Arizona Embrace (34 page)

There were just three of them, riding hunched over in the saddle, their heads lowered against the rain. They there bundled up against the cold and wet, but Victoria recognized Red Beard in the lead.

The horses, smelling the presence of strange horses, became restless. The packhorse swelled up to nicker, but Trinity stopped him. The horse stamped his foot in frustration. It sounded like part of the bank caving in on the rising creek.

Victoria’s horse stood quietly, but she could feel a sneeze coming. She pressed the back of her hand against her nose, but that didn’t help. She buried her face in Trinity’s shirt, but that didn’t help either. The closer they came, the more powerful her impulse to sneeze became.

Victoria rubbed her nose vigorously. She forced herself to take deep, slow breaths. She even turned her face up to the sky and swallowed a few drops of rainwater.

Nothing helped. She had to sneeze.

“We ain’t never going to find them in this rain,” one spoke. Victoria didn’t recognize his voice. He must be the than who never spoke in the hotel. “Ain’t no sense in us getting pneumonia for nothing.”

“We’ll find them” Red Beard said. “There’s only one way to get to Texas from Gabel’s Stop. Besides, you can still see the track of their horses. The rain hasn’t washed it all away yet.”

“It will soon. It keeps getting heavier.”

“We ain’t giving up,” Red Beard reiterated. “I’m going to kill the that stranger. Ain’t nobody kills my brother and gets away with it.”

“I don’t give a damn about Hobie,” the blond said. “I want that woman. Hot damn! Have you ever dreamed of anything like her? It’ll feel better than heaven to sink into her. I’ll stay there all night just pumping her full until I plumb wear myself out.”

“Can’t you never think of nothing but women? That was your cousin that man killed.”

“He told Hobie to stand still. Hobie never could do anything anybody told him. Wouldn’t do a lick of work either, not “If he could get out of it. Good riddance, I say.”

“You son of a bitch,” Red Beard exploded as he turned on the blond.

“Ain’t no use in you killing each other over Hobie,” said the other man. “He wouldn’t care nothing about it.”

“You just shut up about Hobie, you hear!” Red Beard told the blond.

“Sure. I’ll just think about that woman. I think we ought to keep her. Take her back to the cabin. She’s bound to be able to cook better’n Buster. And after she’s done filling us with dinner, I’ll fill her full of something even better.” He laughed.

“Can’t you ever think of anything except your dong?”

“I think it’s a good idea,” the one Victoria assumed was Buster said. “If we ever find them.”

“You set that female up in our camp, and we’d never get nothing done. You two would be fighting over her from see to can’t see.”

“We could take her in shifts.”

They passed on down the trail, arguing over how they would divide up the day so they could make the best use of Victoria.

Victoria didn’t sneeze. Listening to what they said had scared it completely out of her.

She and Trinity remained perfectly quiet until a flash of lightning showed the trail to be empty.

“We’ll stay here about fifteen minutes more “Trinity said.

“"Then what do we do?”

“We follow them.”

“Follow them!” Victoria squeaked. “You must be crazy.”

She sneezed. Twice.

“I’ve got to get you out of the rain before you get sick. I have a friend who has a ranch near here. We’ll follow them until we have to leave the trail. We’ll lose our tracks in theirs.”

“But won’t they be able to see where we turned off?”

“They won’t have any idea we got behind them. There were no tracks there when they came by. If they do turn back, which I doubt, they’ll think it’s just somebody else coming along the same road after them.”

Victoria wasn’t about to argue. The notion of some place dry had taken hold of her imagination. It was all she could think about.

But her relief was some time in coming.

Morning came, grey and full of rain. And colder than ever. They soon left the trail, but it was past noon before they came in sight of a solitary cabin.

“Doesn’t seem to be anybody home,” Trinity said. “No smoke.”

Victoria’s spirits fell. She didn’t think she could go on any longer. Only the prospect of getting warm and dry had kept her going this long. She’d been awake and in the saddle for the better part of three days now. She was so exhausted she didn’t care if she had to find a cave. She had to get off this horse and out of the rain.

Trinity continued on toward the house. Victoria was surprised but didn’t argue. If Trinity intended to break into the place, she’d be right behind him.

“Can’t figure where Ben got to,” Trinity said when they halted out of the rain under a broad overhang. “But he won’t mind us putting up here for the night.”

Trinity lifted Victoria out of the saddle. She couldn’t have dismounted by herself.

The small cabin was only one room. Victoria gave silent thanks it had a wooden floor. After twelve hours of rain, a dirt floor would have been under several inches of water. A handmade table and two slat-bottom chairs stood in the center of the room. A small iron stove with a flue through the ceiling stood out from the far wall. To the left of the stove, the absent Ben had built shelves into the wall where he could keep all his supplies within reach. On the right, a small alcove formed by an open closet on one side and some deep shelves on the other contained the single bed. Even though the bed had been carefully made up, it hadn’t been designed for comfort.

Victoria thought it looked heavenly.

Pegs along the inside and outside walls held saddles, bridles, hats, and anything else the owner wanted to hang up.

Despite the long and heavy rain, only two places in the roof leaked seriously enough for Victoria to consider putting a bucket under them. A little light filtered in from three windows, all of which stood in need of a good cleaning.

“I’ll start a fire and put some water on for coffee,” Trinity said, coming in behind her with the saddlebags. “You get out of those wet clothes.” Long years of practice enabled Trinity to have a fire going in less than a minute. Rainwater, even more quickly procured from a barrel outside, would serve to make coffee.

“Come on, get out of your clothes,” Trinity said, when he turned around and Victoria still stood, dripping water on the floor.

“I can’t. Not with you here.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. You’ll catch your death.”

“I can’t!” Victoria repeated.

“I’ve got to take care of the horses. By the time I unsaddle them, rub them down, and feed them, you ought to have had all the time you need.”

“I hate for you to have to go back outside, but there’s only one room.”

“Don’t worry,” Trinity said. “I’d have had to take care of the horses even if this place was bigger than any house in Texas.”

Chapter Eighteen

The minute the door closed behind Trinity, Victoria dug into her saddlebags for a complete change of clothing. She pulled off her boots and then began striping off her wet clothes. Even with the rain slick, she was wet through to the skin and chilled to the bone.

Standing as close to the small fire as she dared, she stripped down to bare skin. Shivering, her teeth chattering uncontrollably, Victoria hurried into her dry clothes. They felt damp and cold. She stood as close as she dared to the fire to dry her clothes and warm her bones.

That didn’t warm her enough. She took a thick Indian blanket from the bed and wrapped it around her shoulders. She pulled one of the chairs up close to the fire and sank into it. For a few minutes, her body remained cold and stiff, her muscles taut. But as the fire began to warm the cabin, and the heavy blanket began to trap the warmth of her body, Victoria started to relax.

She couldn’t believe how tired she was. Even in the flight from Texas, she’d never been in the saddle so long, never endured such physical exhaustion, never had to escape such a potpourri of evil pursuers.

But it was all over now. She was out of the saddle, warm and dry, with enough food to last for days. And she was safe. Trinity would see to that. For the first time in uncountable hours, she could relax.

She was getting too warm. She moved her chair back a little. The water was beginning to boil. She ought to look for the coffee, but she was too tired to bother. She was too tired to sit up. Her eyelids began to droop. All she wanted was to go to sleep, but she had to stay awake. She couldn’t go to sleep before Trinity got back.

But he would be gone for a long time. It would take him more than half an hour to take care of three horses.

There was no point in her just sitting here all the time. She probably should see about fixing something to eat, but she wasn’t hungry. Besides, she didn’t like the idea of rummaging about in somebody else’s house.
Let Trinity do it. The place belonged to his friend
.

Victoria got up, went over and sat down on the bed. It wasn’t as comfortable as her bed back home, but it would do for a short nap. She lay down and pulled the blanket up over her shoulders.

She wouldn’t sleep, just doze for ten or fifteen minutes. “Then she’d get up and fix something to eat. Trinity probably left the supplies in the pile with the saddlebags. She’d look in a minute. No point in getting up now when she was finally warm.

Victoria gratefully relaxed into the bed. There were times when this journey with Trinity seemed like a nightmare from which she would awaken to find Anita shaking her and saying she’d never get anything done if she slept her life away.

Victoria closed her eyes and smiled. Anita was such a dear. She and Ramon had spoiled her. But so had her father and her uncle … and Buc. Everyone had spoiled her until Trinity came along. Only Trinity had decided she wouldn’t break, that she was as tough as any man. She appreciated that, but she had to admit she liked being spoiled.

Maybe Trinity wasn’t always like that. Maybe, when he was at his ranch, he could relax. He might even say something nice to her without spoiling it a minute later by saying something rude.

She wondered what his ranch was like. What would it reveal about him that she didn’t know? Could she get past his distrust of women? She could try. Surely, if she went about it the right way….

“It’s getting worse out there,” Trinity said as he entered the cabin. The wind sucked the door shut behind him. “I wouldn’t be surprised if this turns into a….”

Victoria was sound asleep. Not even his noisy entrance disturbed her. A strong odor of something burning pervaded the room. Trinity hurried to the stove. The water had burned out of the pan. Taking another pot from the shelf, Trinity hurried outside, dipped it into the rain barrel, and poured the contents into the pan upon returning. A loud hissing, a cloud of steam, and the water would soon be ready for coffee.

He walked over to the bed. He wanted to replace the blanket. It was heavy and coarse, made out of horsehair, but Victoria’s fingers gripped it tightly. He wished he had a soft pillow instead of the hard, cotton-filled pillow Ben used, but she seemed to be sleeping soundly, despite the packed cotton and the coarse blanket.

He wanted to do something to make her more comfortable. It wasn’t very satisfying knowing the best thing he could do was leave her alone. He wasn’t doing a very good job of taking care of her. Grant Davidge certainly wouldn’t have allowed her to go if he’d known she would be attacked by Indians, pursued by randy miners, and end up sleeping in a dirty cabin on a remote ranch across the New Mexico border.

Trinity certainly wouldn’t have let any woman he cared for go under the circumstances.

“That’s why you feel so guilty
. The undeniable realization nearly took his breath away.
You care for her. You care for her in a way you haven’t cared for any woman since Queenie, in a way you swore never to care again
.

Panic rose in his throat. It was the same feeling he had for the first few months after Queenie married his father. That feeling of helplessness and hopelessness, of being sucked into a dark pit to be tortured with the promise of everything he ever wanted and couldn’t have. For years it had pursued him like a wolf pursues a deer during a famine; it shadowed him relentlessly, remorselessly, unceasingly. It used to wake him up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat.

Falling in love was akin to losing control of his life, to yielding himself up to destruction, of letting someone suck the life out of his soul until nothing remained but a hard shell. He had fought it. And he’d spent fifteen years hardening his soul so he would never feel that way again.

Yet, much to his surprise, the panic passed almost as quickly as it came. It wouldn’t be the same way with Victoria. But what did he want from her? What did he want
with
her? He hadn’t stopped to consider that. He had often considered the fact that he desired her, but he wanted something much more meaningful, more long-lasting.

Don’t be stupid. Women like Victoria only consider marriage. And they don’t consider it with a thirty-dollar-a-month cowhand
.