Canyon Song

by Gwyneth Atlee

  Quinn explained to her. “This is Horace Singletary. He came to warn me about Max. He overheard him talking with Cameron this morning.”

  The woman aboard the mule winced at the sight of Max’s face. “Did you do that?” she asked Quinn.

  “I wish I could take credit. Allow me to introduce our not-so-helpless damsel in distress. This is Anna.” Deliberately, he didn’t mention her last name. “Anna, this is Mrs. Cameron.”

  “Lucy,” the young woman corrected as she slid off the mule. “Are you quite all right, Anna?”

  “Lucy Cameron?” Anna’s color dropped another shade. “You’re married to the judge?”

  Lucy glanced toward Horace before answering. “Not for long, I hope.”

  Quinn retrieved Max’s gun.

  “I ought to shoot you with this,” he told his former deputy. He yanked the star off Max’s vest, beneath his jacket, and tossed it away. “You’re a damned disgrace.”

  Max wriggled loose another tooth and spat a mouthful of blood. “And you’re a crazy man, to hook up with this thieving hellcat!”

  “Get back to camp,” Quinn told him, “before I set her loose on you again.”

  * * *

  Quinn poked at the fire, not to accomplish anything, but because he needed to do something with his hands. Probably, he ought to start something cooking for the group that had now swollen to five, but Max’s betrayal left him unsettled, and Horace’s appearance raised the specter of regret.

  Amazingly, Anna knelt nearby, cleaning the very wounds she’d given to Max Wilson. The latter had his hands and feet tied and a look so sour it would likely curdle milk. But at least he’d ceased his cursing in light of Quinn’s offer to knock him out cold if he didn’t quiet down.

  Cameron’s wife moved stiffly toward Anna and offered to take over.

  “I wouldn’t expect you’d want to help him after what he tried to do,” she said.

  “I’m a healer,” Anna told her. “It’s not my job to judge worth, only to tend the wounded.”

  That was what he was when he’d been brought to her, Quinn thought morosely. The wounded. He was glad she hadn’t tried to judge his worth. Looking at Horace, he found it a bit lacking.

  “I’m sorry,” he told the clerk, who was standing near the fire, polishing his glasses with a handkerchief.

  “For what?” the younger man responded.

  “For not doing any more.” Quinn sighed. “You did a fine thing today, riding out to warn me about Max. You saved Anna’s life and maybe mine as well. I’m not sure whether I deserve the favor, but I thank you.”

  Horace stood in silence, his blue eyes forming a question that he did not voice.

  Quinn continued. “Your father asked for help when outlaws started running off his herds. Hell, he didn’t just ask, he begged for it. I rode to the ranch to check on things a few times, but of course by that time the raiders were long gone. Couldn’t raise much interest in a posse, and the judge kept hammering home the point that I was paid to keep the town safe, not run all over the territory hunting rustlers. So I went back to dragging drunks out of saloons at closing time and arresting petty thieves.”

  “Wasn’t that your job?” Horace asked him.

  “I should have done more for him. You were still away at school, and I suspected his old friends had been warned off. But I turned a blind eye, didn’t ask too many questions. Cameron had enough on me to make that difficult.”

  Horace put back on his glasses, but Quinn could still see how the eyes behind them watered.

  “A lot of folks have been hurt by Cameron,” Horace said quietly. “My question isn’t what you did before. It’s what will you do now?”

  “I’m going after Hamby, for starters,” Quinn promised.

  “And I’m going after Cameron. Will you help?”

  Quinn stood and offered his hand. “In every way I can.”

  Horace accepted, and the two shook over his promise. He might have failed Horace’s father, but Quinn swore he would help this Singletary.

  No matter what the cost.

  * * *

  After she finished cleaning the scratches on the face of the deputy who had attacked her, the tall blonde stood, holding the bloody rag she’d used.

  Remembering her own panic after Elena’s attempt upon her life, Lucy wondered at this woman, who seemed so self-possessed. How could she separate crime from criminal to help the very man who’d meant to harm her? And how could she, as a woman perhaps no more than five years Lucy’s senior, call herself a healer and dress in men’s attire?

  This territory was full of even stranger things than she’d imagined. But instead of being repelled by the differences between herself and this odd woman, Lucy wondered if some magic of the land had worked upon her, if the ruggedness of rock had somehow added mettle, if the endless bowl of blue sky had widened her perspective.

  “I need to walk down to the arroyo so I can rinse this cloth,” the blond woman explained.

  “I’d like to stretch my legs, too. May I come with you, Annie Faith?”

  “It’s Anna, please.”

  “I’m Lucy.”

  “We’ll be right back,” Anna told Sheriff Ryan and Horace, who remained deep in conversation near the fire.

  The two women walked down to one of the pockets of water that lay along a crevice near the hillock’s base. By now, stars reflected on the small pool’s surface. Above them, warm yellow light danced between the men.

  When Anna knelt to rinse the rag, Lucy could hear one of her knees pop. Ignoring it, the healer glanced up at her.

  “How far along are you?” she asked.

  Shock resonated through Lucy’s core. If this stranger could see her condition, there was no hope of keeping it a secret any longer. Everyone she meant would know; everyone would judge her.

  “How?” Lucy began. “How can you . . .?”

  “The way you walk,” Anna explained. “A woman balances herself differently as a child grows.”

  Lucy shook her head, and once more she felt panic welling up inside her, as well as unreasoning anger with herself, with David, even with the unborn babe. “Everything’s been out of balance ever since it started, about four months ago. And now – now – I don’t know—”

  “Shh . . . A little while ago, Quinn told me about what happened back in Copper Ridge. Lucy, an attempt was made on your life, too. I remember . . . the first time it happened to me . . . when I was carrying a daughter, just as you are.”

  “A – a daughter?” Was there no limit to this woman’s knowledge?

  From the distance, an eerie cry rose, a wild sound from a wild creature Lucy could not name. As the echo died away, Anna did not explain how she had formed this last opinion.

  “Your daughter,” she said instead, in a voice as soft as the reflected starlight. “Your daughter is your gift, just as mine was.”

  “My baby – my daughter,” Lucy said, accepting, “is illegitimate.”

  “Ridiculous,” Anna admonished. “Every child is legitimate. Sin can’t be handed down through generations. Each of us has the chance to commit our own. As you committed yours . . . and I committed mine.”

  “This baby is my punishment!” A rush of anger burned her face.

  Anna chuckled without a trace of humor. “I’m not God, Lucy, but I’d say marrying Judge Ward Cameron is punishment enough for one lifetime. Loving your daughter, I swear to you, will be your reward – if you can let it. Cherish her for every day you have her.”

  A lump formed in Lucy’s throat, and though she was genuinely curious about the woman, she could not bring herself to ask where Anna’s child was now. For she had heard enough in the woman’s voice to guess her daughter died.

  Lucy took a deep breath – and felt movement, a quickening inside her. The first stirrings of a new life, the first stirrings of new hope.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Near Copper Ridge

  April 12,1884

  Cameron was the first to spot t
hem, his wife riding a mule in the company of two men. To his utter shock, one of them was Horace Singletary. He’d been told that the bastard burned the night before last!

  Had Lucy run to that weasel when she was frightened? He’d ignored Elena’s tale of how his wife had “encouraged” the young man after he’d come ranting to The Pines. Elena might say anything, as jealous as she was.

  Deep in the pit of his stomach, something burned at the thought of Elena, with her wild eyes and her hoarse shrieks. He felt as if he’d swallowed a live coal.

  But before he had time to wonder if Elena had been right about his wife and the young clerk, yet another shock assailed him. Max Wilson was the second man, and he’d been tied onto his horse, which Singletary was now leading.

  Cameron mainly recognized Wilson from his clothing. His face looked as if it had gone a few rounds with an irate bobcat.

  “That your wife?” Hadley had ridden up beside him and also stared down at the trio.

  None of the riders appeared to see them, as they were partially hidden by the shadow of a taller live oak tree.

  Cameron nodded.

  “What do you make of this, then?” Hadley asked.

  “Nothing good,” Cameron said as his mind fumbled to piece together what had happened. Whatever Horace had told Lucy would surely be enough to end their marriage, especially considering its inauspicious start.

  The thought of Lucy squalling home to Daddy Worthington was bad enough that Cameron thought of killing both Horace and Lucy. Ward wondered if maybe somehow, he and Hadley could “find” the bodies and pin the murders on Elena.

  But Max’s presence and the ropes that bound him complicated things a great deal. It meant that somehow or another, Quinn Ryan must have figured out what his deputy was up to. It also meant that Ryan, Singletary, and Lucy had all talked. For all Cameron knew, Ryan might have Anna with him, too.

  And all of them would know enough to ruin everything.

  Hadley clapped a hand to Cameron’s shoulder. “I remember what I owe you, friend. You need anything, just ask.”

  Cameron’s mind raced as he thought of the ruination of all he’d worked to build. They could send him clear back to newspaper-covered walls and nothing in his belly. Hell, they could do worse. They could pack him off to Yuma for his crimes. Trapped among the men he’d sent there, he wouldn’t last long enough to break a sweat in the intense heat of the desert prison.

  The three riders moved in the direction of Copper Ridge until they passed out of sight.

  “Can you make sure those three don’t get back to Copper Ridge?”

  “You want me to kill the county clerk, the deputy, and your own wife? Hell’s bells, man, I don’t mind payin’ back what’s due, but that’s an awful lot of interest, don’t you think?”

  Cameron nodded stiffly. Hadley might have done some questionable things to defend his water from the sheep-lovers, but he was a prosperous family man with too much to lose to get his hands this dirty. “Hell with that, then. Forget I asked. I’ll figure out a way to straighten up that mess when I get back. There’s just one thing I really need for you to do.”

  “Sure.” Hadley looked relieved that he hadn’t pushed harder.

  “You still have that gunslinger on your payroll?”

  “A man has to watch both his cattle and his water out here, if his ranch is gonna last.”

  Cameron put a hand up. “I understand that. What I want is for you to send him into Copper Ridge to see if there’s anyone holed up in Ryan’s house. Anyone at all. If there is, there needs to be an accident. Or at the very least a permanent disappearance.”

  This was more Hadley’s style. Send someone else, a hired gun, to do the actual killing. And if Anna Bennett had been hidden there, that would be one less complication.

  Hadley backed his horse away a few steps, then turned its head toward town. “All right, Cameron. But you mark me ‘Paid in Full.’ You hear?”

  “You could have hung,” Ward reminded him coolly, thinking of the band of Mormons that had been found dead on his range.

  Hadley’s blue eyes burned with defiance. “And so could you. You comin’ back to town now?”

  Cameron shook his head. “Not yet. I have another thing to settle first.”

  Cañon del Sangre de Cristo

  “This way,” Anna advised, pointing out a cleft of red rock to their left. “If we ride down into the canyon on the main trail, there are too many places where we might be ambushed.”

  Quinn glanced upward to the sheer and narrow walls. A shaft of sunlight slipped between the building gray clouds and into the same slot where they would have to ride their horses single file. His expression looked dubious, but after a moment he relented. “If you say so.”

  Anna had never thought much before about the closeness, but his misgivings made her feel hemmed in by her safe haven, even the wider canyon opening. Or perhaps it wasn’t Quinn at all. Perhaps leaving the canyon for a few days had somehow changed her outlook. The air she’d breathed had swept across the land unbounded; the skies she saw formed a great bowl, not a strip.

  Glancing once more at the wide expanse above, she urged her mount into the slim corridor that would lead her home once more. Her horse’s hooves echoed loudly against the windswept rock. Startled by the change in tone and volume, the bay snorted and rose on its rear legs.

  “It’s all right,” Anna reassured him, but her voice rebounded off the smooth walls.

  The gelding shuffled, bumping rock, and whinnied shrilly in its fear.

  “Hold up,” Anna warned Quinn. After much coaxing, she backed the bay out of the channel.

  “Maybe he’ll follow if I go first,” Quinn suggested. But Titania, as if spooked by the gelding’s fear, pranced and sidestepped. Despite Quinn’s reassurances, she steadfastly refused to enter the narrow passageway.

  “I don’t understand it. Canto never seemed to mind,” Anna complained. But Canto had been so old that few things stirred his blood. She grimaced, remembering how he had started just before the cougar had attacked. She should have realized then that something was amiss.

  She dismounted and made one last attempt to lead the bay in, but the horse planted his feet as stubbornly as any mule.

  “I suppose it’s the main trail after all,” Anna said. “But mind the caves up on the east side. Anyone could hide there.”

  “You’re such a comfort,” Quinn said.

  She remounted and they rode forward together, both knowing that trouble — in the form of a gun barrel — could await them from behind any of a thousand trees or rocks.

  * * *

  Lucy shifted in the saddle. Although she’d felt pummeled by the rough buffeting of the stage into Copper Ridge, she had never suffered a fraction of the discomfort that riding this mule caused. She had ridden before from time to time — wearing an elegant equitation outfit and sitting upon a proper sidesaddle. However, her earlier outings had merely been brief jaunts designed for the healthful exposure to fresh air and sunshine, and always she had ridden the smoothest and gentlest of mounts.

  She was likely the first Worthington to ever sit on so disagreeable a creature as this mule. It stank, for one thing, and whenever Horace helped her mount it, it tried to kick at her. Instead of a feather touch with her heels, she had to “kick hard enough to show it you mean business,” as Horace advised her. Since she’d left without her gloves, her hands were chapped and red from hauling on the reins. That discomfort dimmed, though, compared to her sore thighs and bottom.

  “I’ll make a muleskinner of you yet,” Horace called from his horse. “He’s starting to respect you now. Your arms won’t have to work so hard.”

  If only the same could be said of all her body parts. She was too miserable to return his smile, but even so, his compliment felt good. Though she’d never admit such a thing aloud, she felt a little proud of her escape and the way she was now managing her rough mount. The Lucy of four months ago never could have done it.

  Glan
cing at Max Wilson, who appeared to be dozing in his saddle, she felt the spark of satisfaction doused. She might have fled Elena and kept her seat on the mule, but her troubles were still far from over. Partially because of the deputy, she would have to go with Horace to Copper Ridge once more.

  “We’ll be glad to take him back to Stan,” Horace had told Quinn Ryan this morning. “That’s the least I can do, after your loan.”

  “No,” Quinn had answered earnestly. “That was the least I could do. Tell Stan to be sure he’s locked up good and tight until I get back to see to charges. It’d be best to keep this quiet, too, so the judge doesn’t catch wind of it and turn him loose.”

  Horace agreed. Later, he explained to Lucy that Stan, the owner of the livery stable, was a friend of Sheriff Ryan’s and a decent man.

  The idea of riding back to Copper Ridge deeply frightened Lucy. If she encountered that murderess, Elena, she would doubtless expire on the spot from terror. The sheriff had promised to thoroughly investigate Miss Rathbone’s death as soon as he returned to town, but until that happened, Elena could be anywhere.

  However, both Quinn Ryan and Horace persuaded Lucy that it would be unwise, in these parts, to continue riding the “borrowed” mule. Even as the judge’s wife, she’d have difficulty escaping punishment if the owner pressed theft charges.

  “Don’t worry,” Horace reassured her, as if he sensed her distress. “I promised I would help you — and I will. We’ll keep clear of The Pines. After we return the mule, we’ll buy another horse and some supplies with the money Sheriff Ryan loaned me.” He patted his chest pocket, where the sheriff’s cash remained. “Then we’ll get away from Copper Ridge.”

  “To where?” Lucy asked him quietly.

  “To Tucson, where the Territorial Gazette is located. I’m not only going to give them Cameron’s story, I’m going to write my way into a job as a reporter.”

  The determination sparkling in his blue eyes made her believe that he’d succeed. “Aren’t you worried the judge will find some way to stay in power? He could ruin you.”