The Wrangler (24 page)

"I can see you plain as day. Infantry, like a lot of men. I remember you wearing ankle shackles and mucking out after the horses."

"That's right." He stared down at the toes of his boots. He couldn't look at her. Couldn't watch Kit's love turn to hate, her respect to revulsion.

He wasn't that strong.

"You were a conscripted prisoner. You fought in exchange for your freedom if you lived. A lot of men did, but you, I remember you." Distrust narrowed his gaze. "They kept you shackled. Always shackled. Like the monster you are."

He closed his eyes at that word, the word he hated. "I made it through the war, I earned my freedom."

"What about the girl you raped and murdered?" Beauregard barked in anger, nearly drowning the sound of Kit's shocked, strangled gasp. The lawman laid his hand on the butt of his holstered revolver. "What are you doing staying with this nice family? Innocent young ladies, an impressionable boy. There's no man to protect them from you."

"I mean no harm," he said, aware of Kit staring at him, open mouthed, eyes wide as saucers. She looked shocked, but soon enough that would change.

"Don't even try that on me," Beauregard boomed. "Hubert is a kindly man. Before he left town, I promised I'd keep an eye on his family, make sure his children were safe. That's a promise I aim to keep."

"I don't suppose you'd listen to my side of things?" He already knew the answer. It was a story no one wanted to hear.

"I don't care about you. Just the two young girls living here. We can do this the easy way or the hard way," Beauregard said, steel-hard. "It's up to you. You go, or I come back here with every man in town. That won't be pretty. I don't advocate vigilante justice, but I won't stop it either."

Dakota blew out a sigh, bowed his head, and felt the light go out in him. Everything went dark.

"I'll get my things," he said, watching her first tear fall.

"You raped someone. Murdered her? You did that to a woman?" Her voice wavered. "Dakota?"

"I have to go, Kit."

"Why aren't you answering me?" She balled up her hands and shook her head. It just didn't add up. "No. I don't believe it."

"Goodbye, Kit." He said it flatly, as if he were emptied out. He cast his gaze to her, but her vision blurred too much to read what emotions lived there.

"Wait." Her brain seemed stuck in place like a wheel in a muddy rut, going round and round without moving forward. Dakota? Rape and murder? No, that wasn't like him. "That can't be right. You wouldn't do those things."

When was he going to deny Beauregard's accusation? Why wasn't he explaining that it was a mix-up, or he'd never been in the army, that the sheriff had remembered the wrong man? But he didn't. He said nothing.

"Why aren't you answering me?" Her legs went weak and she leaned against the fence. Horror squeezed like a hand around her ribs, keeping her from breathing, holding her in place.

"I'm sorry." He grimaced, his face lined with pain. "I never meant to hurt you."

Not denial. Not an explanation. No protestation of innocence. Just an apology.

Which meant it was true. A murderer and a rapist? How could he be? She swiped her eyes, hating the tears that betrayed her. "This is what you couldn’t tell me?"

He looked miserable, opened his mouth as if to say something and changed his mind. Maybe he was aware of the sheriff watching, the sheriff who knew the kind of man he really was.

The kind of man she couldn't see. Not in Dakota. What about his gentle touch and the tenderness he showed her? That was as real as the earth at her feet. She'd let down her guard with him, the one man she thought so good and true, above all others. How could she have been so wrong?

"Move along, Black," the sheriff ordered. "Don't make me draw this gun."

Something rent apart deep within her—the first blow of belief, the first crack of her heart.

Dakota turned his back to her. He was nothing but a smudge behind her tears, but the loving warmth in his voice said it all. "I'm sorry, Kit. Please forgive me. I should have told you before—"

His words caught, he fell silent, unable to finish his apology and walked away.

"I'll keep an eye on Tannen, too," Beauregard told her, his voice showing hints of kindness to her. "I wish the real Howie had made it here. I wrote him and said it wasn't safe for you on your own. All kinds of lowlifes pass through towns like this, looking to hide, looking for trouble, even to take advantage."

Not Dakota, part of her wanted to argue. It wasn't like that. She shook her head, clinging to denial with all she had. Dakota had never hurt her.

But he'd hurt someone else.

No, she shook her head, fisted her hands, pushed away from the fence. There had to be an explanation. His twin brother, a relative who looked like him, desperate, she searched her brain for any alternative explanation. Something she could cling to. Anything to let her keep believing in him.

"Did he have his way with you?" the lawman asked gently.

She bit her lip, fighting off the memories of Dakota's gentle kisses and touches, of the sweet way he'd loved her.

"I'm doin' this for your own good, little lady, you stay right here with me." The sheriff seemed to think mere words could stop her, but her feet were already moving, her heart breaking more with every frantic beat.

Where had he gone? She searched the dark for him. He'd reappeared into the shadows, his rucksack, rifle and bedroll slung on his back.

"Tell me this is a mistake." Her chin went up, feet braced, hands fisted.

"What are you trying to do, will it not to be true?" His words broke, as if with pain.

"I'm waiting for you to tell me this is a mistake. The sheriff is wrong."

"It's no mistake." The words ripped through him. This was the most desolate pain he'd ever known. Worse than waiting for a trial of his peers to find him guilty. Worse than having his parents say he was dead to them. The years in prison, the toughness of war, none of it could compare to the agony that shattered him. Fractured him to the very core. He hung his head. "The sheriff is right."

"No." Her knees gave out and she dropped to the ground, landing on her knees in the soft grass.

He couldn't even reach out to catch her. He saw the lawman step in protectively, and so he was forced to loom over her, let her rock, overwhelmed by her heartbreak.

He'd hurt her and it was killing him. After the hope and kindness she'd given him, the brief span of happiness, he owed her more than he could repay. She deserved the truth—the truth he should have been strong enough to tell her in the first place.

He had to be strong enough now. "Beauregard is right. I was working off a life sentence in a hard labor prison when I was offered a deal. I could fight for the Confederacy as a front line soldier. Odds were I wouldn't live long, but if I was alive by the war's end, I was free."

"No, it's not true." She shook her head stubbornly, as if a part of her refused to comprehend the words. "I don't believe it. I won't."

"It's true. I'm a convict."

"No, you're making this up. It's a nightmare. I'm sleeping—we're asleep together, I'm in your arms and I'm dreaming."

"No, Kit." His dear Kit. "This isn't a dream. I wish to hell it was. When I was nineteen, I was found guilty and convicted of rape and murder. The girl was my boss's daughter."

"I heard she was fourteen years old." The sheriff towered over him, gun resting on his knee, eyes razor-edged. "I heard she was tortured, mutilated and raped before she died. Now, after seeing how close you got to Kit, maybe a little vigilante justice wouldn't be a bad thing."

This was it, Dakota thought. Her denial was over, and she would hate him now, hate him with a power that would destroy all they had shared. All the love, the happiness, the whispered pleasure they'd given each other in the night was gone, destroyed, as if it had never been. There was no saving it.

It was kinder to her to walk away.

His feet didn't want to go, but he made them. His soul hammered with pain as he stumbled down the lane. His dreams faded with every step he took. He'd only been fooling himself. Dreams of breaking the mustangs together, of her as his wife, of little children running around underfoot, their laughter as merry as lark song.

Well, they were over now. He didn't know if he could live with the pain he'd caused Kit.

Maybe he couldn't.

Chapter Eighteen

A fourteen year-old. The sheriff's declaration haunted her with every breath, with every waking step through the day. Her heart had shattered watching Dakota walk down the road and out of sight, never to come back.

Good riddance, she should have thought. But nothing, not even common sense, could penetrate the tidal waves of grief and shock. She tended the horses with Fred and Red's help, she watched the mustangs mill around their enclosure scenting the wild winds. Blue knew what was wrong and nibbled at her collar and tried stealing her hat, but not even his love could give her solace.

She kept watching the road, wanting to wake up from the nightmare. But the waking day continued, proving once and for all it was no dream. Her heart hurt like an open wound when she and Red took the wagon to Gold Dust City for more lumber, when she'd returned home to catch Honey watching the road waiting for him to return, when she tried to explain to Fred that Dakota had to leave. Heaven knew, she could not bear to tell him why.

Tortured, mutilated and raped before she died
, the sheriff had said.

The girl had been Mindy's age.

Denial roared through her hard enough to weaken her knees, and she grabbed the doorframe to keep from falling. The wind gently puffed the canvas sides of the house, and she remembered helping hold the end posts while Dakota hammered. Laughing, sun shining, he'd been six feet of solid masculinity, tempting her to love him.

Now she watched the sun slanting low through the window, casting evening shadows across her ranch, and tried to make the sun go down in her heart.

"You miss him, don't you?" Mindy swiped the last of the crumbs from the plank table Dakota and Fred had built one evening from lumber scraps.

"I miss him, but this is for the best." She remembered the care he'd taken to show the boy how to plan and measure, combine the pieces of wood and construct. It had been an insignificant moment in time, nothing incredibly special, just Dakota being himself. Kind, easy going, helpful. A moment in time, thirty minutes later the table was standing.

Now the memory clung to her with importance. Dakota was all she could see. He'd been instrumental in the house construction, in laying the canvas roof, in cutting prairie grass for the mattress ticks.

"Whatever he did wrong, maybe you could forgive him." Mindy dowsed the rag in the dishpan and wrung it out. "He's devoted to you. He's worked hard here and never wanted a dime. You should see the way he looks at you. Like you're a great treasure."

"It's something that can't be fixed."
When I was nineteen, I was found guilty
, he'd said.

"I'm real sorry."

Her throat closed up, keeping her from speaking. She grabbed the dishpan and hauled it outside. She tossed the water into the field, watching it fall in a sparkling arc.

"Kit." Red waved to catch her attention. "Wanted to check and make sure it's still fine by you that I head to town?"

"You're off work for the day." She set the dishpan in front of the door. "Your time is your own."

"It doesn't feel quite right leaving you by your lonesome to hold down the fort." Red ran a hand through his tangle of hair. "It feels unsettled out there. I don't know why Outlaw left, but he ought to have stayed. He had a way about him that let ya know he could handle anything that came his way."

A knife to her heart. She bit her lip to keep from agreeing. Dakota's confession rang through her head, ringing with truth.
I'm a convict. I was found guilty.

It was the truth. He'd confirmed it, he hadn't denied it. He'd walked away like a man being found guilty of a crime, with his head down and grim acceptance.

Why couldn’t she make her heart believe it?

"I have the Winchester." She shaded her eyes with one hand. "Tannen doesn't scare me anymore. We'll be fine."

"Okay, then. Guess I'll ride out." Red donned his hat. "My brother might be up with a fella from Gold Dust City. We all have a poker match every few weeks. I can't afford to play tonight, but I'd sure like to see him."

"Then you have to go. Have a nice time."

"Will do, but I'll be back late tonight. To keep an eye on things." Red tipped his hat and left.

The soft evening light clung to the land. The prairie shone like new gold for as far as the eye could see, the pearled blue sky shot with golden clouds.

"Hey, Kit." Fred tromped up from playing in the creek. His bare feet were flecked with bits of mud and grass. "I made sure the water tubs were full."

"Looks like you had a fun time doing it." She tugged on his Stetson's brim. "I thought we could read more tonight. We need to find out what happens to Pip when he goes to London."

"We sure do. I wish Pa was here to read to us." Fred blew out a sigh, wrestling with his feelings. "Are you sure Dakota can't come back?"

"Yes." Those words pierced like a knife. "Dry off your feet before you go in the house, and we'll get started."

Fred obliged by wiping his feet in the grass. She stood a moment in the quiet of the yard. It seemed empty without a certain man. What was wrong with her that she couldn’t accept the truth?

A curious nicker penetrated her thoughts. Blue stared at her at the end of his picket line, head up, ears pricked with a question arching his horsy brows.

"I'll be out later, handsome," she promised. Tonight she would be putting him in the stable alone, feeding the saddle horses grain and shutting them up safe. It was a routine she was going to have to get used to again. There would be no Dakota to laugh with, talk with, to share tender intimacies in the night.

Blue's eyes stayed worried, but he lowered his head to graze. Honey stared down the road with longing in her eyes. Jack looked up, to watch, too.