Pieces of Sky (4 page)

Laughter faded. She seemed familiar and he wondered why. He would have remembered a woman with red hair and a funny accent. And tall. Being tall himself, he admired height in a woman. It made for a better fit all around.

After shaking the water off his feet, he dug two fairly clean socks out of his saddlebag and pulled them on. It hurt like a sonofabitch to cram his blistered feet into his boots, but he persisted. As he rose, he caught his reflection in the trough and realized how beat-up he looked.

It could have been worse, he supposed. It could have been him with a broken leg instead of Bob, or a hatchet instead of a ruffly umbrella. At least his cheek had quit bleeding and he could see out of his eye again. He ran a palm over his bristly jaw, wondering if he should shave, then wondered why it would matter, and finally decided it didn’t.

He was refilling his canteen when it came to him where he’d seen her. Not her, but a drawing of her, on a poster outside the sheriff’s office in El Paso. He frowned, trying to remember. Something about a lost Englishwoman with red hair. And a reward for information. A big reward.

Lost? Or on the run? Either way, somebody wanted her back real bad. He wondered why. The woman was stark crazy. As he walked toward the cabin, he pictured her holding out that lacy doo-dad, offering to tend his injury. Damned if he shouldn’t have unbuckled and let her have at it. That would have been a fine way to apologize.

The idea of it made him laugh out loud.

Two

“OGLE. AS IF,” JESSICA MUTTERED AS SHE STOMPED ANGRILY toward the cabin. First Bodine and now Mr. Brady—the arrogance of men was astounding.

It didn’t improve her mood to hear Maude’s contentious voice even before she reached the porch steps. The woman had lungs a London rag merchant would envy, and from what Jessica could hear, the cook was no less gifted. With a feeling of weary resignation, she pushed open the door and stepped into the fray.

“How could they set a man like that free?” Maude demanded of Cook.

“Needed prison space for all them Rebel renegades they been rounding up, that’s how.”

Bodine snorted. “Better a Reb with a gun than a Mex with a knife, I always say.”

When her eyes adjusted to the dimness of the cabin interior, Jessica noted the only unoccupied benches were at either end of the table. Moving to the one farthest from Bodine, she dusted it with her hanky then sat. As the words grew more heated, she studied the others.

Maude’s high color hinted at encroaching hysteria. Cook and Bodine seemed bent on pushing her to that end by gleefully recounting grisly details of recent violence, despite Coachman Phelps’s repeated attempts to restrain them. Melanie watched with wide-eyed enthusiasm, and Mr. Ashford attended to his meal without comment.

Her companions on the westbound to Bedlam.

“Heard he jumped a guard in prison,” Bodine mumbled through a mouthful of God-knows-what. “Heard they had to bust a knee to get him off.”

Cook slapped a plate in front of her. “Shoulda aimed higher. Right, missy?”

She looked in dismay at her meal. Chili. Again. She had a rather low opinion of Southwestern cuisine. What was recognizable was unpalatable and the rest was so spicy she doubted even a Frenchman would eat it. Disheartened, she settled for water and a biscuit, hoping that would sustain her until they reached their final stop of the day in Val Rosa. Wincing as Maude’s voice rose in a rambling denouncement of frontier justice and territorial prisons, she turned to Melanie, seated on her right. “Of whom are they speaking?”

“Oh, a horrible, dreadful man. He burned his own parents to death.” The young woman gave a dramatic shiver. “Did you notice the man who was here earlier, the big handsome one with the odd-colored eyes and shoulders so wide they—”

“Mr. Brady?”

“You know him?”

Heat flooded Jessica’s cheeks. “Only in passing. Is he the murderer to whom you’re referring?” Crude and ill mannered . . . but a murderer? Surely not.

“Oh no, that’s Sancho Ramirez. Cook says he and Mr. Brady have been fighting for years over an old Spanish land grant. A blood feud. Can you imagine? And now after ten years in prison, Ramirez is back, thirsting for revenge against the hapless Mr. Brady and what family he has left. Isn’t it tragic?”

Hapless?
It was absurd, and about as plausible as a plot in one of Melanie’s frivolous novels. Jessica doubted that real people, even Colonials, behaved that way.

Mr. Ashford must have shared her view even though he couldn’t have overheard their whispered conversation. “Perhaps we’re overreacting here,” he said in an attempt to calm Maude. “Over time such things often become exaggerated.”

“Exaggerated?” Cook thunked his tray onto the table so hard two biscuits bounced off onto the floor. “Tell Brady that. Tell it to them folks on the eastbound. Them that survived, that is.”

“Survived?” Maude asked in a quavering voice.

Phelps sent Cook a warning look.

The old man ignored it. “Last week out of Palovar. Ramirez locked six folks in the coach and burned ’em like cordwood.”

Melanie’s eyes almost popped out. Maude paled. Phelps cursed under his breath.

Bodine laughed. “The man does like a fire.” Pushing back his plate, he rose. “Potent chili,” he told Cook, offering as proof a sputter of intestinal wind before hurriedly exiting the cabin, leaving in his wake a foul stench as pertinacious as a wet coastal fog.

Jessica watched a fly drone listless circles above the table and waited for it to fall dead into the lard. When it didn’t, she allowed herself to breathe again.

“But we’ll never find space for a man his size,” Maude said in protest to something Phelps had said. “We’re crowded as it is.”

“It’s a six-passenger coach, ma’am. And he’s only going as far as Val Rosa.”

Maude’s chins quivered in outrage. “First you tell us a madman is lurking out there”—she waved toward the flyspecked window—“now you say we must make room for the very man he’s—”

The door swung open. Maude froze as the man himself ducked inside.

In hushed silence, six pairs of eyes tracked Mr. Brady to the bench at the opposite end of the table from Jessica, where he plopped down with a sigh. Seemingly impervious to their stares, he dropped his dusty hat onto the floor beside his foot and looked around, his gaze pausing on Jessica before moving on. “Afternoon,” he said, shattering the awkward silence.

Maude closed her mouth. Melanie sighed. Jessica brushed biscuit crumbs from her skirt and wondered how a man could so completely dominate a room full of people without saying or doing a single threatening thing.

“This here’s Wilkins,” Phelps said.

Her head snapped up.
Wilkins?

“I thought his name was Brady,” Melanie said.

“It is. Brady Wilkins.”

Jessica’s lips went numb. The dolt could have corrected her rather than allow the gross impropriety of her using his given name. She glared at him.

He stared back, that silly mustache twitching, those vibrant eyes alight with laughter.

Resisting the urge to throw her biscuit in his face, she forced herself to resume eating.

No one spoke. The clatter of spoons on tin plates seemed unnaturally loud in the hushed room. Phelps pulled out a timepiece, checked the hour, then slipped it back into his pocket. Cook set a filled plate before Wilkins then bent to retrieve the two biscuits that had fallen to the floor. After dusting them on his sleeve, he returned them to the tray, taking care to arrange them just so.

Jessica sensed he had something to say but hoped he would refrain from doing so.

Alas, not. “You gonna tell him or not?” he demanded of Phelps.

“Don’t you ever shut your mouth?”

“I can talk if I want. It’s my house. Besides, he’s got a right to know, don’t he?”

“Know what?” Wilkins asked, chewing something brown.

“Aw, hell.” Phelps sighed and wiped his palms on his thighs. He took a deep breath, let it out, then said, “Ramirez is out.”

The chewing stopped. Other than a slight widening of his eyes, Brady Wilkins went utterly still. Then, in a voice so low it wouldn’t have been heard had the room not been so silent, he said, “What did you say?”

“He’s out, that’s what!” Cook shouted. “Him and Alvarez. Can you believe that?”

Wilkins set down his fork and splayed his big hands on either side of his plate. “Explain.”

Phelps sent Cook another warning look. “I thought Sheriff Rikker might have been out to the ranch to tell you, but Cook said you been in El Paso scouting bulls.”

“Maybe he told your brothers,” Cook offered hopefully.

“Maybe.” Wilkins pushed aside his plate. Wrapping both hands around his tin mug, he lifted it to his lips, took a sip, then gently set it back down—each move executed with the careful precision of a man struggling to stay calm.

But he was far from calm. Jessica could see it in his breathing, in the way his grip tightened on the mug, and the way his eyes had changed to an even brighter, colder blue. Fear fluttered in her chest. She knew about rage, knew the damage a man’s hands could do. And Brady Wilkins had very large hands. She glanced at the others, wondering if they sensed the danger, too.

By their expressions, they did. The Kinderlys sat in wide-eyed silence. Ashford looked wary, his gaze as watchful as a card player waiting for the hand to play out. Cook fidgeted. Phelps looked ill. But perhaps that was the chili.

“The law may have him by now,” Phelps said, ending the tense silence.

“Like hell,” Cook muttered. “That man’s slippery as a heifer’s butt.”

“Well, I won’t have it!” Leaping to her feet, Maude rounded on Phelps. “As our driver, you are sworn to protect us, and we shan’t go another step until that man is apprehended.”

“You sure as hell ain’t staying here.”

Phelps’s palm slapped against the tabletop. “Open your mouth one more time, old man, and I’ll put a bullet in it, swear to God.”

“It’s my house.”

Beneath her cape, Jessica began to perspire.

Wilkins continued to stare into the mug he gripped so tightly.

“Gentlemen, please.” Ashford graced Maude with an indulgent smile. “I’m sure there’s no danger, ma’am. Remember, you’ll have four men riding with you.”

Small comfort, Jessica thought, since one of them was Bodine and another was every bit as menacing as the madman they hoped to avoid.

Sniffing into her hanky, Maude allowed Ashford to assist her from the table. “I told the Colonel we shouldn’t have left Baltimore. Now we’re all going to die.”

“I think it’s a grand adventure,” Melanie said, following them through the door. “Just like in
The Cannibal Diaries
.”

Anxious to make her own escape, Jessica rose and gathered her belongings, wishing Phelps would take the hint and stand so she could slip past him without crowding the stove.

Finally, with the stiff movements of a man who had traveled too many bumpy roads, the driver rose. He hesitated, then turned to the silent man at the end of the table. “Ramirez might not go to the ranch, Brady.”

Wilkins stared into his mug.

Jessica watched the rim slowly bend.

Phelps didn’t seem to notice. “Why would he? The feud’s long over.”

“Is it?” Wilkins lifted his head. Light slanted across his face, and for a moment Jessica glimpsed such a profound fury, his eyes seemed to glow like blue fire.

Finally taking note, Phelps edged back, almost bumping into Jessica. He raised both palms in a conciliatory gesture. “All I’m saying is, things have changed. We got a Federal Marshal now.”

Wilkins’s hand jerked. Coffee sloshed over the bent rim. Jessica watched it drip across his knuckles and thought he had the most powerful hands she’d ever seen. Broad and long-fingered, roughened by dark hair and marred by calluses and scars. Capable, hardworking hands. Hands that could cause a great deal of pain.

“Hell, Brady, your father’s been dead more’n eight years. It’s over.”

Control shattered. Wilkins exploded off the bench, the mug flying through the air. “I’ll kill him! This time I’ll kill the sonofabitch!”

Cook lunged for the door. Jessica ducked behind Phelps. The mug bounced off the wall, spattering coffee in all directions. Then silence.

Parasol at the ready, she peered around Phelps.

Wilkins stood staring at the wall, his big hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. His rage was so consuming it seemed to suck all the air from the room. He took a deep shuddering breath, exhaled, took another. Bending, he snatched his hat from the floor. He studied it for a moment, turning it slowly in his hands. Then in a voice so taut with fury his lips scarcely moved, he said, “This
feud
has cost me most of my family and a lot of good men.” As he spoke, he settled the hat on his head, tipping it front to back, a final tug on the brim. “I’ve got two brothers left.”