Canyon Song

by Gwyneth Atlee

  The Senator had fond memories of Cameron, too. From the start, he’d appeared to recognize the young boy’s awe for what it was. Jonas Worthington was a man who fed on admiration like a half-starved grizzly on an elk carcass. But this time, he’d seemed interested in more than praise and envy. After Ward impressed him with a few broad hints about his growing wealth, the old man had done everything but drop his twenty-year-old daughter into Cameron’s lap.

  Ward tried to remember Miss Lucy’s features, but all that came to mind was her slight, short stature and fashionable coil of dark brown hair. He couldn’t even say for certain the color of her eyes or if her nose was long and thin or short and snub. He remembered almost nothing except the senator’s encouragement and her nearly wordless acquiescence to his wishes. They were engaged in no time, since Ward had to leave town soon. Stranger still, Worthington suggested that Ward marry her out here, instead of going through the unnecessary delay and travel involved in a Connecticut ceremony. He’d hinted that he would not forget his son-in-law when it came time to put in his two cents about federal judgeships in more civilized realms.

  Ward had the distinct impression that Worthington was eager to rid himself of this daughter ─ and quickly ─ for some reason. But he didn’t give a damn what it might be. The carrot of a federal judgeship close to home filled him with grand visions of lording his influence over those who’d snubbed him. The host of opportunities he’d enjoy Back East were worth learning later that quiet little Miss Lucy had six toes on each foot or the temper of an agitated rattler. He’d be married to a Worthington, so he’d be one of them.

  And if he didn’t like Lucy, he still had his lovely, raven-haired housekeeper, Elena. Elena might be furious that he was marrying an eastern gringa, but he knew she’d come around. She’d do what she must to ensure her special gifts would not cease now.

  He couldn’t let Miss Lucy see how nervous he felt, couldn’t let her guess the reason that her presence meant so very much to him. As the coach drew nearer, he willed his hands to cease their trembling, willed his flesh to absorb the beads of sweat that belied the frosty air. Still, his body made a fool of him.

  Let it, he decided stubbornly. Let her think he was trembling with his desire for her. Women read these things through lenses fogged with hope, or so his dealings with Elena had assured him. Lucy would be nervous about leaving family and friends for a fiancé she barely knew, for a territory so remote. Though she might well suspect her family name had induced him to propose marriage so quickly, she would hope for evidence of something far more flattering, of a love that sprang from Cameron full-grown as Athena had sprung from Zeus’s skull.

  Cameron only hoped Lucy would be somewhat less a headache.

  * * *

  Horace slid off his buckskin mare’s back and adjusted a cinch that felt too loose. He’d ridden out to see Edgar Renfro, but the old miner was just like all the others, too scared to speak out against the corrupt judge.

  “He already done me harm enough, the way I see it,” he’d told Horace, referring to the copper mine whose profits he had been compelled to “share”. “And he didn’t have nothin’ personal agin’ me then. What say that fella had a ax to grind?”

  The stoop-shouldered man had gone back to cooking fry bread then, letting his question end the conversation. Horace hadn’t bothered to try to dissuade him. He feared too much that Renfro might be right.

  Judge Cameron had hurt people just because it was convenient and he wanted what they owned. How much worse might he be if he were protecting himself from harm?

  If Horace had anything at all to lose, he would not have bothered. But Papa seemed so frail now and their tiny house so desolate, that Horace had already given up nearly everything he had that passed for hope.

  He remounted his horse and turned its nose toward the old bunkhouse. Riding past the old mission and the pair of tumble-down saloons that flanked it, he continued down Main Street past the tiny station where a stage had just come in.

  His jaw clenched at the sight of Judge Ward Cameron helping a delicate-looking young woman step down to the ground. That must be the bride from Back East. He pretended to adjust his glasses so he would not appear to stare. Naturally, Cameron hadn’t told Horace about his upcoming nuptials, but in a town the size of Copper Ridge, the news had swept through faster than a winter wind.

  Injustice made Horace’s throat close and his stomach churn. With so few women in these parts, it didn’t seem right that this one should go to a man so vile. It especially seemed wrong on a day when he felt so alone.

  Horace thought of returning to his papa to spend another evening coaxing the old man to eat just one more bite. His stomach roiled with the coming struggle, and he thought of taking his buckskin and riding past that bunkhouse, riding past and on and on. To a new life, where he’d be free to chase his dream of the newspaper. To a new life, and perhaps, someday, a woman and a family of his own.

  With a sigh, he nudged the mare toward home with his heels. Guilt rode with Horace at the thought of his temptation, for he dearly loved his father and would die before he abandoned him in his time of need. No matter what the cost, he meant to take care of Papa.

  And no matter what the cost, he’d find someone to help him ruin the bastard who had built his own house on suffering, the bastard who would now share it with a pretty Eastern bride.

  * * *

  Vomiting would make a poor impression, Lucy realized. So she swallowed back the sour taste and grasped Miss Rathbone’s elbow as soon as her fiancé helped her down from the coach. She tried to stare her questions at Ward Cameron: was this mockery of a village really Copper Ridge? Would she truly be expected to abide here?

  She grimaced to imagine whatever hovel he would have. Would it be one of those crude “adobe” mud huts, such as the natives used? Despite her father’s anger about her indiscretion, she’d believed that at least he would be certain her perdition wasn’t too unpleasant. Now she wondered if her father hadn’t found her a new home so remote that it would be left open to the wanderings of chickens, the scavenging of scrawny pigs.

  As if on cue, a loose cow trotted down the raw, red trail that appeared to serve the town as Main Street. Two poorly dressed black-haired boys chased it. She couldn’t tell if they were savages or Mexicans. Not that there was much of a difference, to her way of thinking, except the latter, at least, were Christians of a sort.

  The stage driver, a gangly young rogue, picked up a stone and grinned, then hurled it at the cow’s backside. Bellowing complaints, the animal mooed and bolted, leaving the children yelling curses in its wake.

  After sneaking a glance, she decided Judge Cameron didn’t look like the sort of man who would abide livestock in his dwelling. Ignoring the youngsters and the cow, he stood ramrod straight before her. With his suit freshly brushed and every bristle of his mustache expertly subdued, he looked the very picture of a Washington official, as out of place in this rough land as she.

  Yet there was something other in his bearing, some hard edge she had previously been too demoralized to notice, that suggested she was wrong. Perhaps it was the squareness of his jaw, the angle of his shoulders, or even the broadness of his stance. He looked confident, as if he knew this place and ruled it. Just as her father ruled in his.

  Her heart sank at the thought. Despite their eighteen-year age difference, she’d hoped for an indulgent husband. Papa said he’d be in awe of her family background, and she’d spun those words into wishes that he’d consider her above reproach. Heaven only knew she would need that in a husband. She would need it very soon.

  Two details leant her hope that Father had been correct in his assessment. The first was Ward’s brown bowler, which he was nervously attempting to smooth out. The second was his slight bow, the gentle way he reached to take her hand.

  Her gloved fingers looked tiny in Cameron’s palm, felt so fragile as he lifted her hand and kissed it politely.

  “My dear Lucy, welcome.”


  His gaze made her feel a goddess, though she knew that she must look ─ and smell ─ of travel.

  Releasing her hand, Cameron reached to take Miss Rathbone’s, but the thickset older woman snatched it away from him with an indignant sniff.

  “I would happily dispense with such niceties to determine whether this outpost offers any hospitality to two very weary lady travelers.”

  Lucy blinked in surprise. This pronouncement, from the sulking Miss Rathbone, nearly qualified as oratory. Lucy hadn’t heard her string together so many words at one time since their exile from Connecticut ─ and civilization.

  The woman’s irritable words prompted Cameron to action. With a sweep of his arm, he gestured toward a waiting covered phaeton drawn by a span of handsome sorrel horses. It was a finer looking turnout than Lucy had expected at this frayed hem of the world.

  She shot a smug smile at Miss Rathbone, whose tight-lipped disapproval she’d endured for weeks on end. Ward Cameron, despite his humble origins and the setting, must be a man of substance. A man whose wealth would insulate her from this wretched land and the rashness of her youthful errors.

  Despite the shameful circumstances of her exile, she was nearly certain she had landed on her feet.

  * * *

  Warm fur lay along the length of Anna’s back. A warm and breathing coat of fur. Notion must have crept onto her pallet again, as he sometimes did when it grew cold inside the cabin. Anna’s irritation flared briefly, then dissolved at a memory of a skin of ice across the holy water she kept atop a chest. On such a frigid night ─ she couldn’t guess the time from the dim cabin ─ it was hard to blame even a smelly dog for taking whatever comfort it might find.

  But she felt other warmth beside the dog’s. Another body lay beside her ─ she was sure of it. Anna cried out and jerked suddenly beneath the blanket. Despite the chill in the air, she felt a nauseating rush of heat. As her mind lurched toward consciousness, she first felt sure that this was just another nightmare. Even now, years after the events that had provoked them, vivid flashes jarred her out of sleep several times each month. She shuddered as a solid voice rose out of that memory:

  Sing somethin’ pretty, Annie Faith. Sing for us, you stinkin’ bitch!

  She flinched against a phantom kick, then realized she was here alone.

  “Whaa . . .?”

  The groggy voice catapulted her toward panic, until she remembered. It was Quinn who lay beside her.

  She felt his breath against her cheek, felt the warmth and weight of his arm draped across her ribcage. As she wriggled beneath the scratchy woolen blanket, another fact came into focus. Neither of them wore a stitch of clothing. With a start, she tried to pull away.

  With gentle firmness, his strong arms held her close, until she felt his scratchy whiskers tickling her ear. “Annie . . . you all right?” His voice was clearer now, more present.

  Her heartbeat pounded like the raindrops beating on the cabin walls. “Dios mio . . .” she breathed, “I thought you were them . . . coming back to hurt me.”

  His eyes reflected firelight. “Who?”

  “Them ─ the men . . . but it’s over. Over long ago,” she reassured herself more than him.

  “Did it happen after you left me?”

  She nodded, but offered him no more. The rude awakening left her feeling jittery and unexpectedly weak.

  “You’re warmer now, at least.”

  She was relieved he’d changed the subject. The flashing memories of her attack scattered like marbles from a child’s pouch emptied onto hardwood.

  “I thought you’d never thaw.” He gently brushed her hair out of her eyes.

  She flinched at even that small movement, then willed her limbs to stop their violent quivering. “Warmer?”

  Almost before she asked, she recognized the tapping at the rooftop, tapping on the cabin’s north wall. Icy raindrops clicked against the wood, bringing a snow-slide of recent memory: the mountain lion’s attack on the old horse, the long walk in the freezing rain toward home, her fall down the slick slope and the harsh words she’d heard above her. But most of all, the aching struggle of her body against its frozen shell of death.

  Dimly, she recalled reaching the cabin, recalled how Quinn had helped strip her of the icy clothes that sheathed her. How, despite the awkwardness and weakness of his wounded body, he’d pulled her close to him beneath the blanket and shared his warmth.

  Just as he still shared it.

  Notion rose from his place behind Anna’s back and stretched with a wide yawn. He ambled to his more customary spot against the old chest and turned precisely three tight circles before lying down once more.

  Without the dog’s presence, Anna became uncomfortably aware of the body that still lay against her, which, despite its injured shoulder, was all too obviously a man’s. Though sleep and warmth left him relaxed, she noticed the firm contours of strong upper arms, the long-forgotten coarseness of his sparse chest hair against her breasts, the breathing that timed itself precisely to match hers. Or had it been vice versa? Had her sleeping body betrayed her by merging with his rhythms?

  Then other realizations struck her, nearly as disturbing as any dream. The invitation of their nakednesss, their isolation here, what had passed between them other times when they had lain alone together. Her body ached with emptiness and, unexpectedly, with longing.

  She had shunned male companionship for six long years. But she had known much of it before. So much of what men could do: their roughness, their demands, even their violence. In a saloon, men often assumed she sold her body like the soiled doves that worked the upstairs rooms. Many times, she’d had to use her derringer or knife to carve out a night alone. But sometimes, she grew so weary. Weary enough to take a lover in the hopes he would protect her for a while. But nothing of those experiences had hinted there’d been anything in a man’s touch she might miss. Nothing until Quinn.

  In those two weeks they’d had together, he’d taught her that a man could give pleasure, not just take it, and that pleasing her could increase his joy. She well remembered the awakening of her senses, his introduction to a secret, unimagined world. For the first time in her life, she went to a man willingly, for more than mere protection. He’d paid Miss Hilda a god-awful pile of coins to guarantee the two of them her boardinghouse’s finest private room — with no intrusions. The money he had spent made Anna feel special, and she had tried to pretend for those two weeks she was the gambler’s woman, not just a diversion on the road.

  Yet in the end, she knew he’d leave her. A man like Ryan couldn’t shear the same sheep for too long. Already, he had overstayed his welcome, returning to her bed night after night. And without a string of other men to harass her, she began to look forward to his visits, to fall prey to his gentle, expert touch.

  Of course, he’d meant to leave her. They all did, even the ones who seemed to fall in love. A singer in a cheap saloon, she was little better than a prostitute, she realized, and all he’d bought was the illusion of something that was real. So she steeled her soul against his kindness and remembered only the ease with which he spent money on an expensive new felt hat, the fortune he had squandered on a fine silk dress for her. He must have so much more. He might even have enough . . .

  Her own delicate shiver brought her to the present. Quinn pulled the blanket higher. Protectively, as might a lover, though she realized now that with his injury, with her near-freezing, they had not made love, as she had begun to imagine.

  Mixed up in her relief she felt a bright stain of regret, which took her by surprise, like a spot of blood in a fresh egg yolk.

  She forced her mind to turn back to what she’d overheard, then forced herself to speak. “I fell when I was walking. I’ve never been so cold. Then I heard men’s voices ─ saying they’d come back to find a woman. I think ─ I think they might have been the ones who ─ ones who . . .”

  “The ones who hurt you? Who, Annie? You have to tell me who.”

  �
��They’ll come back, and God forgive me, I’ll kill them before I let them lay a hand on me again.”

  “Who are they?” he insisted.

  “I don’t know their names except for one. There was a man named Hamby. I can’t let him ─ ”

  Quinn swore softly, interrupting her descent into panic. “─ Hamby. That makes sense. I caught him with my mare. And don’t worry. You won’t have to kill him. I’d be glad to do the honors for you. One of his boys put that bullet in me.”

  “I have to get up now,” Anna whispered, her mind swirling with old horror. “I won’t let them catch me here like this.”

  He pulled her down, toward him. “Calm down and relax. How can you be sure of what you heard? You were half-frozen when you stumbled in here, ice all over you. People hear things, even see things when they’re cold like that. Hell, I thought I was having lamb stew with my mother when I was lying in the snow.”

  “I heard them . . . at least I think . . . maybe . . .” She pulled away, more appalled by the comfort she was drawing from Quinn’s nearness than a possible attack. Her skin tingled with a whisper of old pleasure where it grazed his.

  Surely Quinn must feel it, too, the way their bodies remembered what they both would disavow. He must, or else he wouldn’t pull her even nearer, wouldn’t touch his lips so cautiously to hers.

  Anna felt an almost painful spark where their mouths met, almost like a shock that sometimes leapt from metal to flesh on a dry, cold winter’s day. Yet unlike that sensation, this one drew her forward like a lodestone drew a compass needle, giving her direction, a new path to point out.

  His kiss grew less tentative, more questing. As if he sought some treasure he would only know once it was found. As if he’d somehow forgotten what she had done to him.

  Their mouths together formed a moist warmth so inviting, she could barely force herself to pull away. Yet finally she did, for she remembered things that he would not acknowledge, and other things that he would never know.