“Oh no. I didn’t lie about that.” Jewel gazed up at his forehead. “It’s … still there. And I’m quite sure it’s a black widow.” She leaned forward, squinting. “Yes. Red hourglass.”
And at that exact second, Wyatt felt something stir his hair. Something thin and tiny, like the brush of an insect leg.
“You were going to let it bite me.” Wyatt gazed at her in accusation, his chest heaving. He’d hurled his hat and glasses across the room before clawing at his leather vest and stomping senselessly at the fleeing black speck.
Now Jewel crouched near his fallen glasses, trying to bend the crooked frame back into shape.
“A black widow, Mrs. Moreau. Really. How can I partner with you after that?”
“You were going to shoot me.” She wiped the glass lens on the hem of her skirt. “I figured it was fair.”
Wyatt didn’t respond, checking his hair again with a shaky hand. “Partners,” he muttered, turning up his lip. “How can I partner with the likes of you?”
Jewel coldly handed him his glasses, her warm fingers brushing his briefly. “How can you afford not to?”
Wyatt took the glasses with a terse nod of thanks and tried to straighten them on his face, his heart beating dizzy-fast again. Was she threatening him? After all, Jewel had obviously done something in the past that frightened her—something that made her want to forget it. Had she stolen something bigger than a key or … killed someone? The only bluff that made her take notice was the law. The magistrate.
Which meant …
Hairs stood up on Wyatt’s neck as he studied her there in the dim lantern light. The keys in her hand, glinting, and her downcast eyes. The sparkling beaded earring that caught the light in colorful spots, next to the graceful curves of her neck.
“Who are you?” he whispered, holding up the lantern to see her better.
“Jewel,” she replied in mocking tones. “You know my name.”
“That’s what people call you. But that’s not your real name.”
“Collette Moreau. You know that, too.” She raised her face defiantly. “An Indian and a woman who can’t be trusted, and who couldn’t possibly learn the English language. What else do you want from me?”
“Tell me more.” Wyatt didn’t know if he was asking or ordering, but he couldn’t pull the lantern away from her face. “Who are you? Where do you come from?”
He warily set his Colt down on a shelf next to a collection of dingy, dust-covered bottles. “Tell me the truth.” He hung his thumbs in his belt loops and glanced at her, shifting his hat nervously on his head.
Jewel’s head came up, and she studied him in silence.
“Look.” Wyatt crossed his arms. “Everybody has a thing or two to say about you in town, and around the ranch, but nobody really knows the truth.”
“The truth.” Jewel gave a sad half laugh and looked away, putting her hands on her hips. “Is that what they really want?”
Wyatt swallowed, and the scarlet bandanna around his stubbly throat felt tight. “It’s what I want.”
“Why?”
He scuffed the heel of his boot in the dirt, shrugging his shoulders. “Nobody even knows your real name. Except … well, me. Why is that? Why are you hiding?” He waved an arm around the root cellar. “Digging around in the dirt in a cabin at midnight?”
Jewel didn’t answer, twisting her wedding ring back and forth on her finger. “If you must know, I am Arapaho and French,” she finally said in a tender tone, her gaze seeming to go right through Wyatt as if not seeing him at all. “I’m the daughter of an Arapaho chief, born in an Arapaho village just outside the border in Nebraska.” She swallowed and looked down at her hands. Her delicate fingers, now worn from cold water and harsh soaps. “I was sold as a bride to a French trapper in Idaho when I was a young girl.”
It took Wyatt a second to register that Jewel hadn’t answered his question. Did she share her real name because she … trusted him? On some level? A wash of heat spread through his chest, and he blinked faster.
Of course not. It was probably all part of her twisted plot to pull the wool over his eyes, like everything else. He shifted his position against the shelf, keeping his gaze focused on his boots.
“How young were you?” he asked gruffly when she said no more.
“Fourteen years old.”
Wyatt’s hands clenched against the shelf, trying to still the angry throb in his heart at the thought of a fourteen-year-old slip of a girl being bought and sold like a mare—worse, like one of Uncle Hiram’s prize cattle—for a few gold coins or some blankets.
“So what are you doing here in Wyoming?” he finally asked, clearing his throat.
“I am Hagar,” she replied. “From the Bible you taught me at your table.”
“Huh?” Wyatt shook his head to make sense of her words. “I mean, ma’am? Pardon?”
“Running from great injustice and much suffering.” Tears gilded the corners of her eyes as she fumbled with the keys, knotting her fingers together. “I need this gold. Please. Help me find it. There’s enough for both of us, if the legends about Crazy Pierre are true. And I have reason to believe they are.”
“What do you mean you need the gold?”
Jewel turned, and a shadow covered part of her face. “I can’t tell you why. But I need it. My life may depend on it.”
Wyatt crossed his arms. “Well, I need the gold, too, you know.”
“You? For what?”
He hesitated. “To pay back an old wrong,” he said quietly, his hands clenching into fists. “I’ve been planning it all my life. And I’m so close now.” Wyatt squeezed his eyes closed, scarcely daring to breathe. “So close I can almost feel it. After all these years, maybe I’ll finally make amends for my father’s death.”
Jewel regarded him quietly. “I’m sorry about your family, Mr. Kelly.” She spoke so softly he had to lean forward to hear well. “I know you miss them.”
Emotion quivered in Wyatt’s chest, and he feigned a cough to cover it, pretending he hadn’t heard. “So how can I know you’re telling the truth about your … your story?” He gestured with his arm. “You could be spinning a yarn, for all I know.”
“So could you. And to answer your question, you’ll just have to trust me.”
“What if that’s not good enough?”
“The truth is all I have, Mr. Kelly.” She spread her hands wide. Cracks showed on the tips of her fingers. And before she could cover it, he noticed an ugly scar running the length of one brown forearm when her long wool sleeve fell back.
Jewel faced him there in the darkness, eyes glazed with sorrow, and something stirred in Wyatt’s gut. She has spoken the truth.
“Well, come on then.” Wyatt stuck his revolver back in his belt and reached gruffly for the wooden box. “We’d better get out of here. We’ll take it with us and open it in daylight. What do you say?”
“Fine. But don’t even think of opening it without me.” Jewel picked up her darkened lantern and held up his, which threw gold across the dusty wood of the box. “Fifty-fifty. You keep the box, and I keep the keys.” She patted her pocket. “Partners, right?”
Wyatt lifted the box, and something rattled inside. Sliding around the inside of the box with a tinny, metallic sound. He tucked the box under one arm and paused to let Jewel go first, tipping his hat by habit, and then he took the stone steps two at a time. Unspeakably grateful to leave behind the musty root cellar, which crawled with spiders and reeked of sour pickles.
As soon as he reached the top, he heard voices.
Two men’s voices, filtering from the woods into the broken ruins of Crazy Pierre’s house. Distant torches flickered against the trees in glances of light and shadow, splintering in long stripes against the crumbling log walls.
“Of all the rotten luck!” Wyatt hissed, ducking under the low cellar doorway and furiously brushing away cobwebs. “They’ve caught up with us.”
“Who?” Jewel took a step back toward
Wyatt.
“The Crowder brothers. They’re ruthless. They’ll kill us both.” He put a finger to his lips.
“There are two of us and two of them. We’re matched.”
“Naw.” Wyatt stroked his chin as a wave of nausea flitted through his stomach. “Not against the Crowders. They’re crazy, both of them—and they carry more lead with them than a whole infantry. Why, I’ve only got a few more rounds. We’re finished, you know that?”
“Can we make it outside?” Jewel stumbled over a sunken piece of flooring and caught herself against a rough-hewn chair.
“Nope. They’ll see us for sure if we waltz right out the door.” Dull glass in the single window sparkled in sharp shards, and the opening was too small to squeeze through without cutting himself to ribbons.
Jewel held his glowing lantern behind her to block the light. “Hurry, then. Get back down to the root cellar.”
“No way.” Wyatt shuddered at the thought of spiders. “There’s no way out of that cellar. If they find us, we’re done for. Quick!” He pushed her back, feeling his hands turn cold. “Put out the lantern.”
“Give me my gun back.” Jewel held out her hand.
“What?” Wyatt spun around. “It’s empty! You said so yourself.”
“I’ve got an extra round or two.” She jingled her skirt pocket. “And besides, you’re not exactly the best shot. I’ve seen you out on the ranch, Mr. Kelly. With all due respect, you can’t even shoot a magpie.”
Wyatt scowled, feeling his cheeks burn in humiliation. “Are you crazy? I’m not giving you your gun back.”
“What, you think I’m going to stand here and let them shoot me? I’d have been in and out of this place ages ago if it weren’t for you.”
“You might shoot me in the back of the head and take ol’ Pierre’s chest for yourself.”
“Better than getting run through with one of Benjamin Crowder’s knives. He’s not very accurate, you know.”
“Fine. Take it.” Wyatt pulled her Smith & Wesson from his belt and slapped it in her hand. “Satisfied? Now douse the lantern and hide behind something. Quick.”
Jewel reached out greedily for her revolver. “Try not to leave footprints in the dust. Walk like my people do when they’re stalking game: on the sides of your feet. Not the sole.” She jerked her head up. “I bet you left boot tracks all across the floor when you came in.”
Wyatt swallowed nervously.
“You did, didn’t you?”
Jewel lifted the lantern for a quick look and then sighed and shook her head. As soon as she’d clicked a handful of bullets into her revolver, the inside of Pierre’s cabin turned to clammy darkness.
Chapter 3
Yellow light gleamed in one of the windows, illuminating a dusty maze of cobwebs and broken boards. Wyatt flattened himself against the wall beside the crumbling chimney. Hardly daring to breathe, Jewel ducked under the rotten table.
“Get back,” she whispered, whacking his toe with the stock of her (heavy) revolver and making him jump. “Your boots are sticking out.”
“Get back yourself!” he snapped. His toe smarted where she’d smacked it. “I can’t squeeze in here any tighter.”
“Well, try. You want to get us killed?” Jewel tugged a broken board against the chimney and angled it over his boots.
Torches flickered, and Wyatt heard the whinny of horses. The clink of metal as someone lit lanterns and the stench of kerosene.
A figure clad in a long coat pushed open the wooden door, his lantern light shining across the ruined layers of log and stone. “I know it’s gotta be around here. That’s what the ol’ dog said, didn’t he?”
Wyatt ducked his head as he recognized Kirby Crowder’s voice, and his eyes watered from the dust. He moved just enough to rub his nose against his shoulder, hoping to goodness he didn’t sneeze. He’d spent all spring sneezing as a child when the wild grasses bloomed; twenty-five years hadn’t changed his allergies and wimpy sensitivities much. When the dust blew across the Wyoming plains, he swelled up like a porcupine.
“Fella’s lyin’ through his teeth.” Boots clomped against boards. “Why, I oughtta …”
The room grew utterly still, and Wyatt was pretty sure he knew what they were seeing: his boot tracks in the dust leading straight to the root cellar. His chest heaved with nauseated panic.
“By cricket.” Wyatt heard Kirby’s boots scuff the wooden planks as he squatted down, and something like heavy leather holsters groaned. “Somebody’s been here. Looky this.”
“Down to the root cellar, I reckon.”
“You g’won down and see, and I’ll wait here a spell.” Kirby lowered his voice. “See if he comes back—whoever he is.”
Wyatt eased his head around the side of the chimney to see if by some miracle he and Jewel could outmatch Kirby in weapons, but he needn’t have. A shift in Kirby’s stance and the clanking of heavy holsters confirmed that, yes, Kirby would shoot the daylights out of Wyatt if he even tried to draw his revolver.
Kirby cocked his shotgun, and the sharp, metallic click echoed through the cabin.
Benjamin’s boot clatters faded down the stone steps, and Wyatt heard him holler. “There’s a hole busted in the floor. Reckon they’ve already took it?”
“What do you mean, a hole?” Kirby must’ve leaned under the cellar door to see because his lantern light abruptly died into a cold shadow. “We got here before that Bradford sucker did, that’s for shore. Ain’t nobody else who’d know what that old Injun told us.”
“Well, somebody’s pulled the floor up.” Benjamin’s voice echoed, low and eerie. “There’s a space underneath, but ain’t nothin’ in it.”
The cabin silenced, and Wyatt felt himself convulse with a sneeze. His chest shuddered as he pressed his nose closed, and Jewel elbowed him hard in the shin. So hard he almost cried out.
Wyatt thought he saw Kirby march to the door to check outside, holding out his lantern, and then the image dissolved into watery stripes. His mouth scrunched closed. His nose tickled.
And he sneezed.
Exploded, rather.
Twice. So violently that he rocked backward, banging his head against the wall and knocking off his hat. A startled pigeon flew from the broken section of roof overhead, wings flapping.
“What in tarnation?” Kirby growled, stalking over in Wyatt’s direction and hoisting his rifle. “Come out now, whoever you are, or I’ll blow you to bits!”
Wyatt tried to move, but his lungs stifled, and his nose itched. He slid to his knees in misery, fumbling to keep his hold on the revolver. His glasses fell off, clinking against his boots. And he opened his mouth to sneeze again.
When he opened his eyes, Kirby lay sprawled on the floor and Jewel was raising a heavy wooden plank to swing again. Benjamin hollered and fired a shot behind her, but she ducked. The bullet glanced off a rotten section of log, making a chunk crumble from the wall.
Instead of swinging again at Kirby, Jewel whirled around and brought the plank square across Benjamin’s middle without any warning, doubling him over. His lantern clattered to the floor, and she wrestled the pistol out of his hand, knocking his hand into the wall until he cried out in pain.
He lunged after her, but in a quick second she’d cracked him across the skull with his own pistol, knocking his hat off and bringing him to his knees. He struggled to get up, and she laid him out with another blow to the head. Ripping his other revolver from his belt and kicking his rifle down the cellar stairs with a clatter. Just in time to turn the pistol on Kirby, who was scrambling to his feet. Both hands grabbing at pistols in his holster.
Wyatt stood there, the revolver clenched in his hand, his knees knocking and eyes watering, unable to take his eyes off Jewel’s quick and fluid movements. If he had any doubts about her ability to kill, she’d removed every one.
“Why, you little cur!” Kirby turned the barrel of his shotgun around and swung at Jewel with such great force that he struck the wall, splintering the h
eavy wooden barrel of the gun, shooting two rounds into the wall behind Jewel with the pistol in his left hand. “Who are you anyway?”
Jewel ducked, cocking Benjamin’s pistol and leveling it at Kirby’s head. “Don’t worry about who I am,” she retorted. “Drop your gun.”
Do something, you idiot! Wyatt scolded himself. Don’t let Kirby Crowder take down a woman!
Wyatt blinked swollen eyes, remembering how his burly father had thrown himself across his mother and two sisters for protection, wrestling five Indian braves as they tried to drag him away. The wagon burned, bristling with arrows; the prairie grasses sputtered with flames. When his father’s great head finally slumped, bloodied, Wyatt counted six arrows sticking out of him—and two gaping bullet wounds.
His blood trickled down into the smoking prairie grass, a terrible rust-red.
And when they came to haul away his body and kill the others, his father lifted his hand one last time: plunging his dagger square into the Cheyenne brave’s chest. Even after they carried away the wounded brave, blood and spittle leaking from his mouth, they couldn’t pry the dagger from his father’s dead fingers.
Wyatt had buried his face in his mother’s side and bawled, terrified.
“You’re certainly not your father,” everyone said to Wyatt with a shake of the head. As if he wasn’t smart enough to figure that out himself. Uncle Hiram thought him a fool and a skinny excuse for a ranch hand.
Wyatt felt a pang sting through his chest as he looked down at his slim, freckled hands, bony in the moonlight from the broken roof. Not great and strong and calloused from hard work like his father’s. No, he was scrawny Wyatt Kelly: a twenty-five-year-old who could barely see and whose flaming red hair and glass-blue eyes had been so exotic—so alien—that the Cheyenne warrior who raised the spear to take his childhood spared him out of pity. But mainly fear.
The same fear that kept them from slaughtering the rare white buffalo. “Sacred,” they called it. “An omen.”
A spectacle was more like it.
The Valiant Hearts Romance Collection Page 37