Читать книгу Millie And The Fugitive - Liz Ireland, Liz Ireland - Страница 9
ОглавлениеChapter Two
Even before he opened his eyes, Sam could feel something beating down on him. Not the sun; he could tell by the cool, damp air against his skin that it wasn’t yet light. But something equal to the sun’s intensity. He allowed himself to take a tentative peek — and was immediately confronted by a pair of angry brown eyes peering at him through the waning darkness.
His hostage’s arms were crossed over her chest. “I smell like a horse!” she snapped in an imperious tone Sam wasn’t as yet prepared to contend with. Not at this hour, at least.
He closed his eyes again. In his dreams, Salina’s murder had never happened. He’d been back at his farm, confronting nothing more than another early fall day of harvesting the fruits of his labors. Honest work. Work that made a man feel satisfied with himself at the end of the day. Unlike kidnapping.
He forced himself to sit upright and face the day ahead of him. At least it was still well before dawn. They could cover a lot of miles today, which they needed to do now that he had decided where to deposit Miss Lively. Well after she dozed off, Sam had lain awake, considering his options. One thing he definitely didn’t have time for was keeping a girl with dancing dark eyes and enticing lips with him. He’d spent too much time already remembering how slender her waist was, how delicate she felt on his lap. How pretty she was...
And what a rich, powerful daddy she had. An angry daddy, too, once he discovered what had happened to his little princess.
Finally, he’d concluded that the best place for Millie would be with one of his father’s old friends, Gus Beaver. Gus and his wife, Louise, lived on a remote farm and would make certain Miss Lively stayed put, with her mouth shut, until Sam was able to free Jesse. Going to Gus’s wouldn’t take him too much out of his way, but he had no time to waste.
Sam stood up, dusted himself off and prepared to untie Millie, who hadn’t stopped glaring at him.
“I’m not budging an inch until I’ve had a bath,” she said to him before he could take so much as a step forward.
“A bath!” Sam exclaimed. “That’s impossible.”
“Why? There’s a stream not far from here, you said yesterday. You can’t possibly expect me to ride around the country dirty and smelling bad, can you?”
“Welcome to the unwashed masses, Miss Lively.”
Her chin jutted out defiantly, in a manner he was beginning to know and dread. “I am not the masses. Every day since I can remember, my maid, Alberta, has drawn me a warm bath. It’s not as if I’m asking for the moon. Just to wade in a cold stream. I wouldn’t think that too much to ask.”
“Well, it is,” he retorted.
“Hmm.” She tossed her mussed head of black hair behmd her to indicate her utter disdain. “My daddy always says cleanliness is next to godliness. I suppose that just shows what class of person you are!”
“Sorry, Princess, I don’t have time to be godly right at this moment.”
“Then you might as well shoot me now,” she argued petulantly, kicking off the striped wool saddle blanket. “I’d rather be dead than so dirty I’m attracting bugs!”
Sam could deal with bugs. An uppity rich girl with a powerful daddy bothered him a whole lot more. Yesterday he’d never have dreamed that taking the woman would make him feel as if he were traveling across Texas with a lit stick of dynamite, but that’s how it seemed now.
Why hadn’t he seen the signs? Her soft tan boots that looked like they’d barely ever touched dirt, her prissy sidesaddle, the fine yellow dress that even in its simplicity was better than any of the dresses the womenfolk of his acquaintance had ever worn — those things all shouted mockingly at him now. Even in the darkness he could make out that damn yellow dress.
So, probably, could any person who saw them, even from a half mile away. Damn!
Sam bit back a ragged sigh. No use worrying about things he couldn’t do anything about. Unless...
An idea occurred to him. A wicked idea, tailor-made to give the haughty little princess a cold douse of reality. Maybe next time she would think twice before she started making demands.
“All right,” he said, with a reluctance he now didn’t feel, “I suppose we could stop long enough for you to take a quick dip.” He leaned down and untied her bonds, then reached quickly for his rifle, in case she had any sneaky ideas.
Apparently she didn’t. Her smile of satisfaction showed through the darkness as she stood up and dusted herself off. “Now that’s more like it!” she said, her voice a pleased chirp. “I won’t be but a minute.”
“I’ll see to that. I’m not letting you out of my sight.”
Her eyes became round and alert. “What? Surely you don’t think...”
“Surely you don’t think I’m going to let you swim away from me,” he told her. “You just start walking to the creek.”
She took one look at the barrel of his gun, turned, and began marching stiffly ahead of him. Funny, now that she knew she was going to have a witness to her morning bath—someone besides her maid Alberta—the woman seemed in less of a hurry to spiff herself up.
As the soft bubbling of the creek came into earshot, Millie’s steps slowed to a crawl. Finally she stopped, and turned, a genial smile on her face. “Sam...” Her voice was far too pleasant to be trustworthy, and her manner was all flounce and flutter, now that she knew he had her over a barrel. “That’s such a nice name.”
“Thanks.”
She nodded obligingly. “Sam, now that I’ve had time to give the matter further thought, I do believe I could wait another day, or perhaps even a week or so, before I take a bath.”
He smiled back. “I’ve given it some thought, too,” he told her. “And I’ve decided I wouldn’t want to be responsible for depriving you of your daily dose of godliness.”
“Oh, but I don’t mind, honestly.”
He shot his eyebrows upward, feigning shock. “What would your daddy say if he found out?”
Her black eyes grew fiery as all pretense of friendliness was dropped. “He’d rather that than that I stripped down in front of a criminal!”
“Don’t worry,” he said, smiling broadly. “I won’t look.”
She clucked skeptically. “As if I would trust your word—the word of a murderer!”
The tag stung. Would he ever be able to prove to the world that he and his brother weren’t criminals? Obviously not, if Miss Millicent Lively had her way. “Just remember, Princess. This murderer will be nearby in case you decide to swim away. Now walk.”
She tossed him a glare and marched forward again until they reached the edge of a stream. It wasn’t very wide, but there was a spot where it formed a very small pond—big enough for Millie to splash around in. Sam nudged her toward it, then nodded.
“Take off your dress and hop in,” he instructed.
After sending him an annoyed glance, she squinted down at the water at her feet. “This water is brown,” she declared distastefully. “And there are probably snakes in there!”
“Just jump in. Most likely, you’ll scare them all away,” Sam said, growing impatient. “Now take off that dress and get in.”
Knowing she had no choice—not with a gun pointed at her—she untied and slipped off her pinafore, then began to hurriedly undo the multitude of tiny pearl buttons down her front. There were enough of those to make Sam worry that Ed and Toby would catch up with them before they could all be unbuttoned. Finally, however, Millie was able to step out of the yellow frock, and Sam prepared to turn away.
Only, to his surprise, he discovered there was no need. Stripped down to her underwear, Millie had on more clothes than most women wore to church.
Her face flushed under his prolonged stare. “You said you wouldn’t look!”
Sam was still in shock. “You put on all that gear just to pick a few pears?”
Her jaw dropped in astonishment. “Of course!” She looked down her front. Over a corset she wore a thin short-sleeved cotton camisole that gathered at her narrow waist, and under the corset there appeared to be a sleeveless shift. And that wasn’t even counting the petticoats, which had to number three, at least.
Sam’s expectations had by necessity been drawn from the women he’d seen undress in the past—but those women had been from a different class altogether from Millie Lively. He’d forgotten that the richer you were, the more uncomfortable you had a right to be.
“You’d better set aside one of those petticoats to dry yourself off with.”
She complied, grumbling all the while. “All right. But I’m not going to so much as wade in that filthy muck. You can’t make me.”
“I don’t care if you only wet your toes. You were the one who was all fired up to get clean.”
He wasn’t surprised to see that shedding a petticoat barely made a dent in her layers of skirts. He picked up her yellow dress and watched as she untied and stepped out of her boots, then reached out with one small, pale foot to test the water. It was still too dark for her to trust that there wasn’t a snake nearby, so she took a tentative step forward — and, with a loud splash, was suddenly swallowed up by the pond.
“Millie!” Sam hollered, running to the edge of the bank. With all those clothes on, the poor girl was apt to sink like a stone! He looked anxiously at the wildly rippling surface, preparing to strip down to his long underwear and rescue her.
But before he could so much as tug at a shirttail, Millie surfaced again, coughing and sputtering.
“Are you all right?” he asked, still ready to dive in and save her. “Can you swim?”
Her shoulders poked above the water, and through the darkness she sent him a withering look as she coughed up the last of the water she’d swallowed. “I don’t have to swim,” she said. “I can stand.”
“Thank heavens,” Sam said, relieved. Remembering the dress, and the work he had to do, he turned away.
“I’m so touched that you care,” Millie’s voice said bitingly. “And it’s such a relief that you didn’t have to go to the trouble of getting wet just to fish me out.”
“Yes, isn’t it?” Sam agreed, smiling as he heard more splashing and sputtering behind him. He spread the yellow dress out across the bank and began to walk across it in a shambling shuffle.
The girl released a strangled cry. “What are you doing!”
“Mussing your dress. It’s too clean.”
“Too clean?” she exclaimed. “It’s never been so filthy!” He bent down and flipped the dress onto its other side, and Millie groaned in dismay as he repeated the process. “Until now...”
“This way we’ll be a better match,” Sam told her.
“Just what I’ve always dreamed of,” she said scathingly, “to look like I belong to the criminal class.”
Sam finished with a little jig before stepping off the dress. “There,” he said with satisfaction as he inspected the now dingier garment. “You won’t attract as much attention now. It’s hard to tell whether this is yellow or beige, I’ll wager.”
When his commentary was met with silence, Sam turned quickly. But Millie hadn’t disappeared—she was standing very still in the water, her expression pained. And angry. Very, very angry.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
Her mouth clamped shut. Then she mumbled, “Nothing.”
“You can come out now,” he told her, holding out a hand. “Here, I’ll help you.”
“Don’t you dare touch me!” she cried ferociously. “You, you — dress-musser!”
Sam smiled. “You wound me.” Kneeling at the very edge of the bank, he grabbed her by the arms and lifted her bodily out of the water and onto dry land. Millie managed to get him at least half as wet as she was in the process.
He handed her the dress, which did nothing to soothe her. She looked at the garment in seething silence. “I loved this dress,” she said at last.
Sam shrugged. “It’s just clothing.”
“That’s all you know!” she retorted, her eyes flashing. “That dress was my very favorite. I sewed it myself — it took me months!”
Months? Sam wasn’t sure about these things, but he doubted it took most women months to finish a dress. Especially women like Millie Lively, who had all the leisure the world had to offer.
But maybe he just didn’t know what he was talking about. Needle and thread were tedious tools he’d always tried his damnedest to avoid using. “I suppose being called a dress-musser is better than being called a murderer.”
“You are a murderer,” she said, scrambling away from him up the bank as fast as she could. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten those two deputies!” She began drying herself with the petticoat she’d put aside. “I’ll bet hundreds of people are going to be combing the area for you today.”
“We’ll be ahead of them.”
“Not for long. Word of my disappearance will get out, and then you’ll be in big trouble.”
Sam found it difficult to concentrate on the prospect of being hunted at the moment. Instead, his eyes kept glancing in amazement at Millie, whose shape was silhouetted against the lightening sky. The girl might appear to be mere skin and bone while buried under her mounds of clothes, but when those same clothes were wet and clingy, the womanly curves they revealed were definitely...eye-catching.
He remembered, back at the pear tree, thinking the legs poking out from it were mighty appealing. But that had been before he was faced with the spoiled princess that went with them. Most of the time she seemed more girl than woman. It would be hard to think of her that way now....
He looked away, feeling his face redden. His throat was suddenly dry, and he cleared it uncomfortably.
“What’s the matter?” Millie asked. “Are you sick?”
Ironically, anger over her dress seemed to have knocked the bashfulness clear out of her head, so that she stomped around, heedless of his gaping, as she whacked her dress against the trunk of a tree, hoping to flog some of the dirt off. Sam wished she’d go ahead and put the damn thing back on, already.
“No, I’m not sick,” he answered, getting to his feet. “We just need to push on.”
“You’re the one who’s wasted our time this morning,” Millie lectured him primly as her fists rested on her curvaceous hips. “You can’t blame me.”
No, he couldn’t. This was all his fault. If he hadn’t gotten that fool notion about Millie’s dress into his head, he could have gone on thinking about her as a... well, a troublesome hostage. A burden to be shed. But now he was going to be hard-pressed to look at her again without thinking of her as she appeared now, that camisole sticking to her collarbone and cleavage, her petticoats outlining her tiny waist, her hips and her shapely legs.
Damn. He trained his eyes away, on the spot where they’d left the horses. “All right. It’s my fault. Now hurry up and get your clothes on.”
She shot him an exasperated look. “First you want them off, now you want them on! And all the while you keep pointing that gun at met — How do you expect me to act efficiently under these circumstances?”
Patience, Sam told himself, turning away as he listened to her fuss over the scads of little buttons she had to contend with. The rippling pond mocked him now. If only there were time, he could use a therapeutic dunk in that cold water himself.
Tom McMillan, Chariton’s sheriff for going on twenty years, was well-known for being a man of few words, so when the few he chose to tell his hastily gathered but handpicked posse were shoot to kill, Horace Lively was sure the sheriff meant them.
Poor Millicent, his little princess, all alone with that brutal outlaw. And her so unused to the rough conditions she was probably being exposed to! How would she survive?
He swallowed, fighting back a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach that had been there ever since the sheriff had come around with Millie’s bonnet, asking a lot of questions. But, of course, he’d begun to anticipate the worst when Millie wasn’t home for dinner that afternoon. Oh, he never should have quarreled with her! If only he could be sure she had survived thus far. He was an old man, had been through four years of battle during the War between the States, but he’d never faced anything so frightening as the prospect of losing his dear daughter.
He just had to stay calm, keep himself together, as he had been doing. Now if only he could convince Lloyd Boyd to comport himself in the same dignified way. Millie’s fiancé had completely fallen apart when he discovered she was missing. Even now he was fondling the little redbird on Millie’s bonnet, which he held in a white-knuckled grip.
“Shoot to kill?” Lloyd wailed, jumping up from where he was sitting on the wooden sidewalk in front of the sheriff’s office. He looked beseechingly from Horace to the sheriff and then back again. “With Millicent nearby?”
“The sheriff knows what he’s doing, son,” Horace tried to explain. If only he could be certain of his own words.
Sheriff Tom continued instructing his men. “Now you all heard Ed and Toby’s story. Sam Winter is a shifty, brutal character, just like that brother of his, and apparently he’s a lot stronger than he looks. Any man who could overtake two lawmen on horseback while his hands are cuffed would have to be.” He eyed his red-faced deputies sternly.
The sheriff thought the incident of the escaped convict made a laughingstock of him and his deputies in the eyes of the community. There was talk of incompetence going around, though not about Tom. That man had a will of iron, everyone knew, and tended to be overzealous in pursuit of justice. Especially when it involved somebody he didn’t particularly like. And he very clearly disliked Sam Winter and his brother.
“Tom,” Horace said, stepping forward, “don’t forget Millicent is riding with the man. I don’t want Millicent hurt.”
“Oh, right,” Tom drawled for the benefit of the others. “Try not to hit the girl. Now we’re going to branch out in two groups....”
The perfunctory words failed to comfort Horace. As did the directions that followed. The trigger-happy sheriff was going to head the posse himself, and leave Ed and Toby in charge of Jesse Winter at the jail. Oh, Horace was glad that so many had turned out to join the search party, and he would be following the sheriff so that he could hear about events as they developed. Still, all the men in front of him seemed more interested in the prospect of catching the escaped criminal than ensuring the safety of his daughter.
All except Lloyd Boyd. And precious little good the hysterical young bank clerk was going to be in the search.
“Poor, poor Millie!” Lloyd wailed, combing his hands through his pale hair in a gesture of anguish. “Will we ever see her again, see her lovely face, hear her bright, tripping laughter?”
How a man could think so flowery in the midst of a crisis was beyond Horace’s understanding. “We’ll find her, Lloyd. Pull yourself together.”
“I know. I must be strong. For Millicent,” Lloyd said in an earnest attempt to tamp down his emotions. “But if there were only something more I could do!”
Lloyd’s hysteria, signaling as it did a genuine concern for Millie, touched Horace’s heart. He had been right to tell Millie that the young man would make a good match for her. Millie got engaged and disengaged with dizzying regularity—and Lloyd was an upstanding, sober young man. Or had been. Now he seemed to crumble before Horace’s eyes.
“You’re doing all you can by riding with McMillan’s posse, son,” Horace assured him. Then, looking at the young man’s red, anxious face, he added, “Just remember to stay out of the way.”
Unoffended, Lloyd nodded. “I’ll stay right with you, sir.”
Horace took a deep breath. Though it grated on his nerves, the boy’s hysteria was easier to stomach than the bloodthirstiness of the other men gathered.
More than his own deputies’ embarrassing loss of their prisoner, Sheriff Tom had used Millicent’s apparent kidnapping as a call to arms. But now that they were all assembled, no one seemed especially concerned about whether she was dead or alive. Except Lloyd.
And one other man. But Horace didn’t notice him, and neither had anyone else. He had disguised himself so that he could blend into the crowd as just another citizen, and was hanging back — but not too far back—listening and watching, examining the gray-haired, droopy-eyed colonel’s wary reaction to the sheriff’s directives.
Horace P. Lively was worried sick about his daughter. Anybody could see that—even a man who could barely see at all. The old gentleman was as despairing in his silence as the younger man next to him was in all his breast-beating grief. Lively didn’t think the sheriff was going to find his daughter.
Maybe he would, maybe he wouldn’t, the man thought. But the old codger was right about one thing. The sheriff didn’t give a flip about Millicent Lively. Just about Sam Winter.
The stranger saw things differently. Whether Sam Winter lived or died was of no importance to him. But Millicent Lively—now she was another matter entirely....
“I’m certain I’ll catch cold now after being wet the entire day,” Millie said crossly. She knew she was whining, but she couldn’t help it. She was bound to a tree trunk, and uncomfortable, and hungry again.
Wasn’t Sam Winter human? Didn’t he get hungry, or tired, or cold?
How would she know? she wondered in frustration. They had been riding side by side for two days now, and she knew as little about him tonight as when they’d left Chariton. His continued silence alarmed her. It wasn’t just that she couldn’t understand a person who didn’t talk—although that was puzzling—but, even stranger, that he seemed genuinely to want to say things to her. Otherwise, why would she have caught him watching her in that odd, almost pained way so often today?
Unless she looked funny. That was always a possibility, given that she’d dressed this morning so hurriedly, without a mirror, in a mud-caked frock. Even her normally perky, fashionably curled bangs drooped down to her eyebrows. But whose fault was that?
“Sam...”
He was leaned up against another tree, his long, lanky legs stretched out in front of him. “What?” he said, his voice annoyed and completely devoid of curiosity.
“Well, if you’re going to be that way about it, never mind,” she answered peevishly.
She heard a long sigh, then noticed that he sat up straighter. “What is it?” he asked, his tone only slightly more patient.
She sniffed proudly. “I only wanted to ask you if you thought I looked all right, but you don’t have to tell me.”
“Why? Are you sick?”
“No, I was just concerned with my appearance.” When he failed to say anything, she added, “You know...my physical appearance.”
“You look fine.”
“How would you know? You didn’t even glance at me!”
Reluctantly, he turned his head. She could see his gray eyes watching her across the darkness, with that same strange look in them that she had noticed so many times that day as they rode.
He really wasn’t unattractive, even though he was badly in need of a shave and generally scruffier than when she’d first seen him. His face was almost handsome, in a common sort of way. It had taken her a while to get used to his rough, sun-darkened skin. He was almost bronze, which provided a stark contrast to his other features, gray eyes and light brown hair.
The odd look in his eye she chalked up to the same discomfort she felt. “You know what your problem is?” she asked.
The question brought a sharp laugh. “I know what several of them are, Princess. There’s the fact that the law is after me, that my brother might hang. Oh, and there’s you to deal with—”
It annoyed her when he called her “Princess” now, especially when he said the word with such a sneer of derision. “You’re hungry,” she said, interrupting him. “What you need is some real food.”
“Too bad. We don’t have any, and we don’t have time to forage, either.”
“You’ll never make it far on an empty stomach,” Millie told him. “We need to stop in a town.”
“No,” he said flatly.
As far as Millie could tell, getting Sam to take her into a town was her only chance of escape. “Why not? I wouldn’t do anything stupid,” she promised, lying baldly. She’d pictured it so many times during their long ride — getting away from him, running like a crazed woman down a sparsely populated, dusty street of a strange town, flapping her arms and yelling about the madman who had abducted her. Her daydream always ended with Sam being caught by a mob of angry townspeople, which made her feel a little sad, but relieved. Sam had kidnapped her, after all.
Daddy was probably worried out of his mind. It nearly made her cry to think about it. Yet she couldn’t help wondering what was going on in Chariton—Sam’s escape must have created quite a stir. Just her luck. Something exciting finally happens in that dull little town, and she gets abducted!
Oh, well. She was sure her father was doing something on her behalf, which did make her the center of attention, even if she wasn’t there to enjoy it. Her best friend, Sally Hall, was probably going crazy with wanting to know what had happened to her. Alberta would be fretting, too. Oh, and Lloyd Boyd. Her situation would suit the misfit bank clerk’s love of drama.
And with good reason! She had never been so dramatically worn out and hungry. She’d spent many leisurely days riding her gray mare, but never on punishing rides like these. Poor Mrs. Darwimple! Millie felt almost as sorry for her horse as she did for herself. She simply had to convince Sam to head back to civilization.
“It would be stupid trying to get away from me,” Sam told her. “And don’t tell me that’s not what you’re planning, because I can see it in your sneaky eyes.”
The accusation fascinated her. “You think my eyes are sneaky?” No one had ever called her that before. Imagine, being branded sneaky by a desperado! “You know, I do believe that’s the first thing you’ve noticed about me.”
“Hardly.” He laughed bitterly. “Besides, I didn’t mean it as a compliment.”
“Oh, that’s all right. A girl does like to be noticed, though.”
He tossed his hands in the air. “You are the most confounded woman I’ve ever run into. Don’t you know you’re in danger? You should be angry!”
“I was.”
“Then you should have stayed that way.”
She made a tsking noise. Stay angry for two whole days? “That wouldn’t be very pleasant for either of us.” She had never had any call to endure that much emotional turmoil. Until now, of course. “Though I am mad about your decision not to go into town. I wouldn’t do anything to get away, Sam. On my honor.”
“I know, I know,” he muttered. “You’re renowned for your trustworthiness.”
“That’s right.”
“And your riding expertise.”
“Well, of course, I don’t like to brag—”
“Forget it.”
She couldn’t let him see her frustration—which was escalating rapidly. She’d never yet met a man she couldn’t wheedle into doing what she wanted. Sam might prove the first. Usually all it took was a little pleading, but he wasn’t softening a bit. Perhaps it was time to take more dire measures —like showing him exactly what kind of woman she was.
“Sam...”
After rolling his eyes, he looked over at her in irritation — until he saw that with what little mobility she had she was lifting her skirt up past her knee. Irritation turned to slack-jawed curiosity.
“I bet I can change your mind about going into town,” she said sweetly, flexing her small foot enticingly. “I have something for you....”
His eyes bugged at the glimpse of leg, but he shook his head vehemently. “S-see here now,” he stuttered in dismay. “Put your skirt back down!”
“It’s just my legs,” Millie said. “Same ones I had this morning. You didn’t seem to mind them then.”
His mouth clamped shut. “Never mind. Cover up.”
“But I wanted to show you something,” she argued, untying the small satchel at the waistband of her petticoats. She removed it, straightened her skirts and held out her offering primly.
“Oh...” he said, looking sheepishly at the velvet bag.
“It’s money. Count it,” she told him, “and you’ll see that you can trust me.”
Tentatively he reached out and took the bag from her, weighing it for a moment in his hand before loosening the drawstring. He upended the little purse and listened appreciatively as the heavy coins fell into his large hand.
“There’s twelve dollars here,” he said.
Millie smiled. “There! You see? I’ve shown you how much money I have. You can borrow however much you want. And the next time we see a town, we can just detour a little and buy ourselves some supplies. Maybe even stop over at a hotel...”
But even as she spoke, she got the oddest feeling that Sam really wasn’t giving much credence to her words. He calmly put the coins back in her purse, folded it over and placed it in the pocket of the deputy’s saddlebags he kept by his side.
“Aren’t you going to give me my money back?” she asked.
He looked at her as if she’d just sprouted two heads. “Hell, no!”
“But that’s stealing!”
Sam laughed at her. “Millie, didn’t that daddy you’re always going on about teach you to have a lick of sense? For two days you’ve been calling me a murderer, a criminal, a desperado. What did you think was going to happen to your money when you handed it over?”
“I showed you that money as an act of faith,” she argued. “So that you could trust me if we passed a town. I only wanted something decent to eat.”
He shook his head. “Good Lord, listening to you, a person would think you’d never been hungry before.”
For a moment, Millie racked her brains. “I haven’t,” she told him, a little surprised by the discovery herself. But why would a store owner’s daughter have to go without? “Until yesterday. And I must admit, I was rather excitable then—a little nervous about being kidnapped, naturally — so I didn’t notice so much. But today is entirely different.”
“Are you saying you’re not nervous anymore?”
“Well...maybe a little. But I’m just so hungry I don’t care,” she added with a moan. “And sore, and tired.”
“Then go to sleep.”
“I will when I’ve gotten my money back,” she insisted.
The petulant refusal brought her captor to his feet. He stomped over, fists balled at his sides, and towered over her. “Let’s get this straight. You’re not going to see that money again, unless I do think it’s safe to go into a town. But that’s for me to decide, you understand?”
His harsh tone irritated her — and scared her a little, frankly. She’d never seen such a hard look in his eye, or noticed him so on edge. She had half a mind to answer that she was a little on edge herself, thanks to him, but that she had the good manners to mask her foul humor. At the same time, something told her he wouldn’t appreciate a lecture on his bad breeding at this precise moment.
She tilted her chin up and contented herself with a curt “fine.” What more could she do? She was tied to a tree.
But, apparently, he wasn’t through with her. “You seem to forget sometimes who I am, and what you’re doing here.”
“As if I could!”
He paced restlessly in front of her. “Don’t you understand? You should hate me. You should be trying to escape, not giving me money.”
“I didn’t mean to give you the money,” she said.
“You shouldn’t have shown it to me, then,” he said sternly. “I’m a criminal, remember? A murderer.”
“You say the word as if you really weren’t one,” she said.
“What would you think if that was the truth, Millie? What would you say if I told you both my brother and I were innocent, and that I was on my way to bring a real murderer back to Chariton?”
“I’d say that was a likely story!”
“I didn’t kill those deputies,” he told her.
She scoffed. “Next you’ll be asking me to believe that I came along by my own free will.”
“No, I’m afraid that was entirely my fault,” he said. “But just consider this. Why do you think I brought you along, instead of doing to you what I did to the deputies?”
“Obviously,” she said, “because I’m such a valuable hostage.”
“So we’re back to that again.” He emitted a ragged sigh, then returned to his spot on the ground across from her. She could see him shaking his head as he lay back down. “Go to sleep, Miss Lively.”
He had dismissed her rationale as if it were absurd—as if she weren’t valuable to him at all. Despite the night chill, her cheeks grew warm at his lack of appreciation. It was almost as if he wished she didn’t have a wealthy father—a man most kidnappers would be proud to have their hostage related to! Instead, he was treating her as though she were a millstone around his neck. What an odd criminal.
What an odd man. She couldn’t forget the look on his face as she’d pulled up her skirt—as if looking at her leg were somehow painful to him. In a fit of self-doubt, Millie glanced over to Sam to make sure he wasn’t looking, then lifted her skirt again to check her legs for herself. They appeared fine to her. Better than fine. Irving Draper, her intended two fiancés back, had even had the audacity to remark on her shapely legs once, moments before she slapped him silly. It amazed her to think that a boring, conventional sap like Irving could appreciate her, while virile, dangerous Sam looked at her as if he wished she would cover herself with a potato sack. She could only guess that she didn’t compare well to other women of his acquaintance, who, given his character, probably consisted of floozies in fleshpots.
Now if that wasn’t insulting, what was?
A long, slim leg, pale and shapely in the moonlight. Sam didn’t think he’d forget that sight as long as he lived. Sweat popped out across his brow just from thinking about it. Millie was completely oblivious, of course. How could a woman be so prim, so haughty, and yet at times so completely heedless of propriety?
Because she was a pampered rich girl, he told himself. A young lady who considered herself so far above him that she didn’t find anything at all wrong about prancing around in wet, clingy clothes, or hiking her skirt up to her thigh. He was so far out of her circle of consideration that he might as well have been another species entirely, as far as she was concerned. Frogs and toads didn’t mix; escaped convicts didn’t mix with rich men’s daughters.
He would do well to put stock in that way of thinking himself. He had problems aplenty aside from Miss Lively. He had a murderer to catch.
He reached down and felt the small lump in his pocket and was reassured that the ring was still there. His evidence. In his mind’s eye, he could see the inscription on the inside. T to D, it read in bold script. He had a good idea that D stood for Jesse’s old partner, Darnell Weems. But he couldn’t be certain. And who was T?
Finding Darnell Weems was only half the battle — assuming he could even make it out to Little Bend, Darnell’s home, without being caught by the law. Most likely, Darnell wasn’t going to confess to killing his friend’s wife. Why should he, when Jesse was about to hang for the crime?
Jesse hadn’t been able to understand why his friend would have traveled halfway across a state to murder a woman he’d never met. He and Salina had married after he and Darnell parted ways. Yet he swore he’d seen Darnell riding away from the house while he was out hunting the night of the murder. Then, when he returned home, he’d found Salina, and the nightmare had begun. The law had arrived, and when it became clear that the sheriff meant to have his revenge on Jesse by painting him as a wife killer, Jesse, still half out of his mind with grief, had run. The ring had been discovered later by a kind old neighbor lady who was by Jesse’s to clean up the place. She’d promptly brought the engraved band to the jail, but the mysterious clue had interested Sam more than it had Jesse, who by the time it was found was beyond caring about his own life.
Jesse always wanted to think the best of people. But Sam had no illusions. After their parents died, Sam had tried to bring his little brother up to be practical. Jesse had the dreamer in him, though, and had gone his own way. He’d met up with Darnell in Colorado, and for two years the two of them had tried several schemes together — from cattle driving to gold mining. Finally they’d won two plots of land in a poker game. To decide who got which, they had flipped for them. That was the last they’d seen of each other, except for Jesse’s last brief glimpse of Darnell in the night. Maybe Darnell harbored some resentment for getting the lesser plot of land out west.
Even so, Jesse didn’t want to think the worst of his old friend. All along, he’d sworn that Darnell wasn’t a bad character. But Sam didn’t believe it for a moment.
He was going to find Darnell Weems and, come hell or high water, he would squeeze a confession out of him. There had to be a reason behind Salina’s murder. And whether Jesse liked it or not, Sam intended to prove it was his friend’s doing. Or else die trying.
