Liz Ireland (13 page)

“It’s just, when I first saw Pendergast today, something seemed odd to me.”

Cecilia, who was tugging a quilt over Pendergast’s shoulder, stopped in mid-motion. “How do you mean, odd?”

“Well...” He spent a few moments more rubbing at his facial hair. Truly, Cecilia thought, the man got on her nerves. “Mind you, we were not what I would call more than casual acquaintances, really, but
I
remembered Eugene Pendergast as being a slightly smaller man.”

“As small as yourself?” Cecilia blurted out, then instantly regretted her rash words.

Watkins puffed himself up and regarded her with disdain. “No,” he corrected her. “But slighter of build than this man.”

This man
seemed a peculiarly objective choice of words to describe an old friend. “Couldn’t he have grown since then?”

“Oh, I’m not saying that couldn’t very well be the case,” Watkins put in quickly. “Absolutely. At least, there has to be some explanation...”

“You mean for the change in build,” Cecilia asked, “or is there something more?”

Pendergast moaned in his sleep, and his whole body began shaking in an alarming manner.
Faker,
Cecilia thought with disgust as she watched the elaborate convulsions die down.

Once the room was quiet again, Watkins explained in a low voice, “I must say, I did not socialize with Pendergast overly much, yet...this man doesn’t sound quite like the Pendergast I knew, either. Eugene’s voice was not so deep.”

“But if a man grows, his voice is apt to change,” Cecilia said, playing devil’s advocate. Watkins was a fool. Besides, if anyone was going to expose the schoolteacher, it was going to be her.

“Oh, I’m not saying this man
isn’t
Pendergast,” Watkins said quickly. “It’s just the build and the voice and...”

“And?”
Cecilia prompted.

“Well, this man has a definite accent.”

“Mr. Pendergast’s parents were from Alabama.”

“I never knew that,” Watkins said. “But then, as I said, we were only what I would call friends of friends.”

Cecilia smiled. What a dense fool this man was—unwittingly sitting on a bombshell and shying away from admitting it! “Besides, Mr. Pendergast has been in Texas for a month now. He’s bound to have picked up a trace of our speech,” she said.

“You’re absolutely right. Believe me, I’m sure the fault is all with my poor memory. And yet...”

“Is there some other physical characteristic that’s bothering you, Mr. Watkins?” Cecilia asked with some irritation. If he had some conclusive evidence, she wished he’d just spit it out.

The man hesitated. “I’m sure it’s only me...”

“You might as well come out with it,” Cecilia said.

“It’s rather hard to explain. Something about the eyes.”

A chill went down Cecilia’s spine. Those eyes, dark as coals; she’d always suspected they weren’t the eyes of a mild-mannered schoolteacher. She swallowed against the dryness in her mouth. “The passage of time can harden a man about the eyes, I’ve always found.”

Watkins nodded energetically. “I’m certain you’re right, Miss Summertree. It’s silly of me, standing here casting suspicion when I only saw Mr. Pendergast for a short moment.”

“And he’s an old friend!” Cecilia scolded.

She felt elated. If what Watkins was saying was correct, this man not only wasn’t even a schoolteacher, he wasn’t a Pendergast, either! It was too good to be true.

It was perfect. Now she only had to wait for medical confirmation. When Dr. Parker arrived and gave his diagnosis that nothing at all was wrong with Pendergast, she would be able to gather up Watkins and Parker, march over to Beasley’s and tell the old blowhard that she had been right about the schoolteacher all along. And if the storekeeper had any decency, he would offer her old job back then and there. She would be vindicated at last.

She hoped Watkins didn’t go straight to Beasley and muck up all her plans. She didn’t want Beasley getting suspicious before she had the chance to expose the schoolteacher. This would be the talk of the town for years to come, and she wanted to make sure her own heroic role was duly noted.

Dolly swept through the bedroom door, followed by Dr. Parker. Finally! The old bearded doctor pulled a chair up to the bed, grabbed the covers and tossed them to the bottom of the bed.

Dolly gasped. “Cecilia, you’ll have to leave.”

“He’s got his clothes on,” Cecilia said. She hated when Dolly, ever mindful of having once been a married woman, said things like this. “Besides, I’ve been sitting here forever and might have some important observations for the doctor.”

Her words effectively shut Dolly up, though Dr. Parker regarded her skeptically. “
Did
you observe anything?” he asked.

Cecilia shrugged. “Not really.”

“Tremors?” Watkins cued her from the back of the room.

“Oh, that’s right,” she said. That had completely slipped her mind. “He was convulsing.”
Faking
convulsing, she might have added.

As if to demonstrate, Pendergast moaned and shook again.

Cecilia didn’t miss Watkins’s silent creep out of the sickroom, but she was too concerned with Parker’s diagnosis to waylay him.

The doctor
hmmed
with his jaw jutted dramatically forward, then poked and prodded at the patient for what seemed like hours. He lifted one droopy eyelid with his thumb and stared into one of those dark eyes, then felt Pendergast’s forehead as Cecilia and Dolly had done periodically since he’d fainted.

“Can you tell what’s the matter with him?” Dolly asked.

Nothing,
Cecilia wanted to say. But she knew Dr. Parker never left a house without making a thorough examination, no matter how pointless. Besides, the more pains he took, the more conclusive the evidence would be when she announced the man was a fraud.

After pondering the matter a bit longer, Parker finally announced, “This is quite serious—a delirium led on by a fever caused by the sudden change in climate conditions.”

“What?” She hadn’t expected anything so elaborate to come out of the doctor’s mouth—not when there was so obviously nothing wrong with the man.

Parker shook his head gravely. “He might be bedridden for some time. It could be dangerous to him if he tried to get up too early.”

Oh, for heaven’s sake! If that old sawbones couldn’t tell that Pendergast was a faker, it was definitely time to hang up his little black bag.

She was about to tell him so, too, when Dolly interceded. “Cecilia, don’t you think you should go downstairs and clean the kitchen? You’ve hardly left this room for hours and it’s nearly time to start on dinner.”

Cecilia went down to the kitchen and fumed as she listened to Dolly showing the doctor out of the house. Mindful of not wanting to lose her job, she picked up a rag when she heard Dolly coming and started wiping it over the table.

“Poor Mr. Pendergast!” Dolly cried.

Cecilia could hardly stand it. “Why are people here so gullible when it comes to that man?”

Dolly looked appalled. “Cecilia, how uncharitable. You heard the doctor. And Mr. Watkins was quite distressed!”

Watkins! Belatedly, she remembered that he at least might still back her up. Mumbling a lame excuse about needing to buy something at Beasley’s, she dashed out of the house and hotfooted it down to the mercantile. The men who held court on a various assortment of stools and barrels at the front of the store fell silent as she walked in. In the center of them stood Beasley.

“I need to talk to you,” she told the shopkeeper without further ado. “About Pendergast.”

“I hope he’s all right!” Beasley said with alarm.

Cecilia rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. “Well, of course he is.”

“I was just telling the folks here about what happened, then Dr. Parker came by—”

Cecilia clucked her tongue in disgust. “Dr. Parker doesn’t know beans.”

Several of the gathered company laughed, but not Beasley. He sputtered indignantly. “He’s a fine doctor! Came from Baton Rouge eight years ago.”

“Pendergast is a faker,” she said. “Just ask Watkins—he’ll tell you the truth.”

Beasley crossed his arms over his chest and poked his gut out. “Watkins rode out ten minutes ago. And he didn’t say anything about Pendergast being a faker to me.”

Cecilia’s mouth parted in surprise. “He just left?” And he hadn’t said anything to Beasley about Pendergast? “That can’t be! Where did he go?”

“Abilene. Said he could post a letter there before evening.”

Oh, of all the luck! Cecilia let out a sigh of frustration. This meant she was on her own. As usual. “Well, before he left he told me that Pendergast doesn’t even look like he used to.”

Beasley barked out a laugh. “‘Course not—it’s been eight years or more since he’s seen the man.”

“But it was more than that...”

She winced as a patronizing smile bent Beasley’s lips. “Now, Cecilia, honey. You aren’t trying to tell me that this man isn’t a schoolteacher again, are you?”

“But he’s not!” she declared.

He stepped forward and put a fatherly arm around Cecilia’s shoulder. “I thought we’d gotten beyond this. He’s a very talented educator from Philadelphia. He’s got the most impressive credentials of any teacher in all of West Texas.”

“But Watkins said—”

“
I
was there when the two of them met, Cecilia,” Beasley assured her. “Watkins recognized Pendergast right away.”

“But why would a man just faint like that?” Cecilia asked doggedly. “He was fine last night!”

Beasley shrugged at the mysteries of human health. “Right before he passed out, the man looked clammy and green. I saw it with my own eyes!”

“He’s faking, I know it,” Cecilia insisted. “He’s been faking about being a schoolteacher, and now he’s faking this mysterious ailment of his. And if Watkins is right, then his name probably isn’t even Pendergast!”

Her rising hysteria met with chuckles and hoots from Beasley’s cronies. “Better get a rope,” one man joked.

“If I was to lie about my name, I’d sure think up something better than Eugene,” said another.

Cecilia sent them all a withering glare. Naturally, these tobacco-chewing chowderheads would miss the point completely. “I’m telling you, the man’s taking us for a hayride.”

Beasley clucked his tongue disapprovingly. “I’m surprised at you, Cecilia. I thought you had more decency than to try to sabotage a man when he’s helpless.”

“He’s about as helpless as a bobcat!” Cecilia said.

“Dr. Parker told all of us that the schoolteacher was in a delirium, and now you’re over here trying to take away his livelihood.”

She could tell by the nods and frowns around her that Beasley was winning the war of public opinion. At this point it was the men against the woman. She felt her shoulders sag in defeat. Why did Pendergast have such an easy touch with these people? she wondered in frustration.

Beasley pushed her toward the door. “Now you go on back to Dolly’s and look after things there, Cecilia. And if you get any real evidence—I mean written proof—that this man isn’t the upstanding schoolteacher we in Annsboro all think he is, then you come straight to me, young lady.”

Before she knew what was what, Cecilia found herself out on the sidewalk again. As she started trudging toward home, Beasley called after her, “But be ready to go back to school just in case Pendergast doesn’t get better by tomorrow. Will you do that?”

Cecilia turned, her lips pursed in displeasure. She was supposed to
fill in
for Pendergast while he lay about in bed all day? It was too infuriating!

Nevertheless, it wasn’t an offer she could refuse. When she did finally get Pendergast booted out of that schoolhouse, she wanted to be on Beasley’s good side. “Of course,” she said, gritting her teeth into what she hoped was a pleasant smile. “I’d be delighted to.”

* * *

This time Jake was being more careful. He should have known better than to think he could slip out of town in broad daylight. This time he was waiting until three in the morning.

Slowly, he edged down the staircase in his stocking feet, boots in hand. He felt stiff as a board from lying flat all day long, but at least he was somewhat rested up for his journey. With Dolly and Cecilia watching him like hawks the entire day, all he had been able to do was sleep. Fitfully.

He didn’t trust that Cecilia. He didn’t know what had happened when she’d left the boardinghouse today, but one thing was certain—she was good and steamed when she came back. More than once he’d considered just getting it over with and explaining everything to her. Why not? He knew he’d be heading out as soon as he was sure everyone was in their beds asleep. That way Cecilia could leave him alone, secure in the knowledge that she would be queen of the anthill once he was gone.

Only, considering what he’d put her through in the past weeks, he doubted she would keep such a revelation to herself. He nearly laughed out loud just thinking how improbable that was. Face it, she would want to parade him around in chains for crimes to Cecilia, crowing all the while to the world that she was right all along.

It was amazing. The woman wanted his head on a platter, but for all that, he would miss her. And this house, he thought as he stopped for a short moment in the hallway, his ear straining to hear any movement. His time here hadn’t been as peaceful as he’d hoped, but it had been a home, with people around all the time to talk to and three squares a day. And Cecilia to annoy, or flirt with—mostly it added up to the same thing.

He couldn’t go back to the old ways now, which was why it was more important than ever to put his little game of chase with Gunter and Darby behind him. He’d never have a normal life again until he had gotten rid of them, never be able to settle down and start that ranch he’d always dreamed of. Even hiding out under an alias in a tiny town like this one had been a headache. It was either them or him, now or never.

The front door hinges were blessedly silent as he let himself out. Jake took a deep breath of the dry nippy air and smiled. Good traveling weather. Good conditions for settling an old score.

T
he long open wagon pulled by three old plugs lurched slowly down the rutted road. At the reins beside Jake was a silent, skinny man who nonetheless had the biggest potbelly Jake had ever seen, and behind him were six women who wouldn’t shut up. Maybe he should have walked, Jake thought for the hundredth time. Better yet, maybe he should have stolen a horse.

Of course, Buck’s horse hadn’t been tethered in front of Dolly’s when he left. And when he thought about stealing someone else’s horse, he just couldn’t bring himself to turn thief. Not only would that probably put somebody on his tail, it would have undoubtedly awakened someone. And if caught, how would he have explained himself—that in his “delirium,” he’d decided to go out for a moonlit ride?

He had been lucky to come across a farmer who had given him a ride to Buffalo Gap, where he had found this would-be stagecoach bound for Fredericksburg, which was all he could afford, anyway. Teaching in Annsboro hadn’t exactly made him a millionaire.

The only seat available was shotgun, and that was fine with him. But that had been hours ago, when he was still fresh as a daisy, comparatively. Now he was tired and hungry and anxious.

How long before he could jump off this infernal buggy and set off for Darby’s ranch? He kept his eyes on the horizon, looking for a landmark. He’d never traveled this road before, barely even knew it existed. Now that his backbone felt as though it was a nail someone had tried to pound into a rock, he knew why.

Also on his mind was what the people in Annsboro had thought when they discovered him missing this morning. Cecilia, no doubt, was triumphant. Right now she was probably in his schoolroom, telling the class about history’s famous deceivers—Judas Iscariot, Benedict Arnold and now Eugene Pendergast, who she had known all along was a fake and a fraud.

He shook his head thinking about it. He might just as well have stolen a horse. It couldn’t have harmed his reputation in Annsboro any more than his sneaking out silently in the night, especially with Cecilia in charge of the town’s history.

Really, it wasn’t such a bad place. Not much to do there, but then he hadn’t stuck around for the harvest shindig. Too bad. He wasn’t usually too wild about these affairs, but he would have liked the chance to dance with Cecilia, to hold her in his arms for a good long time, out there under the stars.

But that wasn’t likely to happen now. He probably wouldn’t even live to tell the tale of his showdown with Darby, but on the off chance he did, the good people of Annsboro weren’t going to welcome him with open arms. In fact, Lysander Beasley would probably want to have him shot on sight if Jake so much as stepped foot near the place.

And what cause would he ever have to return there, anyway?

“You say you’re a schoolteacher?” The driver didn’t look away from the bony backs of the horses as he spoke.

“Yeah.”

Jake didn’t see the point in giving up his alias just yet. He’d rather have Lysander Beasley after him than Will Gunter. And it wasn’t probable that telling the driver would do much damage, anyway. The man couldn’t keep a conversation going for more than a few minutes at a time, and then it was mostly to go over what you’d already told him.

After a few more minutes hunched over the reins in thought, the man asked, “In Annsboro, you said?”

“That’s right.”

The man slowly moved his head up and down in understanding. Was there anything this fellow didn’t do slowly?

Behind them, two matronly women had been gabbing without cease since leaving Buffalo Gap, about mutual acquaintances, about their husbands and what they did, about various mundane things like planting and cooking and sewing. You’d think they had never had a soul to talk to before. One of the women—Mrs. Randall, he thought she had said—was a stout farm wife, and the other spoke in German-accented English, which wasn’t surprising, since the wagon was headed for Fredericksburg. What was surprising was that after so many hours of chattering either woman had any spit left to keep talking.

Even so, they had nothing on their companions, four older girls, probably around thirteen, who wouldn’t shut up and on top of that spoke nothing but German in loud, high-pitched girlish voices punctuated every so often with giggles. The four of them had varying degrees of blond hair, but it was done identically in simple braids down their backs, and they all wore the same blue dress, dark stockings and black boots. Were they sisters, the daughters of the German woman? Jake couldn’t say. Nor could he imagine what the hell they were talking about that was so funny.

He avoided looking at them, because doing so seemed to set off more peals of laughter, which left him staring straight ahead and brooding. This would surely have to go down as the longest day in his life.

“You got business down south?” the driver asked. This, at last, was a brand-new question.

But Jake could only shrug in return. Really, he would have loved to have talked to the man, yet he couldn’t. On top of not wanting to leave tracks, he feared he was reverting to his old self already. As the wagon crept farther away from Annsboro, his more gregarious Pendergast persona was being shucked off like an old skin. Jake remembered now that, before Annsboro, he’d always been a man of few words, a man who preferred living on the range to in town. Independent.

Funny, those characteristics never struck him as so lonesome before, but that’s how he felt now. Hollow inside, or as if he wasn’t rooted properly. Cecilia’s pretty face flitted through his mind, and he shut his eyes, hoping to keep her there. But she disappeared, elusive as ever, and when he opened them again, his eyes beheld a landscape as unfamiliar and barren as before.

He couldn’t remember needing a woman this way, or this feeling of not wanting to leave someone. More than once he had thought of turning around, going back. But back to what? Just because he felt like a lovesick puppy didn’t mean she did, too. In fact, he doubted Cecilia’s layers of pride would allow her to surrender herself so completely to another person...but he would like to have been the man who found out for sure whether this was the case.

Go back,
his gut told him. Maybe life had something in store for him beyond avenging all the past wrongs Darby and Gunter had done him. He even wondered whether, by hunting down Darby as that man had hunted him, he wasn’t stooping to his level. He pondered this for a moment, allowing himself a brief dream of putting aside bitterness in favor of hearth and home and long peaceful winter nights with Cecilia in his bed.

Yet he still had a voice inside telling him to push on, to get revenge. Or was that simply the sound of the high-pitched voices of six women yammering in his ear? He sighed in frustration.

“Long trip,” the driver said.

It was when you had horses that would lose a race with a slug.

“Fredericksburg’s a far piece. We’re still probably closer to Buffalo Gap than where you’re going, even.”

Great.

“Where
are
you going?” the man asked.

Jake remained silent, his eyes trained on the road ahead of him. This was one piece of information he wasn’t going to divulge, or even lie about, no matter how many times the man returned to it.

From behind them, he heard a noise. In a flash, his hand felt for the gun at his belt and he twisted in his seat, his narrow-eyed gaze sweeping over the countryside they’d just covered.

Nothing. Must have been a rabbit or something.

The tension that had gathered so quickly seeped out in a long exhaled breath. The girls, their blue eyes wide and lips parted in surprise at the speed with which he’d whipped around in their direction, looked at him for a moment of blessed silence and then burst into fresh peals of laughter. They were already chattering again in their foreign tongue when Jake turned to face forward, grimacing.

“Jumpy there, ain’t you?” the driver noted.

Well, who wouldn’t be? Maybe Pendergast—the real Pendergast—had been right. He should have chucked it all and gone somewhere like Philadelphia, to civilization. He didn’t know much about that place, but it had to be more relaxing than where he was now, or had been for the past month, or his entire life before that. Sometimes he felt he hadn’t had a good night’s sleep since way back before his father had died, back on his tiny family farm.

It wasn’t as if he really wanted that much. Just a house, some land, a chance to live in peace without having two crazy men on his tail. He tried to imagine such a place, how it would be if he finally did get it. He could just visualize the little house, the pasture dotted with livestock, a little garden plot that could be worked by his wife.

His
wife?
Jake shook his head. Now where had that thought come from?

Of course he knew exactly where, because in the few moments of fantasizing he’d allowed himself, he’d had a very clear view of the woman—silky blond hair, blue eyes, pretty crimson lips...

He nearly hooted at the very idea. Cecilia Summertree picking turnips. That was a fantasy, all right.

“Damnation!” the driver cried, spinning in his seat even as he whipped the reins on the horses’ backs.

Startled from his ridiculous daydream, Jake was a second behind the man in hearing the horses of the two riders already bearing down on them. The wagon jerked as the wagon horses responded to command, and when Jake turned and looked over the heads of the six terrified women, he saw what surely seemed like doom—the two riders, wearing hats and with faces covered, were nearly flanking them.

One of the girls caught sight of the gun in one man’s hand.
“Bandits!”
The women erupted into a chorus of shrieks.

Bandits, all right, and they were aiming to take out the driver and Jake. As he drew his Colt revolver and cocked it, he barked orders at the women behind him. “Down! Get down!”

All at once, the women dived for the wagon bed. The driver had a rifle, but he was slow on the uptake, and Jake, worried about the dark man who was riding along his side of the wagon, was too busy trying to take him out to see to the other man.

A shot was fired, and Jake was half-surprised when he wasn’t hit. He took aim at the dark-haired man and got one off on him. The man was thrown from his horse and fell to the ground as the wagon horses again leapt forward and started charging down the path for all they were worth. One down! Jake thought eagerly, his blood pounding faster than the rhythm of hoofbeats. Then he felt something slump against him.

He pivoted. The driver, pale, clutching his shoulder but still holding the reins, had fallen against him. Jake pushed the man down lower and turned his attention to the second rider. In the briefest moment, beneath hat brim and over a brown bandanna, pale blue eyes squinted up at him.

It couldn’t be! But those eyes, so icy, they could only belong to one person. Gunter!

What was he doing here? Did Darby have his son-in-law out robbing stages now?

He ducked down and pulled his hat brim low as he took aim. The jolting movement of the wagon made accuracy impossible, but Jake gave it his best shot.

An explosion of gunfire cracked through the air. Gunter was thrown back in his saddle, but a smile of satisfaction never got the chance to reach Jake’s lips. White-hot pain seared through him and he buckled. It felt as though his insides had just been tossed over the side of the wagon. He managed to keep a slippery, shaky grip on his revolver until he could check on Gunter.

His Appaloosa horse galloped away, off down a hill, out of Jake’s sight. Gunter was listing, but alive.

Jake didn’t know how much longer the same description would apply to him. He felt nauseous and dizzy. “Stop!” he yelled. “Stop the wagon!”

The pounding of hooves and wagon wheels against the hard dry earth sounded like thunder in his ears. And there was that other noise, too, he realized—that symphony of female voices behind him, crying and comforting each other. In spite of the cold air, he felt hot. Feverish. Even after another shouted command to stop the wagon, the racket continued.

He looked beside him and saw the lifeless slumped form of the driver. How long had the horses been running on their own? No wonder the women were panicked! He grabbed the reins in his hands, and using his weight as he fell backward on the seat, reined in the frightened animals.

The stiff wagon rattled, bumped and lurched for what seemed like forever before the world became still again. Eerily still. Jake tried to open his eyes and focus on the clear blue afternoon sky over his head. Blue, he thought groggily. Cecilia’s eyes were that color blue...

Muffled crying came from behind him, and then high voices. Jake couldn’t make out the sounds until one of them cried, “The schoolteacher! He’s still alive!”

His eyes blinked rapidly, and he tried to focus on the large matronly face of Mrs. Randall looming above him. “Mr. Penderfloss! Where are you hurt?”

Jake swallowed and then winced at the effort. “Pendergast,” he corrected. A voice had issued from his throat. That was bound to be a good sign. He tried to continue. “Annsboro. I have to get back to Annsboro.”

“It’s his side,” the woman told her German companion, ignoring his murmurings. Jake felt a hand pulling on his shirt, and it felt as though the woman were peeling the skin off him. He groaned in agony.

“What ees he sayink?” another voice asked.

“He’s saying he’s from Annsboro,” the matron translated. “We’ve got to get him to a doctor. Girls, give us a hand!”

Jake couldn’t imagine so much misery could be involved in being dragged the few feet where they laid him out in the bed of the wagon. The pain that burst through him was so intense that for a moment his vision blacked out and he was left only hearing what the women were saying around him as they went about his torture.

“There’s bound to be a doctor in Buffalo Gap.”

Oh, no... Jake thought of the long hours it had taken them to travel this far. Surely they wouldn’t go back! Surely... He willed himself to look up, to face these women and let them know what was what. Didn’t they realize he was a dying man?