Читать книгу To Tame a Wolf - Susan Krinard - Страница 9

SIM WATCHED THE SLENDER RIDER trot up the hill, admiring her graceful posture and firm seat. He didn’t make a habit of admiring women—with one notable exception—but he had to give this one credit for the guts to pose as a man and the skill to pull it off.

Of course he’d known she was female the moment he stood beside her at Hafford’s Saloon, and that was after he’d heard someone named Bernard was searching for a brother called André. He’d followed her at a distance through the streets of Tombstone, waiting for the right moment to get closer and hear the full story. It seemed too lucky that he’d located his prey so easily, but here she was, just where Caleb had told him to look.

Caleb had mentioned that André had a sister who’d lived with him in Texas, but nothing Caleb said had suggested she was vital to Sim’s mission. What was her name…? Chantal. A handle as fancy as her speech. He rolled the name around his tongue, disliking the taste of it. He preferred the name she’d given herself: Tal.

He didn’t trouble himself wondering why she disguised her sex. She gave off a powerful impression of fearlessness—even he had been hard pressed to sense her unease—but she must be pretty damned afraid of something. Afraid, and yet confident enough to keep anyone from looking too close at what lay beneath the mask.

He had a suspicion that she cleaned up a lot nicer than her outward appearance indicated. Her features under the grime were strong but just a little too delicate for a boy, her lips full, her eyes the color of coffee lightened with fresh cream and flecked with crystals of sugar. She must have a figure under those baggy clothes. But she was only a means to an end, unimportant to him except as a guide to André.

Likely she didn’t know anything about the map or she would be a helluva lot more suspicious than she was. She didn’t have any idea why André would have gone into the Chiricahuas outfitted for prospecting. But if André had told her about the treasure, Sim would learn soon enough. Meanwhile, he would let her keep pretending as long as it served his purpose.

He nodded to her as she drew her mount alongside Diablo. A wisp of blond hair had escaped from under her hat, the strand no longer than a boy’s might be. She tucked it back with a gesture both artless and impatient. Her roan sidled, and Diablo snapped at the gelding’s flank.

“Your horse has an unpleasant disposition,” she remarked.

“Just like me,” he said. “You ready?”

“Lead on.”

He turned toward the east and broke Diablo into a gallop, racing down the slope of the dusty miners’ road pointing toward the Dragoons. Diablo had something to prove and lit full out, leaving Tal and her gelding to choke on his dust. But she was game for the contest. In a few minutes her roan was neck and neck with Diablo. What Sim glimpsed of Tal’s profile was grimly unamused. When Diablo had worked out a little of his spite, Sim reined him in and slowed to a steady lope.

Tal flashed him a smile edged with anger. “Trying to get rid of me already?” she said, breathing hard. “Or was that just a test?”

“That’s up to you.” He noticed that her hat had blown back a little ways. She caught his look and jammed it forward.

“Now tell me about your brother,” he said.

She blinked at his sudden change of subject. “What else do you need to know?”

“How familiar is he with the mountains?”

“Our ranch is in the foothills near the south end of the range, in Cold Creek Valley, between the Chiricahuas and the Liebres.”

Which meant she and her brother were squatters on land they hoped to claim once the southern Sulphur Spring Valley was surveyed and opened for homesteading under the U.S. land laws. Until they could claim it legally, they had to hold their spread against all comers, including the rustlers who swarmed over the Valley like lice in a miner’s beard. Sim’s respect for Tal increased.

“This is the first time your brother has shown any interest in looking for ore?” he asked.

“When we lived in Texas, he spoke of getting rich in Arizona Territory. I never—” She paused, darting Sim a wary glance. “I said he was a dreamer.”

“And apt to go off half-cocked.”

Her lips set in a straight line. “He’s young.”

“You ain’t?”

She shrugged.

“What was he doing in Tombstone?”

“I don’t know. He was supposed to be in the Valley, buying stock for the ranch.”

“Doesn’t sound like you should have trusted him.”

She shot him a cold look. “You’re not here to judge André, Mr. Kavanagh, only to find him.”

Sim scratched the day’s growth of new beard on his chin. Tal was defensive about her brother but still naive enough to lead a stranger right to him. She honestly didn’t believe André had anything worth stealing. She valued him more highly than he deserved, and Sim couldn’t figure out why.

“Your brother’s a drinking man,” he said.

“Isn’t everyone?”

The disdain in her voice almost gave her away. “You talk like an abstainer,” he said. “But I saw you take a drink in Hafford’s.”

“I think better when I’m sober.”

“So do I. But from what they say in Tombstone, your brother talks when he drinks. That ain’t a wise habit in this country. It’s a good thing he don’t have nothing to hide…except from you.”

“He was ashamed to come home without the money. That’s all.”

“You sure he planned to come back?”

“I’m sure.” But her voice had a little crack in it. She wasn’t nearly as sure about anything as she let on. She would ride her heart out to prove herself Sim’s equal, but under that tough skin was a weakness he intended to exploit.

He wondered how she would handle their first night together. They would have to make at least one camp between here and the Chiricahua foothills.

“What about this foreman of yours? He any good as a tracker?”

“Elijah was with the Tenth Cavalry, so he has the skill for it. He may very well still be looking in the Valley.”

“But you want me to concentrate on your brother.”

“Elijah can take care of himself.”

Which meant André couldn’t. That fit with everything Sim had heard so far.

Once they were well away from the overwhelming scents of Tombstone, Sim dismounted. “You got anything on you that belongs to your brother?” he asked.

She stared down at him, perplexed. “No. Why?”

“Never mind.” Sim knelt close to the earth. A hundred horses, mules, oxen and men on foot had passed this way. He located a pair of mules’ prints accompanied by the boot marks of a single man.

Sim gathered a pinch of dust and held it to his nostrils. The dirt was infused with a faint but distinct scent that linked this traveler with the woman riding beside him.

“What are you looking for?” Tal asked.

He didn’t bother giving her an answer she wouldn’t understand. “Your brother came this way,” he said, mounting again. “He probably passed through Turquoise. We’ll stop there next.”

He rode a little ahead of Tal to get her smell out of his nose. The ground began to rise, and the trail turned south to loop around the tail end of the Dragoons. Seventeen miles without shade on a road with so many twists, hills and dips was hardly a pleasant jaunt, especially in the growing heat of the day, but Tal didn’t complain. She drank sparingly from her canteen like an experienced desert traveler. Even Sim was glad to catch sight of the Chiricahuas when they finally reached Turquoise.

He knew that Indians had once dug the bright blue rock out of these mountains, but white men were far more interested in the lead, silver and copper they’d found a few years back. The hills were scarred with recent excavation and the discarded trash of human activity. The camp itself was no more than a series of tumbledown shacks, sufficient for the bachelor miners’ stark way of life.

One of the shacks was a makeshift saloon of sorts, indicated by the crudely drawn sketch of a bottle on the door. Sim tied his horse to the hitching post and went inside.

The proprietress was a blowsy woman of early middle age and probably the only female within a ten mile radius—possibly the wife of one of the miners, more likely a willing companion to any who could pay. Her establishment was empty of clients. Flies buzzed lazily near the warped tin ceiling. Sim dropped a coin on the long, poorly fashioned table that served as a bar.

“How’s business?” he asked.

The woman, whose rouged cheeks were the only bit of color in a face hard and gray as granite, looked him up and down. “Maybe better than it was,” she said. She put a shot glass of whiskey down in front of him. The door creaked behind Sim, and Tal walked in.

“You boys lookin’ to stake a claim? Ready Mary can help you get started, get you everything you need. Even a little fun.” She leered at Sim, and he shoved the whiskey back at her. She drank it herself. “No, you ain’t no miner. On your way to more important business, I’d say.” She winked at Tal over Sim’s shoulder. “Now he don’t look as if he’s done much riding at all. I’ll give you a good price, cowboy. And half of that for his turn in the saddle.” She laughed hoarsely until she realized that Sim wasn’t smiling.

Sim glanced back at Tal. It was difficult to tell if she was blushing under the dust and the tan, but he couldn’t mistake the pity in her eyes. Pity for this dried-up husk of a female, who was probably stuck out here because she couldn’t compete with the younger whores in Tombstone.

“We’re looking for someone,” Tal said before Sim could reply. “Maybe he passed this way.” She described her brother as she had before, but she wouldn’t meet the older woman’s avaricious gaze.

“Yeah, I saw someone fitting that description,” Ready Mary said, leaning forward to display the sagging bounty of her bosom.

“Did he say anything?” Sim asked, ignoring the view she offered.

“Well, that depends. He did a bit of drinking—not that he looked liked he’d gone thirsty too long.” She wiped out the glass with a dirty towel and hummed under her breath.

Sim plopped down another coin. “What did he say?”

Ready Mary batted her eyelashes. “Well, it was some days back, and my place was crowded—when the miners come down they need their entertainment….”

Sim slapped his palm on the table. The woman jumped and nearly dropped the glass. She glanced at Sim’s eyes. “Well, he…he wasn’t making much sense. He was talking about someplace called Castillo Canyon, on the west side of the Cherrycows. He was all outfitted up, but everyone knows there ain’t no mines there.”

“Castillo Canyon?” Sim repeated, holding her with his stare.

“Y-yes.” She swallowed, and the sagging flesh of her neck quivered. “What did he do to you, mister?”

“He’s my brother,” Tal said, grabbing Sim’s arm. “Come on, Kavanagh.”

Sim let himself be led more out of shock than cooperation. Once outside the saloon he pried her fingers from his arm and led his horse to the nearest trough, clearing away the scum with a sweep of his hand. Tal’s horse dipped his nose in the opposite end of the trough, wary of Diablo.

“Never do that again,” Sim said quietly.

“What?”

“Touch me like that. Drag me around.”

“You didn’t have to threaten that woman.”

“That whore? She would’ve robbed you blind if she could.” He pulled Diablo away from the water. “What made you think I was threatening her?”

Tal stroked her horse’s neck. “Not with words. But she was terrified of you.” Tal glanced at him sideways. “The way you looked at her… Do you dislike all women, or just a particular type?”

Sim snickered. “What d’you know about women, boy?”

Tal tightened the gelding’s cinch and mounted. “I had a mother,” she said softly. “I’ll ask you to behave with courtesy and decency as long as you’re in my employ. Even to whores.”

Sim swung up to Diablo’s back. So she expected decency, did she? Was the tough, capable shell a front as false as her male disguise? Let her put on some fancy frock and she’d probably want him to bow and scrape like some dandy from back East.

She would get quite a shock when she realized he saw right through her. He was looking forward to that moment.

“I thought you said you lived in Texas,” he said.

“Is that important?”

“Most Texans I know ain’t quite so delicate in their ways. But then, you had an education.”

She chose to disregard his mockery. “You were born in Texas yourself, weren’t you?”

“You wouldn’t know the town. Whereabouts did you live?”

Immediately she became guarded. “We had a place in Palo Duro country.”

She clearly didn’t want to continue on that subject. Sim whistled a few introductory notes and then began to sing.

“Well I come from Alabamy with my banjo on my knee, I’m goin’ to Lou’siana, my true love for to see.” He grinned at Tal’s dubious expression. “Lou’siana.”

“What?”

“That’s where you were born.”

She frowned. “You hear it in my speech.”

“Like I said, I’ve been all over.”

She considered that with a thoughtful tilt of her head. “You are too young to have fought in the war.”

“So’re you.”

“I saw what it did to people on both sides.”

“Is that why you left Texas?”

“My brother saw promise in this country,” she said. “He imagined what it could become.”

A dreamer, just like Caleb. Looking for something he couldn’t see with his eyes, never content with what he had right in front of him. Always wanting more.

And exactly how are you different from either one of them?

Sim spurred ahead. Tal caught up, and they left Turquoise and the Dragoons behind them. To the east rose the Chiricahuas, a range of peaks extending north to south across the horizon. The grassy expanse of Sulphur Spring Valley spread almost unbroken for over twenty miles, but Castillo Canyon was nearly another twenty miles north once they’d crossed the plain. Sim didn’t intend to push the horses too hard when they’d soon be facing much harsher terrain in the mountains.

Grass grew high where water collected in the draw down the center of the valley. A few hardy ranchers squatted on the richest land beside springs and creeks. Sim knew that the infamous McLaury gang had their own spread near Soldier’s Hole, but he and Tal had no cause to pass that way.

“We’ll make camp at Squaretop Hills,” he said, indicating the cluster of buttes rising up from the valley some fifteen miles to the northeast. “There should be water there for the horses.”

He watched Tal carefully, noting the slight stiffening of her shoulders and the jut of her chin. She didn’t suggest that they stop at one of the squatter’s holdings or the few more established ranches between here and the mountains.

“Do you know Castillo Canyon?” she asked.

“I know where it is,” he said. “It’s long and deep, cuts right into the high rocks. Hundreds of spires and pinnacles like towers on a castle. That’s what gave the canyon its name.”

Tal glanced at him with raised brows. “You have some poetry in you, Mr. Kavanagh.”

He almost gave in to the urge to spit. “The whore—the lady—in Turquoise was right. Ain’t no mining up there, at least not on the west slope. Anything else in the canyon that might interest your brother?”

“Not that I know of. I’ve heard there are settlers there—a family by the name of Bryson. I haven’t met them.”

“If your brother went that way, they might have seen him.”

She nodded, lost in her own thoughts. They left the dwindling trail and rode across washes and gullies, past occasional beeves grazing on the yellowing grama, threeawn and bunchgrass that thrived in the valley. The dry season was on Arizona Territory, but Sim sensed rain coming in the days ahead. With any luck, it wouldn’t fall until he had André Bernard right under his nose.

The shadows were growing long when they reached Squaretop Hills. Sim chose a campsite partially shielded by a thick growth of mesquite and unsaddled Diablo. Tal saw to her own horse while Sim sniffed out water running just under a dry creek bed.

He dug out a basin and let the horses drink. Once they’d been rubbed down and staked out for the night, Sim went hunting. He shot a brace of cottontails and brought them back to camp, where Tal had already gathered brush for a small fire. Once again he was grudgingly compelled to admire her practicality, no matter how schoolmarmish she could be when the notion struck her.

Damn all women. Most weren’t worth the confusion they inevitably brought with their presence. But as he began to skin the rabbits, he remembered why he’d looked forward to this night.

He tossed the bloodied animals to Tal. They flopped into the dirt beside the new-made fire, and she gave a little jump. Sim smothered a grin of satisfaction.

“I got our supper,” he said. “You cook ’em.”

She picked up one of the carcasses and examined it with a critical eye. “Not much, is it?” she said. “Well, I’m not very hungry, myself.”

Sim shot to his feet. “How many do you want?”

“I said I’m not hungry.” She drew a knife and set to work without the slightest sign of squeamishness.

He went to stand over her, hands on hips. “Never heard of any boy who wasn’t always hungry.”

She wrinkled her nose, sniffed and waved at the air as if she’d smelled something distasteful, and after a moment he realized that her broad gestures were aimed in his direction. “Some things can spoil even the healthiest appetite.”

“You ain’t exactly a nosegay yourself,” he snapped. “If you only knew how bad humans—” He broke off in consternation and quickly recovered. “Would you get your appetite back if I washed up, Bernard?” He yanked off his neckerchief, shed his buckskin jacket and unbuttoned his waistcoat. “I found a little water that ain’t too muddy. You scrub my back, and I’ll scrub yours.”

The anticipated blush turned her face pink under its layer of dust. “That won’t be necessary.” She focused her attention on the rabbits. “You can make yourself useful by rigging a spit—that is, of course, if you have an appetite.”

“A man on the trail takes what he can get—even if it ain’t the sort of meat he prefers.”

Her knife slipped, and he wondered if she’d guessed that he had seen through her masquerade. Sim rigged the spit as requested, letting her do the rest. He leaned back on his elbows a little way from the fire and studied her as night fell over the valley. The moon and stars had the peculiar effect of softening Tal’s features, breaching her disguise more effectively than the brightest sunlight.

She knew he was watching her, but she pretended to be oblivious. “Your supper is ready,” she said, stepping back from the fire. “I’ll be with the horses.”

“You prefer their company to mine?”

She braced her hands on her hips and stared him down. “I don’t have to explain myself to you, Kavanagh. Is that clear enough?”

Sim grinned, showing all his teeth. “Very clear, hombre.” He crouched by the fire and tore into the meat with gusto. When he’d finished one of the rabbits, he took a tin plate and seldom-used fork from his saddlebags, rinsed them in a freshly dug water hole, and sliced off steaming chunks of meat from the second carcass. He piled them on the plate and went in search of Tal.

She never heard him approach. She’d laid her bedding next to the mesquite where the horses were picketed and now sat cross-legged on the blankets, her hat beside her, raking her fingers through her mass of tangled flaxen hair. It wasn’t as short as Sim had imagined, for she wore it in tight braids that fit under the crown of her hat. She had a female’s natural vanity after all.

Sim crouched and breathed in the woman-smell of her body. He’d lied when he suggested that she needed a bath. There was nothing unpleasant about her scent. Damn near the opposite. She smelled like a natural female—real and warm, like Esperanza, but different….

The memory of Esperanza cleared his head in a hurry. He set down the plate where even a human would find it and retreated as silently as he’d come. He walked around to the side of the hill, shucked his clothes and Changed.

Even after so many times, he still marveled at the miraculous novelty of the transformation from man to wolf. It was good to run free—free in a way he’d never understood before he accepted his MacLean blood, free as no human could comprehend. Stronger than either man or ordinary wolf, containing the best of both in one agile and powerful body.

He shook his thick brown coat and twitched his large, mobile ears. He raced across the valley floor, rattling the dry grasses and leaping waxy-leaved creosote and saltbush. Wind sang in his fur. Mice scurried under his broad feet, and a startled cow with a young calf stoutly turned to face him as if she could drive him away with her lowered horns and snorts of alarm.

He left her alone. He wasn’t after prey this night, and when he hunted cattle it was for some gain other than the filling of his belly. Not that the wolf had ever brought him any profit but this…this shedding of human law, human conscience, human desire.

He opened his senses to their almost painful limits, heard the frantic heartbeats of quail in their nests and smelled the musk of an angry skunk. He sifted one scent from the next and found the place where André Bernard had made camp a few nights ago. The man’s trail joined the wagon road that ran parallel to the Chiricahua foothills.

Sim circled back to Squaretop Hills and resumed his human shape and coverings. He washed his face at the water hole and spread his blankets under the open sky.

He was still wide awake when Tal approached, heavy-footed like all humans but more graceful than most. He heard her crouch several feet away, felt her study him as he’d watched her before, with a bewilderment he sensed like a hum behind his eyes.

“You’re awake?” she asked.

He rolled over to face her, resting his chin on his folded arms. “I don’t sleep much.”

She nodded as if that fact were of little surprise to her. Her hat brim cast her face in shadow, but he could see the gleam of her eyes.

“You didn’t have to do it,” she said in a low voice. “The food, I mean. I can take care of myself.”

“Not if you’ll pass up a fresh meal on the trail,” he said. He sat up, scraping hair out of his face. “You ate it?”

“Yes.” She set his cleaned plate and fork in the grass, staying out of reach. “I just came…to thank you.”

Those words came hard to her, just about as hard as they did to him. He’d thanked maybe half a dozen people in his life, if that. Never for something so small.

“Go to bed,” he said. “I’ll watch.”

She retreated awkwardly. He heard her lie down and toss and turn on her blankets, trying to get comfortable. He didn’t think it was because she was too delicate for the unyielding ground. Something about her scent had changed, and he knew instinctively what it was.

Until now, she’d regarded him as a temporary employee and treated him like one. She’d been aware he was a man about the same way any female would be, sizing him up without even realizing it, cool and objective. But somewhere between his banter about the bathing and her accepting the food he brought, she’d started looking at him different. Not so objective. Not anywhere near so cool.

His body stirred in spite of itself, and he cursed softly. So what if she was interested? She would never admit it. She had some stake in playing the boy, and no reason whatsoever to act on her impulses, given that he was a stranger and she wanted to keep her respectability.

André Bernard had been something less than respectable in Texas. Tal must have known that their ranch in the Palo Duro was a haven for rustlers, but she didn’t seem the type to approve of such illegal activities. She made plenty of excuses for André Bernard, but she hadn’t been running the Texas spread.

Sim flung his hand over his eyes. Why was he making excuses for her? He didn’t give a damn one way or the other, and nothing would come of some fleeting attraction that was about as meaningful as a bull and heifer rutting in a field.

That was all it ever was to him—rutting. Drop your pants and thank you, ma’am. They were always whores, and he always hated himself when it was finished.

He’d only stop hating himself when he took Esperanza in proper marriage, touched that unsullied skin and knew she accepted him. Needed him. Loved him.

Tonight he would dream only of Esperanza. But as he slipped into that netherworld of shades and memories, he saw Esperanza dressed in a soiled dove’s garish plumage, turning from Sim with disgust in her eyes. It was Tal Bernard, in robes of virgin white, who held out her arms to welcome him home.