Arizona Embrace (38 page)

“Don’t take any chances. Just find Chalk, I’ll do the rest.”

“After all these years of riding with you, don’t you think I know what to do?”

“I guess so. See you in three days.”

“You take care of the little lady. If I come back and find you’ve let the Judge chew her about the edges, I’m going to be right put out.”

“After all these years, don’t you think I can take care of a prisoner?”

“A man, yes, even if he’s mean as a sidewinder and has a dozen relatives on your trail. But I don’t think you have the slightest idea what to do with a woman. You’ve been out of practice too long.”

“Get out of here before I decide to take you in for something.”

“What?”

“Being a public nuisance.”

“You may get a conviction, but it ain’t a hanging offense. I’d be out within the hour.”

He waved a cheerful goodbye and cantered away. Victoria couldn’t see so much as a hint of a trail.

“How does he know where to go?”

“Instinct. You could drop that man down in the Black Hills and he’d get to Texas without so much as a wrong turn.”

The country had changed completely from the mountains of Arizona and the desert which had seemed to stretch from southern Arizona through New Mexico past the Big Bend country. They were entering the cattle country of south Texas, the country Victoria remembered so well from her childhood.

She began to see a lot more mesquite, chaparral, prickly pear and a dozen other varieties of low-growing trees, shrubs and vines, all bearing sweet-scented flowers and succulent berries, and nearly all armed with vicious thorns.

She also saw white-faced cattle; first one, then another. The closer they came to the ranch the more frequently they spotted them.

“Something’s wrong,” Trinity said. “There wasn’t a cow on the place when I left.”

Chapter Twenty

“Maybe you’ve got rustlers.”

“Rustlers take cows away, they don’t bring them in” Trinity replied, “certainly not cows like this.” Trinity looked like some new thought had just occurred to him. He looked harder at the cow. Then he rode off to get a better look. The animal ran away before he could get close enough to put a rope on it, but not before he read the brand.

“That’s one of the cows I gave Ben,” he said when he rejoined Victoria. “Now I know why he was away when we reached his cabin. I also know why he wouldn’t come up to the house.”

“He brought his cows here?” Victoria couldn’t see why Ben should do that, but she didn’t understand why Trinity couldn’t decide whether to cuss or laugh.

“He gave them back to the. I now have a herd. And a damned fine one at that.”

He kicked his horse into a slow gallop.

Victoria remembered the house like it was yesterday. It wasn’t a pretty house. Now that it stood unpainted, its boards weathered grey, it looked more forlorn than ever. Its only attractive aspects were the veranda which ran around two sides and the spreading arms of elms and poplars which offered sorely needed shade from the blazing afternoon sun.

The yard was barren of any living thing except the trees. The fence, which had once enclosed the small yard and protected her flowers and a small piece of lawn from hungry cows, had disappeared completely. Only one corral seemed to have been repaired enough to be used. A single barn seemed to be the only thing which had received much attention for many years.

“It’s a little run-down,” Trinity said, but his mind seemed to be on something else. “The house had been empty for two years when I bought it.”

“Do you intend to keep it?”

“I don’t know. I bought it on a whim. Unfortunately I didn’t check to see how much it would cost to put everything back in working order. I’m afraid the only way I could support the ranch for the length of time it would take to build up a herd would be to go back to prospecting.”

“What about the cows we saw on the way in?”

“I don’t know. I mean to ask Ward about that as soon as I can.”

They pulled up in front of the barn, and a thin, whipcord of a man ambled out of its shady depths. He wore his ill-fitting clothes with complete unconcern, but Victoria noticed they were clean and the man freshly shaved. Near-white hair showed from under his hat. He hooked calloused hands, the color of old learner, in his belt. A single glance at his face, and Victoria could tell he didn’t know what to think of his boss showing up with a woman in tow.

“What are Ben’s cows doing here?” Trinity asked without preamble.

“And a good morning to you,” Ward said, a hint of a smile about his lips. “It’s been right quiet around here, Too much work to do to go catting around. I trust you had a good journey.”

“Okay, so I’ve got bad manners,” Trinity said. The hint of a smile returned. “You knew that when you signed on, so don’t go looking for any sudden improvement now.”

“The house isn’t in very good shape, ma’am, but it sure will get you out of the sun. I’d be mighty pleased to help you down.”

“And I’d be mighty pleased to accept,” Victoria replied, delighted to see that all of Trinity’s friends seemed to treat him with complete disregard of his fearsome reputation. She would give a lot to see Buc’s face if he could have seen Trinity wrestling with Ben just like they were fourteen-year-olds.

Trinity coaxed his horse between Victoria and Ward. “Nobody’s going any place until you answer my question.”

“I might as well tell him what he wants to know, ma’am, or hell keep us out here until one of us gets a heatstroke. Seems he could ride through the frying pans of hell and not break a sweat, but I come all over dizzy if I stand in the sun too long.”

“I must have come all over dizzy to have ever thought you’d make a foreman,” Trinity said. “You’re as bad as Ben. The pair of you could talk the ears off a donkey. What are his cows doing here?”

“Said he brung you them cows because you had no business saddling him with that much trouble. In the first place, he didn’t want them. Too much work keeping them out of ravines, finding water, and running off rustlers and cougars.”

“He should have sold them.”

“Said that was too much trouble, too.”

“So he walked them a few hundred miles across some of the worst desert in the country.”

“Ben don’t mind desert. Says he likes it right fine as long as it don’t rain.”

Trinity looked ready to wring his foreman’s neck.

“Ill give him half the money when I sell them.”

“He thought you might say that. Told me to tell you he’d open up a bank account in your name.”

“I’ll give it to him in cash.”

“Said he’d bury it under your front steps.”

Trinity broke out in laughter.

“I guess I have a herd. Now if I can just find the money to fix up the buildings.”

“While you’re looking for it, mind if I take the little lady in out of the sun?”

Trinity jumped down and helped Victoria dismount. “The little lady has a name. She’s Victoria Davidge. And yes, she’s the killer I went to bring back to Bandera to hang,” he added when he saw the confusion in Ward’s eyes, despite the amiable smile which remained in place. “I made a mistake. She’s not guilty?

“So you brought her back here anyway?”

“She insisted.”

Trinity laughed at Ward’s incredulous look.

“Miss Davidge decided it was time to put an end to this unfortunate mess once and for all. Shell stay here while I look for a man who can prove she didn’t kill her husband. Ben has already gone looking for him.”

“Where’d he go?”

“Uvalde. I’m to meet him there in three days. He’s looking for Chalk Gillet. Ever heard of him?”

“No, but then I wouldn’t, not being curious as a female about every drifter between here and California.”

“How’s Diablo doing?”

“Mean as ever,” Ward said. “See for yourself”

Trinity led Victoria inside the barn toward a stall at the back. The dark cool of the barn welcomed her. The familiar small of hay and manure didn’t offend her nostrils.

“Why do you keep your horses inside the barn? My father never did.”

“We just keep Diablo inside. He’s a stallion and insists on fighting every male horse he sees, stallion or gelding. He nearly killed a couple of cow ponies before I got him here.”

A loud whistle made Victoria’s ears hurt. A magnificent black stallion stood in the stall, angrily stamping his feet.

“Is he wild?”

“No, just angry. I won him from a gambler who had won him from some Eastern breeder. He nearly beat him to death before I got him. Hell let me put a saddle on him, but he goes crazy when anyone gets on his back.”

“What are you going to do with him?”

“Tame him, I hope.”

“If you can’t?”

“Use him for stud. I could make a fortune selling his colts. Don’t get too close. He bites.”

“You wouldn’t bite me, would you?” Victoria crooned to the horse. “I used to have a horse a lot like you. Only he loved for the to ride him. I rode him every day.”

Trinity stood poised, ready to pull Victoria beyond reach of Diablo’s teeth. Much to his surprise, Victoria’s voice seemed to have a calming effect on him. She even put her hand through the bars. Diablo backed away, but he didn’t attempt to savage her.

“You seem to have a way with horses,” Trinity said. “He won’t let anybody but me come that close without attacking.”

“He’s not mean,” Victoria said as she stepped back from the stall. “He’s just been badly treated. If you bring him along slowly, he ought to learn to trust you.”

“That’s what I’m doing” Trinity said, ushering her outside again, “but he responds to you better than anyone else. Maybe you can help me. It’ll be something to keep you busy while I’m gone.”

They hadn’t discussed his leaving. His departure affected her in several ways which they hadn’t discussed either. In fact, Victoria realized, they hadn’t discussed anything at all. Except for the death sentence hanging over Victoria’s head, they had talked only of things which meant little to either of them.

That would have to change. As long as he had been a cowboy drifting through, as long as he had been a bounty hunter taking her back to Bandera, what he was doing didn’t really mean much to her. But all that changed along the way.

She knew she loved him. She knew she wanted to spend the rest of her life with him. She didn’t know how he felt about her. She didn’t know what he felt about marriage. He had never mentioned Queenie after that night. She didn’t know if he could forget Queenie, and all the other emotions tied up with her, long enough to fall in love. She was afraid it might keep him from being able to settle down with any woman.

If only she knew how to fight Queenie’s ghost.

She wasn’t even sure Queenie’s being dead would be enough. Trinity felt he had failed because he hadn’t been able to punish her for her crime. If she were dead, she would still have escaped his vengeance. His load of guilt was so enormous and bitter, it had forced him to take up a profession he hated, to accept the reputation of a bounty hunter though he wasn’t one, all in an attempt to exorcise the guilt that still rode him.

Victoria swore she would help him.

The house looked so much the same Victoria felt she had stepped back into the past.

“This is our furniture,” she exclaimed upon entering the north parlor, known as the ladies’ parlor.
Her
parlor. “I remember sitting here every Sunday waiting for Daddy to come down so we could go to church. The bank sold it with everything in it except the few tilings I took to the Tumbling T”

“The Daltons sold it the same way just to get rid of it.”

“It wasn’t lucky for your father either. Why did you really buy it?”

Trinity thought for a moment. “I suppose because it was the only place from our past my father could call his own. Bob Slocum still owns the Triple S. Our homestead on the Trinity got washed away by a spring flood, and there was no place in Colorado I wanted to call home.”

“And now you don’t know if you can keep it.”

“Those cows will make a big difference, but I’m not worried about that now. First thing I have to do is find Chalk Gillet.’

Victoria walked over to one of the windows. It looked north in the direction of San Antonio. “What are you going to do with me in the meantime?”

“You can stay here.”

Victoria’s heartbeat increased instantly. It was the one thing she wanted, and the one thing she’d been afraid to ask for.

“I figured you’d feel more easy in your mind if you were some place familiar. And of course I don’t want Judge Blazer or the sheriff to know we’re back. Not until I’ve found Gillet.”

“Can I see the rest of the house?” she asked.

“Sure. I’ve got a few things to check on, but I imagine you’d rather see it by yourself anyway.”

He was right. She felt like this was her home rather than his. It would take her a little while to accustom herself to the fact that all the familiar objects weren’t hers any longer.