“He could have murdered poor Belser before he came to bed.”
“No, he couldn’t. He told the sheriff he only stayed downstairs a few minutes. Belser had just gone upstairs. He wouldn’t have been asleep yet.”
“I’m sure he could find a way. I will admit he’s a clever man.”
“Much too clever to kill a man under his own roof,” Anne said, repeating Pete’s rationale. “Now I’m tired of talking about Belser’s death. There must be something else of interest going on in Big Bend. Are you in charge of the ball at the fort this year?”
The annual officer’s ball was the highlight of Mrs. Dean’s year. She had been placed in charge of arrangements eight years before when the fort was moved to Big Bend, and she hadn’t let her husband’s retirement force her to give it up. Anne could relax for the rest of the evening knowing that once started, Mrs. Dean wouldn’t stop talking about the ball until bedtime.
Anne rose from bed on the third day of Mrs. Dean’s visit in the certain knowledge that she couldn’t stay in the house with that woman another day without committing murder herself. She couldn’t send her back to town because there was no one at the ranch to take her. Pete had left Ray at the ranch with strict orders not to let Anne out of his sight for any reason. When he flatly refused to take Mrs. Dean to Big Bend, Anne was marooned. She had been forced to listen to even more theories about why Pete was impersonating Peter Warren and how he’d managed to kill Belser without anyone knowing.
It didn’t matter that some of her theories were completely implausible. She was certain Pete had killed Belser. Such a man could do many things ordinary people couldn’t.
Anne had to get away from her, but there was no place Mrs. Dean wouldn’t follow her. Yesterday, hoping to escape for at least a short while, Anne had said she wanted to collect anything Belser might have left in the bunkhouse. It hadn’t worked. Mrs. Dean had followed her. Anne was desperate, but what could she do?
An idea occurred to her. It was rather bold, perhaps too bold, but she was desperate. The more she thought about it, the more she liked it. With a smile of satisfaction, she jumped out of bed and started looking through her closet for something she could use for riding clothes.
She was going to join Pete at the roundup.
Chapter Thirteen
“The roundup has gone slower than I expected,” Pete said to Eddie, “but I think we can finish up tomorrow.”
They were standing on a slight rise, upwind from the herd, where they could watch the cowhands cutting out the animals to be sent to market without having to breathe the dust stirred up by thousands of hooves. The weather had turned cold. The ceaseless wind cut through Pete’s clothes like a knife. He thought longingly of the warm clothes the killers had taken when they shot him and stripped his camp. He had a big score to settle with those men when he found them.
If he ever did.
Under the pretense of checking the condition of the horses, he’d made a careful inspection of all the horses in the remuda. He hadn’t found either of the horses ridden by the men who shot him. If he’d found any newly shod horses, he’d have suspected they’d pulled the old shoes. But only the horses kept at the ranch had visited a blacksmith in the last month.
“When you take the herd to the railhead, I want you to buy any hay you can find,” Pete said.
Eddie looked surprised. “It’ll be expensive.”
“I know. But if the winter’s as bad as the Indians predict, it might be the edge we need to bring the herd through.”
“You put a lot of stock in what those Indians say, don’t you?”
“Like I told the sheriff, they lived on these plains for hundreds of years before we got here. A lot of people think they’re not very smart, but they survived. And without log houses and nice warm stoves.”
“I’m not sure I can get any men to stay. They usually head south after roundup.”
“I’ll only need a couple to help with that hay.”
Eddie went off to talk with the men, leaving Pete to enjoy the view from the rise. He wondered how Anne was getting along back at the ranch. He’d hated to leave her, but to have stayed away from the roundup—even to protect and support his wife—would have been interpreted as a sign of guilt. He couldn’t afford to do anything that might weaken his precarious position. By coming on roundup and doing his work with the confidence of a man with a clean conscience, he had changed the cowhands’ minds about his guilt.
Besides, he couldn’t find his money by staying at the ranch. Despite his lack of success so far, his instinct told him the horses were still around somewhere. The men, too. He didn’t know how or why, but he had a gut feeling that whoever killed Peter had killed Belser as well. He just hoped he would find them before they found him. He’d made a point during the last two weeks of being sure he wasn’t an exposed target as he had been on the trip to Big Bend. He tried to keep himself in the midst of a group of men. When he was in an exposed position as he was now, he made certain he could see far enough to know no one could shoot him from ambush. Except along the streams and some of the foothills closer to the mountains, the plain was barren of anything except miles and miles of grass. He had every intention of heading south with his money and his hide in one piece. But he had to admit, the longer it took him to find his money, the smaller his chances of success.
There was another reason he needed to find his money and leave. If he didn’t get out of Wyoming soon, he was going to do something he’d be sorry for. Every hour, every minute he spent in Anne’s company made it harder to keep his hands to himself. More important, he had started to like Anne. Still worse, the thought of staying at the ranch kept popping into his head. He wasn’t the marrying kind. He wanted to be free to roam. Only freedom didn’t look so inviting when it meant leaving Anne behind. It was difficult to understand how she had taken such a hold on his feelings in such a short time. He’d been infatuated before, but this wasn’t the same.
His fantasies about women had always started and ended with sex. But while thoughts of making love to Anne kept ruining his sleep, it was the dreams of taking her back to Texas, seeing her with her own daughters, growing old alongside her, that let him know this was more than infatuation. He was in very great danger of falling in love with a woman who was married to another man. The fact that the man was dead wasn’t going to make any difference. He’d lied to her over and over, urged her to support him against her friends, tied her credibility tightly to his statement that he was the Peter Warren she married by proxy.
When she found out what he’d done, she’d hate him. If he didn’t find out who’d killed the real Peter Warren, she’d probably believe he’d done it. She’d probably think he killed Belser, too.
She knew perfectly well he’d had plenty of time to commit the crime. Once he admitted he’d lied to her so many times before, it would be impossible for her to believe he hadn’t lied one more time. After all, if he’d kill Peter Warren to inherit his ranch, what difference would it make if he killed Belser? They could only hang him once.
Pete knew it was highly unlikely he could get out of Wyoming with his reputation intact. He’d be doing well if he got out with his hide in one piece. Still, it hurt to know he would leave with Anne knowing he was a liar and an imposter, and thinking he might be a killer as well. He wanted her to understand, to know he’d done it all for her.
Well, almost all of it. He still intended to find his money. Despite the danger, it wasn’t easy to give up the result of five years in the goldfields. He and Sean O’Ryan had started out together. Now Sean had his ranch, a wife, a blond stepdaughter, and three redheaded sons who promised to grow up to look just like him. Lately he’d found himself thinking it might not be so bad to have a couple of brown-haired, black-eyed tots of his own. It was an infallible warning that time was running out. If he didn’t escape soon, he might leave his heart in Wyoming.
He had turned to join Eddie when he noticed a horse and rider top a rise in the distance. The r
ider was coming from the direction of the ranch. Immediately Pete worried something might have happened to Anne. The rider was much too far away to recognize, but he was too small to be Ray. At almost the same moment he realized the rider was a woman, not a man.
It couldn’t be Anne. She wouldn’t know how to find her way across the trackless plain. Yet he felt certain it wasn’t Dolores, either. There was something about the rider that said it couldn’t be anybody but Anne.
He considered returning to camp to get his horse, then changed his mind. She might think he didn’t want to see her and turn back. He waved both hands in the air, and started toward her. By the time she turned her horse in his direction, he had recognized Anne’s flowing black hair. She must have found Carl’s wife’s saddle. It was so old, it was in danger of falling apart. Riding sidesaddle struck him as out of place in Wyoming. It seemed something women did in cities and other civilized places where husbands weren’t killed and left for the wolves, and cowhands weren’t knifed in the next bedroom.
He started running toward her. He didn’t mean to. He just couldn’t help it. When he reached her, she let go of the reins and threw herself into his arms. She nearly knocked the breath out of him. She did knock him off his feet. They tumbled to the ground, laughing like two young fools.
He pulled her roughly, almost violently, to him. Gathering her into his arms, he held her snugly. It felt good to have her in his arms. She fit. She belonged there.
Their kiss was immediate, natural, necessary. His mouth covered hers hungrily. This was no gentle kiss, tender and searching. It was an assault, a ruthless ravishing of her mouth. Wriggling her body about until she lay atop him, Anne returned his kiss with equal urgency. There was nothing tentative about her now. She was a woman who knew what she wanted from her man, and she meant to take it.
Pete gave in gladly. Tomorrow he would remember he had to keep his distance. Tomorrow he’d come up with a reason why she had to go back to the ranch while he stayed with the roundup.
“What are you doing here?” he asked when he finally broke their embrace.
“You’re not angry, are you?”
“No, but I was worried when I recognized you.”
“I had to come. Mrs. Dean is at the house.”
Pete sat up. He couldn’t think while lying down.
“Mrs. Dean?”
“She said she had to support me in my hour of travail, but she’s really trying to make me doubt you.”
“How?”
“She kept coming up with reasons why you aren’t Peter. She had it all worked out, how you met him on the trail, learned he was to inherit a ranch, killed him, and arrived here to take his place. She said you killed Belser to keep him quiet.”
The heat abruptly faded from Pete’s body, and he felt the chill of danger. That line of reasoning was all too believable. “And you didn’t believe her?”
Anne sat up. “Of course not. I know you’d never kill anybody.”
“But everybody says I’ve changed an awful lot.”
“You still couldn’t kill anyone.” She put her arms around his neck and kissed him. He responded more gently this time. “No man could kiss like that and be a murderer.”
“But you don’t know any murderers. Maybe they can do all sorts of things you don’t expect.”
“That’s true, but no woman could be that mistaken about the man she loves.”
Anne’s reaction to her words took Pete by surprised. She blushed furiously, then averted her gaze. He didn’t understand why she should suddenly be so self-conscious. She’d loved Peter Warren all her life, and everybody knew it.
Unless…
He didn’t let himself pursue that thought. He didn’t want to know the answer. “Tell me how you found your way out here,” he said, anxious to divert both their minds from a thought that clearly made both of them uneasy. “I thought you didn’t know your way past the corrals.”
“You told the sheriff you’d left a map of the ranch in your office. I figured if he could find your camp by studying the map, I could too. It wasn’t easy. Buttes and ridges don’t look at all like they do on the map when you’re riding around them. And most of the creeks were hardly more than a dry crack in the ground.”
Pete laughed. “I think you’re a genius to have found us. Wait until I tell Eddie.”
“It wasn’t anything special.”
“Getting on a horse and coming out here was special. Finding your own way was incredible. You must be the smartest woman in Wyoming. I already know you’re the most beautiful.”
“Do you really mean that?”
Her earnestness touched his heart. “Of course, I do. I’ve told you so many times.”
“But people often say things they don’t mean. I don’t mean that you’d lie—I know you wouldn’t—but lying isn’t the same as exaggerating.”
Pete felt his gut twist into a knot. If she only knew how many times he’d lied. But he wasn’t lying about her looks. “I don’t have to exaggerate even the tiniest bit. You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”
“Now I know you’re lying.”
“In Wyoming.”
She laughed. “You’ve hardly seen any women here at all.”
“Then you’re easily the most beautiful.”
She laughed and kissed him again. “I wish we didn’t have to go back to the ranch or see the sheriff and Mrs. Dean. I wish we could stay out here forever. It’s so beautiful and peaceful.”
“It won’t be beautiful or peaceful when there’s two feet of snow on the ground, the temperature is thirty below zero, the wind is strong enough to knock you off your feet, and wolves are howling all around.”
She shivered. “How do the cows survive it?”
“I don’t know, but they do. Now before Eddie sends someone up here to see if I’ve been kidnaped, we’d better go down to the camp. You’ll have to start back to the ranch soon if you’re to make it before nightfall.”
“But I want to stay here with you.”
“We’re not set up for women. There’s no privacy, no place for you to sleep.”
“Where do you sleep?”
“On the ground.”
“Then I’ll sleep on the ground, too.”
“There’ll be men all around you.”
“Then I’ll be well protected.”
“They’ll be embarrassed.”
“I won’t look when they get dressed.”
Her eyes twinkled with merriment. He’d never seen her look so happy, so free of worry. He hated to spoil her fun.
“A roundup camp is no place for a woman. Your presence will upset everybody.”
“I won’t go back while Mrs. Dean is at the ranch.” Her chin jutted stubbornly. “All she does is tell me how you’re an imposter and a murderer. I even started dreaming about the things she says. If I have to listen to her for five more days, I might murder her.”
“Five more days!”
“She told her driver not to return for a week. I couldn’t stand it any longer. Please, let me stay. I won’t go anywhere near the men.”
He didn’t have the heart to send her back to face Mrs. Dean without him there to support her. He certainly didn’t intend to let her make the trip across the plain by herself. When he got back, he intended to find out why Ray hadn’t accompanied her.
“We’ll see. Now let’s go shock Eddie.”
Eddie wasn’t the only one surprised at Anne’s presence. Every man within sight stopped to stare.
“Is this what you do?” she asked as she watched the riders keeping the two herds separate.
“What do you mean?” Pete asked.
“Ride around the cows,” she said. “It doesn’t look very hard.”
Eddie looked offended. Pete broke out laughing. “It wouldn’t be if the cows liked being separated into two herds or driven from their favorite part of the range. They’re wild animals used to defending themselves against wolves, bears, and cougars. Any one of them can kill a
man or gore a horse.”
“Then why do you do this?”
Pete laughed again. “Because nobody’s figured out how to make them go to market on their own.”
“I’m serious. I didn’t know it was so dangerous.”
“Just about any way a man chooses to make a living out here is dangerous. Which is why you’re never to leave the ranch alone again.”
“I was perfectly safe.”
But he couldn’t be sure of that. She had more to fear than wild animals.
“The men don’t act like I’ve upset them at all,” Anne said.
“That’s because it’s dark. They can’t see you now, and I’ve kept you away from them most of the day.”
They’d finished the evening meal more than an hour ago. The men not on duty had already crawled inside their bedrolls. Their turn on night watch would come soon enough. The only sound from camp was the faint murmur of Eddie’s voice as he talked to the cook. The cows had stopped bawling and milling about and were lying down, chewing their cuds and waiting to be allowed to return to their favorite feeding grounds.
Pete had taken Anne to a curve in Crazy Woman Creek shaded by a grove of cottonwoods, ash, and box elder. They sat in the shadows, invisible to prying eyes. It wasn’t his cowhands that worried him, but the unknown killers. He was certain he was the next target. He feared Anne was a target, too. If he had thought his going would have protected her, he’d have left now, even without his money.
He would have to tell her of the danger, explain his lie and why he’d told it. Soon. But not yet. He asked only for tonight. He’d tell her when they returned to the ranch.
“I never realized it could be so beautiful out here,” Anne said.
They looked out over the treeless hills that formed the drainage basin of the Powder River, the best grazing land in Wyoming. The brilliant moonlight had turned the landscape tawny beige, the cows into honey-colored lumps casting inky shadows. The ceaseless wind rustled the leaves above their heads. Soon the first frosts would strip the branches, turning them into a network of charcoal lines against a blue-gray sky.
Pete (The Cowboys) Page 18