Anita Mills (16 page)

“Is that what happened to your father?”

“He didn’t see it like I did. As far as I know, he’s still alive, still trying.”

“You don’t hear from him?”

“I haven’t heard from anybody back in Tennessee for a couple of years. I guess they’re all right, or some-body’d be writing me.” He swung around to face her. “I guess that probably makes me sound pretty hard.”

“Yes.”

“Your father never wrote you,” he reminded her.

“My mother wasn’t quicksand, Mr. McCready. She gave him no reason to leave.”

“So it’s back to Mr. McCready again, is it?”

“There’s nobody around right now.”

“You keep that distance, don’t you? That way you don’t put your trust in anybody.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’m a gambler, Rena. I make my living by looking for signs of what somebody else is thinking.” Moving away from the window, he picked up a photograph of a woman standing behind a man in a chair, both of them young and ill-at-ease. While it didn’t look much like them now, he’d be willing to bet money he was looking at his hosts. “When I get into a game, I’m like a bird of prey, circling, waiting for something weak to make a mistake.”

“Like you were doing when you accosted me on the steamer?”

“When I saw you on the boat, I was looking for a little diversion, and you were pretty enough to pique my interest. I didn’t know you had liabilities of your own. I figured I’d make a few sparks fly, then move on. I didn’t know we were going to be on the run together, or I’d have done this differently.”

“I’m not ‘on the run,’ as you call it. Not exactly, anyway,” she amended truthfully.

“No? Well, you’ve sure as hell got somebody chasing you, and I seem to remember you weren’t all that eager to get caught,” he reminded her. “I didn’t see you going around that corner at Goode’s for a closer look when you had the chance.”

“I didn’t know what they wanted, and I still don’t.”

“But you know it isn’t anything good.”

“Obviously. As nearly as I could tell, somebody named Gil intends to kill me.”

“Then you’re on the run, Rena.”

“I didn’t want to jump off that train, Matthew—you all but pulled me off it.” Her gaze swept the room before returning to him. “This isn’t exactly my notion of a place to stay. By now all the other passengers are in Columbus, already registered at a decent hotel.”

“No, they’re all telling different versions of that shooting to some lawman.”

“At least they’ll be getting a decent bed tonight.” A sudden, embarrassing thought hit her, and it must’ve been written on her face. “Uh—”

“Yeah, it looks like we’re stuck together for one more night—unless you want to share the floor with Molly. But after last night, I’m so damned tired you could be the best-looking dance hall girl in the world, and it wouldn’t matter. I don’t want anything but a night’s sleep.”

“And you think you’ll get it here?” she asked incredulously.

“Look—come morning, we’ll move on. By the time we get to Columbus, everything will have calmed down, and the train’11 be making its run back to Galveston. Then—”

“With my clothes on it. Matthew, I can’t go meet Papa’s lawyer like this. Look at me—just look at this dress! It’s got stains and holes all over it! I don’t even have a toothbrush—or a comb!”

“Actually, you don’t look half bad.” Seeing her color rise, he hastened to reassure her. “They won’t take your bag back. It’s only ticketed to Columbus.”

“But I won’t be there to get it!”

“I told you I’d collect it, didn’t I?”

“Don’t you think somebody’s going to ask just why we departed in such haste, not to mention in the middle of nowhere?”

A faint smile formed at the corners of his mouth, then twisted slightly. “I was figuring on blaming that on you.”

“Me?”
she choked out.

“Yeah. You were already high-strung from lack of sleep, and between the shooting, the heat, and the delay, you were on the verge of a breakdown. I figured if I didn’t get you out of there, you’d work yourself into another fainting spell, and in your delicate condition—”

“Well, you can figure again,” she cut in, interrupting him. “I’m not flighty, I have never swooned, and I refuse to pretend a mental breakdown to suit your story. And if you ever tell anyone again that I’m in a delicate condition, I’ll shoot you and plead self-defense!”

“Hold your voice down, will you?”

“No, if you want to make something up, use yourself! If you can stand the scrutiny, that is. I’m not a gambler at all, but if I were, I’d bet everything I had that you’re hiding something terrible, Matthew McCready—if that’s even your name.”

“Rena—”

“Well—? Are you really Matthew McCready?” she demanded. “Are you really even from Tennessee? Or is everything about you just made up from whole cloth?”

“Why would you say that?” he countered, evading the questions. “Why would I want to lie to you?”

“I don’t know, but you do. Because it’s you who’s on the run from the law. That’s why you didn’t stay on the train—it didn’t have anything to do with me. Can’t you just tell the truth for once?”

“What difference does it make? Once I get you to San Antonio, I’m moving on, anyway. We’re just strangers thrown together for a little while, that’s all.”

“Yes, but for this little while, I’d like to think I could trust you.”

“Nobody can trust anybody, Rena. We all adjust the truth to suit our purposes. Even you.” Before she could refute it, he pointed out, “If man told the truth all the time, there wouldn’t even be a human race. Most of the time, a woman wouldn’t want to know what’s on a man’s mind.”

“And that’s probably the closest thing you’ve said to fact since I met you.”

Carefully setting the picture back on a shelf, he exhaled fully before turning to her. “What do you think you want to know about me?”

“Who
are
you?”

He couldn’t risk the whole truth. He couldn’t put that much trust in anyone’s hands, least of ail in a woman who wasn’t all that truthful herself, but he had to tell her something she could believe, something that wouldn’t get him into trouble if she went to the law.

“My name’s Matthew James McCready, and I was born in Tennessee in the spring of ’46.”

“Where in Tennessee?”

He shrugged. “Pretty much nowhere.”

“Every place is somewhere.”

“Well, it might as well be nowhere,” he said defensively. “It’s just a little dry hollow my Grandpa called Pigeon Creek. Sort of like Eagle Lake, I guess—no pigeons and no creek.” Looking at her through his swollen eye, he forced another smile. “You sure you want to know all this?”

“Yes.”

“So what else do you think I’m lying about? Go on—I’m listening.”

“You told that man you were in a Hell Brigade from Arkansas, and if you were born in 1846, you were barely twenty when the Rebellion ended.”

“Whoa now—you’ve got that part wrong. It wasn’t a rebellion—it was a
war
the damned Yankees waged on us.”

“But you didn’t fight in it, whatever you want to call it.”

“The hell I didn’t. I was fifteen when I ran away to join up. I said I was almost eighteen, which I admit was a damned stupid thing to do, but I wanted to serve in the Army of Tennessee with my brothers. I wanted to do my share for the Cause before they won it without me,” he remembered, his voice betraying bitterness. “Yeah, I went, all right. I had good eyes and steady hands, so they made me a sharpshooter. I probably picked off close to two hundred Yankees before it was over.” His mouth flattened into a straight line. “Yeah, I went for the wrong reasons, and I came out without even a scar to show for it. It was my brothers who didn’t make it.”

“They were killed?”

He nodded. “All three of us ended up in Bragg’s army—Drew, Wayne, and me. Drew fell at Chickamauga, Wayne two months later at Chattanooga. You know what they say—it’s the good that die young. I’m still here to tell about it.”

“I see. Well, at least your mother didn’t lose all her sons. At least she still had you when it was over.”

“I never went home, Rena. I figured if I did, I’d never get away again. I figured since the Almighty let me live, He didn’t mean to hold me prisoner on a little piece of land I hated.”

“What about your parents—your mother—? Didn’t you care that you were all she had left?”

“Oh, I write her from time to time, but I don’t think anybody misses me anymore. She wrote back once, telling me my sister Maggie married the Logan boy after the war, that he was helping out on the place. I figure he’ll get it someday, which’ll be good, because he’ll want it.”

“Yes, but—”

“Ma understood. I just wasn’t cut out to be a farmer, and if I’d gone home the last son, there’d been no escaping it. I couldn’t do it.” His gaze dropped to his hands, to his carefully pared nails, and the corners of his mouth turned down. “I didn’t want to be poor for the rest of my life.”

Listening to him, she could almost feel sorry for him. On the outside, he looked as though he had everything—looks, confidence, the clothing of a gentleman—but underneath that handsome exterior, he had nothing to anchor his life to. No family. No roots.

“But you could have comforted her, and she could have comforted you.”

The way she said it made him feel like a damned fool. He didn’t even know why he’d betrayed as much as he had. Every bit of information he’d given her beyond the McCready name would probably be coming back to haunt him.

“Don’t,” he responded, his voice suddenly harsh. “I didn’t want to be a damned farmer, and by God, I’m not. You want to feel sorry for somebody, Verena Howard, you feel sorry for yourself.”

At first, the vehemence in his voice stunned her, then she understood. “I wasn’t feeling sorry for you, not at all, Mr. McCready,” she said quietly. “I was sympathizing with your mother, because I know what it’s like to be left. I know how it feels to be abandoned by someone who’s supposed to love you.”

“Yeah, you felt so bad, you came running down here. He’s dead, and he’s still got a hold on your mind, doesn’t he?”

“I just want to understand, Matthew. My father was an officer with the Pennsylvania Regulars—an
officer,
Matthew. He was
Major
John Howard, and he deserted. It wasn’t just me and Mama he left, either,” she said evenly. “It was everybody—his men, his state, and his country. He just rode off into thin air, and nobody knew what happened to him until I got the letter from the attorney in San Angelo.”

“Into thin air?”

“Yes. For a long time, he was listed as unaccounted for, and I watched my mother wait and hope and pray that he’d somehow be found alive. Finally, when she was sick and reduced to penury, she was forced to apply for an army widow’s pension. After a military investigation, the war department determined that he’d deserted. And I think that was the blow that killed her.”

“They could’ve made a mistake.”

“Not in this case. There wasn’t even much of a battle the day he disappeared. ‘A minor skirmish with a Confederate supply guard,’ the report called it. After that, he and several of his men just vanished. He wasn’t on any prisoner of war list. There wasn’t a body or anything. He was just gone.”

“Maybe he couldn’t take any more of it. War changes a man, Rena.”

“Enough to make a man turn his back on everybody he was supposed to love?” she countered bitterly.

“I don’t know. A lot of Yankees deserted—and so did some of ours. Some were just too green, two raw to handle what they saw.”

Fixing her gaze on the flock of sheep beyond the window, she swallowed, then went on, her voice low. “No, he just left us for something or somebody else. I don’t think there was any constancy on his side from the beginning of their marriage. But no matter how indiscreet he was, Mama pretended not to know. She always wanted to believe he loved her. But I guess he didn’t.”

It was his turn to feel sorry. “Look,” he said gently, “you may not like what you find.”

“I know.”

“My earlier offer still stands. You can still take the money and go home.”

“I can’t.”

“A couple of hundred dollars doesn’t mean anything to me, Rena. Money comes and goes easy with me.”

“If I were to take your money, I’d expect myself to do something to earn it, and I couldn’t. I could never repay you,” she said simply.

“I wasn’t asking for anything—not even the obvious.”

“I know.”

Noting the set of her shoulders, he realized it would be useless to insist. While he still wasn’t prepared to admit everything she’d told him since they met was the truth, he could at least recognize principle when he saw it. And in the jaded world he knew, that alone made her a rare creature.

“I know you don’t believe me when I say I don’t know anyone out here,” she said quietly. “I know you can’t understand why I’d want to come all this way for next to nothing. You probably still think I’m hiding something.”

“What if I asked you what you asked me?”

“I suppose turnabout would be fair. All right,” she decided. “I was born Verena Mary Howard in Philadelphia on the Fourth of July, eighteen hundred and fifty-one.”

“On Independence Day?”

“Before you make any connection between my temperament and fireworks, I can tell you it won’t be original. There’s nothing you could say on the subject that I haven’t already heard.”

“Well, there is a certain volatility, but all that aside, go on. You’re just a hair shy of twenty-three,” he prompted.

“And any comments about spinsterhood won’t be appreciated either,” she declared flatly. “If I wanted a husband, I’m sure I could get myself one. Now, where was I?”

“An almost twenty-three-year-old spinster, I believe. From Pennsylvania.”

“Yes, and right now I’d swear on a stack of Bibles that if God will just let me get home in one piece, I’ll never leave again.”

“No kin?”

“What?”

“No relations?”

“No one I’d want to claim. Mama and Papa are both dead, and I was an only child. And my grandparents are gone, too. No, there’s just Mama’s brother, Elliot, and I don’t feel particularly charitable toward him. He used to give us ten dollars the first of every month, and every time it came with a sermon. And when I graduated from Bancroft, he gave me a grudging reference for a teaching position, saying he knew of no
major
defect in my character, which I suppose was something,” she conceded. “But I can never forgive him letting Mama work as a seamstress while he lived in a grand house filled with servants who had more than she did.”