by Mary McBride
She was young, untried and probably too innocent to know what she truly wanted. But she seemed to want him. She worried about him, that he knew. He remembered the way she’d called out to him to be careful, and how she’d come flying into that bank just yesterday without any thought for her own safety. And last night—as much as he could remember of it anyway—she had held him and cooled him and warmed him and even kissed him, sweetly, a time or two.
Gideon sighed, still adrift somewhere between sleeping and wakefulness. He could ask her, he thought. No harm in just asking. Wrap her in his arms and whisper in her ear, “Come to Mexico with me. Be with me. Let me love you.”
Love! He nearly laughed. Now there was a word that hadn’t crossed his mind since he’d been a boy. It had fallen out of his vocabulary as surely as the possibility of it had fallen out of his life. He liked the little bank teller. God knew he wanted her. But love? That didn’t exist for the likes of Gideon Summerfield. It probably never would.
So, he’d ask her. Maybe. Taking off for Mexico as soon as his side healed didn’t seem like a bad idea. The hell with Logan and his plans. The banker would never be able to find him once he crossed the border into Mexico. And the hell with Dwight Samuel and Cora. Let somebody else put his black-bearded cousin in prison or six feet under. And as for Cora...well, let her rot in hell, for she’d never wind up anyplace else.
Gideon drifted. Ed could teach him to speak Spanish. It wouldn’t take him all that long to learn. Didn’t he already know a word or two? He knew, for instance, that huevos wasn’t rattlesnake. He smiled in his sleep. Oh, but what he planned to teach pretty Miss Edwina Cassidy would take endless nights, thousands of long lazy afternoons behind drawn shutters, hundreds of bright hot mornings. It might even take forever. He just might make it take forever.
He slept dreamlessly with the blanket pulled over his face to block out the harsh rays of the sun, then awakened with a jolt when the blanket was whipped away. Gideon jerked to his elbows in a haze of sleep and pain to find himself looking along the barrel of a pistol into a pair of eyes as cold as a snake’s and a black beard as tangled as a weed patch. The beard split suddenly in a great, jagged grin.
“Well, I’ll be damned. I didn’t believe ‘em when they said it was you. How the hell are you, cousin?”
“I’d be a helluva lot better if you’d get that pistol out of my face, Dwight,” Gideon said.
Dwight Samuel glanced at the gun as if he had forgotten it was there, then he laughed and sank the weapon into his holster.
“I ‘bout blew your head off, Gid. Didn’t recognize you till you opened your eyes.” The bearded man sat back on his heels, shaking his head in amazement. “Lord, you take after Aunt Carrie. Got them same wintry eyes. I’d clean forgotten that.”
Gideon had no memory of his mother’s eyes, but staring into his cousin’s now, he clearly remembered those. No matter how much Dwight Samuel laughed, his eyes always remained hard and cold. Wintry eyes. Maybe it ran in the family, Gideon mused. They were a hardscrabble lot who’d left Kentucky only to find worse trials awaiting them in Missouri. The women had learned to be thin-lipped and sullen. The men—Jesse, Frank, Dwight, himself—had acquired the ability to kill without batting one of those wintry eyes.
“It’s good to see you, Dwight,” Gideon said now, and somewhere deep in his heart he meant it. Despite his anger at his cousin’s betrayal and his wish for revenge, the tug of family was strong.
“You, too, cousin. You, too.” Dwight’s gaze went to the wad of fabric at Gideon’s side. “Seems like the last time I saw you you was shot up similar. You mendin’ all right?”
“It’s coming along,” Gideon said, ignoring the pain in his side now that there were other pains and other dangers to consider.
Dwight nodded. He tugged his dirty plaid shirt out of his pants to expose his own hair-covered belly. “Hell, I bet I can match you scar for scar.” He touched a ragged, dirt-edged fingernail to a puckered inch of scar tissue. “This here’s from that run-in we had with the bluebellies over in Cass County. You remember that?”
He didn’t, but Gideon nodded anyway.
“You were just a little cuss then as I recall. Hell, I was nineteen. What were you, Gid? Twelve?”
“Ten,” Gideon said quietly.
His cousin shook his head. “Ten. Is that all? Lordy. You were a mean little son of a bitch. Jesse always said you were probably the worst of us.” Dwight’s mouth twitched. “Hell of a thing about Jesse, wasn’t it? By God, I had a mind to track that Bob Ford down and make him eat my gun, but...” His voice trailed off.
Gideon had been in prison in ‘82 when his cousin—poor, unsuspecting Jesse—had been shot in the back of the head by a member of his own gang. And, at the time, Gideon had had the same notion as Dwight and had spent long hours in solitary plotting Jesse’s revenge on that miserable coward, Ford. The thought now that he had so much in common with his vicious, black-bearded cousin was a painful one.
He levered up on one elbow and gazed over the man’s shoulder, off into the mountainous distance. “We’ve probably done enough killing, Dwight, for one family.”
The bearded man stuffed his shirttails back under his belt, glowering, muttering under his breath.
“How’s Cora?” Gideon kept his voice low and level as his eyes fastened on his cousin’s face.
Dwight looked away. “Aw, hell, Gid. She was a faithless whore. You were better off without her, let me tell you. She done me worse than she ever done you.”
Gideon didn’t reply immediately. When his cousin’s gaze finally flicked back to him, Gideon asked, “Did she have the kid?”
“Hell, yes, she had him. Cute little bugger, too. But all she did after that was complain. That woman had a tongue like a braided bullwhip.”
Gideon’s heart was pounding hard now. His muscles were tensing and his palms were beginning to sweat, but he kept his voice as cool and unconcerned as he could manage. “Had a boy, did she?”
Dwight looked him full in the eye now. “Yours, I expect. She named him Gideon anyway.”
“Where is she? Where’s the boy?”
“Dead.” Dwight shrugged slightly and shifted his stance. “Both of ‘em. We were in West Texas. The boy took sick. Cora went about a day after he did. I buried ‘em real nice. Bought ‘em a marker, too.”
The knot in Gideon’s throat threatened to choke him as he lowered his shoulders onto the saddle behind him. Good riddance, he told himself. Except for the boy. Christ Almighty! A son! He’d had a son. Just the knowing shouldn’t hurt so much.
Dwight reached out a hand to nudge him on the leg then. “Where you got the girl stashed, Gid?”
“What?”
“That girl you kidnapped. Where’d you stash her? How much are you asking for her? Hell, I told the boys I bet Race Logan would cough up plenty, ten or twenty thousand maybe, to get his daughter back.”
“She’s not Logan’s daughter. She’s a teller in his bank. And I didn’t kidnap her.” Gideon felt a grin testing one edge of his mouth despite his grim mood. “The lady just kind of latched on to me.”
“Just latched on to you.” Dwight chuckled while he dug his fingers deep in his beard to scratch his chin. “Ain’t that something? You always were one lucky son of a bitch where females were concerned. But stupid, too. Damn lucky and damn stupid.”
“Is that right?” Gideon growled.
“Hell, Gid, you’re sitting on a gold mine and you don’t even know it.” He hooted and slapped Gideon’s leg. “You walked out of that Santa Fe bank cuffed to the owner’s daughter. His only daughter. Honey’s her name. Ain’t you one lucky son of a bitch. Damn!” The black-bearded man craned his neck over his shoulder, peering around the mine entrance. “So where is she?”
Oblivious to the pain in his side, Gideon sat up. “Where’d you get that information, Dwight?” Obviously his cousin had been misinformed, he thought. The daughter of the bank president didn’t work behind the counter.
&nb
sp; “Don’t you think I know what’s what?” Dwight answered. “I been in the territory better than a year now. I guess I know what’s what and who’s who around here. And I guess I know who’s about the richest man in New Mexico with a daughter who looks right like him.”
Jesus! She did! Why hadn’t that ever occurred to him? Gideon wondered now. He’d only seen Race Logan once, that day the banker met him at the train, but the man had memorable looks. Those turquoise eyes, in particular. Just like Ed’s. You’d have to be blind not to notice it. Or blinded by your own foolish yearnings.
And those foolish yearnings had led him right up to the threshold of asking her to go to Mexico with him, to share his life. He had thought... Hell, what difference did it make what he’d thought? The idea of Race Logan’s daughter even looking at the likes of him was laughable. The notion of her going away with him was a joke. A cruel joke. Right now Gideon wasn’t sure who had played him for a worse fool—Ed or Gideon himself.
Dwight leaned toward him and nudged his arm. “Now that I’ve helped you discover that rich little mine, Gid, how ‘bout I help you dig out some gold?” His jagged grin widened.
Gideon didn’t answer. His eyes were focused on the dun mare that was rapidly approaching from the south.
* * *
Honey’s heavy heart lightened and took wing the second she spied Gideon—standing—standing tall—and her face broke out in a happy, relieved grin. He was alive. He was all right. He was standing. She would have known that stance anywhere, she thought, and those broad shoulders, those lean hips and long legs. The fact that he wasn’t standing there alone didn’t seem to register on her until she had pulled Jonquil to a stop in front of the mine.
The fact that that man had a full black beard and an ugly scar high on his cheek was dawning on her just as Gideon reached up and hauled her off Jonquil’s back.
Honey shrieked and struggled.
“Hold still,” Gideon snarled.
“That man,” she cried. “He’s come to take me back to Santa Fe, hasn’t he?”
He wrestled both of her arms behind her back and pulled her close against him.
His voice was harsh and low, and his breath rushed hot at her ear. “That man is Dwight Samuel, and he’d just as soon rape you as look at you, Miss Honey Logan. Now, for God’s sake, just hold still.”
Chapter Twelve
Honey went still within his arms. Her breath ceased and she was sure her heart had stopped beating.
“That’s better,” Gideon whispered. “Now you listen to me. If you want to stay alive, bright eyes, you do exactly what I tell you to.” He clasped his arms more tightly around her, at the same time widening his stance so his legs, too, seemed to surround her. “You hear me?”
“I...I hear you.”
“Good. Now kiss me.”
Her face jerked up to encounter his fierce, implacable gaze. “What?”
“I said kiss me. And make it good, so my cousin over there believes he’d have to walk over my dead body to lay even so much as a finger on you.”
He had barely finished speaking before his mouth settled over Honey’s with an urgency that rocked her to the soles of her feet. Her attempt at protest only served to make it easier for his hot tongue to invade her while one of his hands splayed over her breast.
When he lifted his head, Honey drew in a ragged breath. She was dizzy. Gideon steadied her with his arm.
“That should do it for a while,” he said coldly.
That had done it, all right, Honey thought. Her stomach had dropped someplace impossibly low in her body and her heart had catapulted into her throat. Her brain was in utter confusion and she couldn’t quite focus on Gideon. All she saw was the white slash of his smile.
“Why, Miss Logan,” he taunted, “don’t tell me your rich, fancy boyfriends don’t kiss you that way.”
She forced her wet, trembling lips to form words. “They...they wouldn’t dare.”
Dwight Samuel’s shadow fell across them. ”Lookee what I found in her gear,” he said, letting Gideon’s gun dangle from his index finger. “This yours, cousin?”
Gideon’s wintry eyes held Honey’s as he reached for the gun. “It’s mine.” He jammed the weapon into his belt, adding, “She wouldn’t know how to use it anyway.”
“All I know how to do is go to tea parties and fancy balls,” Honey muttered. “Isn’t that right, Mr. Summerfield?”
The dark-bearded bandit looked from the glaring woman to the scowling man. He scratched his chin for a minute, then shrugged. “I found this here ham and some other vittles, too. I believe I’ll just give my boys a holler. They’re plenty hungry.” He handed the burlap sack to Honey. “Let’s see what you can do about fixing us some hot grub, little lady.”
Gideon laughed. “You’d be better off eating dirt,” he said, as he took the sack from Honey’s hand and shoved it back at Dwight. “Have one of your boys see to this.”
The bandit smirked. “She pretty useless, is she?”
Honey’s mouth opened in protest, but rather than speech her breath chuffed out of her when Gideon grabbed her around the waist and moved her uphill toward the mine entrance, calling over his shoulder. “Useless, yeah. But she sure is pretty, cousin. We’re going to just have ourselves a little lie-down.”
She had no choice but to move forward in his iron grip. “I take back every nice thing I said about you,” Honey snarled as she stomped beside him. “You’re not a gentleman at all. You’re nothing but a goat.”
When he didn’t answer, Honey continued her verbal attack as much to berate him as to vent her own anger. “How dare you paw me! And in front of a man like that. And how dare you give him the impression that we’re coming up here to...to...”
“Act like a couple of goats?” Gideon stopped in his tracks and pulled her into his arms. “That’s exactly what I want him to think. And I want him to damn well believe I’m the king of the goats. Now just shut up and help me up this goddamn hill before I fall right back down.”
Honey took a step backward the moment his arms loosened. “Gideon! You’re bleeding again.” The bandage on his side had turned a deep and frightening crimson. It seemed to darken as she watched.
“Only a bucket or two,” he said through clenched teeth. “I’ve got to lie down, bright eyes, before I fall down. Let me lean on you, will you?”
She slipped her arm around his waist, edged her shoulder under his arm and led him to the makeshift saddle and horse blanket bed she had made for him the day before. Once there, Gideon lowered himself with a sigh.
“Lie back,” Honey said. “I got some fresh linens in town. Some laudanum, too. They’re in my saddlebag.”
He clamped his fingers around her wrist as she got up to leave. “Stay here.”
“But, Gideon...”
“Do what I say. Just wait till Dwight’s gone. I don’t want you anywhere near him.”
“All right,” she said grudgingly.
“And do me a favor. Get the gun belt you took off me. Put it back on me.” He pulled the pistol from his belt. “See that this gets in it, too. Now let me just close my eyes for a minute.”
No sooner had he closed his eyes than he seemed to relax into some faraway place inside his head. He stirred only slightly, lifting his hips an inch or so as Honey struggled to put the gun belt on him. When she buckled it, his lips moved just a bit, first in a dreamy smile, and then to murmur, “That’s it, Ed, honey. Hold my hand now, will you? Yeah. How’d you get such tiny hands?”
Honey gazed at their joined hands. She wanted to say that hers weren’t tiny at all. Only in comparison with his. But Gideon was fast asleep before she could speak.
* * *
The campfire cast its wavering orange glow on the faces of the men who were gathered around it. Six men. Twelve eyes that kept straying in her direction. Honey scooted a little closer to Gideon, whose two-hour sleep seemed to have restored much of his strength, to say nothing of his determination to remain king of the go
ats.
Goats indeed. Dwight Samuel had come back with the rest of his gang of misfits and outlaws. There were two Mexicans, Valez and Cordera, who sat shoulder to shoulder in the firelight and whispered to each other in Spanish. There was a half-breed named Charlie Buck—his black braids falling from the brim of a dusty bowler hat—who barely spoke at all. And there was a boy they all called Shooter, who had wild, curly hair and feverish eyes and hands that couldn’t keep still. He spit whenever he talked and his voice was high and whiny. He reminded Honey of a rabid dog she had seen when she was a little girl in Loma Parda. That wild-eyed animal had frightened her, but not one whit more than Shooter frightened her now.
A jug of mescal was making its way around the circle, and the outlaws were slowly and very deliberately getting drunk. All but Gideon, Honey noticed. She watched each time he tipped the jug. He never swallowed. Not once. The drunker and louder the others became, the more silent and sober Gideon seemed to be, although no one seemed to notice but Honey.
Shooter swigged now, wiped his sleeve across his mouth, then passed the jug to Honey. When she grasped it, the boy didn’t let go immediately, but spread his thin fingers over hers and made a wet, clicking sound with his tongue.
Jerking the stoneware crock away, she used what remained of the hem of her skirt to wipe the lip and took a long, burning swallow of the mescal she had previously declined. Maybe, she thought, it would help her endure this horrible night.
“Careful.” Gideon’s voice was low, threaded with amusement. He grinned as he took the jug from her hands. “This isn’t like your fancy sherry, bright eyes. It packs a little kick.”
She was well aware of that. Her throat felt scorched and her eyes were watering fiercely. “Thank you,” she rasped indignantly. “I believe I know what I’m doing.”
Dwight Samuel leered at her from across the campfire. “That goes down real smooth, don’t it, Miss Logan?”
Honey nodded. The bearded outlaw on the opposite side of the campfire was little more than a blur for the tears in her eyes.