Dust Devil (31 page)

He
grimaced, feeling again the anger. At men like Stephen and Wayne; maybe just at life in general. If he had any horse sense, he’d ride the hell out of Cambria, back to Loving’s Bend and his ranch. But he knew he wouldn’t go anywhere. Not leastways till Stephanie made up her mind what she wanted. He told himself he was too old to go a-courtin’ again, ’specially a girl some seventeen years his junior. A babe. And a spoilt one at that.

At the far end of the saloon a man’s woeful cry went up as the dealer in gartered sleeves and paper-billed cap raked in his winnings. It was then, just past the man who had lost his fortune, that
he thought he sighted the flash of red hair. He shouldered his way through the crowd to reach a table at the rear of the saloon. A priest, two motley-looking cowpunchers, and an old man in owlish-looking glasses and suspenders sat with Stephanie.

He
walked over to the table and stood behind her. He did not know if she had seen him coming; she gave no sign of it. But the others, they seemed to be aware of his more than passing interest in the game. He looked at Stephanie’s cards, held fanwise in her sun-browned hand. She had pushed forward one silver Mexican ’dobe dollar. He felt it not enough, for the others were paying little attention to their cards. He threw down an eight-sided California gold piece.

One of the cowpunchers, a skinny youth, grinned and tossed in his hand. The others followed suit. Stephanie did not move, and
he scraped in her winnings for her. Then he made an almost imperceptible motion of his head to the first cowpuncher, who promptly stood. The three others rose also and made their farewells. They were all gone.

He
still stood behind her. Her low-crowned Spanish hat hung by its cords from her neck, and her head was bare. He laid his hand on the brilliant hair. "Let’s go home, kid.”

S
he leaned forward to escape his hand, then pushed at the table and stood, swinging around to face him. She was wearing britches and boots and a cambric shirt that did little to hide her ripe breasts. A leather belt accented her small waist. She dug her hands into the table behind her. "I have no home!”

"Your mother’s waiting for you.”

"That’s not my home. Didn’t you know,” she spit, "didn’t they tell you — I’m a half-breed! Ask my mother. Ask Stephen Rhodes!”

With a sigh
he hooked his thumbs in his pants pockets. So the rumor had finally come home to roost. "I don’t need to ask anyone — ’cause I don’t care one way or another. But your mother loves you and wants you to come home.”

"So I can be bartered off?”

"You’ve never been made to do anything against your will.”

"Then you haven’t heard that I’m being traded
up from Satana to Hubbard?” she sneered. "Stephen — ”

"Stephen Rhodes is here, in Las Vegas, and your mother’s home worried about you.”
Hey grabbed up the slicker draped on the back of her chair. "Now come on, we’re going home.”

S
he shoved away his outstretched hand and whirled from him.

"Hell’s fires, kid, you’re a stubborn cuss!” He grabbed her from behind, spun her around, and threw her over one shoulder. With
her shouting and beating him on the back, he began to edge his way through the press of people.

"Damn you, Cody Strahan!”

Several gamblers stopped to stare, some to laugh, but her shouts of "Help!” went unheeded. A lovers’ tiff. More power to the wrangler who tamed the woman who tried to act like a man.

Once outside and away from the saloon,
he set her on her feet. "Don’t try to hightail it, ’cause I got longer legs and I’ll take you down quicker than a jackrabbit.”

S
he stood mute and stiff, her eyes shooting bullets at him.

"Now, where’s your horse stabled?”
he demanded.

The new Pintsch gaslights illuminated the slow, wicked smile that dented the corners of her mouth. "Sold it
— and the saddle, too. For a stake.”

He
closed his eyes and let out a grunt. "Come on,” he said, grabbing her hand and pulling her along behind him. At the livery stable he roused the little Mexican urchin and paid him.

S
he dropped to the straw-littered ground and watched Cody saddle his paint. "How’d you know where to find me?”

He
grimaced. "You leave a trail like a city slicker. Thought I’d taught you better.”

"Guess I just didn’t care,”
she mumbled, chewing on a piece of hay and looking anywhere but at him.

He
jerked hard on the girths. "Well, you’d best start caring. Geronimo and Satana are still toting the war hatchet.  And Santana’s no longer buying into your father’s outfitting your death hoax.”

Now her gaze whipped up at him
. "You worried Satana is going to come for me?”

"One day he will. When he and Geronimo have shaken the soldiers off their tails.”

She kept on. "And that worries you?”

"Anything that affects Cambria and my job worries me, kid. Now let’s get moving. Dawn’ll be here soon, and I don’t want to be riding under Satana’s sights.”

He grabbed her about the waist and pitched her up onto the paint before she could protest, then swung up into the saddle in front of her. She wrapped her arms about his lean waist and laid her head against his back, as she had often done as a child, and he uttered an inward sigh. It was going to be a long ride back.

The brisk August wind whipped about the paint and its two riders, and a stooped-back moon peeped through streaked clouds to cast dancing shadows over the rolling terrain.
She hugged closer to the rough warmness of his brush jacket, her cheek nestled between his shoulder blades. "Cody, were you ever in love?”

"Once.”

"What happened?”

There was a silence, then, "I married her.”

Stephanie raised her head and looked accusingly at his back. "You never said you were married.”

"Not any longer. Maggie
— and Becky, my daughter — they’re dead. Killed by a couple of Johnny Rebs. It happened a long time ago — when I was just a kid about your age.”

"Oh.” S
he laid her cheek against his sheltering back once more. "I see.”

But she didn’t see, he thought. And was glad. Or else she would know what a damned idiot he was making of himself, loving her like he did.

Dawn found them coming down out of the scrub-tufted foothills, still halfway from Cambria. He knew she would never admit to weakness, especially to another ranchhand. But the two weeks of whirlwind gambling and carousing showed in the shadows beneath her eyes and the new hollows beneath her cheekbones. "Let’s ease up a spell,” he said.

"A siesta would do us both good.”

He could feel her suspicious stare boring into his back. When he halted the paint in the lee of a mesa’s wall, she said, "You never got tired before, Cody Strahan.”

"No,” he agreed, smiling. "But I never got old before.”

Her eyes narrowed, watching as he settled back against the mesa’s sandy slope, crossed his grasshopper long legs, and tilted his Stetson’s brim down over his face.

* * * * *

Stephanie looked at him for the first time as a woman really looks at a man. The sinewy length of corded muscle, the uncompromising jaw and firm lips, the weather-browned face. But it was the eyes, shielded now by the Stetson’s brim, that had captivated her ever since childhood.

The eyes were the entire man, she thought. A nondescript color of gray, they were nevertheless luminous, eloquent with the gentleness inside the man. She had always supposed his an ordinary face, but now she perceived the deep character sketched in its lines. So much he never talked about
— and so much he knew. So much he knew about her, inside and out.  And so much time she had wasted when she could have been learning from him, getting to know him better.

She dropped down from the saddle and went over to stretch out next to him, at first self-conscious because of her awakened awareness of the man. But even this faded when she closed her eyes and the vision of Wayne’s face returned to haunt her as it had each night for as long as she could remember
— his golden good looks; the brooding, hot eyes; the reckless curve of his lips. And she knew she would not return home to be bartered off to the Englishman.

She waited until she heard Cody’s breath, steady and even in sleep. She hated to leave him stranded there, but he was a survivor. He would make it back to Cambria. And maybe she would too someday. But not now. Not as long as there
was hope for her and Wayne. Slowly she began to inch away from him, until she was far enough to crawl. After two more yards of tension-filled progress, she deemed it safe enough to spring up and make a dash for the paint.

The impact of Cody’s body flattened her. He jerked her roughly around beneath him. Her lungs fought for breath. The red sand ground into her back where her shirt had pulled out of her britches. But she was aware only of Cody’s eyes, a gun-metal gray now in their wrath. Always before there had been only the harsh flatness in the tone of Cody’s voice to show his displeasure. Never had she seen him openly display anger and she was frightened.

"I said you’re going back to Cambria,” he said, his words clipped and hard, and she could feel the fury even in his warm breath.

"So I can be bartered off?” she bristled, her rage momentarily drowning out her fear. "Never!”

She buckled then, trying to roll from beneath him, but his body came down hard against hers, and his hands pinioned her wrists above her head. "Lackey!” she spit up at him. "You’re Stephen Rhodes’s lackey, just like everyone else!”

His
face tightened. "You’ve never been made to do anything against your will . . . before.” His mouth closed ruthlessly over hers, the fierceness of his kiss parting her lips.

At first
she was too surprised and remained immobile under the angry onslaught of his tongue. Her mind reacted with confusion to this first penetrating kiss, and then even it slowed to an opiumlike stupor as her emotions took over. Unconsciously her arms wound about his neck, wanting to draw the hard, lean body closer into her. Her hips undulated with their need. Somewhere in the distance she heard her low moans of desire.

Suddenly
he pulled away. Her lids flew open, and she saw the passion in his face before it closed over like a mask. "You’re going back to Cambria,” he said huskily. "After you’ve talked with your mother, you can leave if you want to. But until then you have my word — you’re safe from Stephen Rhodes.”

"Just like I’m safe from you?” she sneered.

CHAPTER
35

Stephanie’s gaze followed Burton Hubbard’s pale, slender hand as he smoothed the linen napkin into neat folds beside the heavy ironstone plate, and she thought again, as she had done so often those past three months since she had returned to Cambria, of Cody’s strong weather-browned hands. From her childhood she recalled a summer day when she had been badly bruised by a mustang she had tried to ride . . . and Cody’s sure, firm hands massaging away the pain. With a tingling in the pit of her stomach she remembered the melting warmth of languor that had flowed through her like warm rum.

"Stephanie!” Stephen snapped. "Mr. Hubbard asked you a question.”

Miserably she lifted her gaze to meet Burton Hubbard’s pinched face. The Englishman looked as uncomfortable as she. "I’m sorry,” she murmured. "What were you saying?”

There was an awkward silence. Burton Hubbard cleared his throat, and his Adam’s apple vibrated. "I was curious if you had seen the Gila Cliff Dwellings near Silver City. They’re really supposed to be quite unique.”

She saw the calf-love in Burton’s eyes. So, he really was in love with her. It was not just Stephen Rhodes’s promise of a kingdom. "No, Mr. Hubbard, I’ve never seen the cliff dwellings.”

Listlessly she returned to eating. She wondered how much longer Stephen Rhodes would wait for his plans to come to their hoped-for fruition before he forced her into the marriage. So far in the five or six times Burton had stayed at Cambria he had yet to make an overture of marriage. But she knew it was coming.

Earlier that evening he had cornered her in the veranda swing. She had been, for all purposes, reading; but actually she had hoped to catch a glimpse of Cody. The few times their paths had crossed he had all but ignored her, something it seemed that Burton did not intend to do, for he had taken her hand between his clammy ones. Whatever he had been about to say, she could only guess, because at that same moment a servant appeared with the message her mother wanted to see her.

Stephen tossed down his glass of brandy. His florid face
was newly marked with purple veins. His eyes were almost continuously glazed with the increased amount of alcohol he consumed. He was a man robbed of his one dream. Still, he would not give up. Obviously, he was determined to yet make an Anglo dynasty for Cambria — at least three-quarters Anglo — and he would do it, by God, with Hubbard’s bloodline and Hubbard’s money.

"I be thinking,” he said loudly, "that mayhaps we could all take some sort of pleasure trip out to Silver City. To inspect our mines. It’d do you good to get away, Rosemary. And you, too, Stephanie. Mr. Hubbard here could act as our guide.”