“But there weren’t any more.”
“No, just me. Some branches of the Montgomerys are very fertile and some are almost barren. There doesn’t seem to be any middle ground.”
Tynan leaned back on the grass, stretching full length, his feet toward Chris. “She sounds like a wonderful mother. Do you miss her?”
Chris looked away. “Every day of my life. She was strong and soft, sensible and intelligent, wise and…. She was all anyone could hope to be.”
“I think you may be like her, what I’ve seen, that is.”
Chris grinned broadly at him. “For that, you may turn around here and put your head in my lap.”
“That is an honor,” he said as he did as she offered. “This is nice,” he said as Chris smoothed his hair back from his forehead. “You’re not like any other women I’ve met.”
“Good. Ty, what are you going to do now that you’re free?”
“I’m not yet. I have to get you back to your father.”
“Yes, but what can you do besides shoot a gun and sit a horse well? Or get drunk and land in jail?”
With his eyes closed, he smiled. “Doesn’t sound like much, does it? Well, let’s see, what can I do? I guess women don’t count, do they?”
“Most definitely not.”
“I know,” he said, opening his eyes. “I can run four whore houses at once.”
Chris let out a gasp. “Somehow I don’t think that is a good—”
“No, not the women. I let Red handle that, except if there’s a fight, then I separate the women, but one time Red’s bookkeeper got killed in the crossfire of a shootout—one I wasn’t involved in, I might add—and she asked me to look into the accounts because the bank was about to foreclose on one of the houses.”
“Did the bank foreclose?”
“Hell, no. Oh, excuse me. It turned out that little weasel had been embezzling her money. I found it buried under the front porch of his house. And I had to learn to do bookkeeping and straighten the whole mess out. Now, every time I see Red I go over her accounts.”
“What a marvelous ability. My father says that half his empire is nothing but book work. You could be of great use to him.”
“I’m sure that your father would entrust his accounts to a gunslinger.”
“He entrusted his daughter to one,” she said softly.
“I guess he did at that,” he said, smiling at her and beginning to run his hand up her arm. “Chris, do you really think he meant that about not touching you? Do you think he had any idea what he was asking?” His hand was at her neck.
“Maybe he’d heard about your reputation with women and he wanted to protect his daughter’s chastity.”
“Of course if neither of us told anyone what had happened, there’d be no way he’d know.” He was pulling her head down to his.
“But my husband would know on my wedding night.”
“What husband?” His lips were a breath away from hers.
“The man I marry. The man I plan to spend all my nights with.”
He was pulling her closer but she was resisting. “But just the other day you were offering yourself to me.”
“But then I thought you couldn’t and that I was safe. I think we’d better go back to the others.”
“In a minute,” he said, pulling her to him.
Chris’s lips parted for him and again she was amazed at the feeling that passed through her at Tynan’s touch. It was as if her bones were disintegrating and she fell down across him.
He was expert at maneuvering her body so that soon she was stretched full out beside him and it was what she wanted when he moved one of his heavy legs on top of hers. Her body arched upwards toward his.
Later, she wondered what would have happened if he hadn’t heard voices and moved away from her. Chris just lay there, eyes closed, too stunned to move.
“They’re coming back,” Ty whispered, lifting her off the ground into his arms. “Get dressed.” As if she were a doll, he leaned her against his shoulder and began to button the back of her dress.
“What happens if I wear a dress that buttons down the front?” she murmured huskily.
“Don’t. Save my sanity and your virginity and don’t tempt me more than you have already. There, stand up and get that dopey look off your face. They’re coming.”
“Yes, Tynan,” she said, allowing him to pull her upright.
Chapter Ten
Chris and Ty were swept away together with the crowd of returning young people. People were getting restless and wanting to eat again and play games. The women took Chris with them so they could ask her questions about some of the stories she’d written and they left Tynan with the men and the boys—who constantly begged Ty for stories of the gunfights he’d been in.
Chris and the women were on very friendly terms. They believed in her so much that they were willing to look differently at a man they’d been so sure was wrong. One of the women bravely asked Chris what a house of ill repute looked like inside and she had a good time entertaining them with stories of red wallpaper and highly polished brass lamps and women who looked very bored. They were all laughing when the shot rang out.
Chris hoped she was wrong, but somehow, she knew that Tynan was involved with that single gunshot.
Grabbing her skirts, she started running, the women behind her. On the ground, surrounded by men, lay Rory Sayers, a derringer in his hand, blood spreading over his shoulder—and standing over him was Tynan. Chris looked at Ty with disbelief on her face.
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to take you in,” said a young man who Chris had seen wearing a deputy’s badge. “The sheriff will have to deal with this.”
Chris’s eyes were still locked with Tynan’s and it was only after a long moment that she turned away. The face of every woman around her had a look of “I told you so” on it.
Chris lifted her skirt and began walking back to the tables.
“Chris,” Tynan called softly from behind her but she didn’t look back.
At the tables she began packing food away, trying to stay calm while the others put the injured Rory on a wagon bed and started back toward town. Since Rory was yelling that they were going to kill him and also he was raging that he was going to kill Tynan, Chris assumed that he was going to live.
Minutes later, Tynan walked past her, stopping within a few feet of her, but she didn’t turn around, instead, busying herself in putting the food away.
The women came to help her, working in total silence as they gave her looks from under their lashes. After a few minutes, Chris could stand no more. She put down the food, turned toward the road and began walking back to town. She didn’t care about Red’s buggy that she left behind or about anything else for that matter.
It was miles back to town but Chris walked all the way, shaking her head no at the people who stopped their carriages and offered her a ride.
In the hotel, people were watching her in such a way that she ran up the stairs and into her room, slamming the door behind her. She was so ashamed of herself that she wanted to climb into bed, pull the covers over her head and never come out again. For the last two days, she’d strutted around this town and, in essence, told them they were all fools, that they didn’t know a man who’d lived among them most of his life. She’d used the love she’d earned as Nola Dallas to tell them that they knew much less than she did after spending only a few days with the man.
Slowly, Chris began to undress, taking off the dress that Red had loaned her.
How vain I was, she thought, to think that I knew more than they did. And how conceited I was to think that I could reform a man who has chosen a life of crime and violence. How right my father was when he introduced me to men from my own background, men I could understand, not men who went to picnics and shot people who disagreed with them.
She packed her small bundle, put her riding habit back on and took the two dresses downstairs to the clerk. His eyes were different now. No longer was
he looking at her with interest, wanting to know more about the young woman who worked for a big city newspaper. Now she was just one of many women who’d fallen for a cheap drifter.
She didn’t look at the others in the hotel lobby who were watching her with interest, waiting until she’d gone upstairs again so they could tell others what had happened at the picnic.
“Miss,” said a young man behind her, “I have a message for you.”
With her eyes downcast, Chris took the piece of paper, crumbled it in her hand and went up the stairs. Chris sat on the bed and thought for some time. She felt that she owed him this one last visit, to say goodbye, to tell him that she was returning to her father and that she would see that he was given his pardon.
She wrote a note to Asher telling him that she planned to start the journey home tomorrow.
With her shoulders squared, she went downstairs, leaving the note to Asher with the desk clerk, and went outside. As soon as she started toward the jail, she had a following of curious people, some of them snickering. So, the big city girl thought she could come to this town and tell us about someone we already knew, she could almost hear them saying.
Once, a man blocked her passage, and she had to look up at him, giving him her most withering look to make him step aside. He spit a big wad of tobacco juice at her feet, barely missing her.
One thing about people who made a fuss about someone they thought was better than they were, when their idol came to earth, they were very angry about it.
“May I see your prisoner?” she said to the deputy sitting at the desk.
“Oh sure, Miss Dallas,” he said, getting the ring of keys from a nail on the wall. “I’m real sorry about what happened. The sheriff should be here tomorrow and this thing will be cleared up. There’s someone to see you,” the boy said to Tynan as he let Chris into the cell.
Tynan turned around quickly, looking at her with eyes that examined and searched. He didn’t seem to like what he saw because he turned away again.
“I got your message,” she said, looking down at her hands.
“I’ve seen what I wanted to, you can go now.”
The coldness in his voice made her head come up—and her anger surface. “Tell me, are you innocent again? Like with the Chanry Gang? Were you perhaps protecting children from Rory? What was it this time that got you involved in a shooting?”
“Get out of here, Chris,” he said softly. “I don’t want to fight with you.”
“Because I don’t have a gun? Oh yes, I know the code of the West. You’d never draw on an unarmed man—or woman. How could you do that to me? Those people trusted me! They told me their secrets and I asked them to trust me more. I asked them to give you another chance, to let you start fresh. And they did! But what did you do but show them just what you really are, what I was too stupid to see?”
He just stood there with his back to her, his arm up, pressing against the stone wall, looking out the cell window.
“Look at me when I talk to you. If you have no conscience, at least you can pretend to have manners.”
Slowly, he turned toward her and he seemed to be a man Chris had never seen before, one of coolness, as if he were far away and not there at all.
“I never lied to you about what I was. I always told you I wasn’t for you. But you never listened to anything I said. You were so busy showing the world that you could reform the criminal that you never thought about who I really was.”
“I guess I’ve learned now.” She walked toward the cell door. “I won’t bother you again. I just came to tell you that I, and probably Mr. Prescott, will be leaving early in the morning. I’ll make sure, though, that you will be given your pardon by my father. Deputy,” she called.
Tynan was across the room in seconds, barring her exit. “You will not leave without me. I swore to your father that I’d deliver you and I plan to.”
“Of course, the Western man always keeps his word. He may kill people on a daily basis, prison may be a way of life to him but he always keeps his word. Deputy, you may let me out now.”
Tynan slammed the door shut, startling the boy against the wall. “You can’t leave tomorrow morning. You can’t go across this country with just that man, he doesn’t know anything about surviving.”
“I have to agree that he doesn’t know how to shoot innocent men at church picnics.”
“He didn’t shoot Sayers,” the deputy said. “Sayers attacked him from behind.”
“I knew you were innocent,” Chris said. “A man like you doesn’t get caught when he does something illegal. Deputy, please open this door.”
Ty held it shut. “Chris, you can’t leave until I get out of here. You need—”
“Mr. Tynan, if I waited for you to get out of one jail after another, I’d never get home. Let me make myself clear. I am going to leave tomorrow morning and start home to my father. You will have your precious pardon and you will get rid of me in the bargain.” She grabbed the door and jerked, stepping outside quickly. “When you make your way to my father’s, via the jails of Washington, however falsely accused you are, he may even have the ten thousand dollars you’ve worked so hard for. Good-bye, sir, and I hope we never meet again.”
Chapter Eleven
Asher led the way out of town the next morning before the sun was up. She’d mumbled answers to his many questions on the night before, saying her engagement to Tynan had been a farce, something to save him from Rory’s barbs. Asher seemed satisfied that she was properly contrite.
As they passed the jail, Chris saw the dark shadowy outline of Tynan standing in his cell watching them. She kept her head up high and didn’t return his stare. By the time he got out of prison, she’d be far away.
Neither she nor Asher had much to say as they rode, not really running, but not giving themselves time to enjoy the scenery either. At noon they stopped to rest the horses and eat the stale biscuits they’d brought.
As the sound of thundering hooves came down the narrow little road, Chris’s heart nearly stopped beating. But it wasn’t Tynan or anyone else interested in them. Three big men on scraggy horses went tearing past them, their heads down, their faces hidden under their hat brims.
“I’m glad they aren’t looking for us,” Asher said when they’d passed.
Asher didn’t talk to Chris much and she remembered how she’d sometimes been rude to him. As he helped her onto her horse, she took every opportunity to smile at him. Now that Tynan was gone, and Chris was no longer blinded by that man’s light, she could look at Asher with new eyes. This was a man her father wanted her to marry. This man wasn’t likely to pull a gun and kill for the smallest offense.
It was nearly sundown before they saw the overturned wagon, and even then they wouldn’t have seen it except for Chris having noticed the way the ground had been torn up. There were deep, fresh gouges in the earth, leading off into the underbrush.
“Let’s stop here for a moment,” she called, dismounting and running down into the bushes. She hadn’t gone but a few feet when she saw the big old wagon on its side, and what looked to be a woman’s hand protruding from under it.
She ran back up the bank, shouting for Asher to come and help her. “Under there,” she pointed. “We have to get the wagon up and get her out.”
He only hesitated for a second, then ran forward.
When they got to the far side of the wagon, they could see only part of the woman’s arm. Her head and the rest of her body were buried under the wagon.
“Can you lift that?” Chris asked, pointing to a broken part of the wagon. “I’ll try to pull the woman out.”
Asher used most of the strength he had as he propped himself against the side of the wagon then squatted until his legs could work to lift the weight.
“Now!” he shouted and the wagon moved.
Chris lost not a second pulling the woman out to safety.
Asher, kneeling, lit a match because the evening was growing very dim, and studied the woman. Sh
e seemed to be covered in blood. “She’s been shot at least three times,” he said quietly.
“But she’s still breathing.” Chris took the woman’s bloodied head into her lap. “We’ll get you to a doctor,” she whispered to the woman as she began to thrash about.
“My husband,” she gasped. “Where is my husband?”
Chris looked up at Asher but he was already searching the surrounding area. Chris could see where he stopped. Turning, he shook his head.
“Your husband is fine. He’s sleeping now.”
“Can you tell us who did this to you?” Asher asked when he came back.
The woman was having great difficulty talking, and blood was seeping steadily from her wounds. “Three men,” she whispered at last. “They wanted us dead because we know about Lionel. We were going to save Lionel.”
Suddenly the woman looked at Chris with eyes as red as the blood that was washing from her body. “Help him. Help Lionel. Promise me that.”
“Yes, of course I will. As soon as you’re better we’ll both—” She stopped because the woman’s head had fallen to one side and she was dead.
Asher sat back on his heels. “We have to get the sheriff out here. We’ll leave the bodies here for now while I bring the sheriff back.”
“Chris,” he said sharply because she’d begun to look through the packages that had fallen from the wagon. “What in the world are you doing?”
“Looking for something that will tell who Lionel is.”
He caught her shoulders and turned her toward him. “I don’t think we should look for the trouble that got that woman killed. We’re going home and we’re stopping for no one or nothing. This Lionel will have to take care of himself. Now, we’re going to a town.”
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