Anita Mills (29 page)

Disengaging her hands, he slid from the horse to gather her close. “God, Rena—I was afraid I was too late,” he whispered into her soft hair.

“You came after me,” she said foolishly.

“Yeah. I figured I could go to Austin—” Hell, there wasn’t any sense in lying to her anymore. “I figured I could get across the border later,” he admitted. “I decided I’d better make sure you made it to San Angelo before I took off.”

Laying her head against his solid chest, she slid her hands around his waist and held on. He was here, and for now that was all that mattered. All she wanted to do was rub her cheek against his shirt and tell herself that somehow, some way, she could make him stay.

She didn’t know how long she stood there locked tightly in his embrace. It wasn’t until she heard the stagecoach driver shouting at her that she turned loose of him and stepped back. Wiping her wet eyes with her sleeve, she looked up at him.

“I know what they want now—it’s gold, Matt.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Her hazel eyes widened. “You know? How?”

“I met Gib.”

“Where?”

“This morning in San Antonio. He was claiming to be a Texas Ranger when he told me about it. You want to ride or walk back to the coach?”

“Walk.”

“Same here. My backside’s sore from the hardest ride of my life. I was afraid Gib was going to get to you first. Come on—you can tell me what happened on the way.”

The street dust of San Angelo clung to her shoes, her petticoat, her skirt, and almost everything else. But at least she was there. At least she’d finally made it. Now she could get her business over and go home, and that was what she wanted, she told herself resolutely.

But it wasn’t. After years of hardening her heart, after years of truly believing she wanted the inner safety of being a spinster, she’d come to the conclusion that her happiness lay in a rambling gambler named McCready. And to make it even more unfathomable, she’d set her heart on a man wanted for murder.

He’d been in the little adobe building that passed for the sheriff’s office and jail a long time now, and that made her nervous. He was supposed to be talking to Charley Pierce and Lee Jackson, but surely they’d already told him everything they knew. When it came right down to it, they didn’t seem to know much more than they’d told her after their botched-up attempt to take her off the stage. Oh, they had the names of her father’s coconspirators, but what good did that do? As near as she could tell, the rest were all dead.

Except for Gib Hannah. He was still out there, lying in wait somewhere, like a rattlesnake coiled to strike. But unlike Pierce and Jackson, he wanted more than his share. If they could be believed, he wanted all of this gold fortune she was supposed to have. But at least now she knew she could recognize him, and she knew what he was looking for.

At least Matt hadn’t left her. Not yet. He’d promised to stay until after the probate was over. And if Gib Hannah hadn’t shown his face by then, he’d stay until she sold the place, and then he’d take her back to Columbus and put her on the train. But after that, she’d be on her own again.

What could possibly be taking him so long? She’d already met with the county recorder for a description of the farm and gotten rudimentary directions to it while he’d been in there. If he didn’t come out pretty soon, she was going in after him. She would now, but she felt too sorry for Pierce and Jackson. Maybe they’d been Hannah’s bumbling tools, but at least they hadn’t wanted to kill her. They’d wanted to share the gold.

She found herself wishing there
was
gold out there, that she and McCready would discover it, and then maybe he’d want to stay. No, that was fanciful thinking, and she wouldn’t want a man who loved her for her money.

“Ready?”

“Well, it’s about time. What were you doing in there, anyway? Trying to obtain squatter’s rights to the place?”

“Taking care of business.” Taking her elbow, he guided her across the street to a rickety buckboard. “Compliments of the sheriff,” he murmured handing her up to the seat. “Nice fellow, but he says the mules tend to be contrary.” Swinging up beside her, he reached for the reins. “I told him we’d have it back before sunset.”

“Can you drive this?”

“Yeah. Wait a minute—I forgot something.” Jumping down, he went back into the building. When he came out again, he was carrying two long guns. He shoved them under the seat before he climbed up again. “What’s the matter?” he asked when she frowned.

“You’re expecting trouble, aren’t you?”

“I’m ready for it, anyway.”

“I’ll say.”

“It’s just the Henry, and he loaned me’ his Whitney. Sometimes a man needs a rifle, sometimes a shotgun. Right now, we’ve got both. We’re pretty much loaded for anything.”

“And there’s the revolver.”

“And the revolver,” he agreed. “After I gave it to you yesterday, I felt downright naked. I went out and bought the Henry so I’d have something to carry around.” Patting his holster, he added, “To tell the truth, I’m damned glad to have it back. I’ve had it a long time. One of these days, maybe I’ll get myself a new model.” Changing the subject, he asked, “How was it with the recorder? You going to have clear deed to the place?”

“It was fine. He said everything was in order.” She hesitated, then frowned. “He said Papa came down here a long time ago, right after the war—only then he called himself Bill Harper. He didn’t change the name on the deed to John Howard until last year, and then he did it quietly.”

“Yeah, that’s what the sheriff said. Everybody else down here knew him as Harper until he died. I guess he kept pretty much to himself.”

“Yes. But he—the recorder—told me Papa spoke of sending a package to a bank in San Antonio. When he asked him why he didn’t just put his money over at the fort, he said it wasn’t money—it was papers. Makes you wonder what they were, doesn’t it? Mr. Hamer never mentioned anything about there being anything like that.”

“Maybe he didn’t know. Maybe it was a map to the gold.”

“I don’t know. I’d hate to go all the way back to San Antonio to find out. Anyway,” she said, smoothing her skirt, “I got directions to the place.”

“We’re going in the back way.” Pulling out a piece of paper, he handed it to her. “I had the sheriff draw me a map.”

“So that’s what took so long.”

“More or less.”

“I feel sorry for those men, Matt.”

“Yeah, so do I.”

“It wasn’t as if they weren’t entitled to it,” she went on.

“They weren’t. It’s Confederate gold, Rena. They stole it when it might have done some good.”

“It wouldn’t have changed the outcome, Matt. The South was beaten by more than money.”

“It still wasn’t theirs—and it wasn’t your father’s either. They stole it.”

“I guess it corrupted them—they deserted, then they turned against one another.”

“Seems like that’s what happened, doesn’t it?”

Straightening his shoulders, he slapped the reins against a lazy mule’s back. “Looks like he’s taking ’em back to San Antonio for arraignment. I told him if you had to, I’d see you got there to testify. If that happens, you can pick up those papers.”

“Isn’t that dangerous? To you, I mean.”

“I don’t know. Probably.” Half turning to her, he managed a smile. “You’d come to visit me in jail, wouldn’t you?”

“You know I would, but—”

“But you don’t want to see me hang,” he cut in, finishing the thought for her.

“No. I couldn’t stand that. I just wish things were different, that’s all,” she said wistfully.

The sun made her hazel eyes almost golden. “Rena—”

“What?”

No, he was a fool to even think it. “Nothing. I don’t know what I was going to say,” he lied. “Anyway, it slipped my mind before I got it out.”

“Do you think there’s any gold left, or do you think Papa spent it?” she asked suddenly.

“I’d say it’d be hard to spend that much without somebody noticing it. I’d say it’s more likely he stashed it somewhere. But if Hannah and the others couldn’t find it, I wouldn’t bank on ever seeing any of it. Unless your father left some clue, you could spend a lifetime looking.”

“I don’t know if I’d want it,” she murmured. “It’s already cost too many lives.”

“Yeah.”

“But if we found it, maybe we—”

“Rena, you can’t pin your dreams on me,” he said, cutting her off. “I probably won’t be around once you get everything settled.”

“Well, I didn’t mean . . .” But she did, and it was hard to hide how much she wanted him to stay. “You know, something’s not right with you today, Matt,” she said instead.

“I’m all right. I’m just saying I may not be around, that’s all. You’ve got to think of yourself, Rena.”

Studying his closed face, she
knew.
“You’re planning to turn yourself in—that’s it, isn’t it?”

“Maybe.”

“Matt, you cannot! You could be hanged!”

“It’s not much of a life running all the time.”

“How do you know? You haven’t even tried it! Matt, don’t do it—listen to me! If you want, I’ll even go with you!” She caught herself too late. It was out there now, just like wearing her heart on her sleeve. She closed her eyes, hoping she could at least hide a little of it from him. “Please,” she managed, swallowing.

“You’d do that for me, Rena?” she heard him ask softly. “You’d give up your home, your reputation, and your way of life for me?”

“Yes,” she whispered. “If we found the gold, we could go someplace where they’d never catch you. If that’s what it took, I’d go to the ends of the earth for you.”

“God, Rena.” Reaching out, he touched a few straggling chestnut hairs with the back of his hand, caressing them against her temples. “No, I wouldn’t ask you to. You don’t want to hide in some hole in Mexico.”

“It doesn’t have to be Mexico, does it?” she managed to get out before her voice broke. “There’s a whole world beyond Texas, isn’t there? There’s the territories—there’s South America—Europe—”

“You deserve better than that. You deserve better than me, Rena.”

She’d thrown down her cloak of pride, and he walked right across it. It had all been her throwing herself at him, not the other way around. She’d even been the one to offer herself to him. And now she was learning that her mother hadn’t been entirely wrong. He was exactly what her mother called a dangerous man. And unless she wanted to make an even greater fool of herself, she’d have to let him go.

“Rena—”

She could feel his breath against her cheek, his lips brushing against hers. But she couldn’t give in to the flash flood of desire that washed over her. She sat as still as if she’d turned into Lot’s pillar of salt.

“I’m sorry,” he said, moving back. “I guess we’d better get on out there.”

“How far is it the back way?”

“About six miles.”

It proved to be the longest six miles of her life. Beyond an occasional exchange about the heat and the dust, she couldn’t think of anything neutral to say, and apparently neither could he. Finally, after what seemed like an interminable silence, he reined in again.

“There it is.”

Her eyes scanned a flat expanse of land, finally finding a small clapboard house with a barn behind it. From a distance, there didn’t seem to be all that much to it. Certainly it didn’t look like anyplace a man with more than fifty thousand dollars in gold would live.

“It doesn’t look like much, does it?”

“Actually, I was thinking it didn’t look bad. I guess the difference is that you never lived on a farm. Believe me, where I come from, the place is a palace. When I was growing up, all we had were bare boards, and we had to put rags between ’em in the winter to keep from freezing.”

“You must be exaggerating.”

He turned to look at her again. “You think I came into the world like you see me, don’t you? Listen, I learned to read with my head stuck almost into the fireplace—and I didn’t have Lincoln’s mother on my side, either. When I was little, we had to cover the milk with our hands in the summertime to keep the dirt from blowing into it, and we were inside the house. We were poorer than the Brassfields, Rena. I didn’t get my first pair of shoes until I was ten years old. The first new shirt I got, I bought myself. I used to hate my pa for making us live that way just so he could plow his own land.”

“You must be proud of yourself now, Matt,” she said softly.

“For what? All I’ve got is more money, Rena. I still go to bed at night thinking I’m going to wake up poor. Being poor never leaves you, Rena. You just cover it up, plaster over it, and whitewash it. And in good times you pretend it isn’t there.”

“We didn’t have that much either, you know. After Papa left, Mama had to sell almost everything we had. But I guess we were different—she always said the most important thing was who we were, not what we had. As bitter as she was about him, she still showed me how to be a lady. That was everything to her— being a lady, I mean.”

“Did it make you happy?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t know I could live any other way, so how could I tell? Before I met you, I never did one daring thing in my whole life.”

“What about the coal bucket on that fellow’s head?”

“That was self-preservation. And the same with the hat pin and the tart tongue.” Looking up at him, she found herself smiling. “When you told me to jump off that train, I thought you were a lunatic—that you’d lost your mind.”

“And when you saw the Brassfields, you were sure of it.”

“Until I got to know them. By the time we left, I actually liked both of them—and the boys, too. I can’t say I ever became very fond of the pig, but they were obviously attached to it.”

“When we were in San Antonio, you said it had been a grand adventure.”

“Yes.” His black hair shone like satin beneath the hot Texas sun, and as a concession to the weather, he’d unbuttoned the neck of his collarless shirt. The effect was both boyish and decidedly sensual at the same time. “I just wish it wasn’t over. I wish it was just beginning,” she managed painfully, looking away.

“Sometimes today is all we get, Rena. I learned that when my brothers didn’t make it to the end of the war.” Slackening the reins, he flicked one end over the nearest mule. “Well, let’s go take a closer look at the place.”

As they came up the wagon tracks into the yard, the farmhouse and barn took on an almost eerie aspect—as though they were devoid of all life. A sense of complete emptiness pervaded the atmosphere. The barn doors were wide open, betraying a cavernous emptiness, and the front door to the house was ajar, as if it had been left that way by some departing spirit. The silence that greeted them was overwhelming.

“It looks dead, doesn’t it?” she said finally.

“It’s the bare boards—a little whitewash would make a difference.” Pulling up, he jumped down to loop the reins over a rough-hewn hitching post. Coming back, he reached up for her. “Let’s see what it’s like inside.”

As his hands caught her waist, she looked into his face, and for a moment, she held her breath, and time stood still. Then the intense longing she felt gave way to the heat of blood pounding through her body, fueling desire. And what she saw in his eyes told her he felt it, too. He lifted her, lowering her body the length of his. The air seemed to crackle between them.

Right then, he would have given everything he had to keep her, but some small voice of reason told him he couldn’t. He didn’t have the right to ask her to live a lie with him. Not when he couldn’t even give her his own name. He had to force himself to release her, to step back, to break the spell.