Her clothes were modest enough for a young woman with a rich father, but with Pamela it wasn’t quite the same. He couldn’t explain it, but a man could tell when a woman’s clothes said hands off or take it off. Pamela’s way of dressing said neither of these, but Slade couldn’t quite put his finger on what they did say.
The straight and simple lines of her clothing accentuated the rise of her full breasts and the slimness of her waist as she moved about with an unconscious grace. She seemed as relaxed and at ease when kneeling at his feet as when sitting across from him at dinner or telling him he shouldn’t be afraid to admit his vulnerability.
And she wondered why he was tense all the time! It was almost easier to stand the pain in his feet and shoulder than to continually be in her presence and keep his hands, thoughts, and desires to himself.
Slade wondered if it was wise to remain here, even with his wounds. Instinct warned him to leave at the first opportunity, but he knew he wouldn’t go now. And it had nothing to do with chivalry, misplaced or otherwise. There was something going on. And he had an idea it was more than either her father or Dave Bagshot suspected.
Even though Slade made up his mind to stay and look after Pamela until her father returned, he knew the real reason he didn’t leave. He didn’t leave because he didn’t want to. But if he was going to hang around, he’d better learn to control his body’s response to Pamela. Otherwise he’d be a dead man about one minute after Josh White walked in the door.
Pamela’s thoughts were equally unsettling, but she didn’t have the opportunity to ponder them in solitude. Slade had hardly left the kitchen before Belva returned.
“That horse can wear his saddle until the end of his days before I’ll touch it again,” she declared as she waddled in the door. “I don’t know what Mr. Morgan had in mind when he picked that beast, but it must have been a death wish.”
“I’ll unsaddle it later,” Pamela said, her mind elsewhere.
“You’ll do no such thing,” Belva declared. “If anybody’s to do it, it might as well be your worthless cousin. We won’t be losing much if that animal grinds him into the dust.”
“Slade didn’t seem to have any trouble with it.”
“Mr. Morgan’s not your average kind of man. I don’t imagine there’s too many as can stand in his way. And that includes a worthless horse too ungrateful to know when it’s well off. If he was back in those hills with a half dozen mountain lions on his trail, he might see things a little different.”
“I don’t know,” Pamela said, thinking of a man who didn’t seem to care any more for comfort or convention than that hammerhead dun, “some creatures don’t seem to care about being safe and comfortable.”
“I know,” Belva said with disgust, “and nearabout every one of them is male. You won’t see no female hankering after living wild. No siree. We’re not that foolish.”
“Why are they like that, Belva? What made Dad come out here and fight Indians and rustlers and I don’t know what else to build a ranch in this terrible place? Mother always hated it, even from the first. That’s why she insisted I go to school in Baltimore. She wanted me to know there was another way to live.”
“What are you asking me for. I’ve only known your Pa a few months.”
“I don’t know,” Pamela admitted. “I guess he came out here because he was determined to be his own master. He couldn’t do that in Virginia, not with a ruined plantation, and taxes, and reconstruction. He was too proud to bend his head before that rabble.”
Belva looked up from where she had begun her preparations for lunch and surprised a faraway look in Pamela’s eyes. “You’re not asking after your Pa,” she said. “You’re asking about that Mr. Morgan, and I can’t tell you about him. That man is altogether different from anybody I ever saw.”
“Is that so awful?”
“Why do you want to know? When did you start getting all worked up over drifters? Besides, I thought you hated beards.”
“I do. My hands are itching to shave it off. I feel like I’m talking to somebody I can’t see, but that’s not it. I don’t think he is a drifter. I don’t know what he’s done, and don’t think I want to find out, but he’s no saddle bum. He’s in trouble of some kind, or he’s had trouble and he’s running away. It wouldn’t matter if he didn’t go to California. Oregon or Mexico would be the same thing. He just wants to get away.”
“When did you start paying so much attention to cowboys? I didn’t think you were interested in anybody who didn’t grow up in the East, live in a city, and change for dinner.”
Pamela detected a note of censure in Belva’s voice. “Just because I don’t like Arizona and enjoy being comfortable and wearing beautiful clothes doesn’t mean I’m heartless,” she replied, stung by the same accusation twice in one morning. “But Slade isn’t like anybody else. I think it’s his ambition to be a nobody, to virtually disappear. I have the feeling he had a chance to be somebody and turned it down.”
“Doesn’t seem to me like he’s the type to be content with what other people are willing to give him.”
“He’d be more likely to take everything they had,” Pamela said with a chuckle, but then stopped abruptly. “You know, I think he would take what he wanted, but he’d be just as likely to give it away again. I don’t know. I don’t understand that man.”
“Is it so important that you do?”
“Yes,” Pamela said, realization suddenly dawning. “Yes, it is.”
Chapter 7
Slade entered the kitchen a little after three o’clock. He didn’t see Belva, but Pamela was making dough for the dinner rolls.
“Why didn’t you wake me?” He was a little crotchety as he sat down at the table. His feet hurt worse than his shoulder, and he was irritated with himself for having slept so long.
“You needed the rest. Or have you forgotten you have a bullet hole in your shoulder? Add to that being up half the night and being exhausted when you went to bed.” She rolled the dough into a big ball and dropped it into a heavy bowl.
“I can’t afford to get in the habit of sleeping so heavy. It can be dangerous on the trail.” He twisted in his chair. It felt hard, and the ladder-back cut into his shoulder blades.
“Are you planning to spend the rest of your life on the move?” Pamela asked. She draped a damp towel over the bowl and set it in a warm corner of the stove. “Don’t you want to settle down?”
If Slade hadn’t been so cantankerous, he wouldn’t have answered the way he did. “Never met a woman I thought was worth it.”
Pamela’s expression didn’t change one iota, but she couldn’t fool Slade. He hadn’t meant to be insensitive and regretted his words, but she had no business asking questions like that if she wasn’t prepared to accept some pretty raw answers. Still, he looked for a way to soften the effect of his words.
“Never had much success with ladies. They don’t seem to go for my type. Something about me just naturally sets their teeth on edge.”
Pamela’s expression changed to one of curiosity.
“Even my mother didn’t find much to like about me.”
Now it changed to sympathy and Slade couldn’t stand that.
“I guess I gave her plenty of reason.”
“Why?” Pamela asked. She set a cup of coffee in front of him and then followed it with a bowl of hot beef stew and a slice of peach pie.
“You don’t want to hear about her.”
“Yes, I do.”
No one had ever asked Slade about Sara Billingsworth Wilson’s effect on his life, and now all the years of accumulated bitterness came tumbling out.
“She was a whirlwind of destruction for all everybody thought her a pillar of the church,” he said, the years of pent-up anger still under tight control. “My father never amounted to much, not the way most people measure a man, but he could have if he’d married the right kind of woman. You never saw such a tall, handsome, fun-loving man. He couldn’t believe God had put him on this eart
h for nothing but sorrow and suffering. He drank a little too much when he married my mother, but it was mostly high spirits and poor company. He would have grown out of it if he’d been given a chance.”
“But my mother believed carnival people were dyed-in-the-wool sinners and drink was Satan’s brew. She badgered him to quit both of them. Her people had been bankers back East, and she wanted my father to work some place respectable. She didn’t think being a carnival showman was a suitable job for a man fortunate enough to marry a Billings-worth. Actually he made a lot more money with the carnival than he could have in a bank, but the more successful he became, the more she nagged him to quit. And the more time she spent in church praying God would change him.”
“Then one night—I’d just turned fourteen—Dad and I both came home drunk. I’d been working with him for some time by then. Anyway, mother took one look and locked us both out. Next day she packed up everything she owned, including my sister, and left town. I haven’t heard from her since.”
Slade leaned back in his chair, drained but feeling better. Until now he had never told anyone about his parents. He had never guessed the kind of pressure that secret had created inside him.
“What happened to your father?”
Slade stared at his coffee. What had happened? He hadn’t noticed the change at first—he was too young and confused to know what was going on—but it must have started even before his mother left. The kernel of ambition, that germinator of dreams in every man that can make him more than he is, dried up, and his father just started to die.
“He started drinking more. He caught pneumonia after sleeping out one night and died.”
Pamela didn’t know what to say. She wanted him to tell her something about himself, but she hadn’t been prepared for such a heartbreaking tale. Her own mother had been hard and cold, but she had used her strength to protect her daughter, not to destroy her.
“I know words won’t do any good, but I am sorry,” she said finally.
“Don’t be. She was right. I am just like my father.”
“It doesn’t sound that bad.”
“It wouldn’t, not unless you were married to him. Women change. They’re attracted to a man for the very things which, in a few years, they come to dislike. Mother knew what my father was like, but she thought she could make him over into what she wanted. When she found out she couldn’t, she began to hate him.”
Pamela would have given anything to be able to see his face. His grey eyes were cold and hard, but she still wanted to see his features. She wanted to see him, not a lot of hair.
“I didn’t mean to start on my mother,” Slade apologized. “I suppose I can’t blame her. She was brought up expecting a husband to act a certain way. She didn’t know what to do about my father and me, and after a while she just gave up trying.”
“Not all women are like that.”
“So I thought when I became engaged to Trish.”
“Are you married?” Pamela couldn’t describe the feeling of shock his words produced.
“No. Trish realized her mistake in time.”
Thank God he was too absorbed in his thoughts to see her body actually sag with relief.
“What happened?”
Why stop now, Slade asked himself angrily? You might as well tell her everything.
“I paid some boys back for something they had done to one of my horses, only the sheriff and the rest of the community said I’d been too harsh. They put me in jail. After all it was just a dumb animal. Trish agreed with them. She said she could put up with being married to a carnival showman as long as I was making plenty of money, but she wanted nothing to do with a gunslinging jailbird.”
Pamela’s own words pierced her conscience like the point of a knife. Did he lump her with this Trish whoever-she-was just because they both disliked guns and violence? Did he lump her with his mother because she disapproved of what he had done with his life and his lack of desire to change it? Never before had she wanted so desperately to explain how she felt to anyone, but she didn’t know how to begin. From the harshness of his voice and the coldness of his eyes, she knew he still harbored deep resentment against those two women. Other people had probably influenced his life, but clearly no one else had affected it so profoundly.
“Not everybody places such rigid demands on other people.”
“Don’t you?”
“I don’t know,” Pamela replied honestly. “I would hate to think I was so lacking in understanding, but I don’t know if I can compromise with what I want.”
“I know I can’t,” Slade said getting to his feet. “And I know from experience trying doesn’t count. I’ve got to go see about my horse.”
You goddamned fool, Slade cursed himself as he strode toward the corral, the pain in his feet completely unnoticed. Why did you have to tell her about Trish and your mother? Talking isn’t going to make any difference. She’s rich, been to a fancy school, and lives in the kind of house people like you get thrown out of. Why should she fall for a guy like you?
He cursed the day he stumbled into the Bar Double-B ranch, cursed the Texas sheriff who had driven him there, and cursed the whole Briarcliff clan. He hoped they’d all burn in Hell. If he ever did go back to Texas, he swore he would send as many of them as possible on their way ahead of schedule.
Gaddy was inspecting the damage to the barn when Slade reached the corral. It was a large structure containing seven stalls and a tack room and a loft for hay. The support beams and rafters were massive hand-hewn pine logs, probably cut from the hills behind the ranch house.
“It’s a good thing you have trouble sleeping,” he said as Slade came up. “If the fire had ever gotten going, nothing could have stopped it.”
“I don’t have trouble sleeping,” Slade barked. “I woke up because I heard someone moving around outside.” He had spoken more sharply than he intended. A muttered apology didn’t improve his mood. He entered the corral and walked over to the hammerhead. The horse was still tied to the post where Slade had left him. He pawed the ground impatiently. When Slade reached up to remove the saddle bags, the dun tried to bite him. Slade cuffed him across the muzzle.
“I always sleep sound,” Gaddy remarked.
“Sleeping too sound can get you killed,” Slade told him. He walked around the hammerhead; the horse kicked at him as he passed. Slade gave him such a resounding slap on the rump his hindquarters bunched in protest. “Where’s Bag-shot?”
“At the night camp.”
“Why aren’t you with him?”
“He sent me back to stay with Pamela so she wouldn’t get worried.”
That boy’s sixteen, old enough to be doing the work of a man, Slade thought. He shouldn’t be lying around the bunk-house with nothing to do. He’d never grow up if they keep treating him like a kid.
Slade looked at him over the back of the dun. “Trouble?”
“The boys think so.”
“What kind?”
“Don’t know. Nothing’s happened yet, but everybody’s wound tight as barbed wire. Something’ll bust soon. Maybe at roundup time.”
“I think it’s already started.”
“What do you mean?”
“The barn. That was no accident. Somebody got paid for that job.”
“I suppose you’re right, but who’d do a thing like that?”
“You’re the one who lives here. Who do you know who might want to make trouble for your uncle?”
“Every rancher within a hundred miles would give their trigger finger to have this valley,” Gaddy said. “It’s got a natural fence all around, and it can support three or four times as many cows as the rest of the range.”
“But who’d use force? Mongo Shepherd?”
“He’s pretty sly, but he’s an Easterner. He’s too soft to go in for anything like that.”
“In my experience, if you can find the motive, you’ll find the man.”
Slade backed the dun against the corral fence. Holding on
to the pommel with his good hand, he stepped up on the bottom rail of the fence and swung himself into the saddle. The hammerhead dun gave a few half-hearted bucks then settled down.
Slade’s injured arm never moved.
Gaddy stared at him with surprise and a good deal of admiration.
“Lower the bars, will you. I’m going for a ride. I want to see some of this valley everybody talks about so much.”
Gaddy watched Slade ride off. He took off his hat and shook his head as he ran his fingers through his damp hair. “I don’t know who that dude is,” he said as he turned and headed for the ranch house, “but as long as he’s around, anybody planning to come after the Bar Double-B had better watch out. He ain’t no pilgrim.”
Pamela met Gaddy at the kitchen door. “Where’s Slade going?”
“Said he wanted a look around. He seems to think Mongo’s behind those men last night.”
“That’s absurd,” Pamela objected. “Mongo wants to marry me, not burn me out.”
“Don’t jump at me. It’s Slade’s idea.”
“He’s trying to hang a guilty verdict around the neck of the first person he comes to. “But she couldn’t totally dismiss the possibility that Mongo might be guilty. Slade was no fool, neither was he the kind to make ill-founded accusations. It wouldn’t do to discount what he said no matter how absurd it might sound to her right now.
“By the way, did you talk him into staying?” Gaddy asked.
“I don’t know.”
“You mean you didn’t bat your eyes and watch him come begging for a chance to work for free?”
“Gaddy Pemberton, you know I wouldn’t do a shameful thing like that.”
Scarlet Sunset, Silver Nights Page 10