“That was all, I swear it.”
“Anna?”
Her eyes narrowed at the skepticism in his voice.
He shrugged
. “I told you, what you did then doesn’t matter. It was all so long ago, you won’t be prosecuted.”
“I did what I had to to survive.”
“Honey, I did things I’m not proud of either.”
“But you did none of them to me.”
“You’ve also saved me, in more ways than I can put into words. I’ve forgiven you for what happened back in Mud Wasp. Why can’t you forgive yourself?”
She didn’t answer, but instead reached for the hoof pick and cleaned her mount’s hooves as well.
Ryan continued with his theory. “What if there was something in your canyon Cameron wanted? There’s a lot of copper mined now in these parts.”
She shrugged
. “Seems like awfully far to go for copper.”
“It might be high-grade enough to make it worthwhile
. Or maybe we’re talking about silver, even gold. I may have heard a part of something — Cameron talking with the assayer.” He shook his head. “But it might have been nothing, just a pair of greedy bastards jawing. Happens in saloons all over every day.”
She nodded mute agreement, then hobbled the horse so he could graze without getting far away
. Afterward, she went to her pack and pulled out a pair of blankets that she had borrowed for bedding. After shaking out the first, she kicked aside a few stones and laid it down.
The sun nestled between a pair of distant hills, its descent painting the sky scarlet and coral with a smudge of indigo
. She sat on the blanket and stared up at it, away from him.
He was hungry, and he knew that he should start a fire so they could cook
. But instead, he walked closer, by her side, just so he could watch her looking. Just so he could see the cool light bathe her face, the colors paint her eyes.
“It’s so beautiful,” she whispered, still staring heavenward
. “I’ve seen just a slice from inside the canyon, but out here it’s boundless, isn’t it? There’s so much, it’s almost frightening. It’s just another thing that scares me.”
She was rubbing at her bruised wrist, and he sat down beside her to take over the task
. And the two of them just sat there, watching as the day receded. Watching as the first bright stars emerged.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Copper Ridge
April 10,1884
That stupid bastard, Horace Singletary, must not want to live much longer than his papa
. Sitting behind his big, black walnut desk, Ward Cameron crumpled up the telegram, his fury escalating with the pounding of his heart.
So Singletary had wired the office of the United States Marshal requesting an investigation, had he
? Too damned bad he didn’t realize the marshal’s deputy, Norris Foster, who’d received the message, was Cameron’s associate in another mining venture down near Tucson. The mine might have played out early and cost them both a pretty penny, but a bond of greed had formed between the two entrepreneurs. No way was Foster going to begrudge Cameron his chance to earn a buck now — particularly not with Singletary helping him earn his old partner’s gratitude, perhaps even a cut.
Foster’s assistance might cost him dearly, but Cameron was still grateful for the warning, among other things
. Foster added a cryptic line about delaying things a bit. That must mean that he had “lost” Singletary’s first request.
But in the end, that wouldn’t matter
. Knowing young Horace, he would bury the marshal’s office in telegrams until he had his inquiry. And then what? Cameron couldn’t hope to buy off the district marshal, too.
That wasn’t all of it, either
. He’d heard from Elena about how Horace had shown up on his doorstep, shouting threats. And just how graciously his new bride had greeted the young man.
He wondered what the hell Lucy thought that she was doing
? If she talked privately to Singletary, he could fill her head with his suspicions. She could leave her new husband then, crying to her father about what a brute he’d been. If that happened, their marriage would last only long enough to give her bastard his name.
Senator Worthington would be furious when Lucy hinted at mistreatment at his hands
. She’d no doubt offer her father the very lie that Cameron had suggested, that they’d secretly married during his earlier visit east, to explain the early birth. And Worthington would use Cameron’s alleged crimes as an excuse to completely cut him off. Without any favors, forevermore, amen.
They’d laugh at him back East, the senator and all his old schoolmates
. And the U.S. Marshal might turn up enough evidence to have him indicted him on a host of charges. If that happened, he’d lose his fine house, even Elena. His life, in essence, would completely go to hell.
His problems had only one solution, one surprisingly appealing and easily arranged
. One so gratifying that he wondered why he hadn’t thought of it months before, when the upstart clerk had just begun to bare his teeth.
Horace Singletary must join his father
. Cameron only hoped it would be soon enough.
* * *
“I want to make
un trabajo
against a man-thief,” Elena hissed. Again and again, she wadded her lace handkerchief into a tiny sphere and prayed that the old man would cast a potent spell.
The
curandero
stared at her intently. Difficult to imagine what he thought of her request, peering at her as he did with those cloudy eyes. Blind eyes, and yet they saw things that Elena never could. Their gaze took in the spiritual, if not the physical, world.
For Elena’s comfort, he lit several candles to dispel the evening gloom
. Despite his sightlessness and swollen knuckles, he handled the matches expertly.
Waiting for his answer, she felt as if the walls and ceilings of the narrow shack were closing in on her
. From the rafters, both the scents and forms of dried bunches of herbs hung heavy: sweet basil and vervain, oregano and borage. There were others that she couldn’t name, most harmless, but at least one her mother had warned her long ago would kill goats or sheep, even cattle, if they grazed on it.
“Who is this woman you would make a spell against?” the healer asked
.
“A stranger who would take the one that I love,
Tío
.” The
curandero
liked it when younger people called him Uncle, though they were not related. Perhaps the affectionate name would keep him from asking questions she did not wish to answer regarding Miss Lucinda Worthington.
“The
Americana
, is it?”
How could she have thought she could hide anything from him
? “For a blind man, you see all too clearly.”
“Have I not told you, your judge will never wed you
? For you, the future holds another path. Embrace it, and not a man who shows you no respect.”
She leapt to her feet, suddenly realizing his source of information
. “My mother has been coming here to tell her tales!”
He smiled, his lips crinkling around mostly toothless gums
. “Patients often come for help with their disobedient children. Many a conjure have I held over you, and many a pastry has your mother baked in payment. Tell me, do you cook as well as she?”
Forgetting for a moment that he could not see her, Elena scowled at the bone-thin old man. “You will grow fat on my problems if you will help me with the Eastern bride.”
He coughed harshly. Then his head swiveled on his corded neck. “Not for a barrel of
cuernitos
will I do this. Can you not see the evil in this man you say you love?”
Evil
?
No, she
would
not see it. She could only recognize what he could give her. A way to have things no other man she knew could provide. A way to live inside the fine home she deserved.
She had earned that life
. When the judge had come to her, she had learned to be a woman, a woman who could pleasure him as no one had before. Had he not told her that? Had he not whispered other sweet things and given her fine gifts?
Tears welled in her eyes, blurring shelves filled with bottles of blessed water, candles, and ground roots
. Tears that told her that this Eastern woman must have somehow bewitched Elena’s lover into marriage, for she refused to believe all they’d had had been a lie.
If her judge truly loved this stranger, wouldn’t he have allowed her to send Elena away
? Instead, he’d come to her in secret just after the wedding, and he’d asked her to stay. He’d kissed Elena then, in the manner of a man whose heart was filled with love.
And then he’d left her, to couple with his new wife
. She swiped away angry tears with the wadded handkerchief.
“If you are not my friend, you cannot be my uncle either,” she told the old man.
She turned on her heel to leave, and the knot of hair behind her head caught in a bunch of drying herbs. Reaching up, she realized that it was the deadly plant.
She glanced nervously at the old man
. Would he somehow see her? Sometimes, he seemed to know so much. But how much of his apparent sight was based on gossip?
If she missed this chance, she might not have another
. She imagined indignity after indignity heaped on her by this bride. Orders to clean the house in
her
way, to cook her tasteless recipes, and after awhile, to tend her babies, those she would make with the judge.
No
!
She could not bear to think of it! The thought was like a blade thrust through her heart.
As Elena reached up to disentangle her chignon, she snapped off a section of the plant
. Pushing it into a pocket of her skirt, she walked out before she had a chance to lose her nerve.
Later, in the judge’s kitchen, she pulled out the brittle stem and feathery dried leaves of the
weed, which sometimes grew along the water’s edges. She’d been so frightened in the
curandero’s
shack, she’d taken quite a bit.
Enough to kill a bull, at least.
Enough, then, to put a man-thief in the ground where she belonged.
* * *
Anna vividly remembered the last time she’d ridden into Copper Ridge. Hands tied behind her, eyes downcast, she’d taken in very little of the town. Still, she recalled some sort of main street bordered by the usual cantinas, a blacksmith shop, and a general store. Besides that, she remembered only a host of blurred faces watching from the street. Some tossed off rude comments; several children had thrown rocks. One stone struck her shoulder, and that had stung, but not as much as coming here a prisoner. She would have been kept in the Mud Wasp jail instead, but Sheriff Baker had no intention of housing a female prisoner for a month until the circuit judge came through. His wife, who fed the small jail’s inhabitants, had taken one look at Anna in her violet silk dress before declaring she must go immediately.
The idea had taken little prompting
. Baker had been so eager to brag to Cameron about capturing her, to turn over the gold she’d carried. He’d reminded Anna of a shaggy terrier she’d once had as a child, in the years before her father had turned her world inside out. After learning that a stick she retrieved would bring words of praise and petting, the dog had brought her pillows, an uprooted fern from the solarium, even, once, Grandmother’s cane. Grandmother had thumped the animal’s behind on several occasions before the animal learned that objects fetched had different outcomes.
But Judge Cameron had praised Baker effusively this time, particularly when he hefted the bag of stolen gold to test its weight
. She could almost envision the lawman’s wagging tail. She wondered how he would have reacted to learn that less than a day later, she was given to Ned Hamby, taken far from here, then knifed and left to die. Or was Sheriff Baker in on it as well?
It hardly mattered now, six years later, in a place she’d be considered a fugitive if she were recognized
. That was why Anna and Quinn had waited until nightfall to ride down the town’s main street, why she’d covered her distinctive blond hair with a long scarf, which she’d wrapped around her neck like the Mexican women wore their
rebozos
.
Though she had hated giving up her practical denim pants and button shirt, she’d changed before they’d come to town
. She donned a loose white
blusa
and full dark blue skirt borrowed, like the scarf, from Catalina. A wool serape completed the disguise and offered warmth. Wearing men’s clothing in a town the size of Copper Ridge would provoke too much curiosity, and with her fine-boned, shapely figure, it was unlikely that she would be taken for a man.
Still, stealth and a safe distance gave them the best chance to safely reach the small adobe house that Ryan rented
. There was no disguising Anna’s fair skin or her steel blue eyes. And this far west, the rumor of a strange white woman would spread through the town like fever. Likely, the few married white women would descend upon his doorstep, bearing curiosity and casseroles. The end results would be disastrous, if — or when — Judge Cameron found out.
Their luck held
. As they wended their way down side streets, Quinn gestured toward the largest building in the town. Cool moonlight lit the Catholic church’s adobe exterior from without; the light of dozens of candles burning in the windows gave a contradictory impression of the warmth and the community within. The very facets of religion that Anna had so long shunned.
“Holy Thursday evening mass
. Most of the law-abiding folks will be in church now, or their beds.” Quinn’s quiet explanation drifted just above the wisps of emanating hymn.
For a moment, her heart yearned to join the gathering inside, to lend her voice to Latin hymns she suddenly remembered
. Long ago, hadn’t she read of churches offering lost souls sanctuary? But on the Arizona frontier, the only redemption available came behind bars in one of the territory’s hellish prisons, or worse yet, coiled in the end of a hemp noose.
The gallows stood, a grim reminder, not far from the church
. Between the two lay a graveyard, fenced in iron spikes. Crosses rose up in the moonlight, along with clumps of wilted flowers. Beyond that graveyard lay another, excluded from enclosure. The markers there were mostly toppled, but Anna knew the area nonetheless. The final resting place of suicides, of whores, of outlaws, of men who’d been cut down from the gallows. As in life, the respectable kept addresses separate from the sinful, depriving them of the pleasures of decent company.
Anna shivered, suspecting that weed-infested plot — or one just like it — would be her final resting-place
. With no known relations and her criminal background, she could look forward to an eternity planted beside the likes of Hamby and his ilk. The thought almost made her want to commit some crime heinous enough to deserve the fate.
As they rounded a corner, she tried to brush aside her morbid thoughts
. But she recognized the staunch rectangle of the Copper Ridge’s jail ahead. Her memories of it did little to elevate her mood.
Quinn reined his mount once more so they would not pass the building
. Glancing toward the darkened windows, he said, “Either Max is back at the saloons again, or we don’t have any paying customers tonight.”