He’d assumed these rooms belonged to Ben. Now Chance realized she must have been staying here herself. Although he hadn’t thought about it till now, the pillows were infused with a lily-of-the-valley fragrance that had lulled him to sleep.
Feeling ashamed, Chance swung his stockinged feet to the floor and scratched his bearded chin. Manners weren’t in great demand when robbing banks and running from the law, and it had been a long time since he’d been around civilized people. His mother had raised him better than this. “I’m sorry, miss. I thought these were Ben’s rooms.”
She turned, and the blush rose in her cheeks. “I moved in after the accident. It was closer to the store, and besides, when I was staying here, I felt … Well, never mind.”
Chance thought Annabelle must prefer staying here, surrounded by Ben’s possessions, to sleeping near the sickroom where he lay close to death. It was true, a home held traces of its former occupants.
“Don’t worry about the reward money.” Chance finally realized what Annabelle was searching for. He began to pull on his boots, trying to figure out how to explain that he had gone after Willy Ratzel more for his own sake than because she had asked him to. His brain was still fuzzy from sleep. It had been longer than he could remember since he’d enjoyed such a comfortable bed.
Something small glimmered atop the highboy she was still rummaging through, and Chance balanced on one stockinged foot, staring at it. “Well, look at that. I’ll be golldarned!”
“What?” She followed the direction of his gaze.
“My harmonica!” He crossed over to pick up the instrument, inspecting its surface. “Those are my initials right there. Ma had it engraved for my seventeenth birthday.” Chance blew a series of husky chords, and tears almost sprang to his eyes at the familiar sound. It reminded him of sitting by the campfire after the war, when he’d anticipated returning to his farm and marrying that yellow-haired girl. Lord, how he’d missed making music with this very harmonica! Even so, he did not regret for a moment the impulsive gift to Ben. The instrument had been well cared for over the past couple of years. Not a nick or a scratch, and it looked as shiny as when it was new.
“That’s your harmonica?” Annabelle’s eyes were wider than he had ever seen them. “My fiancé told me it was given to him by an old friend from the war. If that’s so, how on earth …” Her voice trailed away as understanding dawned.
“Well, that’s part of what I came to tell you, ma’am. Me and Ben Marlowe served together in the Union army. He saved my life, and afterward, we rode out west and became good friends. Last I saw your fiancé, he was heading toward Montana with some horse-thieving Sioux, hoping for adventure. I reckon he found it.”
Annabelle looked like a newborn chick staring at the world for the first time, trying to make sense of it all. “You? You’re Ben’s old friend?”
Chance understood her shocked face. It wasn’t every day a pretty young lady learned that her high-falutin’ fiancé used to be friends with an outlaw.
Annabelle looked at the harmonica. “I always thought it strange that it meant so much to him,” she murmured. “He used to play it all the time, before we came to Salem. Once I asked him why he bothered to keep it, and he said, ‘Memories.’ That’s why I keep it on the dresser. It reminds me of Ben.”
Chance swallowed. “Look here, ma’am, I’ve got something your fiancé gave me, the same day I gave him my harmonica.” Reaching inside his hip pocket, he pulled out the battered edition of Leaves of Grass, the gilt title almost worn away. “Ben used to sit by the campfire and read from this book every night. He said the fellow who wrote it understood folks like me.”
Annabelle took the book and ran her fingertips over its battered spine. “Yes, Ben used to quote from this often. He’d just about memorized the whole thing.” She met Chance’s eyes, and her cheeks colored. “So you’re the tall Iowan he used to talk about. He always said his friend was—well, the most honest person he’d ever met.”
“Did he, now?” Feeling confined in the small room, Chance strode to the window and looked down at the empty street. “That’s a long story, ma’am. The fact is, I wasn’t an outlaw back when he knew me. And I can promise you that after I leave this place, I’m going to travel to a quiet spot somewhere far away and spend the rest of my days staying out of trouble. I’m done with that life.”
Annabelle joined him. The subtle scent of lilies of the valley wafted from her slight form as she looked at the city below them. A few moments later, she turned to face Chance. Her eyes held sympathy and understanding. “Salem’s a quiet spot. Why not stay right here? Ben would like that … and so would I.”
He stared down at her before shaking his head. “You said it yourself, ma’am, I’d get you and your fiancé in trouble if people thought … well, that you folks even knew someone like me. No, ma’am, I need to head out of the Northwest, to some place where no one has seen my wanted posters, where they can’t put two and two together. Maybe California, or New Mexico.”
Annabelle shook her head. “You mustn’t give up so easily, Mr. McInnes. If you shaved that beard and changed your name, most likely no one would know who you were. If I introduced you as my cousin from Texas, no one would think of questioning your bona fides. My mother-in-law is a very important person, and the Marlowes are one of the most socially prominent families in the country. Our reputation is beyond reproach. If I say you’re related to us, everyone in Salem will accept you with open arms.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but I find that hard to believe.”
Her smile grew wider. “When I got engaged to Ben, I was a nobody myself, just a wild girl from the mountains with bare feet and a patched dress. Now I’m invited to all the best balls and parties. It’s amazing what can happen if a person has the right connections.”
Chance studied her. The prospect was tempting, but it sounded too good to be true. “Why would you do that for someone like me?”
“Because Ben would want me to. I’m sure you’d do the same for him.”
His chest felt tight. No woman had ever had this effect on him before, not even that silly yellow-haired girl he’d once been so taken with. Lucky, lucky Ben, he thought, to have a fiancée so beautiful and loyal.
“It’s odd, Mr. McInnes … I mean, Chance. It’s all right if I call you that, isn’t it? You’re almost as easy to talk to as Ben is. Maybe that’s because of something Ben told me, that you knew him better than anyone else—even better than the members of his own family.” She took a deep breath. “If Ben wakes up from his coma, Chance—that is, when he wakes up—he’ll want to see you. Please … don’t leave.”
“I appreciate your kindness, Miss Bergman.” Chance swallowed. “But it wouldn’t work. In spite of what you say, I’ll be recognized eventually. Those cursed wanted posters with my face and name on them are all over the place.”
Now it was Annabelle who paced back and forth in the cramped room, clutching Ben’s book to her chest. “Maybe so, but there must be something we can do.” She looked up suddenly. “I know. What if the bank drops the charges? If they don’t offer a reward for your capture, no one will bother looking for you anymore.”
He smiled at her naïveté. “Why in tarnation would they drop the charges, ma’am? Those bank folks want me hanged.”
“That’s just because you have their money. If you give the money back, they’d have no reason to be angry at you anymore.”
“Give it back?”
She stopped and eyed his threadbare checkered shirt, the worn boots. “Well, surely you must have some of it left, anyway. You can’t have spent it all, living out in that cave for so long. Surely whiskey and … er … women can’t be that expensive, can they?”
“So you think the banks will leave me alone if I just promise to stop robbing them and give back their money?” Chance began to smile, but the grin faded. “No, miss, they’d wait till I handed it over, then clamp leg irons on me as I was trying to leave.”
“Of course you
mustn’t return the money yourself. You’d need an intermediary. Maybe a lawyer, or a news reporter. Why, the newspapers would fall all over themselves to help with the transaction. Everyone loves a reformed criminal, and your story would sell thousands of copies of their papers. The bank would call off the search, and you’d have a chance to lead a normal life again.”
The idea sparked hope in Chance. It wouldn’t be that simple, of course, since the others in the gang had already taken their portions, but it was true that practically every last dollar of his money was sitting in that chest inside the cave. Maybe her plan was worth a try.
“What about Ratzel’s death?” Ben’s fiancée seemed to have an answer for everything, so Chance was curious what she’d have to say about that. “With my reputation, they’ll hang me for killing him.”
“That’s trickier,” she admitted. “But Willy Ratzel … he was an outlaw and a murderer. I don’t think the authorities would be too concerned about bringing his killer to justice. For all we know, Ratzel might have a reward on his head as well, although,” she gave a rueful smile, “under the circumstances, I suppose you’d better not try to claim it.”
Chance remembered his promise not to tell Annabelle about Richard’s role in all this. He’d told Richard that he could tell that tale himself, if the youth ever chose to. That still left the matter of Hugh Lott, the little banker he had killed back in River Bend. Chance was sure that long-ago incident would not be finessed so easily. Thankfully, Annabelle did not know of it. He wondered what she’d think if he told her.
“As for those wanted posters,” Annabelle gestured at his chin, “if you shave, it’s likely you’d probably look much different. That’s why I didn’t recognize Willy Ratzel.”
Chance had never much liked his beard. It was itchy, scratchy, and caught crumbs, but shaving in the desert wasn’t easy with so little water at hand. He nodded.
“While we’re at it, I might as well cut your hair too.” Now she was rummaging through her bag, and she emerged holding up a pair of small sewing scissors as confidently as if she were experienced at giving men haircuts. “When I’m done, you can go to the inn and register under the name of—ah—Charles McMullen. Like I said, we’ll tell everyone you’re my cousin from back east. What do you think?”
“Why, ma’am, I can bluff my way into anything.” Chance hoped it was true. Those folks at the saloon already thought he and Annabelle were relations. Why not change his identity again, into a law-abiding citizen, like he’d always wanted to be?
He sat straight-backed on a chair and allowed her to comb his hair and snip away. The long sun-bleached locks fell to the floor, leaving his head feeling lighter than it had in years. She tipped back his head and lathered his throat and jaw with soap. Her light, matter-of-fact touch made him feel shy. With his throat vulnerably bared, he wondered if he would ever meet a girl like this one who loved Ben Marlowe. It wasn’t fair, he thought. He’d met Annabelle first. If he hadn’t been an outlaw, the outcome might have been different.
Annabelle brought out a straight-edged razor, and it occurred to him that she was using Ben’s shaving gear. Once again, the thought made him feel conflicted. He needed to stop wishing he was in Ben’s shoes, Chance told himself firmly, even if the young woman was so much more attractive, in her way, and obviously had better breeding than … than … He struggled to remember the name of the yellow-haired girl who had betrayed him. For the life of him, Chance could no longer remember why he’d once been so desperate to marry her.
The edge of the razor slid coolly down his cheeks, like melting ice sliding down a hill in early spring. Air swept against his newly bare cheeks, chin, and throat. When the razor lifted, a warm, damp cloth was laid against his skin for a moment and pulled away. “There,” she said. “All done.”
“How do I look?” His voice was gruff.
“Trust me, no one will recognize you.”
He rubbed his hand along his smooth jaw and crossed to the armoire. A stranger looked back from the mirror hanging over it. With a jolt of surprise, Chance thought that if he met himself on the street, he’d probably instinctively like him. The sky-blue eyes staring back at him were frank and quizzical, the face thinner than he remembered. The cheekbones were more prominent, the nose higher-bridged, and he looked older than before. The man in the mirror was not the gangly youth that Captain Benjamin Marlowe had pulled out of a burning barn so many years ago. “You honestly think this will work?”
“I’m sure it will. We’ll find you some new clothes, then I’ll take you to see Ben. But first, you’ll have to get past his mother.”
Chapter Forty-Two
Chance
Western Idaho
Spring, 1867
“So you’re an old friend of my son’s, Mr. McMullen?” Lavinia Marlowe assessed the rough-hewn visitor who twisted his hat in front of his chest as if he’d never stood in a decent parlor before. “I don’t recall him mentioning you.”
Watching Chance from a corner of the room, Annabelle remembered the time Lavinia had studied her that way, like a butcher surveying an inferior cut of meat. She’d wanted to slide below the floorboards under the thick Persian carpet and disappear.
Despite his size and rugged appearance, Chance—or rather, “Charles”—looked equally intimidated. He clenched his battered hat with one big hand while the other stroked his chin, as if seeking the comfort of his missing sandy beard. “Yes’m. Ben saved my life back in the last days of the war. Pulled me out of a burning barn where a Reb was hiding.”
“So you’re the reason my son has those horrible scars on his hands. As a matter of fact, I think he did mention something about that incident, once.”
Chance lowered his shorn head, looking more like a schoolboy than an outlaw or a visitor from back east. Despite his brand-new clothes, his bulk looked out of place in the brocade wallpapered sitting room with its marble fireplace and gilded Louis XVI furnishings. “Yes’m. I’ll always be grateful for what your son did.”
The gold lorgnette came down and tapped gently on the side of the upholstered chair, while Lavinia’s aristocratic face took on a thoughtful look. “This man also happens to be a relative of yours, Annabelle? My, my, what a coincidence.”
Annabelle had rehearsed in the mirror in her room above the store and so met her mother-in-law’s eyes square-on. “Yes, isn’t it? I haven’t seen Cousin … er … Charles for years. When he heard that Ben was injured, nothing would stop him from coming to visit us. He traveled night and day, hoping to arrive before … before Ben … if Ben …”
Rehearse or not, she could not get out the word died. Her fiancé was still alive, if barely, lying in a coma in the room upstairs with his pale face cool to her touch, chest barely rising and falling with each weak breath. It did not escape her that Chance McMullen, a man known as a cold-blooded murderer, was the one who had talked her out of commissioning murder to avenge him.
Did that make her evil? Annabelle wondered. Even so, she couldn’t help being glad that, one way or another, Willy Ratzel was dead.
“Excuse me, Mrs. Marlowe, but …” Chance swallowed, Adam’s apple rising and falling. “I was hoping that I could see Ben, just for a minute. I won’t disturb him, I promise.”
Lavinia hesitated, and Annabelle broke in. “Of course you can see him, Charles.” She gave her mother-in-law a meaningful stare. The two women were allies now, but that didn’t mean that Annabelle didn’t still have to stand her ground at times. This was a moment when she must assert the status of being Ben’s future wife—that is, if he survived.
Lavinia bowed her head in agreement. “I warn you, Mr. McMullen, my son is not the man you remember from the battlefield. The doctor says he is in his last moments.”
“Don’t worry, ma’am, I’ve seen plenty of men die.” Chance’s jaw hardened.
Lavinia turned to Annabelle. “Go ahead, my dear. Take your cousin upstairs.”
Annabelle’s eyes went straight to the figure in the bed, afraid of
what she would see, but the covers still rose and fell slightly. Without waiting for permission, Chance strode past her and bent over the bed, looking closely at Ben’s drawn face.
“Well, now, it’s really you, Ben. Glory be.” He fumbled for the rocking chair that Lavinia usually sat in, and pulled it closer to the bed. “When you rode off with that dadburned Injun a couple years ago, I never thought to see you again, so you just better hold on a while. At least till I tell you what I got to say. You remember that book you gave me? Still got it, right here.” He pulled it out of his breast pocket and flipped it open. “I learned me to read pretty blamed good from it. I’ll bet I can read just as good as you can, or that pretty fiancée of yours.”
Clearing his throat, he read aloud unhesitatingly, with emotion, “‘Not I, nor anyone else can travel that road for you. You must travel it by yourself. It is not far. It is within reach. Perhaps since you were born, and did not know.’”
He closed the book. “I been travelin’ quite a while now, Ben. Guess you have too. Don’t know why the poem says it is not far, because it seems golldarned far to me, but he’s definitely got a point there. No one else could travel it for either of us.” He stopped, as if waiting for Ben to respond, but under the crisp white sheet, Ben’s chest continued to rise and fall.
“I like what that Whitman fellow wrote just fine,” Chance went on after a moment. He looked up and caught Annabelle’s eyes, then focused on Ben again. “Got a lot of it down by heart by now, just like you did. But I got to admit something. I still don’t think it sounds the least bit like poetry. Not like the words to this, at any rate.” He chuckled, pulled out his battered old harmonica, and played a loud, quick arpeggio before beginning a sprightly version of “Turkey in the Straw.”
The crisp white sheet shuddered slightly. Then, to Annabelle’s astonishment, Ben’s eyelids quivered. Annabelle cried out and rushed to his side.
“Chance, you rascal.” The hoarsely whispered words came so low that Annabelle wondered if she imagined them. “Am I … dreaming?”
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