Patricia Potter (36 page)

He’d almost believed Willow’s fairy tale. As if a few accidental deeds wiped away the rot in him. Well, she’d seen him for what he was. And she hadn’t liked it.

The warmth that had settled inside him, the odd feeling of peace and belonging, was swallowed by a yawning hole, one made even deeper by those few moments of pleasure.

When would Newton strike? Soon, since Morrow planned to run his cattle this way. They had a day, perhaps a few, but no more. He wasn’t sure he had time to build the dam, but right now hard work was mighty appealing. And they would need three watches. Chad could take days. For some reason Lobo didn’t think Newton would strike in daylight. A coyote usually hid behind darkness.

He wanted it over. He wanted distance between him and this goddamned ranch. He wanted to forget eyes the color of a summer day, and hair that felt like silk. He wanted to forget Chad’s admiring eyes and Sallie Sue’s small, lisping voice.

Minutes later he was back at the ranch, giving orders to an unusually cooperative Brady and a grateful Chad. Lobo was ready to ride out if Willow appeared.

“I can really keep watch?” Chad asked so hopefully that the words nearly broke through the new armor Lobo had pieced around his heart.

“Really,” he said curtly, but Chad didn’t seem to take offense. Everyone, it seemed, was walking gingerly after the confrontation in the ranch house.

As Chad took Willow’s old riding horse out to the hill, Lobo and Brady found two axes and carefully fastened them to their saddles. They had two hours of daylight left, enough to get started on the dam.

When they arrived at the place Willow had pointed out earlier, Lobo picked a tree, and they took turns wielding their axes. It became a test of endurance, a competition. On his side, Lobo had rage and frustration that gave him almost superhuman strength, but Brady also had incentive. He was driven to prove himself.

In no time a large cottonwood fell across the stream, and then a smaller tree, then brush. They worked as dusk came, and then as the moon lit the sky. They worked until Brady thought he would drop from exhaustion. Still, Lobo continued, his strokes steady although Brady knew he must have the same bleeding blisters as he himself did. But no pain showed on Lobo’s face, no exhaustion.

An hour later Lobo turned to him. “You best go spell Chad.”

“Come back with me,” Brady said, surprising himself, and getting a startled look from Lobo.

“No,” the gunfighter said.

Brady gave him a level stare for several moments. It would be useless to try to convince him. Lobo was wrestling his own devils, and Brady knew from experience no one could help.

“All right,” he said finally. “I’ll see you in the morning.” As he mounted and rode away, he could still hear the ring of the ax hitting wood.

He stopped at the now-dark house and fetched the box with the medical supplies. Lobo would need it when he relieved Brady a few hours later, and Brady knew damned well Lobo wouldn’t ask Willow for it. He assured himself the only reason he cared was they all needed Lobo’s gun hand.

M
ARISA FOUND HER
chance to escape. She had been waiting for days, but after her ride into town, she had been watched. Her keepers were all polite enough but firm. Her father was worried about her safety.

She had not given up on the idea of talking to Gar Morrow. If she could discover the reason for the hatred between her father and his onetime friend, perhaps she could do something to dissolve it. She didn’t know what exactly, but anything was worth a try.

All day men had been riding out. Even the new gunslingers who had been recruited. All the streams in the area were going dry, and the cattle had to be brought in to the river. Cady, who took care of the horses, had been working harder than usual until his back, bad since a fall on roundup, gave out. He’d sent a message to her for some tonic, and she’d spiked it with a little of the laudanum they kept around the ranch.

After she was sure he was sleeping, she saddled her own horse and rode out. The range was dry, and even the river which she rode alongside was low.

The horse felt good under her. She knew an exhilarating sense of freedom. On the way back she would stop and see Sullivan. Sullivan. Even the name was enticing to her.

She turned at the road that snaked by Gar Morrow’s ranch, occasionally glimpsing other riders, all of them unfamiliar. Despite the heat of the day, she shivered slightly. Every stranger now was ominous, not like it used to be. Since the Indians had been driven from this area a few years back, it had been safe, and she’d never felt troubled riding alone. But now…

It was late afternoon when she drew up at the fenced entrance to the Morrow house. The building was much like her father’s—a plantation-type structure from the South. Only Jake, whose wife had been ill, had chosen a one-story home.

There were several horses tied to the posts in front of the house, and at her arrival a man leaning against one of the columns of the front porch disappeared inside. Before she could dismount, Gar Morrow was coming out the door, and behind him was the gunfighter she’d seen at the dance.

“Miss Newton,” Gar Morrow said, his face showing surprise. “This is—”

“Unexpected?”

“Unexpected,” he agreed. “Is this a social call?”

“I would like to talk to you,” Marisa said. “Alone.”

Gar’s brow furrowed. Marisa had once seen a photograph of him and her father and Jake. It had been in the attic, in one of the trunks containing her mother’s clothes. All three had been handsome young men, even in the stiff, self-conscious pose. Gar had probably been the most striking of the three with a devil-may-care smile framed by a roguish mustache. Even the poor black-and-white picture could not hide the twinkle in his eye.

But now his face was worn with time. It held the same kind of bitterness as her father’s, the same disappointment in life. Only pride remained, a fierce, indomitable defiance.

For a moment she thought he would refuse, and then he nodded his head and went to her side, helping her down. “Wait for me out here,” he told the man in black.

Once inside the comfortable main room of the house, he offered her some sherry, and she accepted it. She watched as he took his time, obviously trying to understand her presence and the reason behind it. When he turned back to her, he was holding two glasses, and after handing her one, he took a deep gulp of the other.

“Miss Marisa, you have my attention.”

“I—I was hoping you could tell me why…why you and my father are enemies?”

“He didn’t tell you anything?”

She shook her head.

“Ask him.”

“I have,” she said hopelessly. “He won’t talk about it.”

His glance softened. “You look very much like your mother.”

“Did she have anything to do with it?”

He sighed. “It’s not right you being in the middle. But you’ll have to ask your father.”

“You were once good friends,” she tried again, a desperate note in her voice.

He turned away and looked at the wall so she couldn’t see his face. “Good friends trust each other,” he said harshly. “Unfortunately, your father didn’t trust me. And that’s all I have to say.”

There was pain in his speech. Marisa could feel it rush between them.

“There’s nothing I can do?”

“Not now,” he said roughly. “It’s gone too far.”

“But other people are being hurt.”

He turned back to her, and his face was set. “I need that water for my cattle, and nothing is going to stop me from getting it.”

“Perhaps…if I knew I could do something.”

“No one can do anything now,” he said.

“You’re wrong. You have to be.”

He started to hold out his hand to her, then stopped. “You’re so much like her. Always the peacemaker.” His lips tightened. “But he wants a fight, and I’ll be damned if I’ll let him run me out.”

“Mr. Morrow…”

“I’m sorry, Marisa.” He hesitated, looking suddenly weary and vulnerable. “I tried, Marisa, God knows I’ve tried. Over and over again, I’ve tried to convince him that nothing—”

He stopped, stubborn pride etched all over his face, and Marisa, with a sick feeling deep inside, knew he wasn’t going to say any more.

She hesitated a moment. “Thank you for seeing me.”

“My fight’s not with you. God knows I didn’t want one with Alex. But neither am I going to back down. He’s wrong, goddammit.”

The fierceness in his voice made Marisa feel cold once more. The chill stayed with her as she rose and went out the door. The gunfighter was at her side, helping her mount, his arm strong, but his gaze like that of a wolverine.

Marisa kicked her horse into a gallop. She wanted Sullivan.

She wanted warmth.

21

G
od only knew what time it was when Lobo realized he was simply striking back at the deity—if there was one—and accomplishing damned little.
There was enough underbrush and trees in the river to construct two or three dams.

He threw the ax to the ground and flexed his hands, realizing he’d been a muttonhead once again. His fingers were already stiffening, and he needed the full power of his gun hand for what might be coming.

Yet he relished the pain. He needed the pain to take his thoughts away from Willow Taylor.

For moments that afternoon he’d felt like a boy again, a boy with his life before him, a boy who looked at the horizon and dreamed. When had the dreams stopped? It was so long ago, he didn’t remember. But before he’d met up with Canton, he’d been in a dream again, one so real he felt it deep to the core of him.

And then there was Canton, and the dream shattered. He had looked at Canton, and it was as if he were looking into a mirror. Willow deserved more.

Lobo stared at the pile of tree trunks and branches lying across the river. Already the water was building up slightly on his side. It wouldn’t take Newton long to realize something was wrong with his section of the river.

Lobo painfully pulled on his gloves, and he mounted the pinto. Time to relieve Brady. The ex-lawman was holding out far better than Lobo had expected, but Brady Thomas’s body was no longer in the shape it once had been. Lobo was used to little sleep. Thomas would need rest far more than he.

As he rode to the hill, his eyes moved to the ranch house. There was a light in the window, and he wondered if Willow was still awake, if she regretted those hours that afternoon, especially after his meeting with Canton. He had seen that quick, startled realization, even momentary fear, in her eyes, and it had struck him like an arrow through the gut.

He’d half expected Thomas to be asleep when he reached the hill, but the man wasn’t. The ex-lawman was stretched out along the ground, his head propped on one of his hands, his eyes steady on the trail just beyond. He didn’t look up until Lobo stood beside him, but all the same Lobo knew Thomas was aware of his approach. The ex-lawman’s body had tensed and then relaxed.

“Build another dam?” Thomas asked laconically.

“Not quite,” Lobo replied in a soft, drawling voice. “No visitors?”

“Not even Doc Sullivan, and I half expected him.”

There was a pause. “He come by often?”

Brady caught the note of what could be jealousy. “He and Willow are friends.”

Lobo grimaced and sat down, his legs crossed Indian-fashion. “They seem—suited.”

“Not the way you mean,” Brady said, partially disturbed, partially bemused. This was the first time Lobo had spoken more than orders or insults to him.

“What do you mean?”

Even in the dim moonlight, Brady could see the intense interest in eyes usually so well guarded. Brady hesitated. “Doc Sullivan has eyes only for Miss Marisa, Alex Newton’s daughter. Has for years, but he won’t do anything about it.”

“Why?” Lobo didn’t know why in the hell he was asking such stupid questions.

“Same reason I ’spect you’re so damned on edge. Pride. He’s got as much as you do. And he’s sick sometimes. Malaria. So he doesn’t think he’ll make a good husband.”

“I’m not sick.”

Brady raised one of his bushy eyebrows, but he said nothing. Instead, he picked up Willow’s box of medical supplies. “Brought this for you. You keep abusin’ those hands, you’ll have to find a new profession.”

“That would make you feel real bad,” Lobo mocked.

“I don’t care what you do after this is over,” Brady said, and though it hurt to admit the next truth, he added, “But now Willow needs you.”

Lobo gave him a sharp look, then turned his gaze toward the box. Thomas was right. He took off his gloves and looked at his hands, flexing them and feeling the pain. He took a tin of salve and rubbed the ointment into the broken blisters. He thought of the tender way Willow had done it, and he rubbed even harder. Could he never get her out of his mind?

When he finished, he passed the tin back to Thomas, noticing that the man’s hands were more steady than he’d seen them. He was also wearing a gun.

“Let me see you draw,” he said suddenly, and Brady flinched. He didn’t want the gunslinger to see his hand shake.