by Anita Mills
Holding her close, he stroked her hair with his hand. "I don't know what they did to you, but I'm stubborn enough to believe I can make you get over it."
"But what if you cannot?"
"I've never forced a woman in my life. If you never change, I won't have any less than I've got right now."
"Why, Hap? Why would you want to do this?" she whispered into his shoulder.
"I want a home, Annie. When this is over, I want a place to come home to. Me, you, and the kid." And as he held her, saying the words he knew Annie wanted to hear, he almost believed he could find the little girl. "You don't have to answer right now. I reckon you're needing time to think it over."
He was rock solid, making her feel safe within his embrace. Savoring the strength of his arms around her, she rested her head on his shoulder. "I was going to get provisions in the morning. I've already made arrangements for Mr. Willett to come for the animals. I couldn't just leave them here."
"You can stay here with 'em. As soon as you tell me, I'll go"
"I have to go. How else will you know her? I have to go, Hap."
"Then we'll do it together."
"I don't know, Hap—I don't know."
"Like I said, I've got time. They aren't expecting me in Helena for a few more days. And if you decide to take me, I don't have to go down there at all."
CHAPTER 19
As she sat beside him on the buckboard seat, the tension between them was palpable, as though they were two tightly wound coils, either of which could break at any moment. They'd made most of the trip in silence, each afraid to say anything that might disappoint the other.
Her mind was in turmoil and had been ever since he'd sprung his totally unexpected proposal on her. Unable to sleep all night, she'd tossed and turned until both of the cats had abandoned her bed in disgust. If she didn't stop worrying over it, she was going to make herself physically sick.
The morning sun was white-hot, beating down on her back, baking her shoulders. She looked up from beneath the broad, curved brim of her sunbonnet, noting the cloudless sky. There wasn't any relief in sight. And to make matters worse, if it was already hot in this part of the state, the west Texas desert was going to be unbearable.
She cast a furtive glance at Hap. He was wearing a black frock coat, which had to feel miserable, but his expression was set, stoic. It was hard to believe this was the same man who'd stood in her kitchen asking her to marry him. Now he seemed so purposeful, so sure of himself.
Her gaze dropped to the traces in his hands. He had strong, capable hands. On this morning it seemed as though everything about him was decidedly masculine. The scuffed boots, the black pants that clung to his legs, the butt of his Peacemaker above the tooled-leather holster, the frock coat straining across his hunched shoulders. Even the straight, even profile of his face.
The only thing relieving the unrelenting masculinity of the man was that hair and those sleepy blue eyes. When he'd come out of the house, his hair was wet, slicked back as though he'd tried to glue it down, but now that the hot wind had played with it, it had dried to a soft brown, ruffled and wavy. And whether he knew it or not, it looked a lot better that way. If she hadn't been so wary of everything, she'd have told him that it made him look ten years younger than the way he'd had it.
"Something the matter?" he asked.
She jumped guiltily. "No."
"I was beginning to think I'd sprouted devil horns the way you were looking at me."
"No. I was admiring your hair."
"Now I know you're fibbing, Annie."
"No, you've got pretty hair."
"Pretty," he repeated. "Just what a man wants to hear."
"I mean it. It's very becoming."
"Yeah, well, I always sort of hated it. My brothers used to call me—" He caught himself. "Well, I'm not saying it. Anyway, I finally had to lick 'em before they quit. It always made me feel like a damned girl—the hair, I mean."
"My father would have been happy to have hair like yours."
"Not if he had it."
"He was bald."
"I used to wish I was."
"I guess we all wish for something we aren't," she observed. "I always wanted to be shorter."
"I don't know why."
"I had a cousin everybody made over. She was an itty-bitty little thing, and my mother kept saying she was so pretty that I got the notion I must be ugly."
"You're the prettiest woman I know."
"I wasn't trying to get a compliment, Hap."
"Denying what you are doesn't change it." Straightening his shoulders abruptly, he frowned. "Did you bring your list?"
"Yes."
"I don't know as it's such a good idea—traveling by wagon, I mean," he said slowly. "I've done a lot of tracking out in that country, and there's places where a wagon'd make a man a damned good target. Like all the rivers we'll be crossing. I know it's hard traveling for a woman, but I think we'd be better off taking a horse and a mule apiece like we did in the rangers."
"Oh?"
"Yeah. You're traveling light enough to make a run for it, and you can switch back and forth between 'em so you've got a fairly fresh mount when you need one."
"What do you do for clothes?"
"What did the Comanches do?" he countered.
"They didn't change very often—and they had fleas and lice, Hap."
"Take two or three dresses and leave the damned petticoats at home. Wash when you get a chance."
"There's not much water up there," she reminded him.
"It doesn't take much, if you know what you're doing."
"What about food and drinking water? I don't want to drink out of a buffalo paunch."
"Well, you have to take extra canteens into a desert, but you can live off the land when it comes to food."
"I did that—for three years."
"I've done it most of my life."
She considered a moment, then looked at him. "You're serious, aren't you?"
"Well, I was just thinking if we found your daughter, they might not be reasonable about handing her over. We could be riding hell for leather to save our necks."
"But can you ride that far on horseback? What about your leg?"
"I can stand it. We'll get a good supply of jerky, some coffee for you, pick up just enough flour and salt for hardtack, buy as many canteens as we can tie onto four animals, and get us a couple of good mules. Hell of a lot easier, Annie."
"I guess I was just thinking of me driving the wagon. But I guess you've had more experience than I've had. Most of the time when—when I was with them, I was lost."
"Won't even have to keep to the roads this way," he assured her. "We'll have a better chance of finding the kid by going up into those canyons."
"How well do you know the Comancheria, Hap?"
"Better than the army."
"You're going for sure, then?"
"It's up to you."
She took a deep breath, then looked away. "I could pay you—there was some money in the savings. I'd tried to hire somebody before this, you know, but nobody answered."
There's not enough money on earth to make a sane man go up there, Annie."
"But you'd go."
"For you. All you've got to do is say the word."
"But I don't know if I could ever be a wife to you!" she cried. "What if you come to feel cheated? What if you come to hate me?"
"I'm not much of a man to hate anybody. Only the damned Comanches and the Comancheros, and I reckon if they'd have given me any reason to, I'd have tried to understand 'em. It was just damned hard to bury what was left of a family after they got done with 'em, so I gave up allowing any reason for it." Settling his shoulders, he flicked the whip out over the team, hurrying them along. "So if you're asking whether I can stand it if you can't love me, I guess I'm saying I mean to try. It'd be something just to have a place somewhere, to say I've got a pretty wife. You're a woman who'd make a man proud to say it, Annie."
"I wis
h I believed that was all it took to make a man happy," she said wistfully.
"I guess you can't know until you try."
He turned the team down a narrow, dusty wagon path at an angle to the road. Surprised, she asked. "You're not going to Veck's?"
"Not if I can help it. It's too far."
"There's not much in this place, I can tell you."
"No store?"
"Not much of one, anyway. Nothing like Veck's. You've never been here before, have you?"
"Passing through in the middle of the night. 'Way I remembered it, there was an old trading post, a blacksmith's shingle over a lean-to and a half dozen houses."
"That's Buell's Crossing, all right."
"Trading post ought to have what we need."
She'd never liked Lake Buell, not even when Ethan had been alive, and since she'd been back, she'd had to drive him off her porch once at gunpoint when he'd shown up drunk and amorous. But she couldn't bring herself to say that to Hap.
"It probably does," she said finally.
"You don't want to go there?"
"Well, he's always got rough-looking men hanging around the place, but I don't guess it really matters. It is a long way to Veck's," she conceded.
"You don't have to go in. No sense putting up with anything you don't have to." Slowing the team down to a walk, he offered, "Tell you what—I'll park under a tree, and you can wait outside in the shade."
"All right." Opening the drawstrings of her bag, she dug around inside her purse. "I brought forty dollars—you can get everything for that, can't you?"
"Put it back. I've still got a letter of credit I never used from when I was working at the Ybarra. I reckon it won't be any good after a while."
"I don't want you paying for this. I don't want to be beholden to you, Hap. Here," she said, pressing the banknotes into his hand.
It didn't make much sense to him. She was asking him to risk his life going up into some of the roughest country on God's green earth, but she didn't want him spending his money. He opened his mouth to point out her lack of logic, then shut it, saying nothing. Instead, he tucked the folded money into his pocket. They'd probably need it later, anyway.
Passing the low adobe building that said BUELL'S CROSSING in crude letters, he found a good-sized oak tree and pulled the wagon to a halt. Swinging down, he tied the traces to a low-hanging branch, then looked up at her.
"I don't plan on being long. I've got a good notion of what we need."
"All right."
She watched him walk back to the store, wondering if she was doing the right thing, if she was being at all fair to him. He still favored that leg, and after having ridden all the way from the Ybarra, he'd seemed to be in pain last night. While he hadn't said anything, he'd retired early, and yet when she'd gotten up for a glass of goat's milk to settle her stomach, she could see the glow of the kerosene lamp beneath his door.
He was quite a man, she'd give him that. After all the things she'd heard and read about him, he didn't seem half as wild as he'd been painted. He was too easy to like to be all that dangerous. But he apparently was. How had he put it?
I can be as mean and ornery as they are. And I've never been a coward. Anything I've ever said I'd do, I've done. His words seemed to echo in her mind, reassuring her, telling her it was fate that he'd come back to help her. He was tough, and he knew the land. He was her best chance of ever finding Susannah. She thought of Ethan, wondering what he would have said. It probably wasn't the sort of thing that had ever crossed a mind intent on a future that never came.
Ethan. Given the distance of three and a half year's separation from her memories, it was harder and harder to bring his image to mind. After three months of forcing herself to lie in the bed she'd once shared with him, she no longer dwelled on that, either. Which was just as well, she told herself stoutly. Every time she dreamed of what it had been like, the yearning had turned to terror, and it was Two Trees' hideously painted face hovering over her. Then she'd wake up screaming, drowning in sweat.
She looked around, wishing she'd not been such a coward, that she'd marched right into Lake Buell's store with her head held high. But she hadn't, and now she'd just have to occupy her thoughts in this sleepy, dusty little crossroad.
Hap Walker had left something that looked like a tablet under his seat. Curious, she retrieved it. Telling herself he hadn't really made any attempt to hide it, she looked inside. His decidedly masculine scrawl drew her, and she found herself reading what looked to be an essay he'd written.
I came into this world where the Sulphur and Red rivers meet (Paris, Texas now) on the Fourth of July, 1836, the youngest of five sons born to Henry Wagnon Walker, at various times a surveyor, a patriot in the war for Texas independence, a preacher, and a dirt farmer, and his wife, Hannah Goodwin Walker, a schoolteacher from East Tennessee. She did her best to pass on her love of books to me, hoping maybe I'd read law or become a doctor. My father wanted me to be a Baptist preacher, but I knew early on I wasn't suited to it.
I was the hell-raiser of the bunch, so much so that my father was relieved when I ran off to join the Texas Rangers in 1853. I guess he figured it was that or I'd be swinging at the end of a rope as an outlaw. My mother cried when I left home, and I'm not sure she ever forgave me for picking what she considered a rough calling.
But I liked the freedom of being a lawman like that. Back in those days the Indians, particularly the Comanches, the Kiowas, the Lipan Apaches, the Kickapoos, the Mescalero Apaches, and the Tonkawas raided throughout Texas, stealing and killing, then fading either up to the Llano, over to New Mexico, or down to Old Mexico. While the Tonkawas have been known to eat their enemies, I would still have to say that the meanest Indian of my experience was, and still is, the Comanche.
His narration left off there, with a notation of the current date. If he'd been writing a letter to someone, it was going to be a long one. It was a curious document, but perhaps the most surprising thing about it was that every word was spelled correctly, and the prose, while lengthy, was correct. For all his seeming folksiness, Hap Walker was more literate than most Texans. She supposed he owed that to his mother.
Feeling somewhat guilty for reading it, she carefully put the tablet back, then resigned herself to at least a half hour of sitting under the spreading oak tree. She just hoped that Lake Buell didn't mean to give him any trouble.
"He'p you?" Buell was saying.
"Yeah." Hap took out Annie's list and a pencil, then marked off about three-quarters of it. Handing it across the counter, he asked, "Got any of this?"
The man studied it for a moment, then allowed, "Some. Canteens. Flour, by the fifty pounds only. Buffalo jerky in paraffin. Salt. Coffee. Now, tin plates I ain't got. Out o' cornmeal right now. No whiskey?"
"No."
Buell scratched his head. "Mebbe I could do you some good on the cornmeal. Jack!" he called out. "That Mexican got any cornmeal?"
Several men, obviously cowpunchers, looked up from a card game. "Naw," one answered, swatting a fly with his hand, squashing it on the table. "Lake, you got to do something about the damned flies. Damned things is bigger 'n buzzards."
The front door banged on its hinges, and a leather-skinned man sauntered in. "Hey, Lake! Never guess what I just saw outside. Looks like yer sweetie's done come to town!"
"Huh?"
"The Widder Bryce."
Hap didn't like his tone. "The lady's with me," he said evenly.
"Lady!" Buell snorted. "Hell, that ain't no lady, mister! Annie Bryce ain't nothing but a Comanche's whore!" he declared to the snickers of the fellows at the table. "Why, all you got to do is go out there with a bottle of cheap whiskey, and—"
His head snapped back with the force of the blow. Staggering, he backed into a shelf of tinned goods, knocking it over. For a moment he just stared, then his face turned dark red. "No gimp-legged son of a bitch's gonna hit Lake Buell," he growled, lunging across the counter. He came at Hap like a charging bull, s
winging a beefy fist. It missed.
Hap's second punch caught him in the gut, followed by a third to his jaw, and the battle was joined. Bellowing now, the big, hulking shopkeeper got down to business by swinging a chair, breaking the rungs over Hap's shoulder. Hap's good leg kicked him, catching Buell behind the knee with the toe of his boot, sending him crashing to the ground, but the big man wouldn't stay down.
The fight was dirty, brutal, and short, ending when Buell grabbed a long-necked bottle, broke it on the edge of the table, and swung the jagged edge at Hap's throat. Ducking under the arc of the bottle, Hap butted him, knocking the wind out of him. As Buell sagged, he caught him hard in the gut with the boot, knocking him to the floor. A couple of swift kicks to the head, and it was all over. Buell tried to get up, then fell back, blood gushing from an obviously broken nose. Hap stood over him, fists clenched. But the bigger man leaned over and spit a broken tooth into the dirt.
"Jesus, mister, I ain't seen nuthin' like it," Jack muttered, looking away. "Ain't nobody beats Lake. Nobody."
But Hap's eyes were still on the proprietor. "I'd be real careful what I said from now on, Buell. The lady's a Walker now." Reaching into his pocket, he took out his letter of credit from the Ybarra and dropped it into Lake's lap. "I'll take that order now, and I want it carried out to the wagon, you hear? And if you so much as looked crosseyed at her, I'll kill you," he added evenly.
As he walked out, the place was dead silent, but the hairs on Hap's neck prickled in warning. He dropped his hand and spun around, leveling the Colt as Buell edged for a shotgun. Lake dropped it like it was red-hot, then stammered, "I didn't mean nuthin', mister. I was just picking it up off the floor."
"Jesus, did you see that?" somebody gasped.
Hap returned the gun to his holster and kicked open the door. As it banged on its hinges behind him, he heard Jack say, "My God, Lake, he coulda kilt you! Look at this paper, Lake, look at it!"
"I'm gonna kill me a gimp-legged man," Buell muttered. "I'm gonna cut 'im in half with a load of buckshot."