Читать книгу Dreaming Of A Western Christmas - Carol Arens - Страница 18

Chapter Nine

“Gentlemen.”

“What the—?” The heavyset man facing Brand across the fire leaped to his feet. “Who the hell are you?”

“Name’s Brandon Wyler. And you?”

One of the other men twisted on the log he sat on and surveyed Brand with hard black eyes. His matted hair hung past the open neck of a grimy shirt, and Brand couldn’t help noticing his necklace of elk’s teeth. The third man, younger than his companions, looked downright skinny and his blond hair hung in greasy-looking strands past his fuzzy chin.

Silence.

He kept his revolver trained on the heavy one. “Talk to me,” Brand snapped. “What are you doin’ out here in the middle of nowhere?”

“H-hunting,” the blond kid answered. He didn’t sound too sure. “That—that’s right, isn’t it, Jim?”

“Shut up, Granger.”

“Hunting what?” Brand pursued.

The heavyset man propped his pudgy hands on his hips. “What’s it to you, mister?”

“Nothin’ much. I’m hunting, too. Didn’t want my horse to scare your quarry away.” He paused long enough to take a look at the silent third man. Round-shouldered, dark-skinned, with a drooping black mustache.

“I’m chasin’ after a woman,” Brand continued. “Following her, actually. Pretty. Blond hair. Came out from Missouri with a wagon train, but I lost track of her after Fort Hall. Colonel there told me she picked up a guide and started south to Texas. That’s where I’m headed. You run across her?”

“Nope,” Fatso said quickly. “Uh, how come you’re tryin’ to find her?”

“Money. She’s carrying a lot of cash and she owes me for a horse I sold her.” He watched the three men look at each other, then at him.

“Texas, huh?” Fatso said.

“Yeah. Hired a guide, like I said. Lost track of them a couple days ago, but I figure I can pick up their trail. Used to live halfway between here and Texas, so I know the trails. Maybe you fellas could use some company?” Brand carefully made a show of putting his gun away.

Again the men exchanged glances, and Brand knew they’d taken the bait. Already the skinny kid was edging toward a saddled pinto at the edge of their camp.

But Fatso pinned Brand with small, hostile eyes that were too close together. “We don’t want company, mister. Why don’t you just ride on outta here?”

“Sure thing. Maybe I’ll see you fellas on the trail.”

“Don’t look too hard. Like I said, we don’t want company.”

Brand faked anger. “Hey, I don’t want you hornin’ in on my quarry. Don’t want to share the goods with anybody, know what I mean?”

“Sure do. Now, turn around, mister, and vamoose.”

Brand pivoted and headed for his horse. Behind him he heard Fatso’s voice. “Granger, Jim, saddle up! We’re ridin’ out.”

Good riddance, he thought. He could hardly wait to get back to Suzannah. But just as he stuffed his boot into the stirrup, he heard the sound of a gun cocking and then the roar of its discharge. A bullet slammed into him. White-hot pain tore through his right shoulder and he sucked in his breath.

“Got ’im,” someone shouted. “He won’t be botherin’ us anymore.”

He had to mount, but he couldn’t grab the saddle horn and haul himself up by brute strength. He had to get back to the top of Clarke’s Castle and Suzannah. He gritted his teeth and reached up again.

* * *

Someone is coming. Suzannah listened for a moment, then jolted upright and fished under her saddlebag for the revolver. Lifting it in both hands, she pointed the barrel toward the noise, careful not to touch her finger to the trigger.

What was it, an animal? A wolf? The hair on the back of her neck rose. Could it be a bear? Did bears live on hilltops?

The sound came closer. Her mare shifted nervously, and Suzannah held her breath. Could she aim accurately in the dark? Even if she did, could she kill anything?

A horse! She heard hoofbeats, moving slowly, just beyond the boulders. Very slow hoofbeats, and... Oh, God. She tried to control her shaking hands, slipped off the safety and slid her forefinger over the trigger.

And then she heard something odd, someone whistling through his teeth—“Oh, Susanna.”

“Brand?”

“Yeah,” came a tired voice.

She was on her feet and running as his head appeared over the rocks. “Brand!”

“Suzannah,” he rasped. “For God’s sake, put the gun down.”

She tossed it onto the ground and kept moving toward him.

“Gotta help me down, Suzannah. My shoulder’s hurt.” He dropped the reins, brought his leg over the saddle horn and reached down to her with one arm. With a groan he latched on to her extended hands and slid to the ground.

He staggered, and she grabbed him around the waist. “Easy, easy,” he panted. “Don’t bump my arm.”

“Which arm?”

“Right. It’s my shoulder, really. Gunshot.”

She cried out, then clapped her free hand over her mouth.

“Walk me over to my bedroll, will you?”

Step by halting step she guided him the twenty feet to his blankets, and he dropped to his knees. “Think you could unsaddle my horse?”

After some fumbling she figured out how to loosen the cinch under the animal’s belly and dragged off the saddle. She staggered under the weight.

“Make some coffee, will you?” he called.

“I thought you were afraid of smoke being seen.”

“Dig a fire pit. Use the shovel tied on my horse. Scoop down about ten inches.”

Brand watched his ladylike lady dig what had to be the first hole she’d made in the earth since making mud pies when she was a girl. She followed his instructions, and when the coffee was bubbling over on her scrabbled-together fire, he asked for the final thing he needed.

“Look in my saddlebag for my whiskey flask and some linen for bandages. And the jerky,” he added. “All of a sudden I’m damn hungry.”

Her relief was so obvious he had to laugh. “You cannot be at death’s door if you are hungry,” she quipped.

“Coffee ’bout ready?”

“After I tend to your shoulder.” She found the bandages and the whiskey and settled beside him. “Lean forward.”

She stripped off his bloody shirt while he clenched his jaw. She peered at him. “Do you want some whiskey?”

“No. Save it for...just save it.”

“There doesn’t seem to be very much blood,” she said.

“Bullet must have gone clean through.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Like a son of a— Yeah, it hurts.”

She twisted her hands together. “What should I do now?”

“Pour the whiskey over it.”

She uncorked the flask, clamped her teeth together and dribbled the contents over his bloody shoulder while he hissed in his breath and swore.

“Such language!” she remarked when his fist released her shirt-sleeve.

Brand closed his eyes while she rustled around the camp getting out mugs for the coffee. “Any whiskey left?”

“Yes. But save some for me, please.”

For her! Lord save them, the trail to Oregon was corrupting his Southern belle. He heard the coffee dribble out of the pot and, still keeping his eyes closed, he reached for a mug. It was hot and strong and so full of grounds he ended up chewing most of the first mouthful, but he didn’t say a word, just gulped down swallow after swallow while she unfolded his pocketknife and did her best to saw off rounds of jerky.

“Open your mouth,” she ordered. She laid a piece of the salty-tasting dried meat on his tongue. He chewed it up and swallowed it down. His shoulder throbbed like a son of a gun, but he tried not to think about it. Instead, he closed his eyes and thought about Suzannah while she fed him sips of coffee and more jerky as if she’d done it all her life.

“You know something, Suzannah?”

“I know a great many things, Brand. I was very well educated when I was a girl. Papa had acres of books. What would you like to know?”

“Nothing that’s in any book,” he growled. “I wanted to say that, fancy education or not, you are one extraordinary woman.”

“Oh, I do hope so. I do want to make John a good wife.”

He snapped his lids open. “Hand me the whiskey.”

But three slugs of the liquor didn’t take away the sour taste of John’s name on her lips. He listened to her pouring coffee for herself and slicing off more rounds of jerky and wondered why the whiskey wasn’t working.

“How do you know you really want to marry this man?” he heard himself say. “You’ve only known him for two days.”

“I just know. John was so dashing and so personable, and attentive and, well, flattering...with such fine manners. I just know.”

For some reason her words made him mad. “That’s what it takes to get a girl like you, huh? Fancy manners and flattery?”

Her mouth dropped open.

“I have—” He sucked in a breath. “I had a younger sister. She fell in love with some damn flashy army officer who was just toying with her. He left her at the altar, and—” he swallowed over the rock in his throat “—she, uh, she drowned herself.”

Her face changed. “Oh, Brand, what a terrible thing.”

“Yeah, well, I guess that’s why I believe in long engagements. Gives a couple of lovers time to get to know each other.”

She was silent for a long minute. “You think I am foolish, do you not?”

“I think... Doesn’t matter what I think.”

“Yes, it does. Tell me.”

He began playing with his pocketknife, turning it over and over in his hand and rubbing his thumb over the smooth handle.

“Seems to me like a man and a woman have two choices. They can fall into bed with each other and damn the consequences. Or they can do what men and women do to spend time together—takin’ walks by the river and dancin’ with each other and goin’ on picnics and all those things. Then they can—”

“Fall into bed with each other,” she supplied.

His laugh stuttered into the quiet.

“It is the same in the end, is it not?” Her voice told him he should drop the subject, but something inside him wouldn’t let it go.

“Might not be the same, no. Might be that if she looked hard enough at a man she’d see something in him that should warn her off.”

“And you wish your sister had done just that.”

Brand looked past her hunched shoulder into the soft darkness. “Yeah. If she had, she’d be alive today. If I ever meet up with the bastard who destroyed her, I’m going to kill him.”

She hesitated. “What good will that do?”

“It’d get him off the face of the earth, for one thing. And it might make me feel better about my sister.”

Suzannah said nothing. After a while she refilled his coffee and then her own and sat sipping it slowly. He watched her slim, delicate fingers cradle the tin mug. An army wife? He didn’t think so. Even an officer’s wife, like the colonel’s lady, Violet McLeod got pretty well ground down between sandstorms and Indian skirmishes and God knew what else out here in the West.

“There’s precious little to compensate a gently reared woman at an army post,” he said carefully.

“There is her husband,” Suzannah insisted. “There is always the love of her husband.”

What the hell, her mind was made up. She didn’t want to see the danger staring her in the face. And anyway, what difference did it make if she wanted to throw her life away out in Oregon? But it ate at him just the same.

Something he said must have whanged into her because she sat looking down at him for a long time, her eyes troubled. Slowly he reached up and touched her shoulder, spread his fingers against her warmth and drew her down to him.

His lips grazed her forehead, moved to her cheek and then hovered a scant inch from her mouth.

“Suzannah,” he murmured. “Don’t do it, Suzannah. Don’t marry him.”