Comanche Cowboy (The Durango Family) (42 page)

For a long moment, she stared back at him in motionless horror. “No, not Papa!” But suddenly all the pieces began to fall into place and she realized in horror why the grim half-breed had ridden all this way with her. It wasn’t for love, it was for revenge! She hated him then as she had never hated a man. Her deception had been nothing compared to his! Maverick had tricked her into leading him to kill her own father!

“
Senor
Durango, we’d better get out there as fast as these horses can gallop! It won’t be an even match, it’ll be cold-blooded murder!”

Unable to hold back her sobs, she slapped Strawberry with the reins, leading out at a dead run for the Lazy M.

Maverick crouched against the side of the porch, listening to the echo of the shotgun fade away. Seconds passed and darkness deepened. No experienced Westerner would go up against the superior challenge of a shotgun at close range. Silence. Nothing. He had to go in that house and find out what had happened.

Moving silently as the Comanches who had raised him, he entered the hall, then stepped into the parlor. The scent of gunpowder and fresh blood made him gasp. Quickly, he glanced around. Darkness cast long shadows, but crumpled on the floor by the window, Maverick saw the form of a man, a ragged hole in his belly.
Shotgun
, Maverick thought with alarm. He tightened his grasp on the Colt in his hand. Opposite Maverick, a man stood with his back to him by the big stone fireplace. In the growing darkness, Maverick could barely make out the red hair but he knew by the size of him who that man must surely be. With his attention centered on the man, Maverick bumped into a table.

The man did not turn around. “Maverick Durango?”

Maverick cocked the pistol with a loud click. “That’s right. Do you know why I’m here?” Even in the shadows of the twilight, he realized the man held a double-barreled shotgun, which put him at a distinct advantage . . . unless Maverick stood ready to shoot him in the back. He gritted his teeth. No, he couldn’t do that; no honorable man would shoot another in the back.

The man nodded. “I knew you’d come someday; the old Don told me about you.” He sighed. “In a way it’s a relief, I reckon, to have it end, not to be listening for you, waitin’ for you to walk in unexpectedly anymore.”

Maverick looked at the crumpled man by the window. “Who’d you just kill and why?”

“His name’s Bill Slade,” Joe said softly without turning around. “He planned to ambush you as you walked up on the porch.”

Maverick hesitated, reaching up to stroke the jagged scar on his cheek. “You killed him to save my life? By damn, that was a loco thing to do! Don’t you know I’ve come to kill you?”

“I know.”

“You yellow bastard!” Maverick growled, and passion and vengeance made the hand that held the pistol shake a little. “Before I kill you and ride out, I have to know. Why didn’t you come for her?”

“I know you won’t believe this,” McBride said, not moving, “but I thought she was dead all those years, and—”

“Liar!” Maverick screamed, and it was all he could do to keep from pulling the trigger, pumping lead into the broad back. “You goddamned liar!” He tried to keep from sobbing but he was overwhelmed with emotion. “How could you have deserted her when she loved you so! The last name on her lips as she died wasn’t mine, it was yours, you sonovabitch! Yours!”

Annie’s face came to him now and he relived that final moment, holding the thin, tortured body in his arms, listening to his mother whisper,
Joe . . . I love you
,
Joe
. . . .

The man in the shadows of the fireplace seemed to shake too. “I loved her,” he choked out. “You’ll never know how much I loved her. I don’t guess you ever loved a woman like I loved Annie.”

“I love Cayenne that way,” Maverick declared through gritted teeth, “and after I kill you, I’m going to take her away from here forever!”

“You’ll go to my daughter with her father’s blood on her hands? Do you think she’ll love you then?”

Maverick swore an oath. “I’ll take her away; she’ll never find out!”

“Sooner or later,” Joe said softly, still holding the deadly shotgun, “someone will tell her, and every day will be a hell for you, afraid this will be the day someone tells her and she leaves you.”

Maverick hesitated and the pistol wavered in his hand. What Joe McBride said was true. Sooner or later, Cayenne would find out and he’d lose her. He could not kill the father and have the daughter.
But he had sworn, oh, God, he had sworn
!

Joe said, “And what of my other daughters? What about my orphaned little girls?”

“That’s not my problem!” Maverick snapped, but in his troubled mind he saw all those freckled-faced children looking up at him from the buggy.

“Isn’t it?” Joe said softly. “I think my Annie would have raised a son who cared, would have felt responsible. Funny how things turn out. She always promised me a son and now you’ve come to kill me.”

“We waited and waited!” Maverick’s voice rose with passion. “She said you’d come for us, that we’d all be together as a family, that you’d be the father I never had, but you never came! So now I’ve come for you, you rotten sonovabitch! An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth like your Bible says!”

Away off down the road, he heard the sound of galloping horses. Maverick turned, glancing out the window. Two riders were coming at a fast pace. In the growing darkness, he saw only their silhouettes, but they weren’t going to get here fast enough to stop him from killing Joe McBride. “I intended to put you through a Comanche torture,” he said, “but now I’m just gonna kill you clean and leave.”

“
Vengeance is mine, says the Lord; I shall repay
. But go ahead and shoot,” the man said softly. “My back ought to be big enough for an easy target!”

“No!” Maverick swore, gesturing with the pistol. “Damn you! Turn around! You’re better armed than I am! I’ll give you a better than even chance! Cee Cee tells me you’re a crack shot! Let’s see if you can turn and fire, nail me with that shotgun before I get you first!”

The man shook his head slowly and the first rays of the rising moon glinted in the red hair. “No,” he said, “I’m not going to ease your conscience. You’ll just have to shoot me down in cold blood! Besides, even to save my own life, I don’t think I could pull a trigger on Annie’s son!”

The riders galloped closer now. Maverick could hear shouting but the words were carried away by the wind. He had to move fast or they’d get here in time to stop him. And yet, his emotions were in a turmoil. He’d expected to enjoy this moment when he finally had Joe McBride in his gun sights, had relished the image of the rotten villain on his knees begging for his life. But all he’d heard about this man told him Joe McBride was everything Annie had told her son he was. A man who would face Comanche torture for others was not going to beg for his life.

Tears ran down Maverick’s face. “At the end, they tortured her, hurt her too bad to travel! I couldn’t take her out of there, but she was still alive! I couldn’t take her but I couldn’t leave her there alive!”

“Oh, my God,” Joe said softly, “you poor, poor devil! You had to—?”

“Yes,” Maverick lost control and sobbed, “she begged me to kill her! End her pain! I couldn’t take her with me, she was hurt too bad! I—I cut her throat rather than leave her for them to torture! I held her in my arms as she died and the last name on her lips was yours! Yours! Now turn around, you sonovabitch, and use that shotgun! And when you try, I’m gonna blow your guts out!”

The two horses galloped into the barnyard now. He heard Cayenne’s voice shouting.
She wouldn’t get here in time
, Maverick thought, his gun hand trembling in indecision; she’d know he’d killed her father. But he’d lived the past ten years only for this moment when he could gun Joe McBride down for failing Annie, failing him.

“No,” Joe said uncertainly, “I—I don’t think I can kill you, even to save myself!”

Maverick heard the riders dismount and run for the house. “No, Maverick!” Cayenne screamed. “Oh, my God! Stop, Maverick!”

He had to finish quickly. “Turn around! ” Maverick ordered. “You talk big, but when you turn, you’ll take that shot rather than die! No man wants to die! Turn around and we’ll see what kind of man you are!”

“And what kind of man you are,” Joe said softly, and he turned around even as Cayenne’s feet pounded up the creaking porch steps.

In that instant as the man turned, Maverick wavered, seeing faces in his mind. the plain, beloved face of Annie; the trusting face of Cayenne, who had led him innocently to her father; even the faces of four little freckled-faced, red-haired girls looking up at him from the buggy.

But, too, in that split second, Maverick remembered all the years he had waited for his vengeance, how he had planned it with relish. His outstretched gun hand would kill the big man at point-blank range and he knew he was faster than the other. Then suddenly, he saw the insane eyes of Little Fox. Was he no better than that—a crazed animal, a burned-out shell of a man?

Maverick’s hand trembled in that split second as Joe turned around. And in that heartbeat of a moment, he made his decision because of the man he was. Very slowly, his hand dropped limply to his side, the pistol useless.

He couldn’t do it. After all these years, he couldn’t pull the trigger on the man the two women in Maverick’s life loved so. Even if Joe cut down on him with that shotgun as he turned, Maverick could not pull that trigger.

They both stood facing each other and Maverick winced, awaiting the loud explosion of the buckshot tearing a hole in his belly, awaiting the agony of slow death. He heard Cayenne’s small feet running across the squeaky porch.

And only then did Maverick blink unbelievingly in the moonlit darkness, taking another look at the man’s face as he realized that neither of them had pulled a trigger. “My, God! Your eyes! You’re blind! Blind!”

Joe nodded, staring back at him with tortured, empty sockets. “You didn’t know? A crazed Comanche did that with a burning stick when I went in to carry the ransom.”

Wave after wave of tumultuous emotion swept over Maverick as he stared. He had almost murdered a blind man! “She forgave you,” he whispered, tears running down his face, “but I never did. . . .”

“Maverick,” Joe said softly, the shotgun hanging from his burned, twisted fingers, “your problem, the whip that drives you, is that you’ve never been able to live with what you did. Even though she begged you to do it, you can’t forgive yourself! God has forgiven both of us, as has Annie. I’m sure of it, Son. Can’t you find it in your heart to forgive me, to forgive yourself?”

Maverick gave a cry like a wounded animal as the truth of Joe’s words knifed into his soul like a hot blade. With a curse and a sob, he brushed past Cayenne as she and the old Don entered the room, staggering outside to lean against an old chinaberry tree in the light of a Comanche moon.

Cayenne hardly glanced at him, her heart pounding in terror for her father as she ran into the dark parlor. “Papa, are you all right? He planned to—”

“Yes, but he didn’t,” Joe said calmly. He turned and hung the shotgun back up over the fireplace.

The old Don sighed loudly. “Thank the Holy Mother!
Senor
, are you sure—?”

“I’m fine, just fine.” Joe turned around. “I guess I got Slade and Maverick got the Mexican.”

For the first time, she noticed the crumpled body in the shadows by the window.

Quickly, she moved to a table to light a lamp. “Oh, Papa, it’s been so terrible! Maverick got Trask, too! Those men must have intended to rob the Austin stage!
Senor
Durango came in on that stage to try to stop Maverick. . . .”

“Looks like there was no need,” the old Don said.

Papa suddenly seemed exhausted and leaned against the fireplace. “It’s Maverick I’m worried about. Cayenne, where did he go?”

Hurt filled her heart, threatened to choke her. She’d been betrayed, lied to by the man she loved. Cayenne looked out the window. “He’s leaning against the old chinaberry tree, Papa, the one with the swing. He—he’s crying.” She almost couldn’t believe what she saw—the big, tough trail boss leaning against a tree trunk, his wide shoulders shaking with sobs.

“Daughter, do you love that man?”

Did she
? “I—I thought I did, Papa.” The tears came now, all hot and salty, though she tried to hold them back. “But he’s lied and betrayed me, used me to lead him to you! He never cared about me; he only used me so he could kill you. . . .”

“But he didn’t.” Joe leaned against the fireplace and his voice was calm, full of faith. “When the chips were down, he was Annie’s son after all, he just couldn’t do it. I think his love for you played a big part, too.”

She looked out the window, watching the man sobbing against the tree, and her very depths were in turmoil.

Joe said, “Cayenne, if you love that man, go out to him right now and tell him so, because any moment he’ll mount up and ride out and none of us will ever see him again!”

The old Don’s face furrowed in concern and agreement. “You’re right,
Senor
. I’ve always known he had terrible scars I couldn’t erase, that he needed more than the friendship we Durangos gave him. I’ll go out to him. . . .”

But as he brushed past Joe, the big man caught his arm. “No,
Senor
Durango, only a woman’s love can save him now. When he leaves here, he’ll not look back. I can guarantee you that if she doesn’t love him enough to go to him, when Maverick rides out, he’ll be driven by such torment he may become the worst outlaw Texas ever saw!”

Cayenne stared out the window and saw Maverick turn away from the tree and start uncertainly toward the big gray horse. “He’s leaving now, Papa! But how can I love him, ever trust him again after what he’s done?”

“Love sets no restrictions, Cayenne,” Joe said softly. “A girl named Annie Laurie taught me that. When you love someone, you love him! It doesn’t matter if he’s disappointed you or betrayed you, you can’t help lovin’, as I never really stopped lovin’ Maverick’s mother and she never stopped lovin’ me!”

Cayenne looked out the window at the silhouette of Maverick walking toward Dust Devil, then looked back at Joe. “His mother?”

Joe nodded. “I got a lot of things to tell you, Cee Cee, but that’s not important now. What is important is this? Do you love that man?”

And she had to answer with her heart. “Yes! Yes, I love him! I love him in spite of everything!” And she ran headlong out the door, screaming, “Maverick! Maverick! Wait!”

He was just about to mount as she ran across the porch, down the steps, out into the yard to face him.

Even in the darkness, she could see the tearstains on his bronzed face. He held up his hand to stop her words. “If you’ve come to tell me how much you hate me for using you like I did, for betraying your trust, I don’t blame you.” He checked his saddle girth. “I was rotten to do it, but I’d sworn to kill your father. Now I understand I really hate myself for what I’ve done!”