Liz Ireland (27 page)

“I wouldn’t want to inconvenience Mr. Reed....”

“Inconvenience me how, Miss Pendergast?” came a low wary voice from behind them.

Cecilia turned to Jake, her face a sober mask as she held out his bedroll. “We’ve decided it would be best if you slept elsewhere,” she informed him.

“But what if something—” Jake stopped when he saw Rosalyn’s eyes widen alertly. He didn’t want to scare the wits out of her by talking about what might sneak up on them in the middle of the night. “You all would be without protection,” he finished less ominously.

Rosalyn worried her brows as she contemplated Jake’s argument.

By contrast, Cecilia was enjoying herself; after his telling her to take a lesson in ladylike behavior from Rosalyn, it pleased her no end to be able to appear the more prudent. “Please, Jake, it just wouldn’t be right,” she said demurely. “After all, we are ladies.”

One black eyebrow shot up skeptically. “How far do you expect me to go?”

Rosalyn fidgeted beside them. “If it’s too much trouble...”

“Far.” Cecilia batted her eyelashes provocatively. “You know how we ladies cherish our privacy.”

Jake scowled. Nevertheless, he wasn’t going to argue the point of Cecilia’s being a lady in front of a stranger—especially one who would probably be returning to Annsboro with them. Cecilia’s reputation would no doubt have suffered enough without this woman being able to blab the actual truth around town.

“All right,” he said, snatching the bedding from her with little grace. Last night had been more wonderful than he could ever have imagined, but tonight... Well, he could only hope riding hard had worn all the imagination out of him.

Cecilia smiled as she watched him trudge away, and even winked when he turned back once to look at her. “A little farther, if you don’t mind,” she instructed him primly.

She could hear his exasperation through the hundreds of feet of darkness that separated them. “Is this okay, your highness?” he hollered out to her after walking a little ways.

“Just try not to snore too loudly,” Cecilia yelled back.

Rosalyn looked at her shyly. “You two are...going together, aren’t you?”

“Ha!” Cecilia collapsed to her blanket and stretched out her legs. “Though I guess we’re going to Redwood together.”

Rosalyn, having stripped to a heavy cotton shift, sat erectly on her own blanket, which, along with an Appaloosa horse and all the accoutrements that went with it, they had stolen with relish from Gunter. She smiled wistfully into the low fire.

“It must be exciting to be involved with such a man,” she announced suddenly.

“Annoying, is more like it,” Cecilia replied. “Jake Reed is a tough piece of work.”

“But so are you,” Rosalyn blurted out, then, noting Cecilia’s reaction, blushed at her own words. “I only meant, I admire your courage so much. You saved my life.”

The addendum mollified Cecilia somewhat, though she shrugged off the compliment. “Jake would have killed Gunter with his bare hands before he would have allowed that monster to lay a hand on either of us.”

“I was terrified,” Rosalyn said. “But you! You never hesitated! And when it was over, I completely fell apart, while you were completely composed.”

“I was as scared as I ever want to be,” Cecilia said, embarrassed. Rosalyn made it sound as if her behavior was somehow unnatural. “The only difference between us was that I had a gun and you didn’t.”

“That wouldn’t have done me any good!” Rosalyn said with a laugh. “I’ve never even held a gun. Can you believe that?”

“Never?” Cecilia asked, shocked.

“We don’t keep one in my aunt’s house in Philadelphia.”

Even at her school in New Orleans, there had been an old Gatling mounted on the wall, a relic from the war. And Cecilia would have bet money that, if for some strange reason someone had laid siege to Miss Brubeck’s finishing school, every last girl there would have known how to handle the repeating rifle. Cecilia herself had been nip and tuck with firearms ever since she could heave one shoulder high.

But Philadelphia was a long way from New Orleans, and probably another world entirely from Texas. Cecilia had dreamed so long of the life Rosalyn had, she had just assumed she would have been able to make herself fit in, given the opportunity. But Rosalyn was different from other women she had known, more guileless, earnest and genuinely refined. Jake was wrong; taking lessons from Rosalyn would be pointless. No one could teach natural grace like hers.

Pure envy surged through Cecilia even as she tried to duplicate Rosalyn’s posture as she sat by the fire, her legs tucked neatly to her side and her hands clasped in her lap. Unfortunately, the urge to flop and stretch was strong in her.

She mentally dressed herself down for such a foolish notion. Why should anybody care about posture when they were in the middle of nowhere?

Cecilia shot a suspicious glance out in the darkness, but nary a sound did she hear from Jake. “I guess people are just different down here,” she said, finally picking up the thread of Rosalyn’s statement. “Guns mean the world to us.”

“It seems so primitive, this obsession with protecting oneself,” Rosalyn mused. “And yet, I find it exciting.”

“Exciting?”
Cecilia couldn’t believe her ears. “After all you’ve been through, I would have thought you’d want to take the first train back to civilization!”

“But this
is
civilization,” Rosalyn countered, adding effusively, “a burgeoning society with all the dynamics heightened. I find it thrilling.”

Cecilia’s jaw dropped in shock at the woman’s characterization of what she had always considered to be, even on days when she was feeling generous, the edge of nowhere.

Rosalyn laughed, a trilly, tinkly sound. “I’ve surprised you. But it’s true, though my poor brother died so brutally, I feel in a way that his mysterious death was his way of sending for me and showing me the wonder of this place he’d always wanted to be a part of.”

“But surely you’ll go back to Philadelphia,” Cecilia said.

Rosalyn shook her head. “I can’t imagine going back to such a humdrum little life after all I’ve been through here.”

“But...” Cecilia wanted to scream with frustration. How could someone with so much that she wanted give it all up for so little? “You don’t know what you’re getting into.”

“Perhaps not,” Rosalyn admitted, “but I do know there’s much to admire out here. Since coming to Texas, I’ve begun to realize what kind of person I want to be.”

Cecilia hesitated to ask, but finally did. “What kind?”

“Someone like you.”

Now Cecilia truly was flabbergasted.
“Me?”

“Oh, yes,” Rosalyn said, her eyes bright with admiration, “I would love to have your courage and skill.”

So much adoration was enough to make a person self-conscious, but for a few seconds, Cecilia allowed herself to swell up with pride. She
had
kept her head in a sticky situation, and the shot she’d gotten off on Gunter couldn’t have been better—or more timely.

Too bad they had sent Jake out of earshot. He needed to hear some of this.

With what scant humility she could muster, Cecilia replied, “I was trying to save my own life today, too.”

“That’s just what I think is so wonderful,” Rosalyn continued. “You’re so open, so honest.”

Cecilia blushed, her pride deflating rapidly as she remembered how for weeks she had tried every devious way imaginable to get Jake out of town. She hadn’t been very honest in that endeavor, or successful, either. “Don’t go overboard,” she said, shamefaced.

“And people take you seriously!” Rosalyn exclaimed, paying Cecilia’s words no heed.

“They do?”

“Mr. Reed does.”

This was news! “Since when?”

“Well...he listened to your argument about why you didn’t think he should go after this Mr. Darby alone.”

Cecilia grimaced. “And then he ignored it.”

“I think you could change his mind, if you wanted to,” Rosalyn said finally. “It’s in his eyes that he respects what you say.”

“I could talk till I’m blue in the face, and nothing would change,” Cecilia argued. “There’s no two ways about it. We’re on our way to Redwood.”

“And that displeases you?” Rosalyn guessed.

Cecilia sighed out a shaky breath. “Jake is simply walking into trouble.”

“You love him, don’t you?” Rosalyn asked gently.

Cecilia’s head snapped up to give a tart reply, but in the face of Rosalyn’s earnest, unyielding gaze, her cynicism collapsed. “Yes, I do,” she admitted, hating to say it aloud but relieved to at the same time.

From the sound of it, Rosalyn’s life—the kind of life Cecilia had coveted at least superficially for so long—was twice as confining as her own. And nothing compared to that freedom she had found in Jake’s arms. Putting it all together, she decided maybe a rancher wasn’t too far from what she wanted, after all.

“He only wants to protect you,” Rosalyn said.

“I don’t see why,” Cecilia grumbled. “He should know by now what a good shot I am.”

“He knows,” Rosalyn countered, “but he can’t help himself. He wants to protect you because he loves you.”

The word
loves
shocked Cecilia. Jake, love her? He had never said a word about that. But perhaps in his own gruff way, not allowing her to put herself in danger was his way of showing her.

She lay back against her blanket, looked up at the stars and smiled. She could show that man a few things about love herself.

J
ake’s heart was breaking as he looked down the hillside to the town of Redwood. Home. It sure didn’t feel like home now, but he suspected nowhere would, unless it was beside Cecilia.

Atop the bay, she wore a sober, unrevealing expression. Jake couldn’t tell whether she was sad or angry or beyond caring, and he couldn’t say which would have made him feel worse. They had barely spoken since their argument the day before, and now he feared he might never be able to tell her what she meant to him.

But maybe, he reminded himself, that was for the best.

Rosalyn, who seemed sadder than Cecilia at their parting, sniffed back a tear. “You’d better take this horse,” she said, handing him the reins of the Appaloosa.

Jake looked at the animal, hesitant to ride into Darby’s ranch on Gunter’s horse.

“You said yourself he’s faster than the black.”

Finally, he nodded, and got down off his own mount. “Stay at the hotel in town,” he told them, “and wait.”

Cecilia looked up at him suddenly, her blue eyes wide and innocent. “Wait for what?”

Rosalyn put a hand on his arm. “We’ll stay, and then, when you get back—”

“
If
you get back!” Cecilia interjected.

“—we’ll go to the sheriff together and explain what happened to that awful Gunter man.”

“And Darby.” Cecilia shot Jake a resentful stare. “Or maybe we’ll have a sad story to tell him about you instead.”

“I don’t want to hear it,” he said.

“You won’t.”

They glared at each other from atop their mounts. This should have been an emotional farewell, Jake thought with frustration. But then again, maybe the animosity between them would make leaving her easier.

And maybe, just maybe, when he came back he could make her understand why he had to do this alone. That is, if she was still there waiting for him.

“Just lie low,” he instructed again, more urgently this time. “Stay in the hotel.”

Cecilia’s lips were set in a stubborn line.

“We will,” Rosalyn promised.

Why couldn’t he have fallen for someone like Rosalyn? Jake thought briefly—a nice, biddable woman who cried and smiled encouragingly when a man was about to ride off to his death. Instead, he had to fall in love with Cecilia Summertree, a tough-as-nails beauty who was as uncompromising as he was.

Love. It was like a revelation, and he was stunned to think that, after all he’d been through, he had actually managed to fall in love at all. Not so long ago he’d decided that his prospects for ever finding anyone to share his life with were pretty small. But he had. Only now was rather late in the game to be realizing it—and looking at Cecilia, he knew it was a far sight too late to tell her. She didn’t want to hear it, anyway.

“Don’t worry about us,” Rosalyn told him.

The advice almost made him laugh. How could he not worry when he didn’t even know what he was going to find at the Darby ranch, and knowing he was leaving behind the person he most treasured in all the world? Life forced bitter trades, but this one was the hardest of all.

He had to say goodbye. Rosalyn smiled shakily at him and wiped her eyes delicately with an old scruffy handkerchief, but Cecilia looked dry-eyed and unfazed by their parting.

“So long, Reed,” she said. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”
And what you’re giving up,
her tone seemed to indicate.

Jake tapped his heels into the Appaloosa’s flanks and rode off with Cecilia’s words ringing in his ears.

Behind him, when he was fast becoming a speck on the horizon, Cecilia turned to Rosalyn, shaking her head. “You are the most shameless liar I have ever met.” She cast her eyes to the heavens in a disbelieving scoff. “Crying, no less!”

Rosalyn smiled graciously and tipped her a bow. “He seemed so glum, Cecilia. You could have given him
some
hope, you know.”

“I’m going to give him something better than hope,” Cecilia retorted before they kicked their horses into a gallop down the long sloping hill toward town. “I’m going to give him help.”

* * *

Sheriff Burnet Dobbs lived in a tidy wood frame house behind Redwood’s small jail. A woman walking down the street with a basket of eggs on her arm pointed the way to Rosalyn and Cecilia, who immediately ran over and pounded on the door.

Moments later a towering man with gray hair and pale gray eyes appeared in the doorway. His surprised gaze took in the two women slowly, clearly not quite understanding why two such stylish yet bedraggled creatures had come to his house so early in the morning.

“Whooo-ee,” he drawled, taking in their worn and dusty dresses—especially Cecilia’s. “You two ladies look like you walked here clear over from Paris!”

“Not quite. We’re from Annsboro,” Cecilia said, getting right to the point. She was anxious not to lose any time. “We’ve come about Jake Reed.”

The name got Burnet Dobbs’s attention. “Jake?” he whispered. “I haven’t heard from him in years.”

“You’ve got to go after him, Sheriff, and round up all the extra men available—”

“Whoa, now,” the sheriff said. Cecilia was practically hopping up and down in her panic. “Take it slow.” He put his hands on her shoulders to calm her down.

As quickly as she could, Cecilia explained what had happened, who Rosalyn was and what Jake’s mission was today. “Someone needs to help him!”

The sheriff’s gray eyes registered alarm. “Killing Will Gunter is the best day’s work anyone’s done around here in years. But Darby...”

Cecilia shivered at the speculative glint in the man’s eye. “Is it that bad?” She and Rosalyn exchanged worried glances.

“If Jake guns down Darby it will be cold-blooded murder.”

“But the man is a bully!” Cecilia cried, jumping to Jake’s defense. “You don’t know what he’s done to Jake! We’ve got to help him!”

The sheriff shook his head. “Otis Darby is a madman.”

The word struck a chord of terror in Cecilia. The specter of a raving wild-haired lunatic jumped to her mind, and she felt instantly contrite for letting Jake go out there alone.

She only hoped now wasn’t too late. She turned away, and the tears she had been holding at bay for so long sprang to her eyes.

“Wait a second.”

“There’s not a second to waste! Darby will kill him!”

“No, he won’t,” the sheriff said.

“You said yourself he’s a madman,” Rosalyn insisted, backing up Cecilia.

“He is, but he’s also harmless. He’s been off his head since getting out of jail.”

“Harmless?” Cecilia asked.

“Since Darby learned of his daughter’s death, he hardly knows who he is.”

Harmless.
Cecilia released a deep, heavy breath as her shoulders sagged with relief. For a moment she allowed herself to lean against the door, thanking providence, until she realized that the sheriff had turned into the hallway and was arming himself in preparation to set out for the Darby ranch. The alarmed look remained in his eye.

“What are you doing?” If he considered Darby harmless, then that rifle could only be in anticipation for a showdown...with Jake!

The sheriff grabbed a handful of cartridges from a box. “We’ve got to stop him. If Jake finally comes face-to-face with that man, he might shoot first and ask questions later.”

“But he won’t if he sees...” Cecilia suddenly remembered the determined look in Jake’s eye when he left her. This whole trip had been about one thing—getting to Darby.

As her nerves kicked in, she sent up a silent prayer that Jake would use some restraint. “Can we get to him in time?”

“Maybe.” The sheriff grabbed a rifle off a rack and opened the door. “Darby isn’t living in his big ranch house anymore. Jake doesn’t know that.”

Cecilia followed the sheriff, then turned to Rosalyn on the small porch. “Will you be okay here?”

With an encouraging smile from Rosalyn, Cecilia ran toward the bay.

She shouldn’t have left him. She shouldn’t have left him. She should have sent Rosalyn into town and followed Jake on her own. Never, never should she have let him out of her sight. The reproach echoed over and over through her mind during the frantic ride to intercept Jake. Her nerves hummed with dull, persistent fear. Before she’d been worried that Jake would get himself killed. Now she was terrified that he was setting himself up for even more serious trouble.

The dogged set of Sheriff Dobbs’s shoulders left no doubt in her mind that the man would send his own mother to the hoosegow if there was just cause. And no one would blame him for seeking recourse in this case if Jake managed to get his revenge. Especially since his revenge would apparently be misplaced.

The month and a half since Jake had first walked into the Annsboro schoolroom passed through her mind. She could hardly believe the man she knew was that same flippant, silly person, but the fact that he was made her care all the more for him. It was still a marvel to her that he could have successfully hidden his desperation from her for so long.

Cecilia galloped over the unfamiliar terrain with fear increasing in her heart. Every beat of their horses’ hooves accentuated their mad race against time, and she prayed each homestead she saw in the distance would be the one they were headed for. But always they would pass the house up, or the gates, or the beaten path that seemed as though it would lead them to a ranch.

All the while, her insides were clenched with dread. What if Jake had already killed Darby before they could get to him? The sheriff, no matter what he thought of Jake, would certainly testify that Darby was a simpleton who had done nothing to provoke the attack—nothing that he hadn’t already paid for with a jail sentence. And then it would be Jake who would be tried for murder. Tried and probably convicted.

She attempted to force the ugly scenario from her mind, but failed. What would she do if Jake was sent to jail? That answer, at least, was clear as crystal in her head. It would have seemed silly to her just a month ago, but now she knew without a doubt that she would wait for him, no matter how long it took. But most of the time judges weren’t satisfied with jail time when it came to murderers....

Cecilia shuddered. She couldn’t think about it. The only thing she was sure of was that she never should have left him, and once they caught up with him, she would never leave him again. She only hoped Jake would use his head until that time.

On and on they rode until all at once they cleared a rise and saw on the other side a shabby-looking two-story ranch house. The Appaloosa nibbled at the Johnsongrass in the yard. Sheriff Dobbs motioned for Cecilia to slow her horse, and pointed down the hill. Cecilia didn’t want to stop until she found Jake, but she did as the sheriff said.

Beyond the house were stables and outbuildings, and farther away still, a small lone house of graying water-stained boards. It was that house that the sheriff’s steely eyes were focused on.

“The overseer’s house?”

Dobbs shook his head. “No overseer here for more than five years. That’s where Darby lives now, ‘cause it’s smaller and easier to care for.”

Heart hammering, Cecilia narrowed her gaze on the little house and the yard. Only barely could she make out two forms in front of the place.

“Look!” she cried.

One man was on his knees. The other had a gun pointed at the man’s head.

The sheriff didn’t look for long. Both of them spurred their horses into a gallop and sped down the hill as fast as they could. White, cold fear gripped Cecilia so fiercely that she couldn’t see the world whizzing past her, but only followed the sound of the sheriff’s mount in front of her.
Too late,
she thought, near hysteria.
I’m too late!

The bay skidded to a stop and Cecilia jumped to the ground on wobbly legs. She felt sick as she turned to see what she was sure would be a scene more grisly than even Gunter’s death had created. But what she actually saw was more heartbreaking.

The men were still positioned as she had seen them before, with Darby, his eyes wide with fright and confusion, kneeling in front of Jake. But the revolver that had seemed so threatening from a distance she could now see was held slack at Jake’s side, and the expression on his dear face was simply stunned.

Cecilia looked on Jake’s old adversary, an old withered man who was terrified by a stranger’s appearance in his yard. His confused blue eyes recognized no one, not even when Sheriff Dobbs came forward to give him a hand to his feet.

“I haven’t done anything,” the old man pleaded in a desperate whisper. He clutched the sheriff’s hand as if for mercy. “I did my time. That’s all over now.”

“That’s right, Otis,” the sheriff said in a kindly tone, as if speaking to a very young boy, “it’s all over. Can you stand up?”

But the old fellow was too afraid to get out of his beseeching position. “I did my time,” he insisted. “I have nothing you could want now.”

“We only wanted to see how you were, Otis.”

Jake’s dark impassioned gaze met Cecilia’s and she grasped his arm in support. “Oh, Jake,” she said. “I was so worried. I didn’t know what we’d find....”

“I would never have known him,” Jake whispered. There was no venom in his tone now, only pity. “I barely recognized the ranch—everything’s so different now.”

He looked around, and Cecilia’s eyes followed his gaze across the weathered buildings and overgrown scraggly grounds. Two skinny chickens were pecking at the yellow grass in front of the small house, heedless of the scene nearby.

After all these years, Jake felt pity for the man. In a way, Darby’s condition was a worse reward for a lifetime of hate than even a bullet through the head would have been.

“He’s destitute,” Dobbs said to them in a low voice. “He hasn’t been able to keep the place up.”

Hearing the conspiratorial tone, Darby looked up sharply. “Do I know you?” he asked, his spindly limbs shaking when he noticed the star on the man’s shirt. “I know! You’re from the jail!”

“No, no,” the sheriff said, soothing the terrified old man. “We only want to see how you are, and if you need any food.”

“Food?” The man looked up at the sheriff gratefully. “I have no bread here.”