Behind him, a scream distracted his attention
. Horace turned to see a dark gray blur approaching. The mule bucked and plunged in an obvious attempt to rid itself of the petite woman astride it. Her petticoats flashed white with each kick, but somehow she managed to cling to the beast’s back.
Before he stopped to consider consequences, Horace urged his mare toward the animal
. As soon as he was close enough, he leaned forward to grasp the mule’s headstall and then catch up the dangling reins. Though the leather strained against his bandaged fingers, he held tight.
Once the beast had settled, he stared in surprise at its rider
. Though her long, dark brown tresses had unwound into a disheveled mass and the shoulder of her bodice drooped beneath a split seam, he recognized her immediately. Lucy — Cameron’s wife, and she was clearly in a state, her face unnaturally pallid, her deep brown eyes wide and full of tears.
Had the judge somehow harmed her
? Did this mule, which surely was not one of Cameron’s fine beasts, mean she had tried to run away? Remembering her kindness, he almost hoped so, God forgive him. Such a woman was far too fine to be bound to any man as cruel as Cameron.
“Are you hurt?” he asked quickly.
“I — I — no.” She was shaking hard. Even her words trembled. “But — but she tried to kill me. She killed Miss Rathbone — murdered her, I’m sure.”
“
She?
Who, Lucy? What are you talking about?”
Haltingly, with many tears, she recounted what had happened: her suspicions regarding the judge’s beautiful, young housekeeper, the animosity that grew between them, Elena’s new recipes, and the events surrounding the death of Agnes Rathbone, the woman who’d accompanied her from Connecticut
.
Horace believed every word
. Rumors of the judge’s improper relationship with the beautiful Mexican woman had long been fodder for town gossip. And clearly, Lucy was far too distraught to be lying.
He glanced back up the trail, mindful that ahead of him, Max Wilson plotted to kill another woman
. But he could not leave Lucy here in such need, either.
Then take her
, something whispered.
Take the judge’s bride.
Why not
? Hadn’t Cameron taken Papa — and so much more as well.
He looked at Lucy, who was nervously trying to re-pin her fallen hair, and once more he felt the attraction he’d experienced when he’d first met her, almost painful in its intensity
. But wanting her did not make stealing her all right.
He cleared his throat and forced himself to ask the question his conscience demanded
. “Do you want me — do you want me to take you to your husband?”
“No
! Mr. Singletary, I hope never to spend another day — or especially a
night
in the presence of Judge Ward Cameron. Please, can you help me?”
Relief flooded over him
. But he must tell her the truth. “Call me Horace, please. Men came to kill me last night, men I believe were sent by your husband. A woman is a target, too. She’s leaving town right now. I was following her in hopes of warning her when I heard you scream. The sheriff is with her, and I know him to be a good man. You can come with me, or we can try to find someone else to help you.”
“Someone else might not believe me, or maybe they won’t care what happens to a stranger
. Please, just take me far from here. I want to go with you.” Her dark eyes brimmed with more tears. “I need you . . . Horace.”
* * *
Fine weather made folks careless, Ned had observed on more than one occasion, and today was the finest he had seen in many months. As the haze of gun smoke lifted, brilliant sunshine warmed an azure sky, and fresh spring leaves nodded in a gentle breeze. From the spreading pool near his feet, the sharp, almost metallic scent of blood burned in his nostrils, making him feel strong and alive.
Fortunately, the same could not be said of the two men he’d just shot down.
Judging from their equipment, the pair of them were miners. They’d come knocking at the door, seeking the healing woman who had lived here, probably to tend the balding man’s bandaged knee. Their surprise at finding Ned and Hop instead had been so great that Ned had little trouble plugging both before Hop’s revolver cleared leather.
He couldn’t help feeling smug that he had been so quick, despite his injuries
. He felt even better when he stepped out of the doorway and saw the dead men’s mounts. A pair of tough-looking saddle horses had been turned out in the corral, along with a sway-backed pinto packhorse.
“That’s what you get for enjoyin’ a fine day too much to be careful,” he told the two dead men
.
“You gonna give these fellas Indian haircuts?” Hop asked.
Ned considered, and toed the larger corpse. It rolled easily, and the man’s black curls bobbed with the movement. “Maybe just this one. Ain’t got a scalp like this one.”
“You ain’t got any now,” Hop reminded him
. “Not since that woman stole your horse.”
Ned grimaced at the reminder
. His collection had been tucked inside a saddlebag. “I’ll get ‘em back — both my Ginger and my collection, with a couple other scalps besides. I mean to get that blond bitch’s, and Black Eagle’s gonna regret ever teachin’ me his heathen trick. And after we fix them, I’m goin’ home.”
“You mean to leave today?” Hop asked
. “Cause if we’re gonna stay awhile, we’d best drag off these bodies and that old man’s before they get to stinkin’.”
Ned walked back to near the doorway, where both miners lay, their limbs splayed haphazardly
. A string of jet-black beads dropped from the pocket of the man he’d planned to scalp. Stooping carefully on account of his stitches, Ned hooked a finger beneath the beads and pulled them toward him. A rosary carved from onyx felt very warm in his hand, almost too hot to hold. Far too hot to be explained by the dead man’s dissipating heat.
Ned dropped the rosary and backed up, once more troubled by the sense of
wrongness
in this place, the feeling that he should leave here right away.
Hop stepped forward and began searching the bodies for more valuables
. When he saw that Ned wasn’t joining in and had not retrieved the beads, he scooped them up and stuffed them into his own trouser pocket. Only the black cross remained visible, jutting upside-down out of the opening.
“Let’s say we give all these fellas a nice, warm send-off,” Hamby suggested, nodding toward the cabin
. “If she had visitors both today and yesterday, there’ll probably be more. We’ve been lucky so far. But it don’t seem likely all of ‘em will be this easy — ‘specially if folks start noticing disappearances.”
Hop, grinned, glancing at the little cabin
. “Always liked a bonfire. We used to have ‘em back home to celebrate. Let’s clean out what we want and drag in these fellas. Then I’ll light her up.”
“You do that, Hop,” Ned told him
. Truth was, the sooner they were shed of this place, the better he would like it.
* * *
They might not be really married, but they sure as hell behaved like sweethearts, Max Wilson observed. He watched Quinn trot his mare closer to the bay that Annie Faith rode, watched him lean closer so the two could speak in quiet voices. At the sight, Max’s stomach churned with jealousy.
She called herself Miranda, called herself a widow
. Both claims might be possible. Perhaps she’d shucked the saloon life to marry some rancher with good prospects. Single white women being in such short supply, some men in the territory even married whores.
Not that this woman was much better
. Any female who sang in such places was hardly virtuous, and this one had proven it with the crimes of robbery and escape. The robbery of Quinn Ryan. Max shook his head, wondering how the man could be fool enough to fall under her spell twice.
Annie Faith leaned closer to Quinn and laughed, a musical sound that reminded Max once more of her glorious voice
. He found himself remembering how beautiful she had looked singing in her brilliant, silk attire, and he grew hard with resurrected want.
Maybe it wasn’t so surprising that Quinn had succumbed once more to her charms
. Even knowing all he did, Max wouldn’t hesitate a moment if fate awarded him a chance to enjoy her.
He thought once more of the judge’s words.
Who knows? She may even offer you her favors in order to secure your silence.
The thought made him groan with desire
. All he had to do was figure a way to lose Quinn for a while. Then he’d treat this Annie Faith to one fine honeymoon before she met her Maker.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Ward Cameron’s first reaction to seeing Manuel galloping the sorrel toward him was to swear at the condition of the horse. The gelding’s sides heaved heavily, and foamy sweat lathered its flank.
“Christ Almighty, you’re ruining an eight hundred-dollar carriage horse!” But even as Cameron shouted, he noticed the horror in the young man’s black eyes, along with the fact that he hadn’t taken time to put a saddle on his mount’s back.
Roy Hadley, the big, raw-boned rancher who’d been riding with him, held up one hand. “Wait, Ward. Hear him out.”
Manuel pulled the sorrel to a stop
. “You must come back home now, señor! There has been a killing!”
Max Wilson had acted faster than he’d imagined possible, so Cameron’s expression of surprise was not completely contrived.
“In Copper Ridge?” he asked, hoping to elicit further details.
“In your own
casa
, Señor Cameron.”
In his own house
? That made no sense. Why would Max take Anna to The Pines to kill her? Had the fool no brains at all?
“Who was murdered?” Hadley asked.
“The woman who come here with your new señora — the one who never smile!”
This time, when Cameron’s jaw dropped, his shock was genuine
. Miss Rathbone? “But who — why? I thought you’d put her on the stage by now.”
“
El curandero
say she eat the poison — the poison that
mi prima
, my own cousin, take from him.”
“
Elena?
Horse shit! Elena would do no such thing!” Ward argued.
Heedless of his outburst, Manuel pressed on
. “Your wife — we can no find her.”
Elena
!
Oh, dear God! Cameron knew how much the surly Bostonian Rathbone bitch annoyed her — just as she irritated everyone — but he couldn’t imagine Elena doing anything to harm her on the day of her departure. But Lucy was another matter.
Then he remembered Elena’s angry words as clearly as if she’d just shouted them
.
If you do not send Señorita Holy White Daughter of the Senator and her complaining dueña from this house this instant, I swear to you I kill them both ─ and maybe you as well!
His mistress’s temper was no less fiery than her passion; he’d imagined her outrage would pass
. He’d certainly never believed that she had ever truly expected him to marry
her
instead. Why, it would be unthinkable!
A wave of nause
a made his bowels feel weak and watery. Damn it to hell! How would he ever explain this to the Senator? A dew of sweat popped out on his forehead, and he could almost hear his grand political career shattering beneath the weight of Manuel’s news.
“I’m sure we’ll find your wife.” Hadley placed a reassuring hand on Cameron’s elbow, then turned his horse around
.
Cameron followed, glad to have with him the big rancher, a man who owed him favors beyond counting
. Today, the judge realized, might turn out to be a good one for calling in some of his markers, for God alone knew what kind of mess awaited him at home.
* * *
Though the air had warmed considerably, Lucy’s trembling only increased as Horace told his tale. Her mule, now tractable enough, walked quietly alongside his horse across a rugged landscape, beneath the bluest sky that she had ever seen.
“Dear God
. I’m so sorry for what he did to your family and all the others. I never imagined I’d married such a monster,” Lucy said. Her stomach roiled with the thought that, legally, at least, she belonged to the foul man.
Horace shook his head
. “He must have mistreated you as well, or you would have asked to go to him for help.”
Lucy laid a palm across the gentle swell of her midsection
. “He was horrible — but — but it’s not as though I didn’t deserve it.”
“I don’t believe it
. What could anyone like you ever have done to merit his abuse?” Horace asked.
In that moment, Lucy saw something so precious in his blue-eyed gaze, something she hadn’t realized how badly she missed
. Trust. She felt absolutely certain that no matter what she told him, he’d believe her. Months ago, she had thrown away that luxury for the pleasure of a moment — and sown herself a harvest of shame and misery. It occurred to her that she might tell him anything and he’d believe her.
Instead of tempting her, that knowledge freed her and made her want to share the truth
. All of it. All the things she’d held inside her for so long rose like gorge in her throat.
She cast her eyes downward, too embarrassed to look him in the eye as she spoke
. “I’m going to have a baby, Horace. I came here because the judge was my only chance to salvage something from my ruin.”
“Oh, Lucy . . .” He sounded comforting rather than judgmental.
She continued, for the relief of telling outweighed the pain. “I made such terrible mistakes. I flirted outlandishly with our assistant coachman, a young man known for his affairs. He said things to me, things so wicked and exciting — even more so because I knew how improper such a relationship would be. I was a virgin, but I was no victim. At the time, I truly wanted him.”
Her face burned with shame, and she imagined how red her fair skin must appear
. But it hardly mattered. All that was important was the telling — all of it.
“It only happened once, and we were caught,” Lucy explained
. “The young man fled before my father could have him punished. I’m certain that he never gave my plight another thought.”
She looked up, overwhelmed by the irony of a different memory
. “Once, when my older brother still lived at home, he was caught out in the woodshed with our new cook. Father told him it was very bad, but I noticed how he clapped him on the back and grinned, almost as if the whole affair made him very proud.”
“I take it he treated your indiscretion differently,” Horace said
. Neither shock nor horror tainted his words.
Lucy laughed
. “Oh, dear, yes. One would think I’d set the world aflame — or at the very least, Connecticut. You see, I’d had the incredibly poor taste to be female — and be caught in such a manner that my actions became widely known. I was so mortified, I wished that I could die — and I was very much afraid my father would oblige me. Yet he’s a United States Senator, and I’m sure he felt that murdering his daughter would put a damper on his standing in Washington’s social circle.”
“So was it his idea to marry you to Cameron?”
“Oh, yes. ‘A perfect solution,’ he told me. ‘Why, the man practically worships at my feet. He’d give anything to ally himself with Worthingtons,’” Lucy explained, “Besides, the judge was visiting from the Arizona Territory, too remote a place for him to have heard the rumors of my disgrace. Father arranged it all so deftly.”
“Did he know you were in a — er — delicate condition?”
“Of course not. At first, I didn’t know myself. And once I did, I only prayed to marry quickly enough that Ward Cameron wouldn’t guess.”
“But Cameron does know, doesn’t he?”
She nodded and squeezed her eyes shut at the horror of the memory of their wedding night, just days before. “I told him just after we were married. He — he was beastly. Oh, God, the way he used me . . .”
Her voice — and her composure dissolved into deep sobs
. She lifted her hands to hide her face.
Horace pulled his horse to a stop and dismounted, then helped her down from the mule when it paused to chew a patch of grass
. Then he held her, his hands stroking her hair and back as one might comfort a small child.
When she recovered, she felt a sudden rush of shame at her tears — so weak and unseemly, as her father might have told her
. “I shouldn’t do this,” she muttered. “He had every right. I’d tricked him into marriage — and I am his wife.”
Horace pulled her closer
. “We’ll have to see what we can do about that.”
“There’s nothing — nothing I can do
. I have no money, no place to go. I should have stayed my course.”
“And gone back to Elena
? You were right before. It’s very possible that no one would believe your accusations, and then she would kill you.”
Lucy stared up into his face
. “Perhaps that’s what I deserve. I was proud and wanton, and I was dishonorable to marry under false pretenses.”
“You made mistakes, but you married Cameron and came to a new land to protect your child
. In that act, there is great honor.”
He might believe that, but Lucy knew she’d been thinking only of how to save her own miserable existence
. Motherly emotions hadn’t figured into it at all, only a base desire to survive.
Horace reached under her chin with gentle fingers and turned her face upwards, toward his
. “And I will help you, Lucy. I swear it on my father’s grave.”
* * *
“Shoulda done this at night,” Hop said, staring at the dancing flames and the dark, smoky column rising above the canyon walls. “Fire this pretty’s wasted on a day this bright.”
“Better toss in that old Mexican, too,” Ned answered
. Unlike Hop, who always took a special delight in fire, he didn’t give a damn about watching the flames’ dance, but whenever possible, he liked to get rid of bodies. Despite Cameron’s influence, someone would likely come after him if he left behind too many corpses.
They walked to the side of the cabin opposite the corral and feed shed to find the old man’s body
.
“Wasn’t it right here?” Hop asked, gesturing toward a patch of flattened dried leaves.
Ned looked around. “Somethin’ musta drug it off.”
“A bear?” Hop’s head swung rapidly from side to side, lifting his lank, red-brown hair in oily clumps
. Hop had a special dread of bears. He’d told the story several times about how a grizzly in the Sierras tore apart his pap.
“Could be.” Ned shrugged
. The more likely culprit would be coyotes or perhaps a cougar, but it never hurt to remind Hop that despite the killings, rapes, and burnings, he wasn’t far off bein’ a snot-nosed kid.
Hop peered intently at the ground, his gun drawn and at the ready
. Backing away from where the body had lain, he said, “But I don’t see no tracks.”
Wood cracked, and Hop screamed suddenly
. Before Ned could figure what was happening, Hop fell backward on the fallen needles and half-rotted leaves that blanketed the ground.
Ned saw the jagged piece of wood sticking up, sharp as a blade, out of the soil
. Several drops of blood, beaded near its tip, ran down the side.
Hop howled with pain, grasping his deeply punctured lower leg
. The onyx rosary had snaked its way out of his pocket. Beside the jet black cross lay another, this one larger and of wood.
“A grave marker,” Hamby said, and a chill gripped him, despite the bright heat of the fire crackling nearby
. Hop had stepped on and broke off a wood grave marker. And it had bitten back.
“Forget the old man,” Ned suggested
. “Let’s get your leg bound up to stop the bleeding. Then we’re getting out of here.”
For once, Hop didn’t argue
. Instead, he struggled to his feet and hobbled toward where the horses waited.
Neither of them bothered to pick up the string of onyx beads, far blacker than a night sky, far warmer than their hearts.
* * *
Ward Cameron arrived home to a scene right out of Bedlam
. Coming in from the bright sunshine, it took his eyes several moments to adjust to the dining room’s dim light. But even in those seconds, he could hear Elena wailing hoarsely, alternating between fits of begging, cursing, and denials. As his vision cleared, he saw her, bound hand and foot to a straight-backed chair and screaming at an old man at her right. Beside her, the thin old Mexican sat impassively, completely heedless of both her pleas and the still figure lying on the floor.
Cameron remembered seeing the old blind Mexican a few times on the streets of Copper Ridge
. Ward thought he was some sort of medicine man, the kind that ignorant have-nots substituted for real doctors. From the sounds of Elena and the old man’s complete stillness, he might well have added deafness to his deficits.
Walking past the pair, Cameron approached the woman lying on his Persian rug, her shoes sticking out from beneath the
blanket that had been draped over her body.
“Is that – is that your wife?” Hadley asked, standing behind him
. He held a blue bandanna to his mouth to block the dreadful stench.
For one horrifying moment, Cameron wondered if it could be
. His world careened as he once more imagined himself trying to delicately word the telegram he would have to send the Senator, her father. But he quickly realized the shape beneath the blanket must be Miss Rathbone’s, for both the figure and the feet were far too large to be those of his delicate bride.