Deborah Camp (33 page)

“You’re not drunk, are you?” Cassie asked, finally aware that his earlier performance had been just that and amazed at his ability to fool her and everyone else inside.

“No.”

“And you’re not sick, are you?”

“No.” He laughed softly and ran his hand over her head familiarly, as if he’d done it a hundred times before. “Well, in a way I’m a little sick. Sick at heart.” He pulled her head forward and kissed her brow. “Now, go on. Being Jewel’s friend has kept you safe from them so far, but they’re drunk as skunks now and thinking along some very unsavory lines. Run, Cassie. Run, and don’t look back.”

“Go with me.”

“No. They’ll look for me.”

“Me too.”

“No, they won’t.” He smiled and turned her around in the direction of the mine. “I won’t let them.” His hand slapped her backside. “Get!”

She sensed his grim desperation and it fueled her own fear. Relations between Rook and Blackie weren’t as rosy and good-natured as they had seemed inside the cabin, she thought as she ran headlong into the night. She heard something behind her and she slowed down long enough to glance over her shoulder. Slim was racing toward her.

“You stupid thing,” she scolded. “You nearly scared me witless! Well, come on. You can keep me company tonight.”

At the edge of the woods, she stopped to get her breath and looked back through the darkness at the lights shining from the cabin windows. Her thoughts were with Rook, and she wondered how he’d handle her escape. What if they shot him for letting her get away?

Cassie shook her head, dislodging the awful idea, and resumed her trek to the mine. She didn’t relish spending the night in that dismal place … especially alone.

“Don’t worry, Slim,” she said, stroking the hound’s bony head. “He’ll be all right. They won’t hurt Rook. He’ll come get us tomorrow. You’ll see. You’ll see.”

Heavy of heart, she entered the mine, deeply grateful for Slim’s faithful company beside her.

It was an hour after noon when Cassie tiptoed outside the mine to blink painfully at the sun like a mole coming out of his tunnel. Dirty, hungry, and scared, she now knew what a rabbit felt like right before she shot it for supper.

“Supper,” she groaned, placing a hand on her stomach. “I could eat a horse.”

With Slim at her side, Cassie moved toward the trail and wondered what she might find at home. Would the house still be there? Tales Shorty used to tell her about soldiers burning down houses and fields during the Civil War flitted through her mind unbidden and lengthened her strides so that Slim had to trot to keep up with her.

And what of Rook? Maybe Rook was still at the house with the gang. If the Colton gang had cleared out before now, surely Rook would have come and got her at the mine! He wouldn’t have made her stay in that hole for any longer than was necessary. What happened after Blackie had found out she’d run off?

Those questions had been her uneasy company during her hours in the mine, when daylight and darkness had been one. To keep track of the time, she’d gone to the mine entrance every so often and checked on the movement of the moon or the sun in the sky, and both had moved at an intolerably slow pace.

During that seemingly endless vigil, it hadn’t taken long for her thoughts to stultify as they lay heavy and still on her mind. Before sunup she’d just about decided that Rook hadn’t really been looking out for her welfare but had gotten her out of the way so that he could be his real self around his old buddies, flirting with that wild woman and cussing with his brother. Hell! He’d probably helped
Blackie load up her valuables and headed off with his daddy’s old gang to rob some bank nearby! They were probably laughing to beat the band right that minute at how they’d bamboozled her into thinking that Rook cared about what happened to her!

Tears of humiliation burned her eyes and blurred her vision as Cassie came up to the house. At least it had been left standing; she derived some comfort from that. Slim loped ahead, deliriously happy to be home instead of holed up in that miserable, dark mine. He barked happily, making the chickens squawk and ruffle their feathers.

Chickens are safe, Cassie thought with relief as she raced around the house and up the porch steps. There she stopped, frozen like Lot’s wife, who saw too much and paid the price. Cassie’s heart sank to her boots and she felt cold all over, her fearful dread turning her insides to ice as she stared at the drops of dried blood scattered on her porch like leaves tossed by the wind.

“Rook!”

The one word burst past her lips, full of anguish, horror, sorrow, and devotion. It propelled her forward, her gaze following the trail of rusty dots and smears. Looks like somebody’s been dragged across the floor, she thought. Somebody dead?

“Rook—oh, Rook.” She swallowed hard and looked around the empty cabin, then ran hopefully to the bedroom and flung open the door. The bedspread was mussed and pulled half off the bed, but that was all. No blood in the bedroom, just on the porch and near the kitchen table. She examined the area carefully, finding a couple of dried dots on her kitchen table. One of her kitchen chairs was all broken up, reduced to sticks of splintered wood. What had happened? What in the name of God had happened?

Cassie threw open the shutters and turned to examine the damage and destruction that were the aftermath of Blackie’s visit. Dirty dishes were piled where she’d left them. Spit marks and crushed cigarettes littered the floor. Somebody had urinated on the wall near the cot and the whole cabin stank of it. Cassie’s stomach turned. She wasn’t hungry anymore. Rook’s clothes were all under the cot where
she’d put them. He hadn’t packed his things, she noted, wondering if that was a good sign or a bad one.

She didn’t recall seeing Irish tethered near the lean-to, so she went outside where the air was fresh to confirm the fact that the chestnut was gone. She whistled for the horse, but knew he wouldn’t show up. It was as if Rook and Irish had never been, save for that blood on the floor, and she didn’t really know it was Rook’s. It might be somebody else’s. Blackie’s. Annabelle’s. God, don’t let it be Rook’s! she thought. Even if he had double-crossed her or fooled her, she didn’t want him dead because of it. He’d been kind to her in his own way. Hadn’t he worked the mine with her, helped with her garden, and filled in on other chores around the place? He’d been a good man, when all was said and done. He’d managed the best he could—

“Stop it!” she hissed, closing off her ears with her hands as if by doing that she could shut out her painful thoughts. “You’re acting like he’s dead and you’re delivering the last words over his coffin!”

She uncovered her ears and told herself to calm down and wipe up the blood. Make yourself useful, she scolded herself, instead of standing here acting a jackass!

Slim barked, then bayed loud and long. Cassie stiffened, hearing the hoofbeats and whirling around the cabin searching for her shotgun or whip. The shotgun was gone, but the whip lay coiled on the table. Cassie grabbed the handle, felt her skirt pocket to make sure the knife was still there, and went outside to greet her visitor.

As the rider drew closer, Cassie popped the whip over her head so he could see what he was up against. The horse slowed to a walk almost immediately. It wasn’t Rook, but for a few moments her mind played tricks on her and she relived the day he’d come riding up and she’d tried to scare him off. She came back to the present with a start.

“It’s Sheriff Barnes!” The roly-poly man waved an arm over his head. “Miss Cassie, it’s the sheriff!”

“ ’Afternoon, Sheriff.” Cassie coiled up the whip in her hand. “What brings you out here? Did you arrest the weasel that shot my Pa?”

Cassie knew the answer to that before Clarence Barnes
could shake his round head and put a sorrowful frown on his ugly face.

“No, Miss Cassie. I wish I could tell you that, but I can’t. Haven’t had anybody come forth and say they know anything about Shorty’s trouble.”

“Shorty didn’t have no trouble,” Cassie said. “He just got killed, is all. ’Course, I didn’t ’spect anybody to admit to it; did you?”

“You never know, Miss Cassie. A guilty conscience can be a heavy burden to bear.”

Cassie looked down at her dusty boots. “Bullshit,” she murmured.

“Ma’am?”

“Nothing.” She lifted her gaze to the sheriff again. “So what brings you out here today?”

Sheriff Barnes glanced with annoyance at Slim, who was sniffing at his horse’s forelegs, so Cassie called the curious hound to her side. The sheriff threw her a grateful smile. He removed his black cowboy hat and ran a damp handkerchief carefully over the top part of his head, across which long, thin strands of hair were carefully arranged to hide his bald pate.

Clarence Barnes was a good one hundred pounds overweight. His gut hung over his belt and holster like bread dough over the rim of an undersized bowl. He had beady eyes, and what hair he had was black and sticky looking. It crawled across his shiny head like rivulets of tar. The tan shirt he was wearing had big, wet circles under the arms and across the front and back. Cassie could smell him from where she stood.

“Word has it that the Colton gang’s been spotted in these parts, and I rode out to warn you.” He turned his head and spit brown tobacco juice onto the ground. “You being out here alone and all, I thought you oughta know. You haven’t seen nobody around here, have you?”

Cassie shook her head even as a picture of the inside of her home flashed through her mind, complete with all the signs of her recently departed “company.” She thought of the blood on the porch, but she forced herself not to look in that direction.

“Well, best be on the lookout,” the sheriff drawled. “They’d just as soon cut your throat as look at you.”

“Ah, Sheriff …” Cassie stepped in his direction as he made a move to turn his horse around.

“Yes?”

“You heading back to town?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, I …” She ran her free hand down the front of her grimy skirt and wondered how to approach him.

“What, Miss Cassie?”

“I was wondering if you’d give me a ride.” She lifted her chin and looked him in the eye. “I don’t have a horse and I got business in town. It’d save me a long walk.”

He mopped the folds of skin around his neck with his handkerchief and smiled kindly at her.

“No sense you walking to town. I’d be glad to let you ride with me.”

“Thanks! I …” She glanced back at the house and wondered whether she should take the time to change her clothes.

“You want to freshen up first? I’ll wait out here on the porch if—”

“No!” She threw the whip aside, grabbed the saddle, put her foot against the back of the sheriff’s leg for leverage, and hauled herself up behind him before he had time to blink. “Let’s go.”

Barnes turned his small, piglike eyes back at Cassie. “You’re in a hurry, ain’tcha?”

“I don’t want to hold you up. I know you’re a busy man and the whole town depends on you.” She breathed more easily when she saw that her flattery had worked.

“Aw, Miss Cassie, I got deputies to take over for me when I got business outside Eureka Springs.”

“Yes, but they can’t handle things like you can. Everybody knows that. I hear people talking about how much safer they feel when you’re amongst ’em.”

“That a fact?” He pulled the horse’s head around and headed south toward his domain.

“That’s a fact,” Cassie said and hoped she wouldn’t go to hell for lying.

All the way into town, she tried to keep from inhaling deeply, because the sheriff smelled like spoiled meat. He carried on a one-sided conversation about his dangerous work as a lawman, and Cassie decided that if anyone was going to hell for lying, it would be Numb Nuts Barnes. To hear him tell it, he’d not only met but narrowly missed capturing every known outlaw west of the Pecos.

“Who woulda guessed that all them outlaws would come into Eureka Springs?” Cassie asked, finally getting a word in as they entered the city limits.

Sheriff Barnes lost the thread of his story for a moment, but he quickly recovered. “It’s the healing springs that draws ’em here. They all got bullet wounds, you know, and them wounds pains them something fierce, so they come here to get better.”

“Oh, I see.” Cassie lifted her gaze in a silent plea. “That makes sense.”

“Where can I drop you, little miss?”

“Uh … the general store is fine.” Cassie leaned to the side to see the store up ahead. “It was mighty good of you to let me ride with you, Sheriff.”

“Think nothing of it.” Sheriff Barnes threw out his beefy chest and smiled broadly. “It’s all part of the job. When one of my people needs help, I’m at their service.” He drew the horse up and helped Cassie slip to the ground. “Now you be on the lookout for any strangers around your place, ya hear?”

“Yes, sir.” Cassie extended a grateful smile, then turned and breathed the first clean air she’d had since she’d climbed onto the sheriff’s horse. She plucked at the front of her dress, held the fabric out and sniffed. Her stomach tightened. Lordy, she smelled just like him, or maybe worse!

Ducking her head so that no one would recognize her, Cassie hurried toward the other end of town where Jewel’s place was situated. She laughed at herself as she almost ran along the boardwalk, recalling those times she hadn’t cared how she looked when she’d come into town with Shorty. Things had changed since then—she’d changed. She cared how she looked these days; she was embarrassed
to be seen all dirty and smelly, but it couldn’t be helped. She couldn’t have taken a chance on Numb Nuts Barnes seeing that blood on the porch and asking all kinds of questions about it.

Reaching Jewel’s, Cassie went up to the porch and knocked hard on the front door. Delphia answered with the sullen expression she seemed to save just for Cassie.

“ ’Afternoon, Delphia. I’ve come to see Miss Jewel.”

“She be having her breakfast.”

Impatience welled inside Cassie and she pushed Delphia aside without waiting for the maid to invite her in. “That’s okay. I haven’t had my breakfast either, so I’ll join her. Is she upstairs?”

“You won’t do nothing until I says you can!” Delphia grabbed Cassie’s arm and pulled her back. “I’ll go tell her you’s here. You stay put, missy!”