Outlaw (34 page)

Hand leaned over the bar. "You ain't gonna
find those fellas you're looking for tonight," he said. "It's clear
past midnight already. I ought to just close up anyhow." He jerked
his head toward Cruz. "Go on with Cruz and forgot about it for a
while."

Forget
. Damn, but he wanted to forget
everything. Ellen, the Sharpes, Ben. All of it hurt like hell to
think about.

And it was nothing compared with the pain
that seared him every time he pictured Amy beside him, loving
him.

Being left behind.

Hell.

Mason raised his whiskey, liking its warm
weight in his hand. He could taste it, feel the bitter peace it
would bring. He inhaled deeply, filling his nostrils with the
liquor's tangy scent. Just one little drink....

"A little comfort never hurt nobody," Cruz
said, sliding down from her barstool. Mason sensed her coming
nearer, smelled her perfume and the clove-sweet scent of the
laudanum she drank throughout the day, and lowered his head.

"No, Cruz."

"Why not? You find yourself another fancy
eastern lady, sugar?" She touched his arm, wrapping her fingers
around it to pull herself up against his shoulder. "I reckon that
ain't never stopped none of my other gentleman callers."

"I said no."

Mason hurled his whiskey glass. It shattered
against the saloon's whitewashed wall in a spray of liquor and
glass shards.

The motion only fueled the anger already
inside him. He wanted to break something. Hurt something. Teeth
clenched, he slammed his hand onto the bar top. Pain surged up his
arm as he shoved himself from the stool and straightened to his
full height.

"Don't ask again," he snarled.

Cruz jumped backward, staring at him with
eyes gone wide. She nodded. "Sorry, sugar. I—I'll let you know if I
see them Sharpe fellas who took your boy." She cast a hasty glance
at Hand, busy gathering up broken glass behind the bar. "See you at
the
fiesta
tomorrow, George."

"'Night, Cruz."

She shoved open the saloon doors, letting in
cooler night air and the sounds of dogs barking in the distance. A
mule brayed nearby, and tinny music drifted over from the Gem
saloon down the street. Mason kept his head down, not looking as he
heard the doors swish closed again behind Cruz's departing
back.

Hand straightened behind the bar, holding
the cloth he'd used to wipe up Mason's whiskey.

"What the hell's the matter with you?" he
asked, shaking the glass fragments from it into the trash. "You
ain't never been one to be mean like that, not even to a whore. You
known Cruz a long time."

Mason glared down at him. Another man would
have shut up. George Hand, only chest-high to Mason, didn't.

"What kind of damn help you think her and
them painted ladies are going to give you now, since you went all
wrathy on Cruz?"

Looking disgusted, he shook his head, then
wadded up the cloth and threw it behind the bar. "I dunno what's
deviling you, Mason, but this ain't like you."

Mason grabbed the full whiskey bottle Hand
had left on the bar. The liquor sloshed inside, a siren's call
compared with what he'd been hearing from himself every hour since
leaving Amy back at Picacho Peak.

He'd taken the coward's way out, sending
Manuel back with that key.

Tell her goodbye
, he'd told Manuel.
Tell her
...and then he'd stopped. Tell her what? That he
loved her? Love meant promises Mason couldn't keep. Lying words
said over a bible that would only haunt them both later. Tell her
to be happy? To be safe? She would be both.

If he stayed away.

Curly Top deserved better. Better than a
life lived amongst strangers in Mexico, better than life as an
outlaw's woman. Better than him.

Just tell her goodbye
, he'd finally
said. And Manuel had ridden away to keep his promise, leaving Mason
to live with the consequences.

"It just ain't like you," Hand said again,
spreading his palms along the bar. He looked pointedly at the
whiskey. "It ain't."

Mason looked at it too, raising the bottle
to the lamplight. "It is now," he said.

He headed toward the saloon doors, the
whiskey dangling from his fingertips.

"Much obliged for the drink, Hand," Mason
told him. "But you can keep your damned opinions to yourself. At
least until I'm drunk enough to forget them in the morning."

Tucson was, Amelia decided, quite possibly
the noisiest town she'd ever encountered. Horses and mule-drawn
freight wagons rumbled by at a dangerously rapid pace, music seemed
to spill from the saloons night and day, and overhead the windmills
creaked incessantly. Conversations in English, Spanish, and
sometimes, unfamiliar-sounding Chinese, swirled around her and
added to the confusion.

Passers-by filled what little space remained
in the streets. Farmers and ranchers ducked past Indian women
carrying enormous pottery jars on their heads, and tipped their
hats to ladies paying calls. Water, wood, and vegetable vendors
plied their goods from handmade carts between the shops, making up
tunes to entice buyers that remained in Amelia's head far longer
than she wished.

Children smiled shyly up at her from their
parents' sides as she passed, and each one of them made her think
of little Ben. Had Mason found him? Were they all right? She found
herself looking closely into each young face, watching for
resemblances to Mason. Every glimpse of a dark-haired, brown-eyed
boy made her look twice as closely, her heart pounding
fiercely.

It was silly, really, Amelia told herself.
As fruitless as her thoughts of Mason were. She had little chance
of finding Ben herself—Mason had never described the boy to her. He
could have blond hair, or red; blue eyes instead of brown. For all
she knew, Ben resembled his mother. Amelia hadn't the slightest
notion what Ellen had looked like.

Aside from impossibly beautiful, she
amended.

Dabbing her damp forehead with the
handkerchief Juana had given her before she'd boarded the stage
yesterday, Amelia squinted up at the broiling sun overhead. Not
even noon yet, and already her dress, chemise, petticoats and
corset felt like a cambric-and-calico prison. She sighed and
stopped into the shade of a restaurant's overhanging
ramada
to catch her breath, plunking down her satchels on the ground
beside her.

There were no raised board sidewalks here.
Mud and manure abounded, making careful attention to where she
stepped a necessity. But there were plenty of book buyers in
Tucson, and Amelia had visited nearly everyone in her J.G. O'Malley
and Sons book order log, making deliveries and taking new orders
where ever she could.

She opened it, thumbing past the pages of
new orders she'd taken from the soldiers at Fort Lowell, where,
upon James' suggestion, she'd stopped before continuing into
Tucson. Evidently Jacob had bypassed the fort during his last
order-gathering trip into the Territory, and Amelia had found an
eager audience for her wares.

The officers and enlisted men—and their
wives—had pored over her J.G. O'Malley and Sons catalogue and
listened to her sales talk long into the afternoon, placing order
after order to fill her book. Seated beneath the shady cottonwood
trees of Fort Lowell's 'officer's row,' she'd penciled in orders
until her hand cramped.

She'd been successful. Fulfilled her plan to
return home with enough book orders to dazzle her father and
brothers. With such evident success to her credit, surely they'd be
forced to admit Amelia could help with J.G. O'Malley and Sons, too.
She'd proven herself a good book agent and a reliable helper, just
as she'd set out to do.

Then why did the accomplishment leave her
feeling so empty?

Tightening her lips, Amelia hummed a
low-keyed hymn, pocketed her handkerchief, and tried to think of
something else. She looked around her for distraction's sake,
seeing the flat-roofed adobe shops silhouetted against the hot blue
sky, the people and wagons streaming by...and cared nothing for any
of it.

All she cared for was Mason. Thoughts of him
were never far from her, however she tried to push them away. With
him she'd found something far greater than a log filled with orders
and the book agent's position she'd coveted. She'd found caring.
Appreciation.

Love
.

Amelia saw again the respect on Mason's face
when she'd gotten them released from their cell in Maricopa Wells,
when she'd driven them away and made good their escape, and knew
that no one else had ever seen in her the good things Mason
did.

Or had, before he'd left her.

A fresh prickle of tears blurred the page in
her hands. Blinking rapidly to force them back, Amelia flipped past
the last of the soldiers' orders and scanned the book order log for
the location of her next delivery. Better to go forward. Better to
get on with what she could salvage, rather than look back at all
she'd lost.

Drawing a deep breath, Amelia scanned the
street, then picked up both her satchels and trudged on. Eventually
she'd be able to feel happy again. Truly, it couldn't be possible
to die of a broken heart like the poets said—no matter how hers
hurt now.

Perhaps Juana was right. Perhaps she should
try to find Mason, try to find out why he hadn't returned for her
and set it right again. But if he could elude a posse and the
Tucson lawmen alike, surely he could remain hidden from her, too.
Tucson was a big place, the largest city in the Territory. She'd
hadn't the slightest notion how to find him.

Or what she would say to him if she did.

I love you?

That hadn't mattered enough to make him
return for her. Humming a little louder, Amelia tried to push the
thought away as she continued down the edge of the street. In front
of her, a gentleman helped his wife, large with child, down from
their carriage. Amelia paused in the cooling shade of a meat
market's
ramada
to let them pass, watched the man open the
shop door and smile down at his wife before escorting her inside,
and her heart sank a little lower at the sight.

It had been one thing to expect never to
marry, to believe her father and brothers when they told her that
her only future was to care for them and the home she'd grown up
in. It was something else altogether to taste the future she might
have shared with Mason, only to have it snatched away again.

Frowning, Amelia quickened her step,
crossing Mesilla Street in a few short strides. If she gave in to
many more thoughts like these, she'd be tempted to retreat to the
safety and solitude of her room at the Palace Hotel, where she
could just lie down and bawl her eyes out with no one seeing. Her
next customer was only a little ways ahead—better to focus on that,
else she'd never find the strength to go on.

She reached the street corner and glanced
around. The business she was looking for ought to be right here.
Setting down her satchels again, Amelia opened her book order log
and double-checked the address. She looked up at the small,
hand-lettered sign on the cramped-looking adobe building closest to
her, and sighed.

A saloon. Her next customer operated a
saloon.

Well, that needn't stop her, Amelia
resolved. It wasn't as though the place was teeming with ruffians
about to rush outside and accost her. The establishment appeared a
bit run-down, but that in itself wasn't a crime.

Straightening her spine as courageously as
she could, Amelia raised her chin and attempted a worldly air. She
stepped closer just as the nearby church bells of San Agustín
tolled, loud as a sign from the Almighty Himself. Startled, Amelia
skittered backward. Heavens above! She couldn't enter a saloon
alone, book order or no. Who'd have thought the owner of such an
establishment would be interested in literature, anyway?

Cautiously, she shaded her eyes with her
hands and peered into the saloon's gloomy interior. George Hand,
whomever he was, obviously preferred his establishment's customers
to do their imbibing in the dark. She couldn't see a blessed
thing.

"Errr—hello?" she squeaked, wavering on
tiptoes as she tried to catch a glimpse of the book customer she'd
come in search of. "Excuse me, but—"

The saloon doors swung, then stilled,
propped in place by the man peering over them. His chest-length
dark beard, prominent cheekbones, and shadowed eyes put Amelia in
mind of Abraham Lincoln—except this man was at least a foot
shorter.

"Ma'am?" he asked politely. "George Hand,
here. What can I do for you?"

His voice sounded gravelly, but kind.
Shuffling her satchels and book order log, Amelia noticed a few
passers-by staring curiously in her direction and felt a blush heat
her cheeks. "Oh, I, ah..."

"Ma'am—" he lowered his voice
conspiratorially "—you ain't lost track of your husband, have you?
I don't—"

"Oh, no!" Her blush deepened, feeling as
though it fairly blazed toward her throat and chest. Amelia put her
hand to her throat, welcoming its coolness. "It's not that at
all."

"If it is, you can step inside and ask in
private," he went on, his eyes like those of an old basset hound
beneath his busy dark brows. "Don't no lady have a thing to fear
from George Hand."

He thumped his hand on his chest, letting
the saloon doors swing open, then held one open for her.

Amelia glanced backward. "No, thank you.
Honestly, I haven't lost my husband."

He pursed his lips, looking skeptical.

"I mean I'm not married."

His eyebrows raised.

"I'm a book agent," she almost shouted,
scrabbling for her order book. Tucking it beneath her elbow, Amelia
put her hand forward and assumed her best book-agent demeanor. "I'm
Miss Amelia O'Malley, representing the J.G. O'Malley and Sons book
company, at your service, Mr. Hand. I believe you ordered a volume
of poetry from one of our agents some months ago?"