The Last Renegade (39 page)

“We’re going to find out.”

“You think the water’s important, don’t you?”

“What do you mean?”

Kellen’s cautious pause before he answered supported Raine’s suspicions. “I mean, what if the deaths of John Hood, Hank Thompson, the lawyer from Rawlins, Marshal Sterling, and Scott Pennway have little or nothing to do with Ellen and Isaac and the trial, and have so much more to do with water?”

“It’s an interesting idea.”

“But is it your idea?”

Kellen turned his head and discovered she was watching him closely. “Let’s say that visiting the Burdicks has forced me to consider it.”

“Why?”

“Because I’ve been listening to people since I came to Bitter Springs, and there is information I’ve had that meant nothing to me in the context of your sister’s trial, but when I started to consider another rationale for the murders, there were connections that I would be foolish to ignore.”

“Connections? Such as?”

“Raine, I don’t think this is solely about one thing or the other. It’s about both. I think Uriah Burdick saw an opportunity and seized on it. Two birds, one stone.”

“Tell me about these connections,” she said flatly.

“John Hood was the mayor of Bitter Springs before he came back to town in a box. Walt told me he was elected months after Ellen’s trial, largely because folks saw him as someone willing to stand up to Uriah.”

“That’s true.”

Kellen did not point out that Raine had never mentioned that John Hood had been the mayor. Her narrow view was of him as a member of the jury. He also refrained from reminding her that Rabbit and Finn were the ones who told him that Hood owned the print shop. John Hood had the means to fight back. “I knew that Hank Thompson was the schoolmaster. Ted Rush told me that Thompson regularly explored the Medicine Bow forests to make photographs that he contributed to Eastern periodicals.”

“Yes,” she said. “Not so different than what Mr. Petit is doing.”

“I know. And you’ve witnessed the Burdick reaction to that.”

She had. Raine nodded slowly. “What about Moses T. Parker? What can the Rawlins lawyer possibly have to do with water in Bitter Springs?”

“I had a conversation with Harry Sample and his cousin at the land office. Mr. Parker represented the interests of Carbon County. Had he lived, he would be the person appointed to negotiate water rights with Washington.”

“But there’s someone new in that position with the same responsibilities. I don’t—” She broke off as understanding dawned. “Uriah has influence with this new lawyer, doesn’t he?”

“I don’t know it for a fact, but I think it’s likely. It wouldn’t be difficult to discover.”

Raine sighed heavily. “Scott Pennway helped people find water. Farmers and ranchers hired him to find and dig new wells. He knew about irrigation. Annie told me he was going to help Matt Sharp open up another ten acres for farming.”

“I didn’t know that he was set to help Matt. That probably influenced the timing of his death.”

“What about Marshal Sterling?”

“He was in the way, Raine. He was killed because he was doing his job. If he hadn’t been going out to the ranch to bring Isaac Burdick back, he would have been going out there someday on some other business and come to the same end. It’s possible Isaac was merely a lure to draw him out.”

“If you’re right about all of it, who’s next?”

“I’d only be guessing.”

“Guess.”

“Very well. I think Harry Sample is probably high on Uriah’s list. He works at the land office, and Uriah indicated to me that he doesn’t have much faith in Harry any longer. He hinted that Harry betrayed him by taking part in your sister’s trial. He would rather do business with Charles Sample.”

Raine stared straight ahead. “I hate it. I hate all of it.” The words settled like stones around her heart. The pressure made her chest ache. “Is there an end to it, Kellen?”

“Yes.”

His certainty did not ease her. It filled her with dread. She felt tears sting her eyes, and she blinked them back.

“This way,” said Kellen, pointing to the stand of pines that he’d seen Raine eyeing earlier. “There’s decent cover. There’s probably someplace we can tether the horses where they’ll be out of sight.” He glanced up at the sky. The wind had picked up since they had reached the lake, and while the sun still shone brightly when it appeared between breaks in the clouds, it brought little warmth. The snow that Raine told him was in the air last night never got to the ground, but he thought she could be right about the advent of an early winter storm.

They dismounted. Raine laid out the blanket and their food while Kellen walked the horses another fifty yards deeper into the stand of trees. Once she looked back and didn’t see him. Panic rushed her. The reaction was as swift as it was surprising, and she was aware that she couldn’t move, couldn’t think. It only lasted a few moments, but the sense of paralysis stayed with her even as she began walking in the direction Kellen had gone.

She stopped when he stepped into view between two stout trunks of mountain pine. He was carrying her carbine. She stared at him, at the Springfield, and she swayed slightly but held her ground.

“Raine?” Kellen was only ten yards away, and he could see she was as pale as salt. “What’s wrong?” She was watching him intently, but he looked over his shoulder as if there might be something behind him that would explain her vigilance. There was nothing there, which meant he was the one who had put her on her guard.

Kellen reversed the carbine in his hand and extended it, stock first, to Raine. When she didn’t come forward to take it, he went to her. He took her by the wrist, turned her gloved hand over, and slapped the butt of the Springfield against her palm with enough force to make her fingers close around it. He kept on walking.

Raine stayed where she was for several long minutes. When she finally joined Kellen on the blanket, she still had no words to explain herself. He didn’t ask, but she thought that might be because he was too angry to speak. Too angry. Too hurt. In his place, she would feel the same.

She took the biscuit he held out to her but did not mistake it for a peace offering. Her hand shook a little as she raised it to her mouth. She pressed the cold biscuit against her lips but did not take a bite. Lowering her hand to her lap, she said, “I’m sorry.”

Kellen settled against the scaly, reddish-brown bark of the pine behind him. He opened his canteen and took a deep swallow of water. He did not look at Raine. His eyes tracked as much of the perimeter of the lake as he could see from his vantage point.

“I’m sorry,” she repeated. “I didn’t think you were
really
going to shoot me.”

“Yes, you did. You’re still not sure you can trust me.”

“That’s not true.” She hated the lack of inflection in his voice, the dead weight that it lent his words. “The thought that you might turn the carbine on me startled me as much as seeing you with it. I can’t account for it.”

He cocked an eyebrow at her and then returned to scanning the lakeshore.

Raine bent her head, stared at the biscuit in her lap. She broke off a piece and put it in her mouth. It may as well have been a wet rag for all the taste it had. She eyed her canteen but did not reach for it. “Do you have your flask?”

Kellen reached inside his duster, pulled it out, and gave it to her.

Raine noticed that he was careful to avoid touching her when she took it. She held the flask in both hands. “I’m afraid.” The admission came hard to her. Every word that followed came fast. “I looked up earlier and you were gone and I was afraid that something happened to you so I went to find you and you appeared out of nowhere and then I was afraid something was going to happen to me. I’m just afraid.” Her fingertips whitened on the silver flask. “My shadow. Yours. I can’t distinguish any longer. What I know with absolute certainty is that I was more afraid when I couldn’t see you than when I finally did.”

Raine fumbled with the lid on the flask until Kellen took it out of her hands and opened it for her.

“Don’t drink it all,” he said, passing it back.

She pressed the flask to her lips, took a single mouthful, and handed it to him. The whiskey warmed her tongue, her throat, and slid smoothly into her belly. “Thank you.”

Kellen drank, capped the flask, and put it away. He tipped the brim of his hat so he was no longer looking at her from a deep shadow. “I don’t want you to be afraid.”

Raine smiled unevenly. “If only you got everything you wanted.”

“I know. If there is a choice to be made, I’d rather have you afraid for me than of me. I will never hurt you, Raine.”

She let his words sit on her heart for a moment, long enough to let him know that she wished it were true. “Yes, you will,” she said finally. “You won’t hurt me the way you mean, not physically. I know that. But you’ll hurt me just the same. You won’t be able to help yourself, and I won’t be able to stop you. It’s an unintended consequence of loving someone.”

Raine held up a hand, stopping him as his lips parted. “I love you. There’s nothing to be done about it. Nothing to be fixed. I don’t want you to lecture me about my lack of expectations. Unrequited love is difficult, but no one dies of it except in tragedies and dime novels. I do not think I will be the exception.”

She picked up the biscuit in her lap and returned it to his saddlebag. She brushed crumbs off her skirt. “I don’t know if intentions matter, but I did not mean to fall in love with you. That it’s happened at all mostly rests on my shoulders, but you bear some responsibility, too.”

“Are you going to tell me again that I’m decent?”

“Your kisses aren’t.”

“There’s a mercy.”

“But you’re kind to Walt and patient with Rabbit and Finn, and you don’t mind if Sue prattles on because she can’t remember what she’s supposed to say when she’s near you. You allow Mrs. Sterling to order you around as if she’s known you all of your life, and you’ll fold a winning hand if it means Jessop Davis can win a game against his brothers. I watch you separate yourself from others as though you don’t want to be bothered,
and yet you come to know the exact things that will put you in the thick of it all. You’ve never forgotten that Nat Church brought you here or that you want to do right by him. It’s hard not to respect that.”

Raine studied his face. One corner of his mouth lifted the merest of fractions. It was not amusement that she saw but something more akin to embarrassment. “It’s not your fault, I suppose, that you’re as handsome on a woman’s arm as a ten-dollar bonnet is on her head.”

“Ten dollars? I’m not sure that I—”

“Don’t fish for compliments. Twelve dollars is the most a sensible woman would spend on a handsome hat.”

“Then I’m flattered.”

“I don’t know why. It’s your parents I’m flattering.”

“I’ll be sure to tell them.”

“And that’s another thing,” she said, lifting her chin. “I believe you will tell them. I don’t think you
are
the black sheep in your family. I don’t even think there is one. I know you’ve written letters home to New Haven. Emily told me that she posted them for you. You can’t be as estranged from your parents as you would have me believe, and your brother apparently had no qualms about helping you.”

Kellen rubbed his knuckles under his chin. He mirrored Raine’s thoughtful study. “There’s a lot about me that you think you know but don’t, and there’s even more that you don’t suspect.”

“You’re telling me that you’ve lied to me.”

“Yes. Often by omission, but yes.”

“All right. Tell me something I don’t know.”

“Very well. At the risk of challenging your notion that no one dies of unrequited love except in tragedies and dime novels, I’ve been thinking lately that it could happen to me.”

Raine’s lips parted, closed, then parted again. They remained that way until Kellen gently slipped his gloved hand under her chin and lifted her jaw.

“You were gaping,” he said.

She simply nodded.

He leaned forward and took advantage of her silence to kiss her thoroughly. The brims of their hats got in the way. Kellen had to make a grab for his as a gust lifted it off his head. Raine clamped a hand over the crown of hers. Their mouths remained fused, but amusement crept into the kiss and then they were laughing and they had no choice but to draw back.

“That’s a hat for Texas,” she said as he returned the black Stetson to his head. “Did you buy it there?”

“Bought it and broke it in.”

She reached up and tapped the wide brim. “That’s for keeping the Texas sun out of your eyes, but Wyoming ranchers favor a narrower brim, one the wind isn’t as likely to carry away. You might have noticed that nearly everyone in Bitter Springs wears a white Stetson.” She removed her hat, reshaped and creased the crown the way she liked it. “More of a pearl gray,
I suppose.” She put it back on her head and tucked her loose coppery braid under it. “Try to keep that one on your head, Mr. Coltrane.”

Kellen reached for Raine. He shifted to one side and gave her part of the trunk to lean against and sheltered her with an arm around her shoulders. He plucked her hat off again. She tried to get it from him, but he held it out of her reach until she settled back, and then he dropped it on the blanket and nudged the butt of the carbine onto the brim to keep it in place. He pressed his lips to the crown of her head.

“I do love you, you know,” he said.

“I’m warming to the notion.”

“Good, but I’m thinking we should have made these mutual declarations when we were closer to a bed and a stove.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“You like your comforts, don’t you?”

“I do.”

Raine removed herself from the curve of his arm and straddled his legs. “I think I could make you forget certain comforts.” Using her teeth to help, she stripped off her gloves and then tucked the gloves under Kellen’s thigh. Her fingertips trailed over the beaten, buttery soft brown leather duster. She opened it and set her hands on his belt. Watching him, not what she was doing, she pulled the tongue through the buckle and began to unfasten the buttons of his trousers. She raised her eyebrows in question before she continued. At his faint nod, she reached inside his drawers, found his erection stirring, and freed his penis.