The Cowgirl in Question

by B. J Daniels

  Just do it, Rourke. Do whatever it is you’ve been planning to do to me for the past eleven years.

  He must have seen the change in her. His eyes narrowed and he frowned as if suddenly confused.

  There was a crash of pots and pans from the kitchen, followed by some mild cursing. Cassidy hurriedly returned to the kitchen.

  Arthur looked up sheepishly. “Nerves,” he whispered.

  She smiled at him, knowing how he felt, and bent to help him and Kit retrieve the clutter of pans that had fallen from the shelf. Ellie had finally left, it appeared. “These all have to be washed.”

  “I’ll do it,” Kit volunteered, kneeling beside her on the floor. “Are you all right?” she whispered.

  Cassidy nodded. She felt as if she’d just gotten the news that someone close to her had died. Only she and Rourke had never been close. Their only connection was his need for revenge. And her need to set things right.

  She’d tried to just before Rourke was moved to the prison in Deer Lodge. She’d gone to the jail to try to talk to him but he’d been too angry to listen—let alone believe her.

  Cassidy handed Arthur a pan as she rose. Hiding her tears, she made a swipe at them, then turned to go back out to the counter. Rourke would talk to her. And if he didn’t, well, she’d talk to him.

  But when she reached the counter, she looked around in confusion.

  He was gone.

  She stared in surprise at the spot where she’d left him just minutes before. His plate was empty. He’d left the price of his meal and a generous tip on the counter.

  She was torn between relief and regret. Both made her weak. She leaned against the counter, fighting back her earlier tears. She felt drained, bereft.

  “Go on home,” Kit said as she scooped up Rourke’s empty dishes and wiped down the counter. “You’ve had a long day.”

  Cassidy could only nod. It had been the longest day of her life.

  She took off her apron, hung it up and went to her office to retrieve her purse again. This time, she didn’t hesitate. She opened the back door, trying not to run. She desperately wanted to go home, take a hot bath, mourn for all that had been lost.

  The door swung open and she stepped out.

  Rourke was leaning against his old pickup, arms folded across his chest, his cowboy hat pushed back, the last of the day’s sunlight on the face she’d dreamed about for eleven years. Some of those dreams had turned into nightmares.

  Chapter Four

  “Let’s go for a ride,” Rourke said, motioning to his pickup as he considered what he would do when she refused.

  Cassidy glanced at the truck, then at him. “If you want to talk, we can go in my office.”

  “Any reason you wouldn’t want to go for a ride with me?” he asked.

  She cocked her head at him, that look in her eyes again, the same one he’d seen earlier in the café. Anger? What the hell did she have to be angry about? He thought of the photo in his pocket. He didn’t know what to make of it any more than he did of her now. He would have to learn to read this woman better.

  “I know you’re trying to intimidate me,” she said quietly.

  He smiled at that. He’d just graduated from the school of intimidation. “That’s what you think I’m trying to do?”

  “Yes,” she said, but to his surprise, she walked around the front of the pickup, opened the passenger-side door and climbed in.

  He was momentarily taken aback. He’d expected her to put up an argument. Maybe even yell for help. Or at least threaten to tell his brother the sheriff that she was being harassed.

  She’d surprised him and he had a feeling it wouldn’t be the first time. That in itself worried him as he climbed behind the wheel and glanced over at her.

  “You know most people in town wouldn’t have agreed to a ride with a convicted killer,” he said as he shifted into first, kicking up gravel from the rear tires as he took off.

  She just shot him another one of those looks he couldn’t read. Everything about Cassidy was a mystery to him, he realized. He’d been four years ahead of her in school. He barely remembered her. Even after high school when she’d gone to work at the Longbranch that summer before college bussing tables, he hardly remembered seeing her.

  And even after hiring several private investigators while in prison to dig up everything they could on her, he still didn’t have any idea why she’d framed him. Or who was really behind it.

  Cassidy Miller appeared to be just what she seemed. A twenty-eight-year-old woman who’d grown up in Antelope Flats without a father. Her mother had been a waitress. The year her mother died, Cassidy was at Montana State University in Bozeman on a scholarship, getting a degree in business.

  Cassidy had come back to Antelope Flats, bought the Longhorn Café and later the Kirkhoff Place, both with low down payments.

  She was up to her eyeballs in debt but had made a go of the café and had never been late on a payment on either place. She’d never been in trouble with the law. Never even been late on returning a library book from what he could tell.

  On the surface, Cassidy Miller looked squeaky clean.

  He wondered what he’d missed.

  “Where are you taking me?” she asked as he drove out of town headed north. There was only a slight quiver in her voice. She was trying so hard to make him think he didn’t frighten her. Fool woman.

  “You’ll see.”

  She wore a pale pink short-sleeved uniform top and skirt that came down to her knees.

  He remembered her in jeans, boots and a Western shirt. Now that he thought of it, she had dressed like his tomboy sister, all cowgirl. He couldn’t ever remember seeing Cassidy’s legs before. They were shapely, lightly tanned from the summer and long for her height of about five foot six. She was short next to him at six-two.

  With her small leather purse in her lap, white cross-trainers and white socks on her feet and her hair pulled up in a ponytail, she looked like the schoolgirl he’d kissed in the barn. Except, he noticed as he drove, her body had filled out. She’d turned into a woman while he’d been gone, he thought, annoyed with himself for noticing, even more annoyed with her for not being the same person he’d imagined when he’d planned what he would do to her.

  He drove north five miles, turned onto the Rosebud Creek Road and didn’t go far up the winding muddy path before stopping next to a monument with the word Crook on it.

  “Come on. Let’s take a little walk.” He climbed out before she could argue. He could tell she wasn’t wild about the idea, but she opened her door and stepped out, squinting into the sun that was about to sink behind the bluffs.

  She should have been terrified. And would have been, if she’d known how furious he was with her. He was convinced there was only one reason Cassidy Miller had gotten into the pickup with a convicted murderer. Because she knew he wasn’t a killer. Because she knew who was and had kept silent all these years while he was locked up in prison.

  He started up a gully through the tall grass, walking toward the bottom of the red bluffs. It was cool here with the sun almost down. The air smelled of sage and pine. A bee buzzed in the riot of wildflowers, and crickets chirped deeper in the bushes.

  He’d waited so long for this day he could hardly contain himself. He took deep breaths, fighting to control his temper. He wanted to grab Cassidy and shake the truth from her.

  Instead, he looked at the red bluffs, at the ponderosa pines along the top and imagined Cheyenne and Sioux warriors sitting on their horses watching them.

  He’d always liked to come here. His grandfather had brought him the first time and told him the story of struggle and courage, victory and defeat, the tale of man’s battle against man. He’d felt the history then, just as he did now, as if it was entrenched in the soil, in the rocks.

  “Why are we here?” Cassidy asked as he stopped in a draw below the red bluffs. The breeze stirred her hair, now loose around her shoulders. She had pulled out the band that had held her hair
and was nervously toying with it.

  “Do you know what happened here?” he asked.

  She glanced behind them, down the hillside. He followed her focus to where the lush green willows, wild roses and chokecherries hid the stream. They were completely alone. The closest ranch house was a good half mile away and there had been no vehicles at the ranger station up the road when they’d passed.

  “Everyone knows what happened here,” she said, turning back to look at the bluffs, then at him.

  He smiled at that. “I doubt few people have even heard of the Rosebud Battlefield, let alone know the story.”

  General Crook and his men had stopped to water their horses at the creek on June 17, 1876—just eight days before the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Fifteen hundred Cheyenne and Sioux warriors came over the hills above where he and Cassidy now stood and attacked the cavalry unit.

  Of Crook’s one thousand men and three hundred and seventy-five Crow and Shoshoni scouts, only eight cavalry men were killed and fifty scouts.

  It wasn’t much of a battle because Crook didn’t pursue when the Indians retreated. But eight days later, the warring warrior chiefs used the techniques they’d learned on the Rosebud to defeat Custer at the Little Bighorn. Custer and two hundred and sixty-one cavalry and scouts were killed.

  Cassidy gave him a look that he could read. What was the point of all this?

  “Crook didn’t go after the Cheyenne and Sioux that day,” Rourke said. “If he had, who knows how history might have been written. Instead he just let it go not realizing he would contribute to many more deaths at the Little Bighorn.”

  She shook her head and met his gaze. Her eyes, he noticed, were the same color as her hair, shades of rich brown in the sunset with splashes of gold.

  “You’re not going to let it go,” she said. She didn’t sound in the least surprised as she turned her back on him to look down at his pickup parked below them on the hillside. If anything, she sounded sad.

  “There are some battles that you just can’t walk away from,” he said. “But that isn’t my point. Crook was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Historians disagree, but I think he made a mistake not finishing the battle and I—”

  “I’m sorry.” Her voice broke as she turned to face him. “I never meant to hurt you. I tried to explain about that night.”

  Rourke squeezed his eyes closed, that night too clear in his memory. Driving up the dark gulch, driven by his anger. Forrest’s pickup flashed in his headlights. He’d swung his truck in front of Forrest’s because he thought Forrest would try to make a run for it. And then he’d stormed over to Forrest’s truck and jerked open the driver’s side door.

  Forrest had fallen toward him and, without thinking, he’d caught him. Blood. It was all over his hands, his shirt, as he’d pushed Forrest back up in a sitting position behind the wheel. Everything registered at once. The gunshot wound to Forrest’s chest, the dead, hollow look in his eyes, the empty seat beside him.

  He’d stared at Forrest, trying to make sense of it, then turned and ran back toward his pickup. He’d left it running, the lights on. He had to get help. That was what he’d been thinking and yet he’d known Forrest was dead. Did he reach his pickup? Rourke couldn’t be sure.

  All he remembered was Cash waking him up in the wee hours of the morning. He had Forrest’s blood all over him and the murder weapon was on the seat next to him with only his fingerprints on it. And Cassidy. She stood out in the darkness, hugging herself, beside Cash’s patrol car.

  And Cash was saying, “Cassidy called, worried after you left the Mello Dee.” Cassidy, the one who’d tricked him into going up Wild Horse Gulch in the first place.

  He fought to keep eleven years of anger and frustration and bitterness out of his voice and failed. “Stop lying to me. You wouldn’t have gotten into my pickup today if you thought I really was a murderer. You know I didn’t kill Forrest, because you framed me for his murder. I want to know why. And who was in on it with you.”

  She had to have heard the rage in his voice, seen it in his eyes, in his balled fists at his side. And yet she met his eyes and didn’t veer away. “I don’t know who killed Forrest. I just know in my heart that you didn’t do it. You couldn’t kill a man in cold blood, not even out of jealousy.” She shook her head. “Why can’t you believe me?”

  “Because I didn’t believe your story at the trial and I sure as hell don’t believe it now.”

  “The prosecutor used me to help convict you. I’m sorry about that. But I told the truth and I give you my word that I’m telling you the truth now. There is nothing more I can do.” She started to walk past him back down the hillside to the pickup, but he grabbed her arm and spun her around to face him.

  “Not so fast, sugar.” He smiled at her. “Your word?”

  She raised her chin, her spine a rod of steel. “It’s all I have.”

  He felt the fury, banked for so many years, bubble up inside him. “I’m not taking your word on anything, all right? You wrote the note that put me up Wild Horse Gulch, that put me at the scene of the crime.”

  Her chin came down a little, some of the steel melting out of her spine. “I’m not proud of what I did.”

  “Not proud?” he echoed. “It cost me eleven years of my life. You set me up. The killer couldn’t have framed me without you leaving me that damned note!” He was towering over her, his fingers digging into her arm.

  “Do you think that I haven’t agonized over this every day for the past eleven years? I tried to save you at the trial. You know I did.” Tears welled in her eyes but she didn’t look away. “You’re hurting me.” It came out little more than a whisper.

  He released her at once, swallowed and stepped back, afraid of what he might do to her. Overhead, a hawk sailed soundlessly across the fading blue sky. “Why did you write that note?”

  THE PAIN IN HIS VOICE crushed her heart like a blow. She felt hot with shame just as she had at seventeen when she’d taken the stand to explain that she’d left a note on Rourke’s pickup windshield telling him that Blaze was meeting Forrest up Wild Horse Gulch.

  That spiteful note, written out of her schoolgirl jealousy over Rourke and Blaze, had cost Rourke eleven years of his life. She’d helped send him to prison, destroying the young man he’d been. All these years she’d hoped that when he got out of prison he might finally believe her. What a fool she’d been. Then. And now.

  He stepped back, shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his jacket, as if fighting to control his anger. “Tell me something. What would you do if you’d just spent eleven years of your life behind bars for a crime you didn’t commit?”

  “I would find the real killer or die trying,” she said without hesitation.

  He smiled at that. “And what would you do once you found him? Or her,” he added.

  She swallowed, afraid of where he was going with this. “I would prove the person was guilty and turn the evidence over to the authorities.”

  His laugh held no humor. “Then I guess you and I are different.”

  “I hope you don’t intend to take the law in your own hands,” she said, her voice cracking. “It will only get you sent back to prison.”

  Rourke closed the distance between them in a stride, his hand coming out of his pocket to cup her jaw. He moved so fast she didn’t have time to react. But she couldn’t help flinching at his touch.

  He smiled, obviously pleased to think that he’d frightened her. It had been fear that his touch induced and something much more primitive.

  He said between gritted teeth, “If I was going to take the law into my own hands, don’t you think I would do it right now?” His thumb caressed her cheek.

  She didn’t move, didn’t breathe.

  “I was headed home that night,” he said, his voice breaking with emotion. He released her but stayed so close she could smell his masculine scent, feel his heat. “Blaze had already left to go to her apartment. I only went up Wild Horse Gulch because of you
r note. You put me at the murder scene. Don’t you dare tell me it was just a coincidence.” He glared at her, his eyes a dark blue under the brim of his cowboy hat. “Either you framed me. Or you helped someone else frame me and I will get the truth out of you—one way or the other.”

  She swallowed, her heart breaking at the sight of his raw pain. “What do you want from me, Rourke? I’ve told you everything I know. I left the note. It was a childish, spiteful thing to do and I’ve regretted it for eleven years. At the time, I just wanted you to know the truth about Blaze. I thought I was protecting you.”

  “You did it for my own good,” he mocked.

  “No, I did it for very selfish reasons. I thought if you knew the truth…” Her eyes came up to meet his.

  “What?” He grabbed her arm and shook her gently. “What were you going to say?”

  “I was seventeen.” Her voice broke. “I was in…love with you.”

  He stared at her, stepping back as if in shock.

  “You really didn’t know.” She smiled ruefully, seeing the truth in his eyes.

  “You and I never said two words to each other. How could you…” He reached into his pocket and shoved a photograph at her. “That’s what you call love?”

  With trembling fingers, she took the snapshot from him and looked down at the two young women in the snapshot.

  “How do you explain your anger at me in that photograph?” he demanded. “That was taken just days before Forrest’s murder.”

  “I thought you were taunting me with Blaze.”

  “What?”

  “You were the one who insisted I stand next to Blaze for the photograph. I thought you knew how I felt about you, that you were enjoying rubbing it in my face, maybe hoping Blaze and I would fight over you,” she said, and handed him back the photograph.

  He stared at her, frowning. “The photo was Blaze’s idea. I had no idea how you felt. You never said anything.”

  She smiled and nodded. “I thought maybe you liked me because— You probably don’t even remember that day in the barn.” Her eyes burned with humiliation.