Noah shook his head. “Bad idea. If you’re going to Lincoln, señorita, you can bet Snake will find you.”
“If one of us could protect her,” Dick said, “we could use her testimony.”
“How about you?” Noah suggested. “Your place isn’t far. She could lie low there until the trouble blows over.”
Dick looked away, his gray eyes troubled. “Noah, they killed John. It’s not that I wouldn’t protect a woman, you know that. But I was Tunstall’s foreman and his friend. I’m going after them.”
“We’re all going after them!” Billy Bonney stepped up. “C’mon, Buchanan, you can’t expect one of us to babysit the señorita. You’re not a Tunstall man, and Chisum’s in jail. Why don’t you take the job?”
Noah held up a hand. “Not me, kid. I’ve got papers to deliver to Chisum and my own business to see to.”
“But you told us John Chisum ain’t gonna sell you no land unless you can prove you’re willing to settle down and knock off that reputation you carry around. Now, say you come along with this pretty señorita—hey, what say you marry her? Chisum would sell you the land quick if you did that. You know how sentimental he is about families.”
“Marry her?” Noah felt the blood siphon from his face. “Billy Bonney, you’re a fool. There’s no way—”
“Can you be serious?” Isobel interrupted. “Never would I marry this…this dusty vaquero! I am betrothed to Don Guillermo Pascal of Santa Fe. Nor do I need a protector. I am a better marksman than most of the men in Catalonia and I ride like the wind. I shall go with you on this journey of revenge.”
“You can’t come with us,” Billy exclaimed, eyeing Isobel as if she were possessed. “The men who killed our boss have the law on their side. And the law in Lincoln County is as crooked as this trail. You’d best get on up to Santa Fe and marry your rich muchacho.”
“Not until I find my father’s murderer.”
“Isobel,” Susan broke in, “please consider what these men are saying. The murderers have threatened to kill you, and you have no protectors. Why not take on Mr.—”
“Buchanan,” Billy put in. “His name is Noah Buchanan.”
Lest the conversation erupt into a shouting match, Isobel had agreed to walk a short distance from the men to discuss the situation with Susan.
“Isobel,” her friend said softly. “Can you trust me?”
Nodding, Isobel acknowledged the truth. Though she had not planned to get close to the others on the journey, they had won her friendship after all.
“This is a lawless land,” Susan said. “If you insist on finding your father’s killer and getting your inheritance back, you must have protection. I know you ride and shoot well, but you’ll never survive against fifty armed men. If you won’t go to Santa Fe and get married like you should, let Mr. Buchanan watch over you.”
Isobel glanced at the huddled group of men. Billy Bonney and Dick Brewer clearly were exhorting Noah to action. “Don Guillermo may not accept me now, anyway,” she murmured, finally admitting aloud her fear. “Without my dowry, I cannot push for marriage. By law he should marry me, but his family is powerful.”
“Then you must get your rightful land. And to do that, you must let Mr. Buchanan look after you.”
Isobel knew it was the right decision—the only possible conclusion. She gave her friend a quick hug and hurried across the slushy snow to the men.
“Very well, Señor Buchanan,” she informed him. “If you agree to protect me, I shall bear witness to the authorities about the murder.”
“Sure, I’ll take you on,” Noah said. “If you’ll marry me.”
She gasped. “Marry you? Borrachón! What have you been drinking?”
“Not a thing.” He studied her for a moment, then gave a nod. “We’ll get the preacher over there to hitch us up. I’ll tell folks you’re the wife I brought in from the trail. That’s true enough.”
She stared at the blue-eyed man. “But I am already engaged.”
“And the last thing I want is to get married.” He glanced at Dr. Ealy, a missionary who was standing quietly in the background. “We’ll get it annulled later. Extreme circumstances…marriage without parents’ consent…lack of consummation…we’ll think of something. Once I convince Chisum to sell me the land I’ve been after and you settle your business in Lincoln, you can go to Santa Fe and marry your don. Meantime, I won’t lay a hand on you.”
“Whoa, Buchanan!” Billy laughed. “Don’t get carried away.”
“Naw, kid. It’ll all be on the up-and-up.”
Again Isobel assessed the bearded, brawny trail boss. Did she really need his protection? Probably. Her father had been murdered despite his armed guard.
Could she delay marrying Don Guillermo? Certainly. Her fiancé had never even responded to her letter of intent to journey to America.
Retrieving the stolen land-grant titles was her primary goal. More than anything, she ached to possess those rich pastures on which to graze cattle of her own.
“Very well, Mr. Buchanan,” she declared. “If you will protect me while I search for my father’s killer and recover my family’s stolen land, I shall marry you and prove to Mr. Chisum that you are very settled. And I shall be your witness in the law courts.”
“Then I reckon we’ve got a deal.”
Dick Brewer spoke up. “Stay at my place tonight, Noah, and head for Chisum’s ranch in the morning. We’ve got to get Tunstall’s body to Lincoln, and we can see the others safely into town.”
The two conferred a moment before Dr. Ealy cleared his throat. Accustomed to unexpected weddings, funerals and the like, he had agreed to perform the ceremony and wanted to get on with it.
Isobel barely heard his words. Instead she stared down at the pointed toes of her red boots. What had she done? Minutes ago she had been planning to marry Don Guillermo of Santa Fe. Now this leather-clad cowboy who owned nothing but his horse and gun would be her husband.
The ceremony ended, and Susan presented her friend with a bundle of folded garments. “Not much of a wedding gift, Isobel. But wear them, please. Those killers will recognize you right away if you stay as you are.”
As the shaken group set off down the moonlit trail in one party, Noah explained to Isobel the situation in Lincoln Town.
Jimmie Dolan had profited from his store and vast acreage by keeping the small landowners financially strapped, until the young Englishman John Tunstall had moved to the area. On the advice of his business partner, Alexander McSween, Tunstall had started his own store and ranch.
Dr. Ealy added that he, along with his wife, two young daughters and Susan Gates, had been summoned to Lincoln by McSween. “It looks as if we’re already in McSween’s war,” he observed, “and we haven’t even arrived in Lincoln.”
“Just keep quiet about tonight’s business,” Noah instructed the group. “We’ll do the same.”
As Isobel watched her companions head north in the darkness, she and Noah turned their horses east. Less than an hour later, they arrived at an old cabin with a sagging front porch. With some trepidation, she followed this man who was no more than a stranger up the steps.
Without speaking, he lit two oil lamps and began to build a fire. She watched him work, appraising biceps that bunched as he placed logs on crackling kindling, brown fingers that set an iron pot he had filled with water on a hook above the blaze. Broad back. Shaggy brown hair and beard. Muddy boots. Leather chaps. Such a common man, this Noah Buchanan.
“Like to wash up?” He asked the question so abruptly that she took a step backward.
He dusted his hands on his thighs before pushing open a door and carrying her bag into a small bedroom. She followed, surveying with some dismay the narrow iron bed, the washstand with its chipped white crockery, the window fitted with paper. Noah filled a cracked bowl with heated water, then shut the door behind him.
Isobel walked to the door and listened to him whistling in the other room. Dare she trust the man? She slid her revo
lver from her bag and set it on a table near the tub. With another glance at the door, she changed into a nightgown. Then she removed her comb, dipped her hands into the water and finally began to relax.
Curling onto the narrow bed, she sighed deeply. But as sleep crept over her, a movement rippled behind her eyelids. Horses cantering up a trail. Men shouting. Gunshots.
Noah sat on a three-legged stool before the fire and warmed his hands. A second pot of water had begun to steam. The woman in the next room would be asleep by now. No matter how hotheaded, she must be exhausted.
He smiled and shook his head as he filled a large basin with hot water and set to shaving his whiskers off with Dick Brewer’s straight razor.
Good old Dick. As Tunstall’s foreman, he was bound to get into the thick of the trouble. Noah peered into a mirror hung by the iron cookstove. If Dick got hurt, he couldn’t stand by, no matter what he’d promised the señorita.
Of course, the way she’d acted today, he’d probably have trouble keeping her out of it.
He dipped his head into a second bowl of fresh water and scrubbed his scalp. She was crazy to come after her father’s killer all by herself. Of course he was just as loco to have married her. John Chisum would take some fancy convincing to swallow that one.
Trail dust was getting a little old. Noah looked forward to settling down and fixing up his own cabin. Then he could really begin to make his dreams come true.
He stared for a long time at the flames, thinking of the small packet he had brought in his saddlebag from Arizona, filled with pens and ink bottles. Soon he would start to put down the thoughts he had been having for years. Stories about trail rides, roundups, cowboys. Images and memories he didn’t want to forget.
The thought of writing sent him searching Dick’s cabin for paper. Maybe he would start right now—the tale of the señorita and the Dolan gang. He wished he had a blank notebook with him, but they were back at his cabin.
Dick never kept paper. He searched the first room and hesitated at the bedroom door, then knocked. When he got no answer, he wondered if the woman had left. He leaned closer, peered into the room, caught his breath.
She lay curled on the bed, asleep. A fan of dark lashes rested on each pale cheek. Her chin was tucked against her arm. Long, golden hair draped around her shoulders and down her side.
Noah took a hesitant step toward the bed. She wore a silky white gown but her feet were bare. He was staring at her slender ankles when she turned. A soft moan escaped her lips as she lifted her head.
Rising up on one elbow, she whispered, “¿Mamá? ¿Dónde está?”
She lifted her hand to her eyes.
“Who…who are you?” Her voice was husky in the night air.
“I’m Noah Buchanan,” he answered. “I’m your husband.”
Chapter Two
“Noah Buchanan?” With a gasp, Isobel scrambled out of bed. What on earth was the vaquero doing in her room?
“That blanket,” she ordered, pointing. “Now!”
As he fetched a faded homespun coverlet from a nearby chair, she sorted through images of this so-called protector. Shaggy black beard, dusty denims, travel-worn leather.
Outlined in lamplight, his strong, clean jaw was squared with tension. His hair shone a damp blue-black.
“You look different, señor,” she said, glancing at her pistol on the table.
“I shaved.” His blue eyes sparkled as they flicked down to her ankles.
Before he could speak again, she snatched the gun and leveled it at his heart. “Take your hungry eyes away from me!” she commanded, cocking the gun for emphasis. “Stand back, Buchanan.”
“Whoa, now.” He held up his hands. “I didn’t mean any harm. I was looking for paper.”
“Paper? Why paper?”
He didn’t answer. “Why paper?” Her fingers tensed on the pistol handle.
“I wanted to write.” Swifter than the strike of a rattlesnake, his hand shot out and knocked the pistol from her grip. A blast of flame and smoke erupted from the barrel. The hanging glass lamp shattered. The gun clattered across the wooden floor. As the light died, he grabbed her shoulder and stared hard into her eyes.
“Don’t ever pull a gun on me again, woman,” he growled. “You hear?”
“Let me go!” she cried out, the nearness of the man plunging fear like a knife into her heart.
Relaxing his shoulders, he stepped back. “I won’t hurt you, Isobel. I made a vow.”
She swallowed in confusion at the change in him. “I must trust you to take me to Lincoln Town. Yet I know nothing about you.”
“You know me real well. John Chisum says if you want to know a man, find out what makes him mad. If you draw a gun on me again, you can say adios to the best shot west of the Pecos.”
“The best shot west of the Pecos?” She laughed. “I will have to see that to believe it, señor.”
The moon kindled a silver flame in his eyes as he spoke. “Stick around Lincoln County and you’ll see it. I can outdraw any man in the territory. But that’s not what I aim to do with myself from here on.”
She lifted the blanket to her chin. “And what is your aim?”
“The minute John Chisum gets out of jail, I’ll introduce you as Isobel…no, Belle. Belle Buchanan, a slip of a lady I met and married on the trail.”
“My name is Isobel Matas.”
“You’d better be Belle Buchanan if you don’t want Snake Jackson after your hide. And Belle is just the shiest, quietest little thing Lincoln Town has ever seen.”
“If I’m to be Belle Buchanan, quiet and shy for your John Chisum, you had better be the fastest gun west of the Pecos—or your little wife will change swiftly into Isobel Matas, the fastest gun in Catalonia.”
Noah chuckled. “I’ve tangled with a few women in my time, but never one as sure talking, high strung and mule stubborn as you.”
“Nor as pretty,” she added.
“Ornery is more like it,” he said with a grin. “You put on a shy smile, and I’ll keep my trigger finger ready. We’ll settle the matter of my land first. Then we’ll check into this question of your father.”
“My father first. Then your land.”
“The trouble over Tunstall’s death needs to die down before we start poking around in Lincoln. We’ll go see Chisum first.”
“I have waited five years,” she told him. “I have traveled many miles. I will wait no longer. Now, leave me to sleep, Buchanan. I must speak to the sheriff tomorrow.”
“Sheriff Brady deputized that posse you saw today. He gave Snake Jackson a lawman’s badge. Brady’s a Dolan man. You ride into Lincoln tomorrow and you’ll be eating hot lead for supper.”
He headed for the open door, but he paused with his hand on the latch. “And it’s Noah…Noah to you…not Buchanan. Don’t forget I’m your husband.”
As he shut the door behind him, Isobel sagged against the bed frame. How could she forget? The man would be with her every moment, ordering her around, insisting on his own way. He was a bull. Rough and unrefined. Headstrong and stubborn. So powerful he frightened her.
Sinking onto the lumpy mattress, she closed her eyes. But instantly she saw him. Noah Buchanan. She felt the grip of his hand on her shoulder. He was a brute—nothing like Don Guillermo Pascal of Santa Fe.
At that thought, she left the bed again and searched through her saddlebag until her fingers closed on an oval locket. Holding the pendant up to catch the moonlight, she studied the tiny painting of her intended. His jutting chin, firm mouth, deep-set brooding eyes and shock of black hair made her proud. Here was the splendid Spaniard who could outwit the roughshod cowboy. This was the torero who could defeat the bull.
For ten years Isobel had known that Guillermo Pascal would become her husband. He owned a sprawling hacienda, a fine stable, countless cattle, land that stretched many miles across the New Mexico Territory. He was wealthy, noble, Spanish. And he was hers.
She snapped the locket clasp and sli
pped the golden chain back into her bag. As she crossed to the bed, she noticed the shards of glass from the shattered lamp. She ought to sweep them up.
But Isobel Matas had never touched a broom in her life. She was to be served—not to be a servant. Someone else would have to sweep the glass, someone meant for menial tasks. Shrugging, she found the fallen pistol, pushed it beneath her pillow and climbed back into bed.
The first rays of sunlight were slipping over the pine trees when Isobel waded from the shallows of slumber. She fought to catch the remnants of her dream—of that magnificent man who strode through the purple-ribboned depths, his chest broad, his shoulders strong, his eyes so blue. Blue?
Isobel frowned. Guillermo Pascal’s eyes were not blue.
At a tinkling sound in the room, she eased onto one elbow. In the gray light she made out a tall figure. Noah Buchanan.
His black hat tilted toward the back of his head. His shirtsleeves were rolled to his elbows. He wore a leather belt with a silver buckle. In his hand he held a stick. A rifle?
No…a broom.
Humming, he swept the broken glass. Unaware of her watchful eye, he raked it into a tin dustpan and stepped out of the room. She shook her head. This vaquero who could knock a loaded gun from her hand, who could guide his horse through darkness, who had walked through her dreams all night…this cattleman of the plains was sweeping!
As she rose from the bed, she caught the smell of frying bacon. He sweeps, he cooks, what else? Mystified, she peered around the door frame.
His worn brown boots thudding on the floor, the bull stalked across the room. His shoulder grazed a hanging pot, one knee knocked a rickety chair aside. But as he leaned over the fire, Noah Buchanan might have been a cocinero in a nobleman’s kitchen. As he broke six eggs into sizzling grease in a frying pan, he hummed.
Bemused, Isobel eased the bedroom door shut and propped a chair beneath the handle. She wanted no intrusions this time. As she took a petticoat and faded skirt from the bundle Susan Gates had given her, she smiled. Noah Buchanan was rugged and earthy, but he was gentle and unpretentious, too. Perhaps they would do well together for the few days of their marriage.
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