She marveled that her voice didn’t shake from the weight of her anger. Most of it stemmed from the fact that she had very little right to be angry at all, but she wasn’t about to admit that to him.
He cocked his head to one side and looked her up and down again.
“But you did follow me,” he said wryly. “Obviously, I can run but I can’t hide.”
Slight chagrin tinged her anger, and she turned away so he wouldn’t see it. Honestly, he was being rather patient with her, since she was following him around town accosting him at every turn. Maybe women pursued him all the time, since he was handsome enough to stop a beating heart.
“Tell me, Miss Benton,” he said, leaning close to her as the din grew louder, “why me again? I have refused your request. There must be fifty other men, at least, right here in this one place. Why don’t you take ‘no’ for an answer and simply go find yourself another bodyguard?”
His breath felt warm on her ear. A thrill passed through her, made her shiver. She moved a bit away from him and lifted one hand to signal the bartender, as she’d just seen someone else do.
“Lemonade, please.”
“If you’re man enough to come into a saloon, you ought to be man enough to order whiskey,” he snapped.
“I have to keep my wits about me.”
She waited for her drink without looking at him, but she could feel his eyes assessing her profile.
“Why not get someone else? Answer me, Aurora.”
He had never called her by her given name before, but there was no thrill in it—the cold hardness in his voice could have cut wood.
She spun around.
“How many of these men in here are trustworthy, Cole? How many wouldn’t leave me and my men tied to a tree or dead in a coulee somewhere, run new brands onto my cattle and start their own ranch in Texas? How could I know which one to trust?”
“You don’t know me. I might do the same.”
“Never. You’re a Texas Ranger.”
His full lips tightened, a sharp shadow passed through his eyes.
“Not any more.”
“You still have honor, though. I’ve asked a lot of people about you.”
“You wasted your time. Nobody knows me.”
He held her gaze with a long, hard look. His eyes turned black, filled with thoughts she couldn’t read, but she looked back at him steadily, not flinching, not giving an inch.
“Many men have honor,” he said shortly. “You live around here. You know many who do.”
The bartender brought a mug of lemonade. She sighed and leaned toward Cole, reaching for her glass with both hands, willing the few pieces of ice in it to cool the heat of rising anticipation building in her blood. A person couldn’t make assumptions about Cole McCord, this much she had already learned about him, so the fact that he was actually testing her reasons for offering the job to him didn’t mean anything. But maybe it did.
“Look, Mr. McCord, I know you think I’m crazy, I know you’re sick of my annoying you, but I’m desperate. We’re talking about my survival here. My only hope for a decent life is to try to get to Texas with twenty-two hundred head of cattle, five cowboys, and an old man and two youngsters, counting Skeeter, who’s all crippled up from a horse wreck. I can’t pay any more hands than that, so I have to ride scout myself, and I can’t do that and keep constant watch.”
“Sell something and hire some more men.”
“I’ve sold all I can. And what money I’ve saved would be much better spent on you, considering your abilities and your reputation.”
He shrugged. “Maybe.”
“No maybes. I know it. Who better to protect me than the most dangerous man in Colorado?”
He gave a derisive snort.
“My reputation won’t help you any—it’ll just attract every would-be outlaw like Kid Dolby who can beg, borrow, or steal a horse to ride out to meet your herd.”
She gripped the mug hard to steady her hands. Dear Lord, please let this discussion mean he was seriously thinking of agreeing to come with her.
“Your reputation will work the opposite way, too, though, remember that,” she said, “especially on the man who’s sworn to keep me from getting my cattle through. He’ll be afraid of you, I know he will, so really, you’ll have very little work to do.”
“Just dealing with you every day would be a lot of work,” he said dryly.
That annoyed her at first, but then it pleased her, too. This was personal, she was making progress! At least she’d pulled him out of that awful remoteness.
“I’ll be too busy to give you any problems,” she said. “I won’t even talk to you—all you have to do is stay out of my way and keep an eye out for trouble.”
He frowned fiercely.
“Stay out of your way?”
“While I boss the drive.”
“Have some sense! I can’t turn you loose … I mean, whoever you hire to be your bodyguard … can’t let you make all the decisions when it’s his job to keep you safe. What if you pick a stretch of quicksand as a place to ford a river and mire yourself up to your neck? Then it’s his job to get you out.”
“You have some sense! I know what I’m doing. How do you think I’ve held onto these cattle and my last few possessions for six months with half the thieves in Colorado riding out to my ranch, trying, legally or illegally, to strip me of everything?”
He raised his eyebrows.
“By threatening to put the greedy grabbers to work against their wills?” he said sarcastically. “By assigning a job to each one and badgering him until he either buckles down to it or runs screaming down the road?”
She laughed. “Right. But they’ve all run away, the cowards. I take you for a braver man than that.”
His lips turned up at the corners. A little warmth ran through her. Good. If she could make him laugh and let down his guard, she could win him over.
They each took a sip of their drinks. He kept looking at her.
“This buzzard who threatened you,” he said, “the one who told you he’d stop you from going down the trail. He must be a bad one.”
“He thinks he is,” she said, drinking from her glass again, suddenly dry-mouthed from too much hope, “and sometimes that’s the most dangerous kind.”
He shook his head.
“You think you’re a trail boss, you think you know bad men, you think you can persuade me to come with you … I think you’re overconfident, Miss Benton, and that’s a dangerous way to be.”
Her spirits dropped into her shoes, but she made her expression as impassive as his.
“No,” she said quietly, looking him straight in the eye, “I know I can persuade you. I know I can be a trail boss, and I know a lot about people, bad ones and good ones. You’re coming with me, Mr. McCord. You might as well finish your drink and go pack your warbag.”
He stared at her for a moment more, then he threw back his head and laughed, really laughed. It was a wonderful, rippling sound, truly delightful.
“Aurora Benton,” he said, “I’ve heard of mule-footed and mule-eared and mule-headed horses, but you’re the most mule-minded human being I ever saw.”
He was laughing at her, but there was admiration in his voice, too. She gritted her teeth and gave him a determinedly sweet smile.
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
He looked into her eyes, searchingly, as if she were some kind of curiosity. “Don’t you have any ‘quit’ in you?”
“Not anymore, I don’t,” she said. “If I quit on this drive, I’m lost.”
“How so?”
“I’ll have no freedom, ever again. If I don’t save this one herd of cattle and find some free land to ranch, I’ll have three unacceptable choices: move into town here and live in poverty as a teacher paid half what a man would make, marry a man I cannot abide, or go back East to live off the charity of relatives.”
A warmth came into his eyes, a look she took to be admiration, a look that made her
blood heat like a sudden stroke of the sun. She was going to win. He was going with her to Texas, and she’d better start learning right now not to let herself become too attracted to him.
But he only finished his drink, set the glass down, and pushed it away.
“I can’t help you,” he said. “But I wish you plenty of water, tall grass, and luck.”
Stunned, she watched him fish a coin from the front pocket of his well-fitted pants and toss it onto the counter, indicating with a gesture that it took care of the lemonade also.
“Ride safe,” he said, with a cursory tip of his hat.
Before she could think how best to reply, he was gone.
The smoke threatened to choke Cole with every breath he took, and his mind wandered so constantly that he couldn’t keep in mind the cards he himself had been dealt, much less make a guess as to which ones his opponents might hold. No wonder he wasn’t winning—it was pure luck that he was even breaking even. Before the next round of betting could start, he stood up and threw in his hand.
“I’m out,” he said. “Thank you, gentlemen.”
He was through the door and into the back corridor of the hotel in a heartbeat, striding toward the stairs at a feverish pace, but the air seemed just as thick there as in the Gentleman’s Club. Worse, his thoughts continued to roil. He took the stairs two at a time. What he needed, all he needed, was sleep.
The thought twisted his lips into a bitter smile. Every night sleep was hard enough to come by, had been ever since Travis got killed, but tonight it’d be a true lost cause. He hadn’t been this stirred up in years.
It must be because of how close he had come to having to kill the boy, or maybe because of the little whelp’s insistence on not giving up until they drew on each other. Kid Dolby was even more of a greenhorn than Cole had been when he ran away from home to join the Rangers. At the rate he was going, he wouldn’t live to become much older.
Cole reached his room, took out his key, unlocked the door, and went in, realizing as he closed it behind him that he was still moving as fast as if he were running from someone or something. Well, he was. All day long this emotional turmoil had been threatening to swamp him.
The latch clicked closed in the sudden silence of the room, but being alone gave him no peace: his thoughts kept racing, he still felt too hot, too confined. Maybe he ought to just turn around, go get his horse, ride on out, and take temptation away from the Kid. He could simply be gone when the boy got out of jail—and when the man he was supposed to meet tomorrow arrived from Denver. He didn’t want a job with the Pinkertons, anyhow.
And he sure as hell didn’t want any more days like this one.
He stripped to the waist, dunked his head in the water bowl, went to the window, wrenched it open, and leaned out into the moonlight. The air bathed his skin—cold air—but in spite of the temperature it carried spring on its breath. A light breeze blew from the east, and he would swear it smelled of flowers and damp earth.
A sudden longing, a fierce, unnameable yearning, twisted inside him, and he searched the night as if he could see something that might assuage it. The sky stretched high and wide, clear and black, the full moon shone yellow, the stars gleamed white as the feathers they were said to be in the Chickasaw legends of his mother’s people. A thousand more feelings surged, swirling, inside him, and, without warning, the truth rode to the surface.
Aurora Benton was the one who’d whipped up the maelstrom inside him. She had done it to him from the very first moment he had found himself lying in the middle of the street with her in his arms, while that terrible flood of relief and fury and desire roared in his blood.
The life in her, the way she’d taken him to task for being too serious, the way she’d smiled, the way she’d simply assumed he would be her bodyguard if she only asked had drawn him to her. The way she’d come marching into the saloon on his trail as no other respectable woman would ever do, hotly indignant because he hadn’t stayed to hear her out, sharpened his curiosity even more. Dear God, the way she’d assumed she could trail a herd all the way to Texas and set out to do it was enough to make him root for her. Everything about her had pierced his hard shell.
How long had it been since he had laughed out loud the way he had today? How long, how many years, since he had taken delight in any trait in anybody the way he had in Aurora’s stubbornness?
How long since he had even noticed anybody? People were part of the landscape to him, objects, good or bad, to be dealt with in the course of whatever job he was on. But Miss Aurora was different—she meant to be dealing with him—and she had put her trust completely in him never knowing how he’d destroyed Travis, who had trusted him, too.
Wearily, he drew his head back into the room and sagged against the window frame, dragging the cold air deeper and more slowly into his lungs while he faced the terrible fact he’d been keeping locked up out of sight for nearly eight months. He was merely existing, with no purpose. Running away from hell day in Texas to the cold mountains of Colorado hadn’t helped him one bit.
It was Aurora Benton who had done this to him, she was the one who’d made him see that he was numb to the heart, no more than a walking dead man, and she’d done it by being so alive, so full of hope, so stubbornly determined to hire him. To Aurora, everything mattered. Most of the time, to him, nothing did.
And that was more comfortable, much more comfortable. Why did she ever have to cross his path, much less trail him everywhere like a bloodhound? Into the saloon, no less. Next thing he knew she’d be knocking on his door, ready to nag him for the rest of the night—he’d probably have to tie her to a lamppost and ride out of town at a flat gallop to ever get away from her.
As if the thought had conjured her, a rhythmic rapping sounded at his door. He turned and stared at it for a moment, picturing her on the other side of it all perky and stubborn, dressed in her stylish jacket that matched her eyes. Sudden anger swept through him. Damn it, why couldn’t she take “no” for an answer? What did he have to do to make her leave him alone? He crossed to the door and flung it open.
A freckled boy about ten years old stood there, his russet-colored cowlick sticking straight up, his fist lifted to knock again. Stunned, Cole stared and, out of old habit, closed his hand around the butt of his six-gun. Dear God, what had he been thinking? Assuming the identity of the person on the other side of a door was a good way to get killed—the very fact that he had done such an idiotic thing made him mad all over again.
“What?”
The boy didn’t shrink from his bark.
“Here,” he said, thrusting a piece of paper at Cole. “Kid Dolby done give me a nickel to bring you this.”
Cole took it.
“I reckoned you’d likely give me another nickel,” the boy said hopefully.
Cole looked down into bold hazel-colored eyes that snapped and danced.
“Being that you’re famous,” he added.
“What does that have to do with anything?” Cole growled, putting on his fiercest glare.
The boy didn’t budge.
“You wouldn’t want the Kid to outdo you, would you?”
“You’re the second toughest person I’ve been up against all day,” Cole muttered, reaching into his pocket for a nickel.
“Who’s the toughest?”
“Not the Kid,” Cole said and dropped the payment into the dirty palm waiting for it.
The boy completely lost interest in the conversation. He unbuttoned his pocket, dropped the coin into it and turned and ran for the stairs. Cole opened the crumpled paper and read it by the light of the hallway lamps.
“I ain’t quittin’,” it said. “I aim to draw down on you if’n’ I hafta foller you to Canady.” KD
A slow, sick feeling ran deep through Cole’s guts as he stepped back into his room, turning again toward the fresh night air for comfort.
He truly ought to get out of town before the boy got out of jail. He stared into the night again, but this time
he saw only Kid Dolby’s young face against the spangled sky. If he did leave now, nobody with a grain of sense would say that Cole McCord had run away from a fight, since it was with such a boy. Besides, he could live if some called him coward. The only way it’d hurt him was that it was bound to bring more of Kid Dolby’s type out of the woods to try their luck.
And it would hurt his pride. Basically, his reputation was all he had left of his old life—which had been his only life.
Anger so swift it made him nauseous swept through him. Why had Travis had to die? Why had he lived, when the whole damn thing had been his fault? Now if he killed the boy he would always hate himself for that, too.
“Mr. McCord?”
He whirled on his heel and stepped out of the moonlight, at the same time drawing his gun in a reflex action that he couldn’t stop, but he knew that voice from the first syllable. It startled him, how familiar it sounded.
Aurora Benton stood in the doorway, her small figure limned by the light in the hall behind her, and for an instant, just for that first moment he looked at her, a strange sense of himself came over his anger. He was as lonely as he’d ever been. Lonelier.
“I need to speak with you.”
Here was another human being at his door, a beautiful woman who had eyes like the summer sky, a sweet-smelling woman who fit into his arms like a wonderful gift. A woman who could make him laugh.
He didn’t need that. He didn’t want a woman who could touch him in any way.
“I saw your door open,” she said, and stepped into the room without waiting for an invitation. “I’ve come to give you one last chance.”
That made him grin.
“Mighty generous of you,” he said wryly. “What this world needs most is one last chance.”
He holstered his gun, went to pick up his shirt. She gave a little gasp of surprise as he passed through the wide shaft of moonlight and she saw that he was half-naked. He felt her gaze touch his skin, then she went to the window to look out while he slipped the shirt on and started buttoning it.
“I suppose I should get dressed,” he muttered, “since I seem to have one visitor after another.”
The Renegades: Cole Page 3