Читать книгу Outlaw Hunter - Carol Arens - Страница 9
ОглавлениеA pair of lovely, amber-colored eyes gazed up at him in the moonlight. He felt as dumb as a tree stump, with no more knowledge of how to respond than a dried-out piece of wood.
A helpless sparrow of a woman had gone into the water, but someone else had stepped out.
She even had another name.
“Pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Dawson.” He reckoned Miss was the right way to address her. Chances are she had gone back to her maiden name.
And a good thing, too, in his estimation. The lady taking her child from his arms had a smile prettier than the bright full moon. She resembled a “Hattie” as much a songbird resembled a mud hen.
“Won’t you call me Melody?”
It would change things, being on a first-name basis. As it stood now, bringing her home was a part of his job, his obligation as a US marshal.
Ordinarily, he transported criminals whose first names he didn’t care to know. His only duty was to see them safely to trial and then a jail cell.
Miss Dawson was offering friendship. It would make the trip more pleasant, no denying that. But once he delivered her to Cottonwood Grove, he’d never see her or the children again.
Keeping an emotional distance would be proper.
“I’m Reeve,” he said, and by the blazes, he was smiling when he said it.
He followed her to the campfire and then sat down beside her, a comfortable enough distance to allow for conversation without things seeming too intimate.
The evening was cold but with no sign of snow. It felt good to have a fire burning from the branches he’d found scattered among the trees. Nothing was better than a true wood fire. It glowed hot enough so that the part of one’s body presented to the flames grew toasty and made it easier to ignore the chilly side facing the dark.
While he considered how to bring up the Broken Brand without discouraging the new confidence brewing in her, she settled the baby on her lap then drew her wet hair over her shoulders. She fanned it through her fingers.
Even damp, her hair wasn’t the dull brown color he had assumed it was. Far from dull, it caught the warmth of the flames and reflected shots of honey gold.
He knew he shouldn’t, but he looked forward to seeing dawn sunshine glinting in those long silky strands.
Too bad they couldn’t have an easy fireside chat about nothing of great importance, but there were some things he needed to know. Things that would keep the Travers family in jail for a very long time.
“I don’t like to bring it up,” he said, deciding that the only way to approach the subject was straight on. “But I need to know what went on at the ranch. Colt’s lady, Holly Jane, told me that you had been kidnapped.”
“That’s true. It’s what they called The Travers Way. It was required of a man to go out and pluck a bride out from under her family’s nose. It was a little different in my case, though.”
“How was it different? I wouldn’t ask, but I don’t want some fancy lawyer twisting the truth and setting those—” he cleared his throat of the cussword he had been ready to blurt out “—those criminals free.”
“I understand,” she answered.
Her smile faded, but the defeated expression she used to have did not come back. In fact, she squared her shoulders and looked directly at him. The dusky beauty of her dark-lashed eyes nearly made him forget what he had been talking about.
“I don’t regret anything, mind you, because of my babies, but the day I saw Ramsey Travers walk into the Cottonwood Grove General Store was the worst day of my life.” She shrugged her shoulders and cast a glance at the wagon, where Flynn slept. “I didn’t know it was, at the time...I thought it was the best. That day, watching Ram from across the street, I told my friends that I had fallen in love. They said I was silly—I couldn’t know that with just one glance. Well...until that point in my life I had been a cherished only child... What I knew about the world outside of Cottonwood Grove wouldn’t fill a thimble.”
She turned Seth around on her lap, facing the other side of his blanket toward the flames.
This close to winter, the woods were bare and silent. Still, there was a symphony in the air, with the crackle of the flames, the bubble of the spring and the branches overhead rustling against each other. And there was Joe, already snoring like a full-grown man.
“I left my friends and crossed the street, pretending to need something—a ribbon or a gewgaw—I can’t recall, but it was something frivolous. Quite truthfully, Reeve, I was a frivolous girl. I flirted with Ram and he promised me the moon if only I’d sneak away with him. He filled my head with romance. He told me I was the first girl he’d ever kissed and the last one he ever wanted to. Fool I was to believe him.”
“You were young. Besides, I’m the last person to judge youthful foolishness. I only want to see those folks stay where they belong.”
“That would suit me fine.”
The baby began to fuss. Seth turned his head toward his mother’s breast and gnawed at the blanket where it covered his cheek.
“Looks like he wants a feeding.”
Reeve got up and walked over to his saddle. He took a blanket out of his pack then carried it back and settled it over Melody’s shoulders.
“Let me know when he’s settled.” He walked to the other side of the fire to check on the sleeping children. The deputy’s large coat had slipped from Pansy’s shoulder where it covered her and her sister like a blanket. He tugged it over the curve of her round, pink cheek.
“You seem to know a thing about babies, Reeve.”
His name sounded nice, the way she said it. It was hard to recall when someone had uttered it quite that way.
“I have nieces. I know when it’s time to hand one back to her mother.”
“Seth is settled in. Sit beside me so I can get this sorry tale over with.”
He sat down a few inches closer than he had been before, but somehow it seemed the right distance.
“We were to be married, be gone for only a day, he’d promised. We were to return and spring the grand and romantic news on my parents. I was so full of the dreams he’d spun I didn’t give anyone else’s feelings a thought. I left my folks without a word or a kiss, only a note that I later found among Ram’s things.
“I was wretched to them when all they had ever been to me was devoted. Until Ram, the three of us had been each other’s world.”
“Girls do grow up.” Way too fast. He thought about the little ones who hugged his thighs whenever he visited his sister. His heart twisted.
“Most not so thoughtlessly,” she answered, staring at the flames. “I’ve told the children my folks will welcome me back, and them, as well. I only hope that’s true.”
“Would you welcome Flynn or Seth in the same situation?”
“I see your point, Reeve, but for all I know they might think I’m dead.”
Reeve. Every time she said his name it sounded special. He gave himself a mental shake. It was time to wrangle his thoughts back to business.
“They’ll be that much more relieved to see you, then. So, are you saying you weren’t kidnapped?”
“Oh, I was...” She looked away from the fire and straight at him. “Half a day out of Cottonwood Grove we rode right past the Justice of the Peace where we were to be married. I told Ram that I’d changed my mind. I wanted to go home, to be married with my parents by my side. That gave him a good laugh and me a good cry.
“We kept on riding, avoiding towns so I couldn’t tell anyone that he was taking me against my will, because by then he was. I tried to escape once and he tied me to the saddle until we got to the Badlands, where I wouldn’t dare try to run. Once we reached the Broken Brand, Pappy Travers married us. I had to say I do. They were going to punish Libby if I didn’t.”
“I wonder if your marriage was legal?”
“I signed a license that looked real. They say Pappy Travers became ordained, just so he could perform weddings at the ranch.”
Another crime came to mind. One he had to ask about, but damn, he didn’t want to.
“I’m asking this as a lawman, because I have to.” He took a breath. Questioning a criminal was a hell of a lot easier than questioning a witness. “Before you got to the Broken Brand, did Trav—”
“No.” Silence stretched for a moment, broken by Seth’s contented sighs. “It wasn’t allowed. Pappy Travers had decreed—and what Pappy Travers decreed was law—that the men had to wait until the vows were spoken and the paper signed. They broke every other kind of law. I don’t know why they drew the line at rape.
“After Pappy pronounced a marriage binding, that was another thing. It didn’t matter if the bride was unwilling, she was now her husband’s property, to be treated as he saw fit.”
He nodded, clasped his hands around his knees and tried very hard not to erupt into anger. There were two more things he needed to ask, one much harder than the other.
“Were there others like you?”
She was silent for a long moment, and then she nodded.
“I’ve heard the stories of how some adapted, became no better than their husbands. Some didn’t. Joe’s mother died giving birth to him. His daddy is in jail—no one remembers where, though. Libby and Pansy’s mother went crazy. She walked away one day. That happened the year before I came, and Pansy was an infant. Libby said they looked for her, but not for long.”
“It’s hard to accept that they got away with it as long as they did.”
“The ranch is remote...and not all of the Traverses got away. Some got caught, some shot. Ram and his brother were both killed robbing a bank. They were buried where they committed their crime.” She looked at him straight on again, her eyes welling with moisture. “I’d like to say that I grieved the loss, but when word came...well, my tears weren’t sorrowful ones. All I could think of was that he wouldn’t be a poisonous influence on Flynn or the coming baby.”
As much as he’d told her that his questions were not personal, only what he was required to ask, her answers cut him to the quick. The few Traverses out there walking free wouldn’t be for long.
This brought him to the final question, the one he dreaded asking more than the others.
“Will you testify against the ones we have in custody when it comes to the trial?”
She bowed her head, closed her eyes. He thought she was not going to answer, but she nodded her head.
“Yes, Reeve,” she whispered. “As long as you’ll be there.”
“I’ll be there.”
It was his job to be there. Even if it weren’t, he’d be there. Somewhere during this conversation, he had changed from lawman to friend.
Where Melody Dawson was concerned, things were no longer strictly business.
* * *
“I can’t believe it,” Reeve heard Libby exclaim while she and Melody sat on the back of the buckboard with their legs dangling over the edge. “Your name is really Melody Irene? Why did you tell us it was Hattie?”
Reeve drove the wagon team while Joe took turns giving Pansy and Flynn rides on his horse. He didn’t worry about his mount. The horse was good with children, having been exposed to his sister’s brood.
“I just... I guess I wanted to keep that bit of me for myself.” Melody’s voice drifted toward him on the wood seat. “Ram took everything I loved away... I didn’t want to give him my name.”
“How is it he didn’t learn your name that first day, when you met him in front of the general store?”
“Libby, I hope you are never as foolish as I was. Meeting Ram began as a romantic lark. I thought it would be fun to pretend I was someone else.”
“You aren’t foolish. You are the best person I know. I can’t think of how we would have gotten by without you.”
“Still, I was very foolish.”
For a moment, the only noise was the sound of the wheels crunching over the road and the creak of the leather tack.
“I only hope that bringing you all home will help heal my folks’ grief.”
Reeve turned his head to look back. Libby slipped her arms around Melody’s waist, and Melody put her arm over Libby’s shoulders. They leaned together, blond head meeting red head.
“I hope they take to us,” Libby said, the worry in her voice apparent all the way to the front of the wagon. “We look like riffraff that the cat dragged in.”
Their clothing did look ragged, and that was a fact. It would be important for them to make a respectable impression. Melody’s folks might be happy enough that they wouldn’t notice what their daughter or the others had on but other folks in town would be looking, and looking hard.
Adjusting to town ways would not be easy on the children, especially Joe and Libby. They’d have a stigma to overcome, having been raised by outlaws.
Looking their best might make a difference.
“We’ll be coming to a town tomorrow.” Reeve looked over his shoulder again.
Melody and Libby glanced up at him at the same time. Libby would grow to be a beauty, once she got some food in her and her blue eyes lost their slightly haunted look.
“It’s the last one before we reach Cottonwood Grove. We’ll do some shopping. We could all use something clean to wear.”
Melody let go of Libby then crawled across the back of the wagon, pausing for an instant to check on Seth, asleep in a wood crate. She climbed over the seat back, then settled beside him.
“We might just as well go around the town,” she whispered. “What we have on will do.”
It wouldn’t do. Neither would the flush of embarrassment tinting her face. He should have realized that they didn’t have any money before he spoke up.
“There’s a fund. A victims’ fund.” There wasn’t, but he hoped that she believed him. “The government sets aside money for people in situations like yours. Just to see that you get off to a fair start.”
Melody frowned down at her worn skirt. She grabbed a fistful of fabric in her lap. When she glanced up, there was moisture warming her dark amber eyes.
“I’ve hated this thing for a very long time. I’ll pay the government back every cent. For what it spends on the children, too.”
He believed that she would.
There were women in the world who would not have made it through the kidnapping and the captivity. Like Libby and Pansy’s mother, they would have simply walked away. He admired the fact that life’s struggles had made Melody stronger rather than weaker.
He’d seen her strength from the first moment, but ever since she emerged from the hot spring, she had taken on a new radiance.
Not only was he impressed with her poise and her grit, but her sunny beauty, as well, even though she was a mite thin.
Just now, he wanted to kiss her, to pull her tight against him and taste her. He wanted it more than he’d wanted anything in a long time.
Chances were this warm feeling for Melody Dawson would stay with him for a long time after he left her safely in Cottonwood Grove.
* * *
It was hard to believe that she was walking down the boardwalk of a real town—a town less than a day’s ride from home.
Melody recalled coming here with her parents once, but the memories were dim.
To her right was a bakery with its door open to the cloudy afternoon. Out of it trailed the scents of vanilla and cinnamon.
The aroma went straight to her heart. It felt as if she had landed in Heaven instead of Tawberry, Texas.
Next door to the bakery was a milliner. Hats with pretty ribbons and bows decorated the window. The whirl of textures and colors made her want to weep out loud. Life had been dull for so long.
It was the next establishment, though, that made her gasp and Libby spin about in alarm. The name on the frosted glass door read E. M. Probst, MD.
Each night of her captivity she had gone to sleep thanking the Good Lord that her children remained healthy for another day. Way out on the Broken Brand, illness could be a death sentence. There were several small graves on that cursed land.
Somehow, she managed to regain her composure by the time they reached their destination, Henry’s General Store.
A splat of moisture hit her bare head, cold and stinging as though it couldn’t decide whether it wanted to be rain or snow.
She hugged Seth tight to her chest. Beside her, Libby shivered. Tonight she would offer thanks that they would be sleeping in the hotel, that the children would not catch a chill by staying out in the elements.
Government money would pay for the cost, Reeve had assured her—just like the cost of the new clothes they were about to purchase.
She didn’t believe that, not for a moment. If she had to work all hours of the day and night she would pay Reeve Prentis back.
But Libby was right. They did look like riffraff that the cat had dragged in. Well, not all of them.
Reeve looked perfectly wonderful, walking ahead of her on the boardwalk. He carried Flynn in one arm and Pansy in the other.
He had left his gun belt in his saddle pack so that it would be safer to tote her little wild man about.
The marshal strode straight and tall. Even without the weapon he had the bearing of a man of authority. Yes, he spoke to the children and made them laugh, but all the while he glanced about, scanning dim alleys and watching folks as they passed by.
It must be habit for him, looking out for trouble.
Once again, emotion pressed tears to the backs of her eyes. Because of Reeve, she felt safe for the first time in a long while.
He carried Flynn and Pansy into the store. Joe followed.
Needing a moment and a deep breath to once again compose herself, Melody stood outside while Libby went in before her.
Libby screeched.
Melody rushed inside to see the girl frozen in place with one hand over her mouth and her finger wagging at the counter where a display of jars containing hard candy shimmered in a rainbow of colors.
The store clerk, very clearly, did not share her joy. His eyes narrowed. He swung his head back and forth, taking in each person’s disreputable appearance.
“Is there something I can help you with?” he asked with an arrogant arch of his brows.
“That’s candy!” Joe exclaimed.
He and Libby approached the counter, shoulder to shoulder, their eyes as wide as their grins.
“Those are peppermint sticks,” Joe said. “I recall one time that Uncle Cyrus brought some home from a raid.”
“He didn’t share them,” Libby said. “But they sure smelled good.”
On the right side of the counter was a basket of hair ribbons. Libby turned, reaching toward the ribbons. Her fingers stroked the air over them.
“I reckon the shiny ones are satin,” she said in an almost-reverent tone. “And those others, are they velvet, Melody?”
“Don’t you touch those, young woman,” the counter man ordered. “And you, boy, keep those dirty fingers off the candy jars.”
Poor Libby, her cheeks flamed.
“I wouldn’t take one, I swear,” she said.
Reeve set Flynn and Pansy on the floor. He approached the basket, patted Libby’s shoulder then scooped up all the ribbons in his big fist.
“I’ll take these and whatever else the young lady wants.” Reeve shrugged off his coat, exposing his badge. “Give me all the peppermint in the jar and the licorice, to go with it.”
The skinny man gulped, sending his Adam’s apple sliding up and down his throat.
“Yes, sir, Marshal.”
“Mind your manners, mister, and help these good folks with whatever they need. If you don’t have it, find someone who does and have it brought here. Be sure to pack everything up in nice, neat packages and have them delivered to the hotel.”
The counter clerk bobbed his half-bald head.
“I’ll be back to settle up in half an hour.”
“Yes, sir, Marshal.” The man blinked pale green eyes that were a size too large for his face. “It’ll be just as you say.”
“See that it is.”
Reeve turned to Melody, then took her by the elbow and led her to stand by the big potbellied stove that heated the store.
“Buy whatever you need. The government’s got more money in the fund than it knows what to do with. I’ve got to pay a visit to the town marshal, but I’ll be back shortly. We can all walk over to the hotel together.”
He took a step toward the front door, but she touched his arm, halting him. The supple leather of his shirt felt warm and his muscles firm under her fingertips.
“This is the first time any of the children have been inside a store. Thank you for not allowing the clerk to disrespect them.”
He answered with a nod, then went out the door, closing it on an increasingly angry-looking storm.
She went to the window and pulled aside the curtain to watch him dash across the earthen street. He was a big man walking in long powerful strides. His shoulders, hunched against a sudden downpour, looked as if they could carry the world.
