A Texan's Luck (9 page)

He leaned forward as she continued, "My mother's mother was from Hungary, and even though my mom was born in Louisiana, she didn't speak English until she was almost grown, so her words sounded foreign to most folks. My father left the day I was born."

She stopped as if expecting him to say something. When he didn't, she continued. "Because my mother talked different and dressed as her mother had, everyone in the county thought she was a witch, so no one visited with us much. She died when I was ten."

She relaxed a little and took a bite of apple. "I guess you got a right to know, folks have a way of dying around me. All my family's gone." She looked so serious, he almost laughed.

"So is mine, Lacy, but I don't consider it a curse following me. Tell me about how your mother talked."

She sat still, considering his request.

Walker waited.

"I saw nothing strange in the way she talked, but sometimes folks said some mean things to us. Once a man found blood in an egg we'd sold him. He said my mother had cursed him." Lacy glanced up, meeting Walker's eyes as she remembered. "I couldn't tell anything happened to him, except he got drunk and killed most of our chickens that night."

Walker imagined Lacy as a child trying to understand. "Did you mother press charges? I've been reading about the law, and I think she could have."

Lacy nodded. "The sheriff said since he didn't steal the hens, he couldn't be found guilty. We didn't know anyone else to turn to. The man went free, but we almost starved that winter."

She looked at him now with her big dark eyes liquid with unshed tears, and he fought the urge to touch her. He remembered the way he'd been drawn to her the first time he saw her, even before he knew she was his wife on paper.

Lacy lifted her chin slightly. "About me, my mother would have said, a nightmare breathes in the shadows of my world."

Without another word, she left the room.

An hour later Walker stood on the tiny back porch landing off the kitchen and smoked the last of his thin cigars. He tried to figure out what she'd been trying to tell him. He told himself he didn't like her, didn't care if he ever saw her again, but he'd never in his life felt so protective toward someone.

The icy wind whirled down the alleyway from the livery to the north. Walker turned his collar up to the chill, feeling bad weather riding full speed toward Cedar Point. He was used to cold. Used to the weather. Even used to being shot at from time to time. But he wasn't sure he'd ever get used to Lacy. Her frightened stare had turned his gut over with a shovel. All the anger he'd felt toward her had vanished when he realized someone just beyond the window took aim at her. And when she'd told him the story of her mother, he wished he could have gone back in time and protected her.

After not eating enough to keep a bird alive, she went to bed, closing her bedroom door, though he'd told her not to. He'd even heard the scrape of what must have been her dresser, blocking him out.

Not that he would cross into her room after swearing he wouldn't. But she didn't trust him, and that bothered him even more than the fact that she was afraid of him.

"Captain?" Sheriff Riley's call rattled from the bottom of the stairs. "Your wife kick you out along with the cats?"

Walker smiled. He liked the old sheriff despite his meddlesome ways. Part of Riley still thought him a boy. "I didn't think she'd take much to my smoking in the house." Walker walked down the stairs.

Riley laughed. "Last I heard, she didn't take much to you at all. I just dropped by to see if she's killed you yet."

"Not yet," Walker answered, as if not sure he had long to wait. "We did manage to have supper without a fight."

Riley nodded. "That's some progress."

Walker didn't plan on standing in the cold and talking about his marital problems, so he changed the subject. "Anyone spot Zeb Whitaker?"

Riley shook his head. "I've had both my deputies walking the streets for over an hour. Abe said his feet are so cold his toes are falling off and rolling around in his boots. He couldn't find even one person who saw a big man riding out tonight. But that old buffalo hunter is around. I swear I can smell him."

"They found nothing," Walker said as a statement.

"Nothing," Riley echoed, "but a few tracks, already mostly covered up by new snow. Whoever stood between the buildings planned on doing some damage, if not murder. He had a horse waiting at the end of the alley and was gone before we could track him from the corner were he shot."

Riley shook his head. "Maybe you should think of getting Lacy out of here."

"To where? She'd be no safer on the road. Fort Elliot might be a good place, we could be there in a day, but she'd never go with me."

"She's got a few friends—"

"I'll not put others in harm's way," Walker said before the sheriff could finish.

"I can't argue with that. Both the other two women who came into my office confessing to the murder of Zeb Whitaker five years ago are married with families now. They're in a lot safer locations than Lacy, so I'm guessing he's heading here first. The only friend Lacy has, that might take her in, is a girl down in Childress. They call her Two Bits. But she's just a kid, even if she did inherit an old house by the tracks a few months ago. She could let Lacy stay with her, but then neither one would probably be safe. Her place is off by itself."

"Lacy stays with me," Walker said, remembering the fear in her brown eyes. If he had to give up sleep for a month, he'd protect her.

Riley nodded and touched his hat in farewell. "Stay warm. We're in for a bad storm tonight." The sheriff walked away, a mangy alley dog following behind him.

Walker "climbed the stairs and stepped back into the apartment kitchen as quietly as he could. The notepad still lay on the tiny table with twenty-three marked on the top page.

"Lacy stays with me," Walker said again. "For as long as necessary." He flipped the notepad over. He didn't need to be reminded of his duty.

The cold woke Lacy before dawn. She felt as if
she were sleeping in a mound of snow. Not even the blankets warmed her. Wrapping the covers around her, she forced her stiff body to move toward the kitchen, which she hoped would still be warm from last night's fire in the stove. The air seemed frozen, and she took shallow breaths, pressing her nose against the top of the quilt.

As soon as she opened her bedroom door, warmth rushed in. For a moment she stood, letting the heated air caress her face. Blinking, she peered around the shadowy living space covered with quilts and hand-me-down books from her father-in-law. Home, too small of a word to describe how this place wrapped around her, welcomed her, made her feel like she belonged somewhere on the planet.

The low, steady breathing of someone sleeping reached her ears, and Lacy realized she wasn't alone. Walker slept by the door leading to the shop. One of his hands lay outside his army blanket touching the rifle at his side. The barrel of the weapon pointed toward the kitchen door. The odd leather bag he'd brought in when he'd arrived was open near the lamp, and a book lay propped up as if he'd read himself to sleep.

Lacy wondered how many times he'd slept with the rifle and the book so near. She tiptoed across the room and slipped into the kitchen. As she turned up the low-burning lamp on the table, she smiled, thankful Walker had stoked the fire in her little stove sometime during the night and not let it go out. He'd also brought in two buckets of snow. One rested on the back corner of the stove; the other, still icy, sat near the sink waiting to be heated.

Glancing back to make sure he slept, she quickly put on coffee using the cold water. She collected her things from the bedroom and then placed the warm bucket of melted snow in the far corner of the kitchen. Realizing the captain could see her should he awake, she hooked a thin old blanket between two nails. Then she ducked behind the blanket curtain and stepped into her newly made dressing room.

The curtain had gaps on either side, but at least it offered her some privacy. During the months Walker's father had stayed with her, the worn blanket provided the only space for her to change since she insisted he use the bedroom. Last winter, she'd sometimes used the blanket to bathe because the wool kept out drafts and hugged in warmth.

A tub bath would have been impossible in this weather, so she began to bathe one part of her body at a time using a sliver of the soap her friend Bailee made with peach blossoms and a soft washcloth that had survived a thousand washings. Lacy tied her hair back, opened her gown, and slowly washed until she reached her legs. Bundling up the hem of her gown, she tied it at her hips and continued to wash. The warm air dried her skin, and the smell of coffee drifted around the room as the pot bubbled to life on the stove.

When she finished bathing, she let her hair tumble and reached for her brush. With long strokes she worked the tangles from her hair. She leaned forward and let her hair fall as she pulled the brush from the back of her scalp forward. The thick brown mass floated around her shoulders. For the first time since the captain had arrived, Lacy felt order slipping back into her life.

When she finished her hair and started to button her gown, she thought she heard a sound. Lacy froze and listened. A meow came from the other side of the blanket.

Lacy stretched and peeked over the blanket. Andy pawed at the back door and meowed again.

She relaxed, held her nightgown closed, and tiptoed over to let the cat out. Andy made it a foot before he realized the snow was too deep to go about his business. Lacy laughed. Leaning back behind the door, she lifted the only coat on the hook. The captain's coat.

Wrapping it around her, she stretched back out the door and brushed off most of the snow from the long flowerpot on one side of her small porch.

She reached backward into the kitchen and grabbed the bucket, now full of soapy water, and poured it over the side railing, then refilled it with fresh-fallen snow. Once the snow melted, the water wouldn't be clean enough to use for coffee, but she could wash dishes with it, and melting snow seemed far more practical than waiting for the pipes to thaw.

Dancing quickly back inside before her feet froze, she peeked around the wall separating the two rooms to make sure Walker still slept. He'd rolled to his back, and she heard him snoring slightly, his hair in his eyes. He didn't seem all that stiff and proper asleep.

She laughed. He almost looked human.

Quickly, she removed his coat and placed it back in place, guessing he would not approve of her using his things.

She debated taking her clothes back to her bedroom to change, but the warmth behind the wool blanket won out. As fast as she could, Lacy slipped into her shift and cotton drawers, then her petticoat and her dress. Last, she laced the heavy wool vest over her blouse. Not only would it keep her warm, Lacy thought, it did a good job of hiding the fact that she was a little heavy on top.

On days like this she'd often wished she had enough money to buy material for a proper wool dress, but the thick cotton was warm enough with the vest. She had her jacket downstairs if she got cold and wool stockings her friend Sarah sent her last Christmas. Lacy warmed her toes close to the stove before slipping on the stockings, enjoying the way they wrapped around her legs to just above her knee, then tied with a thin black ribbon.

After pulling her hair back, she began breakfast. By the time she heard Walker moving in the main room, the food was almost ready.

She heard him stomp into his boots, then walk across the room. Her hand shook slightly when he filled the passage. Even though she'd heard him coming, he looked so out of place in her home, he still startled her. The dark beard covering his face had spread during the night, no longer cut in clean lines along his jaw. He rubbed his eyes with his thumb and first finger and appeared half asleep.

"Want some breakfast?" She smiled, thinking the captain didn't seem nearly as powerful just after he woke.

Walker glanced around. "I'd like to wash up, first." He reached for his saddlebags and turned to the back door. "If I remember, there's a washstand behind the hotel."

"Wait," she said a moment before he turned the knob.

Walker glanced back at her, and she realized he fully intended to step out in the blizzard with nothing on but his trousers and undershirt. If he'd collected the buckets full of snow, he already knew the weather. And since he wasn't talking of using them, he must also know that she'd bathed.

She glanced at the blanket, wondering just how much he could see from the living area.

"I'm melting more snow. You could wash up here if you like. If there was any water in the jugs behind the hotel, it'll be frozen by now." Before he could answer, she pulled a clean towel down from the shelf and pointed toward the corner where the blanket still hung between the nails. If he could not comment on her using the water he'd collected, she could offer her space.

Walker raised an eyebrow.

Lacy tried not to think about the intimacy of the act she suggested. "I used to hang the blanket when your father lived here. Otherwise I had no place to change clothes, since he slept in the bedroom."

"Very effective. Would you mind if I made use of your private dressing room, madam?"