Arizona Embrace (29 page)

“But I wasn’t content to stick with what I knew. I had to set my eyes on a dance hall singer. She called herself Queenie. Nothing else. And she was the queen of San Antonio. Men flocked to see her every night, but she kept her distance. That just made them all the wilder. Soon they weren’t talking about anything else but Queenie.

“Now you can imagine how I felt when Queenie walked up to me one night and asked me to buy her a drink. I’d have sold my soul on the spot to buy her anything she wanted. We sat and talked until it was time for her next number. I don’t know what we talked about. I don’t know if I made any sense. I rode back to the ranch floating on air.

“When she invited me to her table the next time I went to town, I was completely lost. I’d have done anything she asked. I was in love and didn’t care who knew it. I started talking marriage. I even tried to give her a ring, but Queenie said I was too young. She didn’t look a day over eighteen, and I was only one month from turning seventeen, so I didn’t accept that. I saw her every night for two weeks until I wore her down. But she insisted I bring Pa to see her before we got to talking about anything serious.”

Victoria couldn’t help but wish she’d known Trinity then, before the bitterness chewed so deeply into his soul, before everything inside him turned to stone. She could imagine him swaggering about town, proud as a peacock, anxious to prove his manhood. Desperate to prove himself worthy of winning the most sought-after woman in San Antonio.

“What did your mother say?”

“Ma died when I was twelve. Pa nearbout went
loco,
drinking and fighting and getting in so much trouble Mr. Slocum fired him. He’d been foreman nearly four years when it happened, but I never blamed Slocum. Pa drunk would have made a saint cuss. We went to Colorado after that, and spent nearly two years working the mine fields. We didn’t get rich, but Pa made one strike big enough for him to come back and buy a ranch even bigger than Mr. Slocum’s.”

“Which ranch did he buy?” She had visited most of the ranches in the area and wondered if it was one she remembered.

“The Demon D.”

“But that was my father’s ranch.”

“I know. The sheriff told me when I went to see him. Even back when my Pa bought it, it had a reputation for being cursed, but he didn’t care. He bought it because the owner had just died, and it was cheap. But Pa still couldn’t settle down. He would go to town and get drunk. I used to follow him to bring him home. He would sit in the corner of the Hitching Post Saloon and drink until it closed. Everybody knew he was pining for Ma, so they just let him alone.”

Victoria wondered if it had ever occurred to Trinity’s father that the boy might also be hurting from his mother’s death. It must have been terrible to watch his father destroy himself so soon after losing his mother. He must have been a very special youngster to care so much for his father that he willingly gave up his own pleasures to look after him, see that he got home, care for him until he could get back on his feet.

“I’d get bored waiting for Pa, so I’d go check out the other saloons. That’s how I discovered Queenie. Anyway, I told Pa I wanted to get married. He tried to talk me out of it, but I wouldn’t listen. He finally agreed to see Queenie with me.

“He was pretty hard on her at first, but Queenie had a way with men, and pretty soon she had Pa eating out of her hand. They sent me away so they could talk. It seemed like they talked forever, but when we rode home, Pa told me he would have to talk with her again.

“If I’d had any seasoning, I’d have seen the signs right then, but my head was so full of being the man who won Queenie I couldn’t have seen anything if you’d printed it in letters a foot high. Pa stopped drinking and cleaned himself up. When he went back to see Queenie, he took a bath and put on his best suit. The third time he went to see Queenie, he wouldn’t let me go with him.

“Even then I didn’t see that’s what Queenie was after all the time. Pa didn’t either. Somehow she’d found out he was a grieving widower with a real big ranch, and she’d set her mind on marrying him. She just used me to get to him.

“When Pa came home that last time, he told me he and Queenie were going to get married. He tried to tell me how neither of them had meant for anything to happen, that neither had foreseen any thing like this. He told me Queenie was actually twenty-two, too old for a boy like me.

“But I didn’t understand anything except Pa had stolen the woman I loved. I don’t know why I didn’t pick up a gun and shoot him. It was in my mind to do it, but I attacked him with my fists. I might have been well filled out for sixteen, but my father was a bear of a man. He sent me flying with one blow.

“I said a lot of things, some I’ll always be ashamed of, but in the end I ran away. I couldn’t stand to see them married. I hated my father as much as I loved Queenie.”

“Where did you go?”

“Back to the mine fields. It was the only thing I knew. A year later I got word Pa had died. I couldn’t believe it. He had always been such a strong, healthy man. I couldn’t understand how he could have died unless it had been some accident. I headed home right away, all the while dunking of the changes I was going to make on the ranch. You can’t imagine how stunned I was when I found out Pa had left everything to Queenie. He hadn’t even left me his watch.

“But I wasn’t such a naive kid anymore. I’d had time to do some thinking while I was working claims all over Colorado and Nevada. I had figured out Queenie meant to get Pa all along. Now I realized she hadn’t wanted Pa, just his ranch. Queenie wouldn’t see me, so I started asking questions.

“I found out Pa had died while they were on a trip to Galveston. Seems he’d eaten some raw oysters and they’d poisoned him. I knew right then Queenie had killed Pa. He’d rather starve than eat a raw oyster.

“Nobody would listen to me. Pa had died in Galveston, so it didn’t concern anybody in Bandera. Queenie was a grand lady now, and everyone said she was in mourning, that she had really loved my Pa. She started telling people I caused Pa’s death. She said he was unhappy I couldn’t love his new wife, that I broke his heart when I ran away.

“I guess I went crazy then. I tried to kill Queenie. I fronted her in the street and announced what I was going to do. They put me in jail for six months. By the time I got out, Queenie had sold the ranch and disappeared.’’

“Did you ever see her again?”

“No, but I kept hearing about a woman a lot like her who moved from one mining town to another, just the ones where they had big strikes, setting herself up as a respectable widow. I don’t know all the scams she used, but she must have robbed dozens of miners. In a few years I didn’t hear anything about her any more. I suppose she got so rich she could go back East, or maybe out to San Francisco.”

“What happened to you?”

“When I got out of jail, I went back to the mine fields. I couldn’t stay in Texas, and mining and cows was all I knew.”

“When did you decide to become a bounty hunter?”

Trinity flinched at the word.

“A man tried to steal my claim. It wasn’t much of a claim, but it was mine and I intended to keep it. I found out he was wanted for murder in Nebraska, so I waited until he came sneaking up to my cabin at night, hoping to catch me asleep. By the time he woke up he was bound and gagged and halfway to Ogallala.”

“Bounty hunting must have paid better than panning for a few dollars a day.”

“I never accepted a reward for bringing anybody in.”

“But you said you—”

“I never accepted any money, not even in the form of a salary. I only agreed to swear in as a deputy this time because the sheriff insisted. I don’t take money even to pay for my supplies. I don’t do it for money. I do it because I can’t
not
do it.”

Victoria couldn’t disbelieve him now. Not when she could look into his eyes and see all the way into his soul. She felt lower than a snake’s belly.

“I guess I owe you an apology.”

“No, you don’t. I didn’t believe you.”

“Maybe not, but That’s no excuse for the terrible things I said.”

They’re not half as bad as seeing decent people turn their backs on you.”

“Then why did you decide to keep it up?”

“I never thought to do it again, but then a gambler shot three miners in a card game one night. They caught him cheating, but they were too slow on the draw. One of them was a friend of mine. The gambler was wanted in Denver, so I took him in.”

“And you just kept it up after that?”

“Sort of.”

He stopped, clearly reluctant to go on. Victoria felt certain he had never told anybody what he’d just told her. He must have been carrying it locked inside him all these years.

“I could forget losing the ranch, but knowing Queenie had killed Pa and was living free ate at me all the time. If I hadn’t been such a fool over her, Pa would still be alive. The guilt was so bad sometimes that it almost choked me. Every time I saw someone who had escaped from the law, I’d see Queenie all over again.

“I couldn’t do anything about her, I didn’t even know where she was, but I could see that someone else didn’t go free. Each time I took a man in, the feeling would go away for a while, but it always came back again.”

“And when it does, you find someone else to kidnap?”

“That’s about it.”

“Why did you pick me?”

“I hadn’t been back to Bandera since they let me out of jail. I had just taken a man to San Antonio, and I couldn’t resist going by the old place. It was up for sale again. It seems the man who bought it from your Pa didn’t have much luck either. He was gored by a cow, and one of his sons died from a rattlesnake bite. The daughter and the remaining son decided they’d had enough of the Demon D and left with instructions to sell to anybody who was fool enough to buy it.”

Victoria could well understand his temptation to buy back the ranch which should have been his in the first place.

“I offered them a ridiculously low price and they accepted. It was while I was seeing to the paperwork I heard about Judge Blazer’s son. It sounded so much like Queenie I couldn’t help myself. The Judge and his family were away in Austin, but I went to the sheriff and offered to bring you in.”

“How much was the Judge willing to pay?”

“I didn’t ask.” Trinity got to his feet. “It’s getting late. We have a long ride tomorrow.”

“We always have a long ride” Victoria said, accepting that his confidences were at an end. “I’m finding it hard to believe I wasn’t born attached to a horse.”

Victoria went to bed, but she didn’t go to sleep. She couldn’t put Trinity’s story out of her mind. She still didn’t appreciate being kidnapped, but now she could understand his commitment to his task. Lots of people had causes to which they dedicated their lives. She hated Trinity’s cause, but his reasons were laudable. And since he accepted no money, it amounted to some kind of crusade for justice. How could she condemn a man for that?

Easily when he’s taking you back to hang for a crime you didn’t commit!

But even that no longer had its former power to whip up her anger against him. He wasn’t responsible for her being embroiled in a miscarriage of justice. He merely did what the law said should be done.

Victoria felt disgusted with herself. She was stumbling blindly over herself to find excuses for a man who had carried her off from her home and was determined to do anything necessary to get her back to Bandera. And all because he was handsome and amusing and charming and fearless and capable of doing anything he made up his mind to do.

Not just that,
Victoria said to herself, though she couldn’t forget either his smile or his strength. His touch turned her bones to wet rawhide. She had avoided him for the last few days, but she still remembered the ease with which he lifted her into the saddle, the way he held her suspended in midair with one arm. His smile always drew an answering response from her. It was contagious. She couldn’t help it even when she was angry at him.

But it was the moments when she caught him alone with his thoughts, the moments when his pain was so near the surface, which touched her heart and dissolved her anger at him. At that moment he was neither enemy or friend, just a man in need of someone to love and to trust, someone to believe in.

Though her soul might be damned for it, Victoria knew she wanted to be that someone.

“Here, you ought to have this.”

Victoria was getting ready to mount up next morning when Trinity handed her a rifle. Shocked, her gaze sought his face, but he had turned to attach the scabbard to her saddle.

“What made you decide to give me a rifle?”

“I’ll give you some ammunition, too. “If you need to shoot, you won’t have time to ask for shells”

“Are you sure you can trust me?”

“I’ll give you a gun, If you like, but I thought you’d be more comfortable with a rifle.”

“How do you know I won’t use it on you?”

Trinity grinned at her question. “You’d never use it on me.”

Much to her surprise, Victoria realized what he said was true. “What makes you say that?”

“You said you would go with me to Bandera. You won’t break your word.”

“That decision was forced on me.”