Canyon Song (12 page)

From his pallet near the hearth, Quinn watched her cautiously
. He sat cross-legged, the blanket draped around his frame. “When I first got here, I figured you might do that to me.”

Expertly, she peeled off the soft pelt, turning it inside-out as she worked
. “What makes you think I’ve ruled out the idea?”

He shook his head
. “You were right before. You didn’t go through all this trouble just to kill me. But I’m still wondering why.”

“It’s what I do, heal people.”  She cut through joints and tossed the meaty chunks into a pan she’d filled with snow
. Blood droplets bloomed into pink petals against the field of white.

“But why heal me
? Didn’t you realize who I was?”

“The Navajo brought you here
. I trusted their wisdom. And I trusted the curing woman’s teaching.”  Anna paused to add some spices from her precious store into the pan. She measured out a double portion of dried corn she’d soaked this morning and poured it in as well.

He said nothing, but his moss-colored eyes seemed to flicker in the firelight, to weigh her every word.

She decided it would be best, this time, to answer him completely. “The only other voices that spoke to me were those of fear and of what I once was. I trust neither of those voices anymore.”

His words dropped into a husky whisper
. “What happened to change you? What did they do to you, Annie Fait
h
no, Anna?”

She hooked the pot’s handle over a metal arm and swung it into place to cook above the fire
. She watched the snow inside the pan melt gradually over the heat, just as she sensed herself dissolving with Quinn’s question and the emotion in his words.

She turned to look at him and saw his shape sparkling with the tears trapped in her eyes
. “I owe you a great deal, Quinn Ryan. But I don’t owe you that story.”

He paused as if to consider, then continued
. “It’s all right. I’ve decided. I won’t try to take you when I go.”

“Take me where?”

“To Copper Ridge, to face what you did to me six years ago. You might not believe this, but I’m the sheriff there. Guess old Hamby took a fancy to my badge, or I would show you.”

She blinked at him, unable to comprehend what he had said
. When she recovered, she asked, “Since when do they elect card sharps to put in charge of law and order?”

“I suppose about the same time they cast a thieving saloon singer in the role of angel of mercy
. I don’t gamble anymore. Haven’t since . . . well, you.”

His words hurt, but she supposed that she deserved them
. “You mean you weren’t shot by someone you had cheated?”

“It was one of Hamby’s boys, like I said before
. I caught the bastards burning out some Navajo. I meant to ride back into town, get help. But they ─ they were ─ Good Lord . . .”  He closed his eyes tightly, as if by doing so, he might stop reliving something far too awful to describe.

As she watched him, she could feel the dark echo of his pain
. She imagined him being overwhelmed by lurid images, much like those that had touched her when he’d asked what Hamby’s men had done. She tried to clamp down on her compassion, bring it under tight control, but instead it grew as wild as the creek with the melting winter snows.

As if she’d never broken with music, Anna felt a tattered fragment of a song rise up
. The first song since that terrible attack six years before. A Spanish
corrido
, its simple melody might soothe Quinn. But even more compelling was the feel of it inside her mind, the weight and texture of each note.

She had to try to sing it, not only to console Quinn but to assure herself that she still could
. She had to give voice to this bright mirage of music lest it dissolve into old pain.

She’d never sung the words before, had only heard them in the old woman’s creaking voice
. Yet her mouth gently curved around each word, each note, as if she’d sung it all her life.

“
Se ve vagar la misteriosa sombra

que se detiene al pie de una ventana,

y murmura: “No llores angel mio,

que volveré mañana . . .” 

Before she’d never thought much of the words, a soldier’s lament at his leave-taking, a soldier’s promise to his angel to return. She thought of Quinn’s return to her, though there had been no heartfelt promise, and the only angel in their story lay long-shrouded in a cold and stony grave.

Quinn lifted his head to look at her
. She heard, as she continued, his exhalation of surrender. She felt, rather than saw, his own sharp-toothed memories loose their chokehold on his soul.

When she finished, he spared her a we
ak smile. “You sound even nicer singing sad tunes than you did belting bar songs back in Mud Wasp. Ever consider going back to that ─ maybe just the singing, not the rest?”

She gave the pot over the fire a stir, thinking of the music she had lost
. Whatever had it earned her but trouble anyway? She shook her head. “Do you think of returning to your wicked ways, Quinn Ryan?”

He stared at her in a way that sent a shiver rippling up her spine
. “Only to the one that’s tempting me right now. Aside from that, I’m mainly thinking of going back to get my spare gun and a couple of deputies to fix Hamby and his boys for good.”

“It could be weeks until you’re strong enough to walk out of this canyon.”

“I was hoping you might have an extra horse that you could loan me.”

“I had only the one
. He’s gone.”

Quinn shifted the blanket to cover both his shoulders
. “Gone? Where is he?”

“Just where this poor rabbit’s going,” Anna answered, “to satisfy the hunger of a beast.”

*     *     *

Though Lucy lay sleeping in a bedroom designed to insulate her from the wildness of Arizona, the blue-gray expanse she dreamed of appeared no more civilized
. Neither the hoof prints of the horse in harness nor the runners of the sleigh yet marred the moonlit surface of a snow-covered cornfield. She glimpsed that unsullied scene from beneath the poor cover of bare elm trees and the sheltering dark boughs of a holly. Brilliant berries dotted the leaves’ bases, like small globules of blood.

There had been blood inside, too, in that sleigh tucked in the shadows
. Blood beneath the rug that warmed them. Blood amid the plumes of steam that rose from breathy exhalations, faster, harder . . . all so enticingly forbidden.

Lucy’s breaths grew quicker as she dreamed of David’s hands, his mouth . . . Dear, God
!

She’d told Miss Rathbone she was going to a sleighing frolic with Edward Harris and his sisters
. Miss Rathbone, acting in her father’s stead while he finished his Washington business, had allowed her. But what Miss Rathbone hadn’t guessed was that a second young man met her just outside the gate when the Harris siblings brought her home. He’d convinced Edward he would be happy to escort Miss Worthington inside, where he had business.

And why shouldn’t Edward, steady Edward, have believed them
? Lucy, his fiancée, had always conducted herself honorably. His young sisters both complained of the icy clear cold of the night. And David Tanner, the Worthington’s assistant coachman, had always presented himself as one who knew his place.

But Edward had never seen the flirtatious glances that passed between his fiancée and the fellow nor heard the shocking things he whispered when she chanced to cross his path
. He never would have guessed how his decorous Miss Lucy, instead of having the impertinent young man fired, had gone out of her way to come upon him with increasing frequency, had even sent to him one of her embroidered handkerchiefs on Christmas Eve. He had no reason to suspect that David had a horse in harness in the barn, that handsome, dark-haired David had been waiting for his chance.

How many times had Lucy dreamed that evening
? She had known, as if by instinct, how the secret touch would be the one that would ignite her, just as David’s daring whispered words had sparked her soul. And oh, how those sparks had caught, how they’d leapt into a roaring blaze in those few minutes . . .

At least until that awful instant when Edward had returned to find her
. Until he’d dragged her home and seen ─ even Miss Rathbone had seen it ─ that damning splotch of blood upon her skirt.

The rush of shame that wakened her made Lucy sob aloud
. And yet, and yet . . . she wiped tears from her eyes, then closed them, trying to recapture the exhilaration of what happened in those lustrous moments before she had been caught.

Cañon del Sangre de Cristo

March 31, 1884

“Here, Ryan, why don’t you make yourself useful?”  Anna leaned to pass Quinn the damp bundle she had brought in from the cold, even though he’d just awakened.

Notion roused himself to walk over and sniff her smelly burden.

Quinn sat up, yawning, and quickly coughed
. His face screwed up, apparently at the odor. Shaking his head, he reminded her, “You said yourself last night the wound was healing nicely. No more of those stinking poultices.”

She unceremoniously dumped the slimy burden, which was far bigger than a poultice anyway, into his lap
. The newborn goat squirmed and weakly bleated, “Ma-a-a-h.”

She fought a smile at the confused expression on his face
. For the love of
Dios
, he looked as sleep-tousled as a boy when he awakened.

“It’s a tiny cabin, no room for deadwood
. Come on,” she urged. “Take that rag and rub down the little fellow before he freezes. He came a few weeks too early for spring weather.”

Her memory took her back to the mornings during her recovery, when Señora Valdez had first awakened her at dawn to demand she help with simple chores
. Anna had cursed the old woman at the time, unable to make sense of the
curandera’s
methods.

It was doubly important now, thought Anna, to recast herself into the role of healer
. Since her own near-freezing last week, though she and Quinn had kept as far apart as possible, she sometimes caught him watching her intently. She tried to avoid eye contact, but several times a days, their gazes locked with an almost audible click, and she knew beyond all doubt that he was remembering when he’d held her, the sensation of her bare flesh against his. He was recalling other times, too, when their bodies twined toward ecstasy, as if they’d had forever, not two weeks.

She knew it because she, too, was reliving those lost hours. . . as well as imagining things she had no right to dream of, things that would only serve to hurt them both.

To distract herself, she ordered, “Rub briskly – and use both hands. You’re favoring the left.”

“That’s because this shoulder’s sore as hell,” he snapped.

She felt the corners of her mouth twitch. “I know your little friend there’s small, but maybe he could still provide us with the crucial ingredient to make another poultice.”

“I’m rubbing already
.
There
– satisfied?” 

The gold and white kid’s hair now stuck up in all directions
. Notion cocked his head at the small intruder and whined in canine confusion.

Anna quirked an eyebrow
. “That goat’s looking more like you every minute. Think I’ll call him Ryan.”

Quinn chuckled, an easy sound that reminded Anna of other times they’d laughed together, six years back
. The moment choked down to silence as he looked into her face. The warmth in his green eyes made her wonder if he’d forgotten for the moment what she’d done to him . . . and if he’d lost sight of how much hatred he still carried.

The newborn kid broke the silence with a hungry bleat
. Gratefully, Anna scooped him back into her arms and told Quinn, “Thank – thank you for drying your new namesake. His
mamacita
will be worried, and her milk will warm him from the inside out. I’m – I’m going to put the two of them in the feed shed until the weather warms a bit.”

Without waiting for an answer, she stepped back outside and leaned against the door to shut it
. For a long time she remained there, eyes closed against the icy wind, a bitter wind that chilled the farthest reaches of her canyon, but not the glowing embers resurrected in her heart.

CHAPTER FIVE

Copper Ridge, Arizona Territory

April 6, 1884

Ward stared out his window and glowered at the icicles
. Damned incessant winter had delayed all his plans. He should have been married by this time, were it not for the late ice storm that prevented Judge Clancy’s arrival. Travel all over the northern territory had come to a standstill, not just for days, but weeks. At least the sky had cleared this morning, its blue as bright as a jay’s feather.

The closest fang of ice began to drip, slowly at first, then with a steady plop, plop, plop onto the slushy snow beneath the eaves.

Finally.
He poured a shot into his morning coffee, just to help settle the foreboding that gnawed at him like termites at an old log cabin.

Maybe the worst of the snow would melt today
. Maybe Clancy would perform the marriage before his housekeeper lost her mind and Miss Lucy lost all patience.

“Why do we have to wait?” the girl asked time after time.

She seemed not to hear his explanation, that there wasn’t another local white man who could do the honors. For a while he half expected her to insist on a local padre, even if the ceremony must be held in Spanish ─ or in Latin.

Ward could imagine the Senator’s reaction if he learned a Mexican Papist officiated for his Protestant daughter’s wedding vows
. The old man had insisted the ceremony both proper and expeditious.

Once again the eagerness of both Lucy and her
father nagged at him. Once again he wondered why both seemed to desire such haste.

Ward sipped at the coffee
. Whatever could be wrong with Worthington’s youngest daughter? He’d watched her carefully these last two weeks, but he saw no signs of either physical or mental defects. She seemed pleased, almost
too
pleased, with everything about their impending marriage. Except for the delays.

Could she truly love him
? He dismissed the wild idea.   The two of them barely knew each other. What then? What would he find out, once they were married?

Cameron added a touch more whiskey to his brew.

In addition to his wedding, other important business had also been held up by the weather. Ned Hamby had not yet informed him the outcome of his search for Anna Bennett. Perhaps the snow and ice had only delayed the message. Surely, one woman would be powerless to stop the outlaw and his men, just as she could do nothing to delay his plans to mine the narrow canyon.

He sat behind his huge desk and pulled open the top drawer, where he kept his finest silver nugget
. He’d had the other analyzed to see if Luc-Pierre’s wild tale would prove true. Ah, that had been a story for his journal, a tale of luck too late, of love and avarice.

For years, Luc-Pierre had prospected among the mountains of the Arizona Territory, accompanied by a beautiful Paiute bride he’d picked up in his travels
. Though he never had much luck, he possessed a generous soul. So when he met a fever-stricken trapper, he and his squaw nursed the fellow back to health. The trapper, a fellow by the name of Jake Chambers, was a charmer, always ready with a wild tale of his reckless youth and daring. He drank Luc-Pierre’s whiskey and flirted with Luc-Pierre’s long-suffering squaw, hinting that he could offer plenty more than an old prospector with pockets full of sand.

Luc-Pierre was elated when the assay on his last samples came back showing high-grade silver
. All he could think of was getting back to his woman to celebrate the news. What he came home to, however, was an empty camp. The recovered miner had lured the squaw to follow him.

They hadn’t gotten far
. Luc-Pierre shot both of them dead a few days later, in Bottom Dollar, just outside the blacksmith’s shop.

When Frenchman used his knowledge of the rich location where he meant to stake his claim to bargain for his life,  Cameron had listened carefully, imagining the profits from the mine
. The Frenchman, encouraged by the judge’s attention, even drew a map and produced ore samples. Cameron smiled at the thought. People fearing for their lives could be so very careless. In the end, that carelessness, more even than the murders, cost Luc-Pierre his life.

The hanging had been well-attended, Ward remembered, nearly as festive as a Fourth of July gathering
.

But lately, Cameron suspected that the prospector had gotten the last laugh
. If he’d known the canyon had an owner, he had certainly kept it to himself.

The judge frowned at the tap at his door
. After putting away the silver, he took out some papers and pretended he’d been reading.

“Come in,” he called, his voice gruff with the interruption.

Elena stormed into the room. She carried his customary
cuernito
on a plate. He noted the fire in her dark eyes just in time to duck to avoid being struck. The hurled plate shattered against the edge of his desk.

“If you do not send Señorita Holy White Daughter of the Senator and her complaining
dueña
from this house this instant, I swear to you I kill them both ─ and maybe you as well!”

Ward feigned calm long enough to pour an extra shot of whiskey into his coffee
. He gazed miserably out at the dripping icicles and wondered if he stood in exactly the right spot, one could fall down and impale him so he wouldn’t have to face this day.