Authors: Barbara Ankrum
All traces of humor disappeared from his eyes. "Bounty hunter?" he supplied tightly. "That's true. I'm also a friend of Seth's."
Mariah swallowed hard and stiffened her spine. "There must be some mistake."
His jaw grew tight. "I'm afraid not. Seth was taken ill suddenly and couldn't come himself. That's why he sent me to fetch you."
"Seth—ill?" she echoed in a small voice.
Dear Lord... not Seth... not now...
Creed shifted uncomfortably. "He came down with camp fever the day before he was supposed to come here. Quite a few of the miners in Virginia City are down with it."
Numbness crept into her voice. "Camp fever. Is it... serious?"
He glanced at the ground, unable to meet her eyes.
"Serious enough to keep him from coming here for you. He would have tried, too, if I hadn't threatened to tie him to the bed."
It was worse than he was telling her. She knew that from his evasive glance. She blinked at the tears that burned the backs of her eyes.
Seth. Oh, Seth.
"I... I don't even know you," she managed at last. "How do I even know you're telling me the truth?"
Devereaux pulled what looked suspiciously like her last letter to Seth from his pocket along with a small heart-shaped pin she'd given him four years ago when he'd left for the West.
"He gave me these so you wouldn't doubt my word."
Mariah took both in her trembling hands, unable to deny they were hers. Her gaze returned to the bounty hunter. What could Seth have been thinking, sending a vicious killer like Creed Devereaux to protect her? It must have been the fever. He
couldn't
have been in his right mind.
"I... I suppose you're who you say you are." She blinked rapidly, determined not to cry. "He... Seth could have just sent word to me. You needn't have gone to all the trouble of riding up here to fetch me, Mr. Devereaux. After all, there
is
a stage that runs between here and Virginia City, isn't there? I would be perfectly safe—"
"No," Devereaux interrupted. "No, you wouldn't."
"He's right," put in Jamie O'Hurlehy who had walked up beside his wife. "Not a soul's safe on the road 'tween here and Virginia City, Miss. It's bein' used as a kind of toll road for a gang of highwaymen callin' themselves 'The Innocents.' Even though they hanged the gang's leaders this past winter, a fair number of 'em are robbin' stages every week for the gold shipments, or the miners traveling with their dust."
"Well, why doesn't the law do something about it?" Mariah demanded.
"You're not in Chicago now," Creed reminded her. "I'm afraid there's not much law out in these parts yet."
"Except for men like you."
A muscle twitched in his cheek. "That's right."
"I suppose the Montana Territory hasn't caught up with the American concept of 'innocent until proven guilty' either, has it?" she pressed on recklessly. "Do you always shoot men down in cold blood, Mr. Devereaux, or only the ones you have personally convicted and sentenced?"
"I've never killed a man who didn't need killing, Miss Parsons. Nor have I ever felt the need to answer to anyone but myself."
"Not even to God, Mr. Devereaux?"
Something in his eyes—perhaps the flicker of pain that seemed to vanish as soon as it appeared—made her wish she'd kept quiet. He was, after all, Seth's friend. Or so he claimed. But for the life of her, she'd never understand how her gentle Seth could have fallen in with a man as ruthless as Devereaux.
His eyes narrowed with his scowl and it took him a moment to answer. "That's between Him and me, isn't it? Look, Miss Parsons, you're not obliged to like me, but I promised Seth I'd bring you to him, safe and sound. I intend to do just that. I suggest, however, if we're to be traveling together, you keep your opinions of me to yourself and I'll do my best to do the same. Do we understand each other?"
Never, she thought, hitching up her chin defiantly. "Perfectly."
"Good. Now, if you want to change out of those things before we take off, I suggest you hurry," he continued, cracking open an incongruous-looking gold pocket watch he'd withdrawn from a pocket in his fringed buckskin pants. "The only stage for Virginia City leaves in about forty-five minutes."
Creed placed his hand over hers on the handle of her bag intending to relieve her of it, but a peculiar shock traveled up his arm at the contact. For a moment, he felt as if the wind had been knocked out of him. He sucked in a breath and with an effort, blinked the sensation away. He wondered if she'd felt it, too, as he took her bag from her.
Mariah, seemingly unfazed by his strange reaction, cast a forlorn glance at her filthy attire. "W-we're leaving now? So soon?"
Creed forced a casual shrug, belying the tension in his jaw. "Or, you can wait until tomorrow, as you wish."
Maeve patted her arm. "Mari, dear, why don't ye wait a day or so? Get yer bearings straight. Ye've had quite a scare." She shot a cold glance at Creed, then returned her attention to Mariah. "Yer welcome to stay with us."
"Aye," agreed Jamie. "There's room at the fort, lass."
Mariah shook her head. Her throat was knotted with emotion. "I haven't seen Seth in over four years, Maeve. Now he's sick and he needs me. He... he could be dying, for all I know. The sooner I go, the sooner I'll be with him.
"I'll need my things," she told Devereaux curtly. She snatched back the tapestry grip, then turned to Maeve. "If you can find a suitable place where I can change, I'll be ready whenever Mr. Devereaux is."
The bounty hunter glanced at the steamer. "You have more luggage, I assume."
"Only a small trunk. It has yet to be off-loaded."
"I'll see to it. Meet me at the stage depot at the end of the street in thirty minutes. I'll have your ticket." He turned his back on her without waiting for a reply and stalked up the gangplank.
Mariah scowled after him, giving a mock salute to his back. "Yes,
sir."
If he heard her, he didn't turn around. Mariah paced, twisting her hands around the leather handles on her valise.
"Imagine," she fumed to Maeve, "Seth sending a man like that to protect me! Why, I think I'd be safer in that randy crowd of miners we just rode in with than with that... that barbarian."
"Faith..." Maeve shook her head sympathetically. "'Tis sure ye are that goin's the right thing, lass?"
"What else can I do? But I can tell you, Seth will have a piece of my mind for this." Her anger faltered. "When he... when he gets well, that is."
"And he will, Mari. Don't you be worryin' yerself sick over it. Yer man'll be fine. You'll see." She patted Mariah's arm. "Come along now. Jamie will find us a place close by where ye can change out of these things."
Mariah cast one last, disparaging glance at the tall man aboard the
Luella.
She wondered exactly how long it would take to travel the almost two hundred miles between here and Virginia City. Four days? Five? How would she stand being near him for that long?
One thing was certain: however long it took, she'd be counting the minutes until Creed Devereaux would be out of her life and she'd be safely back with Seth.
* * *
The hand-lettered wooden sign above the A.J. Oliver Stagecoach Depot swung in the rising breeze and nudged the still-green wood frame building with a steady, annoying thud. Creed leaned one shoulder against the storefront wall, keeping time with the toe of his boot against the wooden walkway.
Tossing his cheroot down, he ground it to ashes beneath his heel and yanked his watch out of his pocket for a third time. Thirty minutes, he'd told her. It had been nearly forty and the driver was stowing the last of the luggage into the canvas-covered boot of the mud-coach. Creed's agitated gaze swept the crowded street.
Where is she?
"Pow, pow!"
Two young boys careened by him in the muddy street, shooting imaginary guns at each other.
"You're dead, Jeremy!" cried the older of the two, a boy whose worn britches were held up by a piece of twine.
"Ain't neither!" retorted the smaller one, balling his fists on his hips. His small face clouded like a thunder-head.
"Are so! I got ya 'tween the eyes, outlaw!"
Turning to make good his escape, the younger boy raced up the steps and collided with Creed's knees with a
whoof
of breath.
"Whoa, there," Creed said with a gruff smile as he caught the boy by the shoulders before he could fall to the planked flooring. He steadied him while the tow-headed child, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, scanned Creed's extraordinary height.
"Sorry, mister," Jeremy mumbled. "I didn't mean to—"
"It's all right, boy. You didn't do much damage," Creed answered with a grin, brushing a smear of dirt from the boy's shoulder.
"Jeremy! Michael!" came a woman's shrill voice from the walkway behind Creed. Hot on the boys' heels, she gathered Jeremy up under her wings like a prairie hen, then cast a wary look up at Creed. It was a look he'd seen a hundred times before. He'd grown used to it, in fact.
"Come along boys," the woman went on. "It's time to go home."
"Oh, Ma..." the older boy complained. "We was just—"
"Not now, Michael. I swan," she muttered, looking pointedly at Creed, "decent people aren't safe on this street anymore."
Creed's body tensed as he watched the woman hurry her boys by him—the same way he'd seen mothers hurry their children by tattered beggars in the streets of St. Louis years ago with his father. Creed folded his arms tightly across his chest and tried to ignore the stares he'd drawn from the group of male stage passengers waiting nearby.
"You buyin' a ticket for yourself, too, mister?" asked the balding clerk behind the barred window. He peered above his spectacles and pointed toward Creed's gelding. "The horse won't cost ya no extra to tow."
"No," Creed snapped, imagining three days of close confinement with a woman who'd made it clear she despised him. "I'm not buying a ticket."
With a knowing shrug, the clerk glanced up at the gathering clouds. "Looks like rain. Eh-yup."
Creed's eyes flicked up toward the darkening sky, then back to the road that led to the fort. He wasn't in the mood for small talk or weather predictions. He wasn't in the mood for much of anything but a good, stiff drink.
"You're
him,
ain't you?"
Creed's glance slid to the clerk. "What?"
"You're that fellow who gunned down that half-breed up on the levee." A knowing smile brightened the clerk's face. "The whole town's talkin' about it. They say you hit that injun square between the eyes. That true?"
"Forget it," Creed recommended, turning his attention back to the street.
"Forget it?" The man chuckled. "Hell, we ain't had so much excitement since they hung Red Yager and George Brown here last January."
"I said leave it alone."
"Not that I have anything against gettin' rid of them redskins," the man prattled on. "Mangy bunch of heathens. But just between you an' me, what'd that feller do to get you so riled?"
Creed shook his head, then leaned closer to the window and gave the clerk a menacing look. He kept his voice low and conspiratorial. "You really want to know?"
Wide-eyed, the balding man nodded.
Creed's lips were almost touching the iron bars on the clerk's cage. "I killed him 'cause he was too damned nosey."
The clerk's Adam's apple bobbed in his throat and his spectacles slipped to the tip of his nose. He pushed them back in place with one shaking finger and forced his attention back to the sheaf of papers on his desk.
"Mister Devereaux?"
Creed turned to find Mariah standing beside him on the boardwalk, mud-free and dressed in a fresh, pale blue gown with a white lace collar and cuffs. A delicate white shawl circled her shoulders and fell softly over her shapely breasts, contrasting sharply with her flushed cheeks. One slender eyebrow was arched in annoyance.
She looked like a schoolmarm or a minister's daughter, he mused darkly. Just Seth's type. Behind her like the rear guard stood Maeve and Jamie O'Hurlehy—arms linked.
Creed pushed away from the wall. "It's about time."
Mariah's whiskey-eyes flashed and her lips parted as if she were about to retort. Instead she snapped her teeth together and glared at him. A sudden breeze tugged at a strand of her hair, whipping it across her face.
Creed nodded toward the stage. "They're nearly loaded."
"I changed as quickly as I could," Mariah told him, noting that he, too, had changed out of his muddy clothes. He'd traded his bloody buckskin for a clean maroon wool shirt with two ties lacing the deep slash at the neck. It made his eyes look suddenly greener, she thought warily, and his face seem less—
"Give me your bag," he demanded gruffly, erasing any gentle quality she'd been about to ascribe to him.
Mariah tightened her grip. Inside was not only the meat and cheese she'd brought to nibble on, but her needlework. Tatting was a skill she'd acquired during long days and nights spent sitting beside her dying grandmother. A sharp pang of nostalgia passed through her. Now, the needlework merely occupied her empty hands and kept her mind distracted from thoughts of Seth. What would she do if she lost him, too, she wondered miserably.