Catch a Shooting Star jd edit 03 12 2012 html (21 page)

“Are you talking about his prowess with a gun or his skill in the tender territory?” Jake questioned knowingly.

“Jake,” Madeline admonished with a smile.  “I am just using him for his aim with a gun.  I don’t have the fortitude to let a man into my heart.  I don’t trust any of them to give me what I think I deserve.  Besides, I’m still married.”

“To a man that you want dead.”

“Be that as it may, Jake, I am his wife and I will be true to him until that glorious day when I am his widow,” she said with a sideways glance at him.

“Well, then,” Jake said.  “Keep your heart out of the transaction and you won’t be hurt.”

“I will,” she said with a nod to them both.  “I’ll miss you both terribly.”

“You just take care of yourself and bring that precious baby back with you,” Margaret told her as she rose to hug Maddie.

“I will.  And thank you both for all that you have done for me,” Madeline said with a warm smile that brought them both into her arms for another hug.

Chapter Thirteen

A purple glow bathed the already steaming surroundings of the little border town known as El Charro.  An ominously heavy quilt of stagnant air hung across the horizon, its oppressive outline, which was flanked by orange clouds that intruded upon the sun’s arrival, enveloped the town with its stifling heat.  A still quiet overtook the town, broken only by an occasional call of a lost prairie hen.  The crickets had already skittered away to rest until nightfall while the horned toads and roadrunners were stretching their limbs as they readied themselves for a full day of scampering about.  Overhead, a buzzard wafted upon the breezes that hovered close to the clouds above, its head craned downward in hopes of an early meal.

Madeline sat in a stiff chair, sipping black coffee on the back porch of the hotel and waiting for Travis to find his way down from his room so that they could start their day’s journey into the desert and toward her destiny.  She sat rigid and unmoving with her boot heels hung on a rung of the chair and her knees drawn up with her elbows resting upon her knees and her gloved hands cradling an earthenware cup.  She leaned the cup toward her lips and took in the piping hot liquid as her eyes cased the brightening horizon.

She swore under her breath wondering if he had left without her after all.  She drained the cup and slapped it on the floor of the porch next to her and then snatched the newly purchased Stetson hat off her head and slapped it against the split denim skirt that she had bought from the dry goods store.  She sighed angrily in her body-hugging cotton blouse and tugged impatiently upon the tan leather vest that barely covered her bosom.  She craned her neck toward the screened door that entered into the kitchen and wondered if she should have waited for him at the entrance to the hotel on the front porch instead.

Contemplating moving to the opposite side of the building, she watched her Appaloosa mare stamp her eagerness to get going.  The gray horse with her white rump that was spotted with varying sizes of black dots was her new pride and joy.  The docile and loyal mare, which Madeline had named Dixie the moment that she had bought her a month ago, was willing to take her owner anywhere that Madeline wished to venture.  Dixie was also sure-footed, a trait that was not only necessary in this part of the country, but the Appaloosa’s agility was preferred by most of the locals, who were required to cover tough terrain filled with cactus, prickly bush, thorny mesquite and jagged rocks. 

Madeline rose from the chair, stepped down to the ground and went to Dixie’s side, patting the mare’s neck affectionately and talking softly to her.  She stepped back to the saddle and checked the cinch before she leaned to check the contents of her saddle bags that she had slung across Dixie’s back and had tied to the back of the saddle.  She touched a palm to the stock of the Winchester that she had purchased yesterday afternoon and then her hands found their way to the holster belt around her waist that held her pistol and bullets.  A leather case which held extra bullets was tied to the saddle near the pommel and two filled canteens dangled on the other side.  A rope for good measure was coiled beneath the canteens.  For the third time this morning, she had found that everything was securely in its place including the ‘personals’ that she had tucked into the saddle bag on one side and food on the other side.

“Where is he?” she ground through clenched teeth as she stomped her foot, causing the mare to prick her ears in excitement.

“Where’s who?” a familiar voice startled her so much that when she wheeled around to face him and to ultimately scold him for making her wait, she tripped on the toe of her boot and stumbled into his arms.

Travis Corbett set the disassembled woman back on her feet and smiled a beaming, white-toothed smile down at her discontented face.  He couldn’t help but laugh inwardly at her for getting angry at him since he had made her wait for two long hours on that porch.  Yep, he’d watched her from across the street, where he had parked himself as he sipped on his own cup of coffee.  He’d waited until he knew for sure that she was serious about going with him.  Once they headed into the desert, there was no way in Hell that he would turn back and escort a frightened bunny of a woman back to town.

“It’s about time!” she scoffed at him with a scowl.

He shrugged his wide shoulders in indifference and said as he pointed across the street, “I’ve been sitting over there since five thirty.”

“Over there?” she screeched.  “You said to meet you here.”

“I know,” he admitted.  Then he winked at her and said, “I kinda liked watching you getting madder by the minute.  Besides, I wanted to make sure you didn’t give up and go inside.”

“Well, I didn’t,” she said with a huff.  But then she added, “But, I was getting very impatient, as you must have noticed.  You said that we were leaving at sun-up.”

“I said to be ready by sun-up,” he corrected.

“Well, I’ve been ready and I’m ready now,” she said angrily, her violet eyes boring into his.

“Then, let’s get going,” he said excitedly.

Madeline shuffled her boots on the dirt road as she hesitated a bit.

“You still want to go, don’t you?” Travis asked, wondering why she had not jumped into her saddle already.

“I—um—I have to go empty my bladder,” she stuttered, and then added in a perturbed voice, “I drank too much coffee while I was waiting for you.”

Travis chuckled and dipped his head in response and watched her twirl around and run up the steps, banging the screened door behind her.  He did not have to wait long.  A few minutes later, she was mounted and ready to go.

They steered their horses toward the outskirts of town and while Travis told her of their plans, Madeline listened intently.  He’d figured, he told her, that it would take almost two weeks to get to the small Mexican village where her husband called home and then a few more days while he and his friend made plans to attack the house where El Diablo lived.  He suggested that while they were confronting her husband at his house, she would go to the little house on the edge of town to retrieve her son.  Maddie nodded while clamping her mouth shut against a protest in opposition to being sent away from the action and perhaps a chance to exact revenge on her husband.  When he finished, both fell silent while the desert opened its wide, hungry mouth to swallow them up in its vast, barren abyss.

Quietly, Madeline watched the man who rode beside her and wondered if she was doing the right thing in asking a stranger to help her.  All she knew about him was that he used to be a Texas Ranger and that he was and still is a cold-blooded killer.  But, she did not think that he really looked like an assassin to her at all, for his features were soft, symmetrical and sensual, not the hard, scarred and marred version that she would have conjured in her mind of a rough-riding, cruel-hearted Texas lawman.  And, except for his disregard for female modesty, his soaring ego and his curt disposition, Travis Corbett was not a mean-spirited man at all.  In fact, she had a suspicious feeling that he may, at times, be gentle and affectionate. 

She darted a glance in his direction as she scrutinized him in a way in which she had not dared to before, but was worried that he would catch her staring at him and find something to say to embarrass her.  Still, she kept her eyes upon him, taking in every inch of him.  His eyes, which were partially shielded by his black Stetson hat, were framed by thick black lashes that, when he blinked, would brush ever so delicately upon his sun-bronzed cheeks.  And the amber skin that molded against those slightly angled cheeks was smooth and unlined except for a set of tiny crevasses that peeked out at the corners of his mouth.  And when he smiled, only when he smiled, a pair of dimples was the onlooker’s reward as they appeared from inside those crevasses and mingled with the twinkle in his light brown, almost hazel eyes.  These features made him handsome to her, to any woman who gazed upon that sun-bronzed god who stared toward his destination without even a glance toward her.

Her gaze found its way to the wide, muscled shoulders and the chest that barreled out above a slim waistline and in front of a long, lean back.  His strong legs curved around the large Palomino’s chest in muscular masculinity.  Only when her eyes stopped at the stirrups of his saddle, which supported long, sturdy booted feet, did she raise them again to look at that handsome face which, for some reason, still looked familiar to her.

Her heart fluttered wildly when he caught her looking at him and she quickly turned her head away.  But, his curiosity at her interest in him was peaked and he asked without warning, “You don’t remember me, do you?”

Taken aback, Madeline pulled up on the reins and narrowed her eyes at him, asking, “Should I?”

With another stunning statement, he told her, “Your name is not Madeline.  I don’t quite remember it, but it’s definitely not Madeline, or Maddie, as your friends seem to think.”

Shivers ran up and down her spine as she sat straight and apprehensive in her saddle, wondering how he could have known her secret.  She stammered as she tried to correct him, “Y—Yes it is.”

“Nope,” he said as he stared at her and tried to recall the name that he’d remembered that night on the lane.  “It starts with an ‘S’, I think.  The name of some city in Georgia.  That is where you are from, right?”

How could he know her?  How could he know her past?  She bit her lip and held back the mare that wanted to continue their trek across the desert while she contemplated telling him the truth that he probably already knew.  She took a deep breath and said softly, “Savannah.”

“That’s it!” he exclaimed as he slapped his hand on his leg and startling both horses.  He settled his mount down while he reached for the mare’s halter in order to ease the Appaloosa’s nerves.  Then while he stroked his chin, he said with growing recollection, “I knew it was something like that.”

He leaned closer to her, pulling the halter of the mare next to his chest as he asked, “You don’t remember do you?”

Savannah ducked her head and then shook it dejectedly saying, “I’m sorry.  I don’t.”

“It was about three years ago on a stormy night.  Your horse had run away with you, a different horse. It was a black bolt of lightning.  He’d run away with you and I saved you.  And then a few days later, I was on my way to your plantation to make you a widow before you were even married.  I was riding along with a preacher who was on his way to talk with you and your intended,” he began to explain to her but she cut him off.

“I remember!” she shouted, bringing a palm to her opened mouth.  “You were the man on the yellow horse,” she paused to look at the Palomino beneath him before she continued, “and you did not save my life.  As I recall, I had full knowledge of my whereabouts.  And then, you were with Reverend Warren.  You were the man who wanted to talk me out of marrying Diego.”

“And, I see, you didn’t listen to me,” he admonished her.

“I know,” she admitted with a frown.  “I should have.  But, I was forced to marry him.  You see, he had loaned my father money that could not be repaid and Diego made my father promise to let him marry me in return for the promissory note.”

“Sounds to me like you were sold to the highest bidder,” he said.  Inside, he wondered why she did not mention that the plantation was hers whether she married the Mexican or not, but he did not ask, for she agreed with his statement.

“That’s exactly what I called it.  But Father insisted that I marry my husband despite my dispute with the agreement.  He—and Diego—made it clear that a deal was a deal and that I was bound by contract to go through with it.  And then, Father took a turn for the worst and things had to speed up and the day after I saw you, we were married.  Then,” her voice wavered before she composed herself and continued, “Father passed away and Diego made me pack my belongings and we rode to Mexico where I lived with him until the day he left me for dead in the desert.  Who knows what condition the plantation is in or if he sold it or not.  He’d told me that since he’d paid the debts for it, he owned it and would do with it what he pleased.”

Travis heard a forlorn sigh from her before he stated, “Sounds like you should have listened to me alright.”

“Well, it wouldn’t have mattered.  If I had not married Diego, he would have still owned my home and my father and I would be homeless.  I just couldn’t let that happen to my father while he was on his deathbed.  I loved him too much to go against his wishes.”