Captive Angel

by Cheryl Anne Porter

  Just then, the roan stumbled, yanking Angel out of her memories. Steadying her horse with a pat, and realizing where her mind had wandered, she frowned at this dim memory from the before times. Before her father was killed. Before Virginia began selling herself for money.

  “You okay?”

  Angel looked over at Mr. Daltry. Every time she got quiet, he asked her that. A sigh escaped her. “I’m fine. My horse stumbled.”

  He nodded, said, “Up here a ways, we’ll stop for the night. I know just the sheltered spot, in case it rains again. You’ll be glad to know that tomorrow, about half a day’s ride west of here, we’ll be home.” With that, and without waiting for any response from her, he retreated back into his thoughts.

  Knowing it’d do her no good to question him, Angel returned to her own thoughts, thoughts about God, she recalled. She supposed that when she’d been a little girl, she’d believed in Him. But not so much now. No, she couldn’t call herself particularly religious or pious. Never saw a need to be. Never saw the proof, as she grew up, that anyone beyond herself—and sometimes not even herself—gave a damn what happened to her.

  Well, except for Mr. Daltry. She threw a glance in his direction. He was looking into the hazy, wavery distance. Probably searching for that sheltered spot for their night’s rest. Angel took advantage of his preoccupation to continue her scrutiny of him. He certainly seemed to believe in God, she decided. And she was coming to believe in Mr. Daltry. So, maybe she could give God some thought one day.

  Just then, Mr. Daltry turned his head, trapped her with his gaze. “You know your mama didn’t really have any choice, don’t you?”

  Angel’s belly tightened. Every other word out of this man’s mouth seemed to be about her personal business. She shifted her weight in the saddle and cleared her throat, delaying her answer. Finally, she asked, “No choice about what exactly, Mr. Daltry?”

  “About what she did … had to do. For a living. She had you to feed. And there was no other choice open to her.”

  Angel firmed her jaw and held tight to a lifetime of shame and derision. “There’s always a choice. She could have left.”

  “And gone where? And how? You weren’t much more’n a baby when your pa died. And the only money she had was from selling the wagon and team. She had no kin to help her. And no reason to continue on out West with your father gone. So, there she was … a woman alone with a child. What should she have done when her money ran out and you were crying for food?”

  Angel looked down at her fingers, now knotted around the reins. And hated him for putting this sick feeling back in her stomach. And for this new image in her head of her mother—a young widow, alone, afraid, a small child in tow. But Angel was not ready to concede anything. So she shrugged. “She could’ve done other things, made do with what she had at the station.”

  “Like what?”

  Exasperated by his questioning, she blurted, “I don’t know. Maybe take in wash. Teach school. Work at Chisholm’s. Anything but what she did.”

  Mr. Daltry stared at her and then stretched in his saddle and fiddled with his hat. Angel gritted her teeth at the man’s slowness in answering. But after three days of dealing with him, she knew he was ordering his thoughts and couldn’t be rushed. And so, she waited, thinking that he seemed to take great care with each word he said to her, as if he were guiding her gently to certain conclusions. Which only made her that much more wary of every word he uttered. She didn’t like being led. By anybody. For any reason.

  After another reflective moment, Mr. Daltry finally said, “Not in those days, she couldn’t. Red River Station wasn’t the growing town it is now. Back then, it wasn’t nothing more than a stopover, a way station. Nothing too permanent. Certainly no school. And Chisholm didn’t need any help. Hell, nobody back then had a need for a decent woman.”

  A decent woman? Angel raised an eyebrow and made an abrupt noise at the back of her throat. Mr. Daltry’s eyes narrowed. He said, “Your mother was a decent woman. Right up to the end.”

  Each of his words rang with the weight of a sacred conviction. Angel’s bottom lip puckered stubbornly against her top one. She hated these conversations, hated the plodding pace and the unchanging scenery. “That’s easy for you to say, Mr. Daltry. But you didn’t live with her decision. I did.”

  The words were no more out of her mouth than Mr. Daltry made a strangled noise that alarmed Angel, because she now knew what came next. Sure enough, the poor man’s body was racked with another coughing fit that bent him double. Angel bit at her bottom lip, telling herself that her fear for him was more a fear for herself. She just knew, with each fit, that he’d die on her and leave her out here with only the vaguest of ideas about where she was and where she was headed. After a minute of watching him, and of feeling helpless, she asked, “You okay?”

  He nodded, despite his coughing spasm, and strangled out, “I’m fine.” When it finally eased, leaving him red-faced and weak, his blue eyes tearing up, he said, “You’re wrong when you say I didn’t live with her decision. Because I did. And still do. After your father … passed on, I tried to help, tried to give her enough money so she could resettle. But she wouldn’t take it, said she’d die first before accepting my charity.”

  The man’s unexpected words had Angel reining in her horse. Mr. Daltry followed suit, met her questioning gaze. “So she did have a choice,” Angel challenged.

  Mr. Daltry shook his head, saying, “No. No, she didn’t.”

  To Angel, time seemed to slow. She let a moment or two pass. Then … “Mr. Daltry,” she began, speaking slowly, “if I had a gun right now, I’d shoot you for being closemouthed with the truth when it suits you.”

  He nodded, said, “I believe you would, Angel.” Then he chuckled and ran a hand over his mouth. “And maybe you should. If you’d like, you can use my gun. It’d be a mercy.”

  Angel huffed out her breath, shook her head, ignoring his offer. “Tell me why my mother would turn down your money. Why she would let pride prevent her from accepting help and instead turn to whoring to feed me.” Then something she’d missed before pelted Angel’s consciousness. She narrowed her eyes. Suspicion had her cocking her head. “What’d you do to her, that she’d refuse your help?”

  Mr. Daltry winced, as if he’d had a sudden pain. But not a physical one. “I didn’t do anything to her.” With that, he turned his face away from Angel and put his heels to his buckskin horse, urging it past her and onward. Frustration exploded through Angel, tensing her every muscle. She wanted to yell at this old man, wanted to throw something at him.

  But just as suddenly, she let go of it and went limp, slumping in her saddle. Exhaling, firming her lips together, she looked after his back. It’d been like this for the past three days. Their talking always stalled when she asked why. Why he wanted to help her. Why he’d wanted to help Virginia Devlin, a young widow with a daughter. And why she had refused it. And why Angel should accept it.

  But learning now of her mother’s refusal of help only hardened Angel’s heart that much more. Virginia Devlin had been offered a chance at a decent life. But hadn’t taken it. For whatever reason. To Angel’s way of thinking, no reason could be good enough. Not pride. Not any injustice done her. It couldn’t warrant the life she’d therefore given her daughter, the victim of her decision. So what else could Angel think?

  Virginia Devlin had evidently preferred to wallow in mud and to drag her daughter right along with her. Angel’s features stiffened as she reached her rough-edged conclusions. She watched Mr. Daltry a moment longer before shaking her head in dismissal and urging her roan after the man’s departing back.

  She was surely glad to know they’d be at that danged ranch of his tomorrow. Because she needed answers. And he wasn’t giving any until she signed some legal papers he had waiting for her. Only then, as he’d said maybe fifty times, would he tell her what she needed to know, what she had a right to know. Angel watched him, tensing when yet another coughing spasm—t
hey were coming quicker and harder today, she noticed—seized him. This one, like all the others, arched his back and then bent him over his horse’s neck. This man wasn’t long for this world, Angel knew.

  That thought settled a frown on her features. She was surprised to realize she wanted to help him, to do something, even if it was just to pat his back or say a comforting word to him. She knew she should do something, but a lifetime of doing without comfort herself rendered her unable to do much but hope he’d live long enough to bring them both safely to his home.

  And once there, she’d sign those papers. And have her answers from him. Then, she supposed, they’d live there together until he … died. She looked over at him. His coughing eased, he straightened up. Angel winced at the image of herself as a nursemaid to a dying man. Well, she knew a few sickroom things from tending her mother during her last days … not that Virginia’d even known her daughter was there most of the time.

  A stab of pain lanced through Angel’s heart. She immediately firmed her jaw, pulling her thoughts away from that seedy little back-room scene, and forcing them to the future that Mr. Daltry was offering her.

  And that was exactly what it was. A future. His home would be hers. But of more importance to Angel was the realization that her life would be her own. A rare and fleeting smile found its way to her lips. Her life would be her own. She liked the sound of that. Liked the sound of living on her own terms. Without hiding. Without running. Without fear. Finally.

  And it all started tomorrow. Just half a day’s ride west, Mr. Daltry had said earlier. A giddiness Angel didn’t know she possessed tickled her stomach, had her biting down on her bottom lip, had her hoping, and looking toward the future. And the ever-closer horizon.

  Only good things could happen to her from here on out, she just knew it.

  Three

  Yesterday’s hope fled. In its wake followed yesterday’s moment of giddiness. Because Angel’s future was this new day … this dew-dampened early morning. A pink and red sky filled the vast blue canvas above, overshadowing the sun rising beyond it. Angel lowered her gaze from the sky, stared again at Mr. Daltry’s still form next to the cold, ashy remains of last night’s campfire. She swallowed, the motion more mechanical than voluntary.

  Behind her, the precariously poised jumble of boulders she’d stumbled back against, only moments ago, pressed against her spine. Their impersonal coldness seeped through her clothing, cooled her fevered emotions. But her knees, she knew, could give at any moment. So could her stomach, were it not already empty. Her palms scraped across the rough, cold rocks behind her, as if she sought their solidness, as if she needed to feel their bulk. And still, she pushed against them, wanting to force herself through them.

  This was madness, her hammering heart warned with each tripping beat. Angel knew the truth of that. She willed herself to breathe … in and out … in and out. Then, she blinked. Listened to her blood rush through her veins. Tried to deny that she’d awakened to the sight of Mr. Daltry lying there … in his blood-soaked bedroll … with a bone-handled knife protruding from his chest. But she knew—somewhere in a tiny corner of her mind—that it was true. Because here she stood … still staring at him, unable to look away.

  Then, as if possessed of a will of its own, Angel’s right hand crept its way up her clothing, up her neck, until it found her mouth and cupped itself tightly over her lips. A fresh surge of panic shivered through her, had her breathing hard through her nostrils. She hadn’t heard a thing. And the horses … they hadn’t raised so much as a nicker of a fuss all night. Angel pictured herself sleeping across the campfire from Mr. Daltry. That close, she’d been. And yet, she hadn’t heard a thing. How was that possible?

  Who could have done such a thing … and so quietly? Indians? Certainly. Outlaws? Maybe. The prairie was lousy with them. But this killing … done like this, with all their belongings still here, and her left alive? She shook her head. It just didn’t figure with what she knew of outlaws and Indians. But what about those Henton drovers from Red River Station? Could they have followed her and Mr. Daltry and picked their moment? Immediately she discounted that notion. No, they’d have killed her, too—if not instead.

  Angel pursed her lips. She knew enough of the world to realize that she—a lone, unarmed woman—would not be alive right now to tell about this cold-booded murder, if it’d been Indians or outlaws or even the Henton drovers. But Mr. Daltry’s murder wasn’t the result of a cold-blooded, random act. No, it was personal. And something that had nothing to do with her. Which was why she’d been left alive. Was it so she could tell about it? But tell who? And why. Mr. Daltry’d said he was a rich rancher. But since he had no family left, who would care?

  Angel found herself focusing on the unknown murderer. She frowned, tried to figure out what type of person would just sneak in and kill a man in his sleep. A cowardly type, she reckoned, lowering her hand from her mouth. This murder spoke of a grudge. A wrong that had needed righting.

  She stared at the body that had been Mr. Daltry’s, at the blood that no longer flowed from his chest but stained his blankets. Now she’d never have her answers from him. Yes, it was a cold thought, she knew, and one that decent folks would have gasped at. But then again, no one had ever accused her of being decent, now had they? But what about Mr. Daltry? Was he decent? What could that old man have done to someone to bring this on himself? It had to be something awful.

  What had he been capable of? And what, after all, did she really know about him? Nothing. Except what she’d seen with her own eyes. She couldn’t speak for how he treated other folks. Or could she? He had faced down that lynch mob and saved her life when he didn’t have to. That said something for the man. So did the respect with which those drovers had treated him. Angel weighed all this, decided that, yes, Mr. Daltry was a somebody. That much had been evident.

  All those facts added together, she knew, were why she’d placed her trust in him … for the first time in her life. And now look what had happened. He’d saved her life four days ago, only to lose his now. And once again—twice in one week—her life had been spared. It had to mean something. And she couldn’t say why or even how she felt about that. So, what was she supposed to do now? Because before this—meaning Mr. Daltry’s murder—she’d looked to him for direction.

  But he was no more forthcoming in death than he had been in life. Angel cocked her head. Had he been a good man? she asked herself. Or had he deserved to die like this? She closed her eyes against her own thoughts … and called herself a fool for not thinking this through before now. Although he had prevented her from being hanged, she had no firsthand proof that anything he’d said to her was the truth. Did he even deserve this awful feeling of loss that had settled rocklike in her belly?

  That thought forced her to consider new and frightening possibilities. That ranch of his might exist only in his head. Those legal papers awaiting her signature could be nonexistent. Angel’s heart pounded with sudden fear for herself, for her immediate future. Her tongue flicked out to moisten suddenly dry lips. What would she do if had lied to her? Where would she go? She had nothing but the roan she was riding. No money. No help. No direction.

  Just like your mother.

  A surge of anger squelched that comparison. She was not like her mother. Never would be, either. Never. She’d take charge of her life, would live it clean. She’d show Virginia Devlin. For long seconds, Angel breathed hard and glared at … nothing—until her anger finally subsided, leaving her, surprisingly, feeling better about herself. She could do this. Do what? she asked herself. Find that ranch, came her answer. Yes, that was good. Finding the ranch was doing something. It wasn’t standing here being scared and doubting everything she knew to be true.

  Angel pushed away from the boulders, looked westward. A half-day’s ride west, he’d said yesterday. She turned to Mr. Daltry’s body, and grimaced. She knew what she had to do. Take him along. It was the only decent thing to do. Bury him on his own land. Well,
it was her land now, she supposed. If it existed. If she believed him. And then, she realized that she did believe him, she knew the ranch existed, and when she got there, those papers—and a new and a good life—would be waiting for her. Just as Mr. Daltry had promised.

  * * *

  Straddling his big brown horse with the ease of one born to the saddle, Jack Daltry directed his gelding’s steps across the fenced-off stretch of north Texas prairie that fronted the ranch house he called home. He didn’t like the look of things as he rode in and surveyed the yard. Too deserted. Too quiet for a sunny afternoon. Where was Pa? And Lou and Boots? Those two old hands always stayed behind when the drovers took the herd north to Abilene.

  That wasn’t to say he’d expected a welcoming committee. After all, no one even knew he was coming home. And might not even be glad he had. But, hell, somebody should have been here. Somebody besides the few disinterested chickens roaming free and scratching at the barren ground. Jack’s eyes narrowed as he became certain that the place was deserted. He reined Buffalo in, started to dismount …

  Then … he saw it. The front door of the house, as if in confirmation of his fear, hung open.

  His heart skipped a beat. He resettled himself in the saddle, patted his gelding’s shoulder when it sidestepped at his mixed signals. “Whoa. Easy there,” he crooned absently, all the while trying to deny the sudden, skin-crawling certainty that he was being watched. By hostile eyes. As casually as possible, he made a visual sweep of the yard, looking for a furtive movement, or sunlight glinting off gunmetal. But he saw nothing. All remained calm and quiet.