When the door finally opened, his fist, holding his rifle, froze in midair.
Rafe, momentarily taken aback, wondered if he did have the right place.
His first thought was that the lovely woman looked more like a schoolmarm than a fancy woman. His second, that she had the saddest eyes he had ever seen. Eyes the color of new spring grass should sparkle.
Hers held a wealth of sorrow and shadows.
Rafe swept a quick look that raked her from head to toe. The faded gown, the patched apron, the neatly braided hair, added up to cleanliness and pride that glowed like a beacon from her wary stance.
He knew the exact moment she spotted the wound on his arm. The wariness remained, but now was tempered with compassion.
“They say in town I’d find help for my daughter with the widows.”
Mary looked from the upraised rifle to the hand gun. She clung to the slightly opened door when she looked at his face. Beneath the brim of his hat, the dark slash of his brows was a warning, like the guarded look in his eyes.
“Help? What kind of help?”
He stepped to the side, revealing the blanket-clad bundle he held.
Mary’s gaze shifted from the strong, clean-cut features of his bronzed face to the edge of the blanket, where the child’s head was exposed.
“Bring her in,” Mary ordered. She pressed against the door to allow space for the tall, gun-toting stranger to pass inside.
Broad shoulders tapered to a narrow waist and lean hips beneath a sun-faded blue shirt and a hide vest. Dusty black denim clung to his legs. The boots had seen use. The gun he wore was no more obvious than the guns of other men, but it seemed to her that it belonged where it was.
He would, Mary decided, look undressed without it. She stared at the knife sheath at the small of his back. Both he and the child had the weary, dust-laden look of heavy travel. His ripped, bloodstained clothing told of fighting.
Mary wasted no time asking foolish questions.
There were men who lived by violence, and those who had no choice. But where was his wife, that he had come seeking help for his child?
“Take her upstairs. First door on your left,” she directed. Mary closed the door, with the strangest feeling that she had made some irrevocable decision by letting him inside.
Not him. The child.
Shaken to find that he had turned around and was keeping a bold stare upon her, Mary did not look at him, but only on the child.
“Bullet or knife, or is she ill?”
Rafe hit the first stair. Beth stirred and moaned. The blanket fell back, exposing the broken arrow shaft.
“Dear God.” Mary lifted her hands to her mouth. She suddenly realized that she still held the doll.
Beth could not lift her head, but her eyes were open. For a moment, she stared at the woman. Her gaze lowered to the doll.
“Muffy.” The word was a ragged murmur, as if it had sapped all her strength to speak.
“Ah, Beth, that’s—” Rafe’s husky voice broke. He relived those horror-filled moments when he had been helpless to save his child. His gaze found that of the woman’s over his daughter’s head. “She lost her doll in the fighting.”
Rafe had told Beth the same, unwilling to explain his reluctance to touch the blood-soaked cloth, no matter how much the doll meant to her. He never wanted violence to touch his child. He couldn’t stop the thought that Valerie had cursed him with her last, water-filled breath.
“Name your price. I’ll buy it.”
Mary had to look at him then. Pulled forward by an irrepressible need to be near the little girl, she listened to him repeat his blunt offer.
“I’ll buy the doll, you, and anything I want or need.” They were not the words he spoke, but the ones Mary heard in her mind, and saw the truth of it in his eyes.
“The doll is not for sale.”
His mouth tightened, disturbing the full, sensuous line of his lips.
“I said to name your price. Don’t let appearances fool you.”
“I never have.” A lie, Mary, such a lie. You did once. “I shall make a gift of the doll to your daughter. That is, if your wife won’t object.”
“She’s dead.”
Cold. Flat, hard words holding hidden meanings. Mary shivered. A winter’s storm would be warmer than this man’s eyes.
“Poor sweeting,” she whispered to the child. “If you want her to be your Muffy, that is who she’ll be.”
“Won’t your daughter object?” Rafe asked.
A blunt question that demanded a blunt answer.
“I have no daughter. I have no child.” Mary’s admission was made in the same flat, cold voice that he had used.
She stood on tiptoe to tuck the soft-bodied doll between the child’s arm and the man’s back. Her fingers trailed marks in the dust on his leather vest. Mary stepped back. She was uncomfortable with his position, towering over her. But she took with her the scents of sage and cedar, leather, sweat, horse and blood.
“Hurry,” she whispered, alarmed by the child’s glazed eyes, flushed cheeks.
But she didn’t turn away. Two matching pairs of gray eyes stared at her. Stared and pinned her in place.
One pair, beneath dark, slashing brows, held a hunter’s wariness. The other pair, even fever-glazed with pain, held a calm far too deep for the child’s years.
Yet it was a calm that steadied her.
“Go on,” Mary urged. “I’ll be there soon.”
“Those four horses in the corral. Who do they belong to?”
“To us. The widows.” Later she would wonder what possessed her to add, “The merry widows of Sierra County.”
Chapter Four
While Mary rushed to the kitchen to boil water before she gathered the dry herbs she needed from the pantry, Rafe McCade faced another surprise, when he stepped inside the bedroom.
He knew the room belonged to the woman with the sad green eyes. The same faint scent he had noted when she stepped close to him lingered in the air.
It was something clean and fresh that put him in mind of a dew-swept meadow on a spring morning.
The scent was nothing like the cloying perfume worn by the ladies on the line working every hole-in-the-wall brothel in the territory.
He had not forgotten her sassy voice claiming ownership of the four horses. He had never heard of the merry widows of Sierra County. But then, if a tent town could spring up overnight, a brothel could do it, too.
Seating himself in the rocking chair—that, in itself, was an oddity in a fancy woman’s room—he held tight to Beth, unwilling and unable to release her.
If he could give his daughter his strength, give her his very lifeblood, he would.
As Rafe sat there and waited for the woman to come, a prayer hovered in his mind. At the same time, a strange feeling came with it. No man had darkened the door of this room, no man had sported on that bed.
He studied the room, as he had often studied the lay of strange land. Carefully. Methodically. He picked up every detail, for upon such care a man rested his life and that of his daughter.
And you failed the first test to protect her.
It was a guilt he would have to live with. There was no way to go back and change what had happened. If what he suspected was true, the attack would have come even if he had ridden off alone with his child. Any man with enough gold or guns could buy a renegade band to attack a rival. And the blame was placed on the Apache. It was something to think about when Beth was out of danger.
There was nothing threatening in the room, but he simply could not put a name to the unease he felt. Something simply was not right.
He wanted to know who he was putting his trust in. He needed to know more about the woman he was entrusting with his daughter’s life.
Judging a man was a straightforward call. How a man rode, treated his horse, wore his gun, spoke to others, his dress and even his walk, gave clues to his character if you looked for them.
Women hid thing
s. Bodies bundled under layers of clothes, feelings behind proper manners. They hid good deeds, and those they wished kept secret. It was expected that they hid intelligence from men, though he had never seen the reason for it. Women were born with mystery shrouding them.
But this room could be tracked the same way a man’s trail told much of what he was.
Orphaned at twelve, Rafe had had eighteen years to make the kind of judgments that meant the difference between life and death. He had lied about his age to join the Union army and fight in the last year of the War between the States. He had stayed on, losing his rank of corporal, and come to the western lands to fight Indians.
Rafe closed his eyes. Memories crowded him.
He had worked cattle ranches in Texas, helped drive herds up to the railheads. He had fought Comanche, and renegade bands of men who still lusted for killing after the war. He had survived weather that cost the lives of men and cattle and horses.
He had ridden shotgun for both stage and freight lines through the Arizona and New Mexico territories, gambled his way from New Orleans up the coast to New York, in the best and worst the big cities had to offer, and in more mining camps than he could name.
He had followed the wild mustang herds, broken broncs in Montana, and scouted for the army. He had prospected his way over the southeastern area of the territory.
In not one of these places from his memory did he know of a crib or brothel that allowed a working girl a separate room from the one where she took her customers.
There had been two doors on each side of the upstairs hall, and a window at the far end. No sounds issued forth from the other rooms.
He had noticed the house held an air of emptiness, the sort that comes from the absence of other people, not from abandonment.
Like the woman who had opened the door, the room was neat and clean.
But strangely bare of a fancy woman’s fripperies. No boxes of paint, no jar of powder, no array of perfume bottles used to mask the last man’s scent, littering the china tray on the bureau.
A small china dish held a few hairpins and a faded, rolled ribbon resting next to a brush and comb. They were not silver-backed, but appeared to be bone. Nor was the buttonhook of any good quality. Even the mirror above the bureau top had a plain wood frame.
A fresh towel was folded over the bar on the side of the washstand. A few more clean, folded towels rested on the shelf below. On a wall peg beside the washstand hung a plain white nightgown.
Nothing there to entice a man’s lusty thoughts, unless he had a hankering to play slap and tickle with a schoolmarm.
A tall, narrow wood wardrobe stood against the far wall, the single door closed to conceal its contents.
Rafe had a feeling he would no more find a red satin dress behind the door than he would if he unpacked his own saddlebags.
The bed was as pristine as the woman who slept in it. The wood headboard and lower footboard gleamed with polish, as did the small side table, but there was a roughness to them that suggested they were locally made.
Rafe cast an admiring look at the quilt. The cheerful colors and fine stitching sent an invitation to a weary man to wrap himself in its soft warmth and sleep.
His unease lessened in one respect. His daughter was not about to be cared for in a filthy place. He had seen men die of minor wounds that had festered and poisoned their bodies from the use of whatever dirty rag was at hand.
But his annoyance grew that he found so few clues about the woman.
Perhaps that was the telling clue in itself.
His pondering came to an end when she entered the room. He opened his eyes to watch her. She carried a full bucket of water in one hand, and a steaming kettle with a cloth-wrapped handle in the other.
“How is she?” Mary asked softly, avoiding his gaze as she set the bucket down by the washstand.
“Quiet. Fever’s climbing.” Rafe saw her remove the big china pitcher from the washbowl and place it on the floor. She filled the bowl with the boiling water. From her pocket she took a small square of cloth.
“I’ll put the dry bark and leaves of the quinine bush to soak. By the time I fetch my tray, the water will have cooled a bit.”
Rafe wanted to stop her, wanted to say something, but she was gone before the words formed. His head felt heavy, but he heard the whisper of sound she made and realized that she moved quietly, almost too quietly for a woman safe in her own place.
Where had she learned to walk softly?
More important, why?
He knew men who had learned the quiet ways of walking from Indians. He had learned from them, too.
Beth stirred with a sob. Rafe turned his thoughts to his child. Her moan caught at his heart. He murmured promises against her hair, promises he had no right to make, for they were not ones he could keep. They were as empty as a water hole in high summer.
But he whispered them anyway, praying the Lord was listening, praying there was mercy for an innocent child.
A slight rattle alerted him that the woman was returning.
All his attention should have focused on his daughter, but a tiny corner of his mind wrung the admission from him that this woman intrigued him.
Puzzles irritated Rafe. There was an answer to most puzzles, if a man added things up right. The trouble was, a man had to have all the pieces, and in this case, he had too few to make a decision.
And he never could forget that betrayal was a hard lesson learned.
Rafe McCade lived his life by few laws. First, last and always, he never learned a lesson twice.
When Mary stepped into her room the second time, she judged that no more than twenty minutes had passed since she opened the door to admit this man and his child.
Every minute had mentally ticked away as she worked to gather the items she needed. Did he feel as she did? That every minute had dragged an hour long?
Carefully carrying the loaded tray, Mary rested it on the edge of the bureau. She held it with one hand while she pushed her few belongings to the far corner. There was just enough room for the large tray.
“I brought you coffee,” she said, indicating the pot and cup. “And there’s food in the kitchen.”
“It will keep.”
“You’ve traveled far, and—”
“And I will keep, too.”
Warmth spread inside her. This man truly loved his child. What a lucky woman his wife must have been to have shared in such a love.
Mary stood there, willing her hands to stop trembling. She knew the man was watching her. From the first, she had remained aware of his guarded eyes, his studying sweeps. But now his gaze burned like a brand on her back.
Mary began talking as she moved, perhaps to reassure him, but she thought it would help settle her nerves, too.
She tested the heat of the water in the bowl. “Some call the quinine a cliff rose, but whatever the name used, I believe soaking the bark and leaves makes the best wash for wounds.”
She left one of the clean towels soaking in the bowl and stepped back in front of the bureau. “I have crushed dried spectacle pod into a powder. I’ve learned that any injury where the skin is broken does not seem to fester when this is used.”
She skimmed her gaze over the remaining few items on the tray. Too few. Why didn’t he speak? Didn’t he care what she had to treat his daughter’s wound?
“This bowl holds a paste I made of pine sap mixed with gunpowder to help stop the bleeding. I’ve not the faith of some that cobwebs work as well. There’s charcoal, saltpeter and sulfur in gunpowder. An old Navajo woman said that one or all help some wounds to heal faster.”
The growing tension made her pause. But at the moment, she could not have said which one of them sent tension prowling into the room toward the other.
“I boiled the knife, and the linen is freshly washed.”
Mary could not halt the slight quaver in her voice as she finished listing what tools she had to save a child.
She knew she had d
elayed long enough. But she had to first summon courage to turn around and face him.
His tall, lean as any ironwood tree body, seemed to overwhelm the rocking chair. He had placed his flat-crowned black hat on the floor beside him, but he still wore his gun. Beneath the window, and within his easy reach, rested his rifle.
An armed, dangerous-looking, wary man.
Mary had never known any man who could sit so still, or hold her gaze as steadily and as directly, as this man.
She found herself the first to look away. But her gaze went only as far as his long-fingered hand, stroking his daughter’s back. The other curved beneath her bottom to hold her against him.
A lock of dark brown hair fell over his forehead. Mary had to fight the strange urge to brush his hair aside, then confront the stranger feeling that she knew it would slip back into place. It was neatly clipped to collar length.
Her hands twisted the sides of her apron. She steeled herself for what she was about to ask him.
“Have you the courage to hold her?”
A faint line of color flushed Rafe’s high-set cheekbones. When he answered, his voice was low, husky from thirst, and filled with a measured calm.
“Have you?”
“No.”
Mary did not know if she or he was more surprised by her truthful admission. “If she were my child, I could not watch while someone caused her more pain.”
“But you have no intent to hurt her out of a need to do violence to someone smaller, and infinitely more innocent, than yourself.”
“You would kill me if I did.”
Rafe didn’t waste a breath to hesitate. “That’s right. I would.”
Chapter Five
Mary barely swallowed a cry. It was one thing to suspect what someone would do in a given situation, but quite another to hear his bald admission. It was the lack of hesitation, rather than the words, that struck her with fear.
Mary Page 3