Sundancer (Cheyenne Series) (41 page)

      
She was a cold one, didn't even blink. Captains of industry from Paris to Pittsburgh had learned to tremble when Jubal MacKenzie was ready to pounce, but this female sat in stony composure. Was she mad? It would explain her persecution of Roxanna. He could find out little about her marriage to Nathaniel Darby, other than that the man was a sadistic bastard who enjoyed playing games with other people's lives. What bizarre twist must there have been to their relationship to drive her to such hatred over his death? He stood up and walked around the desk, using his considerable bulk as a weapon of intimidation. Eyes cold and hard as steel pierced her.

      
“I know you blackmailed Roxanna more to humiliate and frighten her than because of the money...but I also know yer broke and Andrew Powell hasna' ever been accused of being a generous man with his mistresses.” He scored a point at last when she sucked in her breath faintly. “He dinna' pay you what you thought you'd get, did he? Yer out of money. You owe exactly seven thousand two hundred seventy-two dollars and twenty-seven cents in back taxes and interest before you can reclaim yer estate—Edgewater. I'll pay you fifty thousand dollars so you can go back South, get back yer land and start over.”

      
Isobel digested that. The old fool was offering her a fortune! “I take it that in return for your largesse I must agree never to bother the Fallon woman again?”

      
MacKenzie nodded. “You take it correctly.”

      
With a growing sense of triumph, Isobel continued. “As for your second choice...let me guess. If I do not leave your ‘granddaughter’ alone, you personally will throttle me. Also correct?” She was almost taunting.

      
The old Scot's eyes widened. “Mrs. Darby, do na' mistake me! Murder? No, indeed. If you take the money and stay here, out West, you will have an ‘accident’...soon, I expect. And if you take my money and go back South and then double-cross me, weel...perhaps one night the cook will unintentionally overload the kitchen stove and there'll be a devastating fire...” Jubal shook his head sadly, as if he had just read a distressing article in the newspaper. “Or perhaps one afternoon, yer trusted overseer will take you on an inspection tour of yer fields—say, one where a wagon road runs along the high embankment of the river. The wheel comes off yer buggy; it overturns, throwing you into the current; his rescue attempt fails... Tragic, absolutely tragic!”

      
All through MacKenzie’s narrative Isobel felt the muscles along her spine tighten. Staring up at the old Scot, who was gazing at her with the benign smile of a kindly grandfather, she felt as though her bladder might disgrace her at any moment.

      
Damn you and that bitch you are besotted with!
she thought furiously. But she knew he had eyes everywhere, and to protect that slut, he would be even more callously ruthless than Andrew. She fought to keep her voice steady. “When will I receive my...stipend?”

      
“Why, my dear lady, it has already been deposited in yer account.”

      
Without another word, Isobel Darby rose on trembling knees and walked out of the office.

* * * *

      
Cain tracked Lawrence for nearly a week through the Nevada grading camps of the Central Pacific. Powell's former troubleshooter, now working for the competition, did not receive a warm welcome. Many of the Central Pacific crew chiefs viewed him with covert suspicion, but none had the courage to mention his runaway wife—until he asked point-blank if she was with Lawrence. Several knew that young Powell had a blond-haired woman with him. Gossip spread fast as heat lightning through the rail camps. When Cain finally located his brother all the way back in Salt Lake, he expected to find Roxanna with him. If Lawrence had touched her, he was prepared to commit fratricide for the second time.

      
“A man named Cain is asking for you, Mr. Powell. A mixed-blood, rather a rough-looking sort,” the young bookkeeper said with the avid curiosity of a greenhorn newly arrived from back East.

      
‘‘Show him in, William.” Powell laid aside the papers he had been working on and straightened his tie nervously.

      
Before William Smithers could do more than reach for the door to the Central Pacific's small temporary office, Cain shoved it open and stepped inside. “Where is she, Larry?”

      
“Mr. Powell, shall I—”

      
“You may leave us, William. It's all right,” Powell replied firmly.

      
Disappointed to be excluded from what looked like an exciting confrontation, the youth bowed out, closing the door behind him.

      
“I knew you'd come. She thought you wouldn't, but I don't think she knows you as well as I do, Damon,” Lawrence said calmly. In spite of his brother's shuttered expression, Powell sensed the murderous anger in those glittering black eyes.
As lethal as Father's
.

      
“Knowing me isn't the question, it's how well you know my wife,” Cain replied in a silky voice.

      
“In the biblical sense, I presume.” He raised his hands, palms up, then sighed and shrugged. “If she'd have had me, I would have taken her away from you. I made a mistake letting her go in the first place.”

      
“Like I said before, your mistake.” The tension that had coiled so painfully tight inside his gut eased.
He's telling the truth. She didn't let him touch her.
“Alexa is my wife and I keep what's mine.”

      
“Maybe you don't deserve a remarkable woman like Roxanna.” Lawrence watched in satisfaction as Cain's bronzed face leached of color.

      
“She told you.”

      
“Does that decrease her value to you? If so—”

      
“I said I keep what's mine, Larry. I don't give a damn if she's Jubal's granddaughter or not. She is my wife.”

      
Lawrence watched Cain's hand rest lightly on the Smith and Wesson at his hip. “If you shoot me, you'll never find her.”

      
Cain was surprised at the near taunt in his brother's voice. “If she's tucked in some hotel room in the city, I'll find her—if I have to tear the whole of Brigham Young's New Jerusalem to the ground. I don't need you.”

      
“She's not in the city, but before I tell you where she went, I want your word you won't hurt her.”

      
“My word?” Cain echoed dryly. If he wasn't so worried about Roxanna, it would be amusing. “Since when would a Powell take a breed's word?”

      
“You'll always hate me because I'm the old man's heir, won't you?” Lawrence asked stiffly.

      
Cain studied the pale smooth-faced man fashionably dressed in English tweed, his light brown hair meticulously barbered, his hands soft and manicured. “Frankly, Larry, I've never given you much consideration one way or the other...until I thought you might have slept with my wife. It's old Andrew I hate.”

      
“The
worthy
adversary. Yes, I imagine you would think of him that way. He does you,” Lawrence replied bitterly.

      
“We can do this easy...or we can do it hard. You choose. Either way, I'll have her.” Cain advanced a step.

      
“She's with the Cheyenne, your mother's people,” Lawrence replied, stepping back.

      
“In old Leather Shirt's camp?” Cain asked, stunned.

      
“There was another attempt on her life. We believed she'd be safest there while I try to locate the Darby woman.”

      
Cain cursed. “They move around. Must be over a hundred miles east of here. They could even be down in Colorado Territory. How the hell did you locate them?”

      
“The Central Pacific has scouts the same as MacKenzie,” Lawrence said smugly.

      
“Yeah, I'm acquainted with their work.” Lawrence gave him a blank look, then backed away as Cain placed his hands on the desk and leaned forward. “She better be with my grandfather and she better be unharmed—by anyone—or you'll wish you were dead before I'm through with you.”

* * * *

NORTHEASTERN COLORADO TERRITORY

      
The old man sat staring into the flames. The sharp chill of late autumn put a bite in the ceaseless High Plains wind. Sees Much gathered his blanket closer around his shoulders, remembering how it had been when he was young and his blood ran thick and hot in the coldest winters...as the Lone Bull's did now. “He will be here soon.”

      
Roxanna did not pretend to misunderstand even though they had not discussed Cain since the day she arrived several weeks earlier. She had not explained about Cain's betrayal or her own masquerade as Jubal's granddaughter. Among these people she was still called Her Back Is Straight.

      
“Tomorrow?” she asked, settling on a pile of furs with graceful ease, a bowl of fragrant antelope stew in each hand. Strange how easily she once more fit in with the routine of the camp, she thought as she passed the food to the old man.

      
They ate in companionable silence for several moments before he replied. “Yes, tomorrow, I think.” His rheumy dark eyes studied her. “Are you ready to see him?”

      
She put down her bowl. “I...I don't know. There is so much that has gone wrong...lies and deceptions. At first when I learned who he was and why he had married me I blamed him for everything. But now I realize that we were both guilty.”

      
Sees Much did not speak, only waited in patient silence, as was his way. In her own time she would unburden her heart. From the day she rode into their camp, he had felt her anguish. She as much as his nephew needed to be healed.

      
“I've had these weeks away from him to think. I suppose I will always love him, but I don't think I can ever trust him again.”

      
“Your pain is great. Sometimes it is lessened when it is shared.”

      
Roxanna took a shaky breath and launched into the whole story, beginning with her own desperate masquerade as Alexa Hunt, her plans to wed the Powell heir and the subsequent events leading up to her marriage to Cain instead. He did not seem surprised, nor was he condemning. She realized now that she had known he would not be. It gave her the courage to tell the rest of it, the most painful part about the deal Cain and Jubal had made and the shocking way she learned of it and her husband's true identity. By the time she was finished, tears brimmed in her eyes, but she refused to let them fall.

      
“Does your husband know about the child?” he asked after a moment.

      
She bit her lip and smiled sadly. “I should not be surprised that you know.” She shook her head. “I did not tell him, but I'm certain Jubal MacKenzie will. After all, providing that heir was the only reason he needed his granddaughter. Cain will come after me for the child and because I'm his guarantee that he'll keep his new position with Jubal.”

      
“Perhaps he comes for another reason.”

      
“Out of love?” she asked, half scornful, half hopeful in spite of herself.

      
“I do not think he accepts that he loves you yet, but you are his woman and he is a proud man who has already lost much in this life.”

      
“Will you make me go back with him if I don't want to?”

      
Sees Much shrugged. “A Cheyenne woman may divorce her husband anytime she has just cause.”

      
“I have just cause,” Roxanna said, hotly.

      
“Do you?” he asked. When she sat back, stung at the gentle rebuke, he said, “Only wait until you speak with him, child. Then listen with your heart.”

* * * *

      
Cain searched arduously for another two weeks after leaving Salt Lake, beginning with Riccard Dillon, who had been busily scouring the areas adjacent to Union Pacific land for hostiles. The colonel had not been overly happy with Cain's explanation about how Leather Shirt's band came to possess so many Yellow Boy Winchesters, but he had elaborated on the information Jubal and Cain already possessed about the renegades. When he explained that full-bloods riding with the raiders had been tracked into Leather Shirt's camp, Cain knew Weasel Bear was one of them.

      
Cain did not tell Dillon he was searching for his wife. He planned to ride into the Cheyenne village and drag her out himself before she was caught in a full-blown Indian war! The best thing would be for the colonel to head in the opposite direction. He described some Crow sign he had run across a week earlier, farther west. Perhaps Dillon would take the bait, perhaps not. Either way, Cain meant to have Roxanna safely out of harm's way as soon as possible.

      
He rode into the camp at midday. The way of life there was timeless as always. With winter coming on, the women were busy drying antelope meat taken from their last hunt. Ponies fattened on the remnants of tall summer grasses. The warriors sharpened their weapons and prepared to move the village farther south into the shelter of the Arkansas River country. Children ran naked in the warm autumn sun, laughing and playing a game of stickball.

      
His eyes searched for the glint of silver-gilt hair as he made his way to where Leather Shirt stood, waiting impassively. He dismounted and greeted the old man. “I have come for my woman,” he said in English.

      
“Sees Much said you would return. I did not believe him until she came to us,” Leather Shirt answered in Cheyenne, a wintry smile touching his lips. “Her Back Is Straight may not wish to return to the white eyes with you.”