He started to straighten up when another shot rang out down the street. A cry of pain echoed through the night, coming from above him, and he sensed rather than saw something falling from the roof of the hotel. A man’s body slammed hard onto the street, raising a cloud of dust.
Trey leveled his gun in the direction from which the last shot had come, the shadows near the saloon he had just vacated.
A voice called, “Don’t shoot!”
Langley! Trey walked toward the bounty hunter cautiously, his gun ready. “What the hell’s going on?”
Langley replaced the spent cartridges and holstered his gun. “Looks like those two were after the reward on your head.”
“You saved my life,” Trey remarked, unable to keep the surprise out of his tone.
“Only seemed right, since you saved mine.”
“Yeah.” Trey eased the hammer down on his Colt. “So where does that leave us?”
“Don’t worry. I said I wouldn’t come after you again, and I won’t. But if you’re smart, you’ll hightail it out of here. This is Tucson, not some one-horse town. The marshal will be on his way. And he’s bound to recognize you too.”
“You’re probably right, dammit.” Trey slid his Colt into his holster. “Obliged for your help. I never would have seen the one on the roof in time.”
“Yeah, well, I may regret it later,” Langley said with a wry grin. “You’d better get going.”
“On my way.” Turning, Trey almost plowed into Amanda who was running across the street toward him.
“Are you all right?” Her worried gaze moved over his face, her hands running restlessly over his arms and chest.
“I’m fine. Come on, we’re getting out of here, now.”
She didn’t argue.
Twenty minutes later, they were ready to go, riding double on Relámpago because Trey didn’t want to take the time to buy another horse. He noticed the crowd had gathered in front of the hotel. A man holding a lantern was kneeling beside one of the bodies. Trey heard someone say, “Here comes the marshal,” and the crowd parted.
Trey swore softly. “Time to make tracks,” he said grimly, and reined the horse around, heading away from the hotel at a walk so as not to attract any attention.
Once out of sight of the hotel, he urged the stallion into a lope.
Amanda clung to Trey, her arms tight around his waist, her cheek resting against his back. One thing about life in the Old West, she mused, it was never dull.
“Where are we going?” she asked as they left the town behind.
“There’s a piece of land I’ve had my eye on,” he replied. “I was planning to settle there after I’d squared things with Hollinger. I think now’s a good time to light out in that direction. No one knows me there.”
“Oh, I remember. You mentioned it once before, didn’t you? You were going to use the money from the bank robbery…” Her voice trailed off. The money he had stolen was sitting in the back of her bedroom closet, in a house that she probably would never see again.
“Something wrong?”
“What? Oh, no.”
“Come on, sweetheart, what’s bothering you?”
“Nothing, really. I guess I was just feeling a little homesick.”
He placed his hand over hers and gave it a squeeze. “We’ll build a new home. Together.”
She nodded, her heart swelling with love as she imagined them building a house, raising a family. A boy and a girl, she thought, with Trey’s dark hair and eyes. She slid her hand over her stomach. She could be pregnant, even now. The idea thrilled her even as it gave her pause. Having a baby in a modern hospital with a doctor and drugs and emergency help if needed was one thing; having it out here, in the wilds, was something else entirely. Sanitary conditions were poor, hospitals few and far between. Childbirth would be risky, at best.
She was still considering the implications of being pregnant when they stopped for the night.
They had done it often enough so that it took no time at all to make camp.
“No fire tonight,” Trey said when she started looking for wood.
“Why not? Oh. Of course.” A fire could be seen for miles out here, where the land was flat and there were no trees to diffuse the smoke.
They settled down on the blanket with Trey’s arms around her. She shivered and he drew her closer, his lips moving over her face, along her throat, the curve of her shoulder. And then he kissed her and she shivered again, right down to her toes, but not from the cold.
* * * * *
It was nearing midnight two nights later when they reached Canyon Creek. Amanda stared at the town. Late as it was, the saloons were still open. Yellow lamplight spilled out onto the street. Someone was playing a lively song on a piano that was sadly out of tune.
“Seems we’ve come full circle,” she murmured, and even though home was over a hundred years in the future, she felt a sense of homecoming as they rode down the dusty street. This might be as close to home as she ever got.
As always, Trey’s first thought was for Relámpago. He left the stallion at the livery barn after instructing the owner to be sure the stud got a good rubdown and a quart of oats.
“It’s too late to go to the land office tonight,” Trey said as they walked toward the hotel. “I’ll go first thing in the morning.”
“What if they’ve sold the property to someone else?”
It was a possibility he refused to consider.
“How far is your property from here?”
“A shade over forty miles.”
She nodded. Her house was about fifty miles from town. She wondered who was living in her house, and how long it would take to get there on horseback. They would be almost neighbors. She might even meet them. It would be interesting to see how the place had looked when it was new.
Thinking of home made her ask, “Is there a house on this land of yours?”
“Yeah, but it’s not much. Just an old adobe shack.” He took her hand in his and gave it a squeeze. “We’ll build a new one together.”
* * * * *
Later that night, lying in bed in each other’s arms, they made plans for the future. They’d build a barn and corrals first, Trey said, since they could live in the shack for awhile. They’d have to find some brood mares, just a few to start with, mares with good bloodlines.
“How big a house will we build?” Amanda asked.
“Nothing too big to start with,” Trey replied. “We can always add on later.”
“I want a big window in front,” Amanda said. “And one in the kitchen, so I can look out and watch you work.”
“And a big bedroom,” he said, grinning, “with a big bed.”
“And a bathroom, inside the house.”
Trey grunted. “Well, a tub, anyway. And a big wood stove to heat the water. I doubt if we’ll be able to find a blue tub.”
“The color won’t matter,” she said wistfully. She put her hand over her stomach. “And a smaller bedroom, just in case.”
He stared at her.
“Well, it could happen, you know,” she said, feeling suddenly defensive. “You want children, don’t you?”
He dragged his hand over his jaw. “Sure, it’s just that I never…” He shook his head, his gaze darting to her stomach. “Are you expecting?”
“I don’t know.” She made a face at him. “It’s possible, you know.” More than possible, she thought, as often as they had made love lately. And now that she thought of it, she realized she hadn’t had her period since she’d been here. She felt a flutter of apprehensive excitement. “Very possible.”
Trey stared at her. The timing couldn’t be worse, he thought bleakly. He was on the run. There was no telling what the future held, or how long Amanda would be here. He’d never given any thought to having kids before, had never known he wanted one, until now. His child. His and Amanda’s.
“Trey? You’re not mad, are you?”
“No, sweetheart, I’m not mad.” He laid his
hand over hers. “It’s just that the whole idea of being a father is new to me.”
“You want kids, don’t you?”
He nodded as he drew her into his arms and nuzzled her neck. “A pretty little girl with red hair, just like you.”
* * * * *
They went to the Land Office first thing in the morning, even before breakfast. The property that Trey wanted was still available, being held by the local bank. They visited the bank next, and Amanda sat back and watched while Trey and the bank officer haggled over price and terms. Trey’s poker winnings made a sizable down payment, and the bank officer said the papers making him the owner of 150 acres of land would be ready for signing by the time they finished breakfast.
Their next stop was the restaurant, where they ordered ham and eggs. “Not as good as yours,” Trey remarked, though she noticed he ate enough for a small army.
Next, they went to the general store and loaded up on supplies. Amanda bought dish towels and a zinc washtub, an apron, soap, flour, sugar, salt, pepper, baking soda, yeast, coffee and a coffee grinder. She picked up a variety of tinned fruit, a hunk of cheese, dried apples, several boxes of matches, a kerosene lamp, a flour sifter, an iron, which weighed a ton, a Dutch oven, and numerous other household items.
She found a couple of shirts and a sheepskin jacket for Trey, two cotton dresses, underwear, and a coat and bonnet for herself. She picked out blankets and pillows for their bed. Trey added a shovel, a wheelbarrow, an ax, a rake, a hammer and nails, a rifle and several boxes of ammunition, a curry comb and a couple of brushes, and a rasp.
They looked through a mail order catalog and picked out a high-backed sofa, a kitchen table and two chairs, a brass bed, and a stove. Lastly, they bought a rooster and a half-dozen red hens.
It was really going to happen, she thought. The two of them were going to set up housekeeping in an adobe shack and build a horse ranch. She sure hoped Trey knew what he was doing, because she didn’t have a clue!
They had to rent a wagon and horses from the livery to haul their supplies in. Trey tied Relámpago to the back of the wagon, gave Amanda a boost onto the high-sprung seat. Hopping up beside her, he took up the reins and they were on their way.
* * * * *
It was, indeed, a shack. A fair-sized one, though, with a living room, a kitchen that faced the east, and a bedroom barely big enough to turn around in. The windows were covered with burlap, the door was made of oak and had a sturdy cross-bar on the inside. The floors were dirt. There was a large fireplace for heating and cooking.
Trey squeezed her hand. “Remember, it’s only temporary.”
Nodding, she forced a smile.
Only temporary became her mantra.
Living in the adobe shack was no worse than living with the Apache, but here she had no other women to laugh with while she looked for wood or hauled water from the stream, or washed their clothes, no one to talk to while she cleaned the game Trey brought home. She missed Yellow Calf Woman and Walker on the Wind.
But she didn’t complain. Couldn’t complain, not when Trey worked so hard. He spent long hours laying out the foundation for the barn, plowing the ground behind the shack so she could plant vegetables, cutting trees for poles to build a corral for Relámpago, and for the mares he hoped to buy the following spring.
So much work, and none of it easy.
At first, she didn’t think she’d ever get the hang of cooking in a Dutch oven. Time and again, the food came out cooked on the bottom, but not on the top, or burned on one side but raw on the other.
Washing clothes was perhaps the worst chore of all. She grew to hate the big old wash tub. A fire had to be kept going under the tub to keep the water hot, the clothes had to be rubbed back and forth over a scrub board to remove the dirt, then rinsed and hung to dry. Oh, Lord, how she missed her washer and dryer, her dishwasher, the microwave. Not to mention the grocery store, where bread came in lovely packages and meat was already aged and butchered. She missed hot bubble baths, and running water. And toilet paper. Relieving herself in a chamber pot, or in the privy that Trey built out back, was perhaps the worst part of living in the past.
She missed indoor heat and plumbing, her refrigerator, television. Right now, even old I Love Lucy reruns sounded good.
Sometimes she was overwhelmed with homesickness. Whenever that happened, whenever she thought she couldn’t go on for another minute, she would go find Trey. In his arms, whatever trivial thing was bothering her melted away. She never tired of looking at him, watching him work. Tall and lean, he moved with an assurance that she found oddly comforting. There was nothing to be afraid of so long as he was here, nothing they couldn’t do, together. He never seemed to get discouraged. He knew what had to be done, and he did it.
He was easy to live with, never critical of her efforts, however bad they might be, willing to let her make her own mistakes but always ready and willing to help her if she asked for it.
And no matter how difficult the days might be, the nights were always wonderful. Sometimes they sat under the stars and imagined how things would be when the house was finished and the corral was filled with prime horseflesh. Sometimes they went skinny-dipping in the stream, then curled up in front of the fire with a blanket over their shoulders and thought about names for the baby.
The baby. She was certain she was pregnant now. She had all the symptoms her married girlfriends had complained of. She was weepy and irritable, her breasts were tender, her ankles were swollen.
Trey was the soul of patience, always understanding, ever tender, able to laugh her out of her moods. She woke up in his arms in the morning, fell asleep in his arms at night.
By the time she was four months pregnant, her moodiness seemed to have passed, she was full of energy, and she was certain being pregnant was the most wonderful thing in the world.
Now, standing in the doorway waiting for Trey to come to supper, she was filled with a sense of contentment. The corral was finished. The barn was almost up. Their furniture had arrived and they had a table to eat on, a bed to sleep in, and a stove to cook on. She had made curtains for the windows, a tablecloth for the table. She had planted flowers in front of the shack, a vegetable garden in the back, made a winding path lined with rocks that led from the house to the stream. Chickens scratched in the dirt, digging up worms for their chicks.
She blew out a sigh as she placed a hand over her burgeoning belly. She couldn’t wait to see her child, hold it in her arms. Trey’s child. A son, with his dark hair and eyes.
She smiled as she watched Trey walk toward her, felt her heart beat a little faster as he drew near. His face and chest were sheened with sweat, his hands were dirty, but she didn’t care. She threw herself in his arms and kissed him.
“Hey, sweetheart.”
“Hey yourself. I missed you.”
He grinned down at her. Whether he was gone an hour or all day, she always met him with a hug and a smile, always told him she missed him. He couldn’t imagine his life without her, didn’t know what he’d ever done to deserve her.
He placed his hand over her belly. She had always been beautiful, but never more so than now, when she was carrying his child. “How’s my son?”
“Sleeping, I think. Dinner’s ready. Are you hungry?”
He nodded. “Just let me get cleaned up.”
He washed up in the tub alongside the shack while she went in to set the table. There had been times, when she was first learning how to cook Western-style, when it had been all he could do to choke down his dinner, but she’d become a darn fine cook in the last couple months. She had even learned to make a melt-in-your-mouth apple pie.
He dried off, then took a minute to look out over the land. His land. It had taken a lot of hard work, but it had been worth it. The corral was sturdy. As soon as the barn was finished, he’d start looking for some brood mares. And then they’d get to work on a new house.
Whistling softly, he walked around the shack to the front door and st
epped inside, thinking himself the luckiest man in the world.
* * * * *
They had worked hard the last few months and Trey decided it was time for a trip to town. Amanda didn’t argue. She was ready for a change of scene, especially when it meant spending the night in town, bathing in a real tub in hot water she didn’t have to heat on the stove. Shopping. Eating a meal she hadn’t had to prepare. Seeing other people, even people she didn’t know. Besides, there were a few things she wanted to buy for the house. She also needed some flannel so she could start sewing things for the baby, and muslin for diapers.
She put on her bonnet, tied the strings beneath her chin, tucked her shopping list into her skirt pocket.
Trey was waiting for her outside. He lifted her onto Relámpago’s back and handed her the reins before swinging effortlessly onto the back of a leggy bay. The mare was the first he’d bought. She had long clean lines and a gentle disposition, but she was still a little wild and he didn’t trust her to carry Amanda.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Ready.”
It was a beautiful morning for a ride, warm and clear. The Saguaro and the Palo Verde were in bloom; wildflowers made bright splashes of color between gray-green clumps of sage and spiny cactus. They passed a slow-moving tortoise. An eagle soared effortlessly overhead, making lazy circles before plummeting to earth to snatch some unsuspecting creature in its talons. Trey’s mount shied to one side as a rabbit sprang across her path. He spoke softly to the mare and she quickly settled back down, soothed by the sound of his voice and the gentle touch of his hand on her neck.
He had a way with females, Amanda thought with a grin. Human or equine.
* * * * *
It was after dark when they arrived in town. After leaving the horses at the livery, they got a room at the hotel. After washing up, they went to get something to eat.
It was wonderful to sit at a table she hadn’t set, to eat a full course meal she hadn’t had to prepare, to know she wouldn’t have to heat a pan of water and wash and dry the dishes when they were through.
Feeling spoiled and happy, she sat back in her chair and smiled at Trey, thinking, not for the first time, that he was easily the most handsome man she had ever known.
Chase the Lightning Page 27
