Only My Love

by Jo Goodman

  Snow cushioned her footfalls but made walking difficult. She tried not to think of how far she had to go to reach the abandoned train but only of pressing on. After she had been walking awhile she turned around once, just to gauge her distance from the camp, and was discouraged to still be able to see the red-orange glow from the fire. The hundred yards she thought she had walked couldn't have been more than a hundred feet. Michael had considered the possibility of a search party finding her frozen body on the trail. She hadn't considered that she might fall so close to the robbers' camp that they would be witness to her death. It made her angry enough that she was able to increase her pace for the next few minutes.

  "Where the hell do you think you're going?"

  The voice, seemingly coming from nowhere, but surrounding her on all sides, brought Michael up short. It was Ethan's voice. There was no mistaking the deep, smooth, whiskey tones and the faint drawl. There was also no mistaking the impatience, incredulity, and anger. She clutched the blanket more tightly closed at her throat and squinted in the darkness to find him. She finally located Ethan standing above her on a rocky ledge. For some reason she thought of a mountain goat and giggled. In seconds, for no apparent reason other than she couldn't help herself, she was laughing uncontrollably.

  Recognizing that Michael had reached the end of her mental tether, Ethan climbed down from his perch. His large hands clamped her shoulders and his long fingers pressed deeply against the blanket and into her flesh. His shake was forceful and Michael's head lolled weakly on the slender stem of her neck. Her laughter died away. The prelude to silence was a hiccup.

  Michael stared wide-eyed and solemnly at her captor, rather surprised at the sound and the fact that it had come from her. She tried to recall if she had had something to drink.

  "I should kill you," Ethan said emotionlessly. He could see her well enough to know that she didn't blink. She was either the bravest woman he had ever met or the most hopelessly naive. Ethan voted for the latter. She didn't think he meant it. "As sure as I know anything, I know you're going to bring me grief. I knew it the minute I saw you on that train. I think I knew it the moment I first laid eyes on you." One hand dropped to his gun and his fingers curled around the handle.

  "What are you two doin' out here?"

  Ethan spun around, gun drawn. Happy McAllister stood some fifteen feet down the trail. "Jesus, Happy, are you trying to get yourself killed? Don't sneak up on me that way."

  "I already got the drop on you, Ethan." Happy slipped his gun back in his holster. "You would have noticed 'cept for your woman there. I'm of a mind to kill her myself for tryin' to hightail it outta here."

  Ethan put his Colt away. Behind him he felt Michael begin to sag. Before she could fall he grabbed her by the waist and pulled her around in front of him to face Happy. "You thought she was leaving?" Ethan asked. He managed to sound surprised that Happy would reach that conclusion.

  "I saw her sneakin' out with my own eyes."

  "Do you hear that, Michael?" Ethan asked, keeping her propped up and steady on her frozen feet. "Happy thought you were leaving and he was going to kill you for it." Perhaps that would shake her out of her stupor. If he hadn't found her before Happy, she would be dead now. "Michael?"

  "I was going to..." she said quietly, "...going to relieve myself."

  There was a bit of her brain that wasn't frozen, Ethan thought, and she had managed to put it to credible use. "You have a problem with my wife tending to a call of nature, Happy?"

  "No problem," Happy said after a moment's thoughtful pause. "But ain't she a tad fer from the camp?"

  "You're welcome to check her trail," Ethan told him. "You'll see for yourself that she was circling back."

  With a distressed sigh, Michael realized Ethan's words were true. She had become disoriented in the dark and, at the time Ethan had called to her, she had actually been making her way back to the camp.

  "Go on back to camp, Happy. Let me take care of my wife myself."

  "Guess that's why you followed her in the first place, is it?"

  "Guess so."

  Happy shrugged, one wiry brow raised skeptically. "If you say so, Stone. Only I don't recollect ever hearin' a man sayin' he'll take care of his missus by killin' her. Or did I mistake your intention when I came walkin' down here?"

  "If you'd ever been married to more than that mule of yours, you'd know that wanting to shake the devil out of your wife is all part and parcel of the arrangement."

  "Shakin' ain't killin'," Happy said, turning on his heel. Still mumbling under his breath and scratching the uneven growth of beard on his chin, he walked away.

  "He's right," Michael whispered. "You were going to kill me."

  Ethan didn't deny it. "I still might."

  Michael tore away from the embrace that was holding her upright and began to retrace her steps back to the camp. Her progress was clumsy, almost drunken, and when she veered off the path considerably, Ethan snapped at her.

  "Where the hell do you think you're going now?"

  "I have to relieve myself."

  "Oh, for God's sake," Ethan muttered. He waited with ill-disguised impatience on the trail as Michael disappeared behind a boulder and beneath the sheltering boughs of some spruce trees. When she didn't return quickly enough to suit him he started after her.

  Upon hearing his approach Michael quickly righted her undergarments and stood. "I'm coming," she called. She noticed her announcement did not deter him. "I said, 'I'm coming,'" she repeated with as much dignity as she could muster.

  Ethan didn't hear dignity. "God, but you're pathetic," he said, quickly assessing her appearance. She was huddled beneath the blanket. She had pulled it over her head and she was still shaking so badly she could barely stand. He hunkered down at her feet and touched the hem of her skirt and felt her leather shoes. Both were wet and crusted with ice from her ill-advised trek in the snow. Without telling her his intention, Ethan picked her up and slung Michael over his shoulder. "You need a keeper," he grumbled.

  "I had five," she said as blood rushed to her head. "Thanks to you and the others they're all dead."

  "Repeat that to anyone else," he told her, "and you'll join them."

  She was silent as he carried her back to the site of their blankets. When she started to get under the blankets, he stopped her.

  "Take off your skirt and shoes."

  Michael couldn't believe she had heard him correctly so she made no move to obey.

  Ethan knelt beside her, brusquely grabbed her by the ankles, and began unlacing her shoes. She fought him, kicking him in the chest with her feet. He slapped her lightly in the face with the back of his hand. It had the desired effect of stunning her into compliance. "That's better," he said.

  "You hit me," she said accusingly.

  There was no apology in his voice. "And I'll do it again if you don't start doing what I say." He pulled off one shoe. "Get the other one off while I get an extra pair of socks from my saddle bag. No arguments. Just do it. The skirt, too."

  She wondered if he had an extra skirt in his saddle bag, but some fuzzy sense of self-preservation helped her keep silent. By the time he returned she had complied. A pair of thick woolen socks were dropped in her lap with a growled order to put them on.

  "What did you do with the gloves you were wearing?"

  She had had to take them off to work her shoestrings. She found them near the burned out fire.

  Ethan took them from her. "Don't take anything of mine unless you ask or unless I give it to you. Understood?"

  Michael nodded.

  He tossed a pair of jeans at her. "Put these on. They're Obie's extras. Best fit I could manage on short notice. I'll lay your skirt out on a rock. It'll be stiff as a day old corpse by morning but you might be able to wear it again. I'm not so sure about the shoes." Ethan threw some more tinder on the cold fire and lighted it. "Pull the blankets closer to the fire then lie down." He was patient with her while she followed his instructions. Whe
n she was situated under the blankets he slipped in beside her. "Don't think about moving 'til morning."

  She couldn't think about anything else. Trapped as she was by his arm and his leg, freedom burned in her mind. "I don't need you to hold me," she whispered. "I'm not going anywhere."

  Ethan's sigh was weary. "You can understand if I don't believe you."

  "I swear it."

  "Go to sleep."

  Somehow she did. And later, when Ethan turned away from her, it was Michael who groggily pursued the warmth he provided, fitting her body to the planes and angles of his. It was her leg that insinuated itself between his and her arm which curved around his waist. It was her breath which warmed the nape of his neck and the even cadence of her breathing which lulled him to sleep.

  It was something nudging steadily at his foot that woke Ethan. He tried to bat it away as he would a pesky fly, but the rhythmic tattoo was intrusive. Opening his eyes he looked down the length of his body to find the source of the disturbance, then up to see Houston standing over him.

  There was a wicked smile on Houston's lean face and his black eyes were knowing. "Looks like you had a better night than the rest of us. Quite a tangle here."

  Ethan realized it was true. Michael was curved so tightly against him she was like an extension of his own skin. He couldn't remember the last time he had slept so soundly.

  "Usually don't have to rouse you," Houston said, stating what Ethan was thinking at that precise moment. "Of course you don't usually have a lady wrapped around you."

  Ethan eased himself away from Michael and sat up. Reaching for his gun belt, he put it on, then stood. "You waiting on us to leave?"

  Houston handed Ethan a tin mug of hot, black coffee. "Happy's chomping at the bit to move on, but there's no hurry. Posse's days away from being organized and there's a storm coming. In twenty-four hours there'll be no trail to follow. We're safe."

  Ethan warmed his hands around the coffee mug and raised it to his lips slowly, breathing the aroma as if the fragrance alone could warm him on the inside. "I didn't get to hear much last night about what happened with the engine. Did you and Jake have any trouble?"

  "You were fairly well occupied with your own problems," Houston said, looking significantly at Michael's sleeping form. "But, no, Jake and I didn't have any trouble. After the track was cleared we uncoupled her from the rest of the cars and took 349 about four miles down the line. She built up some good speed on the downgrade but nothing we couldn't handle. We jumped at Hunter's Point and let the engine go on. She didn't make the curve." He made a diving motion with his hand to show what had happened. "In the canyon. It was too dark to see clearly, but the sound echoed for minutes."

  Ethan sipped his coffee and noted that Houston sounded pleased with the night's work. "It's too bad we didn't anticipate the Chronicle's cars."

  "It couldn't be helped."

  Although Houston appeared to shrug off the comment, Ethan knew he was angry about the unpredictable events that had made his plans go slightly less than smooth. "No, it couldn't be helped. The murders are going to cause us some problems."

  "You worried?"

  "No. You?"

  "No." Houston pointed to Michael. "What about her? Happy says she was the fiancée of that reporter you killed."

  Ethan nodded. "That's right."

  "But you say she's your wife."

  "She thought I was dead. I suspect she thought it was time to remarry."

  "You never once mentioned a wife."

  "I understand you had an encounter with Michael on the train."

  "That's right," Houston said.

  "Well, if you were married to the shrew, would you admit it?"

  Houston turned away, but not before letting Ethan see his slow, thoughtful smile. "I might," he said softly to himself. "I just might."

  Chapter 3

  They talked casually about the robbery as if she weren't there, or worse, as if her presence were of no account. It was an insult to her and an insult to the men who had died because of their profession. Michael made herself remember that—five colleagues had died simply because they were newspapermen. She owed them something. Her story, her account of the robbery, would be the best revenge. She didn't have to live to tell it in the Chronicle, she had to live to tell it in the court.

  Knowing that kept her quiet and alert. If Ethan or any of the others wondered at her uncharacteristic silence, they never commented on it.

  Michael shared Ethan's mount and the fit was uncomfortably tight. Every time she moved she was aware of him, aware of the hard wall of his chest, aware of the supporting cradle of his thighs. She tried not to move. She tried not to think of the way she had clung to him during the night.

  The morning grew warmer, making the impending storm more threatening. Michael still wore the jeans Ethan had given her. Her skirt had been as stiff as Ethan warned. Her shoes wouldn't fit over the heavy socks so she carried them in her lap and clutched them because she was sometimes afraid she would clutch Ethan. He wasn't her ally, she reminded herself, no matter that he had made it his business to save her life.

  The sky seemed to press against the mountain peaks. The clouds were heavy and thick and gray. The flakes that fell were a complete contrast, light, airy, and white. They drifted steadily to the ground, spaced widely apart, so that it seemed they fell around her but not on her. Yet when she looked at the blanket covering her shoulders there was a fine dusting of snow in the creases.

  A bald eagle, disturbed by the passage of the men, horses, and mules, dove from its nest of sticks in a timber pine and made a threatening, elegant pass over their heads then dropped lower and skimmed the surface of a briskly moving stream for fish.

  "How much you figure's in those bags agin, Ben?" Happy asked his brother.

  "Sixty thousand if there's a penny."

  "Damn," Happy said, grinning. "I like hearin' that."

  "You must," Jake said, rolling his eyes. "That's at least the fourth time you've made Ben repeat it. There's none of it that's going to get up and walk away."

  Happy's lower lip was distended from a wad of tobacco. He spit in the snow. "Hope not," he said. "Hate to think Obie and me stopped a perfectly good poker game for nothin'."

  In his arms Ethan felt Michael stiffen. The bruise on her jaw seemed to darken as the rest of her pale face went ashen. "What are you talking about, Happy? What poker game?"

  "When me and Obie interrupted the reporters, they were in the middle of a game. Looked like they was enjoyin' themselves, too. 'Course we took the pot and that kinda made 'em mad. Threatened to do a story about the robbery. You know Houston ain't in it for the glory."

  As if there was any glory associated with what they had wrought. Michael wanted to scream. Instead she bit her lip until she tasted blood and tears came to her eyes.

  "So you took it on yourself to get rid of them," Ethan said, not bothering to hide his disgust.

  "You have a problem with that?" Happy asked, spitting to punctuate his question. "Seems I recall you offering to take that other fellow out yourself. Obie says you dispatched him without much fanfare."

  Michael waited to see how Ethan would defend himself.

  "I acted on Houston's orders," he said. "You acted on your own. Anyway, you know I was anxious to get away from first class because of Michael."

  "So you shot her fiancé." He chuckled. "That's a good one."

  Houston pulled up his mount sharply and called over his shoulder. "Enough! I don't need to hear a rehash of last night. What's done's done. It's not the first time any of us has killed."

  But this time was supposed to be different, Ethan thought. Or what was he here for? He said nothing.

  "Please," Michael said softly, her voice expressing urgency as she reached for Ethan's wrist and held on tightly. "I think I'm going to be sick." She started to wriggle out of the saddle even before Ethan had stopped. Her hand came up in a reflex action to cover her mouth. The small choking sound she made was muffled. "
Let me down."

  Ethan steadied her as she slid from the saddle. Although he dismounted quickly, Michael was already running for the privacy of some pines. He gave her a moment, waiting for the painful, retching sounds to end before approaching. "Better?"

  His question incensed her. As he reached out to touch her Michael slapped his arm away. "Don't put your hands on me. I can't bear the thought of you touching me. What do you think made me sick? You and the others talk about killing as if those lives were of no account." She barely got the words out before she was sick again. "Get out of here," she moaned softly, turning her back on Ethan.

  He didn't move. When he was certain she had emptied her stomach he offered her a handful of snow. "Take some of this," he said, unconcerned by her rebuff. "Rinse your mouth out."

  Michael ignored him. A small tremor shook her body as she bent and scooped some clean snow herself.

  "Jesus, lady," Ethan sighed. "Do you think I really care whether you take the damn snow from me or not? I'm surprised you saw the merit of my suggestion." He turned his palm over and let the snow fall back to the ground. "I never met a woman so purely stubborn as you." That said, Ethan turned on his heel and went back to his horse. He waved the others on when they looked at him questioningly. "We'll catch up in a few minutes," he told them, mounting. "Michael needs a little more time."

  Happy rolled his eyes and shook his head slowly from side to side. He spit. "You ask her if she's pregnant?"

  "She not pregnant," Ethan snapped.

  "Didn't know it would make you so touchy," Happy said, grinning and shying away from Ethan with exaggerated movements. "Guess I'll take myself off." Under his breath he added, "But she was goin' to marry that reporter fellow."

  Houston interjected, "That's enough, Happy. Move on. Obie. Ben. Jake. You all do the same." When he and Ethan were alone he glanced in Michael's direction with his cold black eyes. "I suppose the talk upset her."