Читать книгу Bride On The Run - Elizabeth Lane - Страница 11

The mule wheezed and laid back its ears as Anna settled her tender buttocks atop the bony ridge of its spine. “There now,” she murmured, struggling to soothe the nervous beast. “Take it easy, old boy. You got the best of the deal here. You could be carrying that big hulk of a man instead of me.”

But the mule did not appreciate her logic. It rolled its eyes, shook its dusty hide and began kicking out at the buckboard with its hind legs. Anna groped frantically for reins to control the creature. There were none.

Malachi had mounted the other mule—a much calmer animal than the one he had chosen for her, Anna noted wryly. If he was concerned for her safety, he did not show it. “Just hang on to the collar and give Lucifer his head,” he told her. “He knows the way home.”

“Lucifer?” She shot him a sidelong glare, struck by the aptness of the name. “And, pray tell, who might you be riding? Saint Peter?”

“Beelzebub.” He nudged the flanks of his longeared mount and moved ahead of her on the trail. With a contemptuous wheeze, Lucifer fell into line. Anna clung grimly to the padded leather collar as the massive beast swayed down the road. She’d lied to Malachi about being able to ride—just as she’d lied about other things to Stuart Wilkinson and to the kindly couple who’d let her wait at their ranch for Malachi to arrive. Lies had come more and more easily to her since that shattering night in St. Joseph. By now they were almost second nature.

A fresh breeze, smelling of rain, ruffled Anna’s sweat-dampened hair. She glanced up to see clouds sliding across the jagged gash of sky. In the depths of the canyon the shadows had deepened from mauve to purple. Fear twisted the knot in her stomach as she realized the daylight would soon be gone. They would have to pick their way down the narrow, dizzying roadway in full darkness.

Even now she could feel twilight closing around her. Its bluish haze blended with the back of Malachi’s faded chambray work shirt as he moved in and out of the shadows like a ghost, keeping well ahead of her. He had fallen as silent as the great stone buttresses that lined the canyon. Oh, but she knew what he was thinking. Disappointment had been etched all over his big, craggy face from the first time he looked at her. She was not what he had expected, let alone what he had wanted.

But then, what difference did it make? Anna reminded herself harshly. If she had anything to say about it, the dour Mr. Stone wouldn’t have to put up with her for long. She could only hope that when the time came for goodbyes, he would be decent enough to buy her passage to California.

As the sky deepened a coyote sang out from a distant ridge top. The sharp crescendo of yips climaxing in a long, mournful wail, puckered the skin at the back of Anna’s neck. Malachi’s broad-shouldered back was no more than a flicker in the gathering murk. He was deliberately leaving her farther and farther behind. She could pitch off this accursed beast, tumble into some bottomless ravine, and he would not know—or likely care—until the mule wandered into the corral without her.

“Get up, Lucifer!” She kicked at the mule’s flanks with her sharp little boot heels, but the stubborn animal only wheezed and stopped to nibble at a trailside plant. Anna clung to the harness, kicking and cursing under her breath as the collar slid forward. Malachi had not even glanced back to make sure she was all right. The big, sullen wretch was more than disappointed, she realized with a sinking heart. He was angry. It was almost as if he’d hated her on sight.

Maybe she should have invested her last dollar in a set of itchy woolen long johns and a flour-sack dress. Yes, and braided her hair in scraggly pigtails tied up with rags. Maybe she should have smeared a little mud on her face and practiced belching out loud and saying ain’t and gol-darnit. Would that have elevated her in Malachi Stone’s esteem? Or was this just the way men treated women in these parts?

“Wait up, blast it!” she shouted after Malachi’s vanishing form. “Lucifer won’t budge, and you’re leaving me behind!”

Malachi paused, glancing back over his shoulder. Putting his fingers to his mouth he gave a long, shrill whistle.

Lucifer’s huge, bony head shot up like a catapult, throwing Anna backward as the animal plunged onto the road and broke into a spine-jarring trot. She gripped the collar for dear life, her hips alternately bouncing into the air and slamming down on the mule’s rock-hard back. Malachi sat and watched her, his face hidden by the deepening shadows. If he was laughing at her, Anna vowed, she would kill him for it!

“I thought you told me you could ride,” he said as Lucifer came abreast of his own mount and slowed to a swaying walk.

“I did,” Anna muttered, tugging her skirts over her knees. “I just didn’t specify what I could ride.”

He rewarded her witticism with a scowl. “It’s clouding up. Let’s get moving,” he said, nudging his mule to a brisk trot. This time Lucifer fell into line, bounding down the rutted road like a nine-hundred-pound jackrabbit. Anna clenched her teeth as her raw buttocks pounded the bumpy ridge of Lucifer’s spine. Misery rankled and roiled in her, festering until she could keep her silence no longer.

“You—don’t like—me, do—you?” she muttered, spitting out the words between bounces.

“Did I say that?” Malachi did not look at her.

“You didn’t—have to! Damn it, I’m not stupid!”

“I never said you were.”

“Then slow down, for mercy’s sake!” She seized Lucifer’s harness and by sheer force of will wrenched the big, lumbering animal to a halt. “No matter what you might think of me, I won’t be treated this way!” she said. “Either we come to some kind of understanding here and now, or I’m not budging another inch!”

Malachi, who had already gained half a furlong on her, hesitated, then wheeled his mount and rode back to where she waited. “All right,” he said in a cold voice, “have it your way. Your call.”

Anna’s breath hissed out in a ragged exhalation as she prodded Lucifer to a slow walk and waited for Malachi to fall in alongside her. She swallowed hard, steeling her nerves before she spoke.

“You desperately wanted me here,” she said. “At least that’s what your cousin, Mr. Wilkinson, led me to believe. And I did believe it, or I never would have come such a distance. So why are you treating me as if I’d brought in the plague?”

Malachi’s silence was as long and deep as the shadows that flowed through the craggy hollows of the canyon. The haunting cry of a desert owl shattered the darkness. As the sound echoed across the gorge, Anna realized how alone she was in this place, how helpless, how utterly dependent on this hostile stranger who was her lawful husband. It was too late, this time, to go flouncing off and climb aboard the next train out of town. She was stranded in this alien landscape with no money, no food and no one else who would help her.

“You’ve asked a fair question. I’ll give you that.” Malachi’s voice rumbled out of the shadows, almost startling her. “But not even you can believe this is going to work. I asked Stuart to find me a woman who could survive and pull her own weight in this wild, hard place—a woman who could run the ferry and drive the mules and—”

“You could have hired a man for that,” Anna said curtly.

“Could I have hired a man to help an eleven-year-old girl grow up to be a good woman?” His voice rasped with emotion reined in too tightly for too long. “Could I have hired a man to dry the tears of an eight-year-old boy who still misses his mother?”

Anna let the damp evening wind cool her face for a moment before she spoke into the awkward silence. “So I’m not a fit candidate for the job. Is that what you’re saying?”

Malachi’s answer was a disdainful snort. “Look at you! Your clothes, your hands, the very size of you! Have you ever milked a cow on a morning so cold that the ice froze in the bucket? Have you ever plucked a duck and singed off the pinfeathers over an open fire?”

“As a matter of fact, I have.” That much, at least, was true. The orphanage had had its own dairy barn and kitchen, and Anna had worked long, drudging hours in both.

“Could you pull a pig out of the quicksand or stick a calf that’s bloated on too much spring clover?”

“Could your wife do those things?”

Malachi’s breath sucked in as if he’d been gut-punched. “This has nothing to do with Elise,” he said in a raw-edged voice. “I was asking about you.”

Anna drew herself up, fueled by a slow-welling anger. “Whatever else you may think of me, Mr. Stone, I haven’t had an easy life. There are a good many things I can do if I have to.”

“Yes, I can well imagine.” His cold voice dripped innuendo. Anna recoiled as if he had struck her. She had surmised what he thought of her, but hearing the words spoken, and with such contempt, stung her like an openhanded slap in the face.

She was still groping for a retort when he cleared his throat and continued his assault on her character. “The message Stuart telegraphed to Kanab mentioned you were widowed in a Comanche attack. Is any part of that story true?”

“No.” Anna was too angry to lie. “I thought the story might win Mr. Wilkinson’s sympathy, and I suppose it did. I’m here.”

His eyes narrowed as if he were looking at her down the barrel of a rifle. “So what’s the real story, Anna, or whatever the blazes your real name is?”

“It’s Anna.” She stared between the dark V of Lucifer’s ears, biting back the urge to spill out the whole truth. How could she tell this man that her face was on Wanted posters in three states, and that Louis Caswell himself had put up one thousand dollars of the reward money? How could she tell him about the lawmen and bounty hunters that dogged her trail, the fear-filled days, the sleepless nights?

“I was desperate,” she said, settling on a half truth. “I was out of money, out of work, had no place to go.”

Malachi sighed, his powerful shoulders shifting in the deep indigo twilight. “I wish I could believe you,” he said. “But your kind isn’t exactly known for veracity.”

“My kind?” Anna glared at him, her stomach churning.

“I think you know what I’m talking about.”

She fought the nauseating rage that rose like bile in her throat. “Would it make any difference if I told you I’m not a—” She hesitated, staring down at her pale hands. No, she could not even bring herself to say the word whore. She had known too many of those poor, lost girls. And she had come all too close to sharing their fate. In those homeless, hungry days, only the gift of her voice had saved her from the hell of those upstairs rooms.

“I’m not what you think I am,” she said, recovering her poise. “But of course, I can’t expect you to believe that, can I?”

His silence answered her question, and for the space of a heartbeat Anna was tempted once more to tell this man the whole true story and beg for his protection. But no, she reminded herself, he would not believe her. And even if he did, he would not like what he heard. The upright Malachi Stone would not take kindly to the fact that the woman on his hands was wanted for murder.

Beyond the winding, narrow thread of the road, the canyon was a darkening wonderland of castle-shaped buttes, spires and buttresses. Colors changed with the changing light, deepening from sienna to violet, from indigo to midnight. The wind moaned as it funneled down the arroyos, a lonely, haunting sound that was broken only by the rush of the river and the steady, plodding hoofbeats of the two mules.

Anna gazed upward at the darkening gap of sky. Her spirits sank even deeper as she saw the flicker of lightning and heard, a heartbeat later, the distant roll of thunder.

Malachi had not spoken. Glancing at his stubborn profile, she knew that this was one contest of wills she could not win. Her breath slid out in a long sigh of defeat. “Very well,” she said. “I understand and accept your position, Mr. Stone. If you’ll consent to give me shelter until your wagon is repaired, I’ll be on my way. I assume your cousin Mr. Wilkinson will take care of the contract cancellation…and the divorce.” How strange to say the word, when there had been no semblance of a marriage between them. They were strangers to one another, and would remain so until the end of their days.

Malachi stirred at last, as if awakening from sleep. He shifted his seat on the mule, cleared his throat and spoke. “Where will you go?”

“California, as soon as I can manage the fare. There are plenty of opportunities there for my kind, as you so generously described me.”

She sensed the tightening of his jaw as the irony sank home. “The buckboard shouldn’t take more than a day or two to fix,” he said wearily. “Then I’ll take you as far as Kanab and put you on the stage for Salt Lake. It’s the least I can do to compensate you for your trouble.”

“That’s very kind. Thank you.” Anna spoke through a haze of disappointment. If only he would offer to pay her way to California. She could get work there, maybe even a singing engagement if she changed her name and dyed her hair. If things went well, she could save her money and go anywhere she wished—Mexico, even Europe. But Salt Lake City was too small, too isolated for safety. Sooner or later, she was bound to be noticed. Her face would be matched with the face on the poster, and then the bounty hunters would come.

The wind had picked up, carrying the first elusive drops of rain. Anna licked the moisture from her dusty lips, savoring the coolness as Malachi pushed ahead of her once more. “Let’s get moving,” he said. “Storm’s going to break soon, and this stretch of the road is prone to slides.”

He kneed his mule to a brisk trot. Not wanting to be left behind, Anna jabbed her heels into Lucifer’s flanks and was rewarded by a sudden burst of speed. She gripped the collar, her teeth clenched against the pain that jarred her pelvis and chafed her thighs with every bounce. Walking would be agony tomorrow—if she survived that long.

Lightning cracked across the sky, casting buttes and mesas into stark blue relief. The earsplitting boom of thunder echoed across the canyon, and in the next instant the rain began to fall. Not a gentle shower but a stinging, lashing torrent. Within seconds it had plastered Anna’s clothes to her body and turned the road into a seething river of mud.

Startled by nature’s sudden savagery, the perverse Lucifer stopped dead in his tracks and began wheezing like a ruptured steam calliope.

“Come on!” Malachi swung back toward Anna and yanked the frightened animal into motion again. “There’s an overhang about a mile down the road!” he shouted above the rain. “We can stop there till the worst of this passes!”

He swung ahead of her to lead the way and was at once swallowed up by darkness and rain. All but blinded by the stinging raindrops, Anna gripped Lucifer’s collar, trusting her life to the erratic beast. The mule knew the way home, she reminded herself. As long as she stayed on its back, she would be safe. All the same, it was hard not to be terrified when water was gushing over the road with a force that threatened to wash away the entire hillside.

“Keep him away from the edge!” She could hear Malachi’s voice shouting from somewhere off to her left. “This way!”

Another lightning bolt split the sky above the gorge. In its ghostly flash she saw him plunging toward her, one arm outstretched in an effort to grasp her mount’s harness. Then thunder broke like the roar of cannon fire, and Lucifer lost his footing. Squalling and kicking, the mule went down and began to slide.

Anna screamed as she felt herself flying through the black rain, felt the twisting jerk as Malachi’s powerful hand caught her wrist, wrenching her upright. She slammed into the side of his mule and hung there, her breath coming in hard little sobs.

“We’ve got to get out of here!” Malachi was hauling her upward. Wild with terror she fought against the pull of his arm.

“Lucifer!” she gasped. “We’ve got to save him!”

“He’ll have to save himself! Get up here, damn you!” He was dragging her alongside the mule, almost twisting her arm out of its socket.

“Please—” she started to argue. Then she heard it—a roar of sound that rose out of the rain like a demon out of the sea, growing, building until it became the scream of the earth itself.

Landslide!

Malachi bent down and caught her waist, sweeping her off her feet as the mule shot forward. Anna used the harness to clamber up behind him, and they rocketed down the road, skidding around curves, dodging boulders and exploding through mud pits.

Too terrified to think, Anna pressed against Malachi’s back, her arms encircling his lean, muscular waist, her knees spoon-cupped against the backs of his thighs. From behind them she could hear the rush of water and the rumble of falling earth. She could hear it gaining on them, moving closer with every breath, every heartbeat.

Malachi’s body strained forward against her clasping hands. His muscles bunched and lengthened through the rain-soaked shirt as he lashed the mule’s flanks with a loose harness buckle. Startled by a crashing boulder, the mule skidded sideways, giving Anna a fleeting glimpse of a whitish rock outcrop that loomed perhaps a quarter mile down the road. It had to be the overhang Malachi had mentioned earlier. They had seconds to reach it.

Malachi cursed as the mule wheeled in sudden panic and stopped still, braying and rolling its eyes. “Give me your petticoat!” he shouted. “We’ve got to blindfold him or he won’t move!”

Clinging on with one hand, Anna tugged at the stubborn muslin. When it failed to come free, Malachi reached back, seized a fistful of cloth and yanked hard. The sodden fabric ripped, almost jerking her off the mule as it tore loose.

A fist-size chunk of sandstone bounced off Anna’s shoulder and skittered down the slope. Malachi had dismounted and flung the petticoat over the head of the screaming mule. They were moving forward now, at the leaden speed of a nightmare chase. She could hear his voice through the rain, urging the animal forward.

“Come on, you stubborn old devil! It’s all right! Just let loose and run!”

Anna could hear the sucking sound of the earth washing away behind them. Just ahead the huge, pale outcrop jutted over the road like the bow of an ocean-going ship. She could see the hollow beneath it, their only chance of safety.

“Get up, damn you!” She slapped the mule’s haunch with the flat of her hand. Startled, the animal bolted forward, almost running Malachi down in its haste. Anna lay low against its neck as they passed under the edge of the overhang, and then, miraculously they were beneath solid rock, safe for the moment.

The air was dark here and strangely quiet. Without waiting for Malachi to help her, Anna slid wearily down the mule’s wet side, her hand catching the petticoat on the way down. The ground was solid and dry beneath her feet, but her quivering legs refused to support her. With a little moan she folded onto the sand and huddled there in a sodden ball, her knees drawn tight against her chest.

Malachi had come inside, his presence filling the small space beneath the outcrop. Anna could hear his breath coming in raw gasps as he leaned against the rocky wall. His wet clothes steamed in the darkness.

The mule had ambled off to one side. It snorted and shook its dripping hide, spraying muddy water. Anna thought of the stubborn, cantankerous Lucifer and how he had gone flailing off the road at the worst possible time. She remembered the soft rabbity ears, the wheezy bray, the patient back. The accursed beast had meant nothing to her, but suddenly Anna found herself weeping—not in ladylike sniffles, but in ugly, body-racking sobs. She cried as she had not cried since her teens. She cried for the loveless years of her youth, for poor, dear Harry, for today’s hideous misadventure and for all the rough and lonely times ahead. Her tears gushed like water through a bursting dam, and try as she might, Anna could not make them stop.

“What the devil is wrong with you?”

She glanced up to find Malachi looming over her, his eyes glowing silver in the eerie light of the storm. “I can understand a few tears,” he growled, “but enough is enough, lady! For the love of heaven, you’re alive! You ought to be kissing the ground in gratitude instead of bawling your damn-fool eyes out! What’s gotten into you?”

Anna raised her swollen face, too distraught to care how she looked or what this man thought of her. “Lu-Lucifer,” she hiccuped. “The slide—he—”

“Bloody hell, woman, you don’t have to tell me! I know what happened to the blasted animal!” He furrowed impatient fingers through his wet hair, making it stand up in spikes. “That’s the luck of the draw in a place like this. You lose stock. Sometimes you even lose people, and the sooner you get used to that, the better off you’ll be. So stop your sniveling, lady! If anything, I’m the one who ought to be upset. I paid top dollar for that idiot mule!”

Anna stiffened as her distress congealed into a wintry rage. Slowly she rose to her feet, her clothes dripping mud, her hair streaming in her tear-blotched face.

“How dare you?” She forced each word past the barricade of her chattering teeth. “How dare you speak to me like that—as if I were nothing, a piece of livestock, bought and paid for?” She took a step closer, her eyes drilling holes in his face. “I’ve known some cold-blooded, self-righteous prigs in my day, but you, Mr. Malachi Stone—you deserve the blue ribbon! You take the all-time first prize!”