Killing Halfbreed (19 page)

Elizabeth not only saved me from the posse, but she'd been the one who'd cared for me in Rio Perdido that time when I'd gotten stupidly drunk.  It was her blurry face I'd seen tending me in that hotel room.  Another time, she saved me from an ambush by one of Hartford's men when I'd been trailing the rustlers by myself.

After that, she realized it was going to get more and more difficult to keep aiding me in secret.  So, she came up with the plan to act and dress like a man so she could ride with me everywhere I went and keep closer tabs on me.

I was astonished.

She didn’t want to see me again after that first visit, but I insisted. She moved to the hotel to isolate herself, but I couldn't bring myself to leave her alone in a strange town while she healed.  I felt responsible.

Repeatedly, she told me to get ‘my butt out of her sight and leave her be’, or something similar.  Told me she was fully capable of taking care of herself and didn't need the likes of me helping.  Still, I waited.

After a couple of weeks, I saw she was pretty much better and decided to head back to my ranch.  Alone.

I left some money with the hotel clerk for her, though I doubted she would take it, and started off down the trail.

Later that afternoon, twenty miles south of Bare Rock, Elizabeth Miller rode into my camp.  She dismounted and made her own fire, fixing her own coffee, ignoring mine, and starting her own supper.  I watched in disbelief.

Her manner was completely hostile, yet here she was following me once more.  After she got settled in, she turned to me and said flatly, "Don't imagine my feelings toward you have changed,
sir
, but don't think for one minute I'm going to let you go off and get yourself killed either.  Nothing's changed.  My brother died for you, and I'm not letting you out my sight.  That's all there is to it."

I thought everything
had
changed, but saying so would probably only invoke more of her wrath, and I had a feeling I'd be receiving plenty of that as it was.  My life looked as if it wasn’t going to be very pleasant for a while.

***

So, we rode.  The trail was just as dusty and weary as it'd been on the way up, but this time made worse by the presence of the hostile figure behind me, who rode a consistent two hundred feet back and hated my guts.

We ate, drank, and slept at the same time, but always separated by at least twenty feet.  Her eyes studied me, stared at me, and only left me when searching our surroundings for potential ambushes.  And while those deep, brown eyes were on me, they were filled with nothing but contempt and loathing.

I found myself returning her stare quite often.  Sometimes, I watched her when she wasn't looking too.  She intrigued me.  It was quite an adjustment to ride with a person you’d considered a good friend, only to discover they were a female who hated your guts.

Anger and frustration took over some times.  I'd had nothing to do with her brother's death.  I mean, sure, he died in my place, but that wasn't my fault.  I hadn't even known what was happening at the time.  It'd been completely out of my control.

She had some nerve, treating me so poorly, directing all her resentment my way.  Surely, any rational being could see that.  But she wasn't behaving rationally, was she?

I wanted to go over and shake some sense into her so she'd see the cold facts of my case and realize I'd had no part in killing her brother.

That would never work, I knew.  She was convinced it was all my fault, my responsibility.  Nothing I said or did would change that.

The problem was that I secretly agreed with her.  I felt like her brother's death
was
my fault, and it was something that was becoming harder and harder for me to bear.

On top of all that, I was upset by the realization that I was falling in love with her.  Even when she had pretended to be Will, her true personality had always shone through.  I could see that more and more now.  I'd felt close to her as a friend when I thought she was a man, but now I found myself falling for her romantically.

No one had to tell me the foolishness of that.  What a situation I'd gotten myself into.  Things were growing more and more complicated, and I still had no idea what had happened to my brother.

Back in Bare Rock when I'd first spoken to her as Elizabeth, there’d been such fury in her words, but even then I'd felt a pull in my heart for her.  The flood of her betrayal swirled crazily with a new sense of attraction.  Her striking beauty lifted my spirit as if on wings, even as her spite-filled eyes dashed me to the rocks.  What was I going to do?

If things kept along this way, she'd never give me the chance to do anything about it.  One evening, I decided to try and break the ice.  I was falling for her hard, and not trying was worse than crashing and burning.

"What do you want?" She looked petite in the shadows of the small fire she'd built fifty feet away from mine.

"I thought maybe we could talk, Elizabeth."

"There’s nothing that remains to be said, Halfbreed.  I don't care to associate with you, so leave me alone!"

"Listen, I only want to point out that your brother's death was not in my hands.  If it'd been up to me, I would never have allowed it, be assured, and..."

"Sure, sure.  I've heard it all before.  Mom and everybody else tells me it was fully Joshua's decision, that he made it all by himself.  Well, I can see past that house of cards.  If you'd never been charged with murder and if you hadn't been facing the gallows, there would have been no need for him to die.  Of course, I hold you responsible for his death, and I always will.  You're a coward!  Too afraid to face up to the consequences of your own crimes!"  She said this last part with particular vehemence.

Her calling me a coward really incensed me.  There was no way on earth I would share my feelings for her now.  I was no coward.  It hadn't been in my control. 
I was not in control.

I wanted to hurt her back.  "You're just an irrational, spoiled child!  I was obviously mistaken to try and have a calm conversation with you.  I don't know what you're doing following me around like a little puppy anyway..."

"A little puppy, huh?"  She jumped up to her feet, indignant.

"Yes, a stupid, little puppy.  You're following me around everywhere and generally making my life a living hell.  It
is
still my life, you know.  You may think you're protecting me physically, but you're killing me otherwise.  And cramping my style for that matter.  Why don't you just ride off somewhere and leave
me
alone!"  That was actually the last thing I wanted.

We argued and yelled for a while.  She got so steamed, her face turned beet red, and I thought she might explode.  I don't know if it was lucky or unlucky that she didn't.

"You don't want me around, that's fine!  Take care of yourself, for all I care.  I did everything I could to make sure Josh didn't give his life for nothing, but I can see now it's pointless.  You're gonna get yourself killed one way or the other."

She began slamming her gear back into her saddle bags, but I never really expected her to actually leave.

She did.

Like a scar that just won't heal

Blue-eyed gypsy, you're still with me.

“Lonely Won’t Leave Me Alone”

            - Trace Adkins

It was a cold ride home, if you could call that ranch my home.  I still felt like I was just a caretaker, waiting with some hopeless hope for my brother to come waltzing in off the range and reclaim what was his.  Nothing in the world would have made me happier.

I knew it was hopeless.  The circumstances surrounding his and Jessica's disappearance couldn't have been more sinister. They weren't coming back, and the sooner I got that through my thick skull the better.

I didn't see Elizabeth at all on the way home.  She had really left, and it'd left a hole in my heart.  I kept glancing at my back trail, hoping to catch a glimpse of her, but there was no silhouette against the horizon trailing me.  I was completely alone.

The charcoal grey sky gave testimony to my mood.  There's nothing more lonesome than traveling home by yourself, knowing there's going to be no one to greet you when you get there.  The cold just made it worse as I tried to huddle further into my jacket against the icy winter gales coming in from the northwest.

It looked like it was brewing up for a storm, and a pretty serious one at that.  The kind of weather that told you winter was taking charge.

I hoped I could make it back to my cabin before the storm hit.  I didn't have much farther to go, but it was coming in fast.

The wind nipped at my face and whipped its cold fingers around my ears until I couldn't feel them anymore.  Snow drifted down in large, fluffy flakes, but then began drizzling down an hour later in a kind of wicked, knife-like sleet.  That kind of sleet is one of the worst things nature has to offer.  It soaked my clothes, freezing them against my skin.  I’d never been so miserable in all my life.

My mustang kept ducking his head down, trying fruitlessly to evade the biting gusts of wind.  White ice clung to his flank in large chunks.  We were both soon chilled to our cores.

The freezing sleet changed back to snow, but we were already half frozen to death, so it didn't matter by then.  If we could make it back to the cabin we'd be okay.  Heck, I’d let my horse come inside the cabin with me if he got us through this.

The snow began piling up, pushed into drifts by the wind.  My horse had to step higher to keep from stumbling.  He tripped anyway when one of his hooves sank through the snow into a prairie dog hole.  The abrupt jolt of the movement caught me off guard and threw me from the saddle.  My head hit a rock, and I blacked out.

When I came to, blurry snow swirled all around.  My horse was nowhere to be seen. 
No loyalty lost here, pal
.  If he showed up at the cabin later, there was no way I'd let him inside now.

I figured I couldn’t be more than a mile or two away.  If I could just manage to keep aimed in the right direction, I'd probably make it, though the snow was coming down so thick it was hard to see more than about fifty feet.

I tried to get my bearings and started off in the direction I thought was right.

***

The steps were interminable.  On and on, I trudged through the whirling snow, which erased my tracks behind me, and blinded me to the way ahead.  Shivering was a memory, my body having long ago given up its fight against the cold.

It couldn’t be much farther.  Just up ahead had to be the bend in the trail that opened into the wide vale where my brother had built his cabin.  My home.

I’d left plenty of wood stacked outside and in.  In no time, I’d have a fire going.  I could almost feel the warmth from its flames already, melting the ice off my body.  My mouth watered with the thought of a hot meal.

A gust of cold wind cut across the back of my neck and brought me to my senses.  I’d be lucky if I didn’t lose a couple of fingers or toes, or even my nose to frostbite.  My feet felt like two deadened logs.  It was all I could do to keep lifting one after the other.  There was no feeling left in any of my extremities, except a deep dull ache in my bones.

If I couldn’t find my cabin in this storm, I was a goner.  I stumbled and almost fell headlong into the snow.  My struggle against the weather had exhausted me.  If I’d fallen, I might not have been able to get up again.

Finally, the white sheets ahead of me parted like curtains on a stage.  I’d reached the bend in the trail I’d so desperately sought.  Just a few more steps, and I’d be there.

One.  Two.  Three.  One more.  Another.  Almost home.  Almost there.  Just a few more.

The last few steps required all my remaining strength.  I almost expected to find Eden when I turned that corner.  Instead, the sight of what awaited drove me to my knees.

The vale was completely blanketed in peaceful white except for a small, ugly patch of black right smack dab in the middle of it.  A pile of burnt timber protruded nastily from the blackened area.  The charred wood was still warm enough to melt any snow falling upon it.  Those blackened logs were what remained of the cabin.

In an instant, all hope fled.  How could that have happened?  There hadn’t been any lightning storms recently.  The only possibility was a human cause, of course.  Someone had torched the cabin down to send me a message.  Well, they’d done more than send a message, they’d as good as killed me.

I flopped over deliriously onto my back in the building snow banks, crying out silently to the sky, moving my mouth without sound, like a fish out of water.  The cold seeped into my joints and began to overcome me in finality.  The cold grew so intense, I felt warm.

It can’t end like this
. 
I may die, but let me die trying to make it, not lying here helpless.
  It took all my will to lift myself out of the frozen mold I’d formed on the ground.