolgirls as they fiddled with their gray hair.

"Oh come now!" Hester scolded. "What is it we can do for you, young man?"

"I am actually looking for someone. A lady and her son." both women sobered instantly.

"Why?" Hester asked, her large eyes narrowing suspiciously behind her spectacles.

"Hester!" Hattie exclaimed as her sisters harsh tone. Hester simply shrugged.

"We have to look out for each other out here, Hattie. I want to know what this mud covered, bearded stranger, with more weapons than the union army put together, wants with a woman and a boy." Hattie began chewing on her fingernails, her chins wobbling as she did so. Hester however had a death stare fixed on Marston and it nearly made him laugh. This woman wasn't any bigger than a damn field mouse but clearly she had spunk.

"I don't mean them no harm, ma'am." he promised. "I have some things that belong to them is all and I'd like to return them."

"Where did you get these things?" Hester asked as she raised her thick gray brow and Hattie looked back and forth between them like a nervous child.

"I'm not gonna tell you that, least not tell I've told the woman." he replied with a simple shrug and then he smiled and bent over the counter, leaning his forearms against the wooden top and bringing himself eye level with the two vertically challenged ladies. "Now can one of you ladies tell me where to find Rose or do I have to go door to door to all the surrounding homesteads?" The sisters shared a look and Hattie nodded. Hester sighed.

"Take the south rode out of town, veer right at the fork, you'll go about a half mile through a thick forest and then you'll top over a hill and you'll see the home. Rose and Langston junior should be there this morning." Marston smiled and stood back straight. Hester fixed him with a glare and pointed one crooked finger up at his face. "You better not mean those folks any harm or I'll come gunning for you myself."

"She could!" Hattie warned him with a wobbly nod. "She's good with a gun."

"I don't doubt that, ma'ams." Marston replied with an amused grin. "And I don't mean nobody in this town any harm. Thank you kindly for your help." He could hear the two women fall into hushed conversation as he walked out of the mercantile.

Several people were gathered in the hotel doorway watching him and he gave them a smile and a wave sending them running back inside. Apparently he'd gotten uglier in the last few years because people didn't used to run from him quite that badly.

He jumped up into the grays saddle and started on the south road out of town. Time to find the old woman, give her the damn money (or half of it anyway) and the horse and then get back to looking for his brother. As he always did when he was riding slowly, he began whistling his favorite tune in the bright morning sunlight.