Ned stared down at the man he’d ridden with for four long years and wondered what emotions other folks might experience at a time like this. As for him, he felt just like he did when he killed anybody, completely empty of all but physical sensations, in this case exhaustion and cold. His hands, especially, were freezing. That must be the reason that they shook as he holstered his gun.
His hands warmed a little when he used his knife to hack off Pete’s scalp. Maybe he oughtn’t to have done that to old Pete, he thought, in light of everything they’d been through. But by now, the action had become a habit, one he didn’t know if he could break. Besides, Pete hardly looked the same with a chunk of that hair missing. A wet mask of crimson made his face seem almost like a stranger’s.
His grisly task completed, Ned began to shiver once again. He stooped to pull Sheriff Ryan’s leather gloves off the corpse’s stiffening hands.
As he turned away to put them on, he offered his old partner a few final words. “Sorry, Pete, but, the way I figure it, you’ll have the fires of hell to warm you now.”
* * *
With hands so cold she could barely feel them, Anna turned up her wool coat’s collar and once more adjusted her broad-brimmed leather hat. Neither action helped much. The collar had acquired a thin layer of frozen moisture. Now against her neck, it melted, sending freezing rivulets into her shirt. Though it offered more protection than a bare head, her hat had been transformed into a crown of ice.
The rain continued, still mingled with thick, white snowflakes. A chill breeze stirred the gray sky cauldron with the cruelty of the Devil’s hand. As it increased, Anna heard a mysterious sound, like the most delicate chiming. Her chattering teeth tapped it a rhythm, and for several moments her fogged brain thought it was the tinkling of coins as they struck one another, the evening’s take at the last saloon where she had worked.
She struggled onward, keeping beneath the pine trees’ limbs for whatever scant protection they might offer. Another gust gave her an answer to the mystery of the chimes. It was the treetops, covered as they were with glassy layers, striking each other whenever the breeze stirred. The beauty of it awed her, as did the crystalline sculpture of the icy limbs. If the clouds lifted and the sunlight touched the treetops, it would look as if the canyon bottom were afire.
How strange for her thoughts to linger on the splendor of this canyon, even as its wild beauty killed her. Though she felt oddly separate from that hard fact, she knew that it was true, that while her numb, wet feet yet staggered forward, she was quickly losing her race against the cold.
So cold she ached with it. So cold that her body gave up its futile shivering and struggled to drag its own dead weight. Though some part of her knew she was close to home now, she suspected that she wasn’t close enough. With that realization came a misstep into snow much deeper than it first appeared. In an instant, she spun downhill to strike the base of an oak tree.
She lay there, stunned and outstretched like a child making angels in the snow. And as she did, she heard the thudding steps of something heavy on the frozen ground above, on the opposite side of the screen of bushes she’d slid past.
The cougar! Panic flooded through her veins, once more offered the unexpected blessing of its warmth. For while she might freeze to death, she wasn’t going to just lie here as she was eaten. She dug her hand into a pocket, but her fingers were too cold to grasp her hunting knife.
No matter. It wasn’t the mountain lion at all, she realized, for the muffled thumps were hoof beats in the snow, not broad, soft paws. Something uphill charged past her, and she caught a glimpse of the dark brown neck of a horse. She saw no one aboard it, but she couldn’t be completely sure.
She had to catch that horse. If it was halfway tame, she could ride it back to her cabin. If there was a rider, she could flag him down and persuade him to take her the short distance home.
But the horse was long gone now; she’d never catch it. Not in her condition. Not even, probably, if she weren’t half-covered in ice. Tears welled in her eyes as she struggled up the slope. Yet as she continued, she heard more hoof beats two horses this time, she guessed.
The thrumming pounded to a stop.
One man swore, “God damn it! You think old Pete would run halfway to Texas chasing one of our nags through this blizzard?”
Something in that voice formed razor-edged shards of memory in Anna’s mind. The sound of her own blood in her ears rose to a deep whoosh, like the rushing of the creek in early summer after the snow melt. She could no more continue moving uphill past the intervening bushes than she could will the storm to stop.
The second rider’s voice sounded younger, as high-pitched as a boy’s. “Let him catch his own horse if he ain’t dead already.”
Those words provoked no reaction in her memory, but the first speaker boomed cruel laughter, a sound that resonated in her core. “Yeah. Ned ain’t the safest nanny for a hurt man. I thought I heard a gunshot while back.”
“Then why didn’t you stop us?” The younger voice brimmed with impatience.
“That bay’s a better horse than this used-up mustang I been ridin’.”
“Maybe he’ll go back to the cabin. Horses usually run home.”
“If nothin’ kills him first. It’s been a hard winter. There’s hungry critters all over these parts.”
The jingle of a horse’s tack, or perhaps the tinkling of the breeze-touched treetops, did nothing to soften the harsh sound of the man’s voice in Anna’s ears.
“I ain’t goin’ one more step to chase him. Old Ark here’s about done in, and I’m colder than a whore’s heart.”
“Yeah. Let’s collect Hamby, then get back to the cabin. If that woman’s ‘round these parts, she’ll still be here once this storm’s over.”
Hamby. The name made Anna’s world careen crazily, as if her feet had just flown out from under her. Then she’d been right about that voice. It was one of Hamby’s men, perhaps one who’d helped toss her down a hillside, leaving her to die.
The horses’ hoof beats receded into the distance. Anna once more found herself shivering, but this time with fear, not just the cold.
Madre de Dios! If the blizzard didn’t kill her, it sounded as if those beasts meant to do the job.
She set her jaw and started walking. If they came back, they would find her at her cabin, but this time she would not cower helplessly and beg them to go. This time, with God’s help, she would destroy them before they could kill her.
CHAPTER FOUR
Quinn sensed Annie’s continued absence almost before his shivering fully woke him. The fire had burned to red-gold embers, despite the thick log she had placed on it before she left the cabin. How long had he slept? Had she come back at all during that time? Looking around the cabin, he saw nothing that indicated she had been here recently. The dog still sat beside the door and gazed at it expectantly.
I’m sorrier than I could ever tell you.
Her apology returned to him, even though she hadn’t. The simple earnestness of her words sounded nothing like the captivating singer who’d caught his eye so long ago. This time, she sounded like she meant what she said.
Could six years have really changed her as much as it changed him?
If it makes you feel any better, I was punished for my crimes.
What the devil had she meant? Certainly, the law had never caught up to her, or she would have been hung, or at least imprisoned. Since he’d been a sheriff, he would have learned about it, maybe even recovered his gold, as he had finally gotten back his mare, Titania.
He wondered anew about how he’d come to reclaim the horse from Ned Hamby the day the outlaw rode her into town. Quinn had always suspected that Annie had a lover among the ruffians, though the idea had both amazed him and made him surprisingly uneasy. She’d never seemed the type to admire outlaws, though she’d never seemed the type to rob him either. Perhaps, after she’d turned over her ill-gotten treasures, her man had turned on her.<
br />
Some part of him hoped the man had beaten her black and blue. Quinn had dreamed about doing the same thing a time or two, at least. But another part wondered if it had been Annie’s “punishment” that had dampened all her spark.
He’d be an idiot to care what happened after she had robbed him, after she’d caused him to lose everything that really mattered. He was a fool to worry now, yet he still did.
She’d been gone for hours, if the fire was any indication. He wrapped the blanket around himself more snugly, but both worry and the growing cold kept him from drifting back to sleep. His stomach, roused from its rest by the sweet tea he’d drunk earlier, now demanded sustenance.
It was only natural, then, that he was worried. Not for the thief, of course, but for himself. He was still too weak to tend to all his needs without her.
He peered at the dying fire, a few short feet away. Beside it lay a neat pyramid of logs. If he could scoot that far, put more wood on the fire, the cabin would warm quickly. And when Annie returned, she would see he wasn’t completely helpless after all.
He groaned at the idea of moving after so long spent lying still. The memory of his shoulder’s throbbing pain was still fresh in his mind, and he hated like hell to rouse it from its almost pleasant stupor. Yet at every minute, the cabin grew a little colder. If he let the fire burn down completely, he’d have the devil’s own time starting it again.
He hated himself for needing her, wondering when she would return. He envisioned how he would look to her, naked, with his teeth chattering, just a few feet from the wood. Absolutely helpless.
Damned if he would let her find him that way. He steeled himself and slowly began to edge his body closer to the fireplace. As he pushed himself nearer, he felt sweat beading on his forehead, and he had to grit his teeth against the ache. He must have made some sound, for the gold dog leapt to its feet and trotted over.
“Don’t you dare,” Quinn threatened.
The mongrel licked his face anyway, until Quinn pushed him away. He couldn’t allow himself to be distracted from his goal. Just a few more inches . . .
He reached out and grabbed a log, then began to lift it toward the pile of glowing embers.
The dog barked and grabbed the log’s other end in his mouth. With a playful growl, he began to pull. Quinn tried to hold onto his prize, but the damned cur tore it from his grasp. Wagging his tail in victory, the dog bounded around the small cabin.
Quinn called him repeatedly, to no avail.
“If I could get up now,” he threatened, “I’d beat you with that log.”
He reached for a second log and hoped to God the dog wouldn’t initiate Round Two of tug-of-war. Fortunately, it seemed content to chew its trophy. This time, Quinn quickly shoved a log into the embers and was rewarded with the satisfying crackle of new flame. He put on another log for good measure before he began to carefully push himself back to the pile of blankets where he had been resting earlier. To warm his back, he rolled onto his opposite side, so it would face the heat.
The cabin door banged open, nearly startling him out of his skin. In a blur of motion, Annie staggered into the room. She groaned and kicked the door shut against the howling wind. A host of snowflakes settled to the floor to melt into the dirt.
“Son of a” He started, just as she fell to her knees. “What’s wrong? What happened to you? You were gone so long. I was”
He couldn’t make himself say that he’d been worried. Couldn’t let her think he’d cared about anything but getting fed and keeping warm.
She was shaking, shaking as violently as a drunk in deep withdrawal. The firelight glittered off her hat, her coat, her flesh ice. She was iced over, he realized in another instant.
“Can you make it over here, closer to the fire? Then you can get warmer. I’ll help if you come here.”
She did not respond at first, but the dog sprang to life once more, pawing at her and whining loudly. It licked at her face until she roused, then began crawling toward the fire. At one point, it grabbed her sleeve in its strong jaws and pulled her in that direction, as if it understood her need and meant to help.
As Annie collapsed next to Quinn, thin sheets of ice fell off her hat and collar. He touched his fingers to her cheeks, then her neck. Her flesh felt cold as a corpse’s. He couldn’t imagined how she’d gotten here.
Forgetting the aching in his shoulder, he pulled off her hat, which caused a small avalanche of icy snow.
“You have to get out of these freezing clothes,” he told her as he began unbuttoning the wet coat.
She flailed her arms and tossed her head back and forth, as if she meant to deny him. But her trembling robbed her of coordination, and he managed to remove the coat and then her shirt.
"Jesus, Annie," Quinn muttered. Nothing else seemed adequate to what he saw and felt. The cold pallor of her skin, even in the firelight's orange glow. The thin sheets of ice that slid off her clothes and melted, making chill mud of the dirt floor. The bluish tint of her lips, even the nipples of her small, round breasts.
He drew her body against him and tried to ignore the confusing emotions that swirled about him like fresh snow. The simple, human horror of seeing another in such straits. The selfish concern that if she died, he might well die, too, from lack of care. The revulsion at her flesh, not much warmer than a cadaver’s against him. The dim tickle of lust that he felt looking on that graceful, slender body, with its high, firm breasts exposed. Quickly, he pulled the blanket over both of them, amazed most by his last thought. Amazed that he could feel anything now, just a few short days from being shot down, and that he could still see beauty in this woman who had wreaked such havoc on his life.
As if she read his mind, she spoke, her voice rumbling with the rhythm of her chattering jaws. "You you b-better not be enjoying this, Ryan. El-else I'm gonna m-make you a a nice pot of goat t-turd tea."
"Oh, come on. You're about as entertaining as cuddling up to an icicle. Now, help me with those jeans."
"No!"
"You're dripping ice-water all over, and as much as I hate to admit it, I can't strip you by myself."
"F-first time for everything . . ." She fumbled at the buttons on her jeans, but her fingers shook too hard to be effective.
"On a better day, I’d charm you out of those." He pushed away her hands and attended to the buttons himself, feeling awkward as a schoolboy.
He tried not to notice how her hips moved against his nakedness as she wriggled out of the wet denim. But memories overwhelmed him anyway: the sweet, floral scent of the powder she had worn, the wheat-gold gleam of her blond hair, the silken sweep of it against his skin. Then. When he had been a whole man, and she had been a pretty saloon singer.
What was wrong with him, remembering? She was nothing to him now, nothing but a lifeline, a thin thread of bad memories that kept him suspended between recovery and death. Certainly nothing to remember fondly, nothing to nudge an old attraction into wakefulness. Just bare flesh against bare flesh, a reaction as natural as a sneeze.
All in all, this felt more pleasant, though her chill flesh robbed him of needed warmth. A sneeze right now would probably feel like something detonated inside his wounded body. This explosion was far gentler, slower, and after a time wrapped him in a sweet, dark blanket.
He became aware of her breaths, lengthening, then matching his own. Of her body, which began to warm degree by slow degree. Of her muscles, which loosened just as slowly. Until she slept, and then he, too, could finally rest.
* * *
Even though the stage was still a distant silhouette against the snowy sky, Ward Cameron rose from the hard pine bench where he’d been sitting. He’d been waiting for this moment for twenty-five minutes and twenty-five years ─ ever since that fateful visit to then-Mayor Worthington’s fine home. Despite his youth and his appalling ignorance, he’d known then what he wanted, what he needed. To blend into that group of people who knew things and who owned things. To someda
y overcome his awful origins, to be one of them.
He had studied the rich as if they were some unknown species. Then he adopted their exotic ways, mastered each and every one. Yet still, there must have been some invisible difference, some taint of poverty that clung to him like the hint of an old stench.
He suspected as much while still studying the law. In groups with his classmates, he sometimes met lovely young ladies, even made them laugh with his studiously witty bon mots. Yet when he tried to call upon them privately, a knowing servant always said, “How sad. You’ve just missed her,” or “Miss B─ is not receiving visitors this afternoon.”
Later, his suspicions were confirmed. When the time came to take his place in his profession, all the choice positions went to young men with family connections, even young men with the charm and perspicuity of parsnips. Still, he’d hammered out a career in law from the scraps left to him, and finally, he’d managed to turn his idol, Worthington, into a benefactor. The former mayor had parlayed shrewdness, ruthlessness, and an uncanny ability to say the right things to the right people into a seat in the United States Senate. Thanks to the Senator’s influence, Cameron received a Presidential appointment as a territorial judge out west, where ancestry mattered far less than a man’s skill and ambition. Where no one would whisper about how his mother had died drunk in a pool of her own vomit, how his father had turned as mean as a mad dog.
As the stagecoach drew nearer, Cameron snatched the expensive bowler from his head and promptly crushed it in his nervousness. Noticing the damage, he smoothed the brim and brushed furiously at the stiff brown felt.
When Ward had returned home in the wake of his father’s funeral, he’d been grateful for Senator Worthington’s kindness. Although sorting out his old man’s laughable “estate” had been Ward’s excuse to go home, he had really come to renew his acquaintance with the man who’d become quite influential during his tenure in the Senate.
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