“Why not?”
“You’re all wrong for me,” he said carefully. “More importantly, I’m all wrong for you. What good could come of it?”
“What good?” she asked, her temper rising. “How about that we enjoyed it? Isn’t that good?”
“It’s not that simple, and you know it.”
“Why can’t it be?” Foolish man. “Sam, do you think that I’m so naïve that I must tangle up a simple, lovely kiss with all sorts of emotions and plans? Don’t worry, Sam. I’m not planning to marry you.”
“What?” Why the hell not? Was the first thing that sprang to his mind. And Lord, wasn’t that by far the biggest jolt of stupidity he’d indulged in for many a day? Since he obviously could not look at her and think clearly, he swung his gaze around, as if he were on guard in truth, and then—“What the hell is that?”
On a long slope perhaps three hundred yards away, a man pelted down the hillside, heading straight for them. He ran wildly, looking behind him as he chugged through the tangled brush and past the spiky tufts of bunchgrass.
“Sam?” Laura climbed to her feet, rose to her toes for a better view. Beside her Sam jumped up as well, edging sideways to put the bulk of his body between her and the approaching figure.
The man stumbled, going down hard, his arms flailing like a loose-limbed doll as he tumbled twice down the hill, coming to rest against a large, reddish rock that thrust crookedly from the crumbled slope.
She gasped and ran forward, coming up against the fence. It was rough-cut wood below, tipped with a taut line of new, silvery barbed wire that snagged on the soft silk of her shirtwaist.
“Wait.” He caught her arm. “That’s private property. Crocker doesn’t take kindly at all to trespassers.”
“But he’s hurt! He—”
“No, he’s up.”
The man staggered to his feet, weaved a few unsteady steps forward, and began to run again.
Sound rumbled. Low enough at first she couldn’t identify it. And then—“Are those horses?”
He nodded, mouth grim, shoulders tense. More anxious than she’d ever seen him, even in the middle of the robbery on the train. Why would that be?
The man was getting close enough to pick out features. He was a small man, a long dark braid flying behind him as he ran. His loose, dark blue tunic billowed as he sprinted, and his pants hung on his thin frame, as baggy as if he’d lost a lot of weight since he’d first acquired them. Behind him, above the crown of the hill, a dust cloud rose.
Three horses crested over the top. The sound of their hoofbeats grew louder, louder yet, like the threatening drumbeats of an approaching army.
“Oh, God.” She lifted the top wire of the fence, intending to crawl through. But her skirts tangled, and a barb pierced her finger. “Sam, they’re going to run him down.”
The man was no more than a hundred yards away by then: narrow eyes set in a wide face, broad cheekbones under dark skin. A Celestial, Laura thought in surprise. Chinese, most likely. There were many of them in the West. She’d read about it in the papers. Thousands had been brought here to work on the railroad and the mines, welcomed at first because they were considered hard workers and less troublesome than the Irish and the Mexicans, but now despised because the unions were afraid they were stealing too many American jobs.
Her foot found purchase on the bottom rail.
“Laura, no!”
“We have to do something.”
“Just how are you planning to stop them? Those horses can run you over as easily as him.”
One of the men on horseback uncoiled a lasso, circling it into a wide loop over his head.
Laura’s heart pumped as if she were the one running.
Two hundred feet. He shouted something at them, an incomprehensible burst of staccato language.
“Sam! Do something!”
“What?” he said grimly. “Start shooting somebody? I’m sure as hell not going to get in a gun battle with you beside me.”
“But—”
“We have no idea what’s going on. He could be a thief. He could be a murderer.”
That made a certain sense. If this was Haw Crocker’s land—and Sam was usually right about such things—the men on horseback probably worked for him.
But oh—she found herself hoping he’d make it to the fence. He was so close, a headlong rush for freedom. Though she understood the fence was unlikely to stop the men on horseback, and certainly not a bullet; if he got that far perhaps they could shield him—
A hundred feet. The horses were almost upon him. He must be feeling their heat behind him, the vibration of the ground beneath his feet, and realize it was hopeless.
The man’s gaze met Laura’s. Dear God. Wild despair, desperation, a bitter hopelessness. He knew he wasn’t going to make it. But he would rather be run down and killed in the attempt than be captured.
The loop of rope dropped around his torso. The man at the forefront of the trio of riders—tall, wearing a wide-brimmed tan hat—yanked back on the rope, and he flew back, landing flat on his back.
“Hey. Hey!”
They ignored her completely. One of them, this one younger, soft around the middle, leapt from his own horse. He checked the man on the ground, who was rolling slowly from side to side. Likely had the breath driven right out of him.
The young man clipped the Celestial on the crown of the head with the butt of his pistol. The man on the ground sagged immediately. The young cowboy grunted as he lifted the limp body and threw it over the back of his horse.
She couldn’t believe they were letting them ride off. She’d never felt so impotent. “Sam?”
He had his face turned away. As if he, too, couldn’t stand to watch, his eyes hooded, his mouth bleak.
“Sam, please.”
“I can’t,” Sam gritted out. He would have given anything not to have Laura look at him with that accusation in her eyes. His stomach clenched, acid burning through. He remembered the feeling too well—freedom just on the other side of the pine log fence, that terrible desperation to reach it, knowing you wouldn’t. Hell, he and Griff had tried to claw their way out, digging through rock with their fingernails, not much caring if they bled to death in the process. When the guards had discovered their tunnel in a sheltered corner of the crowded stockade, all of eight feet deep, they’d forced them to stay there. But they’d added that section to their regular patrol, checking on them every twenty minutes or so, and if they suspected them of having deepened it even a fraction, they kicked in a few more inches of dirt, laughing as it rained down on their prisoners’ heads.
Twice, they’d managed to scrabble their way out. The guards had had a merry time searching through the prisoners for them, and an even better time making them regret their “impertinence” before tossing them back in their hole. “You’ve dug your grave,” they’d said. “Now stay in it.”
Griff and he had lived—if one could call it that—in that hole for six months. Too narrow for them both to sit at once, they had taken turns, one leaning against the wall while the other curled up and slept. If one of those guards had tossed him a gun and given him the option of ending it by turning the barrel on himself, he would have taken it without question.
His back, his shoulders, his gut all hurt, every muscle screaming to help that poor man who’d come so close to escape.
No, not help. Interfere. The guy could be a rapist, for all he knew. And even then, it was no business of his.
He thought he recognized the youngest hand. He’d been with the group who’d jumped him when he’d tried to sneak back in the north border of the Silver Spur. Though that entire night was a little blurry, and his eyes had swelled shut early on.
The guy was likely too occupied to notice Sam. And he’d shaved since then and hacked off a good chunk of his hair. Even so, Sam kept his face turned away. He preferred that, in any case, for if he’d watched any longer, he wasn’t sure he could have kept from stepping in.
Wh
ich would probably lead to disaster. You couldn’t take anyone who worked for Haw Crocker lightly. He’d had the bruises to prove it.
And he’d only put Laura in danger if he tried to meddle. Not to mention destroy any chance he’d ever have of finding out what had happened to Griff inside those fences.
But turning away from the scene forced him to look at Laura—Laura, and the disappointment and blame in those pale blue eyes.
She had been furious when he’d told her that her father had hired him. And even then she’d had an inkling of what his life entailed. She had accused him that first night of being without honor, without purpose.
But now she’d witnessed it with her own eyes. It twisted inside him, all the impotent anger and heavy regrets.
Well, he had never asked for her to like him, had he? He’d known all along that there could be nothing between them. After this, she’d never ask him to kiss her again, and wouldn’t that be safer all around, for both of them? He ignored the screams of protests from his baser urges, the part of him that kept him awake at night, dreaming about how her mouth had felt against his. The part that insisted that that kiss was something more, and if he never had that feeling again with her, he’d never have that feeling again, period. And that would be a terrible loss.
“Why should I stop them?” he asked. “It’s not my job.”
She blanched, her already-pale skin going white as a blank canvas.
And then the anger surged, coloring her cheeks and snapping in her eyes. “I have money. How much do you need to step in?”
“You can’t afford me.”
“Two thousand dollars,” she snapped.
It had taken him three years to earn that much when he’d first left Andersonville. “Not enough.”
“Four thousand.”
“Too late,” he said, nodding in the direction of where the three horses were disappearing over the crest. The dust blotted their figures, as if they were half-erased in an unfinished sketch, a dirty brown haze soiling a clear blue sky.
“Yes,” she said coldly. “It certainly is.”
Chapter 9
He haunted her sleep. What little sleep there was. Laura lay on her bed—a comfortable one, her father made sure—and stared at the inky darkness above her. Moonlight trickled through the window so the gilding on the ceiling shimmered now and then, as if a starlit sky arched above her. She wondered idly if someone had planned that exact effect. Likely; her father famously hired craftsmen with an eye for the details.
Mrs. Bossidy slumbered easily in the cubicle next door. Despite the train car’s solid build, the interior walls were thin, to avoid stealing precious floor space. Their doors were open and, if she were very still, Laura could hear her heavy breathing.
It was soothing. Comfortable. After six weeks of travel, familiar. The evening was cool, so her window was closed, the sound of the wind outside only a very faint whisper.
But every time she closed her eyes she saw that desperate running man. Such an unusual face to Laura’s eyes, his skin drawn and sallow. Terrified…no, past terrified. Like a man who’d been terrified so long he’d moved beyond it, into that desperate hopelessness where he no longer cared whether he lived or died.
She sighed and gave up trying to sleep. They’d be moving on in the morning—the train to pick them up was due shortly after ten. She could nap then, if she chose to, until they arrived in Silver Creek.
She tossed aside the light coverlet. The rugs beneath her bare feet were thick, plush wool, tickling her toes. She moved to the window.
She’d left the drapes open. Night interested her. She was so accustomed to color, studying every shade and reflection of it. Night washed away the vivid hues, leaving only a thousand shades of gray, revealing the lines of a place. There were a few scrubby Joshua trees, silvery in the moonlight. A storage shed—empty; she’d checked herself. Little else but for the looming bulk of the mountains in the distance.
Ah, yes. There. Sam. The long lean length of him stretched out on a bare patch of ground. He hadn’t bothered with a tent, not even the tarp he sometimes pitched when bad weather threatened. He was barely visible in the shadows, a man who seemed made for the darkness, or been created from it. He’d certainly spent a fair amount of time dwelling in it—if she’d learned one thing about him, she had learned that.
As she watched, she saw him shift, roll from his back to his right side, as if he, too, couldn’t settle in to sleep. Perhaps the same thing bothered him that ruined her sleep.
It had shocked her when he refused to intervene to rescue that poor man. Especially since he’d charged to the rescue so quickly, fearlessly, on the train. But then, he’d been paid to do that, hadn’t he? To protect her, though she hadn’t been in any immediate danger. No doubt paid very well.
But it wasn’t that simple. In hindsight, she could understand what she’d ignored when she’d been in the grip of the moment. Much of what he said made sense. There was a limit to what they could have done given the situation.
But she couldn’t simply accept that that was all there was to it. There’d been a thread of fury running through him, a strong and detectable anger though he’d worked to hide it from her.
No use. There wasn’t enough outside to occupy her mind, and mooning over Sam was hardly productive. She tugged the drapes shut.
A comfortable armchair was bolted beside a small table. She’d insisted upon its presence, though there really was scarcely room for it. But she’d spent too much time in bed in her life as it was and preferred not to be in one if she didn’t have to. The lamp mounted above flared to life with the touch of a match, the soft glow warming the rich wood walls of her compartment, burnishing the rosette-gathered panels of red silk on her ceiling.
She collected her sketch pad, a dozen completed drawings, a couple of pencils. There wasn’t enough light really to work, but she could sort through them, make a few notes, perhaps eliminate some ideas. Knowing what to leave out of a panorama was as important as deciding what to include.
If she weren’t going to sleep that night, at least she could do something productive with her time.
She flipped through the sketches. Good, good, not so good…she’d missed something in that landscape, she considered, tilting her head as she studied it. The proportions of that valley they’d passed right outside of Aspen were off. It had been a murky day, and the mountains kept shifting in and out of the clouds, so their shape was not as precise as she would have liked.
She moved on. So many sketches, of which she’d use no more than 10 percent or so.
Before this particular trip, she was starting to get a bit…not bored, exactly, but restless in her work. It was the scale of panoramas that appealed to her originally. If she were destined to paint landscapes, well, by darn, she’d paint the grandest ones she could. That, and the opportunity to immerse herself in a place she could not travel to herself. For a girl who’d lived in a narrow world, the massive scope of them drew her.
But she’d struggled with the last one, the New York panels. Deep inside that bothered her most of all. Perhaps the reason she’d made mistakes was because she hadn’t thrown herself into it with her usual enthusiasm. As she’d gotten healthier, stronger, she’d gotten more intrigued by the real world outside her studio window; the painted one held less fascination. And contemplating the next project was difficult, being confronted with those huge blank rolls of canvas. The enormity of the task, once so exciting and challenging—now that she truly knew how much work awaited her, the prospect merely made her tired.
So this trip had been crucial to her in more ways than one. She’d thought that it would revive her enthusiasm, giving her back the passion for painting panoramas that she’d once had.
Instead the journey had given her other passions. A hunger for travel. Not the least sated by the trip, all Laura could think of was how much more world there was to experience. And wasn’t her father going to love that, when she went home and announced that she really,
really, wanted to go to Italy or Africa?
And a yearning for new people, different people. The richness of experience that had been denied her, the absence of boundaries. It was a grand, wide world, so wide even a panorama could never capture it. Perhaps, she thought, she’d do better to concentrate on one small snip of it and portray it perfectly.
And a passion for him. For Sam. She could not pretend that it didn’t exist. She loved the way she felt when he was near, the way her blood thrummed in her veins and her skin tingled and her senses were alive, not only her vision but all the other ones, too, the ones that had been mostly ignored until now. Smell and taste and touch—oh, Lord, touch. Her lips throbbed at just the memory, her skin heating. She would not go back to being ignorant of that feeling, even if she could. Surely, when this was over, she could find someone else to give her that. Someone more appropriate, who would fit into her life and be willing to allow her to take a central place in his. Someone who would long to have that joining with her—for she was not so blinded by desire that she did not realize that Sam did not want to feel anything for her.
Her hands slowed as she reached the final sketch: the edge of the Silver Spur Ranch, the half-finished study she’d abandoned when that despairing man came running toward them. She traced the path he’d taken, down over the hill, across the flat, scrub-studded land.
The next page was blank. A clean slate, a world of possibilities. Without conscious thought, her hand moved over the page. A quick slash, a slow curve, a brutal, arrowing line. She drew faster, and faster still, completely unlike her usual deliberate pace, while her breath sped up and her heart beat faster.
She was breathless when she finished, as though she’d been the one who’d run miles.
A face. She’d drawn a face. His face.
She hadn’t tried portraiture since she was fourteen or so, under the tutelage of Mr. Aspinwall, her art teacher. She’d been a natural at nearly every other form of art, though sculpture had challenged her, especially early on when her body was weak. But as soon as they’d moved on to figures, her talent seemed to desert her.
A Wanted Man Page 11