Arizona Embrace (4 page)

T don’t know,” Trinity mused, devils dancing in his eyes. “If I was a cow used to coming nose to nose with bobcats, bears, and the like, I’d be so happy to come upon this little lady I’d probably lie down and hold my feet together so she could tie me up. And being branded wouldn’t be more than a bee sting compared to some cougar making fresh steaks out of me.”

Victoria laughed, a delighted peal which reverberated about the room.

“Do give him a job, Uncle,” she said. “He lies shamefully, but he does it with such charm.”

“I assure you, ma’am—”

“Don’t. Women delight in flattery. Maybe we should be more fond of the truth, but it’s nice to hear ourselves described in more glowing terms than we deserve. However, flattery loses some of its appeal when you start swearing it’s the truth.”

“You’re very wise to be so young.”

A cloud passed over Victoria’s spirits. “I’m older than you think.”

“I knew you were no longer in your girlhood,” Trinity said, recovering swiftly. “A girl, by definition being a woman still unformed, could never have attained such perfection.”

Victoria laughed again, even more easily than before.

“Are you never without an answer? I wouldn’t be surprised to find they ran you out of Texas.”

“I’d like to run him out of Arizona,” Buc said, making no effort to keep the animosity from his voice.

“I’m really quite harmless” Trinity said. “My old man used to say, ‘Never worry about a man as long as he’s talking, but look out when he stops.’“

“Then I guess we got nothing to worry about from you. You haven’t stopped jawing since you rode in. Think you can stop long enough to get some work done?”

“If you give me the right kind of job.”

“And what might that be?” Buc asked, sarcasm in his voice.

“Why a talking job, naturally.”

Victoria and her uncle grinned. Buc didn’t.

“We don’t have any jobs like that.”

“Sure you do. I could fetch and carry for Miss Davidge. She must need lots of wood and water for cooking. Then there’s the slops to be thrown out and the sweeping up to be done. And of course a lady can’t be allowed to go fetching eggs and feeding chickens. And all the while I would be talking steady so she wouldn’t worry about whether those Indians have got you yet.”

“When we want a housemaid, we’ll hire a female,” Buc said.

“I bet Miss Davidge would like it better if you hired a house fella. It would make things more interesting.”

“Things are interesting enough around here,” Buc sputtered. “And they’ll be a whole lot more pleasant after you’re gone.”

“Maybe for you, but not for me. I’m not looking forward to the long ride through the desert. You want to go with me, ma’am? Sure would help to while away the hot afternoons. They say Los Angeles is making up into a right fair town. Of course it don’t compare to San Francisco, but I’d take you there, too, if you wanted.”

“Victoria doesn’t want to go to California, and certainly not with the likes of you,” Buc exploded before Victoria could respond.

“It’s a good thing I don’t take that as a personal insult,” Trinity observed, sounding too amiable to get insulted about anything.

“I meant it personal. Now if you want this job, you’d better shake a leg. And forget you ever found your way into this kitchen. Hands don’t eat up at the house”

There’s no one but you in the bunkhouse just now,” Victoria objected, “and you eat with us. You can’t expect him to eat alone”

“Somebody’ll be back in a couple of days,” Buc said.

“I won’t mind,” Trinity said, “as long I can come up for a piece of pie now and again.”

“You’ll eat with us,” Grant Davidge said.

Buc didn’t like it, but Grant’s decision put an end to the discussion.

“I’m heading over to the bunkhouse,” Buc said to Trinity. “I’ll settle you in.”

“No need to be in such a hurry,” Grant said. “You can take him over after dinner. I want to talk to him.” Buc seemed reluctant to leave. “He’s got to know sooner or later.”

“Can you trust him?” Buc asked, casting Trinity an angry glance.

“It’s not much of a secret. Half of Texas knows already”

“Still, I don’t think—”

“You can go on. I"ll take care of it.”

Buc leaned against the wall, his frown of disapproval deepening into a scowl. “I’ll wait.”

“Buc doesn’t dislike you,” Grant assured Trinity. “He’s just worried every man who sets foot in this valley is after Victoria.”

Trinity tried to look surprised and mystified in turn. Fortunately, Grant didn’t seem much interested in his facial expression.

“Five years ago somebody killed Victoria’s husband,” Grant explained. “Nobody could find out who did it so they tried to put the blame on Victoria. By the time I got there, they had set the date for a trial and picked the jury. They had also made plans to hang her at the end of the week. The scaffold was already going up. Can you imagine any man meaning to hang a lovely, innocent young woman like Victoria?”

It took no special intuition to see Grant believed implicitly in his niece’s innocence. The man actually vibrated with the fury inside him.

The judge wouldn’t listen to a word I said. He was Victoria’s father-in-law, you see, and he was all eaten up with grief. Jeb was his only boy. I don’t think he would have managed to hold up at all if it hadn’t been for his wife. Victoria didn’t much like her stepmother-in-law, but Myra Blazer is a remarkable woman. Quite handsome, too.” Grant looked embarrassed to have ventured so far from the topic. He cleared his throat.

“I intended to appeal to the governor, but Judge Blazer held the trial early. The jury never even left the room.”

“What did you do?”

“Buc came up with a plan to break her out of jail. Worked like a charm. Not a single shot fired and nobody hurt. We were halfway across Texas before they even knew Victoria was gone.”

“Is she safe here? Maybe you ought to take her to California.”

“As long as she’s not in the states, they can’t touch her. The territorial governor is a personal friend of mine. Besides, he wouldn’t send Victoria back. He doesn’t believe in hanging women.”

“Not even the ones who’re guilty?”

Trinity hadn’t meant to say anything, but he couldn’t restrain himself. Grant’s words had scraped against old wounds. Even after all these years, just remembering what Queenie had done to him and his father made him burn with rage.

Now sitting here, listening to Grant Davidge talk about helping his niece escape, as if it were his right to decide when the criminal justice system did and didn’t work, made him furious. Queenie had gotten away. She had disappeared without a trace. But by God, Victoria Davidge wouldn’t, not if he had anything to say about it.

“Since Victoria’s not guilty, I never considered it,” Grant said, impatiently dismissing the idea.

“Did you have any trouble with people coming after her?” Trinity asked, changing the subject. “I mean, is there any kind of reward for taking her back?”

“You wouldn’t be thinking about trying to collect it, would you?”

“No, but there’s a lot of people who’d turn in their own ma for no more than fifty dollars.”

There’s a thousand dollar reward, but Judge Blazer has offered several times that amount to any coyote who’d come after her.”

Grant’s eyes had turned steely cold, his features set in the cement of rock-hard determination. In that moment Trinity had no trouble seeing in this mild-mannered, fond uncle the man who had carved a ranch out of the Arizona wilderness and held it against Indians and rustlers.

“But he reckoned without Buc and me. If they couldn’t be bought off, we …” Grant stopped himself. His gaze met Trinity’s gaze and held steady, challenging. “Let’s just say I was able to convince them they could earn easier money somewhere else.”

Trinity wondered if there were any bodies buried in the remote reaches of Mountain Valley Ranch. It wasn’t his job to check on Grant or his foreman, but it would be helpful to know. A wise man always takes careful inventory of the obstacles facing him before undertaking a task if he wants to be successful.

And Trinity Smith was always successful.

“Why’re you telling me all this?” Trinity asked.

“Because part of your job will be to protect Victoria. In fact, it’s the most important part. Every cowhand here knows what happened and has sworn not to let anyone take her out of this valley.”

“I suppose it can get mighty tiresome being kept under lock and key” Trinity said, turning to Victoria.

“Yes, it can,” Victoria agreed, glad to be able to turn the conversation, if only slightly, from her awful past. “This may sound ungrateful, but there are times when I wish I weren’t so much a prisoner and could go anywhere I liked. I especially wish I were a man.”

“Lord almighty!” Trinity exploded. “Think of the waste.”

Victoria laughed again. She couldn’t remember ever having laughed so much in one day, and it felt good.

“I’m going to insist Uncle Grant keep you around for a long time,” Victoria said. “You’re wonderful for my ego.”

“All the men think you’re beautiful,” Grant told her.

“I know, but they’re afraid to say anything. Trinity just wades in and says what he thinks. I imagine there’ll be times when I’ll wish he hadn’t, but on the whole I prefer it.”

“I can’t imagine saying anything against you, ma’am.”

“You just did.”

“Ma’am?”

“You did it again.”

Trinity looked confused.

“My name’s Victoria. I don’t know anyone named
Ma’am”

“But it ain’t polite to call the boss lady by her first name.”

“Then it’s fortunate I’m not the boss lady,” Victoria said when Trinity started to demur. “Uncle Grant is the boss and Buc is the foreman. I just live here. If you want any more pecan pie, you’ll have to learn to call me Victoria.”

“Ma’am, I’d learn to call you anything if you just keep on baking those pies.”

“Call me
Ma’am
again, and you’ll eat dinner in the bunkhouse.”

Trinity hung his head and shuffled his feet a bit. Then he looked at Victoria, rather sheepishly. “Ill do my best, but you got to forgive me if I forget now and again. My pa was real strict, you see, and he used to cane me if I didn’t call every female I saw ‘Ma’am.’ Didn’t matter if they was so little they could hide behind their ma’s skirts. It was ‘Ma’am’ or nothing. It got to be such a habit I don’t know if I can break it.”

The imps dancing in Trinity’s eyes convinced Victoria she couldn’t believe a word he said. “You’ll just have to try. A few missed meals ought to help sharpen your memory.”

“Is she always so cruel?” Trinity asked Grant.

“She’s real determined,” Grant said, an answering gleam in his eye. “I guess you’d better do like she orders.”

“Do you think she might order me to keep an eye on her? It would be terrible if some Apache was to get hold of her.”

“You said they were a couple hundred miles south of here,” Buc interrupted.

“They might get tired of all that desert. It’s much nicer up here in the mountains. Lots of cold water to drink.”

Victoria turned away to hide her smile.

“It might not be such a bad idea for you to stick close to the house for the next couple days,” Grant said. “We’re too short of hands to pull anybody off the range, and Buc and I have to ride pretty far out the next few days.”

“Victoria doesn’t need the likes of him hanging about,” Buc protested.

“I never do like leaving her,” Grant explained to Trinity.

“She’s got Ramon and Anita.”

They’d be no help if trouble came.”

“We haven’t had any trouble in three years. I don’t see why we should expect it in the next two days”.

“It’ll also give him a chance to get familiar with the place, learn his way about,” Grant continued, good-naturedly ignoring his foreman’s repeated objections. “You wouldn’t mind, would you, Victoria?”

“Not if he helps me with my survey” she answered.

“Have him do anything you want. That okay with you?” Grant asked Trinity.

“Looking at a pretty woman is always better than chasing after ornery cows that don’t want to be found.”

“Now you look here—” Buc started.

“He’s just kidding you, Buc,” Victoria interrupted. “Can’t you see that?”

“All I see is a nameless cowboy who’s wormed his way into this ranch in less than an hour.”

“I told you my name was Trin—”

That’s what you say,” Buc replied angrily. “It could be Billy the Kid for all we know.”

“He’s about six inches shorter than I am,” Trinity pointed out. “Besides he’s going to fat. And he’s got this big ugly chin that—”

“You know what I mean!” Buc roared furiously.

“We all do,” Grant said. He didn’t raise his voice, but his expression clearly showed his impatience. “But I trust Trinity. I like the look of him. And I’d feel a lot safer knowing he was with Victoria.”