B000XUBEHA EBOK (6 page)

The image made him smile. “I haven’t done something like that since I was a boy.”

“I guessed. Going barefoot would damage your heroic image as a gunslinging sheriff and a legendary bounty hunter.”

Narrowing his eyes, he turned to look at her, then realized she was teasing. No one teased James Cameron. After an instant of astonishment, he laughed. That surprised him, too.

“All right, fetch a lantern and we’ll go dangle our feet in the water.”

“Truly? Give me a couple of minutes. I need to take off my stockings and tie up my skirt.”

While he waited, he yanked off his boots and socks and rolled up his pant legs. When she emerged, carrying the lantern, they looked at each other’s bare feet and laughed.

The creek wasn’t far from the house, maybe fifty yards. Della placed the lantern on the weedy grass at the top of a short embankment, then she walked into the shallow creek with a sigh of pleasure. “In the daytime, it’s cooler under the cottonwoods, but at night it’s nice to see the stars.”

It wasn’t full dark yet, but a few bright stars pierced the fringes of the sunset residue. Cameron stepped into the cool water and let it swirl around his ankles. Bending, he scooped water into his hands and splashed his face and throat while Della did the same.

“This was a good idea.”

“If you want to kick and splash around, I promise not to tell a soul.” Tiny droplets caught the fading light and sparkled on her face and long throat. Her feet were pale beneath the water.

What did she see in him that others didn’t? The question intrigued him. Of all the people in the world, why did this one particular woman feel comfortable joshing with him? Absurdly, he wanted her to do it again.

Instead she sat on the embankment, keeping her feet in the water, and unwrapped leftover biscuits that she’d brought in her pocket.

“What would you have done with your life if the war hadn’t intervened?” She handed him a biscuit. “Would you still have come west?”

He made it a point not to speak of the past and never to explain himself. But after his questions on the porch, he owed her more than evasiveness or silence.

“Shortly after the war began, I sat for the bar,” he said finally. “If I hadn’t put on a uniform, I probably would have entered the family law practice back east.”

Leaning forward, she splashed water farther up a shapely leg. “Is your father an attorney?”

“He was a judge.”

“Was. He’s dead, then?”

“Both my parents died years ago.”

“Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

“I had a sister. Celia died in childbirth.”

“I’m prying, aren’t I?”

“Yes.”

She clasped her hands in her lap and tilted her head back to look at the stars. “So why did you decide to come west?”

He turned his head to stare. “You just admitted that you’re prying into personal affairs.”

“I know. I’m still doing it. Why did you come west?”

Cameron thought a minute, then let his frown dissolve into a smile. He was seeing flashes of the woman-child’s barefoot charm, and understanding why Clarence Ward had defied his parents to marry her.

“I came west because that’s where the outlaws are,” he said.

A moment passed as she considered his statement and worked out the meaning. “You learned to kill during the war,” she said softly, not looking at him. “You’ve gone on killing.”

Ordinarily he would have left it at that. But she had trusted him with part of her story.

He crumbled the biscuit between his fingers. “Until the end of the war, I never thought much about killing. When we went into battle, I only saw the enemy. I didn’t see the men under the uniforms.” He supposed it was the same for everyone. Otherwise no soldier could do his duty or fire his weapon.

“Cameron?” she said gently, touching his sleeve.

“Then something happened. And abruptly I understood the enemy was just an ordinary man. He wasn’t evil. He was tired and hungry and he wanted to go home, just like me. He had parents and family who cared about him. He was decent and honorable. The enemy was simply a man doing his duty. The only difference between him and me was a point of philosophy and the color of our uniforms.”

“What was the thing that happened?”

Here was the moment. There would never be a better opportunity to tell her the truth.

But he felt the warmth of her shoulder and her foot almost touching his beneath the water. An intoxicating scent clung to her skin and hair, the fragrance of apples, raisins, and woman sweat. At any moment she might tease him again. He wanted this interlude of closeness to last. Needed this brief experience of intimacy at a depth that shook him.

Right now he couldn’t think about her hating him. Not yet, not tonight.

“I intend to tell you what happened,” he said slowly, marking the second incidence of cowardice in his life, “but not now.”

If she had pressed, he would have told her, but she didn’t push, she merely nodded.

“I don’t know how many good, decent men I killed during the war,” he said, finishing his answer. He had detested those who kept count of fallen enemy soldiers. “I came west to even the score, to kill those who deserve to be killed for a better reason than the color of a uniform.”

It was dark enough now that he couldn’t see her expression or judge her reaction. The woman-child in the photograph was too young to understand what he was saying, but he sensed the woman she had become did know.

“The war will never end for you and me, will it,” she murmured. She gazed up at the stars and touched her throat. “I’ll go on hating myself for a letter that shouldn’t have been written. You’ll go on trying to atone for doing your duty. We can’t change the past, and we can’t let it go.”

The night was never silent. Bullfrogs and crickets thrummed in the undergrowth, mosquitoes vibrated near their faces. Something splashed through the creek downstream and a cat screamed out on the prairie.

“How badly were you wounded?” she inquired, standing. When he asked which time she meant, she reminded him, “You said the blood on Clarence’s letter was yours.”

“That wound was superficial.” He shrugged and stood. “None of the wounds I received were especially serious. I was lucky.”

And he’d been lucky since the war. Dozens of times he’d faced men known to be deadly accurate killers, but the worst that had occurred had been one shot in his side and a couple of knife cuts.

One day his luck would run out. He accepted that inevitability as a natural consequence of the path he’d chosen.

It didn’t matter.

Chapter 4

Upon awakening each day, the first thing Della did was hurry to the window. She doubted James Cameron was the kind of man to ride away without a fare-thee-well, but still, it reassured her to see him.

This morning she peeked through her bedroom curtains and watched him thumb back his hat, then frown at one of the warped rails he’d pulled from the decaying corral posts. Next he unfolded a long ruler and measured the board. Seeing him at work—his sleeves rolled to the elbows, his collar opened to the early morning sunshine— she wouldn’t have guessed that he was a famous gunslinger. If she ignored the gun belt at his waist, he looked like an ordinary man fixing up his place.

Well, not ordinary, she decided. Ordinary men didn’t have James Cameron’s bearing or steely blue eyes. Most men weren’t as tall. And even now, focused on the job before him, something in his posture and attitude told Della that he was keenly aware of his surroundings, alert to the morning rhythms. If an unusual sound or movement occurred, he would know at once.

His constant vigilance was a legacy from the war, of course, a habit he had carried into his present occupation. She suspected that what Cameron referred to as luck was more a highly developed instinct for survival. He might not care if he died, but neither did he intend to let carelessness hasten the event.

She took great pleasure in knowing this about him, and in knowing what she suspected few others did, why he had come west. She loved observing the small details about him. That he was right-handed, that he shaved every morning, that he placed his knife and fork across the top of the plate when he finished eating. He drank his coffee black, he salted his food before he tasted it. He had a habit of lightly touching his palms to the butt of his guns before he dropped his arms to his sides. His horse’s name was Bold, and he talked to Bold in a low voice while grooming him and when giving him grain in the evenings.

This was what she had hungered for, the sharing of those small details that made up a life. Without fully realizing it, she’d longed to look into another person, even if she couldn’t see far, and she’d wanted someone to look into her, even if there wasn’t much to see.

But there was one thing; not a secret but something she didn’t want to talk about, either. Pressing her lips together, she gazed into the mirror and lowered her hair brush.

Cameron had surprised her last night. His first question wasn’t what she had dreaded it would be. But as surely as she was standing here in her second-best dress, that question would come.

“You look fine this morning,” he said when he came inside for breakfast.

He wasn’t a man accustomed to giving compliments, and she wasn’t a woman accustomed to receiving them. Della blushed violently and splattered bacon grease on the floor. Cameron cleared his throat and took a sudden interest in the items hanging on the clothes pegs.

“The reason I’m not wearing a work dress . . . I thought I mentioned this last night . . . I’m going into town today to replenish staples.” Irritated, she told herself he’d only made a polite comment, for heaven’s sake. Once upon a time she’d received compliments as a matter of course, it was nothing to get flustered about. “The bank receives my money at the middle of the month, so that’s when I go to town,” she added, babbling and definitely flustered. “I remember you said something about unfinished business . . . would you like to accompany me?”

She preferred to believe that his primary purpose in coming to Two Creeks had been to see her. That irritated her, too. She had no claim on this man, and no interest in him beyond the fact that he’d been Clarence’s friend and had been with Clarence when he died.

“If you don’t mind some company,” he said, pulling out his chair and sitting, “I believe I will.”

“I can’t tell you how much I appreciate the work you’ve done around here, it’s a nice tribute to Clarence, but I’d say you deserve a day off.” She noticed him looking at her with a quizzical expression. “I guess you’re wondering about the money.”

“I don’t want to pry into your affairs.”

“Unlike someone else we know,” she said, almost smiling. If she let a silence develop, she knew she’d think about him saying she looked fine, so she kept talking. “I have a monthly income. It isn’t much, but I couldn’t manage without it.”

“I’m glad you have it then.”

Apparently he wasn’t comfortable talking financial matters with a woman, because he didn’t look up from his plate.

“Clarence’s father sends me the money.”

Now he did look up. “Mr. Ward?”

“Mr. Ward transferred most of his fortune to Europe at the start of the war. He didn’t lose everything like so many people did.” She reached for the salt. “Actually, Mr. Speers—that’s my banker—won’t reveal who sends the money, but who else could it be? I figure Mrs. Ward would object, so Mr. Ward sends the money anonymously, and without her knowing.”

Cameron finished his breakfast before he spoke again. “I didn’t think of this before, but Ward ought to send you an income. He owes you.” Anger chilled his eyes. “If I understand your letter to Clarence, you were responsible for keeping Mr. Ward alive during a serious illness. Plus, you’re his son’s widow.”

“Those are the reasons I think he sends the money.” She didn’t understand his apparent anger. “If it wasn’t for Mr. Ward, I’d still be working at the Silver Garter.” The thought made her skin crawl.

“Instead of living in luxury.” He sent a pointed glance around her one-room kitchen, parlor, living room.

“I’m grateful to have anything at all,” she said stiffly, regretting that she’d mentioned finances.

“I’ll hitch up the buckboard.”

After he left for the barn, she stood beside the table, holding their plates and looking around her small house, seeing it through his eyes.

She couldn’t invite Cameron to sit inside in the evenings because she owned only one parlor chair. She’d positioned the chair near the bookcase and a side table, with a colorful braid rug to keep the winter chill off her feet. Right now none of her sparse furnishings seemed as cozy or comforting as she usually told herself they were. The room just looked cramped and shabby.

The plates she held were old and chipped. She didn’t have three glasses that matched. Her curtains were sun-bleached, the pattern faded almost to white.

Heat flared in her cheeks. Whirling, she strode to the sink and slammed the plates into the dishpan. She didn’t care what he thought of her house. It suited her needs, and that’s all that mattered. And what right did he have to turn up his nose anyway? From the sound of it he didn’t own property, he drifted from place to place, sleeping on the ground or in a hotel or a boarding house, or in someone’s barn. If what she had to offer wasn’t good enough for him, then he could just . . .