Anita Mills (8 page)

“I’m quite all right,” she managed shakily, again trying to sit up.

“No, y’ain’t. Ya better stay right where y’ is,” one of them said, pushing her back down again.

She twisted her head, trying to see McCready, but there was no sign of the miscreant. “Where’s—where’s my—my husband?” she managed to choke out.

“Raisin’ a mite o’ hell with the danged railroad,” the big fellow answered. “Ain’t no wagon here yet, and if’n it don’t come right soon, I reckon we’ll be a-carryin’ yuh aller way t’ Eagle Lake.”

Unnerved by the thought, she insisted, “I need to speak with Mr. McCready—
now,
if you please.”

“Eh, Mac, th’ missus wants ye!” he called out loudly.

When the gambler bent over her solicitously, she caught his lapels in her hands, pulling him down almost head to head with her until she was looking through her wet hair into those dark eyes of his. “Don’t—you—dare—leave—me,” she told him through tightly clenched teeth. “And—and if you so much as
think
about laughing—”

Her words died as his lips brushed hers, and she could feel her cheeks go hot. If it hadn’t been for the public disgrace of it, she would have slapped him. When he pulled away, he murmured, “Believe me, I’m trying not to.” But there was an unholy look in those eyes. The corners of his mouth twitched as he added, “You have to admit though that it’s a pretty inspired use of a lavatory door.”

“Wagon’s coming!” a cowboy shouted.

“Ambulance is here,” the trainman announced loudly. “Soon’s it’s unloaded, you can put her in it for the ride back to Sheriff Goode’s house.”

Despite the awful tightening in his gut, Matt managed to speak casually, observing, “I thought we were taking her into town—into Eagle Lake, that is.”

“Ain’t no town at Eagle Lake!” the cowboy roared. “Ain’t no lake, and no eagles neither! Leastwise, none that I ever seen, anyways.”

Matt pulled the timetable out of his pocket to reassure himself. “But it’s a scheduled stop, isn’t it?”

“Yep, but there ain’t nothin’ there.”

The trainman tried to clarify the matter. “Now, I wouldn’t say there’s nothing there,” he said judiciously. His eyes met Matt’s for a moment. “It’s the Goode Ranch mostly. Lot of ranches around here, in fact. But the road to Columbus cuts right through the Goode spread, so a lot of cowboys that work around these parts get off there. If they didn’t, they’d be wastin’ money going all the way to Columbus, then turnin’ around and comin’ back by horse.”

“I suppose this means there’s no hotel—and no bath to be had, either,” McCready murmured.

“I reckon Mrs. Goode’d take care of it, if you was to ask ’er. She and the sheriff is real accommodatin’ folks.”

He didn’t move a muscle, but the irony wasn’t lost on Matt. After being on the run all the way from Natchez, he’d managed to deliver himself right into the clutches of a damned sheriff. All he could do was console himself with the notion that it’d be pretty hard to recognize the immaculate, fastidious Matthew Morgan in Mac McCready. And nobody would be expecting him to be traveling with an ailing wife. He’d just have to lie low and wait until Columbus to leave her. Until then, she’d be his excuse for avoiding Goode whenever possible.

“Looks like the crew’s unloaded,” the trainman announced. “Be careful puttin’ her on the wagon.” Before the conveyance was mobbed, he called out, “Mr. McCready’s going with his missus! Wagon’ll be back for everybody else as soon as it can make the trip around!”

“I’d like to sit up,” Verena protested through the gambler’s fingers.

The trainman looked at her, then at the lavatory door, wondering how he could explain to his superiors if it came up missing. “Reckon it ain’t going to harm anything if the mister’s with you,” he decided. “That way you boys can be putting this privy door back up while you’re waitin’.”

“Thank you,” she murmured, pushing McCready’s hand away.

She stood up and shook out the folds of her ruined skirt, then started to climb onto the wagon. But the gambler caught her from behind and swung her up into his arms. “You know, you’re a damned sight heavier than you look, my dear.”

“Nobody could accuse you of an excess of chivalry,” she muttered. “If I didn’t consider myself a lady, I’d be tempted to snatch you baldheaded, I hope you know.”

“Do you really want rid of me?” he whispered into her bedraggled hair.

“Just as soon as you give me ten dollars for this dress,” she answered fervently.

Dumping her into the back of the wagon, he climbed onto the seat and grasped the reins. Flicking the ends over the rumps of the two mules, he called out, “Yee-haw!” One of the animals moved, dragging the other with it.

“Don’t you need to ask the direction?” Verena muttered, righting herself behind him.

“I figure if I give ’em their heads, they’ll go home.” Leaning back on the hard board seat, he admitted, “I was hoping for a chance to talk this over before we get there.”

Grasping his shoulder for balance, she climbed up beside him. “I don’t care how it looks—I’m
not
bouncing around back there.”

“What I started to say was I’ve been thinking, and—” Seeing her eyebrows lift behind the hair plastered over her forehead, he decided to soften her up a little before he broached his proposition. “That was one brave thing you did back there—you know that, don’t you?”

“Well, I couldn’t let that boy shoot you.” Then, realizing that sounded as if she had an interest in him, she added, “Actually, I couldn’t have let him shoot
anyone.
But I guess that almost evens us up, doesn’t it? I mean, you got rid of my so-called brother, and I kept you from being shot. Now I have absolutely no reason to be beholden to you.” Looking down at the tobacco juice stains on her dress, she grimaced. “Truth to tell, I think I’ve gotten the worst of the acquaintance. So far, nobody’s poured water on you, and your clothing is still wholly presentable.”

“I said I’d take care of that—and I meant it. It doesn’t look like there’s anyplace to buy anything you’d wear around here, but as soon as we get to Columbus—”

“But you aren’t going to Columbus,” she reminded him sweetly. “You’re getting off here, as I recall.”

“Like I said, I was just thinking about that, and I was kind of figuring that I owed you now.”

“I’ll just take the money, thank you.”

“Yeah, well, maybe you’d better hear me out first. Right now, everybody on that train thinks I’m your husband. Once I take off alone across the prairie for Austin, you’re going to get a lot of skeptical looks from those folks. Some will probably think you’ve been abandoned by a real rounder, but others…” He let his voice trail off while she considered the possibilities, then he nodded. “Uh-huh. It’s not a very pretty notion, is it? And once some of those thick-skulled cowboys get that in their heads, who’s going to fend them off for you? It’ll be worse than that train station in Indianola. No, the way I look at it, I’m stuck with you until Columbus. Either that, or we both get off here.”

“No, Mr. McCready—it is
I
who’s stuck with
you,”
she declared wearily. “And as you already know, I’ve got to go on. No matter how anybody looks at or acts toward me, I’ve still got to get to San Angelo.” Raising her eyes heavenward, she sighed heavily. “If I believed in reincarnation, I’d be wondering what I ever did in my last life to deserve this.”

“Look, am I really that hard to take for a few hours more? If everything goes right, we’ll be parting company at Columbus tonight, anyway.”

“Yes, Mr. McCready, you are. Never in all of my twenty-two years have I
ever
encountered anyone quite like you. Despite my rather pointed discouragement, you have managed to insinuate yourself into my life for some unfathomable but probably utterly nefarious reason. And absolutely nothing I can say or do seems to put an end to it. Furthermore,” she added pointedly,
“nothing
has gone right since you first laid eyes on me.”

“You didn’t have to pretend to faint back there,” he reminded her.

“Believe me, I am already regretting that,” she muttered. “Now I have ruined a perfectly good traveling dress, and even worse than that, I smell as if I have been chewing tobacco and spitting it all over myself.”

“For at least the fourth or fifth time, I said I’d buy you a new dress.”

“You cannot. As you have already noted, there’s no place to buy one,” she retorted. “And it is extremely unlikely that you could find one already made, anyway. Although I think it highly questionable that a man of your obvious experience wouldn’t know this, it is dress
lengths
that are bought. No, I shall just have to purchase the cloth and findings and make a new one for myself. Whenever I have time to do it, that is. So I will take your money in restitution and try to get along with the two I have left.”

“Hire a seamstress to make you one.”

“In the middle of nowhere? Yes, Mr. McCready, I shall do that,” she countered tiredly. “Look, I’m finished talking about it, so just give me the ten dollars, and we will be totally even.”

“That’s another thing I was meaning to mention.”

“What?”

“You can’t go around calling your husband Mr. McCready, you know.”

“Well, I intend to.”

“Oh, it sounds all right when you are referring to me to someone else, I suppose,” he conceded. “But when you are talking
to
me, you’d better call me by a name.”

“Nothing that comes to mind would be suitable.”

“My friends call me Mac,” he lied.

“That’s a little too informal. Surely you have a given name?”

“Yes.” Taking a deep breath, he considered whether to invent one, or whether to use his own. “All right,” he answered finally, “it’s Matthew, but I’d rather you used Mac.”

“Matthew,” she repeated, mulling it over. “There’s nothing wrong with Matthew,” she decided. “All right—when speaking face-to-face, I shall use that.”

He was already regretting that small bit of truth. He should have said Tom or Bill or Henry, or something like that. If it wasn’t already, the name Matthew Morgan would soon be on posters in every sheriff’s office between Florida and New Mexico. Old Alexandre Giroux would see to that. And Matthew McCready sounded too damned close to Matthew Morgan for comfort. But he’d done it. Once he parted company with her, he wouldn’t make the mistake again, he promised himself.

“And you’d better not call yourself Verena,” he said aloud. “You never know when you might encounter your brothers.”

“I told you—I don’t have any brothers.”

“You take my meaning.”

“Well, I won’t be Bess. I don’t care if it’s your mother’s name or not, you know. I just don’t happen to like it for myself.”

“It’s more than a little possible those two railroad men overheard me say it.”

“Mr. McCready—”

“Mac.”

“Matthew.” Rearranging her disgusting skirt, she reflected that he actually had a point. “All right, but at least make it Elizabeth.”

“Elizabeth McCready. It does have a certain sound to it,” he admitted. “Well, then that’s settled.”

“Until Columbus.” She looked up, studying his handsome profile for a moment. “You don’t care a button about what happens to me, do you? We’re doing this for you and not for my reputation at all.”

“I was trying to protect you, that’s all.”

“You’re a dangerous man, Mr. McCready, but not for the reason I first thought,” she decided. “When you first latched on to me like a barnacle, I suspected you had designs on my person. And while you may have, I think you’ve got something else to hide.”

“The first instinct is always the best,” he murmured. “You’re a lovely, lovely lass, Mrs. McCready.”

“If you can look at me now and still say that, I
know
you’re pretty adept at lying,” she responded dryly.

“You know, if you’d soften that tongue, you wouldn’t be a spinster.”

“I’m sure there are worse things, Mr. McCready. And if my tongue delivers me from marriage to most of the men I’ve known, it’s been a blessing to me,” she stated flatly.

“Somebody soured you on the institution.”

“That is none of your concern.”

“The bounder led you astray and abandoned you,” he hazarded.

“Don’t be absurd.”

“He chose someone else.”

“No.”

“He already had a wife.”

“No.”

“He wouldn’t convert to Catholicism for you.”

“I’m not a Catholic, Mr. McCready.”

“Where I come from, something’s wrong with a fine-looking woman if she’s not married by the time she’s sixteen or seventeen.”

“And I wasn’t born in the backwoods of Tennessee either.” Fixing him with a withering look, she declared, “This is just your way of turning the tables, isn’t it? You’re afraid I’m going to ask you something you don’t want to answer.”

“How’s that?”

“Why do you need to pretend you have a wife?” Before he could say anything, she hit him with the other one. “Just what are you running from, Mr. McCready?”

“Most everybody coming to Texas is running from something, Verena. Even you.”

“We were speaking of you. For all I know, you could be a thief—or even a murderer.”

“No to both counts. So for now, I guess you’ll just have to trust me.”

“Well, I don’t.”

“Who was he?”

Startled by the suddenness of the question, she blinked. “Who was who?” she asked cautiously.

“Who soured you so young, Verena?”

He had no right to expect an answer, and she didn’t have to give one. But she took a deep breath, then let go of it slowly. “My father,” she admitted.

“Your father?”

“Yes. He was handsome and charming and quickwitted around women, but behind that facade he was cunning, cruel, and heartless. He never came home from the war, Mr. McCready.”

“War takes a terrible toll on a man.”

“Oh, he survived it, all right,” she said bitterly. “Some months before it was over, he deserted his country, then vanished. He deserted Mama. And he deserted me.”

“I’m sorry.”

She met his eyes again. “I don’t want your pity. I watched my mother slowly die inside—she was a dead woman living those last few years. And when she finally left this earth, I promised myself I’d never let anyone give me that kind of pain. And if that means I go to my grave a spinster, then so be it.”