2a748f08-49ec-41d8-8e72-82e5bc151bc0-epub-67710b16-8d2a-4caa-be30-f5ebeb130f9c

by Rebecca Paisley

  “Stop!” Russia yelled, twisting her face away from him. “Don’t tell me nothin’ else!” Eyes closed, she covered her ears with her hands.

  Santiago jerked her arms down to her sides. “You started this, Russia, and you’re going to—”

  “No! It makes me too sad! God, Santiago, it makes me hurt inside!”

  Her announcement took him by complete surprise. “Sad? Why the hell do you hurt inside? It happened to me!”

  She looked at him for a long moment, unable to believe what she’d heard him say. “Santiago… I—Don’t it make no sense a’tall to you that I’d hurt jist because you’re hurtin’, too? If somethin’ real bad happened to your friend, wouldn’t you feel sad fer him?”

  He couldn’t speak. It didn’t matter. He had no words with which to answer her.

  Friend. She’d implied that he was her friend. God, he couldn’t even remember the last time he’d had a friend.

  A strange feeling came over him. A softness, but though gentle, it seemed to destroy his anger and make him feel as if he were being stripped of his armor. His own vulnerability became apparent to him.

  Santa Maria, he felt naked.

  He didn’t know how to handle the feeling. It was so alien. Moreover, it went against his grain to allow Russia to suspect his vulnerability even existed.

  He remembered the one thing he was accustomed to dealing with. “I don’t want you to be sad, Russia. I want you to be afraid. Like everyone else.”

  She heard the hardness of his voice, the bitterness of his command, but listened beyond them to the plea in his eyes. The hope there, within that dark and flashing gaze, begged not for her fear, but for her understanding. “No,” she said simply. “I ain’t gonna be afraid o’ you, Santiago. Not now. Not never, and you cain’t make me.”

  The hell he couldn’t, he seethed. If she was daring him, he accepted. He’d challenge her feelings, that was what he’d do. He’d put her convictions to the test. Never taking his eyes away from hers, he bent, wrapping his fingers around the hilt of the dagger sheathed at his calf.

  Russia watched him slide the flat side of the knife across his palm. She lifted her chin, defying him to do his very worst.

  Santiago smiled the smile that caused hardened men to pale. “The night I found Graciela plying her trade, there was a drunk vaquero in bed with her,” he stated coldly.

  Russia shrugged. “And you killed him with that there knife. All right, but that still don’t make me afraid o’ you.”

  “I didn’t kill him.”

  She glanced at the blade again. “You…killed Graciela?”

  “What do you think?”

  The tap-tap of the knife as he slapped it on his palm jittered her nerves. Nevertheless, she kept her chin raised high. “I ain’t in no mood to play guessin’ games with you. ’Pears to me that you cain’t hardly wait to tell me the whole blood-soaked story anyway. Go on, then. Sad as it might make me to hear it, I’ll listen.”

  He knew she didn’t realize that the whole story spanned sixteen years. “You’ll hate me.” His statement was a warning he couldn’t stop himself from giving.

  She clasped her hands behind her back and took a stroll through a patch of evening primrose. Ordinarily, the sweet pink flowers that looked like tiny, glowing lamps made her feel tranquil and happy. Tonight, however, she barely noticed them. “It’s my hatred, ain’t it? I’ll decide how and when to aim it at you.”

  “You’d use it as a weapon?” The question escaped him before he could resist asking it.

  She swirled to face him, her skirt brushing a path across the tops of the primroses. “Would it be a good one?”

  It wouldn’t merely be good, he answered silently, it would be lethal. He lowered his gaze to his dagger.

  Russia sensed his hesitancy, his raw sensitivity. It made her want to run to him and hold him in her arms. He looked so vulnerable, like a little boy who was about to admit to transgressions he was sure he would be punished for. The temptation to soothe him was overwhelming.

  But she stood her ground and kept a defiant expression. She’d hold and soothe him later, after he’d tried his damnedest to make her fear and hate him. “Well?” she prodded him. “You gonna tell me the whole gory tale, or ain’teha? Whadja do after you finded Graciela in bed with that drunk man? It’s got somethin’ to do with that there knife, don’t it?”

  Rolling the hilt of the gleaming blade between his palms, he remembered that night. “It was only the beginning,” he muttered. “The beginning.”

  “Good place to start,” she returned. “The beginnin’.”

  Lifting his eyes to her, he took a deep breath and prepared to lay sixteen years at her feet.

  “This knife,” he told her. “It had never been bloodied. That night it was. Not with Graciela’s blood, not with her lover’s.”

  Slowly, he brought the blade to his face, touching its tip to the jagged scar on his cheek. “With mine…”

  Chapter Twelve

  Unconsciously, Russia lifted her hand to her own cheek, touching it as though she, too, had a scar there. “I’m…Santiago, I’m so sorry.”

  Her compassion irritated him again. “Sorry?” he snapped. “About what? I’ve barely begun.”

  She reminded herself that he wasn’t about to accept anything remotely related to sympathy. “All right, I won’t be sorry. But what do y’want me to do? Laugh in your face?”

  Santiago raised a brow, silently applauding the way she stood up to him. He didn’t, however, answer her question. Instead, he returned to the issue. “That night, two friends came to me with the news they’d seen Graciela in the brothel located on the outskirts of Misericordia. I went to see for myself. And…there she was, in bed with her lover.”

  He paused, glaring at the blade in his hands and trying to gather control of his emotions. “I left the room and waited outside behind a broken stone wall that surrounded the old gray house. When the man came out, I attacked him with this knife. He yanked it away from me and— He cut my face. I ran. That was sixteen years ago, and I’ve never been back to Misericordia.”

  Russia waited in vain for him to explain further, knowing there was a great deal he was still withholding from her. She also suspected that the whole of his story went well beyond that night in Misericordia. As he’d said, that night had been but the beginning.

  With a will she didn’t realize she had, she succeeded in affecting indifference. She longed to embrace him, but knew in her heart that showing him compassion would get her nowhere…yet. “I believe that’s the most terrible-ist tale I ever hearded in my whole life. Y’jist cain’t know how much it made me hate you, Santiago. And as fer me bein’ afraid o’ you… I’m so scared that if I was chewin’ tobaccer? Well, I’d have swallered it by now.”

  Small pebbles crunched beneath his bootheels as Santiago strode slowly toward a thick mass of thorny brush. “There’s more,” he murmured, pain tightening his chest. “After that night, I became a… I’m a killer, Russia. A merciless assassin.”

  Liar, she accused him inwardly. He was no more a savage killer than she was.

  “For money, I’ll hunt, maim, and murder,” he added. His body rigid with apprehension, he waited for her response. When none came, he wondered if he was getting through to her, if she understood the depths to which he’d sunk in his life. “In the space of sixteen years, I’ve killed over three hundred men.”

  In a desperate attempt to hide her incredulity, she began swatting the air in front of her face. “Damn bugs,” she cursed at the nonexistent insects. More than three hundred men! she exclaimed silently.

  Santiago reached out and plucked a stem of briars, pairing off the thorns with his knife. Only when the slender branch was smooth did he speak again. “That’s about twenty men a year. The count rises… God, it rises so fast. It doesn’t take me long to find my—my victims.”

  Uneasiness assaulted Russia. An uncomfortable anxiety caused not by his past deeds, but by what those exploits had
done to him. “How—how do y’know you’ve killed that many men?” she asked softly. “I heared that some gunmen scratch notches on their weapons or belts to keep count. Is that what you do?”

  He shook his head. “No. I just don’t forget. Sometimes I swear I can even remember their faces.”

  She noted that his voice had dropped to a subdued level, and wondered if he would now accept a bit of compassion. Unsure, she decided to lead up to it gently. “What—what’s it feel like to kill somebody?”

  He glanced down at his Colts, watching the moonlight glint off them. “I don’t feel anything when I shoot a man. Nothing at all.”

  Liar, she accused him for the second time. She knew him well enough by now to understand that he killed only when forced to do so. If he’d gunned down three hundred men, there were probably a thousand more he hadn’t harmed at all.

  She kicked at the mound of stones at her feet. “I—I’d feel sick inside if I had to shoot somebody. It’d prob’ly take me a real long time to fergit it.”

  “You never forget it, Russia,” he answered immediately.

  His torment was like something solid, something touchable. Indeed, she thought that if she reached out her hand, it would bite her. Desperate to think of a way to soothe him, she remembered all the things she knew about him, hoping the memories would aid her.

  She recalled all the evidence of his gentleness. With her. With the animals. With that young and cocky would-be gunslinger, Joseph Callahan. She called to mind his desire to help her that night in Rock Springs when she’d been so upset over the birth of the Emerson baby.

  She thought of how people turned away from him in fear. He had not a friend in the world. He was shunned by society because of his dangerous reputation and sinister appearance.

  He’d loved once. Loved and lost.

  Everything she knew about him came to her. One by one, the pieces joined in her mind, and though the puzzle wasn’t complete, she suddenly had a clearer idea of what he carried inside him.

  Gathering her courage, she approached him and laid her hand on his shoulder. “You been on the run fer sixteen long years, ain’tcha, Santiago?”

  “On the run?” He yanked her hand down. “From what? I don’t run, Russia. I hunt down the men who do.”

  “That ain’t what I’m talkin’ about.” She motioned toward Quetzalcoatl. “That’s a fast horse y’got. Strong, too. He sure can carry you a long way. But he ain’t quite fast enough, is he? He ain’t never been able to carry you far enough away, neither, huh?”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  His shout made her want to back away from him. Instead, she stepped closer. “That night you finded Graciela in the bed with that drunk man? Well, that’s only part o’ what’s maked you so hard. I can see now why whores ain’t your favorite people in the world, but there’s a lot more to this than you’re lettin’ on. Wanna know what it is?”

  He glowered at her. “Are you saying you can tell me about my own feelings?”

  “Well, maybe I won’t guess ever’thing right,” she admitted, “but I’m purty sure I’ll come close. And you’re in that yellin’ mood o’ yours tonight. So if I guess wrong, it’ll be the perfect excuse fer you to holler at me. That oughta make you happy.”

  It wasn’t mere curiosity that made him want to hear her conclusions. It was something much deeper, something that felt very much like hope. He refused, however, to allow her to know the depth of his interest. “I can see by that look in your eyes that you have every intention of telling me, so what good would it do me to try and convince you that I don’t give a damn what you think?”

  He’d bellowed the question at her. But because she could hear no anger behind his shout, she didn’t flinch. “You’re on the run from your own self,” she announced. “You don’t like doin’ what you do. Goin’ around shootin’ folks… Even if gittin’ shooted is exactly what they deserve, you hate doin’ it.”

  She took the stem he held, the one from which he’d cut off all the briars. Then she picked a thorny one from the brush. “This is what you look like…what you think you’ve turned into,” she said, holding up the thorny branch. “But this is what you are.” She raised the smooth twig.

  He looked at both stalks, his forehead furrowing into deep wrinkles. “Let me see if I understand. You’re saying I’m weak and defenseless.”

  Russia let out a huff of impatience. “I’m sayin’ that you ain’t the fire-breathin’ monster you and ever’body else says you are.”

  “Then what am I!” he thundered down at her.

  She thrust the smooth stem up to his face. “You’re gentle! You was gentle before the night you attacked that drunk man, and you’re still gentle! Dammit, if I could do the same thing to you that you done with this here twig, you’d look jist like this! Them thorns you got growin’ all over you ain’t nothin’ but what’s on the outside!”

  “And just how did you come to that conclusion?” he roared, though inside, a mellowness was streaming through him.

  She brought the smooth twig to her mouth, sliding it over her lips. “On account o’ you said you didn’t never bed Graciela and that she was gonna be your virgin bride. A man who don’t touch his sweetheart before the weddin’ is a gentleman. And you said that before that night, your knife weren’t never bloodied. If you was violent, ’pears to me you’d have enjoyed a good stabbin’ binge ever’ now and then. And you didn’t carry no gun back then, neither. If you had, you’d have shooted Graciela’s lover instead o’ tryin’ to cut him up with a knife. You was a real gentle person, weren’t you, Santiago? How’d you git so gentle? Are your parents like that, too?”

  He realized he could refuse to answer her, but he didn’t want to. It was as simple as that. He stuffed his hands into his pockets and strode over to Quetzalcoatl, summoning memory after memory, some of which he hadn’t allowed himself to remember in years. “My parents died in a fire when I was five. My sister, Lupita, raised me.”

  Russia felt encouraged by his normal tone of voice and the fact that he’d revealed more of his past to her. “Then Lupita must be a real good and gentle person.”

  He recalled everything there was to remember about his sister. Lupita was more than a good and gentle person. In fact, when he was little he’d thought she was an angel in disguise. “She— Yes, she was.”

  Russia joined him next to his stallion and offered her open palm to the horse when he swung his head around to look at her. “Y’ain’t seen Lupita in all these years. In sixteen long years.”

  Santiago took hold of his stallion’s forelock and gave it a token tug. “I never even said good-bye to her.”

  “Why?”

  Remorse stabbed through him. “For God’s sake, Russia, I’d just tried to kill a man! Do you think I could have gone home as if nothing had happened? There was blood all over me!”

  Russia lowered her head and kicked at a few dead leaves. It struck her then that Lupita had been the last person in Santiago’s life who’d treated him kindly. “Maybe if you’d tole her what—”

  “She would never have understood. Santa Maria, she had me attend Mass every single day! She raised me with food, shelter, and rosaries! How the hell could I have gone home that night after having attacked a man with every intention of murdering him! Dammit, what I did erased every good thing she’d tried to teach me!”

  “Sweet Lord in heaven.” Her face taut with consternation, Russia paced through the primroses again. The dainty plants rustled as she waded through them, but she barely heard the soft sound, so great was her deliberation. “That’s it, Santiago. That’s why you run from your own self.” She slowed, peering down at the moonlit blossoms at her feet. “And…and that’s why it was so damn hard fer you to let me be nice to you. And that’s why—”

  “What’s why?” Quickly, he sheathed his dagger and stormed toward her, crushing a path through the thick mass of delicate flowers.

  His shout didn’t faze her, but the look in his eyes made h
er weak with heartache. He’d tried to conceal his feelings earlier, but not any longer. Like a wildfire burning at midnight, every shred of pain he suffered blazed from within his dark gaze.

  “You feeled so bad about what you done that night,” she told him, “that when you leaved Misericordia you went ahead and becomed the man you figgered you was already turnin’ into. All that guilt you was carryin’ around—it maked you believe that since you’d done tried to kill one man, you had it in you to keep on doin’ it. But you was wrong, Santiago.”

  Unsure whether she was making any sense, she wondered how else to explain her feelings to him. After a moment of thought, she bent and picked a handful of primroses. Without looking up at him, she proceeded to stick the tender blossoms into the holsters at his sides. When she was finished, his Colts were almost hidden by the pink flowers.

  “There,” she said. “I covered up them guns o’ yours with somethin’ sweet and soft…and fragile.”

  “You think I’m fragile?”

  He’d shouted again; she responded by smiling at him. “Not in a bad way. In a real good way. Hell, you’re the strongest man I ever knowed. I reckon there ain’t nothin’ you cain’t do with them muscles and pistols. But I ain’t talkin’ about that kinda stuff, Santiago. I’m talkin’ about feelin’s. You may be a legendary gunslinger, but compassion and carin’ keep gittin’ in your way. You taked up the wrong profession, Santiago, and you been fightin’ a battle with your own self fer sixteen years.”

  “I’m good at what I do, Russia.”

  “I’m good at what I do, too, but I hate it.”

  He couldn’t find the words to argue. Her point was clear.

  What Russia did next surprised even her. After having vowed to maintain a calm and collected attitude, she flung herself against him, wrapping her arms around his broad back and pressing her face against his hard chest. “You think ever’thing good in you died that night you attacked that man! When you commenced slingin’ them guns fer a livin’, you figgered it was jist the right kinda job fer a hard man like you! But, Santiago, cain’tcha see? Your losin’ Graciela and fightin’ her lover ain’t what maked you into a dangerous gunman! Your bein’ a dangerous gunman is what done it to you!”