McCrory's Lady (45 page)

      
His body slammed into Lazlo's, causing the outlaw to drop the rifle as both men fell to the ground, punching and rolling, each trying to gain a grip on the pistol in Lazlo's holster. Eden withdrew her derringer but dared not fire for fear of hitting Wolf. As he held Lazlo's hand away from his Colt, Wolf landed a solid blow to the killer's gut, then reached for the weapon while Judd wheezed for breath.

      
Blake slid Lazlo's six-shooter from its holster, but Lazlo's fist smashed into Wolf's hand. The weapon flew free, bouncing from a small boulder into the pool. Ignoring the lost gun, Wolf pulled the knife from his boot while he rolled away from Lazlo. He sprang up on the balls of his feet, as agile and taut as a mountain lion poised to pounce. The sunlight caught the edge of his wicked looking blade. His face was harsh and savage, filled with a primitive blood lust.

      
“Now, Lazlo, you'll see how my mother's people take care of enemies who threatens their women.”

      
Judd backed away several steps. Eden watched in fascinated horror, seeing the other side of her lover. The man who had been so gentle and understanding with her was once more the man she remembered from the Sonoran nightmare, a hard-faced, fierce killer, the same kind of man as Judd Lazlo—but not really. Wolf looked infinitely more deadly as he circled Judd in short arcs, backing him toward the water.

      
She was just about to cry out for him to stop when Lazlo slid a knife from the back of his belt. “I'm pretty good with this pig sticker myself, breed. Let's go,” he snarled.

      
The two men moved back and forth in a lethal ballet, parrying, feinting, lunging. Wolf drew first blood, opening a wicked cut across Lazlo's shoulder, but then Lazlo retaliated with a quick arc that opened a furrow up Wolf's left arm.

      
Eden threw down her Zig Zag and edged around the two men to where Lazlo's Winchester had landed. She seized it and cocked it, but was afraid to shoot. If she missed Lazlo, she might at the same time distract Wolf and cost him his life. The combatants closed together then, and turned so quickly, her love was in the line of fire as often as his enemy. She stood with the rifle cocked, waiting, willing herself to be calm.
I must keep my nerve
. Soon, it became apparent that Wolf was toying with Judd, slashing his arms, nicking his neck, all the while keeping up a series of insults in that low silky voice of his.

      
“You're too slow, Lazlo... White Eyes, you never had to hunt with a knife to keep from starving... What's the matter—a few little cuts hurt too bad? They only sting... If you thought the centipede was bad...just wait...”

      
Both men were bloody now. The scorching desert sun beat down mercilessly on them. Wolf watched Lazlo, intent on observing any sign that his foe was growing light-headed from the heat and the blood loss. Sweat poured from both of them, making their knife handles slick.

      
“Getting tired, White Eyes? Us Apache, we're used to roasting in this heat. Now it's your turn.”

      
“It's my turn to kill you,” Lazlo snarled in a last desperate bid to win. He feinted, then came in low with his blade streaking to Wolf's midsection.

      
Wolf parried the blow and their blades locked together. The force of their collision caused them to slide on some loose pebbles. Blake lost his footing and went down on one knee. With a look of triumph blazing in his eyes, Lazlo forced the haft of his knife free and plunged the blade toward Wolf's throat.

      
Eden stifled a scream and carefully aimed for Lazlo's upper body. Wolf was crouched between her and her target; but before she could fire, Lazlo's face took on a glazed expression of agony. His body went suddenly rigid and his knife clattered onto the rocks.

      
Wolf rose and backed away, saying softly, “I bet it's hotter where you're headed now.”

      
Lazlo sank to his knees, his hands clutching his belly where Wolf's blade had zigzagged all the way across and up. He held his own intestines in his hands. Blood foamed at his lips as he gave a final sigh of agony. He fell face forward onto the ground.

      
Eden uncocked her rifle, but held it in a death grip as she stood shivering uncontrollably in the heat. Wolf turned to her and read the revulsion in her wide gold eyes.

      
“Now you've seen the Apache side of me, Eden,” he said quietly, afraid to breathe. The pain clawed at him as he stood facing her, as motionless as she was. “I told you I was a killer. This is how I've survived since I was fifteen. Maybe I can't ever change.”

      
His low, impassioned words, spoken between halting, ragged breaths, brought her out of her trance. He could have been killed—she would have been worse off than dead if Judd Lazlo had been victorious. And now Wolf blamed himself because she had witnessed him fight for their very survival.

      
“No!” She shook her head in denial of his words. Throwing the Winchester down, she ran to him and wrapped her arms around his neck, heedless of the blood and sweat covering his body. “You are my love, my life. Without you I wouldn't want to live. I don't care what you were—or what you become. I'll always love you,” she said slowly, looking into his fathomless black eyes, willing him to listen—to believe.

      
Wolf let the breath he had been holding escape in a long, shaky sigh as he buried his face in her silky hair. Holding her tightly, he felt himself trembling with relief. “Oh, Eden, my paradise, my love. I haven't lost you.”

      
“You never will, Wolf. Never...”

* * * *

      
An hour after Wolf and Eden had ridden hard for Tucson to warn Colin, a lone horseman pulled off the trail by the river. His mount was lathered from keeping a grueling pace. He eyed the buzzards circling in the sky beyond the rocks. Smiling grimly to himself, he tugged on the lead lines of his two remounts and went to make sure that Lazlo had done his job.

      
When he saw the gunman's body lying face down in the dust, he dismounted with a curse and walked over to it. One booted foot kicked the mortal remains of what had been Judd Lazlo face up. Grotesque. There was no sign of Blake or the girl, but they must not be too far ahead of him. Not that he planned to tackle the deadly breed gunman himself, but he must get to the next town and send a wire, warning Win Barker that his inept killer had failed for the last time.

      
Surely, there must be better help in a town the size of Tucson. He would have the situation under his own control from now on.

Chapter Twenty

Tucson

      
“You still love the bloody fool, Megs. I can see it in your eyes,” Bart Fletcher said, brushing Maggie's cheek tenderly. “Only yesterday you were assuring me that you'd work things out.” A sudden look of anguish swept over her face. “Surely, the jealous bastard hasn't abused you because he caught me in your room. I'll—”

      
“No, Bart. He was angry, but that wasn't the real reason—at least it's not that simple. I'd rather not talk about it, not yet. This is the most difficult thing I've ever done. I have to leave Colin—for his own good. If you've changed your mind about being saddled with a pregnant woman, I'll understand.”

      
Fletcher took her hands, so pale and cold, and raised them to his lips. “No, Megs. I'd never change my mind about you. I take it you haven't told McCrory about his impending fatherhood?” He cocked one blond eyebrow, almost certain of her reply.

      
“No. I won't hold him that way.” There was steel in her voice.

      
“Don't you think a man has a right to know about his child—even a bloody rotter like that Scot?”

      
She smiled at his playing a scowling devil's advocate. “I'll wait until after the baby's born. Maybe by then, things will seem clearer to me. If...if he wants the child”—she hesitated, fighting the catch in her throat—“perhaps I'll have to give it up—”

      
“No.” Bart interrupted her with flat finality. “You've already been cheated of enough. You may lose that mule-headed husband of yours, but you'll not give up your child, too. I simply won't permit it.” He patted her hand, then took it and placed it around his arm, guiding her away from the deserted fountain in the small city park where they had arranged to meet. “I'll buy another ticket on tonight's Yuma stage—if you think that will give you enough time to pack?”

      
“I'll be packed and at the depot.” She reached out and placed a light kiss on his cheek. “You are a true friend, Bart.”

      
“I'm not so certain of that, Megs. After all, I'm getting what I want at the cost of your happiness with McCrory.”

      
He watched her walk away with her head held regally high. Her strength of character and elegance of manner showed generations of breeding. Again, he cursed Colin McCrory for a fool, holding the mistakes of a young girl against the woman who had overcome so much by sheer dint of will. Should he have told Maggie about McCrory's unsavory past? Somehow, he doubted that knowing her husband was hiding skeletons in his own closet would make her feel any better about their failed relationship. As she had said, after they were safely settled in San Francisco there would be time to sort out a great many things.

      
One thing he was certain of. The only way Colin McCrory would ever lay claim to Maggie's baby was if he reclaimed his wife first.

* * * *

      
Maggie sat at the desk in their hotel suite, trying to concentrate on the letter she was composing, telling Colin that she had left. She could not bear the humiliation of facing him. He might be foolishly noble and insist she stay. When her scarlet past cost him his reputation, whatever feelings he might have been developing for her would wither and die before they ever had the chance to grow.

      
“I'm not in any danger of seeing him,” she murmured sadly. Since their painful parting yesterday morning, Colin had not returned to their room. A cold, distantly polite note arrived last night explaining that he had been detained on business and would make other arrangements. She was to wait for him at the Palace until Wolf arrived, and they could press charges against Barker.

      
“It will be easier this way. I won't have to face your awful bleak despair and you won't have to barter your honor trying to force me to stay. Oh, Colin, Colin...” Maggie laid down her pen and buried her fists in her eyes, willing herself not to cry. Resolutely she picked up the pen and finished her farewell to her husband.

      
The missive to Eden was in some ways even more difficult to write. Maggie knew how the girl had wanted desperately to believe that her father would fall in love with his new wife. She considered very carefully how to explain to Eden why she could not stay without causing her to blame Colin. It was not an easy task. He had forgiven his daughter her youthful indiscretion but could not tolerate his wife's tawdry past. Maggie did the best she could, urging Eden to find happiness with Wolf Blake and retain the special closeness she had always had with her father. At least one thing had gone right on this dreadful trip to Tucson. She had made Colin aware of Wolf's suitability as a husband for Eden.

      
By the time she had finished both notes, it was dusk. Her bags were packed. As for the rest of her clothes and personal belongings at Crown Verde, Eileen could forward them. She would write the kindly old woman from San Francisco.

      
Maggie rang for a porter. The last and most difficult thing she had to do was to slip the antique wedding band from her finger and place it inside Colin's letter.

      
She sealed the two envelopes and left them on the desk in the parlor.

      
Within half an hour, she and Bart were boarding the stage for Yuma. The only other passengers were a young drummer selling shoes and a harried woman with a sleepy little boy.

      
As soon as the driver cracked his whip over the heads of the team, the heavy conveyance lurched forward, gathering speed, leaving Tucson behind in a cloud of dust. Maggie stared out the window into the darkness. Some small part of her prayed against all reason that Colin would return to their suite, read her note and come after her. She listened to the steady pounding of the team's hooves. No other sound broke the evening stillness.

      
Bart exchanged an understanding look with her. He had always known what she was thinking, sometimes even before she did. She smiled bravely for him, but could not erase the haunted sorrow in her eyes. Sorrow for what might have been but now could never be.

* * * *

      
Colin woke up to the stink of stale whiskey and cheap perfume. God, his skull throbbed! He rolled to the side of the narrow mattress and sat up, very carefully cradling his head between his hands. An empty bottle of rotgut lay on the floor beside the bed. The blonde whore whose room he had slept in had left her gaudy yellow sequined dress crumpled in a sweat-stained heap on one rickety chair. Other items of apparel, shoes, underwear and petticoats, lay strewn around the small, dirty room. He wrinkled his nose in distaste.

      
What had possessed him to choose Alma? Or was it Alice? He could not remember through the fog of liquor that had dulled his brain. He had been drinking for nearly twenty-four hours straight—ever since he left Maggie in their hotel. He had wandered from saloon to saloon, trying to drown his pain. Finally, he had paid the persistent little blonde whore
not
to sleep with him, just to leave him in peace. Then, he proceeded to drink himself into a stupor in her quarters behind the Legal Tender Saloon.