B000XUBEHA EBOK (21 page)

“Stay put. This is a whisky-drinking occasion. I’ll get the bottle and a couple of cups.” Her eyebrows arched and she looked up with a question when he handed her a cup of whisky. “You’ve hardly said a word for three days. Let’s talk about what happened in Rocas, then put it away.”

“You’re right. This is a whisky-drinking occasion.”

“You asked if I regretted killing Morton and I didn’t answer. Of course I regret it.” He wished he could leave it at that, but Della had to talk things around from every angle. Maybe all women did. “I would have liked to enjoy our evening without some son of a bitch forcing a confrontation. What makes it worse is Harvey T. Morton didn’t have to die that night. If he’d made a different choice, he’d be alive. I regret that he chose to fire at me. I regret that I had to kill him.” He took a long swallow of whisky. “But Morton had a choice.”

“And you didn’t.” Lowering her head, she inspected the whisky in her cup. “I’ve thought about it. There’s nothing else you could have done. I guess you couldn’t just wound him . . .”

“The bastard journalist who wrote about me—he said one true thing. He said, when a man is famous enough to become a target, his safety lies with every assailant knowing any challenge will result in life or death. There’s no other outcome. Someone will die. It has to be that way.”

“I don’t know how you live like this.” She lifted her chin, bewilderment darkening her hazel eyes. “You’re either a hero or a target. Every man you meet wants to shake your hand or put a bullet in your heart. There doesn’t seem to be anything in between.”

She was in between. That’s part of what made her special. She seemed to admire him, possibly respect him, but he didn’t sense that she viewed him as heroic or larger than life. She didn’t see him as a legend, or as unapproachable; she wasn’t tongue-tied or awkward in his presence.

“Do you know anything about Harvey T. Morton?” she asked.

“I don’t want to know who these men are.”

“The woman who brought my breakfast told me that Morton made saddles. Nobody knew he even owned a gun.”

She was going to tell him whether he wanted to hear or not. Cameron finished his whisky and refilled his cup.

“He and some friends started drinking around midday. As a joke, the friends dared him to challenge you to a shooting contest.”

“A contest? Like setting up a row of bottles and we try to outshoot each other? Me . . . and a saddle maker?” He pulled a hand through his hair. “Christ.”

“The friends figured you’d refuse and everyone would have a good laugh and buy Harvey Morton more drinks because he was brave enough to challenge you to the contest.” She lifted a hand to her eyes. “But something went terribly wrong. You could have been killed because of a dare and a joke.”

The odds were slim, but it could have happened. Knowing she understood released some of the tension in his shoulders.

“Instead, a joke and a dare killed Harvey Morton.” She shook her head. “That’s sad, and tragic.”

He cradled his hands around the whisky cup. “It’s never easy to kill a man, even when he’s trying to kill you. If the killing is a mistake or for a stupid reason, then it’s always sad and tragic.”

“I’ve never seen anyone killed before, not even during the war.” Rising, she went to the fire and turned the rabbit on the spit. “I don’t know if I said the wrong things, or if I offended you. But it just didn’t seem right to sit down and eat supper like nothing had happened.”

“You’ve known from the beginning who I am and what I do.”

“It’s one thing to hear about a legendary gunfight, and another to see a killing before my eyes. Hearing and seeing are different things.”

She’d been lovely the evening he took her to dinner in Rocas, the kind of woman a man was proud to display on his arm. But she was most beautiful, in his eyes, in everyday dress, doing everyday things. Watching her at the fire made his chest tighten and hardened the muscles in his thighs.

She knelt beside the rocks, adjusting the spit. Her face was rosy in the firelight, her long braid lay over her shoulder. In her photograph, he’d noticed that her hands were slender and now he knew that she kept her nails short.

He tried not to think about her body, but of course he’d noticed. In her wedding photograph she’d been tightly corseted, and she’d worn a corset that evening at the Grande Hotel. At her farm and here on the trail, she let herself be natural. In Cameron’s opinion, she didn’t need a corset. Her breasts were full against the white shirtwaists she wore. Her waist was small, flowing into a flare of hips made to receive a man.

Biting down on his back teeth, Cameron turned away from the fire and faced the moonlit shadows dappling the hillside. The day after tomorrow they’d be out of the foothills and into the mountains. The nights would turn cold.

“I’m not criticizing,” Della said from behind him. “Society needs lawmen who are willing to pull the trigger. I’m just saying that witnessing it up close is new to me, and a little shocking, I guess.”

He hadn’t taken her feelings into account, hadn’t thought that it might be the first time she’d seen a man killed. It was hard to imagine there was anyone in the West who hadn’t witnessed a killing. That’s how cynical he’d become, living in rough border towns and hunting outlaws. Della reminded him there was another world that he didn’t often visit, where shoot-outs and killings were not everyday occurrences.

“Cameron?” When he turned, she was standing beside the fire, holding their supper plates. The sadness that he hadn’t seen since the night it rained had returned to her eyes. “I couldn’t live like you do. Not knowing if this is your last day. Wondering if the next man who comes in the door will shoot you.” She drew a breath and met his eyes. “I couldn’t live like that.”

The way she spoke, slow and with reluctance, told him that she was saying more. She was saying, don’t come closer. He nodded. It was best this way. He ought to feel relieved.

But the long, hot hours riding in the sun gave a man time to ponder. And sometimes an idea shimmered in front of him, as possible and real as a heat mirage, and just as deceptive and insubstantial.

Lately he’d had the idea that maybe he didn’t have to tell Della that he was the man who killed Clarence. There were several arguments in favor of saying nothing. First, telling her wouldn’t change anything. Clarence would still be dead. His last letter still wouldn’t say what Della needed to hear. If Cameron kept his silence, then he and Della could remain friends. He could imagine himself stopping in to visit over the years, and her being glad to see him. He could even imagine more than that. He could imagine that maybe . . .

This was the place where his argument fell apart and an imperative for truth kicked in. Telling her the whole truth about her husband’s death was the right thing to do. Because she deserved the truth was why he’d searched for her. If he didn’t tell her the whole truth, his secret would wedge between them like a wall of dishonor.

But that night in Rocas . . . she had leaned toward him in the candlelight with her lips parted and her eyes soft and almost shy, and he’d realized that she was drawn to him.

How many times over the years had he gazed at her photograph and imagined her looking at him as she had that night? In that moment he had glimpsed a different world and a different life, and for a brief while that life had seemed solid and possible.

Now he understood that even if he never told her about Clarence, she couldn’t accept his life. He understood. He’d never expected that any woman could. But for one fleeting moment at a candlelit table in Rocas, he’d let himself hope that he was wrong.

When he turned, she’d dished up the rabbit and rice and was holding his plate, biting her lip as if she had more to say but wouldn’t let herself say it.

He took his plate and sat on the ground. “A man can’t retire from being a legend.” He kept his voice flat, tried not to sound bitter. This was the life he’d chosen and created. He’d found it satisfactory until Della stepped out of the photograph and into his life.

“I figured that out,” she said, sitting beside the fire. “Even if there was something different you wanted to do, your fame would always get in the way. You’d still be James Cameron. And there would always be men like Harvey Morton and Joe Hasker and Luke Apple.”

After they scrubbed their plates and utensils, Cameron sat on one side of the fire, cleaning his pistols, and Della sat on the other side, doing some light mending. Once, he looked across the flames and found her watching him. They held their gazes for a beat longer than was comfortable, then they looked away.

Eventually he would tell her about Clarence, and she would hate him. Until then, he would enjoy her company and her friendship and not hope for anything more.

It wouldn’t be easy to set his hope aside. Particularly now that he knew she had leanings in his direction. He didn’t think he was wrong about that. And particularly since the sight and scent of her made him want to hold her in his arms and kiss her until she was wild with desire. Being with her but not touching her made him feel crazy inside.

Della mopped sweat from her throat and temples, her gaze on Cameron’s back. As usual, he rode tall and easy as if he was unaware of the sun beating down on them. Earlier he’d pointed north, drawing her attention to a small herd of deer on the rocky hillside. She wouldn’t have seen them, as they were almost the same color as the rocks and golden-leafed bushes.

She’d lost track of the days, but she suspected they were into September now. Autumn would be upon them soon. As they gained altitude, the nights were getting chillier, but so far the mountain sun was hot during the day.

What else could she think about that wasn’t Cameron? She had considered every nuance of the weather. Had noted the change of terrain as they climbed higher up the foothills. She had berated herself for her last letter to Clarence. Had wondered about Claire until her head ached. She had planned her journal entry but knew she wouldn’t write it. The journal wasn’t working out. That left Cameron.

Squinting behind the blue lens of her glasses, she watched Cameron look over his shoulder to make sure she wasn’t too far behind before he turned Bold and Rebecca into a narrow cut between two rock walls.

She had come so close to disaster. If Harvey Morton had not burst into the dining room, she didn’t know how the evening at the Grande Hotel would have ended. However, she suspected that she might have awakened the next morning with much to regret.

But Harvey Morton had burst into the dining room, and everything had changed between her and Cameron. She had seen with brutal clarity that he could be gazing into her eyes one minute, and could be dead two minutes later. It hadn’t happened that way, thank God, but it could have.

And what if she’d been in a different mood? What if she’d said something angry or cold in the minute before Harvey Morton burst through the double doors?

The horror of such a possibility made her shrink inside her jacket. If she and Cameron ever became more than friends, she would have to censure everything she said to him. She couldn’t behave normally, could never risk getting angry. Because anything she said might be her last words to him. Luke Apple and Harvey Morton had demonstrated how quickly Cameron could face mortal danger. There wasn’t time to say, “I didn’t mean what I just said.” Or, “Those words were spoken in anger, please forgive me.”

She couldn’t live like that. Teasing herself with thoughts that she could accept his life was a frivolous pursuit. He was right—he couldn’t decide to stop being a legend.

Della had known this from the beginning. But then, in the beginning she hadn’t known him. Hadn’t slept a few feet from a muscled body that she could visualize in her mind. Or watched him shave in the morning. Hadn’t felt a thrill of electricity when fingertips accidently brushed, or shoulders touched. Hadn’t stood in the rain and wished he’d come after her and felt her heart leap with confusion when he did. They hadn’t whistled together or shared a hundred meals.

“Stop this,” she whispered, wiping the back of her glove across her forehead.

Ahead of her, just out of sight, she thought she heard angry voices. Worried, she urged Bob into a trot, following a faint trail through a tight opening that widened into a shallow valley.

There she found Cameron sitting patiently atop Bold, watching a dozen people engaged in a volatile argument beside four brightly painted enclosed wagons. Men, women, and children talked at once, waving arms and shouting. Dogs chased under and around the wagons and Della spotted a goat.

“The Baldofinis,” Cameron said as she reined up beside him. “They claim to be Romanian gypsies.”

The tall wagons had Baldofini painted on the side in fancy crimson letters. On one of the wagons, someone had lettered an advertisement for Countess Blatski’s miracle salve, guaranteed to cure scabies, rashes, female discomfort, insomnia, snoring, pox, and catarrh. On the second wagon was a sketch of a mysterious looking woman waving her fingers over a crystal ball. Beneath the drawing was a promise that one could learn the future for ten cents.

The gypsies paused to glare at her and Cameron, then returned to the argument. “Baldofini,” Della said. “Is that a Romanian name?”

“I have no idea. I’ve never been able to work out the names or relationships. But it wouldn’t surprise me if someone just made up the name thinking it sounded Romanian. Who knows if it really does?”