Cheyenne's Lady, page 17
Luke gave a startled jerk. “What about Caroline?”
His voice was harsh, and Maria glanced up at him in surprise. “You kept calling her name while you were feverish. Is she the reason you don’t go back to Kansas?”
“You’re too damned smart to be human, bruja. Why don’t you tell me?”
He hadn’t called her witch in a while, Maria realized. “Does the price on your head have anything to do with her?”
Luke snorted and pulled her closer with his good arm. He liked to feel the softness of her breasts pressed against his side. “Your sorcery fails you on that one. How did you know about the price on my head?”
“Sorcery,” Maria replied promptly, “and the sheriff. He warned me about you.”
“And you ignored him. Do you always ignore what you don’t like to hear?”
“When I can. Half the men out here have pasts that don’t bear scrutiny. I’d never have help at all if I insisted on lily-white reputations. In your case, the only question would be how many rewards are being offered for you. A man as quick with his guns as you are could not escape trouble indefinitely.”
“Wise little witch, aren’t you?” Luke stared up at the pattern of stars above them, perplexed by the mixture of innocence and cynicism he held in his arms. How could she lie trustingly beside him knowing the kind of man he was? She had given him what was only hers to give, yet refused him the chance to make it right. He had thought it just a matter of money, but he was beginning to understand Maria was more complex than that.
“Did you love her?”
“Love?” Luke frowned, trying to remember the frantic passion of those years ago. “I thought so, but I was pretty green back then, not much older than you. I don’t know if I loved her, but I sure as hell wanted her. That was enough then.”
“And now?” Maria whispered.
Luke rewarded her with a sardonic leer. “And now I know any woman can satisfy a man if he is hungry enough.”
Maria punched him in the ribs and tried to scramble away before he could retaliate, but Luke slid his arm around her waist and held her still. “Don’t, Maria. I didn’t mean that. I’m not used to saying what I mean. Tell me something. If I were as wealthy as Manuel, would you marry me?”
“Of course, in secret. Then I’d murder you in your sleep, take your gold, and hie myself to California where the living is easy.” Maria relaxed at this line of questioning. She never knew when he was serious, but she was beginning to learn he hid a very odd sense of humor behind that stern expression. She felt him chuckle, and she grinned. One of these days she would teach him to laugh.
“Is that what you intend to do to Manuel?”
“Oh, no!” she replied in mock horror. “He will not inherit his wealth until his father dies. What do you take me for, a fool?”
“A murderous wench perhaps, but never a fool. So why did you choose Manuel?”
Maria sighed as she realized he was once more serious. How would she explain? “For his family, for his place in society, I guess. Do you know what it is like to never feel at home anywhere? My mother’s people do not claim me. The people of the town don’t know what to make of me. I have no friends, no relatives, no one but Pieta and Carmelita to talk to, and they just don’t understand. When we still had money and my wardrobe full of fancy gowns meant nothing to me. The only way I could fit in anywhere was to be one of the boys. So now everyone thinks that’s what I am, but I’m not. I’ve grown up since then, and I want people to see me as I am, but they can’t. They just see Connolly’s tomboy kid, and now that there is no more money, they don’t even think it’s funny anymore. Does any of that make sense to you?”
Luke pulled her hair over her shoulder, smoothing it while he listened. “A little, querida. But it still sounds as if this position in society he offers you means you are marrying him for his money.”
Maria gave him a look of exasperation and reached to take his empty cup. “Manuel’s family could be poor, but they would still be looked upon with respect because the Vasqueros have always been the patrons. You may speak a little Spanish, but you do not understand the Spanish mind.”
He wasn’t sure he understood, but he had never been in the same position as she. He had grown up knowing who he was and where he stood. He had possessed all the security anyone could ask, and he had thrown it all away. Perhaps his decision to return home had some of the elements of what Maria sought in Manuel, except there was no safety in facing a gallows pole.
Luke watched as she cleaned up and stowed away the rest of their cooking gear. He found it hard to believe that a woman would settle for pride when there was money to be had, but that was what she would have him believe. He could see no good reason for her to lie, and he toyed with the idea as she disappeared into the bushes.
If Manuel had no wealth of his own and his father controlled the reins of power, then pride was all she could hope to gain. She already owned a comfortable home, and if she lost that, she always had distant relatives to turn to, but pride prevented that. Damned if he could see anything else but pride in her choice of the arrogant Spanish whelp. Unless it was lust, but Luke already knew better than that.
When Maria returned, she made a pillow of her saddle and lay down on the small piece of blanket beside him. “I’ve been thinking,” she said. “It might be better if we don’t return together. Manuel will be furious with me for going off with you, but if he thinks I have turned you away, he will be much more reasonable. I will understand if you no longer wish to search for my father’s killer.”
Luke nodded his understanding. “You’ve helped us, now Sean and I will help you. I wasn’t making any progress from your end. Maybe it would work better if I stayed in town.”
He had agreed with her. For the first time she had known him, he had actually agreed with her. She wanted to weep, but they would not be tears of joy.
Turning her back on him, Maria sought the solitude of sleep. She could not allow this wave of disappointment engulfing her to affect the future. Luke had gotten what he wanted of her. She had no right to expect more. But two tears trickled down her cheeks as she felt him settle down for the night without reaching for her again.
Chapter 20
Sean returned to camp at daybreak. He blended in with the landscape, materializing as a shadow along the stream bank. Luke propped a Colt across his knee while Maria slept on.
Sean glanced to Maria, and he sent his comrade an expectant look. “I take it you are alive and that the two of you have kissed and made up. Is it too early to offer my congratulations?”
Luke lowered the revolver as Maria stirred at his side. “We are taking her home to her fiancé. Got any food in those bags?”
Shaking his head in disbelief, Sean slid from his horse and began unpacking his saddlebags.
Maria awakened and instantly touched her fingers to Luke’s brow. Luke glowered at Sean to prevent him from saying a word, but he couldn’t help relaxing as he gazed down upon Maria’s sleep-flushed features and tousled hair.
“You have to be mad to give that away,” Sean growled.
Finally realizing Sean had arrived, Maria leapt to her feet, abandoning Luke to his grouchiness. “Thank goodness! I thought you’d left us to starve. I didn’t relish the idea of learning how to dress a deer.”
“You could have tried for smaller game, my foolish colleen.” Sean grinned as she sorted through the assortment of food. “Even our wounded hero over there could have managed a rabbit.”
Holding his arm as he staggered to his feet, Luke shot his friend a sardonic look, but didn’t reply as he strode off into the bushes. Sean sent him a beaming grin.
“You don’t want a man who gets up like a black bear in the morning, anyway,” Sean announced. “What you need is a man like me—always cheerful, always helpful.”
“And always in someone else’s bed.” Maria completed the list for him as she pounced upon the bacon hidden in the folds of a gunny sack. “Light the fire and let me start this cooking, presuming it is safe to light a fire?” She sent him an anxious look.
Sean grimaced. “You are a hard woman, Maria Connolly.” He bent to strike a match to the kindling. “In appreciation of our efforts, rumor is circulating that we nearly perished in the fire while chasing the culprits who blew up the dam. Dallas had some kind of stroke and is in no condition to refute the claim. His henchmen, what there are left of them, would like to have our heads, but they’re not the kind to stir without orders. Meanwhile, we have become minor local heroes and if we only brag as long and loud as Wild Bill, we can become celebrities, too.”
“Do you know him?” Maria stirred the cornmeal mush.
“Know who?” Luke strode back into the clearing, his face paler than usual but his jaw set with determination.
“Wild Bill Hickok. I’ve read about him in Harper’s. Is he really as good as they say?” Maria asked.
Luke hunkered down beside the fire and shook the pan of bacon. “There’s better. He just makes a bigger show of it.”
“But he’s good, you’ve got to admit that.” Sean tore off a piece of bread. Between chews he finished, “Bill’s showy, but I think I’d place my bets on Wes Hardin, if anybody knew where the hell he is.” He sent Maria an apologetic look. “Beg your pardon, Maria.”
Not accustomed to anyone apologizing for their language, Maria continued her questioning. “John Wesley Hardin? You know him, too? But he’s an outlaw!”
Luke appropriated the pot of mush from her hands and set it over the fire. “We’re all outlaws, chiquita. When the law doesn’t work, someone has to act outside of it to get things done. I’m not excusing the bad tempers and the drinking that get so many men in trouble; Hickok and Cody and the rest of them are just as guilty of that as Wes and some of the others. They talked faster and managed to stay just this side of the law often enough to get away with it. When you’re wearing the badge, people don’t mind the killing.”
Maria grew silent, turning this information over in her mind. She’d read all the wild tales of the gunfighters. She knew they were nowhere near as glamorous as the papers made them seem, but she had always thought the ones wearing a badge were heroes. Luke’s words cast doubts on that notion.
“Are you saying Hardin isn’t a criminal or that Hickok is?”
“I’m saying they both killed men they didn’t have to. We’ve all killed men we didn’t have to, just because we wear guns.”
“But if you didn’t wear guns, you could have been killed,” Maria pointed out.
“There’s that chance, yes. Once you develop a reputation, the danger is worse. Hardin could have retired his guns and the sheriff still would have come after him just to prove he’s tougher. I’m betting he’s finally got smart and changed his name so his reputation can’t follow him, but if he’s still wearing guns, the past will eventually catch up. It’s no kind of life for a family man.”
Sean shot him a glance, but as usual Luke’s expression gave nothing away. “If a man doesn’t wear guns to protect himself and his family,” Sean argued, “some of these bigger bastards like that ring in Santa Fe will take everything he owns. There’s going to be a war out here one of these days, and the law won’t be the deciding factor.”
Maria listened intently. She had often heard her father and the other ranchers discuss the powerful men in Santa Fe and the wealthy landowners in other counties who controlled the government and the economy, but she had never understood how they affected her. She waited in vain, however.
Luke shrugged away the threat of war. “In Lincoln County maybe, that’s where the money and water are. Not in San Pedro. The land around there is poor. Most of the ranches are so small a chicken couldn’t scratch a living from them. Only a few of the older families have anything worth keeping. Maria’s father bought wisely. There’s enough good land and water there to get through the lean years. But it’s the others that are being bought out. Who would be fool enough to buy up all the worthless land in a worthless county?”
Sean frowned at the problem Luke posed. “Who’s buying the land?”
Luke shrugged and began dishing the mush onto his tin plate. “They’re using different names. I haven’t been able to trace the owners.”
“Well, it looks to me like they would want the big ranches, too, whatever they’re doing. It just takes a little longer to put the big ones under. You’re saying that’s why Maria’s father was killed?” Sean asked.
Maria silently continued cooking and listening.
“I don’t know that. He could have known too much. It could have been some wandering thief, Maria’s not had any offers to buy her out.” Luke didn’t look at her, but she went stiff beside him.
“It doesn’t make sense to go after the small fish and leave the big ones alone,” Sean said, “unless the big ones are the ones buying out the small fry, and why would they want worthless land? Not simply out of sympathy for a man down on his luck, I’m certain.”
“That’s what we’ve got you for, compadre. “ Luke sipped his coffee and eyed his garrulous friend with approval. “You can find a place on one of the bigger spreads and see if they’re in the same kind of trouble as Connolly’s. If so, then it could be someone outside of the territory.”
Maria couldn’t stand it any longer. Throwing down her dish, she confronted Luke. “You’re talking about Manuel and his father, aren’t you? They have the biggest ranch in the valley and now they want mine and you think that makes them murderers! You’re wrong, Luke Walker! For once in your life you will have to admit you are wrong.”
“I’ve been wrong before, Maria,” Luke replied quietly. “I sincerely hope I’m wrong again. But if you think I’m sending you back to him without finding out one way or another, then you’re the one who is mistaken.”
His amber eyes bored into hers, and Maria felt her heart lodge in her throat. Luke had taken her and made her a part of him, and now he was letting her know he would not let her go easily. She had been a fool in many ways, but this was the worst. She felt him as if he were a physical part of her, felt his possession all over again, and she could not look away.
Sean coughed to remind them of his presence. “I will be the one to decide if everything is on the level, Maria. I have no ax to grind with your Manuel. If you have chosen him, I’m sure he is an honest man.”
Honest wasn’t the word she would have used to describe Manuel, but in the sense Sean meant, it would do. Maria nodded her head. “They are not easy people to know. I have known them all my life, but only recently have they let me close to them. That is their way. It has been for centuries. Do not expect to discover anything at all, Sean.”
“And what will you be doing, boyo?” Sean cast an amused glance to Luke’s controlled features.
“Searching out the new owners of those ranches, I guess. There’s got to be a reason somebody wants land a thousand miles from nowhere.”
“If the railroads hadn’t gone bankrupt, San Pedro would have had the first line to Santa Fe.” Maria defended her village. “The last I heard, they’re stalled up around La Junta in Colorado Territory, but that was awhile back. The Santa Fe trail goes right through San Pedro and that’s what they were following. That’s why we have a stagecoach. So we’re not in the middle of nowhere.”
“They’ll kill themselves trying to build through Raton Pass. You’ll be in the middle of nowhere for a while yet, and be thankful for it. You could wind up like Abilene, meanest cow town this side of the Mississippi.” Sean stood with his empty plate to wash it in the river. “They finally had to move the pens elsewhere to keep the cattle drivers from destroying the place. It’s not worth it.”
He strode off, leaving Luke looking pensive and Maria trying to ignore him. Ignoring Luke was nigh on to impossible, but she avoided speaking while cleaning up the pots. She might as well not have been there at all for all he noticed, she decided, miffed at his lack of attention. Somehow she would have to learn to cultivate that same attitude.
They rode out a short while later, Luke insisting his arm was well enough to manage. Knowing the extent of the injury and the amount of blood he had lost, Maria doubted such superhuman abilities, but she did not argue in front of Sean. Men like Luke might occasionally surrender an argument to a woman when they were alone, but seldom in front of another man. She had learned that right along with her ABC’s.
By mid-afternoon Maria decided she couldn’t bear to watch the suppressed pain in Luke’s face any longer. She feared the wound would open again if he used that arm, and the road was difficult to negotiate with just one hand. She let her horse drop farther and farther behind until the men were forced to wait for her to catch up.
Sean greeted her impatiently, but Luke’s gaze was speculative as she wiped at her brow with a bandanna and smiled wearily. “Is there some hurry? Couldn’t we take this trip a little more easily?” she asked, avoiding Luke’s eyes.
“If you’re in no hurry, I’m not.” Sean shrugged and turned to his partner. “Shall we let the lady rest for the night?”
“The lady doesn’t need any more rest than you do, but I’m ready to call it a day. There’s some shelter down at the bottom of that hill.” Appropriating the reins to Maria’s mount, Luke let Sean move ahead while he ignored her look of surprise.
Once Sean was out of sight, Luke reached over and caught Maria’s silken braid, turning her head up to meet his gaze. She regarded him without fear, and a hint of a smile played about his lips. “You don’t have to coddle me, Miss Connolly. I know my limits better than you.”
“Do you?” The challenge lit her emerald eyes. “Somehow I doubt that very much, Mr. Walker.”
Luke’s gaze lingered on full, pouting lips before traveling to the generous curve revealed by the open collar of her shirt. He wanted her more than any other woman he had ever known, even more now that he knew what she offered, but he had no desire to share her with another man. He grimaced at the path of his thoughts and released his hold on her.
