“Sure. I’ll just think about that woman. I think we ought to keep her. Take her back to the cabin. She’s bound to be able to cook better’n Buster. And after she’s done filling us with dinner, I’ll fill her full of something even better.” He laughed.
“Can’t you ever think of anything except your dong?”
“I think it’s a good idea,” the one Victoria assumed was Buster said. “If we ever find them.”
“You set that female up in our camp, and we’d never get nothing done. You two would be fighting over her from see to can’t see.”
“We could take her in shifts.”
They passed on down the trail, arguing over how they would divide up the day so they could make the best use of Victoria.
Victoria didn’t sneeze. Listening to what they said had scared it completely out of her.
She and Trinity remained perfectly quiet until a flash of lightning showed the trail to be empty.
“We’ll stay here about fifteen minutes more “Trinity said.
“"Then what do we do?”
“We follow them.”
“Follow them!” Victoria squeaked. “You must be crazy.”
She sneezed. Twice.
“I’ve got to get you out of the rain before you get sick. I have a friend who has a ranch near here. We’ll follow them until we have to leave the trail. We’ll lose our tracks in theirs.”
“But won’t they be able to see where we turned off?”
“They won’t have any idea we got behind them. There were no tracks there when they came by. If they do turn back, which I doubt, they’ll think it’s just somebody else coming along the same road after them.”
Victoria wasn’t about to argue. The notion of some place dry had taken hold of her imagination. It was all she could think about.
But her relief was some time in coming.
Morning came, grey and full of rain. And colder than ever. They soon left the trail, but it was past noon before they came in sight of a solitary cabin.
“Doesn’t seem to be anybody home,” Trinity said. “No smoke.”
Victoria’s spirits fell. She didn’t think she could go on any longer. Only the prospect of getting warm and dry had kept her going this long. She’d been awake and in the saddle for the better part of three days now. She was so exhausted she didn’t care if she had to find a cave. She had to get off this horse and out of the rain.
Trinity continued on toward the house. Victoria was surprised but didn’t argue. If Trinity intended to break into the place, she’d be right behind him.
“Can’t figure where Ben got to,” Trinity said when they halted out of the rain under a broad overhang. “But he won’t mind us putting up here for the night.”
Trinity lifted Victoria out of the saddle. She couldn’t have dismounted by herself.
The small cabin was only one room. Victoria gave silent thanks it had a wooden floor. After twelve hours of rain, a dirt floor would have been under several inches of water. A handmade table and two slat-bottom chairs stood in the center of the room. A small iron stove with a flue through the ceiling stood out from the far wall. To the left of the stove, the absent Ben had built shelves into the wall where he could keep all his supplies within reach. On the right, a small alcove formed by an open closet on one side and some deep shelves on the other contained the single bed. Even though the bed had been carefully made up, it hadn’t been designed for comfort.
Victoria thought it looked heavenly.
Pegs along the inside and outside walls held saddles, bridles, hats, and anything else the owner wanted to hang up.
Despite the long and heavy rain, only two places in the roof leaked seriously enough for Victoria to consider putting a bucket under them. A little light filtered in from three windows, all of which stood in need of a good cleaning.
“I’ll start a fire and put some water on for coffee,” Trinity said, coming in behind her with the saddlebags. “You get out of those wet clothes.” Long years of practice enabled Trinity to have a fire going in less than a minute. Rainwater, even more quickly procured from a barrel outside, would serve to make coffee.
“Come on, get out of your clothes,” Trinity said, when he turned around and Victoria still stood, dripping water on the floor.
“I can’t. Not with you here.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You’ll catch your death.”
“I can’t!” Victoria repeated.
“I’ve got to take care of the horses. By the time I unsaddle them, rub them down, and feed them, you ought to have had all the time you need.”
“I hate for you to have to go back outside, but there’s only one room.”
“Don’t worry,” Trinity said. “I’d have had to take care of the horses even if this place was bigger than any house in Texas.”
Chapter Eighteen
The minute the door closed behind Trinity, Victoria dug into her saddlebags for a complete change of clothing. She pulled off her boots and then began striping off her wet clothes. Even with the rain slick, she was wet through to the skin and chilled to the bone.
Standing as close to the small fire as she dared, she stripped down to bare skin. Shivering, her teeth chattering uncontrollably, Victoria hurried into her dry clothes. They felt damp and cold. She stood as close as she dared to the fire to dry her clothes and warm her bones.
That didn’t warm her enough. She took a thick Indian blanket from the bed and wrapped it around her shoulders. She pulled one of the chairs up close to the fire and sank into it. For a few minutes, her body remained cold and stiff, her muscles taut. But as the fire began to warm the cabin, and the heavy blanket began to trap the warmth of her body, Victoria started to relax.
She couldn’t believe how tired she was. Even in the flight from Texas, she’d never been in the saddle so long, never endured such physical exhaustion, never had to escape such a potpourri of evil pursuers.
But it was all over now. She was out of the saddle, warm and dry, with enough food to last for days. And she was safe. Trinity would see to that. For the first time in uncountable hours, she could relax.
She was getting too warm. She moved her chair back a little. The water was beginning to boil. She ought to look for the coffee, but she was too tired to bother. She was too tired to sit up. Her eyelids began to droop. All she wanted was to go to sleep, but she had to stay awake. She couldn’t go to sleep before Trinity got back.
But he would be gone for a long time. It would take him more than half an hour to take care of three horses.
There was no point in her just sitting here all the time. She probably should see about fixing something to eat, but she wasn’t hungry. Besides, she didn’t like the idea of rummaging about in somebody else’s house. Let Trinity do it. The place belonged to his friend.
Victoria got up, went over and sat down on the bed. It wasn’t as comfortable as her bed back home, but it would do for a short nap. She lay down and pulled the blanket up over her shoulders.
She wouldn’t sleep, just doze for ten or fifteen minutes. “Then she’d get up and fix something to eat. Trinity probably left the supplies in the pile with the saddlebags. She’d look in a minute. No point in getting up now when she was finally warm.
Victoria gratefully relaxed into the bed. There were times when this journey with Trinity seemed like a nightmare from which she would awaken to find Anita shaking her and saying she’d never get anything done if she slept her life away.
Victoria closed her eyes and smiled. Anita was such a dear. She and Ramon had spoiled her. But so had her father and her uncle … and Buc. Everyone had spoiled her until Trinity came along. Only Trinity had decided she wouldn’t break, that she was as tough as any man. She appreciated that, but she had to admit she liked being spoiled.
Maybe Trinity wasn’t always like that. Maybe, when he was at his ranch, he could relax. He might even say something nice to her without spoiling it a minute later by saying something rude.
She wondered what his ranch wa
s like. What would it reveal about him that she didn’t know? Could she get past his distrust of women? She could try. Surely, if she went about it the right way….
“It’s getting worse out there,” Trinity said as he entered the cabin. The wind sucked the door shut behind him. “I wouldn’t be surprised if this turns into a….”
Victoria was sound asleep. Not even his noisy entrance disturbed her. A strong odor of something burning pervaded the room. Trinity hurried to the stove. The water had burned out of the pan. Taking another pot from the shelf, Trinity hurried outside, dipped it into the rain barrel, and poured the contents into the pan upon returning. A loud hissing, a cloud of steam, and the water would soon be ready for coffee.
He walked over to the bed. He wanted to replace the blanket. It was heavy and coarse, made out of horsehair, but Victoria’s fingers gripped it tightly. He wished he had a soft pillow instead of the hard, cotton-filled pillow Ben used, but she seemed to be sleeping soundly, despite the packed cotton and the coarse blanket.
He wanted to do something to make her more comfortable. It wasn’t very satisfying knowing the best thing he could do was leave her alone. He wasn’t doing a very good job of taking care of her. Grant Davidge certainly wouldn’t have allowed her to go if he’d known she would be attacked by Indians, pursued by randy miners, and end up sleeping in a dirty cabin on a remote ranch across the New Mexico border.
Trinity certainly wouldn’t have let any woman he cared for go under the circumstances.
“That’s why you feel so guilty. The undeniable realization nearly took his breath away. You care for her. You care for her in a way you haven’t cared for any woman since Queenie, in a way you swore never to care again.
Panic rose in his throat. It was the same feeling he had for the first few months after Queenie married his father. That feeling of helplessness and hopelessness, of being sucked into a dark pit to be tortured with the promise of everything he ever wanted and couldn’t have. For years it had pursued him like a wolf pursues a deer during a famine; it shadowed him relentlessly, remorselessly, unceasingly. It used to wake him up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat.
Falling in love was akin to losing control of his life, to yielding himself up to destruction, of letting someone suck the life out of his soul until nothing remained but a hard shell. He had fought it. And he’d spent fifteen years hardening his soul so he would never feel that way again.
Yet, much to his surprise, the panic passed almost as quickly as it came. It wouldn’t be the same way with Victoria. But what did he want from her? What did he want with her? He hadn’t stopped to consider that. He had often considered the fact that he desired her, but he wanted something much more meaningful, more long-lasting.
Don’t be stupid. Women like Victoria only consider marriage. And they don’t consider it with a thirty-dollar-a-month cowhand.
What was he? An ex-miner. A cowboy of some kind. He certainly couldn’t call himself a rancher, even though he had owned a ranch. He hadn’t had time to buy any cows. All he had there a few horses. Women like Victoria didn’t marry impoverished miners turned ranchers; not when they had an inheritance in the bank, one of the richest men in Texas for a father-in-law, and an uncle who owned the biggest ranch in Arizona.
She might flirt with him, especially if she needed him to prove she was innocent of murder, but she wouldn’t seriously consider marrying him. There were too many respectable men available for her to consider marrying a burned-out bounty hunter.
Trinity forced himself to consider the situation at hand. Victoria was asleep and likely to sleep through the afternoon, evening, and night. If he wanted any dinner, he’d have to cook it himself. And eat it alone.
He wouldn’t wake her.
He set about the familiar task of preparing his own meal. He’d done it so often he didn’t have to think about it any more. He didn’t much care what he ate. Many times he ate nothing rather than go to the trouble of cooking. It was one of the many things he did in his life because he knew he ought to, not because he cared.
But it didn’t take him long to realize that something felt different this time. And it had nothing to do with being inside Ben’s cabin. It was a strange feeling, like he had enjoyed something quite pleasant but couldn’t quite remember what it was. But the feeling didn’t go away. In fact, it grew stronger as he fixed his dinner, ate it, and cleaned up after himself.
By the time he was ready for bed, he was practically purring with contentment. Why? What could have generated this feeling in him?
His gaze fell on Victoria, and he realized she was the difference.
It felt strange being in a cabin with a woman sleeping nearby. Sort of like being married, at least what he thought it would be like to be married. He’d never really considered it. He’d refused to let any such thoughts enter his mind. He didn’t want his life controlled by anyone else, especially a woman. They never seemed to want the same things as men. They were always trying to get men to change or do something they didn’t want to do.
But it wouldn’t be too bad if it were always like this. There was an ease about Victoria which made her as comfortable to be around as most men. This cabin was very simple, even crude, but it had a homey feeling. There were none of the feminine touches he associated with women. On the whole he felt more comfortable that way. But he wouldn’t mind a flower garden, as long as he didn’t have to work in it. Flowers inside the house were nice, too.
Trinity leaned back in his chair and stared into the fire.
Having a woman around made a man see things differently. It was real different from being around a woman. When a man was around a woman, he was sniffing her out, acting like a tomcat, thinking of what he could get, thinking of his own pleasure and not much else.
But having a woman around was something else entirely. It didn’t mean a man couldn’t let his mind contemplate pleasure now and then. No man could look at Victoria and not think about sinking blissfully into her embrace. Whether she knew it or not, she was made for love. And if he had his way, he’d prove it to her before they said adieu.
But he thought of other things, things Trinity had never thought about before. He thought of building something solid, of making a home. He couldn’t do that when he behaved like a one-man crusade. He never made any money. Funding his work took most of the gold he could dig out of the ground. Chasing criminals was expensive. He wasn’t home long enough to put up a house or build up a ranch or a business.
He thought of permanence, of staying in one place for years, of building a network of friends, of having a family, of being tied to people by unbreakable bonds. That meant more than buying someone’s favors by the hour … or by the evening.
It meant changing the whole way he lived, the way he thought, everything he wanted from life. It meant facing himself.
Trinity knew he wasn’t ready to do that.
They there sitting at the table in front of the fire. Trinity had fixed dinner and cleared away the dishes. Victoria had awakened about dusk.
Now it was time to go to bed, but neither of them seemed willing to make the first move.
“The rain’s letting up,” Trinity said. “We ought to be able to leave first thing in the morning.”
“We won’t run into those men?”
“They ought to be about a hundred miles west of here.”
Silence filled the room.
“How long do you think it will take us to reach Bandera?”
“That depends on how hard you want to ride.”
“Not as hard as we rode to get here.”
“Then it’ll take longer.”
More silence permeated the air.
“Don’t you want to wait for your friend?”
“No. He might be away for weeks. I didn’t see any signs of cows about. Maybe he took his herd off to sell. He didn’t have many cows, but they were good breeding stock.”
“As good as Uncle’s?”
“Better.”
&nb
sp; “Do you think Uncle Grant will be in Bandera when we get there?”
“I doubt it, but I’m certain he’ll have hired someone to meet us.”
“How are you going to find Chalk Gillet?”
“I don’t know. I was hoping Ben could give me a line. He knows practically every cowboy between here and Galveston.”
“How, running this ranch?”
“Those cows belonged to the last man I took in. He murdered a man for them. I had nothing to do with them, so I gave them to Ben. Before that he spent all his time riding the trails north.”
Silence.
“What happens if you can’t find Gillet?”
“I’ll find him.” Trinity stood up and stretched. “It’s time for bed. I’ll check the horses.”
Victoria was in bed with the light out when Trinity returned. He put a few more pieces of wood on the fire. The sky had cleared, but a cold wind blew down from the north. They were about three thousand feet above the desert floor, and the night would be cold.
Trinity spread his bedding on the floor and undressed. He consciously made himself keep his back to Victoria. She was sound asleep, but he didn’t trust himself. Ever since that day on the mountain when he kissed her, he had been finding it harder and harder to keep his hands off her.
He told himself at the time it was okay to kiss her because it was part of his plan to lure her into trusting him. Since then he’d kept his distance, partly because she would have nothing to do with him after he kidnapped her, and partly because neither one of them could figure out how to reestablish their easy relationship.
The fact that he was taking her back to Bandera still stood between them. It didn’t matter that she was going willingly. He was still endangering her life. He had dragged her into one dangerous situation after another. He had also been prepared to shoot her uncle. That wasn’t a very good basis for establishing a relationship of love and trust.
Yet he did want her to trust him. He knew she depended on him, and he thought she respected his position. What he wanted most, though, was for her to like him.
Don’t be a fool, he told himself. No woman could feel about you the way you want her to, not after what you’ve done, not even if you were to let her go. The only way you can make up for what you’ve done is to prove her innocent.
Arizona Embrace Page 25