It was doubly important now, thought Anna, to recast herself into the role of healer. Since her own near-freezing last week, though she and Quinn had kept as far apart as possible, she sometimes caught him watching her intently. She tried to avoid eye contact, but several times a days, their gazes locked with an almost audible click, and she knew beyond all doubt that he was remembering when he’d held her, the sensation of her bare flesh against his. He was recalling other times, too, when their bodies twined toward ecstasy, as if they’d had forever, not two weeks.
She knew it because she, too, was reliving those lost hours. . . as well as imagining things she had no right to dream of, things that would only serve to hurt them both.
To distract herself, she ordered, “Rub briskly – and use both hands. You’re favoring the left.”
“That’s because this shoulder’s sore as hell,” he snapped.
She felt the corners of her mouth twitch. “I know your little friend there’s small, but maybe he could still provide us with the crucial ingredient to make another poultice.”
“I’m rubbing already. There – satisfied?”
The gold and white kid’s hair now stuck up in all directions. Notion cocked his head at the small intruder and whined in canine confusion.
Anna quirked an eyebrow. “That goat’s looking more like you every minute. Think I’ll call him Ryan.”
Quinn chuckled, an easy sound that reminded Anna of other times they’d laughed together, six years back. The moment choked down to silence as he looked into her face. The warmth in his green eyes made her wonder if he’d forgotten for the moment what she’d done to him . . . and if he’d lost sight of how much hatred he still carried.
The newborn kid broke the silence with a hungry bleat. Gratefully, Anna scooped him back into her arms and told Quinn, “Thank – thank you for drying your new namesake. His mamacita will be worried, and her milk will warm him from the inside out. I’m – I’m going to put the two of them in the feed shed until the weather warms a bit.”
Without waiting for an answer, she stepped back outside and leaned against the door to shut it. For a long time she remained there, eyes closed against the icy wind, a bitter wind that chilled the farthest reaches of her canyon, but not the glowing embers resurrected in her heart.
CHAPTER FIVE
Copper Ridge, Arizona Territory
April 6, 1884
Ward stared out his window and glowered at the icicles. Damned incessant winter had delayed all his plans. He should have been married by this time, were it not for the late ice storm that prevented Judge Clancy’s arrival. Travel all over the northern territory had come to a standstill, not just for days, but weeks. At least the sky had cleared this morning, its blue as bright as a jay’s feather.
The closest fang of ice began to drip, slowly at first, then with a steady plop, plop, plop onto the slushy snow beneath the eaves.
Finally. He poured a shot into his morning coffee, just to help settle the foreboding that gnawed at him like termites at an old log cabin.
Maybe the worst of the snow would melt today. Maybe Clancy would perform the marriage before his housekeeper lost her mind and Miss Lucy lost all patience.
“Why do we have to wait?” the girl asked time after time.
She seemed not to hear his explanation, that there wasn’t another local white man who could do the honors. For a while he half expected her to insist on a local padre, even if the ceremony must be held in Spanish ─ or in Latin.
Ward could imagine the Senator’s reaction if he learned a Mexican Papist officiated for his Protestant daughter’s wedding vows. The old man had insisted the ceremony both proper and expeditious.
Once again the eagerness of both Lucy and her father nagged at him. Once again he wondered why both seemed to desire such haste.
Ward sipped at the coffee. Whatever could be wrong with Worthington’s youngest daughter? He’d watched her carefully these last two weeks, but he saw no signs of either physical or mental defects. She seemed pleased, almost too pleased, with everything about their impending marriage. Except for the delays.
Could she truly love him? He dismissed the wild idea. The two of them barely knew each other. What then? What would he find out, once they were married?
Cameron added a touch more whiskey to his brew.
In addition to his wedding, other important business had also been held up by the weather. Ned Hamby had not yet informed him the outcome of his search for Anna Bennett. Perhaps the snow and ice had only delayed the message. Surely, one woman would be powerless to stop the outlaw and his men, just as she could do nothing to delay his plans to mine the narrow canyon.
He sat behind his huge desk and pulled open the top drawer, where he kept his finest silver nugget. He’d had the other analyzed to see if Luc-Pierre’s wild tale would prove true. Ah, that had been a story for his journal, a tale of luck too late, of love and avarice.
For years, Luc-Pierre had prospected among the mountains of the Arizona Territory, accompanied by a beautiful Paiute bride he’d picked up in his travels. Though he never had much luck, he possessed a generous soul. So when he met a fever-stricken trapper, he and his squaw nursed the fellow back to health. The trapper, a fellow by the name of Jake Chambers, was a charmer, always ready with a wild tale of his reckless youth and daring. He drank Luc-Pierre’s whiskey and flirted with Luc-Pierre’s long-suffering squaw, hinting that he could offer plenty more than an old prospector with pockets full of sand.
Luc-Pierre was elated when the assay on his last samples came back showing high-grade silver. All he could think of was getting back to his woman to celebrate the news. What he came home to, however, was an empty camp. The recovered miner had lured the squaw to follow him.
They hadn’t gotten far. Luc-Pierre shot both of them dead a few days later, in Bottom Dollar, just outside the blacksmith’s shop.
When Frenchman used his knowledge of the rich location where he meant to stake his claim to bargain for his life, Cameron had listened carefully, imagining the profits from the mine. The Frenchman, encouraged by the judge’s attention, even drew a map and produced ore samples. Cameron smiled at the thought. People fearing for their lives could be so very careless. In the end, that carelessness, more even than the murders, cost Luc-Pierre his life.
The hanging had been well-attended, Ward remembered, nearly as festive as a Fourth of July gathering.
But lately, Cameron suspected that the prospector had gotten the last laugh. If he’d known the canyon had an owner, he had certainly kept it to himself.
The judge frowned at the tap at his door. After putting away the silver, he took out some papers and pretended he’d been reading.
“Come in,” he called, his voice gruff with the interruption.
Elena stormed into the room. She carried his customary cuernito on a plate. He noted the fire in her dark eyes just in time to duck to avoid being struck. The hurled plate shattered against the edge of his desk.
“If you do not send Señorita Holy White Daughter of the Senator and her complaining dueña from this house this instant, I swear to you I kill them both ─ and maybe you as well!”
Ward feigned calm long enough to pour an extra shot of whiskey into his coffee. He gazed miserably out at the dripping icicles and wondered if he stood in exactly the right spot, one could fall down and impale him so he wouldn’t have to face this day.
Near Cañon del Sangre de Cristo
April 7, 1884
Ned Hamby’s revolver cleared leather before either of his men could strike the other. “Stick to fists — and outside,” he warned. “I ain’t scrapin’ either of your guts off my boot leather.”
Black Eagle and Hop glared at each other, still furious over their escalating war of words, which had begun over Hop’s unwillingness to take more than two steps out the cabin door to relieve himself. Tired of fighting with each other, both then turned resentful gazes toward their leader. Really, they ought to thank him, Ned thought. If he hadn’t
insisted on keeping their guns in his possession, they’d both be dead by now, killed by the endless days they’d spent holed up inside this miner’s shack. Way he figured it, those two owed him their sorry lives.
“Today’s the day, boys,” Ned announced. If he had to stay here one more hour, he’d likely give in to temptation and shoot both of them himself.
They blinked at him sullenly, angry that only he could give the word to move, yet too eager to escape this hell-hole to argue.
“We’re gonna go find us that woman and take care of our business so I can go home.”
Black Eagle glowered at the crusted-over bean pot. “Maybe she’s got good food.”
“And whiskey,” Ned added.
“And an appreciation for male companionship,” Hop said.
For the first time in many days, the three men shared a smile, a smile that darkened into laughter that would chill the marrow of an honest man.
* * *
Anna tried to chase the melodies from her mind, the same as she’d once chased a pair of swallows from the cabin after they flew down the chimney. Dolorous as tears, the Mexican corridos sang of longing, of the sweet pain of good-byes.
She added yet another handful of dried pinto beans to the sack and wished that she had more to spare. But the food from last year’s disappointing harvest must last until next season, and Quinn’s unexpected presence had already strained her stores.
She watched him as he brought in another armload of firewood. He moved like a strong and sound beast now. He’d even found the energy to sharpen an old razor to shave his sandy beard. Yet new seams in his mended clothing bore testimony to his hidden wound. Even so, it was difficult to imagine how close to death he’d been when he was left here.
Just as you were, a voice inside her sang, then shifted into Spanish to continue its dark hymn of desolation.
Clearly, Ryan’s presence had awakened something in her, something she almost wished to banish to the half-remembered territory of her dreams. The music licked like spicy flame around her memories from the canyon: the old woman who had found her, cured her stubbornly despite her wish to die. The songs Señora Valdez sang as Anna healed, foreign songs that dissolved the false dreams of the cantina ballads Anna had once sung. The music whose strands once trapped her in a web of silken snares.
Amid the corridos she heard them, the faint echoes of a nightmare far too real to be a dream.
“Sing somethin’ pretty, Annie Faith,” Ned Hamby demanded as he kicked her stomach. “Sing for us, you stinkin’ bitch!”
Then coarse laughter . . . they’d laughed at her because she’d told them . . . that she could not remember any words. She suddenly recalled clearly lying there, curled up against their onslaughts, wiping at the blood that trickled from her mouth like crimson notes. She remembered seeing for the first time the sparkling blade in Hamby’s fist and realizing that he meant to plunge it into her in some deadly parody of sex.
Anna moaned and realized that what she’d told them yet held true. Even after all these years, her mind could not recall a single English song. Dried beans bounced off the tabletop and landed on the floor.
“What’s wrong?” Quinn asked. “You look as if you’re rubbing elbows with your granny’s ghost.”
“Not her ghost . . . one of mine.”
He looked at her strangely, as he often had since that night when he had warmed her body close to his. She imagined he was still trying to reconcile her with the woman she’d once been, the woman who had wounded him so deeply. She wanted to laugh at how he tried to make sense of her, as if she were a puzzle to be solved, but one with razor edges that could hurt him if he tried too hard. Since that evening ─ since their sweet and stillborn kiss ─ he’d kept his distance, both physically and in conversation. She wondered if he knew how happy that made her.
And yet . . . this morning, as she was packing supplies for his departure, she almost wished that they had better spent their time. Instead of skittering around the edges of this tiny cabin, perhaps together at its center, they might have trod closer to forgiveness, or maybe something sweeter still. Perhaps she should have even told him about the little grave. The one beside the resting-place of Señora Valdez. The one that might mean something to him, too.
Quickly, she dismissed the ridiculous idea. The tale was too personal, too sacred to share with anyone. Not now, six years later. Even if he cared, it would never stop him from returning to his own life now that he was feeling better.
Reina del cielo! Is that what this was about? Was she such a fool that she’d already grown accustomed to his presence? Had isolation dimmed her senses so she didn’t realize he could never fill the void that death and music had left inside her heart ─ a void she’d never fully realized before Quinn’s reappearance?
Cursing her stupidity, she began to wrap the cornmeal tortillas she had made. She’d never make a wise old curandera if she didn’t drive the silly girl out of her soul.
Only a few feet away, he rolled an extra blanket she had given him for his long walk. His voice, when he spoke, took her by surprise. “I saw something the day you lost your horse, when you were naked and you gave me back the blanket.”
Despite her mood, she couldn’t stop amusement from quirking up the corners of her mouth. “Santa Maria, Ryan. You mean to tell me you’ve been so long without a woman you don’t even recognize it anymore?”
“Not that. The scar. That long one on your belly. I was wondering about it.”
Just like that, her gush of playfulness froze over. Slowly, as though great age had stiffened all her joints, she turned away from him.
“Anna, tell me what they did to you, and I will pay them back.” His voice had lost the strictly-business tone he’d kept these past two weeks, betraying what sounded strangely like affection.
“Pay back your own wounds, not mine. I don’t want anybody’s blood. I just want to be left alone here, en mi querencia where I can heal.”
“Your what? Either quit speaking Spanish to me, or tell me what you mean. I want to understand you for a change.”
“My querencia ─ the place where I belong, this canyon.”
“Have you ever thought it’s not a place where you belong, but with a person?”
But I am with her here. The canyon and the grave were inseparable within her mind, and Anna knew that she was bound to both.
He laid his hand on her shoulder. She enjoyed the solid warmth of it and wondered, once he left, when anyone would touch her next. Oh, there would be times when she would lay her hands on others, in an attempt to comfort or to heal them. But who would ever lay his hands on her?
“You’re not suggesting that I belong with you? After what happened between us, after what you know I was?” Despite the absurdity of what she asked, she hoped he wouldn’t move his hand again, not yet. His touch would have to last her for a long, long time.
“Of course not. But a beautiful young woman isn’t meant to be out here alone. For one thing, it’s not safe.” He turned her toward him and drew her close. “I think you learned that six years back, when they gave you that scar. It’s from a knife wound, isn’t it?”
She wanted to pull away from his intrusions, but his strong arms held her tight. With a sigh, she nodded her chin against his shoulder for an answer.
“Anna,” he continued, “there are plenty of men in these parts who came west looking for a second chance. Men who don’t want anyone to ask too many questions about who they were or what they did before. They’d be so grateful for a sweet-faced woman like you, they wouldn’t want to know about your past. Why, I have a deputy, Max Wilson, who’d sell his soul for a chance at meeting you.”
“Your deputy?” She freed herself from his embrace, anger underscoring each word. “You must not like him very much.”
He hesitated, as if he’d realized that he’d trod on dangerous ground. “I didn’t mean him personally. I was thinking somewhere farther, where we wouldn’t have to see each other. At least no
t very often.”
She felt ridiculous for imagining he might want her for himself ─ her, a woman he had bought with gifts once, a woman who’d repaid his kindness with an act of utter selfishness. She should have known even a former card cheat wouldn’t want a traitorous thief.
“I don’t want to worry that those voices you heard were something more than hallucinations from the cold. I don’t want to lie awake nights thinking of what might happen if they come back here after you.” He reached out to touch her thick braid, as if he wished to stroke it.
She flipped aside the length of golden hair. “They’ll be dead. That’s what will happen. They won’t get close enough to hurt me again. Not ever.”
“You don’t even have a horse to get away. Come with me instead. We’ll walk out of here together."
“So you can fix me up with some nice man?” She breathed the words into his ear, intoxicated by the closeness of him, the strong, safe feeling of his arms around her.
He turned his head toward hers, until their mouths were so close she could almost taste his words. “I think I have one in mind right now.”
* * *
The closer they drew, the more helpless Quinn became. And feeling helpless with her left him angry. But not so angry that he couldn’t smell the scent of her, clean and fragrant as spring wildflowers.
The blond siren had had to bathe last night, as if she knew how difficult it had been these past two weeks to keep his thoughts ─ and hands ─ off of her. As if she guessed how wanting her was turning his soul inside out. Perhaps she did know, and behind that makeshift curtain she’d set up before the fire, she was laughing at the way her vixen’s tricks tormented him. Surely, she must realize the effect of her shapely silhouette as the fire’s glow cast it on the cloth.
“I can’t wait anymore. I’m starting to smell worse than the dog,” she’d called over the flimsy barrier between them. He heard the water splashing inside the washtub she’d dragged near the hearth and laboriously filled with heated snow-water.
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