by My Desperado
“The mayor,” Travis supplied. “Mayor.”
“Oh! A man. Yeah. That makes sense now. Anyhow, this redheaded fella, he says the people in town all thought you’d killed him. They didn’t know this Grey had hired Delias t’ steal the payroll.”
“Grey?” Katherine asked. “He hired Delias to steal his own miners’ wages.”
Travis nodded. Everything had suddenly become very clear to him.
“Then he hired me to kill Delias, and set me up as the thief. Only Grey had the money all along. The money the townspeople had thrown in the pot to put a stop to Delias.”
“We have to go back to Silver Ridge,” Katherine said quietly. “We have to tell the people what Grey has done. Then our innocence will be established.”
“Is my brother gonna live?” asked Jacob weakly.
“Which way did they go?” Travis asked, his tone deep.
“I don’t know. Could be—”
“Which way?” Travis leaned closer to grab a handful of Jacob’s shirt.
The young man pulled weakly back. “I couldn’t say. But it looked t’ me like Delias had plans of heading back t’ town.”
There was a moment of silence, then, “If you’re lying, I’ll have your liver for supper,” Travis vowed grimly.
Jacob paled another shade, and for a moment Katherine thought he might faint.
“I ain’t lyin’, mister. I swear it.” Suddenly there were tears in his eyes. “They shot my brother. Woulda shot me too if’n they could.”
Travis’s fist loosened, allowing the boy to lie back against the log again. “Why didn’t they?”
Jacob shifted his gaze nervously to Cody, not sure if he could trust him any more than he did Travis. “They was having them a disagreement. The fella named Red, he wanted t’ shoot us straight off. But the old buzzard, Delias, he had him a branch that was a burnin’ on the end, and he lifted the thing and looks at us and says… He says they’d have them some fun with us first,” he finished.
Katherine felt the small hairs rise on the back of her neck, realizing the extent of the evil the boy had encountered.
Travis stood very still, clenching his fist above his revolver. “What happened?”
“There was a fight broke out amongst the men. Me and Luke, we saw our chance and hightailed it.”
“You sure they didn’t follow you?”
“I’m sure. We wasn’t nothin’ t’ them. Just…” He swallowed again. “Just sport. But…” His gaze caught on Travis’s. “They wanted you something fierce.”
Ryland stepped back a pace, visibly trying to relieve his tension.
“Listen, fellas, me and my brother, we seen the light. We ain’t gonna be outlaws no more. And if’n you could fix him up…” He paused long enough to swipe the back of a hand beneath his nose. “We’d stay on the straight and narrow till hell freezes up solid.”
The announcement was delivered with such honest desperation that Katherine felt like crying herself.
“He’ll live.” Cody’s tone was flat. “We got the bullet out, but he’s not likely to want to sit for a while.”
With that news the tears actually exited Jacob’s eyes. “Pretty damn low, ain’t it? Shootin’ a man in his backside?”
“The two of you will sleep in the wagon until he’s healed up,” Cody ordered quietly.
Not needing to be told twice, Jacob hurried over the tailgate and out of view.
“Pick up any more damn strays and we won’t have ‘nough food t’ last till morning,” Saws grumbled.
“You brought enough supplies for a hundred foot soldiers, old man,” Finch argued.
“And a good thing, too, the way we’re packin’ in extras. Hell, you’d think my wagon was a sickbed on wheels, makin’ me stow my goods on them raw-boned broncs like…” His voice trailed off as he bent to stir the stew.
“This change your plans?” asked Blackfeather.
“Yes,” said Kat. “We’ve got to get straight back to Silver Ridge to expose Grey’s true nature.”
“No!” Travis turned toward Cody. “She’ll be safest here with the crew. We’ll stick close until we reach the ranch.”
“But Travis—”
“No!” The word was issued from his throat like a savage growl. “You’ll go to Latigo, and you’ll stay put like you said.”
Katherine spent the remainder of the day doing nothing but drawing, cocking, and releasing the trigger of Finch’s gun. It was tedious and tiring, and it made her wonder if Travis had any intention of teaching her to shoot at all, or rather planned to waste her time until they reached Latigo’s ranch, where he would let her rot like an aged cut of beef.
But if such was his plan, he could think again.
Katherine pulled the revolver smoothly from the holster, staring over the barrel and into the distance. Travis Ryland would not be facing Delias alone. Of that she was certain.
“Wake up, lady,” Travis ordered brusquely.
Katherine rolled over, noticing the sky was only slightly lighter than pitch. Her right arm ached all the way to her shoulder. Her fingertips were chafed, and her thumb hurt from scraping against the fine metal ribbing on the hammer of Finch’s Colt. “What do you want?” she asked in a voice still husky with sleep.
“You’re the one wanted to learn to shoot, remember?”
With the Jameson boys in the wagon, she’d found a sheltered spot not far from camp and had make her bed there. Dimly she wondered if Travis had slept at all, or if he had climbed to some distant ridge to scout the country for any sign of trouble, as Finch said he had done on the previous night.
“You want to change your mind, it’s fine with me. It ain’t giving me no joy knowing you’ll be wandering around thinking you can protect yourself.”
Regardless of the kink in her back, Kat sat up now. “What have you got against teaching me to shoot, Ryland?” she asked, still groggy with sleep. “You afraid I’ll become a faster draw than you?”
“Lady.” She saw him shake his head in the dim beginnings of dawn. “You’re probably faster than I am now.”
“What?” Her mouth fell slightly ajar. “I thought you were a deadeye shot.”
“I’m steady,” he said with no show of pride. “I ain’t fast.”
“But Finch said—”
“Finch’s been listening to Latigo too long.”
She scowled, but he answered before she voiced a question.
“Like Saws said, Latigo collects stray boys like a crow collects shiny rocks. He takes them in, intending to give them a meal and send them on their way. Only they stick around, and pretty soon he thinks he’s their pa.”
“Is that what happened to you?” she asked softly, trying to remember not to care.
But Travis turned his face to the east and hardened his jaw. “If I’m going to teach you to shoot, I’m planning to do it right. We don’t have no time to waste.”
“I think I have a right to know, Travis.”
His gaze was pulled slowly back to her face. Her hair was crumpled and her oversized shirt slightly askew, but despite it all, she looked beautiful.
“I was nine. Maybe ten. We lived down in Kentucky. Had us a couple of slaves. Pa was home, and he was drunk, but not drunk enough, so Rachel, she sent me off to pick apples.” Strange how the memories still made his gut feel raw. “When I came back, the Negroes were gone…and Pa was dead.”
Kat’s inhalation seemed louder than her words, which were breathed out like a secret prayer, “I’m sorry.”
Travis shook his head. “I never could care, lady. It used to make me feel bad that I didn’t. Thought Rachel would be disappointed that I wasn’t sorry for his death. She always said he wasn’t a bad man. It was just missing Ma that made him mean. And the whiskey that made him blame me for her passing.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Katherine murmured in a voice as pale as her face in the darkness.
“She died just after birthing me.”
“Travis, I—”
&
nbsp; “I never knew her, so I didn’t miss her. And anyhow, Rachel was more a mother to me than I could of ever hoped to have.” He turned his gaze away, somehow not able to look at Kat’s perfect face when he said the next words. “Only she was shot, too. Found her when I come running back, spilling apples all the way. They’d…” He drew a deep breath. “God knows what they did to her before they shot her.” His throat hurt as if it had been cut. “She was only fourteen.” His hands were shaking, and he pressed them against his thighs to stop the trembling. “She was gut shot, but she lasted three days, and then she cried. Cried cuz she didn’t want to leave me alone.”
From the hill where the cattle had bedded down, a cow lowed and was answered.
“Was it Delias?” Her voice was very soft, and painfully husky.
Travis turned his gaze back to Kat. Her eyes were wide, and her body seemed no less tense than his. “How did you know?”
“You wouldn’t agree to kill him otherwise. Not unless he was truly evil.”
Ryland drew a deep breath, knowing he should turn away from her before weakness overcame him and he took her in his arms. “You don’t know me, lady.”
Her eyes did not falter from his. “The hell I don’t!”
“I killed more men than—”
“When?” she interrupted.
“Latigo, he found me, took me west with him. But I thought the Yankees had killed Rachel.” He shook his head, trying to clear it of the horrors that haunted him.
“You fought for the Confederacy?”
“I wore the gray colors, but I didn’t fight for no one but me.”
“And Rachel.”
It was difficult to breathe when she looked at him like she was now. “Don’t make me out to be no hero. I’m a long shot from that.”
“Not to me.”
Suddenly he stood, his heart all bound up in his chest and his head aching. “I killed innocent men! Don’t you see that? And for what? Nothing!”
She rose slowly, biting her lip and watching him. “That’s what war is, Travis. You didn’t invent it.”
He took a deep breath, trying to steady his will. “Latigo, he never told me it was Delias that killed her. But he knew all along. Then, a few months ago, when Delias began causing trouble in Colorado and I started asking questions, he told me the truth.” For a second Ryland squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed his fingers across his brow, which throbbed with a well-remembered pain. “I wanted to kill Lat when he first said it.”
“He must have had his reason for waiting.”
“Lat’s always got his reasons.” Travis nodded, but the movement felt stiff and unnatural. “Said he’d thought I’d get myself killed if I took on Delias too soon. Said I had a better chance with the Confederacy. Only he’d never been to war. Didn’t know what it does to a man.”
Suddenly, she was holding his arms, her small heart-shaped face lifted toward his. “What did it do to you?” she whispered.
“You see so much death. So much dying.” He could see it now. As if it had never ended. “Sometimes it seems like you’re already dead. Like it don’t matter. Nothing matters.”
“You matter, Travis.”
He was trapped in her eyes. He knew better than to let it happen, but he’d been caught off guard again. “I can’t protect you, lady,” he breathed. “Latigo padded my reputation, made me out to be a fast draw, a ruthless killer. Hell!” He snorted. “Some say I’m a ghost, that I couldn’t have lived through what I did. So I must have died and come back. Lat, he liked the idea, thinking that would scare folks real good. That it would surely help me survive. But I’m telling you it’s all a fairytale. I can’t keep you safe.”
“I’m not asking you to.”
“Wearing a gun, it don’t keep you alive, lady. There’s always someone faster. Somebody with something to prove. You got to go back east. I won’t watch you die.”
“I’m not going to die.”
Travis hugged her then, crushing her against his chest. Above her head his eyes fell closed, and against the softness of her breasts his heart ached with a longing he was powerless to ignore.
“Death surrounds me, lady.”
“No.” Her voice was almost silent against his chest. “I love you.”
He grabbed her arms, pushing her away to glare into her face. “Don’t say that again. You’ll stay with Latigo until this is all past. Then you’ll go home. Back to Boston.”
Her mouth had fallen ajar, and her silver eyes were round. “Travis…”
“Don’t say it! You’ll stay with Lat! Promise me!”
She shook her head.
“Promise me!” he said, gripping harder.
“All right,” she whispered. “I promise.”
They remained immobile, staring at each other and breathing hard.
“Good.” He nodded once, feeling his guts roil. “You’ll be safe with Lat. Three men can defend the house. He’ll make certain nothing happens to you.”
“Are you expecting me to trust him?”
Her tone was very cool now. Travis narrowed his eyes and studied her. “What are you asking?”
“You say I can’t trust you, the man I…” She stopped the words before they were out. “You say I can’t trust you to protect me. But you expect me to trust this Latigo?”
Travis still held her at arm’s length, but didn’t answer.
“You promised to teach me to defend myself. I’ll not let you back out.”
Travis drew a deep breath, letting his fingers tighten slightly on her arms. “I ain’t made of steel, lady.”
“Hardly that, Ryland.”
“Being with you…alone… It’s—”
“I don’t give a damn what it is,” she said, and, pulling her arms from his grasp, stepped quickly back, her strawberry lips pursed and her eyes hard. “You owe me that much.”
The dog followed them out of camp that morning and cowered behind a log when Katherine tried her first shots. By nightfall she could hit a two-inch knot on a pine tree four times out of ten. Thirty-six hours later she had doubled her odds.
“So, Rye, can she shoot the stinger off a bee yet?” asked Finch. “Or you still workin’ on the grip—firm, but not hard?”
Travis, as usual, sat with his back to the fire, for death would come from behind when it came, and the firelight was blinding. “Shut up, Finch.”
“You ever know anyone as closed mouthed as Ryland? Won’t tell y’ nothin’,” exclaimed Finch. “But I got me another source. Kat,” he said, turning to her. “How’s your fast… Damn.” He interrupted himself as his gaze found her. “She’s mighty purty when she sleeps, ain’t she?”
Travis jerked about quickly. Kat lay propped with her head cocked back against a log. Her hat had fallen off, leaving her blue-black hair to shine in the glow of the firelight and her downy lashes to paint delicate shadows beneath her hidden eyes. Clothed in boys’ garb, she looked like a lovely child who’d fallen asleep playing dress up. The sight made Ryland’s chest ache and his breath stop for an instant. “When have you been watching her sleep, Finch?” he asked. The words sounded hoarse and deadly to his own ears.
But Finch had known him a long time, and held up an unoffending hand, as if to ward off his anger. “I ain’t, Rye. I was just checkin’t’ see if you was awake.”
Travis loosened his fist, forcing his muscles to relax, and turned back to the darkness again. “Shut up, Finch,” he said dryly.
Saws chuckled behind him. “The wolf’s still got a bite, don’t he?”
“When the she-wolf’s around,” Elky said.
“I was hopin’ she could tell us another one of them stories like the one last night,” said Jacob, to which Luke nodded, and shifted uncomfortably on his blankets.
“Sorriest bunch of cowpokes I ever seen,” grumbled Sawdust. “No better than Kat’s Shadow there.” His narrow eyes shifted to the dog that had slipped up behind Katherine and now lay snuggled up against her body. “Pretty soon you’ll be rollin’ over fer
her t’ scratch yer bellies, and sleepin’ by her feet at night.” He snorted at his own wit then turned his gaze to Ryland. “Well, maybe not sleepin’ at her feet. Hell! Ain’t someone gonna carry her to her bedroll?”
Jacob, Luke, and Finch offered at the same time, although Luke was a little slow in rising to do the job.
Travis, however, reached her first, brushing their arms away with a sweep of his own.
“You wanna keep them hands, boys?”
There were mumbles, a grin from Finch, and three young men backed away as Travis bent and lifted her into his arms.
Every man watched him as he carried her from the circle of firelight, but it was Cody’s laughing eyes that made him want to swear.
She felt like a memory in his arms, like a dream he had once had. Not real, and yet not quite fantasy, but something so poignant in his mind that it would never be forgotten.
She had already spread her blankets beneath the sweeping branches of a lodgepole pine, and he set her there, gently settling her weight upon them, only to find he lacked the strength to draw away.
The moon had lifted over the mountain peaks and shone its gilded light upon her face now, shadowing and illuminating each feature with mystery and beauty. Travis’s breath was trapped, and against her side his heart beat like the thundering hooves of a running stallion.
Katherine Simmons was the very image of everything that was good and fine. She was strength, and sweetness. She was beauty, and practicality. She was smart, and she was ignorant.
He watched her in silence.
She was his. And yet she was not.
“I love you, too,” he whispered, and, closing his eyes, pulled his arms away to retreat into the night.
Chapter 28
Katherine lay quietly in the darkness. She had awakened while Travis carried her, had felt his emotions and heard his words.
He loved her. She held her breath, waiting for the euphoria to come. But it did not. Fear came instead, so strong it seemed to rip at her gut. But fear of what? Rejection? Loneliness? Her father had loved her, too.