“I’ll be ready,” Bird said.
CHAPTER
NINE
MUNGO WAS OUT OF BED and watching for dawn when he heard a rider coming. He hadn’t bothered to light a lantern, since he knew the inside of the house as intimately as the bodies of any one of his three wives. He’d built it with his own two hands, after all, laid every plank, planed the bark off every tree, pounded every peg and nail into place. Only thing he’d had help with was hoisting the logs into place for the walls, and that had come from a pair of mules.
And now Undine wanted him to leave it—for California, of all places. Damn fool idea. He’d play hell shaking it loose from his bride’s pretty head, though. Once she took a notion, that was that.
He swore and willed the coffee he’d started to brew faster. Waited for the rider to dismount, put up his horse and come inside.
The side door opened, squeaking a little on its hinges, and the new arrival stepped lightly, so as not to rouse the household. Mungo set his jaw, took his pistol down off the shelf, and waited, just in case he was wrong about who it was.
He was seldom wrong about anything, and when Garrett crossed the threshold, treading light as a sneak-thief looking to plunder the cash box, Mungo set the pistol aside with a thump.
“Dammit, old man,” Garrett said, rubbing his whisker-bristled chin with one hand. “You savin’ on lamp oil or something? You gave me a turn, lurkin’ in the dark like that.”
Heat rushing into the coffeepot on the stove was the only sound in the room, save the tick of the clock Mungo had bought off a squatter, some years back, for two buckets of milk and a sack of potatoes.
Mungo struck a match to light the glorified lantern Undine kept in the middle of the table. Sulphur mingled with kerosene and the aroma of strong coffee about to boil.
“Did you leave that horse of yours standing in the dooryard?” he demanded of his eldest son, keeping his voice low so as not to disturb Undine’s rest. She was keen on getting more than her share of sleep, and their bedroom was directly off the kitchen.
“He’s all right,” Garrett said, sounding testy, but wary, too.
“Put him away,” Mungo ordered. “I paid good money for that horse.”
Garrett thrust out his jaw. “I’m plum wore out, Pa,” he replied, his tone just short of a whine. “And in case you haven’t taken notice of it yet, I’m hurt.”
“You look sound enough to me,” Mungo said. “Whatever’s happened, it wasn’t bad enough to keep you from carousin’ most of the night. Put away the horse. I’ll not tell you again.”
Even in the poor light of Undine’s prissy table lamp, Mungo could see Garrett wanted to spit in his face, but he didn’t quite dare. He turned, grumbling under his breath, and slammed out the door.
That brought Undine yawning into the kitchen, with her hair down and her lace wrapper pulled snug around her full bosom. Mungo wished she wouldn’t go around the house that way, take a chance on the boys seeing her half-naked. He didn’t want another man’s eyes coming to rest on her, even if that man was his own flesh and blood.
“I don’t know how a person is supposed to sleep around here,” she complained. She looked warm and flushed and rumpled, and Mungo felt himself stir.
“Garrett just rode in,” he said gruffly. There were better things to talk about, he supposed, but the sight of her struck them from his mind. He longed to lay her out on their bed, open that wrapper and explore every curve and crevice of that luscious little body, but he wasn’t a young man anymore. He couldn’t depend on his own anatomy, and Undine was a demanding lover. Oh, he knew how to make her happy, with his hands and especially his mouth, but it was still humiliating not to be able to finish the job proper.
The coffee boiled over, sizzled on the stovetop.
Mungo lunged for it, moved the pot to the back, and scalded his hand in the process.
“Let me see,” Undine purred when he cursed and strode to the sink to pump water over his thumb. She wasn’t much for household duties, but she knew enough to sympathize. She traipsed over to peer around his arm.
Mungo showed her the hand.
“I’ll get the butter,” she told him.
“I’m fine, Undine,” Mungo insisted, though he wasn’t. He refused because he knew from experience that smearing grease on his seared flesh would make it burn like fire. It was a poor remedy, but folks seemed wedded to the idea. “Pour me a cup of that coffee if you want to help.”
She sighed and did as he asked, fetching a cup down from the cupboard and proceeding to the stove. With pointed motions, as if to demonstrate that she was smart enough to avoid injury while performing a simple kitchen task, she wadded up a dishtowel and used it like a pot holder.
Mungo pumped more water over his hand, but it seemed that would be a while working. He couldn’t stand at the sink all day, so he decided to tough it out. He’d waited his way out of worse predicaments, that was for sure—like the time he was chopping wood and cut clean through his boot with a freshly sharpened ax. Damn near lost a toe that day, and one of the ranch hands finally had to cauterize the wound with a poker, since it wouldn’t stop bleeding.
He sat at the table, feeling weary to the bone and three years older than the boulder that marked his property line at the northeast corner.
Undine set the steaming mug in front of him and bent to kiss the bald spot on top of his head. He was gratified, though he would have preferred to pretend that bare patch wasn’t there.
“When we get to San Francisco,” she said, “we’ll stay in a fancy hotel and there’ll be somebody bringing your coffee to you every morning, in a china cup.”
She could have done that right there on the ranch, served up his coffee, that is, but Mungo wasn’t fool enough to say so. Anna Deerhorn did the female work around the place, and Undine was content to leave her to it. She figured her job was to look pretty, spend money and perform the occasional bed favor. It hadn’t been that way with his other wives—he’d required plenty from them—but then, he’d been younger, and they’d been plain, sturdy women, just glad to have a husband.
“Undine, who’s going to run this ranch if we go off to California?”
She smiled and wriggled her way onto his lap. Time was, the feel of her warm bottom would have made him hard and straight as a fence post, but old Gus didn’t even try to rise. She put her arms around his neck. “You’ve got four sons and at least a dozen drovers on the place. You think it’s going to fall apart in a few months?”
When he didn’t answer right away, Undine took hold of his injured hand, slid it inside her wrapper, to cup her breast. Mungo didn’t even mind that it made the scald worse.
“Ben’s going with us, unless your plans have changed since we talked about it last, and those brothers of his haven’t got sense enough not to climb a lightning rod in a rainstorm. As for the ranch hands, well, they’re mostly drifters, likely to ride on when the mood takes them, and rustle a few head of my cattle for good measure.”
Undine made a murmury sound in her throat as Mungo played with her nipple. Let her head fall back, wanting him to kiss her throat.
Lord if he hadn’t started something he might not be able to finish.
Abruptly he shoved back the chair and set her on her feet. “You go on back to bed, Undine,” he said. “I have work to do and, anyways, Anna will be coming in here soon to start breakfast.”
Undine wrenched her wrapper shut. “I’m packing my things to leave for California,” she said. “If you won’t come along, I’ll go by myself. Take the stage as far as Tucson on Wednesday afternoon and make my way from there!”
She’d threatened to go before, but this was the first time she’d been specific. Mungo heard Garrett on the step outside the back door and knew they wouldn’t be alone longer than another second or two.
“All right,” Mungo said. “I’ll take you to California, Undine. Soon as I’ve got these cattle to market, we’ll go.”
He could see her pulse pounding
at the base of her throat, and her eyes were wide and hopeful.
“You promise, Mungo?”
Garrett opened the door, made a to-do about hanging up his gun belt on the peg in the little hallway, stomping his boots on the wooden floor.
“I promise,” Mungo told her.
Undine’s gaze darted to the entrance, careened back to Mungo’s face.
“Go on back to bed, Undine,” he said. Garrett was staring at her, nearly bare as she was; Mungo didn’t need to look at his eldest son to know he was gobbling her up with his eyeballs.
Undine hesitated a moment, then fled.
“Anna says she’s under the weather,” Garrett announced. It came out sounding hoarse, and he cleared his throat. Set a basketful of brown eggs on the table. “She gathered these for breakfast and gave them to me, but she’s keeping to her cabin for the day.”
Mungo swore. He usually ate a stevedore’s meal in the morning, but damned if he could rustle up an appetite, what with a winter in California ahead of him. He’d worry about the ranch every day they were gone, and it would take five years of good herds to pay off the bills Undine would run up.
He got to his feet, felt his old bones waver like a board shack in a high wind. “I’ll be on the north range, lookin’ for strays,” he told his son. “You saddle up, as soon as you’ve had all you want of those eggs, and meet me out there. Bring those no-good brothers of yours, if you have to turn over their bunks to do it.”
Garrett let out a huff of breath. “Pa, I told you I was hurt. And I ain’t been to bed for two days.”
Mungo took up his gun belt, thrust the pistol into the holster and strapped the whole thing around his hips. Headed for the door, to claim his hat and coat. “Do as I tell you,” he said, and left the house quietly, so as not to put Undine on the peck. By now, she was sleeping again, probably dreaming about San Francisco hotels, where folks brought a man’s morning coffee in a china cup.
GARRETT GOT OUT A SKILLET and a tin of lard, even went so far as to crack a few eggs into a blue crockery bowl. He could see the barn door from the window over the sink, in the first thin light of dawn, and he watched until he saw the old man ride out at a good clip.
With a little smile, he set the bowl aside and turned from the window.
Undine stood in the bedroom doorway, one shoulder resting against the framework, the other bare where she’d pulled her wrapper down to entice him. All he’d have to do was cross the room, give that lacy trim a good yank, and her plump breasts would be there for the taking.
Undine stuck out her lower lip. “Your daddy worked me up into a dither and left me wanting,” she complained pettishly. “What are you going to do about it, Garrett Donagher?”
“Plenty,” he said, and went to her.
The bedroom was shadowy, though a little light crept in through the window over the washstand, with its china pitcher and bowl.
Garrett opened Undine’s robe and feasted his eyes on her even before he thought to kick the door shut behind them.
“Turn—the—key,” Undine gasped between hungry kisses.
“He’s gone,” Garrett told her. There were times when a man had to take his time to please a woman, but this wasn’t one of them. Undine pulled out of his arms, laid herself sideways on the bed and opened her legs to him.
He unbuttoned his pants.
“Not yet,” she murmured, shaking her head from side to side on the rumpled sheets. “Use your mouth on me, Garrett.”
He’d sooner have rammed into her, satisfied himself, satisfied her, too, but if he refused her, she’d make him pay. So he knelt between her legs, parted her, and helped himself to the goods.
She moaned and hemmed him in with those legs of hers, her hands in his hair, holding him to her, making sure he took care of business.
Her hips began to rise and fall, and he reached up, took hold of her breasts, now fondling, now squeezing.
Undine whimpered and sighed and carried on, louder and louder.
If he’d had time, Garrett would have reckoned that was why he hadn’t heard the door open behind him. He surely did feel the barrel of that pistol press into the nape of his neck, though.
CHAPTER
TEN
WHEN SAM SAW MADDIE crossing the schoolyard the next morning, he figured she’d come to make sure he hadn’t taught Terran any new curse words or how to play cutthroat stud.
He could plead innocent on one of the charges, at least.
Watching her approach, he stopped cranking up that morning’s drinking water, and wondered at the goings-on just beneath and back of his heart. The sunlight turned her chestnut hair to bronze, and her plain, work-aday calico dress looked regal. As she drew closer, he saw the flash in her eyes and the flush on her cheekbones.
He reckoned she’d found out about the poker, then.
He pulled up the bucket and set it at his feet. Neptune, ever helpful, stuck his nose in and lapped.
“Bird is gone,” Maddie said in a loud whisper, coming to stand square in front of him, like a petticoat general fixing to review her troops. She might as well have picked up that bucket and dashed him with the icy contents.
“What?”
Maddie set her jaw. “I had no choice but to let her go,” she said, and he knew by her tone that her stubborn stance was nothing but show. “Garrett Donagher came to the store last night, looking for her. He was drunk and bound to find Bird if he had to tear down the walls to do it.”
“You let him take her?”
The color flared brighter in her cheeks. “Of course I didn’t! There wouldn’t have been a thing I could do to save him, though, if Mr. Vierra hadn’t interceded—”
Sam put up a hand. “Wait,” he said sharply. “Save him? I thought it was Bird Donagher was after.”
Maddie thrust out an impatient breath. For all the gravity of the situation, Sam had a sudden and ferocious yearning to take that beautiful, rebellious face between his rein-calloused hands and kiss Miss Maddie Chancelor into stupefaction.
“It was Garrett who was saved. Bird had the shotgun, and she’d have killed him for sure. That would have made a fine snarl of things, now wouldn’t it?”
Sam rubbed the back of his neck, unable to hide his consternation. “I reckon it would have,” he agreed. He narrowed his eyes. “Where does Vierra figure into all this?”
“Right where I left off,” Maddie replied crisply. “He’s taken her north, to catch a stagecoach or a train for Denver.” A new worry seemed to catch up with her just then; she paused to put a hand to her mouth and her shoulders stooped a little. When Maddie met Sam’s gaze again, her eyes were full of trepidation. “Did she escape one devil only to find herself on the road with another?”
Sam reached out, hesitated, and squeezed her shoulder gently. A charge went through him, stirred up a riot in that strange new landscape that had opened up under his heart. He took a few breaths to steady himself. “Why didn’t you come for me, Maddie?”
She sagged a little, but she didn’t shake his hand off her shoulder, and that gave him a bleak kind of comfort. She gnawed at her lower lip, glanced down at her feet, and finally looked him squarely, resolutely, in the eye. “I was afraid,” she said very softly.
Sam was chagrined. What had he been thinking, chiding Maddie for not coming to fetch him? Donagher had probably lingered outside awhile, watching for a second chance. “You made the right decision,” he allowed. “You wouldn’t have been safe.”
“I wasn’t worried about myself,” she said with spirit and no little defiance.
“Then who—?” The words fell away, like pebbles from a limp slingshot, as the answer came to him, out of nowhere. “Me?” he asked, and for a moment or two, there was no sound save the birds, the rustle of cottonwood leaves and that damn dog slurping up the drinking water.
Maddie clamped her jaw down tight again, looked away and gave one unwilling nod.
Exultation swept through Sam, but he contained it. He had no right or reason to fee
l that way—he’d be riding back up north to Stone Creek, to Abigail, as soon as he’d completed his business in that part of the Territory, and like as not, he’d never lay eyes on Maddie Chancelor again. He’d set his course, tacitly promised to marry the major’s daughter, and he couldn’t go back on his word, even when it was only implied.
Neptune backed away from the water bucket, belched and ran off to chase a butterfly flickering yellow and crimson over the thirsty grass. Sam bent, emptied the pail, put the hook through the handle, and reeled it back down into the well as if it were the most important thing he’d do all day.
It seemed that even the birds and the trees went still.
“Where’s Terran?” Maddie asked when Sam had the bucket clear down and on the way back up again.
“I sent him for the eggs,” he said. “I buy them from Violet’s mama. Fifty cents a basket.”
She touched his arm and he stiffened as surely as if she’d laid a hot poker to his flesh. Felt a flush of embarrassment heat the back of his neck. Damnation, he was acting like a besotted boy, not a full-grown man.
“Sam—” she began, but he never knew what she’d meant to say because just then Terran came bursting through the brush, egg basket in one hand, face contorted with excited horror.
“Sam!” he whooped. “Maddie! Come quick!”
Maddie took the egg basket from Terran, set it down and caught him firmly by the shoulders. Gave him a little shake. “What’s happened?”
Terran’s eyes were huge in his pale face. He made a few false starts before he managed to choke out the news. “Mungo Donagher just showed up at the jailhouse, driving a wagon—” He pulled free of Maddie’s hold and gagged a couple of times before he could go on. “He’s awash in blood. I’ve never seen so much blood. He said it’s Garrett under the tarp in the bed of that buckboard—”
“Dear God,” Maddie gasped.
“Both of you stay right here,” Sam ordered, and headed for the main part of town. Neptune tried to follow, but he sent the dog back with a stern command, and when he glanced over his shoulder, he saw Maddie and Terran staring after him, Maddie with one arm around her brother, as though she was holding him upright.
The Man from Stone Creek Page 12
