“Where do you live?” she asked, keeping her gaze lowered. When she’d glanced at him in gratitude after Catarina’s comments about Joaquin, that cool gray gaze had held something electric.
She didn’t want to be shocked again.
“Just north of downtown, near Rancho Los Feliz.”
Ah, that voice.
She couldn’t let it cozen her. He was sitting in Joaquin Obregon’s place, sent by a man who’d harm her mother if he could—the marshal wanted nothing more from her than the most painful details of her attack.
This trick with his voice, speaking so about Los Angeles—it was all to soften her, to weaken her so that he might breach her defenses.
She wanted Marshal Spencer and his insinuating voice out of Joaquin’s chair, and Joaquin in it instead, the two of them still set on their course to leave Cabrillo. She wanted her teaching position back, her privacy returned to her.
She wanted everything to be as it had been before, when her future had been bright, assured—not murkily uncertain.
But that wasn’t going to happen. The marshal was here and Joaquin was in the sanatorium. The chances of them switching places were about as high as that of her engagement to Joaquin being restored.
Her and Joaquin’s last discussion of the matter made it clear that would never happen. The engagement was over. He’d been insistent, despite her protests. And his condition had prevented her from giving full vent to her objections.
That had been another storm from the gossips to weather, the ending of the engagement and who had severed what. She’d kept the details vague and shouldered most of the blame, given that Joaquin could not answer.
“Do your cousins still live near the city center?” Marshal Spencer asked. He was cutting his meat with the precision of a watchmaker. Such large hands, yet he wielded them with such delicacy.
Then she looked again.
The backs of his hands were netted with scars, the knuckles themselves misshapen from long-healed fractures. He shouldn’t be able to use such hands with such grace.
Yet he did.
Was all this practiced? The suit, the smooth-shaven cheek, the voice, the unsettling grace of his movements? His features were unassailably brutish—broad forehead, scarred face, thick neck—yet the rest of him was decidedly not.
What had he asked? Where her cousins lived. “They’re… yes, they still live in the same house,” she answered.
He cut and cut and cut, the meat dividing into smaller and smaller pieces, until they were fit only for an infant to gum. When there was nothing left to slice, he carefully set his knife and fork aside.
Had he taken a single bite? She couldn’t recall the fork ever making its way to his mouth.
“I never could see,” Señor Moreno put in, “how Don Enrique could stand to live so enclosed by people.”
“Me neither,” added Franny.
No, those two wouldn’t understand, spending their days out of doors as they did. None of her family would understand, content as they were to remain in Cabrillo.
But Isabel understood. There was something vital, enlivening, about the city, with all those people pressed close, moving and striving so much more quickly than anyone in Cabrillo did. Cabrillo moved at the speed of a grazing cow, while Los Angeles was a veritable stampede. She wanted to run with that stampede, to race toward culture and knowledge and refinement.
“There’s something to be said for life in the city,” the marshal said dryly. “Electric lights, telephones… sewers.”
Her father’s mustache lifted in a sneer. “Telephones! What’s wrong with the mail service, I ask?”
“Nothing of course, Señor.”
The marshal sounded as if he found such things quite commonplace. How extraordinary. But she wouldn’t allow herself to ask about them, like some unlettered provincial.
“With so many people,” Catarina said, a smile stuck to her face, “it must be quite the social whirl.”
His hands froze. “I myself am not particularly sociable, but yes, my mother is always off doing something. Ladies’ aid societies. Beautification of… things. Literary societies.”
Literary societies. How Isabel’s heart ached at those words. She’d been involved in one such society in the valley, an anemic meeting of a few ladies who more often than not hadn’t even read the book in question.
“No doubt you have such things here.” His tone said that he did doubt it. Who could blame him, coming from a city with electric railways and universities?
“We have sewing circles and barn dances and the like,” Catarina said. “There’s certainly no lack of amusements.”
“The Ladies’ Temperance League,” Isabel added, not wanting him to think it was all rustic pursuits.
“Oh yes,” Catarina said. “Isabel is the president of our local temperance meeting.”
“Yes,” Franny added. “Isabel ran out the saloon.”
As if such a thing had been as easy as herding cattle from one pasture to another.
“Francisca,” her mother said gently, “please don’t discuss saloons at the table.”
Isabel had run out the saloon, she and Joaquin’s sisters together. They’d been united in friendship and their common cause. The day the saloon had closed had been one of the proudest of her life, knowing that the women and children of Cabrillo were safe from the predations of drunken men.
The Ladies’ Temperance League was no more, her friendship with the Obregon sisters ended in the wake of the attack and the dissolution of her engagement to Joaquin.
Once the saloon was gone, there wasn’t much for the Temperance League to do, but they’d still met regularly, simply to enjoy each other’s company.
“Temperance?” the marshal asked. “That’s a very noble cause.”
He didn’t raise his gaze to hers. Perhaps he’d been as unsettled as she by their earlier glance.
Or perhaps he simply didn’t care to look at her, preferred to focus on his meal. Which he wasn’t eating.
“You believe in temperance?” In her experience, the men of Cabrillo were undecided on the issue at best. As for the men who had shouted the loudest when the saloon had been shut down—their wives had been the first to thank her.
“I do,” he replied. “I’ve been a teetotaler my entire life. Alcohol has never passed my lips, and never will.”
“But what about communion?” As she realized what she’d said, her cheeks exploded with heat, that she would say something so inane.
He leaned toward her and pitched his voice low. “Thanks to the miracle of transubstantiation, it’s not truly wine, now is it?”
She bit her lip to keep her mouth from breaking into a grin.
Almost smiling at a joke about the sacrament of communion of all things—thank goodness her parents hadn’t heard.
Had it been a jest? He hadn’t smiled, hadn’t looked to catch her smile in response. Perhaps he’d been entirely serious. And still no food had passed his lips. She didn’t even think he’d reached for his water.
Boot heels stomped through the hallway, coming for the dining room. The noise stopped just outside, then the door was swinging toward the wall.
Felipe Ortega, the rancho’s overseer, rushed in, still in his clothes from the day. Dusty and wrinkled, his hat upon his head, he clearly hadn’t washed for supper.
Franny jumped up. “Where have you been?” she demanded.
“Francisca,” her mother warned. As Franny sank into her seat, their mother turned to the overseer. “Felipe,” she said repressively, “supper was served quite some time ago. We could wait no longer for you.”
“Pardon, Señoras, Señoritas, Señores,” he said, slightly out of breath, “but one of the Whitmans’ hands just left here.”
Her father frowned. “The Whitmans have already begun driving their cattle down the mountain. They sent a hand here?”
Felipe nodded. “They’ve already driven their herd halfway to the valley. It seems they’ve lost a considerabl
e amount of food. Stolen by someone hiding along the road.”
Cold crept across her skin. It couldn’t be him—there’d been no sign of the outlaw since the attack…
Please let him be dead. Terrible, to pray for a man’s death, but she did it anyway.
The marshal half rose from his seat, his chair eerily silent as it slid across the floor. “That’s likely him. McCade. He’s trying to escape down the mountain.”
Don’t look out the window. Do not look out the window.
“That’s what the Whitmans thought,” Felipe said, “so they sent their man to tell us. I’m sorry I missed supper, but I’ve been speaking with him this entire time.”
Isabel’s heart thudded dully, echoing in her ears. Her lungs wanted to pant in time with the race of her pulse, but she forced her breaths slow and deep.
He was still alive. He could be peering through that window there, the darkness beyond concealing him and his twisted plans for her…
Stop this. She must remain calm, at least until she could gain the solitude of her room.
“When is your herd leaving for the valley?” Marshal Spencer asked her father.
“Tomorrow at first light.”
“I’m coming with you.” His eyes were alight with something close to excitement, the most affected expression she’d seen on him yet. “I’ll join you on the trail once Señorita Moreno has shown me where they were attacked.”
A queer sort of shakiness seized her heart. Lord, could a heart fail a person simply from shock?
But it kept beating, and as long as it did so she would cling to the illusion of calm. Of impassivity.
But her breath slipped past her control, going short and shallow. She released two pants to allow the panic to return to a low simmer.
Enough of this. She’d survived her last trip to that place. She would survive this next.
One last jerking breath, and her lungs were once more under her command.
“As you like, Marshal Spencer.” As if she cared not. As if her entire frame didn’t feel like it was about to shake to pieces.
His imitation of unyielding stone would be nothing compared to hers tomorrow.
Chapter Four
Seeing the place again wasn’t quite as horrid as Isabel thought it would be.
Lead settled in her stomach at the sight of those sickeningly familiar pines. Her skin went clammy, but the shivers she feared might take hold she kept at bay. For now.
Those pines. They came from behind those pines, closer and closer, hands set on their pistols…
She shook off the images—or tried to. Perhaps she couldn’t keep from remembering, but she was still upright. A small victory.
Marshal Spencer stood looking around him, his black suit once again completely untouched by the dust and grime that surrounded everyone else. He looked like an illustration come to life—Modern Urban Man.
He stuck his hands on his hips. Her stomach dropped at the sight of his hands so close to those pistols.
He’s not here to hurt you.
“So this is the place.” He didn’t seem to expect an answer, so she kept silent. He slowly turned round and round, eyes narrow as he took in the road and the brush and the pines.
It really was a very ordinary stretch of road.
But to tell the story here, all those memories pressing hard upon her…
Lord, it would be like flaying herself to tell it here.
“They came from behind those trees?” Marshal Spencer gestured to the stand of pines.
She straightened and drew a deep breath. “Yes.”
“McCade fires,” the marshal said to himself, “but he misses.”
“No, he hit the horse.”
He turned a gimlet stare upon her. “You didn’t mention the horse last time.”
No, she hadn’t. When she’d told the sheriff, he’d gasped at the death of the horse, but had barely flinched when she told of Joaquin’s wounding.
She hadn’t mentioned the horse again.
And now she must recite all those piercing details, the ones she’d been able to avoid before.
She jerked her gaze away and began to stride down the road, unconcerned with his reaction. She dragged deep breaths into her lungs. In, out. In, out. The tide of her breath began to slowly erode the panic within.
She kept walking. Just a few more feet and she’d turn back, once she’d regained complete command of herself.
Something down the road caught her attention. A thin ribbon of red, growing larger, coming as fast as a man ran.
Her breath arrested in her chest.
The snake stopped. Its red length was half as long as herself, the gray head raised to study her.
She held still as could be, fear soaking her as she willed the snake to turn back.
A large arm curled around her waist, an electric shock running through her. Caught between that arm and a hard wall of chest, with warm breath brushing her ear.
“Is that snake poisonous?”
She gave an abrupt shake of her head, bumping against his chin. A red racer’s bite wasn’t fatal, but they were famed for their aggression. From the edge of her vision, she saw him slowly lower the pistol she hadn’t realized he’d drawn.
“We’ll simply wait him out.” His arm around her never slackened.
The snake’s head weaved as it assessed them with flat black eyes.
Suddenly she saw his eyes again—McCade’s. Not black like the snake’s, but just as flat and pitiless. Saw the buckwheat blossoms explode into a cloud of blood red when his hands brushed past them, reaching for her throat…
The tremors broke free, shaking her like a dog did a rabbit. She gritted her teeth and wrapped her arms around her ribs, trying to push the quaking back inside, but it was too late.
The tremors had hold of her, and she could only ride them out.
Marshal Spencer pulled her tight against him, absorbing the violence as if it were nothing. As if he could take in all her fear and pain, swallow it whole, and leave her free and intact again.
Ridiculous to think so. What had happened couldn’t be erased, only endured.
But she’d indulge this once in the solidity of the man behind her and the fantasy that he could repair everything.
A lovely fantasy it was too, that he might always be at her back, that she could trust him as she’d trusted no other. But only a fantasy.
The shaking weakened and she finally regained control of her rebellious body. She slowly stepped forward, his arm falling away, and for a moment she felt much too light.
The snake had disappeared into the brush at some point.
“I apologize for that.” She forced that out. Not because she wasn’t sorry, but because her throat was too tight to speak normally.
“It wasn’t about the snake, was it?”
No, it wasn’t about the snake.
She turned back to the site of the attack.
It was past time to do this, to tell the entire story. Perhaps with this telling she might leave some of the pain and terror here, right where it had first been given to her.
She glanced at the marshal, waiting silently by her side, his face intent, but clear of judgment or prurient interest. He met her gaze measure for measure—the first time she’d been looked upon without sympathy or pity or shock since this whole ordeal. That look was as bracing as a drink from a high country spring.
“Before the horse even fell, Joaquin shot both the Carey boys.” She marked where they’d been with her outstretched finger. “One, two.”
She studied the spot where the Carey brothers had fallen in the road—two useless, wasted lives ended with a shot each.
Such a valiant effort on Joaquin’s part, and it wasn’t enough to protect them. A wasted effort, in the end.
She paused, trying to sharpen the details of her memories.
“McCade fired then, before Sheriff Obregon could fire at him.”
When she tried to move on, to tell the rest, her mind stubbornl
y repeated that moment, over and over. The shot from McCade, the queer, fleshy thud as the bullet landed, the arc of Joaquin’s body as he flew through the air to land in the dust of the road.
“It’s no mean feat,” the marshal said after a time, “to shoot two men dead with a pistol before they draw.”
How had he known that was the aspect her memory wouldn’t quit worrying at? “Why didn’t he shoot McCade first?” she demanded. “The man killed the horse, for heaven’s sake!”
Something sharp twisted just below her breast as she admitted such disloyal thoughts of Joaquin, but she could hold them in no longer.
“He did the easy work first,” he said levelly.
The marshal was right; it had been but a moment’s work to end those two lives. She was glad Mrs. Carey hadn’t been there to see twenty-some years of work on her part snuffed out easier than a candle.
Joaquin should have snuffed out McCade first. Easy to come to that conclusion now, viewing the entire thing in reverse.
She took a deep breath. Halfway there. She was halfway there. Although the second half would be infinitely harder to tell than the first.
“Joaquin kept a rifle under the buggy seat.” She pushed out each word as hard and fast as she could, rushing for this last fence. “I pulled it free and fired at McCade, but missed. He made me pay for it.”
Tears snagged in her voice, trying to force her words into something undecipherable.
“Señorita Moreno.” The marshal’s voice had gone deep, tugging at her buried emotions as it dropped. “You don’t need to—”
“Oh, but I must.” Her smile was sharp against her teeth. She summoned her anger, her rage, needing her weapons and shield, needing to lash out, to strike back as she told this next, even if the marshal was her only target.
“Here is all of it then, every last sordid happening in this sad business.” She marched over to where McCade had dragged her. “He pulled the rifle from my hands and threw it aside. Then—then he closed his hands around my throat. Tight.”
She rubbed at her throat, but couldn’t remove the phantom fingers curled there. “It was much like how you would carry a chicken with a wrung neck.” She paused, raised a finger. “One important difference though—I was quite alive.”
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