Nan Ryan (34 page)

But several hours passed and the Texas Kid, out of whiskey, out of patience, paced back and forth, swearing under his breath, his anger and frustration growing steadily.

Dawn was beginning to streak the eastern sky when he heard the sound of hoofbeats. He stopped his restless pacing and watched as six riders thundered up the incline. Cuchillo dismounted first and came running to him.

“I am sorry,
jefe
. Your
querida
, she not there. She go.”

The Kid grabbed Cuchillo. His face inches from the nervous Mexican’s, he said, “What the hell do you mean?”

“Is like I say. She go away from Maya.” Cuchillo quickly told the angered Kid that the woman they were trailing had left Maya with a man she was to marry. The couple had headed to New Mexico a good ten days ago.

“You’re lying!” snarled the red-faced Kid.

“No, is true. Is talk of the town. Everybody say beautiful blond
señorita
and handsome broncbuster are much in love, mean to marry.”

For relaying this information, Cuchillo got a hard slap across his face. His eyes flickered and his initial instinct was to draw the knife tucked into the waistband of his trousers.

“Don’t try it,” warned his boss. Then looking directly into the bleeding Mexican’s angry eyes, he addressed them all. “Do not unsaddle. We leave at once for New Mexico.”

A collective groan went up from the tired men. But they immediately fell silent when the Kid drew one of his ivory-handled Colts, cocked it, and waved it at them.

“Mollie Rogers is mine,” he said. “She will marry me. Even if it means we ride nonstop until we capture them!
Comprende?”

“Sí, sí.”
murmured the men, fearing for their lives.

“Prepare to depart!” said the Kid, reholstering his pistol. Swiftly he saddled his dun stallion and swung up onto its back. He placed his wide-brimmed sombrero on his head, drew the string tight beneath his chin and, focusing on the northeast, absently tugged at his lobe-less left ear. Then, digging his sharp-roweled spurs into his mount’s sides, the Texas Kid rode after Mollie Rogers.

Mollie didn’t understand him.

She couldn’t figure out why, after they’d said goodbye to the Apaches, Lew was so pointedly distant and uncommunicative. Or why his face was set in a permanent scowl and why he went out of his way to treat her coldly.

Lew saw the hurt and puzzled expression in Mollie’s eyes, but he didn’t care. He was in a bad mood himself and didn’t feel like talking or even being civil. He was unreasonably annoyed that the Apache chief had said, as though his word were gospel, that he could see the great affection “Singing Boy” had for “Sunshine Hair.” The chief had said that it was “like a slow-burning fire that had started in the soul and was growing, growing until one day it would consume him. “She is your destiny,” the chief had told him. “She has been your destiny from the beginning. A destiny you cannot deny.”

Lew had laughed it off. The sentimental chief had thought he saw something between Mollie and him that simply wasn’t there. Not there at all.

But the words kept ringing in Lew’s ears, making him uneasy, edgy. The chief’s parting words—only one language, the language of love—had really bothered him. He wondered now, was it because they were too close to the mark.

No!

Damn it to hell, no!

The Indians were a bunch of romantic dreamers for all their wildness and savagery. Reading hidden meaning into every innocent gesture, for pete’s sake. Mollie meant nothing to him.

Lew gritted his teeth and glanced at Mollie as she asked another of her endless questions. He wondered, irritably, if she ever shut her mouth.

Mollie fell silent and wondered why he was frowning so furiously. All day he had said less than a dozen words, although she had tried to be pleasant and draw him out. A naturally curious person, she wondered about his friendship with the Apaches. So she asked him about it.

Had he known the chief for a long time? Had he once lived among the Apaches? Had he had his own Apache squaw? Had he ridden into their camp alone? If not, who was with him?

But she got only grunts to the questions she posed, and she’d had just about enough of his insufferable rudeness. She was growing angry, and when they stopped to rest at midafternoon, she let him know it.

“See here, bounty hunter,” she stepped up to him, her hands on her hips, “I’m getting bored with all this mystery.”

“What mystery?”

Mollie glared at him. “Every damned thing about you is a mystery. Just what the hell were you doing with a bunch of savages? Did you live with them and … Oh, never mind. I don’t care about any of that. I just want to know what I am doing here. Why are you taking me to Denver? You admitted that it wasn’t because of your father’s death. So what is it? What’s this all about? What did I ever do to you? I have a right to know why I’m being persecuted. You are taking me to the gallows and I don’t even know the reason. I would have given you the gold, but you refused it. Why? Why are you …?”

“Why?” he hotly interrupted and she saw his jaw tighten as his eyes flashed blue fire. He stepped closer to her and yanked his white shirt open down his dark chest. A small gold cross, resting amidst the crisp black hair, gleamed in the alpine sunshine. He lifted the cross. “This. This is
why
. Ever see it before?” He raised it up close to her face. “Can you read the inscription? It says,
‘Mi tesoro.’
But then you already knew that, didn’t you?”

Mollie swallowed hard. She
had
seen the cross before. The Kid had worn it around his neck. More than once she had seen him sliding the cross up and down the chain, caressing it in a strangely obscene way while smiling wickedly. She had never known where it came from—never asked—but when she thought back on it now, she didn’t recall it being around his neck when she’d stabbed him in the Mexican hotel room.

“I … I don’t know where …”

“You know exactly where the cross came from,” he said accusingly.

He could tell by the expression in her eyes that she recognized the cross. He released it, allowing it to fall back onto his chest. He started to turn away. She grabbed his arm.

“All right, all right, I have seen the cross, but I …”

“Where?”

“Ah … it … it was …”

“Around your lover’s neck? He took it from my helpless Teresa after he had brutally raped her! From that day I have been determined to bring all of you in. And I will too. As soon as I get you to Denver, I’m going after your old man.” Lew paused, fighting for control, his bared chest heaving with emotion. “Mystery cleared up now?”

Shocked and horrified, Mollie stared at him, shaking her head. “I honestly don’t know …”

“No?” his tone was deadly cold. “Let me refresh your faulty memory. The Texas Kid, leading the Rogers Renegades, held up a stage outside Bernalillo, New Mexico, more than two years ago. Teresa Castillo was on that stage. The Kid shot and killed Dan Nighthorse, the man I had sent along to guard Teresa, a man who was like a brother to me. After he’d killed Dan, the Kid raped my fiancée, Teresa. Come back to you now?” His eyes were narrowed slits of fury. “My most bitter regret is that the law got to the Kid before I could.”

“But that’s not—”

“I’ll get your father, so help me God.”

“No … no, my papa is—”

“Your papa’s like the rest of them and so are you. The fact that you’re a woman changes nothing.”

“I tell you I never—”

“Tell me anything you please, but you’re wasting your breath. You just admitted you’ve seen the cross and we both know where.” He leaned menacingly close, and said, “How many hot desert nights did this cross rest on your naked breasts while the Kid pumped into you?”

“No!” Mollie exclaimed, horrified. “No, no, I never—”

“Save it, I’m not buying. Teresa Castillo is dead! An innocent girl who never harmed anyone was killed by your lover, and all I have is you and this cross.” His eyes reflected contempt. “The cross has more value to me than you.”

Hurt, confused, on the verge of tears, Mollie shouted angrily, “No!” Then she impulsively reached out and jerked on the chain until it snapped. “To hell with you and your precious cross!” Before he could stop her, she flung the cross as far as she could, not thinking or caring what the consequences would be. “There!” she screamed up into his stunned face. “It’s gone and you’ll never find it. Gone like the dead girl it belonged to! Gone like the past you insist on living in! Gone, damn you, gone!” Hot tears streamed down her cheeks.

It took a minute for it to sink in on Lew. His hand kept frantically patting his chest, feeling for the missing cross, while his face changed from shock to anger to rage. He reached out, grabbed her roughly by the upper arms, and yanked her to him.

“I’ll kill you,” he said through clenched teeth.

“Go ahead, I’m tired of living anyhow,” she sobbed.

“I’ll kill you,” he repeated, his hands cutting into the flesh of her upper arms, an enlarged vein pulsing on his forehead.

“What are you waiting for?” she taunted.

For a long, tense moment Mollie thought he actually would kill her. She had never seen a man struggle so desperately to keep from committing an act of violence. He
wanted
to kill her.

It was written on his hard, chiseled features, was there in his dangerously wild eyes. Mollie waited for him to lift his hands, wrap them around her neck and soundly snap it.

She stood there resigned, looking up at him, her vision blurred with tears. She knew she was in danger, but felt no fear. If he killed her, it would almost be a welcome release from a world that no longer held any joy for her.

“Goddamn you,” he said finally. “I can’t kill you. I can’t do it.”

Disgusted with himself, he shoved her away from him. Mollie lost her footing and fell, sprawling spread-eagled before him. He stepped right over her and went in search of the cross, swearing under his breath.

He ordered her to help him look for the cross.

She refused.

He stayed on his hands and knees for the rest of the afternoon, searching in vain for the small gold cross that was the last remaining link to his lost Teresa. At sundown he gave up and found, to his surprise, that he no longer felt anything other than extreme physical weariness. His rage was gone, sweated out of him along with his energy. Strangely, his mind seemed cleared, less burdened than it had in ages. He realized that all he wanted was a good meal, a bath, and a night’s sleep.

Lew headed straight for the rushing brook, feeling pleasantly exhausted, both mentally and physically. He stripped and stepped into the frothy stream. The shock of the icy water made his tired muscles tingle and jump and he winced as he lowered his overheated, sweat-slick body into the cold, mountain-fed rapids. When he emerged and began dressing, his teeth were chattering, and goose bumps covered his arms and legs.

Lew walked back to where Mollie sat, sullen and silent, against a giant boulder. He glanced at her and almost felt sorry for her. He wanted to tell her he was no longer angry, but the minute she saw him, she shot to her feet and started past him. He stopped her.

“Where are you going?”

“To take a bath,” she said, refusing to look at him.

“No.” He quickly explained, “The water’s too cold.”

“I don’t care.”

“I said no. You’ll catch a cold.”

“You
bathed in it.”

“I was hot and tired.”

“So am I, and I’m taking a bath.”

“The sun’s going down. You’ll freeze.”

“I’ll chance it.”

“I’m telling you, you’ll catch a cold.”

“I’m going.” She took a couple of steps.

“Please,” he said, “come back here. You’ll get a cold!”

“Would you really care?”

“Yes. I want to get over the mountains before the weather turns. If you catch cold it might slow us down.”

“My, my, your concern for my health is most touching.” She turned and walked away.

“Outlaw,” he called after her, “I forbid you to get in that water!”

“Bounty hunter, I’m taking a bath and that’s final!”

“Damn it, you are going to catch a cold!”

“Ah-choo!”