Cherish (22 page)

“And an unending supply of peppermint sticks,” she added before finishing the prayer. “Amen.”

Mr. McNaught grasped Rebecca’s arm to assist her to her feet. She rubbed her palms on her skirt.

“That was right fine,” Mr. Grigsley said. “Ain’t nobody ever gonna get a nicer sendoff than that.”

Rebecca couldn’t speak. It was as if the prayer had sucked her empty. She touched McNaught’s sleeve to thank him for his gentlemanly assistance, then turned and struck off for camp, too tormented to care that she would be alone and defenseless once she got there. Indeed, she wished the ruffians would be there, that all of this could simply end, saving her the agony of having to bring an end to it herself.

“I’ve heard of some lowdown, rotten things,” Pete cried as he approached the grave. “But this beats all!”

Jerked from his misery by the fury in Pete’s voice, Race looked up to see who the foreman was angry with. He was surprised to find that Pete’s glinting, pale blue eyes were fixed, not on any of the other men, but directly on him. “For God’s sake, Pete, whatever’s eatin’ you, now ain’t the time. I’m not finished here.”

Pete jabbed a finger in Race’s direction, fairly sputtering, he was so mad. “It ain’t like she meant to bring this
to our door, goddamn it! I know it ain’t easy on you, losin’ the boy like this, and I can see you feelin’ sorta grizzly bearish. But, by God, sendin’ her off like that is just plain
lowdown
.”

“Sendin’ her off?”

Pete doubled his hand into a fist. Race half expected the wiry little man to come over the grave after him. “They’ll kill her, sure as I breathe, you stupid son of a bitch!”

“Rebecca, you mean?”

Pete jammed his hands on his hips. “Who’n hell you think? Of course, Rebecca! I tried to talk sense to her. But she ain’t hearin’ a word of it. Got her orders from the head man, she said, and off she went! If you don’t step fancy, we’ll be diggin’ another grave this day, mark my words! And her blood’ll be on your hands!”

Race’s stomach dropped. “Went?” he said hoarsely. He cast a frightened glance toward camp. “Went where?”

“God knows! She’s just goin’. I don’t think she knows where herself. Not talkin’ good sense! But who can blame her. Losin’ everybody like that, and then bein’ sent off by the only folks she’s got left. I wouldn’t be thinkin’ clear, either.”

Race took off at a run, Pete trailing behind him and yelling every step of the way. “It’s a damned good thing I followed her when she left the grave.” Huff, huff. “Knowed as soon as I got to camp that her deck was all shuffled. Talkin’ loco.” Huff, huff. “Tearin’ hell outta the chuck wagon. Emptied the salt bag and writ somethin’ on it with a burnt stick! Me tryin’ to talk sense to her the whole time.” Pant, pant. “I just plain can’t believe you sent her off thataway!”

Race staggered to a stop when he reached the center of camp, his gaze darting in all directions. “I didn’t send her off!”

Pete planted his hands on his knees and struggled to catch his breath. “You sure as shit must’ve! Got her sendoff from the head man, she said.”

“That’s not true. She actually said that?”

“Well, not in them exact words. Goin’ on about that
money too. Yours to do with whichever way you want, she said. Writ it all down for ya on the salt sack.”

“Which way?” Race demanded. “Which direction did she go, Pete?”

Pete pointed, and Race took off running again.

It took Race twenty minutes to find her, and when he finally did, he wasn’t sure whether he wanted to hug the breath out of her or tan her backside. Of all the times for her to get a maggot in her brain and go wandering off. Tag not cold in his grave. Killers possibly behind every bush.

She sat at the top of a slope, the brisk morning wind whipping the hem of her skirt and tossing the curls that had escaped her braid. As Race approached her from behind, he said, “What in
hell
do you think you’re doin’!”

He expected her to jump out of her skin, which would have at least given him some sense of satisfaction. Instead she glanced calmly over her shoulder, scanned him with a flick of her blue eyes, and resumed staring out over the grasslands. “Oh, hello, Mr. Spencer.”

She sounded almost bored. Pain exploded behind his eyes. His heart had crawled damned near up to his mouth, and she said, “Hello,” as if she were on the brink of yawning. He no longer had any doubt. He wanted to blister her fanny. Hand to bare ass, blister her until she couldn’t sit down for a month.

Swallowing back curses, he bore down on her. “
What
in the
world
do you think you’re
doin
’?” he yelled, grabbing hold of her arm. “If there’s one thing I don’t need it’s to be standin’ over another grave today, feelin’ like my guts is bein’ tore out.”

He jerked her to her feet, intending to jar her teeth. He was a bit more successful in the attempt than he set out to be. She didn’t weigh much and parted company with the ground more easily than he expected, slamming against his chest, bouncing off, and staggering backward. He caught her by the shoulders to keep her from sprawling, his anger losing its steam. As soon as he determined that he hadn’t hurt her, he started rebuilding pressure.

“You crazy little
fool
! You gotta death wish, or somethin’? Them plug-uglies would kill you without turnin’ a hair!”

She gazed up at him with a calm, completely unruffled expression that sent a chill down his spine. “I hope they do it quickly. Do you suppose there’s any chance of that?”

The icy feeling that danced up his spine radiated outward as if he’d been caught squarely in the back with five gallons of cold water, dousing his anger, blanking his mind for an instant. He stood there, hands clamped on her limp arms, staring down at her white face in stunned disbelief. In that moment, Race couldn’t remember the last time he’d really looked at her and registered what he saw. At some point yesterday, he guessed. Last night, the light hadn’t been that good for the most part, and later in the wagon, he’d been preoccupied with getting her settled.

What he saw now scared the ever-loving hell right out of him. Her small face was so white that a corpse would have had better color. The dark smudges he’d noticed yesterday under her eyes had turned bluish-gray. With the bruise along her cheek from where the ruffian had struck her, she looked as if she’d been beaten.

“Come on, sweetheart,” he said softly. “Let me take you back to camp.”

She tried to peel one of his hands from her arm. “Please, Mr. Spencer, you don’t understand. I have to do this now.”

“Do what now?” He was almost afraid to hear her answer.

“Let it happen,” she said, her voice barely more than a whisper. “Before someone else gets hurt. If I put it off, I’ll lose my nerve.”

Race was starting to get a really bad feeling. “Rebecca, what are you—”

As if he wasn’t speaking, she turned her head to gaze out over the flatland. “It’s not going to stop. Don’t you see that? Not until I make it stop.”

When she tried to pull away, he released her arms, then trailed behind her, leaning around to watch her face as
she wandered along the crown of the slope, the overlong hem of her skirt snagging on the grass. “I’m not supposed to be here. You can’t change the way things are meant to be. That’s what I did. I ran and escaped it. And now it has come for me.”

The hair stood up at the back of Race’s neck and he shot a wary glance around. “What’s come for you, honey?”

“Death,” she said dispassionately. “You can’t cheat death. I was supposed to die in the arroyo.”

The bad feeling Race had been starting to get was quickly becoming an awful understanding. “Sweetheart,” he said, injecting a reasoning tone into his voice, “if you was supposed to die in the arroyo, you’d be gone coon.”

“No. I ran.” She glanced up at him, her eyes haunted. “I never told you all about that, did I?” A muscle near her mouth began to jerk. “Little wonder. What I did was—it was shameful.”

“Running, you mean?” Race ran a hand over his hair. “Rebecca, running is all that saved your life!”

“Yes.”

Just that one word. Hollow, yet filled with a world of heartache. He circled it cautiously, trying to make sense of what she was trying to say. “And now you think you’re bein’ punished?”

“No. Gathered. Or perhaps collected is a better word. Death always takes its due.”

Gathered?

She looked up at him. “I was marked to die. Don’t you see? Everyone else. All of them. I’m the only one who survived. Why would I be chosen as the lucky one?”

Gazing down at her, Race could think of a thousand reasons, none of which he felt he should share with her at that moment. He thought of Tag and imagined her lying in a hole next to him. He wanted to slap her. Shake her. Grab hold of her and never let go. What in God’s name was she thinking?

“The fact is, I wasn’t chosen,” she continued, her mouth beginning to quiver again as she formed each
word. “I’m alive only because I’m the worst kind of a coward.”

His guts clenched at the look on her face. “Rebecca,” he whispered, “you ain’t no coward.” He recalled how she’d walked out to warn him about the ruffians, how afraid she’d been to tell him the truth. “Trust me on that. I know better.”

She held up a hand. “No. You weren’t there. I’m a coward. You’ve no idea.” Tears filled her eyes. “They were all screaming, begging for help. My mother…” She gulped, and her face seemed to dissolve, like wax melting in the sun, before she gathered herself together again. “And…and I ran. I hid in some bushes. Shut my eyes. Covered my ears. While they all faced death, I hid from it. Don’t you see? Death won’t be cheated.”

A horrible urge to laugh came over him. Only this wasn’t funny. She was serious. “Rebecca, death don’t take potshots, then say, ‘Oh, shit, I missed and got the wrong fella!’ That’s what you’re sayin’, ain’t it? That death is huntin’ you down and has bad aim.”

She closed her eyes, and her face twisted as sobs began to jerk her shoulders. “It’s me. Don’t you see? That boy. He’s dead because of me. All because of me.” She bent slightly at the waist and pressed a fist between her breasts. Her sobs were horrible. “I can’t
bear
it. It’ll happen again. It will. I have to make it stop!”

Race grabbed her by the shoulders and gave her a hard shake. Her eyes snapped wide and she stared up at him in stunned bewilderment.

“Tag is dead because some lowdown, heartless son of a bitch shot him.
That’s
why Tag is dead! Because the world’s full of snakes pretendin’ to be men.
That’s
why he’s dead. It don’t have nothin’ to do with you. You ain’t marked, for God’s sake! And you’re not a coward. What was you s’posed to do, Rebecca? One small woman against sixteen men. Run out into the thick of it so the bastards could rape you? So they could slit your throat?”

“I should have
helped
my parents!” she cried, knotting her hands into fists at her sides. “I should have
tried
!”

“How?” Race knew he was yelling. But he couldn’t
seem to stop. She’d come out here to die. Making a target of herself. Hoping those bastards would come for her. And it was nothing short of a miracle that they hadn’t. “Listen to yourself! How could you have helped them? Name me one way!” He gave her another little shake. “You think you can take on a grown man? That’s plumb silly. You don’t even have the know-how to shoot a gun. What was you gonna do, take after ’em with a switch?”

“I could’ve”—she brought up a fist and thumped his chest—“
hit
them! I should’ve
hit
them! Bit them! Kicked them!
Fought
them! With everything I had! With all my
strength
!” She drew back and struck his chest again. “My mother! Oh, God! My
mother
! She
screamed
! She screamed and screamed.” With a broken sob, she pummeled his chest and shoulders frenziedly, delivering a rash of punches. “She screamed my
name
! God forgive me. Oh, God! She screamed my
name
! And I covered my ears!”

Race scarcely felt her blows. But what she was saying nearly took him to his knees, every word breaking his heart. He understood now. Why she had come to this knoll. Why she looked as if someone had blacked both of her eyes. Why she’d been in shock when he found her. God help them both, he understood, and wished he didn’t.

“Honey, listen to me. Listen, all right? There was nothin’ you could’ve done. Nothin’! Save die beside her. You did what came natural. It’s instinct to run if stayin’ means you’re gonna die! You think I wouldn’t? Think again. I woulda left you to eat my dust.”

“You
liar
!” She punched his shoulder again. “
You
wouldn’t have run! You would have
fought
! If she’d screamed
your
name, you would have tried to save her!”

“If I was armed, damned straight! But you wasn’t.”

“Don’t!” She held up her hands as if to block out the sound of his voice. “Even without guns, you would have fought them. Tried, anyway. With your
fists
if nothing else!”

“And you think you should’ve? That just plain don’t make sense. With your fists, Rebecca? You really think you can belly up to a man? No way. He’d knock you into
next week. Turn you every which way but loose!”

“You don’t know that. Not for sure! I could’ve
tried
! I could’ve done
something
!”

Race could see she wasn’t registering anything he said to her. In one ear and out the other.
Christ Almighty
. The guilt was tearing her apart, eating her alive.
She screamed my name, and I covered my ears
!

He bent and caught her behind the knees with one arm. When he tossed her over his shoulder, she shrieked. That was fine. He meant to startle her. Meant to scare the hell out of her, in fact.

“
What
!—You put me
down
! What’re you—”

He jostled her to get a better hold. “Be still! Start throwin’ yourself, and I’ll drop you on your fool head!”