Adobe Palace

by Joyce Brandon

  Steve untied his bandanna, draped it over the end of the rifle, and slowly lifted it into sight. A flash of gunfire up on the mountain gave away the hiding place of one of his assailants. He was south, quite a distance from where Steve had slept. He must have been up there all night waiting for daylight. Steve assumed there was more than one. He felt lucky he hadn’t been killed in his sleep. Either the gunmen had arrived after Steve had climbed the mountain and hadn’t seen him in the dark, or they had arrived after Steve was asleep. If he’d been awake, he’d have heard them. Sound traveled at night.

  Steve propped the barrel on his knee and sighted through the knothole, adjusted slightly for shooting uphill, and waited for the man to show himself. Finally a head appeared. Steve squeezed the trigger.

  The recoil slammed his shoulder. The acrid smell of gunpowder filled his nostrils. Slowly the air cleared. Bushes on the left of the assailant’s hiding place moved as if someone were scampering through them. Steve fired a few shots into the brush, but he didn’t think he’d hit anything. He waited a few minutes, took off one of his boots, and tossed it out the barn door. No shot came in response. Either the sharpshooters had hightailed it for home or they were waiting for something better than a boot.

  Steve waited a few more minutes and then decided to test it. No gunfire marred the silence. He stood, made sure he had a shell under the firing pin, and walked to the barn door. Tensed and ready to fire, he stuck his head out and pulled it back in. Still no gunfire.

  Steve heard the front door open. He looked out in time to see Nicholas run down the steps.

  “Stay inside!” Steve yelled.

  Nicholas didn’t appear to hear him. Tears streaming down his cheeks, he ran toward the north side of the barn. Fortunately no shots rang out. Steve took that as a sign that his attackers had fled. To test his theory, he stepped squarely into the doorway. Still no shots.

  Relieved and curious, Steve followed the boy around the barn. Nicholas stopped beside a young steer that must have been hit during that first burst of gunfire. Nicholas hugged the dead steer and cried as if his heart were broken.

  Steve knelt beside the boy, stroked his head, and let him cry for a while. At first he couldn’t think of what to say, but then an idea came to him.

  “Do you have a reata?”

  Confused, Nicholas looked up at him. “What?”

  “Do you have a reata, a lariat?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Since you love this steer, it would be good if you kept part of him with you.”

  “How could I do that?” Nicholas wiped his eyes and sniffed back fresh tears.

  “I could show you how to make a reata from his hide. You’ll need one someday.”

  Nicholas sniffed and muttered, “Okay.”

  Other men ran out to see what had happened. The steer had been shot in the head. Steve asked Louis Bandini, the head horse wrangler, to have someone skin the steer for him. “Take care not to mar the hide. We’re going to make a reata.”

  Steve knew he should be pursuing his attacker, but he took Nicholas’s hand and led the boy up the steps to where his mother had just appeared, prettily disheveled in robe and slippers.

  “What happened? Was Nicholas hurt?” she asked, alarmed at the sight of blood on both of them.

  “Nicholas is fine.”

  “Then you’ve been hurt.”

  “It’s only a scratch if I have.”

  She knelt beside Nicholas and peered into his face. “Why are you crying?”

  Nicholas’s chin puckered with his attempt to keep his mouth from contorting into a wailing display of grief. “Dakota…got…killed.”

  “Oh, no! Your steer…Oh, poor baby.” She pulled him into her arms. A fresh burst of tears wet her nightgown. Samantha picked him up to carry him inside. She turned to Sheridan, who had stopped on the porch and looked as if he were leaving.

  “Come inside. Let me get the medicine box.”

  “It’s only a scratch,” Steve said, protesting.

  “Only a wonderful place to get an infection and lose your arm if you take care of it the way most men do. Come inside. That’s an order.”

  Grinning, Steve winked at Nicholas and followed her inside. Nicholas slipped away to his room. Usually he would want to watch his mother, who could pore endlessly over a cut or a scratch, putting iodine on it and tearing and wrapping bandages, but today he just wanted to be alone. Dakota had been his best friend among the barn animals.

  In the kitchen, Samantha found the medicine box. “I can’t believe I slept through gunfire,” she said to Steve, who had followed her. “But I was dreaming that someone was shooting at me. What happened?”

  Steve explained about the sniper.

  “I feel terrible about this, and about last night. I shouldn’t have hit you. I’m sorry.”

  Steve’s khaki eyes held hers for a moment, then he nodded his acceptance.

  “If I hadn’t asked you to stay…”

  “Maybe he was trying to rid you of a devil.”

  “You think it was the same person?”

  “Could be.”

  “Be still,” Samantha said, rolling Steve’s sleeve up. But his arm was so big the sleeve wouldn’t go past his elbow. Glancing quickly at his amused eyes and then away, she unbuttoned his shirt and slipped it down to expose his left shoulder and upper arm. Blood oozed out of a long open gouge just above his elbow. She caught the flow before it reached her doily, but she couldn’t stop it from getting on her fingers, where it felt warm and sticky. She wiped her hands, unscrewed the lamp shade holder from the base of an unlit kerosene lamp, dipped a clean cloth into the smelly liquid, and pressed it over the gashed skin.

  Just touching such tender redness made her stomach twist with empathy. It must feel like a thousand ants biting him at once, but he didn’t move away. He just sucked in his breath and held it, blinking against the stinging pain.

  “Most of the men I grew up with were like you,” she said to break the silence, “so stubborn you could cut off one of their legs and they wouldn’t mention it until years later.”

  Steve laughed. “You may have me overrated. Them, too, if those two bruisers who came the other day were any example.”

  She ignored the jab at Lance and Chane. “So what will you do now?” she asked, wrapping the gash with clean cloth. Steve eased his shirt back on and buttoned it.

  “Oh, maybe lie down for a little while.”

  Samantha was relieved. Steve headed for the barn, and she cleaned up the mess she’d made. When he didn’t come back with his things, she went looking for him and learned he had ridden away on Calico.

  Fear formed a hard knot in her chest. He was going after the sniper. He would probably confront Russell and get himself killed.

  Steve felt light-headed after the climb up the side of the hill. After resting for a few minutes, he checked the mountainside for signs and saw where a horse had been tethered a half mile from where the man must have hidden in the rocks. Steve followed the trail northwest. At a dry riverbed, he found tracks where a horse had walked into the gravel-covered river bottom. He followed it for a mile or so north until the faint trail was obliterated by tracks of a cattle herd crossing it.

  He could follow the cattle or the creek bed, or he could turn back. Even if he found the trail, he couldn’t prove his suspicion that the attack had come from Ham Russell. He was pretty sure it had—and also pretty sure that wasn’t worth much in a court of law.

  From the parlor window, Samantha saw Steve ride into the barn. She ran out and found him dumping grain on the ground of Calico’s stall.

  “Did you find anything?”

  “Nope.”

  He looked pale. “How’s your arm?”

  “Arm’s fine.”

  “You shouldn’t have gone. You belong in bed, and I want you to stay there tomorrow and the next day. After that, we’ll see how you are.”

  Steve started to protest, but he’d lost enough blood to feel the difference.
And at this stage of construction, Ian Macready didn’t need much in the way of supervision. If he did, he’d come looking for him.

  That night Samantha tossed so much her bottom sheet worked itself into a tangle. Lying amid the rumpled mess, she listened to night sounds and puzzled about the odd way her fingers tingled. At first she couldn’t think why, but then her mind flashed a picture of her hand, covered with Steve’s blood.

  She rubbed her hand and felt again the odd feeling that his blood had stirred in her. It had been so warm…and so red! Nothing pale or thin about his blood. Or about his stamina. Some men looked like they were working at the outer limits of their endurance. Steve Sheridan looked like he was holding back. Every time she saw him, whether he was with other men or alone, she had the sense that he worked effortlessly. Even wounded, he had ridden half the day.

  Maybe someone’s trying to help rid the territory of a devil. She could hear the bronze undertones in his husky voice.

  She needed to sleep. Morning would come early, and with it many chores. Nicholas was an early riser. But she didn’t feel like sleep. She felt like…

  Maybe his blood had bewitched her. She wasn’t supposed to be thinking about him. But she felt as though she would suffocate if she stayed inside another second.

  She flung aside the thin sheet, put on her robe and slippers, and walked quietly down the stairs and through the dark house. Out on the front porch, she breathed deeply of the crisp desert air. The night was beautiful. Bright stars filled a cloudless sky. The air smelled so strongly of sage she could almost taste it.

  She pulled her wrap close around her. Alone here, with the cold, dry northwest wind on her face, she felt the magnificence of the desert and the joy of owning this piece of it. Ever since she’d seen the Arizona Territory from the window of her Pullman coach, she’d wanted to own every acre of it. Odd, since she’d never seen a desert until this one. She’d never expected to love it so.

  Samantha closed the door behind her. She would walk. She liked to walk at night. She realized there were creepy crawly things on the desert, but she always stayed on beaten paths and had never had any problems.

  Tonight she felt a pull from the south. She walked toward the bend in the creek, enjoying everything; the sand under her light slippers, the wind at her back, even the coolness.

  She felt freer, lighter, more joyful. She liked knowing she was the only one awake. She especially liked knowing that she didn’t have to worry about running into anyone. She had such a compulsion about her land. She was like her uncle Chantry in that. Having to share it irritated her. Even having to worry about running into someone irritated her. And yet, she needed people, occasionally.

  A hundred yards from the house she stopped. As if driven by some need she could neither understand nor resist, she knelt down and dug her hands into the sand. Sometimes she had such a need to do that. And tonight the need was stronger than usual. She wanted to reach all the way to the center of the Earth, to feel the—

  “I knew the minute I saw you step out onto the porch that you’d come this way.” The weighty bronze timbre of Steve Sheridan’s voice startled her, sounding just the way it had a few minutes ago in her mind.

  Heart pounding suddenly, she knew now what had drawn her here, straight as an arrow. She recognized the pull. It was the same one she’d felt that day she’d followed him into the livery stable in town.

  Steve stepped forward, knelt behind her, and reached around her to slide his hands down her arms to where her wrists disappeared into the sand.

  “You are a devil, aren’t you?” she whispered.

  “Not toward children…I’ve never seen anyone else do that,” he said, his voice low and gruff against her cheek. “Reach down to feel the Earth’s heartbeat.”

  She had never articulated it before, but he was right. That was what she wanted—to feel the heartbeat of the Earth. The same compulsion that drove her to touch the Earth, also drove her to want to own it and hold it and somehow keep it.

  “I own this land all the way to the center of the Earth,” she said.

  Steve chuckled. “You had that written into the deed, did you?” His breath was warm and soft against her cheek.

  “As close as they’d come to actually saying it. Deeding is so ritualized. I thought everyone was in bed,” she said. “Especially you…”

  “I don’t like beds, remember?”

  “You’re not very obedient, either.”

  “No.”

  “At least you don’t try to defend your disobedience.”

  “No.”

  He seemed strangely quiet and fatalistic. His touching her settled her down in one way and agitated her in others. At least she no longer felt tired or restless or suffocated.

  “So you couldn’t sleep, either?” She wanted to apologize again for slapping him, but she couldn’t think of how to begin or even how to sit in silence in the circle of his disturbing arms. Perhaps too much time had gone by.

  “I’m like the Indians,” he said gruffly. “A brush with death makes me feel more alive, not less.”

  Steve moved slightly, and his warm lips touched her neck and clung for a moment. Heat pooled in her belly and sent tingling spears of warmth into all her secret places.

  “This can’t be comfortable for you,” he whispered, rising and lifting her with him. Samantha started to resist, but she needed his touch now almost as badly as she had needed to touch the Earth.

  Slowly she allowed him to turn her in his arms, to pull her close against his sturdy, warm body. Part of her watched, and another part felt oddly resigned to whatever would happen between them. His hand caught in her hair and pulled, tilting her lips up to meet his. Her heart’s sudden racing made her dizzy. She wanted to pull away from Steve Sheridan, to revoke whatever license he thought she’d given him, but words didn’t come. Her body didn’t respond to mere willed commands.

  Steve looked into her eyes for a moment and then kissed her. The sensation she’d felt earlier, of being caught up and whirled around, overwhelmed her with simultaneous urges to surrender and fight. He was a man of passion. She wanted peace and tranquility, not this madness, certainly not the searing need his kiss evoked in her.

  His tongue forced its way into her mouth—and her body reacted as if he’d entered her in a deeper way. Heat flushed upward, scalding her.

  His hands slipped down to her hips and held her against him. She could feel his heartbeat against her belly. The vibrations from him, pressed so hard against her, rattled her, caused her to cling more tightly. The Earth no longer felt solid under her feet.

  Suddenly she realized just what it was that frightened her about him. Steve Sheridan represented the reality of a living, breathing man with whom she could actually build a life. He wasn’t a ne’er-do-well, flighty boy-man as Jared had been. He wasn’t someone else’s husband. Steve wanted all of her. And while she knew she was supposed to want that level of maturity and commitment, part of her still wanted Lance, whether he could commit to her or not.

  That knowledge gave her the strength to end the kiss. But not the strength to extract herself from his arms. Panting, she clung to him, still unwilling to relinquish the feel of his body pressed against hers. His heart drummed like a powerful engine, faster than her own, if that were possible.

  She knew Steve Sheridan wanted her passionately. She could feel his desire for her. And that healed something in her she hadn’t even known needed to be healed. As paradoxical as it seemed, his wanting her gave her the strength to signal to him. She moved slightly, and he released her.

  The world felt different outside his arms—more awkward. She hadn’t felt awkward since she was a teenager.

  “I guess I’d better get back before someone misses me.”

  “Juana does bed checks?” Laughter warmed his rich voice.

  “She’ll probably be looking for her patient,” she said pointedly.

  “Well, she’s too smart to expect me to behave myself, don’t you think?”
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  “Yes, she’s probably known other men.”

  Steve walked her to the front porch. “You’re not coming in?” she asked softly.

  “No. I’m even less sleepy now than I was.”

  She felt the need to explain to him, to tell him that she wanted a man—at times. But she was too selfish to want him to have his own personality and needs and ideas. And now that she was waiting for Lance, these kisses, however sweet and heady, could have no permanent meaning in her life. But words didn’t come, and he didn’t seem to need an explanation.

  “Good night then.”

  Steve’s chuckle was low and sardonic, reminding her that she’d probably wrecked all hope of his sleeping. Strangely pleased, she slipped inside and back to her bed. If he were a devil, as the note had said, he was more fun than she’d ever expected one to be.

  She fell asleep almost instantly.

  The next afternoon, a rider came from town with a letter from Lance.

  Dear Sam,

  I’m still looking for a buyer for your cattle. It has proven harder than I thought, probably due to the drought and the recession, but I expect a positive answer from the last man I spoke with. In the meantime, have your riders gather the herd and brand them so that when I get word, we will be able to move quickly.

  Perhaps you can come into town with the cattle. A holiday would do you good.

  Love,

  Lance

  With pounding heart, Samantha smoothed the letter and reread it. Lance had actually used the word “love.”

  Her heart felt full. She read the letter again. He had invited her to Durango. Since his visit to the ranch—and his admission that he wanted her and could barely restrain himself from taking her—her mind had given free rein to her daydreams about him. She had imagined him making love to her a number of times, and it had always been vaguer and more fantastic than her experiences with Jared.

  She was not a virgin. She knew the mechanics of love, but somehow this invitation agitated her. She wondered if going to see him would imply a willingness to sleep with him. With Steve she knew how to set limits. But with Lance it was more difficult. She’d already told him she belonged to him. And it was true. Part of her would always belong to him. But in her heart she was beginning to realize that she wanted to belong to him the way she had in childhood—to be taken care of. Lance had represented safety and a place where she could hide from responsibility.