Dorothy Garlock (22 page)

Johanna was pondering the question and didn’t hear the horseman come up behind her. She looked up and he was there. Nodding, she expected him to pass on, but he slowed his horse and kept in step with her. He was one of the men who had ridden in with Willard Risewick. He grinned down at her, his teeth showing yellow when he parted his lips.

“Hello, purty thin’.”

Shocked that he would speak to her like that, Johanna gave him a haughty look, then looked straight ahead.

“Yer a-meetin’ somebody, girlie, or jist awaitin’ fer somebody t’come along?”

Johanna didn’t answer, but walked a little faster, hoping he would ride on.

He didn’t.

“Ah, come on. I know what ya are—”

Johanna ignored him and kept walking.

“Little Mex gal tol’ me ya come from a saloon. High-class whore, air ya? Ain’t my money good as any?” His words shocked her and she glanced up at him, a look he interpreted as flirtatious. He moved his horse closer and reached out a hand. “Come on up, we’ll find us a place. I got somethin’ what’ll pleasure ya good. No rough stuff. T’will be just like ya like it.”

Johanna jumped back, frightened now, and looked wildly about, then turned quickly and started back toward the house, walking as fast as she could. The man wheeled his horse and came up beside her.

“Get away from me!” Panic made her voice shrill.

“Ain’t no need to act skitterish. You ain’t foolin’ me none. Now, I just betcha my pecker’s bigger’n that white-headed bastid’s ya was with last night.” With his horse he started crowding her.

“Get away!” she shouted. Her fear was making her breathless.

“Behind that little ol’ buildin’ will do just fine. T’won’t take long, as horny as I be.”

Panic-stricken, Johanna tried to break and run, but he used his horse as if he were dogging a steer, and laughed at her attempts to get away. He was between her and the house, edging her closer and closer to the small stone building. She ran back and forth, small, whimpering cries coming from her throat. Trapped between the building and this lust-driven beast, she was barely able to think.

Desperately, she whirled and bolted behind the horse. Then she saw someone running down the path. Frantic with relief, she leaped back from the horse’s sharp hooves, and tried again to run.

Burr’s long legs ate up the distance, and the man, enjoying his game, didn’t realize Burr was there until he grabbed the horse’s bridle and jerked it to a halt. The startled hatchet-faced scout looked down into the angry face with surprise.

“Get off that horse, you son of a bitch, I’m goin’ to kick you to death!” The savagery of his tone reached the man, who was clearly scared out of his wits. He got off his horse, slowly, on the other side, and started backing away. Burr walked after him.

“She’s only a whore, mister. I didn’t think—”

Burr’s huge fist sprang up and hit him squarely on the mouth. He was knocked flat on his back, with his arms and legs sprawled in the dust. Shaking his head, he rolled over onto his knees and got to his feet, spitting teeth and blood. He started to say something more, but Burr hit him again, lifting him off the ground, driving his broken nose back into his face. Blood spurted.

“Go to the house, Johanna!” Burr commanded, and she went, not looking back.

Her legs were so weak they could hardly carry her. Badly shaken from the experience, she went straight to her room and bathed her flushed face with a wet cloth. A whore! That’s what they thought of her here. No . . . a “Mex girl,” he’d said. Isabella. Isabella had told him she was a whore. But why would she say such a thing? But of course—Isabella was jealous, afraid she was going to take Burr away from her. The spiteful cat!

Johanna was mad. As mad and determined as she had ever been in her life. She took off her drab work dress, washed herself, then dressed again in a white blouse with a puckered drawstring at the neck. The soft gray skirt she took from her trunk fitted perfectly, and she buttoned it tightly around her slim waist. She felt better. She was dressed as though going to her classes. The clothes draped neatly about her body and, controlling her movements, also clothed her emotions. She brushed her hair and twisted it into a firm chignon, allowing only two tiny curls to escape and hover in front of her ears. Her lips were soft, her face smooth, and her heart determined. She left the room to find Mack Macklin and tell him her decision.

*  *  *

Willard Risewick spent the day helping to erect the windmill. He became so interested in the enterprise that he picked up a hammer and worked along with the men. When Burr had to leave to supervise another crew, Luis and Risewick took over. Luis translated his instructions to the Mexicans. It was enjoyable work, and Risewick got to know and admire Luis, who seemed to hold no animosity toward him for trying to buy the valley. When time allowed they talked horses and made plans for Willard to visit the hacienda.

Later in the afternoon Willard went back to his room and spent several hours writing the report he would take back to his employer. The people he had met in Macklin Valley were a complete surprise to him, a man who in his line of work met many people under other than normal circumstances. The five people about whom he wrote in his report all had forceful personalities, but each in a different way.

Mack Macklin, Risewick wrote, had allowed malevolence to erode his heart and soul and eat away any decent qualities he may have ever had. Burr Englebretson knew what he wanted and would fight to get it and keep it. A weaker man would have either killed the old man or left the valley. Luis Gazares was a man who hated deeply and when aroused would strike with the swiftness of a viper. Willard recorded what he’d heard about the vicious way Luis had fought at the Battle of Glorieta. It was hard for him to associate that man with the gentle one who was so knowledgeable and gentle with his horses and who had fallen so completely in love with a young woman who had been cruelly violated.

Johanna Doan would stand out in any society. Willard’s pen paused here and he nodded thoughtfully. A beautiful woman. Dressed in the right clothes she would be a sensation in any Eastern city. He had learned, only this morning, she had accepted Burr’s proposal of marriage. He felt a little guilty about that and shook his head sadly. One never knew the far-reaching results when one set a plan into motion. Burr would have his hands full with that one, he thought. He wasn’t getting a weak-minded, submissive woman.

Risewick’s most pleasant surprise had come in meeting Ben Calloway. The man’s stature might be small, but he was the strongest of them all. A man of means, whose family headed a shipbuilding empire, he could have left the valley anytime he wished. But he had set his mind on a course and had not deviated from that course. Risewick stopped writing and chuckled. Ben Calloway would have his revenge. By using his wits he would win against the big-muscled Macklin. Somehow, it reminded Willard of the Bible story of David and Goliath.

Risewick was deep in thought when the door was shoved open and Burr came into the room. He knew immediately that the big man was boiling mad.

“I just beat the hell out of one of your men,” he announced. “You might want to go down and take a look at him. He’s unable to sit a saddle, or I’d have forked him on a horse and run him out of here.”

Risewick got up slowly, a puzzled frown on his face. “What did he do?”

“He bothered Johanna!” Saying the words seemed to make him all the more angry. “Insulted her! I should have killed the son of a bitch!”

“Insulted . . . Miss Johanna?” Risewick’s shock was genuine. “I’m sorry, Macklin. I’m very sorry. I’d have thrashed him myself. I may still do it.” He picked up his notebook and put it in his pocket. “I’ll go down and see about this.”

“You do that,” Burr said, “and while you’re about it, you tell him that if he so much as shows his face outside that bunkhouse before you’re ready to ride out of here, I’ll gut him.”

Burr stomped out of the room and went to the kitchen. He paused in the doorway and looked into the room. There was no one there, so he went in and poured water in the granite washbasin to soak his bleeding knuckles. He emptied the bloody water in the pail that had been set at the end of the washstand to receive the waste water and refilled the basin. He washed his face and dried it on the neatly folded towel that hung nearby. He could not remember there ever being a
folded
towel near the washstand. He looked about the room: it was spotlessly clean. The table was set and a clean cloth covered the dishes and other necessaries that were placed in the center of the table. The stove was clean as was the coffeepot on the back of it. Lamp chimneys glistened and the copper kettle shone. Candles were placed conveniently on the mantel, and a small rug, dug up from heaven only knew where, was in front of the chair in which Ben usually sat.

A poignant longing struck Burr. He’d never missed these things because he hadn’t realized they even existed. The thought struck him that a man needed a woman to be there in the evenings when he came in, tired and worn out, from a day’s work. A woman who would be glad to see him, and greet him with a smile, a kiss, and a hot supper. A woman to talk to before a fire and to hold during long, endless nights when sleep wouldn’t come. A woman who turned to him and wanted his lovin’.
A man needed that,
he thought.
Most men, but not me.

“Goddamn,” he said softly. “Goddamn.”

Burr left the room, his boot heels ringing on the stone floor. He was irritated with himself for thinking such damn fool thoughts and irritated at Johanna for worming her way into his life and making him think the damn fool thoughts. He was out the door and onto the porch before he saw her sitting in one of the bulky chairs talking to Mack.

“The girl’s come around,” Mack said. “She’ll wed you.”

Burr looked from one to the other. Old Mack sat gloating. Johanna was calm and distant, her white face cold and haughty. Every hair on her beautiful head was in place, and her skirt was folded demurely over her ankles. Her calm reserve and icy appraisal sparked a dash of resentment in him. His pride was hurt, too, that she had chosen to tell the old man her decision before talking to him.

“Well, now, ain’t that just dandy. Maybe I’ve changed my mind.”

He saw the color come up in Johanna’s face and grinned with satisfaction before he turned and walked away.

“Come back here!” old Mack roared. “Come back here, you bastard!”

Burr’ steps never faltered as he disappeared around the corner of the house.

“He’ll wed you, never fear. He’ll wed you, if he knows what’s good for him.” The old man glared at the place where Burr had disappeared and muttered, “Stubborn son of a bitch, always a-buckin’, always a-buckin’.” He spat a stream of tobacco juice on the stone floor, making no attempt to use the can that sat beside his chair. “Must be my blood in him. That lily-livered thing that whelped him didn’t have no more guts than a jellyfish.”

“I’ve said I’ll marry him, and I will,” Johanna said firmly. “But I don’t want to hear any more about the past or anyone in it. Is that understood?”

Old Mack looked at her and frowned. “You know, missy, it’s a good thing for you that I ain’t fast on my feet no more or I’d’a boxed your ears more times than you got toes.”

Johanna leaned forward and looked him straight in the eye. “You’d have boxed them only once, Mr. Macklin. The next time you tried I’d have laid your skull open with anything I could get my hands on.”

The old man sat back, and a sly smile played at the corners of his mouth. “If I’d’a met a woman like you thirty years ago, missy, we’d’a stocked this valley with sons that would’a set the West afire.”

Johanna got to her feet and looked down at him with an icy stare. “I can think of nothing more revolting than having to submit to you and give birth to your child.” With that she turned and left him.

“You’ll do, missy,” he called after her. “You’ll do.”

Johanna went through the house and out onto the back porch. She stood by the support post and shivered at the thought of being touched by that lecherous old man.
Please God,
she prayed,
let me get accustomed to these people and this house.

Her troubled eyes turned back toward the doorway and she barely choked off a profanity that sprang to her lips. High above the doorway, on a peg, hung her straw hat, the faded pink rose swaying gently in the afternoon breeze. Flushing with humiliation and pent-up fury, she saw the hat as a symbol of her treatment since she had come to the valley. She had no doubt who was responsible for putting it there and decided she would leave it as a reminder and a guard against any soft feelings she might have about the man she had promised to marry.

A door opened at the far end of the porch, and she whirled, thinking the recipient of her contempt was coming to enjoy her discomfort. It was Isabella . . . coming out of Burr’s room, her arms loaded with his clothing.

“Isabella, come back here!” Burr’s voice reached Johanna where she stood at the end of the porch. “You’ve not got nothing better to do than be with me, have you . . . sweet thing?”

The words stabbed Johanna like a knife, and she marveled that she could stand there so calmly while the Mexican girl’s eyes flashed a clear message of victory. After Isabella turned back into the room, Johanna sagged momentarily, then pride came to her rescue and she went to the kitchen to start the evening meal.

T
hirteen

B
urr was the first to come to the kitchen that evening. Johanna wasn’t aware he was there until she turned and almost collided with him.

“Must you sneak about so quietly?” she said crossly.

“Sneak? Can’t a man walk into his own kitchen without being accused of sneaking?”

About to retort, Johanna caught the glint in his eyes, and clamped her mouth shut. The big, blond devil was trying to irritate her.

Burr stood near the table and rolled a cigarette, then moved to the cookstove to poke a twig into the flame until it caught fire. All the time he watched her.