Cheyenne's Lady, page 7
“I want to go with you,” Maria heard herself saying. Her surprise was no less than Luke’s, but she covered it smoothly, repeating her phrases to Manuel from the prior night. “I still have a few pieces of my mother’s jewelry to sell. It will fetch a better price in Santa Fe than here.”
When Luke continued to stare at her as if she had lost her wits, Maria put her hands on her hips and let the words fly. “I want to wear skirts again. I want to hold my head up and smile at the people I meet. I want to see the city and dance to the music. I’m tired of the dust and the cows and the fools and this whole damned valley. Just once in my life I want to be on my own. When I’ve done that, I’ll buy the material for my trousseau and come home.”
Luke raised an incredulous eyebrow. “Go with me and you won’t need a trousseau. Even Manuel won’t buy your reputation then.”
Nothing would stop her now that she had made up her mind, and she could almost feel freedom in her grasp. Maria threw her long black braid over her shoulder in a gesture of defiance. “Don’t go getting ideas. Carmelita will go with me. She’s never seen Santa Fe. We’ll take the stage. You can meet us there and show us where to stay. Then you can just go about your business as usual. Don’t let us stand in the way of your plans.” Her voice added a hint of scorn as if knowing his plans did not include pure business.
Luke shoved his hat on his head and started for the stable. “I’m leaving in the morning. You’ll need to be on the nine o’clock stage if you’re going to make it.”
Maria stared at his retreating back and cursed his arrogance and her insanity. Pieta would carve her heart out when she heard the news.
Pieta protested long and violently in several languages and emphatic gestures until Maria mentioned Luke would be riding with them. For some reason, that pacified the older woman, and she looked Maria up and down warily.
“You said you wanted to buy wedding things. Why is it not Manuel who takes you?”
Because she fully intended to make Manuel sweat before she gave him anything, but Maria knew better than to say that to Pieta. She shrugged. “That would not be proper. Besides, it is bad luck for the groom to see the bride’s gown before the wedding.” That would appease the superstitious Pieta faster than anything.
Pieta still watched her with suspicion, but conceded, “You will be able to buy the goods for your gown more cheaply in Santa Fe.”
Maria relaxed and smeared a biscuit with jam. “I will buy yard goods for all of us. Carmelita must stand up with me, and she should have a new dress for that. And you will be the closest thing to family I have. You must have a new gown, too.”
Though her suspicions did not disappear, Pieta grew more malleable. “I have the coins for Carmelita and myself. You must buy new petticoats and chemises, lace for a mantilla, new shoes…. I will make a list while you pack.”
Maria gulped down the biscuit and headed for the attic, where the trunks were stored, feeling as if she were walking on air. “Nonsense! We will all have new shoes and mantillas. I have not paid you any wages in months. Soon we will not have to skimp for anything.”
She disappeared down the hallway and Pieta shook her head slowly in dismay. Maria had a sensible head on her shoulders, but too often she let her emotions think for her. Perhaps Maria would gain her senses once away from the valley for a little while. A few days in the company of Cheyenne Walker might teach her more than she needed to learn, but it was time Maria grew up.
Carmelita was both terrified and ecstatic at the thought of leaving home for the first time. Two years younger than Maria, she appeared older. Inheriting her mother’s sturdy frame, she towered over Maria by some inches, but her broad shoulders were the only part of her that had filled out. With her hair pulled back in a severe chignon and covered by a black shawl, she had the appearance of a lanky duenna but felt like a terrified youngster.
The next morning, Luke gazed upon Pieta’s attempt to act as a proper companion and smothered his laughter. It would be akin to escorting two children through the evils of the city, but the only other choice would be to let them go alone. The fire in Maria’s eyes told him that much.
Refusing to let them travel alone into town, Luke drove the buckboard with his two severely garbed companions and their valise. He had his own mount tied behind, but he felt as tethered as the stallion as the two girls chatted in excited Spanish.
Not letting on that he could understand every word, Luke drove in silence through the dawn’s rising heat. Maria had wrapped herself in her black bombazine Sunday dress and bonnet, but even that awful combination did not disguise her youthful beauty. Black lashes and arched black brows accentuated the smoothness of dusky rose cheeks, and the black of her mourning became only a backdrop to those devastating green eyes.
Damn! What had he got himself into? Letting these two go to Santa Fe was the height of idiocy. It was almost as if the little witch had guessed his intention of seeking a willing woman to slake his frustrations. Well, she’d picked on the wrong man. She wasn’t his wife, she wasn’t even his boss, and she wouldn’t get in the way of his plans. They would ride in the damned stagecoach so he could travel in peace.
The stagecoach had few riders, and Maria breathed a sigh of relief as she and Carmelita settled into the front seat reserved for ladies. There was enough room on the back platform for their one valise, and no cigar-smoking strangers crowded the middle drop seat. A couple of traveling drummers in their suave derby hats and fancy vests eyed them speculatively, but when Luke looked in to be certain they were settled, the salesmen lost interest. Luke’s leather vest didn’t conceal the Colts on his hips, and the authority in his gaze warned the two women traveled in protective custody.
The driver offered Luke a seat beside him, but Luke refused the honor, preferring his horse to the confinement of company. Maria waved to him as the stage pulled out.
By noon, the coach had added a few more passengers, all male, and the interior grew stuffy. Accustomed to the odors of unwashed male bodies and tobacco but unaccustomed to this proximity, Maria kept her nose to the hot, dry air through the closed shade. Opening it had raised a wail of protest over heat and dust, so she suffered in the semidarkness, wishing she had ridden a horse as Luke had done.
One of the male passengers clinging to the leather strap on the awkward middle seat tried to strike up a conversation, but Maria disliked his oily face and the way his knee kept rubbing hers, and she did not reply. She heard him make snide comments in English to the other men as if she were not capable of comprehending, but she ignored this, too. She was determined to transform herself into a lady on this trip, and a lady would not curse a fool. She held her temper and kept a tight rein on her impatience as she peeked out the window to the endless plain beyond.
The stage stopped every ten miles or so to change teams, take on passengers, deliver mail bags, and give everyone a chance to stretch their legs and drinks from the rain barrel. Maria kept a lookout for Luke, but he apparently rode on ahead of the lumbering stage. If she felt frightened at being left alone, she couldn’t admit it. Carmelita was already frightened enough for both of them.
By the time they reached a station where they could stop and rest for the night, Maria had grown tired of the unctuous fat man squeezing her knee, felt sick to her stomach from the stage’s swaying motion, and wished heartily for a wad of tobacco she could spit back at the filthy old man in the far seat. Her temper had reached a flaring edge and all vows of patience had disappeared with the daylight.
Peremptorily claiming her right to descend first, she nearly fell into Luke’s arms as he stepped up to give her a hand. Glaring at him in disbelief, she clutched his hand until the passengers behind her began to complain of the delay. Without a word she dropped his hold and swept into the small adobe hut, her petticoats rustling across the planked porch.
As usual, Luke said little over their hot meal, even when the conversation became rowdy. Maria sensed Carmelita’s relief at Luke’s presence, but she refused to admit any fear of her own. The drummers had stopped at an earlier station. Their replacements were hard-eyed men who had suffered years of hard times. They argued with the paunchy bank teller and the driver over the benefits of gold versus the greenback, an argument Maria had always found pointless since you could eat neither gold nor greenbacks but both would buy food. When you didn’t have either, who cared?
The discussion drifted to the railroads and the role their overexpansion played in the economic collapse, but Maria could scarcely stifle a yawn of boredom. She felt Luke’s eyes watching her, and she moved her shoulders restlessly beneath the heavy material of her gown. The company and the conversation depressed her. She had never seen a railroad and could imagine no benefit of having one beyond escaping the tedium of stagecoach travel. She could do that more cheaply with sleep.
She rose from the table. Luke and the fat man did the same. The others grudgingly followed, but they returned to their discussion as soon as the women left the room.
Their sleeping quarters were crude, the only acknowledgment of the needs of female travelers being a curtain drawn around two bunks stacked against the back wall. Carmelita pleaded for the top one and Maria threw her bonnet on the bottom. After a day of travel she wished heartily for a bath, but apparently the wash bowls along the wall would have to suffice.
Whispering to each other, they disrobed, appropriating one of the washbowls for themselves and giggling over the consternation of the men when they discovered they would all have to share the other one. Relieved by the familiarity of Carmelita’s foolish jokes, Maria drew on her long night shift and settled in among the covers. If nothing else, the absence of the stage’s steady swaying made her peaceful.
She must have slept, for she heard nothing as the men complained their way to bed. She didn’t know what woke her, but she heard heavy snores at the far end of the room when she turned over. Apparently everyone slept, though she suspected several of the men had chosen to take their bedrolls outside rather than endure the heavy atmosphere in the station. The heat and the smell and the noise served to waken her more fully….
A movement outside the curtain caught Maria s attention. Perhaps that was what woke her. Someone seemed to be groping through the dark, but not doing a very good job of it.
Irritated more than frightened, Maria pushed aside the curtain. The bulky form hovering on the other side sighed in relief.
“I wasn’t certain which bunk was yours, ma’am, but I’m happy to see you waited. I knew we would suit from the first moment I climbed on the stage.”
Maria gasped and shrank back against the wall as the banker’s plump hand dragged the curtain away from her. She stared into his beaming white face with disbelief.
“Well, now, that’s a mighty pretty gown you got on,” he whispered, but his eyes did not focus on her cotton gown. Glazed with lust and a little too much alcoholic fortification, they fell upon Maria’s breasts and the gap of her nightgown where it tied at the throat.
When he began to reach for what he wanted, Maria smacked his hand hard enough to echo in the silence between snores.
“Get your grubby paws away from me, you filthy bastard,” she stated in a voice that threatened to grow louder if not obeyed.
The intruder looked startled at both her language and her action, but apparently rejection had not occurred to him, and he had no other plan in mind. He sat down heavily on the bed’s edge and again reached for Maria in the darkness.
Before she could scream, an ominous click sounded just outside the curtain, and a tall silhouette loomed against the room’s single candle light.
“I think the lady made herself clear, mister. You’d best find your own bed while you can still walk.”
Luke! Maria retreated further against the wall as the fat man tried to stand and banged his head, then sat back down hard, clamping his hand to the sore spot and glaring at the intruder. Maria’s anger built as the man continued to protest.
“This ain’t none of your business. The lady and I have come to an understanding. Now put your toys away and go rope some cattle.”
Maria heard the amusement in Luke’s low reply, and she had the urge to kill both men. Instead, she placed both feet in the center of the stranger’s fat back and shoved. “Out! Get out and stay out and never get in my sight again!”
The man went sprawling across the floor at Luke’s feet, and Maria yanked the curtain back in time to watch the gunslinger add his own kick to the banker’s upended posterior.
“I protect what’s mine, mister, and the lady is mine,” Luke drawled.
Whether it was this threat or the sight of two Colt revolvers aimed at his belly when he turned over that convinced the man, Maria couldn’t tell. In either case, she was too furious even to laugh as he scrambled away on all fours.
“You addle-pated, ignorant, lying, conniving, two-faced sore on a coyote! Why didn’t you scare that bastard away before he nearly frightened me out of my wits? And what do you mean, your woman? I’m not about to be branded your woman for every lickspittle in the territory to gloat over.”
Luke’s grin grew broader with each curse Maria threw at him until she finally ran out of breath and curses and he could get a word in edgewise. Holding the curtain back and staring admiringly down into her flushed features, he spoke quietly and forcefully.
“For all I knew, you had invited the jackass in here. He’s probably just as wealthy as Manuel and isn’t burdened with a pompous family. And if you really mean to keep out of trouble, then the easiest way to do it is to be branded my woman. There isn’t a man in the territory who will come close to you that way.”
Having said all he meant to say, Luke dropped the curtain and prepared to return to his bedroll at the foot of her bunk. An angry groan of frustration and fury issued from behind the curtain and a second later a shoe came flying at his head, whizzing past his ear with amazing accuracy.
Chuckling, Luke located the ammunition and tucked it under his pillow. Let her figure out what to do about it in the morning.
Chapter 9
Maria waited for the men to dress and leave for breakfast so she could hunt for her shoe. By the time she appeared at the table with Carmelita, the banker had apparently whispered cautionary words in the ears of the other passengers. She felt the silence and the speculative glances like an invisible wall.
Maria knew the instant Luke entered, though her back was turned to the door. A couple of the men watched with interest as he approached the table. The banker kept his gaze on the bowl in front of him.
He had obviously just come in from scrubbing in the wash basin outside. He still sported a stubbly growth of beard, but his hair was wet and combed out of his face, though it wouldn’t remain there long once it dried. His eyes were dark and uncommunicative as they met hers, but his step didn’t hesitate.
Wearing his Colts strapped low on his hips, his eyes hooded and threatening, his booted heels thundering against the wood planks, Luke carried an aura of danger as thorough as a rattler’s warning. When he placed a proprietary hand on Maria’s shoulder, every man in the hall understood the message.
Maria watched as eyes dropped around the table. Even when Luke found a place in the corner, away from the others, the men went out of their way to be polite, urging more coffee on her and offering to heat her toast over the fire.
By the time she took her seat on the stagecoach, Maria could barely contain her amusement. She had wanted to be treated as a lady, but if last night were any indication of how a lady was treated, it just might be more interesting to be thought a gunman’s fancy woman. Even her muffled cough at the whiff of a cigar resulted in the offending weed being thrown from the window.
Understanding nothing of these undercurrents, Carmelita smiled and chatted more easily in this friendlier atmosphere. By the time the coach reached Santa Fe, they were eager for new sights.
The coach rattled around the dusty plaza to stop in front of one of Santa Fe’s leading hotels. Several hands reached to help Maria down to the covered walkway. She never noticed whose hand she took once her gaze located Luke leaning lazily against the hotel’s adobe wall. An odd sensation rippled through her as she met his cynical gaze and realized he had no intention of leaving her to her own pursuits. She wanted to be angry, but it wasn’t anger she felt when he pushed through the crowd to claim her.
With one hand on Luke’s arm and the other lifting her skirts from the dust, Maria entered the hotel feeling like a prim and proper lady. Carmelita followed behind her, someone else carried her valise, and the hotel clerk leapt to his feet at their approach. Even knowing Luke compromised her beyond the bounds of propriety, Maria couldn’t resist the charm of being treated with this old-fashioned elegance. Her soul hungered for this recognition, and if she must gain it on the arm of a gunman, so be it. She would confess this sin of pride later.
To her astonishment the hotel clerk addressed her as “Mrs. Walker” and hurried out from behind the desk with a key dangling in his hand as if he had been waiting for her. From beneath her slat-brimmed black bonnet Maria threw Luke a questioning frown, but he acted as if the man’s behavior were normal and guided her toward the stairs.
The clerk threw open a door to a sunny, whitewashed room. A brilliantly colored blanket decorated the room’s one large bed, and a cheerful blue-and-white pitcher and wash basin waited on the bleached wood of the bedside stand. The arched wicker of the low headboard matched the woven basketry of a cushion-covered chair, and Maria felt instantly at home.
The only complaint lay in the man at her side.
After the clerk left, Luke finally spoke. “My room is right next door, through there.” He pointed to a door other than the one they had entered by.
Her relief must have been plain. When she glanced up at him, she read the mockery in hard amber eyes. “That was thoughtful of you. Now, if you don’t mind, Carmelita and I would like a little time to wash and recuperate from our journey.”
