Читать книгу Millie And The Fugitive - Liz Ireland, Liz Ireland - Страница 11

Chapter Four

“Isn’t this just the loveliest day you’ve ever seen?”

Sam sent his charge a doubtful glance. Up till now, Millie had said not a word after they left Ned’s little shack — just hummed and smiled — and though he appreciated the novelty of her silence, he knew the gears of deception must be grinding away in that twisted feminine mind of hers. The perky tone she chose when she finally spoke confirmed it. Something was up.

“I don’t know when I’ve seen such a lovely day,” she went on enthusiastically, sending him yet another of her beatific smiles.

That was another thing. Why was she looking at him in that simpering, cockeyed way? “You were cranky enough this morning.”

Frankly, he was surprised that she hadn’t attempted some sort of escape back at the store. She’d had ample opportunity to try to get Ned Sparks to hear her story, or to leave him some furtive message. Not that the old fellow could have been much of a help to her.

He frowned as they neared the place where he’d deposited her saddle. After knowing Millie only two full days, the idea of her not having an ulterior motive behind all this sudden complicity struck him as unlikely. These rich girls learned to use all sorts of roundabout tactics to get what they wanted from men.

Unfortunately, forewarned wasn’t always forearmed. He found himself increasingly vulnerable to those thick-lashed dark eyes of hers. While he rode, he often thought about them — and how they would look just before he kissed her. Which wasn’t going to happen, although his rambling thoughts did explain why he’d told that old man back there they were newlyweds. And probably why the old man could believe it, too. When Sam put his arm around Millie, there’d been nothing fake about the fierce stab of desire he felt for her.

Poor kid. She’d probably go screaming into the horizon if she knew what a case he had for her. He glanced warily at her.

Millie beamed. Her dark brown eyes seemed almost to sparkle at him with something that he would have sworn resembled admiration...if he hadn’t known better. That was why it was so important to get his mind off her lips and focus on what was going on inside that brain of hers.

At the top of the hill, Sam reined in his horse. Millie stopped right next to him, and slipped off without his even having to ask her. Carefully he dismounted himself, certain now that she must have some trick up her sleeve.

He walked over to the saddle and lugged it back over to Millie’s horse.

“Here, let me help you with that, Mr. Winter,” she said, coming forward with outstretched hands.

This was too much. “Don’t let’s stand on formality, Millie,” he answered politely. “You can just call me Mr. Murderer.”

She blushed and cast her eyes modestly toward the dirt at his feet. “Oh, no,” she said earnestly, “I would never call you that.”

He let out a sharp laugh as he hefted the silly saddle onto Mrs. Darwimple’s back. “Changed your mind about me, have you?”

She batted her thick black eyelashes twice before looking back at him. “Yes, I have.”

What kind of game was this? “If you think a lie like that is going to make me let my guard down, think again.”

That pointy chin lifted a little higher. “It’s not a lie. I know with perfect certainty that you didn’t kill those two deputies.”

“Did a little bird tell you?”

“No, the newspaper did.”

He looked at her in alarm.

“There was a whole long article on the front page about us — only I guess they didn’t mention my name because that would have been detrimental to my reputation.” She planted her hands on her hips in irritation. “Now I ask you, does that make sense? How else do they expect me to be found?”

Sam’s brows knit together worriedly. Being front-page news didn’t flatter him half as much as it did Millie. “Did the paper have a description of us?”

She sent him a look that let him know precisely how absurd his question was. “Most people in the area know what I look like.”

“Sure, but we’re not in the area. Ned Sparks didn’t suspect us — but maybe he hadn’t read the article yet.”

“That old man? He probably couldn’t see us well enough to identify us, anyway. Besides, he thinks we’re newly married.” She laughed. “And didn’t I play my part well? I thought you would have mentioned that.”

“You were fine,” Sam said, distracted. “You should have snatched that paper, though. That old guy might be better at putting two and two together than we give him credit for.” Sam took to his task more hurriedly. “We’ve got to put some distance between ourselves and this place.”

“Good,” Millie said cheerfully, “I’m anxious to get home.”

Sam stopped in the middle of tugging on the girth. At first, he wasn’t sure he’d heard her right. But the breezy way she stood nearby, inspecting her fingernails, convinced him that he had. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Aren’t we going back to Chariton?” Her wide, dark eyes were unfazed by his gruff words. “Surely you see this changes everything. I believe you, Sam.”

“That’s wonderful,” he said. “What do you want, a medal?”

“No, I merely want to go home, and now there’s absolutely no reason for us not to. Why should we be gallivanting across the countryside, now that you have a witness who can vouch for what happened? This has all just been a big mistake, and I’m perfectly willing to tell everybody so.”

At first he was dumbfounded. Just a big mistake? Finally, after staring in shock for a few minutes at her standing in front of him, her face the picture of complacency, he bit out a bitter laugh. “Oh, now that’s a relief.”

Her thin shoulders squared proudly. “I should think it would be. I’m willing to explain to my daddy, the sheriff and even a judge if need be that there’s been a terrible miscarriage of justice. I’m sure they’ll understand.”

Sam couldn’t think of what to say. She really seemed to believe that all they had to do was go back and all would be forgiven. “Don’t you realize that your father has probably organized a posse to hunt me down?”

“Oh, yes!” Millie nodded. “The story mentioned that. Twenty men, it said.”

“Twenty men, all with orders to shoot to kill.”

“To kill?” The idea seemed to startle her. “But you’re innocent! I can tell them that.”

“Princess, you don’t understand. They’re going to shoot first and ask questions later. If we go within two counties of Chariton, you’ll be explaining my innocence over my carcass. It won’t be a pretty sight.”

Millie frowned distastefully. “My daddy is a reasonable man. Maybe if you sent me first—”

“Oh, no,” Sam said. “Knowing you, you’ll start talking, and soon as you know it you’ll be leading that posse straight to me.”

She rolled her eyes in exasperation. “But if you don’t go back, or at least send me, we’ll just have to keep running.”

“That’s right,” he said. “But it’s not going to be we, Princess. It’ll just be me.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “And where will I be?”

“With friends,” Sam told her.

“Oh, thank heavens!” she said, obviously relieved. “I’ll go directly to Sally Hall. She’s a notorious gossip, but if I twist her arm and tell her how absolutely imperative—”

Sam shook his head in disbelief. “Are you completely addlebrained? I’m not sending you to your friends,” he informed her.

Millie blinked. “Oh.”

“Actually, Gus Beaver was a friend of my father’s, but I count him as one of my own, too.”

Her expression, so recently smug and self-assured, now flushed with confusion and just a touch of panic. “Where does this Gus Beaver live, if I might ask?”

“About a day’s ride from here.”

“In a town?” she asked, her voice growing shrill with concern.

“Nope. He’s about as isolated as can be. That’s why I’m taking you there—so you’ll stay put.”

“Well, I won’t go!” she said, coming forward, some of the old anger flashing in her dark eyes. “This is the most ridiculous plan I’ve ever heard of. Here I am offering—no, practically begging!—to tell the world that you’ve been wrongly treated, and your only reaction is to abandon me alone out in the middle of nowhere with some old man you barely know!”

“I trust Gus. And you won’t be alone—he’s married.”

“Why can’t I at least go with you? That way, if you’re caught, I could —”

“Because without you along I stand a better chance of not getting caught. You stick out, Millie. Somebody’s bound to notice you sooner or later. I’ll move faster on my own.”

“But as I was trying to explain, if you were apprehended, I could vouch for your character.”

Sam was anxious to get going again. “We don’t have time to stand here all day arguing, so listen tight. It’s not only my own hide I’m concerned about. I have a brother in jail, and he’s going to be swinging from a noose in eleven days if I don’t manage to bring in the man who really killed his wife. That’s going to be a hard feat in itself, but saddled with you, Princess, it becomes nigh on impossible. Do you want to be responsible for a man’s death?”

She drew back, stung by his blunt words. “I only wanted to help.”

He handed Mrs. Darwimple’s reins to her. “Fine. Just keep doing what I tell you to do.”

“You don’t have to treat me like a hostage anymore,” she assured him, grudgingly accepting the reins. “I’m on your side.”

Somehow, her words failed to give Sam the solace he suspected was intended. Having Millie Lively on his side was about as comforting as having an ant in his boot. And, to his way of thinking, about as helpful.

Millie wrinkled her nose and, with her fingertips, held her once pristine white ruffled pinafore away from her person. The garment was letting off a dreadful odor that she felt sure not all of the scrubbing in the world could get rid of.

She couldn’t really complain. It had been her idea that Sam teach her how to clean the fish he had caught that evening in a stream they had stopped near. She’d been so excited at the process of a square meal — not to mention a chance to prove how helpful she could be to Sam—that she had eagerly volunteered for the task. But that was before she’d known what a smelly, disgusting experience it would be. Sam could have at least warned her! Her poor pinafore, a mess from all the fish guts and the wounds Sam’s knife had inflicted on her own poor hands, had been rendered unwearable, not to mention unattractive to anything but a swarm of flies.

No doubt Sam would tell her to wash it a couple of times. But with what? The man had thought to pick up things like fishhooks and a knife and ammunition for his stolen arsenal at Ned Sparks’s store, but had he thought of soap? Millie had no intention of lugging a stinky, sticky pinafore around until she got to the Weavers’ or the Beavers’ or whatever their name was. She didn’t care if Sam did think only a spoiled rich girl would be so shameful and wasteful. It was her pinafore, and she was leaving it here.

She just wouldn’t let him know about it.

She scoped out the ground around her. Everywhere the earth was dry and hard, or covered with thick yellow grass she would never be able to claw through to bury the pinafore. The only thing left to do was stash the thing away under a bush and hope Sam didn’t see it. It was nearly dark, anyway, and they would leave well before sunrise. Chances of him spotting it and forcing her to bring it along were slim.

She wasn’t certain why Sam’s opinion suddenly mattered so much. Maybe it had something to do with the quavery feeling she got every time she looked into those hard gray eyes of his—like her knees were about to collapse underneath her. No man she’d known had been capable of making her feel so fluttery inside.

After hastily pushing the pinafore beneath some leafy branches of a low bush and covering it with loose dirt and dried leaves, she hurried back to their makeshift camp.

Sam barely glanced at her as she returned. He was hunched over the smallest campfire she’d ever seen, fanning what little smoke the burning embers of mesquite wood gave off by waving a leafy branch over the fish, which, after she had scraped and mutilated the poor thing, now seemed pathetically small. Hardly worth the effort, really.

“You were gone long enough,” he said.

Sam obviously didn’t want to admit it, but Millie was certain he was glad she believed his story. In fact, she had a vague hope that she was winning the man over. Didn’t that comment about her being gone a long time indicate he had been restless for her return?

The thought gave her a little lift. “A woman likes to have some time to herself, you know,” Millie said, plopping onto the ground nearby and arranging her filthy dress neatly around her.

“Woman?” he muttered, poking at their dinner. “You’re still a kid.”

“I am not. I’ll be twenty in December.”