Calico (20 page)

“Under the bed?” she parroted. “McCready, go to the devil. I’m no silk an’ satin female.”

“You’re a woman. Act like one, Maggie. I’ve got no time to argue.”

“No!” She grabbed hold of his arm before he could move. “You’ll not be doin’ this to me, McCready. I’m Maggie. You ain’t changin’ me. I’ll fight beside you.”

“Then get dressed, darlin’, or we’ll have one hell of a party.”

But when Maggie spun around to get her clothes, he pulled her back for a quick hard kiss.

“For luck, Maggie mine. And there’s my hunting knife in the chest.”

He was stationed by the window when Maggie came to stand alongside him. “Could be Dutch,” she offered, still feeling a warm glow for his trusting her with a knife. Nothing pleased her more than to have McCready accepting her just as she was. It would be a fine marriage they’d be having.

McCready peered out through the partially opened shutter. The thin crescent of the moon offered him little light to see. But he could hear that the hoofbeats were slowing as they neared. Using the barrel of the rifle, he edged a bit more of the shutter open, bracing the stock of the rifle against his shoulder.

“You’ll not be takin’ offense for me askin’, McCready, but can you shoot the damn rifle?”

“It’s a fine time to be asking me that. But I get by,” he whispered back.

“That might not be good enough since there’s more than one. You need to be hittin’ what you’re aimin’ at.”

“Trust me, Maggie. I haven’t failed you yet.” In the next breath he ordered her to be quiet. Three moving shadows were coming toward the cabin.

Maggie fell silent when she sensed his tension. But his head and shoulders blocked her view out of the window.

“Can you see?” she whispered in his ear.

“That’s funny. There … Oh, forget it, Maggie. Put down the knife. A blind man could see that it’s Dutch leading horses.”

McCready was in the act of turning around to Maggie when Dutch bellowed his name.

“Get the hell out here, McCready!” Dutch roared, cursing as he dismounted and ground tied the horses.

“Never heard Dutch cuss so. He could make a bull-whacker sound like a preachin’ man.”

McCready was of a similar opinion, even if he would have phrased it a bit differently. “Maggie mine, I think you’d be better off staying inside until I find out what has Dutch a mite upset.” He handed her the rifle with no more thought than the absent peck he gave her cheek.

“If you think Dutch’s
a mite upset
, McCready, you’ve been away from your whiskey too long.”

“Don’t remind me.”

Hitching his pants up, McCready went outside.

“McCready,” Dutch said, advancing on him, “you’re as useless as a four-card flush. I oughta haul your ashes out back and toss them over below and beyond.” Poking one finger into McCready’s shoulder, Dutch took a breath and lashed out. “I’ve followed you in dumb places and tight spots. I’ve fought by your side. I’ve protected your back, but this time you’ve done it. This time, McCready, I’m coming after you.”

“You’ve got me,” McCready grated, pinned as he was between Dutch and the cabin wall. “Trouble is, you’re not making much sense, Dutch. I’ll bet you’ve got Maggie biting her lip inside to hear you carry on.”

“Maggie! I’ll give you Maggie, you bastard!” His fists came up between them.

“Since you are one of the few people who know the truth about my mother, I won’t take offense for what you said. But I’m not a boy, Dutch. Back off.”

“Do it, Dutch,” Maggie ordered, motioning with the rifle. “I like you, but you’re not hurtin’ him.”

“Hurting him? Maggie, McCready’s a snake that couldn’t be hurt if I pounded him into the ground and threw alkali on him. You can’t protect him. If you knew—” Dutch stopped. Without warning he swung at McCready.

“Dutch!” Maggie screamed, just as McCready ducked to avoid his blow. She yelled his name again, leveling the gun at his belly. “Back off. Even you couldn’t be missin’ from here. You got somethin’ to say, say it. Tell me, if it’s so bad. But don’t beat on him.”

“I can’t.” Dutch turned his back on McCready, shaking his head. “Maggie, it’s time you came back.”

She lowered the gun. “Can’t you be tellin’ me why?”

“I’m not the one that needs to talk to you.”

“McCready?” Maggie looked at him, hoping that he would tell her what was going on.

“Go inside, Maggie, and give Dutch and me a few minutes.”

“Sure you’ll be—”

“I’m sure. Just go.” McCready waited until she closed the door. “I want you to tell me what happened, Dutch. You owe me that much, if nothing else.”

Maggie stood by the open window until they were out of sight. Whatever Dutch was telling McCready was bad news. She had never seen Dutch in a rage tearing into McCready. Maybe someone had robbed the Rawhider. But that didn’t make sense. Dutch wouldn’t be mad at McCready for something that wasn’t his fault.

She couldn’t stand around and wring her hands over it. Her time with McCready in this cabin was coming to an end. Every instinct she had said it was so.

A short time later McCready came back inside the cabin. “Maggie,” he said without looking at her, “we’re going back to Cooney Camp.”

“Figured that. You’ll be needin’ your boots.”

“Yeah. Right. My boots.” He was relieved that she didn’t fire questions at him. He had no answers to give her. It wasn’t until he sat on the bed that he saw what Maggie had done. The quilt and blankets were rolled, the fire smothered with ashes. Pots and kettles were stacked aside, and his clothes were out of sight. He assumed she had put them back into his chest. Maggie was standing by the table, dressed in her clothes, quietly watching him. He couldn’t meet her gaze.

“Will you be wantin’ to take your rifle with you?”

He heard the layers of hurt and bewilderment in her voice, but he still couldn’t look at her. “Yeah, Maggie. I’ll need it.”

“You won’t be sharin’ what’s wrong with me?”

We’ll share, everything, Maggie, equally and together
. As if he had heard her repeat his words out loud, he knew she was thinking about them.

“Maggie, I just can’t.”

She ignored the plea in his voice. “Why won’t you tell me what’s wrong? I told you I ain’t no silk an’ satin female.”

He shook his head and concentrated on pulling on his boots.

Maggie took a quick look around. She had lost so much in this cabin, not all of it bad. She had found more to tip the scale of good things. But the first time she had asked him to share with her what was wrong, he refused. What else would he hold back from her?

“I’ll be waitin’ outside.” But even as she said it, she lingered by the door, hoping he would stop her or at least look at her. When he didn’t, she felt the weight of the scale tip back to losses. Only for the life of her she didn’t understand why.

The three of them rode back slowly to Cooney Camp since the horses were winded from Dutch’s hard ride. Dutch thought about McCready insisting that Dutch be the one to tell Maggie about Satin. McCready had enough of his own to sort out with her.

He spared yet another glance to where Maggie rode in the middle, worried that she was so quiet. She hadn’t asked one question when she came outside and mounted up. She just sat and waited until McCready joined them. It wasn’t a natural state for Maggie.

McCready wasn’t any better. He hadn’t even looked at Maggie. Now that Dutch had had a chance to digest everything that McCready told him, he knew this was going way beyond a right fetching dilemma.

This went all the way to a hard blow, tempest strength.

Dutch was no coward, but he kept holding off what he had to do until a crack of light broke the far horizon. The only thing he had in his favor was that Maggie didn’t have a weapon at hand. He pulled up and stepped down from his horse before they knew what he was doing.

“Maggie, I need to talk to you.” Dutch waited while she walked her horse back to him.

“I’m here.”

“Yeah, well maybe you’d better get down while I say it.”

It wasn’t Dutch’s request but McCready’s continued silence that left her without the strength to argue. She got down. Holding the reins, she stood by her horse.

“Maggie, you know that I like you. You know that Pete and me were friends,” Dutch said, wishing he didn’t have to do this.

“Just say whatever it is.”

He shot a look at McCready, wondering if he heard the almost lifeless sound of her voice. But McCready gave no sign that he heard, and Dutch knew he had to get this over with.

“Maggie, there ain’t no nice way of doing this. Satin—”

“Satin?” Guilt that she hadn’t even asked about her dog cut through the hurt that kept her quiet. “What happened?”

“We were getting along just fine. I took good care of her, and she—”

Maggie slapped the reins against her palm.

Dutch heeded her warning. “Cora Ann let her out tonight. Nothing would have happened to her. She ran up to your cabin, but there was a man either following or waiting for her. There was a shot. I don’t know if she’s hurt. I couldn’t find her after the howling stopped.”

Maggie was already in the saddle, yanking the horse’s head around.

“Maggie, wait!” Dutch called, but she was letting the horse stretch out, and McCready was right behind her.

Dutch had no choice but to follow them.

Maggie didn’t hear the horses behind her. She leaned low over her horse’s neck, crooning to her mustang to give her heart and get them to Satin.

Pete had given her the pup after two men tried to jump a claim they’d been working. Maggie remembered holding the squirming ball of fur who wouldn’t stop licking her, and promising that nothing would happen to take the dog away from her.

But McCready had. To protect her life, he’d said. But if he cost Satin hers, she didn’t know if she could forgive him.

“Where’s she heading?” Dutch yelled to McCready as they raced side by side after Maggie.

“Not to camp,” McCready answered, wondering the same thing himself.

Maggie let the mustang pick her pace around the base of a mesa. If Satin was hurt, she knew there was only one place the dog would go. She headed deep into the Mogollon Mountains, riding over flat stretches of land and through twisted canyons. Maggie knew she was running her horse out, but she was desperate to find Satin.

It was a thought that McCready echoed as he kept his eyes on her fleeing form. He’d lost track of where they were and suspected that Dutch was as lost, but Maggie seemed to know where they were headed as if she had made this ride many times before. She wasn’t slowly picking a trail around outcrops; she was riding hard. And she by-passed canyons only to turn down the next tortured opening. A suspicion grew inside him that Maggie was heading for one of the mine claims. Guilt ate at him that Maggie trusted him, while he couldn’t return the same to her.

A spread of soft glowing colors like the muted shades of a watercolor announced dawn. McCready was better able to see Maggie, still leaning low over her mustang’s neck riding away from him. The sense of loss stunned him. He wanted to call out to her, but she wouldn’t hear him, or if she did, Maggie wouldn’t stop to hear anything he had to say now.

And when they got back to Cooney Camp, she wouldn’t want to listen at all.

Maggie followed the small meandering stream deep into the canyon’s belly. Concealed in a thicket of cottonwoods was her lean-to. She was off her horse before the mustang fully stopped and running toward the trees.

A whimper from the dark interior was all the reward Maggie needed for her wild ride. There was no way to hold back her tears as she knelt beside Satin. Burying her face in the dog’s fur, Maggie whispered her name over and over.

McCready dismounted, no longer speculating about where Maggie had led them to. He didn’t care once he heard her crying. When Dutch made a move to follow her inside, he stopped him.

“Give her time alone, Dutch.”

“I feel responsible if that dog’s been hurt.”

“It wasn’t
your
fault,” McCready answered.

Dutch had the strange feeling that McCready was about to add something, but he didn’t. He took the horses to water, glancing back to where McCready settled down with his back against a tree. There wasn’t anything else he could do but wait as well until Maggie came out.

But Maggie wasn’t thinking about either one of them. She ran her hands over Satin’s fur and found where a bullet had grazed her haunch.

“It’s me fault, girl, an’ no others that this happened,” Maggie whispered, thankful that the wound wasn’t deep. Satin had done a thorough job of cleaning herself, for Maggie didn’t find blood. “You’re a smart girl for thinkin’ to come here.” But Maggie couldn’t stop blaming herself. She had felt the same way when Pete died. If she hadn’t left him alone, he might be alive. If she had let McCready have the mines, no one would have shot at her, and he wouldn’t have taken Satin away from her to protect her life.

“That’s why he took you, girl. To protect me. But you’re the one who got hurt.”

Maggie rose to her feet. “Come outside, girl, an’ let me wash you. Then we’ll head back home an’ find the bastard that did this to you.”

She felt both McCready’s and Dutch’s intense gazes follow her down to the stream, where she knelt to take a drink and wash her face before she bathed Satin’s wound.

Dutch broke under her silence before McCready did and rose to go to Maggie.

“Sorry ain’t enough to say,” he began. “I can see she was lucky it was only a graze. Satin will be fine. Won’t you, girl?” he asked, hoping for more response from the dog than he was getting from Maggie.

Satin heeled as Maggie once again came to her feet and started back to the horses.

Dutch grabbed hold of her arm, ignoring the growl from the dog. “Maggie, please. Say something. Yell. Curse me. If I had a knife I’d hand it over for skinning, but—”

She looked up at him, her eyes cold with suppressed fury.

“You got a name?”

Dutch swallowed against the rage bubbling beneath the even edge of her voice. “Bill.”

Maggie shrugged off his restraining hand. “You said Cora Ann let Satin out. What’s she got to do with him?”

“I’m not sure. He rode in late the other night, and she spent the time drinking with him. I know he spent the night with her and hung around the next day like he didn’t want her out of his sight. I stopped her from leaving after she let Satin out.”

“Where is she, Dutch?”

“Locked in her room.”

Maggie walked off, only to find McCready waiting for her by the horses. She glanced at the three sets of reins in his hands and knew he wasn’t going to let her ride out without talking to him.

McCready tipped back his hat. “What do you plan—”

“What I’m doin’ is none of your business, McCready. Hand over me reins.”

“You’re not accusing me of having something to do with this.”

Since he was telling her and not asking, Maggie felt her back go up. “Is that what you’re sayin’? You didn’t know who was after me and me dog?”

Her eyes held his, caught with the morning sun and glittering with its heat. “That is exactly what I’m telling you, Maggie. The truth.”

“Once I figured you wouldn’t know the truth if it was in the bottom of a whiskey glass. News for you, McCready. I’m back to wonderin’ the same.”

In a very calm but most deliberate motion, he reached out and gathered her shirtfront in his hand, uncaring if the dog tore into him like her growls warned. “I didn’t lie to you about this. I was trying to save your life.”

She didn’t jerk free; she didn’t even look at his hand. Her eyes held to his, trying to read the truth there, for she no longer trusted herself. If she was right, McCready was setting her up. If she was wrong, Maggie knew she was going to lose and lose big.

Trouble was, she wasn’t sure she could continue trusting him. The long ride had made her yearn again for her freedom, but there was no way she could set aside the hours they had spent together. The hurt resurfaced over his refusal to tell her what had happened that brought Dutch to the cabin.

His eyes were intent on hers and very angry. Maggie reached up and uncurled his fingers from her shirt. “Do you trust me?”

“Trust you?”

“Yeah, McCready. You want mine, give over yours. Tell me why Dutch came.”

McCready gazed at the still-rising sun. If he had been granted more time with Maggie, time to understand all that he was feeling for her, he would tell her what she wanted. But he hadn’t been given time, and now everything was going to hell.

“You’ll find out as soon as we get back. Trust me.”

“That’s your answer?”

“That’s it, Maggie.”

“This is mine. You asked me to trust you when you said that Dutch had Satin an’ nothin’ would happen to her. I did an’ she’s the one got hurt. You asked me to trust you an’ said we’d share equal, like partners about me mines. I did. You asked an’ I gave meself to you with nothin’ held back. Now you’re askin’ for me trust again but refuse to tell me what’s wrong.” Maggie grabbed the reins from him. “Guess you’ll wait to find out.”

She put her foot into the stirrup and held the saddle horn, flowing smoothly up onto the saddle. She wavered when McCready put his hand on her leg.

“Maggie, for what it’s worth, I
am
sorry that Satin was hurt.”

“I wish I could believe you.” She jerked her horse around and kept at a walk for Satin to follow alongside. But she wished McCready had told her that he was sorry he had hurt her.

When Cooney Camp came into sight, Maggie veered off to go to her cabin. McCready cut his horse in front of hers.

“Come down to the Rawhider. It’s not safe for you to be alone.”

“Get out of me way. I’m goin’ home an’ getting me gun. Then I’ll come down to deal with Cora Ann.”

“You go beyond mule, Maggie. You go all the way to hard rock.”

“I’ve never denied it, McCready.” Maggie deliberately began shortening the reins and making her horse rear.

McCready had no choice but to back his horse away and let her go. He turned to look at Dutch. “Your call—stay or go?” “I’ll stay.”

“Take this,” McCready said, tossing him the rifle. “And I’ll hope you won’t need to use it.”

Dusk was fast closing by the time he got to the Rawhider, and he was in no mood to listen to Ira and Slick’s questions when he had one of his own.

“Where is Cora Ann?”

“Upstairs,” Ira answered. “Just like Dutch told us to keep her.”

Slick came from behind the bar to follow McCready up the short flight of steps. But when McCready turned and he got a good look at his face, Slick backed down. “Was just coming to see if you needed help.”

“The only help I need is to find the man responsible for shooting at Satin. You spread the word, Slick. You know I’ll be generous in rewarding the man or men who find him.”

“Ain’t no call for you to be offering to pay. That’s why no one’s around. They’re all out looking. Pete was damn good to a lot of men, McCready. Ain’t one of us forget that. We’ll do all we can to help Maggie without you asking.”

“Yeah. Maggie’s got herself an army of knights and doesn’t even know it.” McCready went up the stairs, but instead of going directly to Cora Ann’s room, he headed for his own. Never had he craved a drink so badly as now.

He held the bottle and suddenly stopped himself from pouring the drink. He didn’t need liquor; he needed Maggie. And once she met Larson Vladimir, she was going to kill him. Much as McCready wished it was the other way around that Larson would be the man killed, he wasn’t going to waste time wishing for what couldn’t be.

What he could do was to make sure that Maggie remained alive. Cora Ann held the key.

When he reached her room and saw that the key was missing from the lock, he cursed his own stupidity for not getting the key. It also hit him that it was too much trouble to bother.

“Stand back from the door, Cora Ann.”

“McCready? Oh, thank goodness you’re back. Dutch locked—”

The splintering door silenced and frightened her at the same time.

The second resounding kick that McCready gave the door sent it slamming open.

Cora Ann found herself in the corner of her room, with her hands spread on the walls as if to keep them from closing in on her. But when she read the fury in McCready’s face, her heart beat, jumped, and pounded just like his boots pounded across the floor and brought him in front of her.

“I warned you when you came here looking for work that I didn’t want any cheating at cards. And no damn trouble. I never took a cent that you made up here, did I? I told you to keep it all but don’t bring me trouble, right? And I warned you what would happen if you brought me any, didn’t I? I told you you’d answer to me.”

Cora Ann squeezed her eyes closed, trying to brace herself for the blows she knew were coming.

“Stop cowering,” he ordered, disgust filling him. He knew she expected him to beat her; most working girls were battered daily no matter where they plied their trade. He raked back his hair with both hands, wishing he had never given in to the miners’ demands to hire any women. And it was too late now to worry about it. But he had never hit a woman, and he wasn’t about to start now.