A dozen angry responses trembled on her lips, but now there was triumph glittering undisguised in Powers’s small green eyes. Leslie stood up and turned to leave the room, but her uncle’s sanctimonious words stopped her.
“Leslie, few things are asked of you. You live a remarkably carefree existence, but keep in mind that obedience is an important virtue in a young lady.”
“Have I been disobedient?” Leslie asked, her voice little more than a whisper.
He paused, and his lips tightened. “It’s not safe for you to venture out alone,” he said, ignoring her question. “When you want to leave the ranch you’re to ask permission. Am I understood?” A sly look crept into his eyes.
“Or what?” she demanded.
“Don’t get uppity with me, Leslie. You just do as you’re told. When you go out I want two of Younger’s men with you to protect you.”
“Protect me?” she gasped. “From what?”
“From danger! From Indians! How the hell should I know from what? From whatever threatens you!” he said furiously, his face turning beet red.
Back in her room, as Leslie dressed for bed, she realized that her uncle planned to gain her half-interest in the ranch by either keeping her prisoner or forcing her to marry Dallas Younger. She feared that there was almost nothing she could do about it, unless she was willing to sign everything over to him. He would have no need of her then.
Leslie toyed with the idea, but something stubborn and intractable in her rejected that choice. She might have to fall back on that, and she would before she would allow herself to be forced into a marriage pact with that barbarian Dallas Younger.
Chapter Nine
Ward had been riding for three hours, and it was mid-morning with the sun already beating down when he got his first glimpse of the Mendoza farm. It was exactly as he remembered it—like a pencil drawing in a magazine he’d seen when Arizona was still a place to be read about. The small adobe house looked like a pueblo with small windows, squatting at the base of the mountain. He could see a horse in the corral, two shaggy cows in a pen, and multicolored chickens pecking at the hard ground. The house was on the east side of the mountain and would be shaded from the afternoon sun.
There was a new barbed-wire fence enclosing both the casa and the garden where the Mendozas grew the vegetables for their table. Food was plentiful because Mama had built her house next to a natural artesian well and taught young Pedro to dig shallow ditches to irrigate the small plot. Even the ancient one, Grandpapa, helped with the garden.
Ward stopped on a rise in the desert, amid the yellowed sand and the dark tumbleweed, in the shade of a saguaro. It had been a long time since he had been there—too long probably. It felt like homecoming in his chest. It was a good feeling.
He smiled. Mama was probably still fighting off the young vaqueros from her pretty daughter. If he remembered right, Isabel must be almost nineteen by now. She had been fifteen when Mama had found him delirious in the desert and packed him home to tend his bullet wound. He would have died without her help. He had taken a bullet in the back when he and the gang were fleeing from a posse. He had bled heavily and could not keep up the pace necessary to get to safety before the posse overtook them. He had veered off in another direction, lost the pursuers, who hadn’t noticed his breaking away, and collapsed sometime during the night. By morning, he was watching the buzzards circling overhead. By high noon they had formed a ring around him, and occasionally one of the brave ones would waddle clumsily toward him and he would shoot it. Mama had arrived in the afternoon, when he was so weak he could barely move. She hadn’t asked any questions. She had simply shoved him up onto her horse, tied him on, and hurried back to her home, where she spent many weeks nursing him back to health.
Isabel, her daughter, was young and skittish and eager to test her charms on Ward. He had been younger then, and, if possible, even more responsive to the enticing jiggle of a willing female. Isabel had followed him everywhere when he was strong enough to begin moving around. If he shoed a horse, she was underfoot. If he tried to take a nap, she would accidentally drop something to wake him. When he spoke, she hung on every word. And being male, he had known that he could have her. He had contemplated it in his mind and rejected it. Once his strength returned, and with it his desire for a woman, she brought him more than one sleepless night.
One afternoon, while Mama was in town and Pedro and his grandfather were away from the casa, Isabel fixed his lunch and the two of them sat at the table talking.
Isabel giggled too much and flirted in the breathless, excited way young, inexperienced girls did, and Ward was flattered, but he knew enough about girls to know that while Isabel might enjoy the thought of his making love to her, she would not be prepared for the actuality of it. She was just testing her equipment on him to see if it worked. He flirted with her and enjoyed her attention, but he did not take her seriously, even though it would have relieved him greatly if he could have ignored his own sense of responsibility to her and the woman who had saved his life.
The thought of Mama always brought a smile to his lips. She was fierce and devout, and she would not tolerate having her daughter taken lightly. The second time he had visited with them, long after the gunshot wound had healed, Mama had seen the way his blue eyes watched her Isabel, and she had sent the girl outside to work in the garden with her brother.
“Señor Ward, you are my guest. I have taken you in when you would have died. I treated your wound, fed you, prayed for you, bathed your head when you raved with the fever, but I will not let you sleep with my Isabel. She is a good girl but foolish where men are concerned. She would be easy for one as handsome as you. You have the ways and the looks to tempt young girls.”
Ward started to protest his innocence, but Mama stopped him with a raised hand.
“I know what you are going to say, and it is not necessary. You see, I am not blind, and I know that you have respected my daughter in spite of her clumsy attempts to have you do otherwise.”
Ward was suddenly grateful that he had nothing serious to hide from this woman. Her eyes were too direct and he would never be able to lie to her convincingly. He returned her steady look with one of his own. “It pleases me that you have seen this,” he said, meaning it.
She snorted. “I am not so old or so foolish that I cannot remember the fever in young blood! You want my Isabel, and you are very fair. She is much affected. I see it in the sway of her skinny hips when you watch her. She prances like a young doe. I have also seen that while you found her attractive and available, you chose to put my interests and the girl’s above your own. For that, Señor Ward, I am grateful. You are a man of honor. It would grieve me sorely if it were otherwise.”
Ward flushed. He felt suddenly as if she could read his mind. “Señora Mendoza, I’m a hunted outlaw,” he reminded her, his voice unaccountably husky. “I didn’t shoot myself…”
Now her round face with the knowing eyes came alive with its intensity. “Honor is a thing of the soul, not of circumstance,” she said flatly. From that day forward she called him thee and thou, and he called her Mama.
Originally, the interior of the Mendoza house had consisted of one big room used as three rooms: a kitchen and two bedrooms, separated by sheets for privacy. The kitchen was as big as both other rooms, and it was in there that Mama Mendoza had spread a pallet on the floor for him. Two years ago he and Pedro had built a wooden lean-to at the back of the house so that Pedro and Grandpapa could share a room, while Isabel and Mama shared another, returning the original house to its function as kitchen and cultural center.
They didn’t speak of Isabel again, but Ward continued to protect the lovely young creature, even though she severely tested his resolve from time to time. In the last four years the Mendozas had become like family, until now they were all he wanted or needed. And they suited his lifestyle. He could drop in whenever he felt the need and always be assured of a welcome.
Although he still had family
in New York City—aunts, uncles, cousins—there was no one he cared to communicate with, no one who had claim to his heart the way Jenn had. He hadn’t written to or heard from anyone, not even his sister, since he had joined the cavalry. It had been, as he thought back on it, melodramatic and immature, but at the time it had seemed entirely right.
Now he could smile about such foolishness, but at the time he joined the cavalry, he had been deadly serious. He didn’t get serious about things anymore. He didn’t take on fifty men to prove he was a man, and he didn’t fight over women who meant nothing to him. He was an outlaw and a killer of men, not a crusader.
Ward’s mental wandering jolted to an end when Isabel saw him riding over the rise. She dropped the vegetables she had been gathering and ran excitedly into the house yelling to her madre. “Mama! Mama! Ward is coming!”
Mama Mendoza glanced up from the sock she was mending. Isabel’s pretty face was flushed with excitement. Mama knew Isabel probably loved Ward Cantrell more than she loved Pedro, because to Isabel, Ward was gossip, excitement, gifts, tender interest, and an attractive man to tease and torment but who was safe and admiring. Mama sighed. What could be more perfect than that? Mama Mendoza got heavily to her feet, relief washing over her features for just a moment before she allowed her pleasure to show. “Run meet him, silly chicken. See if I care!” she said, smiling. The girl would do so anyway—no matter what. She was like a three-year-old when Ward came.
Isabel ran from the small adobe house, wiping her hands and poking at her hair, trying frantically to arrange the long straight hair into something less childish. In her haste to greet Ward it bounced and flew around her face, and she gave up.
Ward spurred his horse into a run and met her under the cottonwood trees. He dismounted, gave her a friendly bearhug, and swung her around, telling her how pretty she was while she, overcome with happiness, smothered him with kisses.
“Guess what, Ward! Guess!” she demanded, leaning back in the circle of his arms.
He grinned. “I know. You are married and you have six children and one of them, a boy, looks like me. You ran out here to warn me because your husband is going to shoot me.”
“No, idiota! Foolish talk is not what I want to hear. Guess, really!” she said vehemently, stamping her pretty foot.
“I can’t imagine what could bring such a flush to your pretty cheeks unless there is a new man in your life,” he said, laughing.
“Guess, really!” she begged, pinching his arm.
Mama walked toward their nonsense, shaking her head. They were like playful bear cubs together: Ward refusing to guess to torment her and Isabel pinching and hitting him while he laughed and fended her off.
Mama came into the middle of this, and Ward set the playful Isabel aside to give Mama a hug.
“It’s good to be home,” Ward said, meaning it. Mama hugged him tightly and stepped back, smiling at him. She was trying to be cheerful, but it was apparent to Ward that she was troubled. He made a note to ask her later about the changes he had already sensed. But for now, he did not want to spoil Isabel’s fun.
Grinning, with Isabel bouncing excitedly at his side, Ward turned to the bulging saddlebags he had on the rump of his horse. The big black stamped and pawed the ground. He had smelled the cool clear water and was eager to get to it.
“Pedro!” Mama yelled.
“Sí, Mama?” The answer came from the small lean-to behind the house that served as a barn for the animals and the horse that Pedro rode to town for supplies. At night it was a roost also for the chickens.
“Come at once, Pedro!” Isabel yelled. “Señor Ward has come!”
The young man who joined them was a surprise for Ward. Pedro had grown into a young man. Last summer he had been seventeen and a beanpole. Now he had filled out and was a handsome lad with the same friendly brown eyes that Isabel had. Mama was squat and plain, with nothing of beauty in her face, but her children were comely.
“He is almost a man, no?” Isabel asked proudly.
“Welcome, Señor Ward.” Pedro grinned. “Mama and Isabel speak often of you. We prayed for your safe return.”
“Thank you, Pedro. It is good to be back.” Ward held out his hand solemnly, and the young man took it, pleased to be treated like an equal by this man he admired, loved, and worried about. Pedro had heard the stories about Ward Cantrell, and he had asked Mama about them, because he had seen outlaws who had been hanged by the neck. Their bodies had been laid out on the sidewalk in Phoenix for all to take warning. Señor Ward was the only adult male who had ever taken an interest in him. Ward had spent much time showing him how to care for the horse he had bought for him, how to mend the fine leather saddle that had been his last gift, even how to clean and care for himself properly. The thought of this man, with his smiling eyes and his ready humor stilled forever, lying on some sidewalk, cold and stiff, with arms folded across his chest, displayed in death as a warning to others, had filled him with anger and despair. When he had asked Mama about his fears, he had been puzzled and then pleased with her explanation: “God does not have accidents. He assigns each man to his task, and it is only important that he do it well.”
And from the stories Pedro heard when he went into town, it was apparent to him that Señor Ward did his task very well indeed. Pedro took Ward’s horse to water and care for him, and Ward followed Mama inside, with Isabel still imploring him to guess her secret.
“Tell me your secret, or I will keep all my gifts,” Ward teased her.
“Give me my gift, or I will not tell you ever!” she countered happily. There was too much loneliness in her heart not to squeeze every ounce of affection and attention from this handsome gringo she loved.
Ward relented and dropped to his knees to beg her to share her secret. “I have a novio,” she rushed to tell him. “A young man from what Mama calls ‘a good family,’” she said, dimpling. “And we have received permission from our parents to be married in the church at Christmas.”
“Isabel, how could you?” Ward demanded, feigning injury. He clutched his heart and looked stricken, and Isabel burst into peals of wicked laughter. When she stopped laughing he took her aside, and she sobered.
“This young man, do you love him?”
Her eyes widened. “Sí, I love him so much I would die for him.”
Ward frowned. “Does he love you?”
A smile lighted her face, and it was like the sun breaking through dense clouds unexpectedly. “Sí.”
“Is he good to you?”
She nodded and he could tell by the smile that she was not lying. “Does he have a job? Some way to take care of you?”
“Sí, his papa is a landowner. He works very hard. That is why I do not see him so very often…”
“Does he treat you with respect?”
“Unfortunately he does…” She smiled, nodding, her face flushed with pleasure at the opportunity to talk about her novio, and Ward relaxed, content that all was well.
Everyone loved Ward’s gifts: a pretty gown with dress-up shoes for Isabel, a rifle for Pedro, wine and tobacco for Grandpapa, and a new shawl for Mama Manuela with two hundred dollars in five-dollar bills tucked inside. To her that was a year’s worth of security.
After dinner Isabel proudly brought out a large basket piled high with white satin. Her eyes wide with wonder at the fine lustrous fabric, she explained to Ward that it was to be her wedding gown. It had taken her and Mama a week to cut the numerous pieces from the bolt of fabric Ward’s last generous gift of money had bought for them. “We will never finish it,” she wailed. “Never!”
Ward looked at Mama with alarm and fished into his pants. He dragged out a handful of bills and gave them all to Isabel. “Hire some seamstresses,” he said, scowling. “I don’t want you walking down the aisle in a half-finished gown.”
Mama slapped his hand. “Put thy money away. That is her way of telling thee she wants thee to help with the sewing.” She laughed. Pedro snorted at the thought of War
d Cantrell, a famous gunfighter, sewing with women.
“You need my help, little one?”
Isabel shrugged, appalled at what she had started.
Ward looked from Pedro’s contorted face to Isabel’s. “Well,” he said, “don’t just stand there. Get me a needle.”
Isabel squealed with delight and rushed to comply. Pedro scowled his disbelief, but Ward cuffed him lightly and followed Isabel, watching intently as she threaded a needle for him. Pedro, seeing Ward’s example, sighed and took the next needle from his sister’s hands. Delighted, Mama got both of them started, and then settled down at the table across from Ward. She sewed and watched Ward, his big, deft hands working so carefully in the delicate fabric, and it gave her much pleasure that he set such a good example for her son. Pedro was too prone to take his sister lightly.
Laughing, giggling, saying outrageous things to one another, they sewed at the table, huddled around the brightest lamp until their backs were cramped. Mama laid her sewing aside, sighed, then patted the worn wood of the table with her chubby brown hand, causing Ward to look up from his stitching. “Is there a woman whose face thou carryest in thy heart?”
Startled, Ward scowled. The face that flashed into memory at her question was Jenn’s. “No,” he said grimly, knowing that she was hoping for a sweetheart, not a sister.
Mama sighed, disappointed. “That is most tragic—thou wouldst make a fine husband and father.” Isabel nodded in agreement, but Pedro looked pleased that Ward had not become anything as boring as that. He wanted adventure and excitement for himself and his friend.
Ward shook his head. “I’m an outlaw, remember?”
Mama ignored his words. “What dost thou want for thyself? More than just being a fugitive…”
Ward stopped sewing and fingered the white satin. “I want a home,” he said softly, meeting Mama’s gaze.
At first, after Simone’s death, he had rejected all symbols of commitment, but after six years his wounds had healed. He was tired of running, hungry for a piece of land…a house…a woman to meet him at the door, shading her face against the setting sun, welcoming him with quiet eyes, maybe even a child to run down the steps to fling his small body at him crying, “Daddy, Daddy…”
The Lady and the Outlaw Page 7
