Читать книгу Outlaw Wife - Ana Seymour - Страница 10

After their brief exchange, the three occupants of the sheriffs office had settled down in silence, each busy with their own thoughts. Willow’s had been gloomy. She was thinking back over the past several months, trying to decide exactly where her life had begun to spin out of control.

She could now appreciate the lengths to which her father had gone to protect her from his lawless world. Growing up, she’d resented it. Resented his absences. Resented the fact that she’d had to live with Aunt Maud on a tiny ranch in the middle of the endless bare plains of Nebraska, never seeing anyone. Never visiting a neighbor or being visited by one. When Aunt Maud had died last year, she’d been almost glad because it had forced her father to take her away from the desolation of that place.

Now she finally realized what he had been shielding her from.

She looked around at the jail cell. It had two cots, which were the only furnishings. A chamber pot stood in one corner, without so much as a screen for modesty. Would she have to use it—in plain view of everyone? Would she have to sleep here, watched by strange men? She rubbed her hand along the blanket. It was old and greasy. She swallowed down rising tears.

“They can’t hold you in here, darlin’,” her father told her softly from across the cell, reading her dismay.

She looked out at the man on the bed—the one she’d watched Jake stomp so savagely yesterday that she’d almost lost her breakfast. Simon Grant, the marshall had called him. He appeared to be sleeping. Turning back to her father, she said, “But I was there, Pa. And I did ride with you on those last few jobs.”

“They can’t prove that, Willow. Swear to me that you’ll deny everything if they ask you.”

She glanced again beyond the bars to the injured man. “He said he saw me there.”

“He said he thought he saw you. He was too far gone to know what he saw.”

“I was foolish. I should have kept my neckerchief in place.”

“You were damned foolish to go back to him in the first place. I should have suspected you weren’t off all that time on ‘feminine business’ as you so sweetly put it.”

“He would have died.”

“And we would have sold his blasted horse and been three counties from here by now.”

Willow looked down at her lap. “I’m sorry, Pa.”

Seth hoisted himself up off the bed and went to sit beside his daughter, putting an arm around her shoulders. “Not much use in frettin’ over it now.” He lifted her chin. “You’re not going to turn all Weepy Willow, now are you?”

It had been one of his pet names for her when she was a child, crying to see him ride off yet again for who knew how many months. “Don’t you get Weepy Willow on me,” he’d say teasingly, then he’d take her in his arms and gently wipe away the tears.

“What’s to become of us?” she asked.

“I reckon it depends on that young feller lying over there. They’ve already got about a mountain of things to pin on me. If they can add his testimony, it should be enough to put me at the end of a rope.”

Willow stiffened. The stark words sent a chill right through her middle. They might actually hang her father? It was unthinkable. She looked out again at the stranger who held such power over their fate. “What if he doesn’t testify?” she asked softly.

Seth shrugged. “Not much hope in that. You see what Jake’s boots did to him. Wouldn’t you testify if you were him?”

Her spell of self-pity over, Willow felt her mind beginning to work again. This battle was not lost. As he himself had pointed out, she’d saved their victim’s life. And there’d been a look in his eyes when he’d said it. She’d come to know that look in the year she’d been riding with the band. It meant that a man was interested, as her aunt Maud used to say. She’d never been the least bit interested in return, and she wasn’t now. But if keeping Mr. Grant interested would mean he wouldn’t testify against her and her father, she’d be willing to give it a try.

“Now what’s going through that busy little head of yours?” her father asked.

“Maybe we can convince him not to testify against us.”

Her father pulled his arm away from her. “You can stop that line of thinking right now, Winifred Lou Davis. You just keep your mouth shut and don’t admit anything. It’ll be fine. They can’t keep a young girl locked up like a hardened criminal.”

“Mmm.” She leaned over and planted a kiss on his leathery cheek. Not even Aunt Maud had ever called her by her real name. She’d been Willow since she was a baby, and the only time her father ever called her Winifred Lou was when he was angry or very, very serious.

Seth Davis shook his head and stood. “I’m going to get some shut-eye myself. I can’t even think straight. If the sheriff ever gets back here with that food he promised, wake me up.”

He went over to the other cot and lay down.

Within seconds, Willow could hear his light snores. A life on the run had taught Seth Davis to sleep when he could—anytime, anywhere. But even though they’d been up all night, Willow was wide-awake. She was going over again the brief conversation she and her father had had with the man whose testimony could cost her father his life. She was more and more certain that she hadn’t been mistaken about the way he’d looked at her. Now all she had to do was figure out a way to take advantage of it.

Simon felt as if he’d slept through another entire day, but it couldn’t have been long at all. John was just walking in the door of his office with a tray heaped with food. For the first time since his beating, Simon was hungry. His stomach rumbled in anticipation.

He sat up, feeling almost normal. His horse was back. The marshal had recovered his money belt with almost the entire bankroll intact. He could move again without wanting to puke. Things weren’t so bad after all.

He looked over at the cell. The old outlaw had evidently been sleeping, but he sat up as John walked into the room. The girl was still on the other cot, leaning back against the wall. Her eyes were fixed on him. He ventured a smile.

She smiled back. Lord, she was a beauty. Grimy male clothes and all.

“Sorry it took me so long,” John said, placing the heavy tray on his desk. “Mrs. Harris insisted that I sit myself down for a hot meal before I came back. Land sakes, but the woman’s a pain in the posterior.”

“And you wouldn’t know what to do with yourself if you didn’t have her yappin’ at you,” Simon agreed with a grin that didn’t even hurt.

“How’ve my prisoners been behaving?” John asked, ignoring his friend’s comment.

“I’m afraid I’m not such a good watchman, John. I fell sound asleep again. Sorry. I feel like a tuckeredout two-year-old.”

John busied himself with the tray of food, filling three plates with sausages and beans. “That would be the laudanum. I laced your coffee this morning.”

“The hell you did.”

John shrugged. “Cissy’s orders.” And that was that.

Simon let in enough air to qualify as a sigh. He had to admit that whatever John had given him had eased the pain. But it seemed…cowardly, somehow. His father had never allowed himself to be medicated, no matter what he was suffering. He glanced at the cell. The girl was still watching him. “A shot of whiskey would’ve worked just as well,” he said under his breath.

John didn’t appear the least affected by Simon’s grumbling. “Help yourself,” he said indifferently. “It’s in the desk drawer.” He reached over and thrust a plate at Simon. “I’d eat something first, though.”

Simon took the food and watched as the sheriff picked up the other two plates. “Do you want me to…ah…cover you while you hand that in to them?” he asked, glancing uncertainly toward the two prisoners.

John chuckled. “I think I can handle it, son. They don’t look that fierce.”

In fact, at the moment, the pair in the cell looked rather forlorn. The old man was rubbing the sleep from his eyes, his chest moving rhythmically in a silent cough. The daughter sat with her arms clutching her hunched knees. She had shifted her gaze from Simon to her father, and her eyes had clouded with worry.

“Ready for some lunch?” John asked, balancing the two plates on one arm as he turned the key in the cell door.

The girl unfurled herself and stood. She moved with the grace of a mountain cat. Simon felt a rumble in his stomach that did not come from the odor of Francine Harris’s baked beans. He watched as she crossed the cell and took the plates from John. “Thank you, Sheriff,” she said. “I can tell that, unlike the marshal and that awful deputy, you are a real gentleman. And I am sorry I kicked you.”

Simon couldn’t tell if the well-modulated tone of her voice and her shy smile were calculated. If so, her calculations were right on the mark as far as Simon was concerned. If he’d been John, he’d have flung open the cell door and let her walk right on out of there. John, it appeared, was made of sterner stuff.

“Well, I’m sorry you kicked me, too, miss. I’ll carry that mark awhile, I reckon. Now, if you’d just move back out of the way, I’ll be locking this door up again.”

The girl’s mouth gave a little twist of annoyance. But then she smiled again and stepped back. “Whatever you say, Sheriff.” Her eyes went once again to Simon, and her smile was not quite so shy.

Seth Davis stood to take his plate from his daughter. “We aren’t about to give you any trouble, Sheriff,” he said. “But I can’t say as much for the rest of my men if they find out you’re holding us here.”

John went to sit heavily in his chair. “We’ll just have to hope they won’t find out then, won’t we?”

“Myself, I wouldn’t mind meeting up with them again, as long as the odds are slightly better than the last time,” Simon put in. He set his plate alongside him on the cot and held a hand against his sore side as he settled into a comfortable position against the wall.

“Right,” John snorted. “You look like you’re in great shape for a showdown with a pack of gunmen.”

“I’d rather it wouldn’t be today,” Simon agreed with a faint smile.

“If you’d let us go, there would be no showdown,” the girl interrupted. “My father would take his men and ride clear out of the territory. I’d see to it.”

John leaned back and swiveled back and forth in his new chair. He chuckled. “I don’t mean any insult, miss, but it’s a little hard to picture you ordering around the likes of Jake Patton.”

“Jake’ll do anything I tell him to.” There was absolute conviction in her voice.

“Is Jake your man or something?” John asked.

Simon felt himself holding a breath on the girl’s answer. It was none of his business, but the thought of the man who had kicked him with such viciousness being involved with this girl, putting his hands on her, made him want to toss back the greasy sausage that had just slid down his throat.

She gave a chilly smile. “I don’t have a man. Don’t intend to, either. Not ever.”

There was a finality to the way she said it that seemed just a little sad to Simon. Of course, he’d said the same thing himself about not intending to hitch himself up with a woman, but his circumstances were far different from this outlaw daughter. He had a ranch to run and an invalid father to care for. That was all the future he needed. But what did this girl have ahead of her? Prison, perhaps. Then back to a life on the run. Would she end up after all with some unscrupulous bastard like Patton?

John’s kindly gray eyes held a touch of sympathy as he chuckled and said, “It’s the kind of thing that usually just happens, whether we intend it or not. You’re young yet. But I’m glad to hear that you’re not mixed up with Patton.” He straightened his chair and his expression sobered. “’Cause if he’s the one who messed with Simon, here, I wouldn’t count on him having much of a future.”

Willow paced the length of the cell for what must have been the thousandth time. The afternoon had seemed one of the longest in her life. Her father had spent most of it dozing fitfully, waking only to cough in that quiet, ominous way that seemed to reverberate through his entire body. She’d been urging him to see a doctor for weeks, but he’d brushed her off.

“I don’t need any damned sawbones poking at me” had been his standard reply. “Don’t you worry that pretty head, Weepy Willow.”

Now, if his dire predictions were true, the cough would be the least of his problems. She stopped walking for a minute and shrugged the tenseness out of her shoulders. Her father had been uncharacteristically passive since the arrest. Except for his protest over her involvement, he’d seemed almost resigned to his fate. It was just one more indication that things were not right with him. Which meant it was up to her to do something about the situation.

The sheriff had discouraged all her attempts to draw him into conversation. He’d been polite enough, and had agreed to accompany her out to the privy in back instead of making her use the jar in the cell. But when she’d tried batting her eyes at him, the way Aunt Maud had said girls did when they wanted a man’s attention, he’d appeared not to notice.

Which left the other man: Simon Grant. He, too, had been dozing most of the afternoon, sleeping off the effects of the laudanum, the sheriff had said. She went over to the bars to look at him. He wore no shirt over the wide swath of bandages around his middle. Her eyes were fixed on the even rise and fall of his chest with its sprinkling of dark hair. It was darker than the wavy hair on his head where there were highlights, no doubt from long days in the sun. She’d spent the past year riding with men, but she couldn’t remember ever studying one who was half-naked. Her father had been real fussy about how his men dressed and behaved in her presence.

With a half-conscious groan, the man on the cot moved, his hand clutching his side. Then his eyes opened, focused directly on her.

“What time is it?” he asked.

Willow blinked, her eyes dry. She’d been staring for longer than she thought. “It’s getting dark.”

Simon sat up, keeping his hand in place. “Damn drugs. That’s the last time I drink John’s coffee. I can’t keep my eyes open for more than five minutes at a time.”

Willow’s throat felt tight. She couldn’t decide if it was due to this man’s importance to her father’s future or to the easy ripple of the muscles of his bare arms as he pushed himself up. She forced herself to smile at him.

“Where is he, anyway?” he asked, looking around.

“The sheriff?”

Simon nodded, swinging his legs to the floor and using the momentum to stand.

“He went to have dinner with the marshal and the deputy.” Standing, Simon Grant looked much more powerful than he had on the cot. Willow swallowed away the odd knot in her throat. She might not have another opportunity to get this critical witness on their side. “How…how are your injuries?” she ventured. Desperately she wished that she’d paid more attention to Aunt Maud’s proclamations about the relationship between the genders. Not that Aunt Maud would have been the best teacher. She’d never been married, and Willow couldn’t imagine her proper, staid aunt ever falling in love.

The wounded man grimaced. “I’m all right.” He finally broke his gaze and began looking around the room. “If I knew what John did with my shirt…” he muttered.

“Is that it?” She pointed to a chair in the corner of the room.

“Oh, right.” He walked over to retrieve it.

Willow felt a moment of panic. “Ah…you’re not leaving?”

His eyes went back to her. Earlier in the day she had thought she’d seen interest in his expression and something like pity. Now he just looked tired. “I’ll head over to the hotel, I guess. I don’t suppose you two can cause much trouble locked up like that.”

“But I…I wanted to talk to you.” Her fingers made tight curls around the steel bars.

He shrugged awkwardly into his shirt. “Talk about what?”

“I…You were right. I was there when they robbed you.”

“I know. I saw you.”

“And I did cut the ropes and leave you the water.”

“For which I’m much obliged, like I said.” He turned toward the door.

“No, wait! I saved your life—you admitted it yourself.”

Simon stopped and looked at her with his eyes narrowed. “Forgive me for not being too grateful at the moment, miss. My head’s throbbing and my side aches. I guess I’m just one of those people who gets surly when they’re near stomped to death. So I thank you for your help, but I would give quite a lot of money right now to have never set eyes on you, your father or the congenial bunch you ride with.”

“Jake’s the worst of them. The rest aren’t so bad.”

“I’d just as soon not find out.”

Willow thought about batting her eyes, but somehow she didn’t think it would help Mr. Grant’s mood. Anyway, it hadn’t worked on the sheriff. Perhaps Willow just didn’t know how to do it right. She’d never been very good at playacting. She gave a deep sigh. “The truth is, Mr. Grant. I need your help.”

He looked surprised, but not the least sympathetic.

“Your testimony can put me in prison.”

He nodded. “I reckon.”

“But what’s even more important to me is that it could send my father to his death.”

Simon made no reply. He leaned against the far wall, waiting for her to continue.

“I untied you,” she said again, trying to keep the desperation from her tone.

“I’m willing to testify to that in court, miss,” he said. “And if that keeps you out of prison, it’ll be all right by me. But I don’t think it’ll help your father any. From the sound of things, they have enough piled up on him whether I testify or not.”

Willow’s eyes darted to the sheriff’s desk, then back to the man across the room. The sheriff had not lit the lamps before he left. In the darkening shadows, Simon Grant’s battered face looked monstrous. She couldn’t blame him for not having much charity toward her. But he was her only hope. “You could save him by handing me the keys to this door and looking the other way for five minutes.”

Simon gave a chuckle of disbelief. “Now why in tarnation would I do that, Miss Davis?”

“I…We could pay you. My father would give you money…whatever you want.”

Simon shook his head slowly. “No thanks.”

Willow bit her lip and tried to study his face in the gloom. There was no sign of that kind of male interest she thought she’d seen earlier. She may have been mistaken that it had ever been there. But at this point, she couldn’t think of anything else to try. She looked back at her father to assure herself that he was still sleeping. He’d skin her alive if he heard what she was about to say. She let the words come out in a rush. “Maybe I could pay you with something other than money.”

Simon straightened up and dropped the hand he held at his side. He took three halting steps closer to her. His dark eyes were inscrutable. “What did you have in mind?” he asked in a low voice.

To tell the truth, Willow didn’t know exactly what she had in mind. Aunt Maud had told her how men always wanted something from women. And Willow knew it had to do with mating, like the frantic couplings of the animals on the farm. But she hadn’t let her thoughts linger on the matter. It wasn’t something she’d ever intended to find out for herself.

He was watching her with that odd expression on his face again. Willow felt a strange flutter at the base of her stomach. She looked him square in the face. “I would do anything to save my pa, mister. Anything you want.”

There was a slight tremble to her voice as she said the last words. Simon could see that her hands were gripping the bars so tightly that her fingernails had gone white. All at once he found it impossible to meet those clear blue eyes. The girl might be nineteen, might have ridden with an outlaw gang, but she was obviously an innocent Her father had been right when he’d said that she didn’t belong in that cell. She waited like a lamb at a slaughterhouse for him to respond to her offer. An offer he was almost sure she didn’t even understand.

Suddenly it was as if he was the guilty one. As if it was somehow his fault that he had ended up at the wrong end of Jake Patton’s boot, robbed and beaten, and that as a result this young woman and her father were facing an uncertain future. How the hell had she managed to turn the tables like that?

“How about it, mister?” Her voice was not much more than a whisper.

He tried to take a calming breath, only to have it stab at his sore side. Damn it. He was the victim, not this outlaw girl. He wasn’t about to take on the responsibility for her dilemma. He wasn’t about to let her compound the hurt her father’s gang had already inflicted on him. Steeling himself with anger, he looked up and down her slender form and said with deliberate rudeness, “Sorry, miss. I’m just not interested.”

The anger died swiftly at her stricken look and sharp intake of breath. He was not used to insulting women. But then, he was not used to getting his ribs broken and his face smashed, either.

She seemed to sag, still holding on to the bars. “I saved your life,” she said again, but the energy had gone out of her voice.

“Yeah, well, that’s one point in your favor. But I reckon it’s up to a jury to see how much it counts.” There was an expression in her eyes that made Simon want to say something more. It was something underneath the hurt and frustration. In spite of the girl’s bravado, deep down in those eyes he was almost certain he could see fear. It made him pause for a minute, but he forced himself to turn around and head toward the door. It was none of his business if the girl was afraid.

“Please, mister. Please help me.”

His back stiffened at her soft plea. But he didn’t turn around. Snatching his hat from the rack, he opened the door and left.

“What the hell are you doing here?” the sheriff greeted Simon with a scowl.

Simon pulled out a chair next to Tom Sneed, the deputy, and nodded across the table at Marshal Torrance. “Good evening, gentlemen. Don’t mind John’s manners.”

“You’re supposed to be in bed, goldang it.”

“I need some coffee—some real coffee, not the stuff you drugged me with this morning.”

“I was going to bring you something when I finished here.”

“Kind of you, John. But I think I’ve imposed on your hospitality enough.”

“Hog swill.”

Simon smiled and motioned to Porter Smith, the hotel’s only waiter, to bring him some coffee. “Are you two about ready to set out for Cheyenne?” he asked the marshal.

Torrance stabbed a piece of his well-done steak. “That’s what we were just discussing when you arrived, Grant.”

His tone warned Simon that something was amiss. “Is there a problem?”

“We’ve had word from the deputy over at Cat’s Butte. He says the remaining members of the Davis gang were seen staking out the road between here and Cheyenne.”

“You figure they’re going to try to free their boss?”

“As sure as a puppy knows how to bark.”

John’s round face was creased with worry. “You can’t ride out there to be ambushed, Marshal.”

Sneed was the only one at the table with whiskey rather than coffee. He lifted the tumbler and took a deep drink. “I wouldn’t mind meeting up with that crew,” he said, swiping his hand across his mouth.

“I don’t intend to be ambushed, John,” the marshal replied. “We’ll skirt around them—ride through the hills.”

“There’s some rough country,” the sheriff pointed out.

“I’d rather deal with rough country than that quartet of Davis’s. Jake Patton alone can drill a nickel at sixty paces. And he’s a mean son of a gun with his fists.”

“He’s none too gentle with his boots, either,” Simon added.

John shook his head. “I say you all wait here until they can send reinforcements. Call in some help from the army.”

The marshal pushed away his plate. “No. We’ll handle it. Go easy on that, Tom,” he said as his deputy drained his glass.

Simon and John shared a glance that mirrored each other’s doubt. “At least let me keep the girl here,” the sheriff said finally. “Davis is the one you really want to nail, and you’ll have a better chance without a female along.”

“When the female’s as tasty as that little cottontail, she’s no trouble at all,” Sneed said with a leer.

“Shut up, Tom,” Marshal Torrance barked. “You might have something there, John. It’s Seth Davis I want to see swinging. I don’t really give a damn about the daughter.”

“I can hold her until the Davis gang clears out of the territory. Then you can send someone to fetch her.”

The marshal considered for a moment. “All right,” he said, standing. “I’ll take you up on your offer. One less problem for me to worry about. C’mon, Sneed.”

The deputy rose unsteadily to his feet. John stood along with them, but Simon stayed sitting, letting comfort take precedence over courtesy.

“Do you need me to go open the cell for you?” John asked.

“No, finish your supper. We know where the keys are.” Torrance and John shook hands. “I’ll send word when I make arrangements for the girl.”

The two lawmen said goodbye and walked out of the restaurant, leaving John to settle back down in his chair. “So it looks like I have a real prisoner on my hands for a while.”

“I don’t know why you offered to keep her. She’ll be madder’n hell when they take her father away, and you’ll be the one she’ll take it out on.”

“We’ll be the ones,” John corrected.

“Uh-uh. I’m going home.”

“You’re not riding for two more days, remember?”

“If you’ll let me have another dose of that stuff you gave me this morning, I can just float home.” Porter came over to the table to fill their coffee cups, and Simon ordered a steak.

“Bloody,” he told the stocky old gentleman who had been waiting tables at the Buckhorn Inn as long as Simon could remember. “Tell Mrs. Harris to just pat the cow on its head and send it on in here.”

Porter chuckled and shuffled off into the kitchen.

John resumed his argument. “Just because you don’t feel the pain, doesn’t mean you’re mended. Do you want Cissy riding out to Saddle Ridge to give you a piece of her mind?”

“Not especially.”

“Then just forget about it. You and Miss Davis will be nice cozy roommates over at the office for the next couple of days.” One of John’s white eyebrows shot up. “Anyway, I didn’t notice you finding it a hardship to look at her.”

“Looking’s one thing. Listening’s another.”

“Listening?”

“Before I came over here she was trying to talk me into letting her and her pa go. She said I owed it to her because she saved my life.”

John gave a whistle. “I expect that could be a powerful argument for a softy like you, Simon.”

“I wasn’t tempted,” Simon said, not entirely sure he was telling the truth.

“Good lad. But it’ll be close quarters over the next two days. Do you think she can change your mind?”

“I may be soft when it comes to kids and old folks like you, John, but I have no charity in my heart for outlaws.”

“Not even pretty ones?”

Simon hesitated just enough to let a grin begin to light John’s face, then said firmly, “Not even pretty ones.”