A Heart So Wild (20 page)

T
HE night sky was black velvet scattered with glittering diamonds. Far off there was the lowing of cattle, and even more distant, the howl of a bobcat. The night was briskly cool, though not cold, and gentle breezes stirred a tree on top of the hill ahead.

The horses plodded up the rise and stopped under the tree. Dozens of flickering lights stretched out over the flat plain below. Courtney sighed.

“What town is that?”

“It's not a town. That's the Bar M Ranch.”

“But it looks so big!”

“It is,” Chandos said. “Everything Fletcher Straton does, he does in a big way.”

Courtney knew the name. She'd read it in the newspaper article that had accompanied the photograph her father was in. Fletcher Straton was the rancher whose men had apprehended the cattle rustler who was turned over to the law in Waco.

“Why are we stopping?” Courtney asked as Chandos dismounted and came around her horse. “You don't intend to make camp here when Waco is nearby, do you?”

“It's a good four miles to town.”

His hands closed on her waist to help her down. He hadn't done that since they'd left Alameda. He hadn't gotten this close to her since Alameda.

She moved her hands away from his shoulders as soon as her feet touched the ground, but his hands remained at her waist. “Couldn't we go to Waco?” she ventured.

“I'm not making camp, cateyes,” he said gently. “I'm saying good-bye.”

Stunned, Courtney froze where she stood. “You—you're not taking me into Waco?”

“I never intended to. There are people in town I don't want to see. And I couldn't just leave you in Waco on your own anyway. I need to know you're with someone I can trust. There's a lady on the Bar M who's a friend of mine. It's the best solution.”

“You're leaving me with another one of your mistresses?” she cried, incredulous.

“No, goddammit, Margaret Rowley is Straton's housekeeper. She's an English lady, a motherly kind of person.”

“A little old lady, I suppose?” she snapped.

He ignored her sharpness, saying lightly, “Whatever you do, don't call her that. She boxed my ears once when
I
did.”

There was a knot in her belly working its way up into her throat. He really meant to leave her. Walk out of her life, just like that. Somehow, she had believed she meant more to him than that.

“Don't look at me that way, cateyes.”

He turned away. She watched, dazed, as he started a fire, angrily breaking sticks and throwing them together. Soon he had the fire
going, and the firelight revealed the sharp angles of his features.

“I've got to reach San Antonio before it's too late!” he said forcefully. “I can't take time to see you settled in town.”

“You don't have to see me settled. My father is a doctor. If he's there, he won't be hard to find.”

“
If
he's there.” Sparks shot into the air. “If he's not, at least here you'll have someone to help you figure out what to do next. Margaret Rowley is a good woman, and she knows everyone in Waco. She'll know if your father is there. So you'll know tonight,” he offered soothingly.

“
I'll
know? You're not even going to wait around to find out?”

“No.”

Her eyes widened with suspicion. “You're not even going to take me down there, are you?”

“I can't. There are people on the Bar M I don't want to see. But I'll wait here until I see that you're safely inside.”

Finally, Chandos looked at her. His gut wrenched. Hurt, disbelief, confusion were all there. Her eyes were glassy because she was trying desperately to hold back tears.

“Goddammit!” he exploded. “Do you think I want to leave you here? I swore I'd never come near this place again!”

Courtney turned around to wipe away the tears that slipped past her defenses. “Why, Chandos?” she choked. “If you don't like it here, why leave me here?”

He came up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. His closeness was too much for Courtney and more tears slid down her cheek.

“It's the people I don't like, cateyes—all except the old lady.” His voice was calmer. “For some godforsaken reason I can't begin to imagine, Margaret Rowley likes working on the Bar M. If I knew anyone else around here, I wouldn't bring you here. But she's the only one I can think of to leave you with so I won't have to worry about you.”

“Worry about me?” That was too galling. “Your job is done. You'll never see me again. What have you got to worry about?”

He pulled her around to face him. “Don't do this to me, woman.”

“
You?
” she cried. “What about
me?
What about what
I
feel?”

He shook her. “What do you want from me?”

“I—I—”

No. She wouldn't say it. She wouldn't beg him. She wouldn't ask him not to leave her, no matter how much this good-bye was killing her. Nor would she tell him she loved him. If he could just leave her, just like that, then it wouldn't make any difference to him anyway.

She shoved him away. “I don't want anything from you. Stop treating me like a child. I needed you to get me here, not to see me settled. I can do that myself. God sakes, I'm not helpless. And I don't like being palmed off on strangers and—”

“Are you through?” he asked.

“No. There's the matter of what I owe you,” she said stiffly. “I'll go get it.”

She tried to pass him and he caught her arm. “I don't want your goddamn money!”

“Don't be ridiculous. That's why you agreed—”

“Money had nothing to do with it. I've told you before not to assume things about me, cateyes. You don't know me. You don't know anything about me—do you?”

He didn't frighten her with this tack anymore. “I know you're not as bad as you'd like me to think.”

“No?” His fingers tightened on her arm. “Should I tell you why I'm going to San Antonio?”

“I'd rather you didn't,” she said uneasily.

“I'm going there to kill a man,” he said coldy, bitterly. “There won't be anything lawful about it, either. I've judged him, found him guilty, and I mean to execute him. There's only one hitch. The law has him, and they mean to hang him.”

“What's wrong about that?”

“He has to die by
my
hands.”

“But if the law has him…you don't mean to pit yourself against the law?” she gasped.

He nodded. “I haven't figured out yet how to get him loose. The main thing I have to do is get there before they hang him.”

“I'm sure you have your reasons, Chandos, but—”

“Don't, goddammit!” He didn't want her understanding. He wanted her to turn against him—now—so he wouldn't try to come back later. “What does it take to make you open your eyes? I'm not what you think I am,” he told her.

“Why are you doing this, Chandos?” she cried. “Isn't it enough that you're leaving, that I'll never see you again? Do you want me to hate you, too? Is that it?”

“You do hate me,” he said darkly. “You just don't know it yet.”

A chill of premonition crawled up her spine as he unsheathed the knife from his belt. “Are you going to kill me?” she asked disbelievingly.

“I couldn't do it four years ago, cateyes. What makes you think I can do it now?”

“Then what…what do you mean? Four years ago?” Her gaze was fixed on the knife as he drew the blade across the forefinger of his right hand. “What are you doing?” she whispered.

“If I think you still want me, then the link will never be broken. It must be broken.”

“What link?” Anxiety made her voice crack.

“The link we formed four years ago.”

“I don't understand—” The blade sliced into his left forefinger now. “Chandos!”

He dropped the knife. Courtney stared as he raised his hands to his face. The two forefingers met in the center of his forehead and moved outward, toward his temples, leaving bright red smears of blood just above his eyebrows. His fingers then came together at the bridge of his nose and slashed downward across his cheeks and met at his chin, leaving more lines of blood.

For a moment Courtney saw only the bloodred lines dissecting Chandos's face into four parts. But after a moment the pale blue of his eyes began to come through, vivid against the bronze skin.

“You! It was you! Oh, my God!”

She could barely think for the old fear that welled up, and she ran, blindly. Halfway down the hill he caught her. The impact made them
both fall, and he took the brunt of it. His arms around her, protecting her, they rolled all the way to the bottom of the hill.

When they stopped, Courtney tried to get up, but he pinned her to the ground.

Fear transported her back to Elroy Brower's barn.

“Why did you show me? Why?” she cried, terrified. “Oh, God, wipe the blood off! That's not you!”

“It's me,” he said ruthlessly. “This is what I am, what I've always been.”

“No.” She shook her head wildly in denial, back and forth, back and forth. “No, no.”

“Look at me!”

“No! You took my father.
You
took my father!”

“Now, that's one thing I didn't do. Hold still, goddammit!” He caught the hands beating at him and pressed them down onto her hair, spread out on the ground. “We took only the farmer with us. The rest we left for dead.”

“The farmer.” She groaned, remembering. “I know what the Indians did to him. Mattie overheard people talking about it one time and she told me. How could you be a part of that? How could you let them mutilate him like that?”

“Let
them?
” He shook his head. “Oh, no, you can't deceive yourself that way. The farmer was mine. He died by
my
hand.”

“No!” she screamed.

He might have told her the reason, but he didn't. He let her struggle against him until she had freed herself, and then he let her run from him, disappearing in the direction of the
Bar M. He watched her go, then slowly got to his feet.

He had done what he'd meant to do. Whatever she had felt for him, he had killed. Now he would never know if the life he had to offer her would have been enough. He'd set her free. If only it would be so easy to free himself of her…

Chandos wiped the blood from his face and headed back up the hill. The horses stirred as he approached. They had probably stirred earlier, when the cowhand approached, but Chandos had been too involved with Courtney to hear the man coming. Even now his distraction was so great that he was three feet from the fire before he noticed the fellow hunkered down there. He had never thought to see that man again.

“Easy now, Kane,” the man said as Chandos's stance took on dangerous meaning. “You wouldn't shoot a man just 'cause he's late comin' in off the range, would you? I couldn't very well ignore your fire, could I?”

“You should have, Sawtooth,” Chandos said, a warning in his tone. “For once you should have.”

“But I didn't. And you're forgettin' who taught you how to use that gun.”

“No, but I've had a lot of practice since then.”

The older man grinned, flashing the even line of teeth that had gotten him his nickname. The story he told was that his teeth were once so lopsided they were more nuisance than help for eating, so he'd taken a saw to them just to see if he could come out with a better chomp.

He was a lean man, but solidly built, in his
late forties, with gray hair intruding on the brown. Sawtooth knew cattle, horses, and guns, in that order. The Bar M foreman, he was about the closest friend Fletcher Straton had.

“Shit, you ain't changed a bit, have you?” Sawtooth grunted, seeing that Chandos didn't relax his tense stance. “I couldn't believe it when I saw that pinto of yours. I don't forget horses.”

“I suggest you forget you saw him, and me,” Chandos said, bending to pick up the knife he'd dropped earlier.

“I recognized your voice, too,” Sawtooth grinned. “Couldn't help but hear it, the way you and the woman was shoutin' at each other. Mighty strange the way you put the scare into her. Care to satisfy an old man's curiosity?”

“No.”

“Didn't think so.”

“I could kill you, Sawtooth, and be miles from here before they found your body. Is that the only way I can assure myself you won't tell the old man you saw me?”

“If you're just passin' through, what's the difference if he knows?”

“I don't want him thinking he can use the woman to get to me.”

“Can he?”

“No.”

“You said that too fast, Kane. You sure it's the truth?”

“Goddamn you, Sawtooth!” Chandos snarled. “I don't
want
to kill you.”

“All right, all right.” Sawtooth stood up slowly, his hands outstretched and clearly
empty. “If you feel that strongly about it, I reckon I can forget I saw you.”

“And you stay the hell away from the woman.”

“Now, that's gonna be kind of hard, ain't it, seein' as how you've left her here?”

“With Rowley. And she won't be staying long.”

“Fletcher's gonna want to know who she is,” Sawtooth drawled, watching him carefully.

“He won't make the connection. Just you keep your mouth shut, that's all.”

“That why you scared her—so she wouldn't say nothin'?”

“You're pressing it, Sawtooth,” Chandos rasped. “But you always did stick your nose into what didn't concern you. The woman means nothing to me. And there's nothing she can tell Fletcher, because she doesn't know who I am. If you change that situation, you'll only be starting a fire without water to put it out, because I'm not coming back this way.”