Tombstone Courage by J. A. Jance Read Free Book Online Page B

were scraped raw and bleeding, as was the boy's nose. There was a deep gouge on his chin, a cut Harold suspected was serious enough to require stitches, one that was going to result in a permanent scar.
    It was summer. The boy and his uncle stood in the cool, gloomy barn. They faced each other in silence while a cloud of sunlit dust motes danced gaily around them. Dangling from the man's hand was a thick, supple leather strap. The boy's fists were clenched.
    His chin trembled, and tears glistened in his eyes, but his head was unbowed.
    "Burtie, your aunt Emily says you won't tell Holly you're sorry you hit her with the rock."
    "That's 'cause I'm not," Burton Kimball declared fiercely, sniffing and wiping away the trickle of blood that had dribbled over the lump of his swollen upper lip. "If she ever does it again, I'll hit her harder next time."
    Harold Patterson took a deep breath. He wanted desperately to impart this needed lesson to the boy, to make it stick. As his Christian duty, he had taken in his dead sister's orphaned and abandoned son, had taken him to raise, but Harold was determined Burton not grow up to be like his no good, worthless father.
    "Look, son," Harold explained patiently. "This is important. It's something you got to learn and understand once and for all. Men don't go around hitting women. Ever. No matter what."
    "Holly was tickling Ivy," Burtie countered. "She was tickling her, and she wouldn't stop, not even when I asked her nice."
    "Tickling's not bad," Harold said. "She didn't mean anything by it."
    "Yes, she did, too," Burton insisted. "Holly did it until it hurt, until Ivy cried, until she peed her pants."
    He blushed then, embarrassed that he knew about Ivy wetting her pants, humiliated by having to talk about it to Uncle Harold, and outraged that Holly had laughed at Ivy, pointing at her muddied garments and calling her a stupid cry-baby.
    Burton sniffed again, but he straightened his shoulders. "Give me my licking, Uncle Harold" he said, swallowing hard. "But please don't make me say I'm sorry."
    "Doc Winters sure did a good job of sewing up your chin that time," Harold said suddenly shifting with a time-warping jolt back to the present. "Scar hardly shows at all.
    Looks more like a dimple. Who's that movie actor?  The good-looking one with the dimple?"
    "Kirk Douglas," Burton answered mechanically "But don't change the subject, Uncle Harold, I want to hear you tell me exactly what you think will happen to Ivy if you go through with this fruitcake idea."
    Remember that time I had to give you a licking in the barn after you chucked Holly over the head with a rock?"
    "I remember," Burton Kimball answered grimly.
    "You were right back then, you know," Harold said, "Holly was the one who should have had her butt whupped over that one. I used the strap on you because your aunt Emily insisted, but I didn't hit you all that hard, not as hard as I could've. And here you are, all these years later, still sticking up for Ivy."
    "It seems to me," said Burton Kimball, "that I shouldn't have to. Her father should be the one looking after her instead of her cousin."
    There was another momentary lull in the conversation.
    "I reckon this means I'll have to change my will," ' Harold ventured. "I already talked to Milo Davis's girl about changing the beneficiary agreements on my life insurance."
    Maybe, in the interim, Burton Kimball, too, had been caught up in a remembered glimpse of that long ago scene in the barn; of that determined and unrepentant little boy standing his ground in a swirl of spinning dust motes.
    "You're changing the life insurance, too?  Dear God in heaven. I don't believe it. What's gotten into you?"
    "I've got two daughters," Harold said. "The way it was setup wasn't fair. One was in;one was out. I've thought about it all week. I'm going to talk to Holly about settling this thing with the understanding that she'll have half the ranch, and Ivy will have the rest. Beyond that, I'm going