Sundancer (Cheyenne Series) (39 page)

      
Larry's motives in offering to help her were considerably more puzzling. Was his brother smitten with his wife? A far darker thought nagged at him, one he refused to think about—that Roxanna and Larry were having an affair. He had been insanely jealous when he found her in his brother's arms the other night, but after the way she responded to him, Cain simply could not believe there was anything between her and Larry.

      
For his own reasons, Larry had defied their father to offer Alexa Cain his protection. “Hard to imagine you've finally grown a backbone at twenty-eight.” But was that less difficult to believe than that Roxanna would betray her husband? The punishing ride took his mind away from such troubling thoughts. He chose the big chestnut and took remounts from the fine string of horses Jubal always brought on any trip.

      
By camp that night Cain was forced to admit that Roxanna had most probably picked up the express coach headed into Salt Lake. Even with his spare horses he could not hope to catch her before she arrived in the Mormon capital. Once there, she could vanish again on another coach or have met Lawrence in a prearranged rendezvous. The only thing he could be certain of was that she was bound for San Francisco.

      
If Roxanna remained alone, she would have to travel the northern route, sooner or later selling her horse, if she had not already done so, and riding the overland stages from Salt Lake through the mining towns of Nevada down into California. All he could do was follow her the whole damn distance.

      
He settled back on his bedroll and looked up at the starless night sky with a grim smile. He would solve two problems at one time in San Francisco—face down his father with the news of imminent ruin when word of his thievery reached the other Central Pacific directors, and bring Roxanna back with him. Somehow he would make her understand that he had not married her only to become Jubal’s operations chief. But what if he found out that she had been unfaithful with his brother?

      
Once he had read her wire to Larry, the question simply would not go away. Nor would the insidious pain in his heart when he thought of losing what he had told himself all along he did not want—Roxanna's love.

* * * *

      
Lawrence Powell stood with the wire in his hand, printed out in the telegrapher's neat cribbed script. It had been delivered to him directly by a rider as soon as his San Francisco office telegraphed back his location along with Alexa' s message. A smile flashed across his face. Was Alexa finally finished with his bastard brother? He would soon find out. After all, he'd offered her his help and he intended to give it. A quick calculation of the distance she could have traveled indicated to him that he might intercept her before she reached Salt Lake. Luckily he had decided to ride north on a pressing business matter before returning to San Francisco. “Zebulon, tell the other men to mount up. We have a damsel in distress to rescue.”

* * * *

      
After selling her horse to purchase passage on the coach to Salt Lake, Roxanna finally let the numbness of shock give way to bone-weary exhaustion. Crammed between a drummer whose clothes smelled of camphor balls and an obese woman who munched greedily from the basket of fried chicken on her ample lap, Roxanna fell asleep in spite of the pitch and roll of the fast-moving stage.

      
The next morning, as she picked at the greasy stew at the way station, the drummer engaged in an argument with the proprietor.

      
“Your place is a pigpen. I've seen better food in Chicago tenement kitchens.”

      
“Why don't you go on back to Chicagy, then?” the wiry little station owner said, sending a slug of tobacco juice pinging off the hard-packed dirt floor well shy of the overflowing cuspidor.

      
The drummer jabbed a none-too-clean spoon in the direction of the bowl before him. “There's a fly in the stew!”

      
The owner, who doubled as cook, lifted one shaggy beetled brow and squinted into the food. “Yep. If'n th' stew warn't so damnblasted good, it wouldn't a flown in it neither,” he answered, crossing his arms over his scrawny chest.

      
In spite of herself Roxanna smiled, forcing down another spoonful. At least hers had no flies in it—that she could see. As the wrangling continued, she thought about the jouncing ahead. Lord, if only she were not so tired. How many days to San Francisco? Should she have kept riding horseback in the slim hope of running into Lawrence? She pondered her decision. One way or the other she would reach Salt Lake tomorrow. After that... She rubbed her eyes and tried to think.

      
“You look as if you could use a friend.”

      
Roxanna’s head flew up at the soft, familiar voice. Seeing Lawrence's round smiling face and sympathetic blue eyes, she impulsively stood up and threw her arms around him. “I was afraid I'd missed you!”

      
He patted her back in a brotherly fashion. “If your wire to San Francisco hadn't been redirected to me, you would have. Let's get out of this noisome place so we can talk,” he said, looking around the small squat adobe room with its high little windows and food-encrusted cookstove. The smell of stale grease and sweaty horses hung on the air until they made their way out into the station yard. A fresh team had already been hitched to the coach. The driver called out for everyone to board and the drummer, still fuming, rushed past her, followed by the fat lady, still clutching her enormous hamper of food. Perhaps she'd share with him.

      
The morning sky was hazy with low pale gray clouds massing on the western horizon. Already heat hung like an old horse blanket, enveloping them. “I paid my fare to Salt Lake,” she said, wondering if she could retrieve part of it from the driver, doubting it.

      
Larry shook his head, smiling. “Forget about the coach. I'll see you get safely to San Francisco—if that's where you want to go, Alexa.”

      
“Yes. It's as good a place as any to start over,” she said dismally.

      
He took her elbow gently and steered her to a copse of trees where they could sit on a rock, shaded against the merciless heat. “Now tell me what happened.”

      
“I've left your brother.”

      
He paled at that, then shook his head. “How did you find out? My father has gone to great pains to conceal our relationship.”

      
“I overheard your conversation with Cain the other day on the hotel terrace. My husband did most of the talking as you may recall.”

      
He could hear the bitterness in her voice, underlaid with desolate pain. “He's used you. Just as he uses everyone, but I'm not sure I should place all the blame on Damon. Father was not always...kind. My brother learned to survive in spite of everything, though.”

      
“So did you. I have a feeling growing up with Andrew Powell wasn't easy for either of his sons. But that didn't turn you into the same kind of person.”

      
Lawrence flushed. “You're very kind, Alexa.”

      
For an instant it was on the tip of her tongue to confess that she was not Alexa, but she was risking enough already without adding further complications. Perhaps if he knew she was not Jubal's granddaughter, he might be afraid to offer his help. Lawrence was not a man who dared fate like his brother. “You are the one who's kind for responding to my plea. I can't imagine your father would approve of it.”

      
He sighed. “No, he won't, of course, but that doesn't matter. If I'd not been such a wretched coward in the first place, you would never have fallen into Cain's snare.”

      
“I already had, before I ever met you. “What happened between Cain and me isn't your fault, Larry.”

      
“I can't help but feel it is. You must know that I was smitten with you from the first time we met. If only…”

      
She could not bear the earnest guilty look written across his face. “When I told you in Denver that I was in love with Cain, it was the truth.”

      
“But you can't still love him?”

      
“I don't know,” she replied softly, as her hand curved protectively over her belly. “But I do love the child I'm carrying. And I'll never let Cain or Jubal MacKenzie or any other man use it the way they've used me.”

      
Lawrence stiffened. “Does Cain know about the baby?”

      
“I didn't tell him, but Jubal guessed. He was so pleased,” she said bitterly. “I imagine by now he's told my husband. He'll most probably come after me—to secure MacKenzie’s heir for his boss.”

      
Lawrence could hear the scorn in her voice. “Then it might not be wise to go directly to San Francisco. That's the first place he'll look, you know.” He stood up and began to pace, combing slender elegant fingers through his sandy hair. “If you're feeling well enough, I could take you with me while I ride up into the Snake River country to arrange a timber contract. That would give us time to figure out how to deal with Cain and MacKenzie.”

      
That must have been where he was heading when her wire interrupted his plans. She smiled. “Of course I feel well enough. It sounds like a marvelous adventure.”

* * * *

      
San Francisco had not changed much since he left it over a year earlier, except to grow even bigger and more crowded and dirty. Early autumn rain fell, hanging chill and sullen in the foggy evening air. Cain reined in his horse and dismounted in front of Andrew Powell's immense gargoyle of a house, situated on the far southern edge of the city. Its splendid view of the bay was the only good thing he could see about it. The three-story stone monolith had a mansard roof, a twenty-foot portico on three sides and acres of topiary, which must require a dozen gardeners year-round to maintain. The guard at the scrolled wrought-iron gate had wanted to deny him admittance but was too frightened to do more than bleat a halfhearted protest when Cain drew his Smith and Wesson and ordered it opened.

      
He studied the large front windows hung with heavy lace curtains. The lights glowed dimly through the dusk like the eyes of a jack-o'-lantern. A cold welcome for any man. He had never before set foot on the estate and would never again after tonight. Was Roxanna inside?

      
He felt the keen itch of anticipation racing through his blood as he climbed the three tiers of stone steps and lifted the heavy brass door knocker. A pity Andrew's fancy city wife had died before he had the chance to introduce himself. He wondered if she had ever known about Blue Corn Woman...about him. Then the door swung open on well-oiled hinges and an imperious-looking man with the bearing of a major general looked him up and down with melting thoroughness. Unshaven, his hair shaggy, wearing the same ripe buckskins he'd ridden in during the past week, Cain could easily imagine what the disdainful butler was thinking.

      
“If you're here for employment, the stable master is ‘round back. Now, see here—”

      
Cain placed one dark hand on the pristine starched whiteness of the servant's shirt and shoved him out of the way, stepping into the large marble foyer. A glittering crystal chandelier hung suspended from a twenty-foot ceiling, and Louis XIV tables covered with Chinese vases lined the French silk covered walls. His boots echoed on the polished surface of the floor as he strode around, whistling low. “So this is what you sold your soul for, Andrew Powell.” He raised his eyebrows sardonically. “And for
your
soul, maybe it was worth it.”

      
“It was.” Powell's icy clipped words cut across the distance separating them like the blade of a knife. He stood at the top of a curving staircase, dressed as always in an elegantly tailored suit. He made no move to descend the steps.

      
“Sir, I tried to stop this ruffian,” the butler said, huffing angrily at Cain, then backing off when those cold glittering black eyes swept from his employer to him.

      
Deliberately, Cain turned his back on the servant and faced Powell with a dare implicit in every move of his long lean body.

      
The older man nodded a curt dismissal to the butler, then started down the stairs to face his enemy. “What the hell are you doing here?”

      
Running his fingertips over the satiny surface of an ornate table, Cain replied, “Maybe I thought it was past time to see how you and my brother have lived all these years, now that I'm moving up into your rarefied circles.”

      
Powell snorted inelegantly. “You still look like the breed gunman you always were. Marrying MacKenzie's damaged little darling will never change that...especially now that the truth will come out. She isn't even his kin...just a cheap actress posing as Alexa Hunt. But she is still your wife.” His cold blue eyes glittered with triumph as he let fly the barb.

      
Cain nodded calmly. “Roxanna is still my wife.”

      
“So, you already know. I wonder, did you take the news with the same equanimity as old Jubal?” The words were delivered with an almost disinterested air, but his eyes continued to skewer Cain like a hawk focusing in for the kill.

      
“I imagine the charming Mrs. Darby gave you the information. Pity it won't do you any good. I'm still Jubal's operations chief, Powell. And in that capacity, I have a bit of information to share with your associates...about the Felder-Smythe Iron Foundry back East and their rather sizable sale to the Central
 
Pacific, the one that Magus Shipping Enterprises contracted to bring around the Horn to San Francisco.”