Without Words (12 page)

No fresh meat tonight. Hassie didn’t care. At least Bret looked halfway approachable again.

“Do we have to stay awake and watch them?”
she asked, not sure she could manage to wake up and watch anything even after several hours of sleep.

“No, we need to get some sleep. Gunner can watch them.”

Gunner was tired enough to be stretched out, head on paws, but he was only a few feet from Jensen and Hammerill and looked more than ready to watch them—or take a few bites out of them.

“Their horses don’t eat?”

“Later. I don’t have hobbles for them all. Better we keep two saddled, just in case.”

She didn’t want to think about just in case, watched with dull eyes as Bret let Jensen and Hammerill eat and drink one at a time and took them out of sight behind bushes.

On the way back to the trees, Hammerill lunged at Bret, giving Gunner an excuse to sink his teeth in the man’s calf. Hassie flinched at the sound of Bret’s pistol against the man’s skull, but the dog bite bothered Hammerill more.

“I’m bleeding and my leg hurts like a son of a bitch. You have to do something to stop the bleeding. Dirty damn dog. What if I get rabies?”

“It will save you hanging,” Bret said. “Better yet, keep acting like a jackass, and I’ll forget that poster doesn’t say dead or alive.”

The man kept moaning and complaining, but Hassie was too tired to care. She made her bed so that Bret was between her and the prisoners. And close. Never before had she positioned her bed so that she could touch Bret by reaching out an arm. He didn’t remark on it, and she fell asleep almost instantly, comforted by his closeness.

Three more days of the same kind of travel cured Hassie of any illusions that Bret earned his money easily. She rose stiff and aching in the morning and fell asleep at night stiff, aching, and exhausted. Brownie and Gunner, who had gained weight in the last weeks and rounded out a little, looked gaunt again. For that matter so did the other horses and the men.

Reaching a town with a stone jail house and a real jail cell with iron bars left her giddy with relief. Not caring that night was still hours away, she crawled into bed in a hotel room Bret didn’t bother inspecting and sank into a dreamless sleep.

W
ITH
M
RS.
P
ETTY
safe at the hotel, Bret forced his tired mind to focus on the details he needed to take care of before giving in and sleeping. He sent telegrams to the Missouri-Pacific and to Western Union, informing them Jensen and Hammerill were in custody and asking for instructions.

He led the two extra horses he could all too easily be accused of stealing more than a mile from town and turned them loose, relieved to be out from under that shadow. With nothing left to take care of until he heard back from the railroad and telegraph company, he headed for the hotel. All that kept him upright was the knowledge he’d soon be in a real bed, not limited to the edgy, aware-of-danger half-sleep of the past days but able to let go and fall right off the end of the world.

The hotel owner didn’t agree.

“What do you mean you don’t have a room,” Bret said incredulously. “You rented me a room a couple of hours ago, and I told you I’d need another.”

“Yes, sir, but you didn’t pay yet, and another gentleman arrived after that, and he did pay. He paid for the last available room. This is a small establishment.”

There were no lamps to shoot on these walls, and angering the town marshal here would mean losing use of his jail to store Jensen and Hammerill while getting desperately needed rest. Neither one had committed crimes in this town.

Bret thought of making camp outside town, thought of a pile of hay or straw at the livery where a smith was banging away at his anvil, thought of the room one flight of stairs away he’d escorted Mrs. Petty to not so long ago.

“I assume you haven’t turned Mrs. Petty out because someone came along and paid more?” Bret said.

“It’s not a matter of more,” the hotel man said unctuously. “It’s a matter....”

“Spare me.” Bret cut him off and slapped bills on the desk. After pocketing his change, he said, “Give me a key to Mrs. Petty’s room.”

The man’s mouth pursed into a prim, disapproving circle. “When you rented the room, you said....”

“I don’t care what I said. We both know you have another key. Hand it over before I come over the top of the desk and take it.”

For the first time the man looked nervous. He handed over the key.

Bret almost knocked on the door to her room, but after two hours Mrs. Petty should be so sound asleep nothing but loud shouting or water in the face would rouse her. For more than a day now she had been shaky on her legs, the huge dark circles under her eyes like bruises in her pale face.

The key turned in the lock with barely a sound. The door eased open with only the slightest squeak.

Her boots and outer clothing were in a heap on the floor beside the bed. Her hair was still in its unraveling braid, and Mrs. Petty slept curled on her side, oblivious to his presence and probably to cries of fire or gunshots in the hallway should they occur.

He eased the door shut and locked it, pulled his own boots off right there by the door, and padded to the window to close the curtains and shut out the last of the afternoon sun. In the dim light left in the room, he stood beside the bed for a moment, watching her sleep.

The one dark brow in view arched gracefully over the delicate skin of her eyelid. Her skin still looked unnaturally white, but the shadows under her eyes were already smaller, or maybe he just wished it so. Her lips twitched, nice lips really.

Yawning, knowing he couldn’t stay awake another minute even if the woman in the bed was Mary, Bret moved to the other side and stretched out next to Mrs. Petty. Mrs. Cyrus Petty, widow. His responsibility until he could get her to Gabe and Belle. His burden for another couple of weeks or so.

Of course a woman who pointed out an extra, unexpected five hundred dollar reward wasn’t much of a burden. Not really five hundred, though. He’d split it with her, give her something to start her new life.

Mrs. Hassie Ahearne Petty, respectable female, would probably fall out of the bed with shock if she knew he was beside her. Although she sure bedded down close to him on the trail these last days. She’d used him for comfort the way little girls used rag dolls.

Bret fell asleep considering whether he’d need to open the curtains in the morning before sneaking out of the room. Would Mrs. Petty notice a detail like that, or would she remain ignorant of the fact they’d shared a bed so long as he got out of here while she still slept?

The first light of dawn leaking into the room around the closed curtains woke Bret. Or maybe it was his own intense state of arousal. Mrs. Petty’s breath fanned softly across his cheek. One breast pushed against his arm. If she had climbed half on top of her elderly husband like this, Cyrus Petty had been a lucky man.

Her hand on Bret’s belly burned right through the clothing and sheet separating them. The leg she had hitched over one of his played havoc with every nerve in his body. His breath rasped so loudly in his own ears, her sound sleep was a miracle. Hell, his heart was banging against his ribs so hard it ought to wake everyone in the place.

Bret moved her arm away, eased his shoulder out from under her head, his leg from under hers, and slid off the side of the bed. She sighed, her arm reaching out as if to find him again, then drawing back and curling under her chin when it found only bedclothes.

Bret soft-stepped to the door and leaned against it until his erection subsided and his breathing returned to some semblance of normal. Finally, he pulled on his boots and slipped from the room.

The sooner he got rid of Mrs. Petty, the better for both of them.

W
ITH THE PRISONERS
mounted on horses he purchased and had legitimate bills of sale for, Bret stopped driving them all so hard. Even so, Hassie couldn’t really enjoy the freedom of being out on the trail until they left Hammerill in jail in the town where he’d robbed the Western Union office and killed the telegraph operator.

Traveling with Jensen a few more days in order to hand him over to Missouri-Pacific detectives wasn’t such a strain, but being free of both men would have had Hassie whirling and running with joy except for the knowledge of their next stop—the end of her grand adventure. The end of the intoxicating freedom of traveling with a man who avoided her as much as possible, but who didn’t sneer or belittle and treat her like a servant. The end of admiring the way he sat his horse as he rode ahead of her, his easy walk as he moved around their campsites, the way the hard lines of his face relaxed when he cooked.

Perhaps because she had slept so close to Bret during the nights when Hammerill had still been with them, she couldn’t shake a feeling of an intimacy they had never shared.

In truth, he had only ever touched her arm occasionally, rather forcefully in Werver, but still only her arm. So how could some part of her be sure she knew his scent, the texture of his skin and hair, the rhythm of his breathing?

She had taken liberties she shouldn’t have taken when fear for him had filled her mind, touching his cheek, hugging him. Now her mind took further liberties, and her imagination ran wild.

Soon they would reach his friends’ homestead. He would leave her there, and it would all be over. His friends would look at her and wonder how a sterling man had ever come to bother with a petty woman, and they would find a man willing to marry her, a man like Cyrus. Not exactly like Cyrus, but like him in that he’d have a weakness which would make him settle for a wife like her.

Hassie tried to hide her feelings. Any future was more future than she had the day Bret first appeared in her life. She had no right to wish for more, no right to want more. She worked hard at each campsite, smiled brightly at Bret whenever he looked her way, but she stopped running, stopped dancing with the wind and sun.

They reached Gabe and Belle Chapmans’ homestead late in the afternoon of the day spring became summer, no matter what the calendar said. The horses slogged along, their necks dark with sweat. Hassie slumped in the saddle. No rivulets of perspiration ran between her bound breasts, but the binding was soaked as was the waistband of her trousers.

After seeing other homesteads with houses built from bricks of prairie sod, Hassie expected the Chapmans’ house and outbuildings to be the same, and they were. The surprise was the size. Nestled in a sea of wheat still green and half height, the Chapmans’ house wasn’t a one-room minimum shelter, but two, even three rooms.

The children in the yard shouted and pointed. A brown and white collie barked and ran to meet Gunner. A tall woman appeared in the open doorway, one hand raised to shade her eyes from the sun, the other tucking loose strands of brown hair behind her ear. She waved and walked into the yard, gathering the two children to her as she came.

Bret reined up a few feet away. “It’s good to see you, Belle. Can you stand visitors for a few days?”

“You know you’re always welcome here, Bret. Get down and come on in. Gabe probably saw you ride up and will be here before you know it.”

The woman’s tone didn’t match her words. Not that she was unfriendly, but she didn’t smile, and no one could call her greeting warm. Her dark eyes flicked over Hassie, then back to Bret as he dismounted.

“This is Mrs. Cyrus Petty,” he said. “Recently widowed and needing help I hope you and Gabe will be willing to provide.”

Belle Chapman looked at Hassie again, this time studying her. “Mrs. Petty.”

Hassie nodded and stayed where she was, wondering what would happen if she turned Brownie around and rode away.

“We’ll put the horses up and be back in a few minutes,” Bret said. “Maybe by that time Gabe will be here, and I’ll explain about Mrs. Petty.”

Belle nodded and turned back to the house, taking her young son and daughter with her.

This was one of his good friends, the friends he wanted to leave her with? If she could think of words to write, Hassie would have pulled the slate from her saddlebags, but the only words she could think of were “Let’s go,” and she couldn’t write those.

Bret led Jasper and Packie to a corral beside the barn, and Brownie followed with no signal from Hassie. When her horse stopped beside the others, Hassie finally dismounted, hoping Gabe Chapman would share his wife’s attitude and the two of them would refuse Bret’s request to help the widowed bit of baggage he’d brought them.

If they refused, maybe Bret would let her keep following him. Maybe they would ride west through Kansas to Colorado or even Wyoming. Maybe they would ride back to Missouri and south to Arkansas or Indian Territory. Didn’t a lot of bad men hide in Indian Territory?

She had the saddle off Brownie when a man bellowed as he walked around the barn. “Captain Breton J. Sterling. It’s about time you got back this way. How the hell are you, you son of a gun?”

The two men came together in that way men had that was almost but not quite hugging, more back pounding. Gabe Chapman, for that’s who the man must be, was an inch or two shorter than Bret, barrel-chested and thick through the neck and shoulders. The strands of hair Hassie could see sticking out around his hat were red, a color that fit with his ruddy, freckled complexion.

Finished pounding on Bret, Gabe grinned at Hassie, curiosity all over his wide face. “Well, now, who’s this? Tell me you’ve finally done something sensible.”

All signs of Bret’s enthusiastic greeting for his friend vanished. “This is Mrs. Cyrus Petty,” he said stiffly. “Her last living kin, if only by marriage, was a foolish thief and murderer.”

“Foolish meaning dead, I suppose.” Bright blue eyes assessed Hassie. “If Bret killed your husband for filthy lucre, I’m surprised you’re willing to travel with him, handsome, charming devil that he is.”

Charming? That was a word that had never occurred to Hassie in regard to Bret Sterling. She finally had seen a trace of a smile a few times, but charming required more than that, and right now he had a typical very uncharming glower on his face.