“Shit,” he muttered
. That lovesick dog must have taken advantage of him in his sleep.
Actually, the only possible truth didn’t sit much better
. Annie’s hands had touched more than his wounded shoulder; no part of him remained a mystery to her smoky gaze.
What in God’s name had she done with his clothing
? Feeling more vulnerable than ever, he hoped she’d merely washed the mud and blood away and they were hanging somewhere close to dry.
Carefully, he eased himself over to the left, but not quite carefully enough
. The movement sent expanding shafts of bright pain into his shoulder and clouded his vision.
He lay still for a time, willing himself to outwait the discomfort
. After a few second, his gaze focused on a pair of battered pans hanging on pegs, then took in the remainder of the room. A thick, woolen serape had been tossed carelessly over a crude table. Nearby, a pair of flimsy-looking stools stood close at hand, and a wooden chest took up the space along one wall. Atop it sat a clay bowl, a small painting that might be the Holy Virgin, and a half-dozen candles, all unlit.
A ladder pointed toward a narrow loft, more a shelf than a true room
. He wondered if Annie slept there, if she might be asleep there now. At least one mystery was solved, though. His shirt and jeans dangled from the overhang, reminding him uncomfortably of a hanging man.
Hating to do it, he called her name again
. His mouth felt bone dry, and this mongrel’s slobber was a poor substitute for a cup of water.
Above the loft, bunches of brittle-looking twigs and roots hung from the ceiling, making strange shadows in the amber firelight
. But aside from his drying clothing, none of the shadows looked remotely human.
Had she abandoned him?
He hated the fear that permeated the thought, his overwhelming need for her. Physical needs, for water, sustenance, and someone to tend his wounds. His body did not care that she’d once robbed him and, worse yet, delayed him in Mud Wasp and then Copper Ridge until it was too late. His body only needed what there was no one else to give.
His sense soon overtook his terror
. Of course she hadn’t left. The fire still burned brightly. The dog was by his side. She might just be outside, tending to the needs of nature or bringing in some wood.
Might be
. Must be.
Must be.
* * *
Canyon Sangre de Cristo may have been named for Christ’s blood, but Ned Hamby thought it looked more like the devil’s lair. A mile wide at one end, it snaked for what seemed an eternity, ever-thinner, along the narrow creek that carved it. In some spots, openings honeycombed the rock, doorways to the dwellings from some long-forgotten Indian past.
Hamby had always hated those caves that seemed to stare like empty sockets, even though he and his boys had holed up in them more than once
. The hard, cold rooms, though sheltered from the elements, set him to mind of tombs and all the crawly things that gnawed a body when it lay inside one.
Astride his stolen horse, Ned gazed down into the canyon
. If there really was some white woman down there, she might have a cabin tucked up in the trees or partly hidden by a rock outcropping. Possibly, she was crazy enough to live inside one of the caves.
He’d be damned if he wanted to spend the next six months looking for her
. He had something easier in mind. This far from civilization, the folks that lived around this canyon were likely to rely on one another now and then. Hamby thought back to his family’s Texas ranch, how even distant neighbors might help sink new post holes for a fence-line or maybe castrate calves.
Among those who weren’t Indian, that might be true here, too
. And he’d remembered one small family of Mexicans they’d mostly ignored so far, except for stealing stock from time to time. Hamby was glad they’d let them be, for he felt sure that they could be convinced to tell him what they knew. And if they resisted, hell, he and the boys were always in need of entertainment.
Hoof beats marked the approach of a horse even before it neighed a greeting to the animals it knew
. Black Eagle, who liked to brag that he was a better scout than any full-blood, was returning.
“Find them Mezcans?” Pete asked eagerly
. He wasn’t much for work, but the idea of a raid always got his blood up.
“They ain’t moved
. Guess they thought we’d ride on past that sorry little hut a theirs forever,” Black Eagle responded, with a shake of his lank hair.
Hop turned from his task of picking a stone from one of Ark’s huge feet
. The gelding’s hooves were magnets for horse cripplers. “They see you?”
Black Eagle’s face froze
. “You think I’m so clumsy I’d let ‘em know that I was there?”
The boy grinned
. “Way you
tell
it, you move like the wind. Way I
hear
it, sounds more like a tornado.”
The half-breed pulled an evil-looking Bowie knife from his right boot
. The same knife he’d used to teach the bunch of them the art of scalping.
Ned gritted his teeth
. He didn’t know which was worse, Black Eagle’s mean streak or Hop’s attempts to prove himself a tougher outlaw then the others. Fortunately, Ark chose that moment to bite Hop on the hand.
Pete, who’d always liked Hop, laughed extra hard to defuse the situation
. Black Eagle glared for a long moment, then finally put away his knife. For now.
One of these days, that half-breed was going to cut up Hop
. Ned peered at Hop’s red-brown
thatch, trying to imagine how it would look in his collection.
Even though Black Eagle was the half-breed, it was Ned who’d started the collecting
. He liked to take those scalps out and rub his fingers through them. Made his skin prickle with accomplishment at the thought of those he’d killed.
Ned thought again of killing, so he urged his mount in the direction of the Cortéz place
. One way or another, they were going to learn the whereabouts of a lone white woman in this hell.
It didn’t take much time to find out what they wanted
. An hour later, they were riding toward the canyon’s mouth. Ned didn’t like the low, gray ceiling of the sky, the quick transition from a few white flakes to what looked like serious snowfall.
He reined in Ginger and imagined the others admiring the smart way the mare pulled up, nearly sitting on her haunches
. Their sorry mounts’ gaits dribbled to a halt.
“If Cortéz told the truth, it could take us half a day to ride to where she lives,” Ned said
. He brushed snow off his coat and wished he’d grabbed the pair of leather gloves that Pete had taken from the sheriff’s saddlebags.
“He wasn’t lyin’,” Black Eagle insisted
. “Not with his brat’s hair in my left hand and my toothpick in the right.”
Ned wouldn’t have been surprised if Black Eagle had killed the child anyway, just to hear its mama scream. Hamby nearly grinned to think of it.
“I don’t see as why we had to leave them Mezcans livin’,” Pete complained.
Ned shook his head
. “We’ll pick them off later. Prob’ly catch them on their way someplace else. Somethin’ tells me after today, they’ll be wantin’ to move on.”
“Aw, Pete just wanted a go at that boy’s mama,” Hop said
. “Man don’t got no discipline at all. Me, I’m savin’ myself for one genuine white woman. Hope she ain’t plug-ugly.”
Pete spat, and stared after the glob, which sank through the thin layer of new snow
. “What kind of woman holes up way back in some canyon by her lonesome? Curin’ folks, for Christ’s sake. Probably wrinkled up and senile to boot. Let’s go get this done, boys. I wanta see what this crazy woman’s got for us that we couldn’t a took off them Mezcans with a lot less ridin’.”
Ned adjusted his hat and glared at Pete
. His hunger for blood and a woman faltered against the bitter realities of cold and snow. He shivered, longing for the few comforts of the miner’s shack they’d taken over, the warm fire they’d left behind. He must be losing his edge, because he didn’t want to ride down the canyon in a blizzard. Didn’t want to do it in the least. But if he wanted to live long enough to get home, he couldn’t give these boys the slightest inkling that he was going soft.
If the boys were hell-bent on killing the woman today, he’d best make them think that it had been his idea all along.
CHAPTER THREE
Miss Lucy Worthington drew a clean, white pair of gloves out of her dust-grimed reticule
. It was essential that her appearance and demeanor remind her future husband of her station, despite the fact that she was clearly meeting him in hell.
She gazed once more out the window of the bone-jarring stagecoach and thought she’d never seen such a wretched, empty place in all her life
. She’d been thrilled to finally disembark from the Santa Fe train, whose motion had sickened her from Washington to northern Arizona. At least she was thrilled until she recovered sufficiently to look around.
Where she was from, the collection of raw-looking huts wouldn’t have qualified as an eyesore, much less dared to call itself a town
. Thankfully, one of the vile mud huts (called “
adobe
” by the locals) proved to be the station where she would begin the last leg of her journey. The round, suspiciously swarthy-looking woman who ran the place offered her some sort of bean gruel which stank of rancid grease and unfamiliar spices. Lucy declined as quickly as was politely possible.
She’d begun to think of the whole trip as a desperate struggle with starvation
. Only the respite of the Harvey House meal stops had saved her from perishing with hunger, for she’d been unable to eat a bite during the ride.
The stagecoach was far worse
. She’d been incapable of keeping down her meager bites of food, and she was forced to share the cramped space with the most uncouth of travelers, a pair of the shadiest looking creatures that ever dared call themselves “businessmen”.
They were persistently, inappropriately friendly
. Were it not for the dour expression of Miss Rathbone, her companion, she would have feared for her honor. Fortunately, the old woman had a face that was the envy of all bulldogs. When Lucy’s silence failed to convince them she had no desire to speak with them, Lucy could almost hear the starched Bostonian woman’s protective growl. Finally, the two men took the hint and apologized, muttering excuses about the appalling lack of decent females in these parts.
Although the air outside was freezing, Lucy insisted on opening the window against the sour odors of the unwashed bodies in the coach
. At first, the others had protested, until she added to the stench with her own vomit. Now, when she stared out the window, she wondered if there could be anything but hardship waiting in this harsh land. Mile after mile of wilderness rolled past them: distant, snow-capped mountains, rugged, red-rock earth. Even the trees looked bent and stunted by the cold wind. She cursed her father once more for sending her out here against her wishes.
He’d explained the situation again and again
. “Ward Cameron wants the Worthington name and all it can bring him. He’s a man of ambition, but not a man of breeding. He’ll accept whatever he must to further his career. And realistically, my dear, he’s your only choice. If you’d wanted better, you should have . . .”
Lucy pressed her delicate, gloved hands against her ears, as if they could blot out the memory of her father’s cruel words
. Words that reminded her of the shameful thing that she had done. Words that whispered that despite her grand name and her white gloves, Ward Cameron might still abandon her to whatever demons lurked in this harsh land.
* * *
As Anna walked from the feed shed to the cabin, thick snowflakes began to spiral down toward earth. She glanced up, past the bare creek willows toward the cliffs. The trembling whiteness leached the canyon walls of redness, robbed the junipers of green.
Something in the shimmer of the gray air, the ache of the old injury at her right knee, hinted that this snowfall would be heavy, a true blizzard, though spring was close at hand
. But here the seasons were often unpredictable, and she was glad of the good store of firewood Javier Cortéz had cut for her in payment for setting his son’s broken arm last fall. It would be one less thing to worry about as she worked to cure the unconscious gambler.
She paused a moment inside the cabin’s doorway to allow her eyes to adjust to the dim light
. One luxury she truly missed from her earlier life was glass. One clear window would make such a difference in the lighting of this cabin, but even if she had the money, bringing such a thing unbroken to this canyon would be nearly impossible.
Even so, the fire’s amber light leant comfort as well as warmth
. The only sounds she heard were the low rumbles of Notion’s snores and the burning logs, which shifted amid a shower of quickly fading sparks. She’d have to light the wall lamp, or she’d soon be lulled to sleep herself. Something about a snowfall, even when she couldn’t see it through the tiny, shuttered windows, always made her feel content to be inside the cabin, decently fed and comfortably warm.
Cupping the egg inside her hand, she slipped off her coat and reached up to hang it on a peg
. Then she placed her broad-brimmed leather hat beside it.
“How ‘bout some water here?”
Quinn’s voice, so unexpected, startled her so badly that Anna dropped the egg onto the hard dirt floor. The yellow dog, instantly alerted by the thin crack of the shell, bounded over in two steps and began lapping the rare treat with his broad, pink tongue.
“
Madre de Dios
!” Anna cursed, then told Quinn, “I was going to cure you with that egg.”
“Must have worked
. I’m feeling better, or at least I might be once I get some water and my clothes back.” His voice sounded weak and parched.
Anna brought him a tin cup of the tea she’d brewed this morning, in case the gambler roused
.
As she helped him tilt his head to drink, she noticed he’d removed the poultice
. She glanced around the pallet, wondering what he could have done with it.
Quinn gulped the still-warm liquid, then made a face like a tiny child force-fed turnip greens.
“Gads, woman. Is this juice from that stinking poultice?”
“It’s only spikenard tea
. It tastes just fine, Ryan.” She marveled that the man complained more about what she did to help him than the bullet that had slammed into his shoulder. “What did you do with the poultice? It should still be on your back.”
“It smelled even worse when I tossed it on the fire
. And you’ve been living in the sticks too long if you think this tastes decent.”
“I don’t brew it for the taste.”
“Then for what? Torture?”
“The curing woman who lived here claimed the Indians use it for a lot of things
. It makes babies come easier.”
“So that’s what’s wrong with me
. I shoulda listened to my mama and kept my legs crossed.”
She bit her lip to keep from smiling
. “In your case, I had more in mind its respiratory uses. Your breathing’s worried me. That and the fact that you’ve slept for two straight days.”
“I’ve slep
t
two days?”
His voice stretched taut, and his smile twisted into a grimace.
“Are you in pain? What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Two days. . .” He closed his eyes and shook his head
. “The last time, back in Mud Wasp, I was out two days.”
Dios mio
, Anna wished he hadn’t brought up the incident that lay between them like a coiled copperhead. She poured herself a cup of spikenard. Sweetened with a little honey, its mild flavor suited her. She sat down on one of the stools and sipped, as if for strength.
Since Quinn had been dropped off into her life, she’d thought of little else besides the need to talk to him about what happened
. Still, the words that she’d rehearsed turned cold and sticky in her throat, as if the honey in her tea had congealed.
She hesitated, her thoughts returning to the little book of Shakespeare she had taken from him
. Then to the greed and desperation she had felt to learn where on earth the swindler had secreted his money.
Once more she’d picked up his jacket, though her earlier search through its pockets had yielded nothing in the way of cash
. This time, however, she noticed its surprising weight. Ah, yes. She’d known he’d keep it somewhere nearby. Smiling at her victory, she set to work ripping apart the well-made garment.
“You’re quite the tailor, Ryan,” she told the snoring man.
The gold coins had been sewn into it, cleverly distributed inside the hem and seams. While the gambler snored, she robbed him of his hoard. There was enough here to take her far from little Mud Wasp, enough perhaps, to finally reach her goal.
“San Francisco,” she had whispered once again
. As they always had, the two words soothed her, promising riches for an attractive young woman who knew how to entertain a man. And she didn’t mean to do that entertaining at third-rate hell holes any longer, either. No, sir. God had given her a fine voice, as if for consolation, and she was going to use it to start a brand new life. A new life, with a new name, Miranda Flynn.
Miranda Flynn had style, élan. Miranda Flynn was a star’s name, like Jenny Lind or Lillie Langtry. Miranda Flynn had never been some two-bit singer who allowed a bullying bartender to rough her up, demanding favors she was not prepared to give
. Favors she wouldn’t be able to protect from him much longer.
She closed her eyes, but nothing dammed the flow of tears
. Miranda Flynn had never been gullible, like Anna, nor a thief, like Annie Faith.
“I’m sorry,” she told the sleeping gambler
. She picked up the carpetbag that contained the few items she would take and headed for the door. Pausing, she gazed down at the young man’s tousled, sandy brown hair and barely resisted the temptation to stroke it, as she had so many times these past two weeks. Despite his vile profession, he hadn’t seemed such a bad sort. Though he’d bought her pretty gifts, he hadn’t considered that a license to ill-use her. If he hadn’t been a gambler, she might have chosen someone else to rob. Or at least she would have thought of it if she felt she had more time.
Putting down her bag for a moment, she covered him with the worn gray blanket
. There was no need to let Miss Frieda find him lying here trussed up as a Christmas goose and bare-assed to boot. No need to do more than steal his money and his horse.
Anna’s face burned with shame at the memory of how she’d allowed fear and ambition to cloud her sense of right and wrong
. And the agonizing lessons it had taken to clear her vision of those flaws.
She sipped the cooling liquid and forced herself to speak past the painful lump that prevented her from swallowing
. “There’s nothing I can say that won’t sound like an excuse for what I did in that hotel room. And there is no excuse. I had my reasons, but they were all wrong. I can see that now. Back then, I was a petty thief, and I robbed you for a petty dream. I’m sorrier than I could ever tell you.”
He said nothing, only opened his green eyes and stared with an expression so full of raw hatred, it nearly took her breath away
.
After a brief pause, she steeled herself to say the rest, though the words threatened to dislodge a private store of tears inside her
. “If it makes you feel any better, I was punished for my crime
s
”
“Punished?” His voice sounded shockingly strong now, considering his condition
. “You want to hear about punishment, Annie Faith? Let me tell you about what happened when I woke up two days later. How the kind and caring citizens of Mud Wasp threw me in the hoosegow because I couldn’t pay for the hotel or the livery on the horse that you ran off with. Let me tell you about how your two days turned into two
weeks
while I waited for the circuit judge to come to town. And how those two weeks turned into two
years
before I saved the money that I needed. And how by that time, it was too late. Too late because of you.”
Tears burned in Anna’s eyes, but she couldn’t bear to let him see them
. Instead, she shoved a thick log into the fireplace.
“I told you, I’m not Annie anymore
. I’m Anna,” she insisted. He said nothing, and she knew that in his mind, she’d always be a thief.
She had not expected his forgiveness, but she’d still thought herself at peace with what she’d been
. But the moment she had seen the anger etched in his expression, her own self-loathing rushed back at her, inevitable as winter on the bright heels of the fall.
Barely had the flames begun to lick around the loose bark when she grabbed her hat and stalked back outside into the nearly blinding snow
. She found the storm no colder than the darkness in her heart.
* * *
“Have some more soup, Papa.” Horace Singletary thrust out the spoon. Exhausted from a ten-hour day spent processing claims, the clerk tried to will his hand to steadiness so he would not spill every drop. Despite his effort, fatigue made the curved bowl quiver, and he felt the patience draining from his soul.
Outside the cramped wood structure, a wintry dusk had long since robbed the sky of color, and Horace had been up before the dawn
. He was cold in the ramshackle bunkhouse, cold and tired to his bones. Tired as his father now looked, despite the fact that Horace was only twenty-four years old.