“The woman who come here with your new señora — the one who never smile!”
This time, when Cameron’s jaw dropped, his shock was genuine. Miss Rathbone? “But who — why? I thought you’d put her on the stage by now.”
“El curandero say she eat the poison — the poison that mi prima, my own cousin, take from him.”
“Elena? Horse shit! Elena would do no such thing!” Ward argued.
Heedless of his outburst, Manuel pressed on. “Your wife — we can no find her.”
Elena! Oh, dear God! Cameron knew how much the surly Bostonian Rathbone bitch annoyed her — just as she irritated everyone — but he couldn’t imagine Elena doing anything to harm her on the day of her departure. But Lucy was another matter.
Then he remembered Elena’s angry words as clearly as if she’d just shouted them. 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!
His mistress’s temper was no less fiery than her passion; he’d imagined her outrage would pass. He’d certainly never believed that she had ever truly expected him to marry her instead. Why, it would be unthinkable!
A wave of nausea made his bowels feel weak and watery. Damn it to hell! How would he ever explain this to the Senator? A dew of sweat popped out on his forehead, and he could almost hear his grand political career shattering beneath the weight of Manuel’s news.
“I’m sure we’ll find your wife.” Hadley placed a reassuring hand on Cameron’s elbow, then turned his horse around.
Cameron followed, glad to have with him the big rancher, a man who owed him favors beyond counting. Today, the judge realized, might turn out to be a good one for calling in some of his markers, for God alone knew what kind of mess awaited him at home.
* * *
Though the air had warmed considerably, Lucy’s trembling only increased as Horace told his tale. Her mule, now tractable enough, walked quietly alongside his horse across a rugged landscape, beneath the bluest sky that she had ever seen.
“Dear God. I’m so sorry for what he did to your family and all the others. I never imagined I’d married such a monster,” Lucy said. Her stomach roiled with the thought that, legally, at least, she belonged to the foul man.
Horace shook his head. “He must have mistreated you as well, or you would have asked to go to him for help.”
Lucy laid a palm across the gentle swell of her midsection. “He was horrible — but — but it’s not as though I didn’t deserve it.”
“I don’t believe it. What could anyone like you ever have done to merit his abuse?” Horace asked.
In that moment, Lucy saw something so precious in his blue-eyed gaze, something she hadn’t realized how badly she missed. Trust. She felt absolutely certain that no matter what she told him, he’d believe her. Months ago, she had thrown away that luxury for the pleasure of a moment — and sown herself a harvest of shame and misery. It occurred to her that she might tell him anything and he’d believe her.
Instead of tempting her, that knowledge freed her and made her want to share the truth. All of it. All the things she’d held inside her for so long rose like gorge in her throat.
She cast her eyes downward, too embarrassed to look him in the eye as she spoke. “I’m going to have a baby, Horace. I came here because the judge was my only chance to salvage something from my ruin.”
“Oh, Lucy . . .” He sounded comforting rather than judgmental.
She continued, for the relief of telling outweighed the pain. “I made such terrible mistakes. I flirted outlandishly with our assistant coachman, a young man known for his affairs. He said things to me, things so wicked and exciting — even more so because I knew how improper such a relationship would be. I was a virgin, but I was no victim. At the time, I truly wanted him.”
Her face burned with shame, and she imagined how red her fair skin must appear. But it hardly mattered. All that was important was the telling — all of it.
“It only happened once, and we were caught,” Lucy explained. “The young man fled before my father could have him punished. I’m certain that he never gave my plight another thought.”
She looked up, overwhelmed by the irony of a different memory. “Once, when my older brother still lived at home, he was caught out in the woodshed with our new cook. Father told him it was very bad, but I noticed how he clapped him on the back and grinned, almost as if the whole affair made him very proud.”
“I take it he treated your indiscretion differently,” Horace said. Neither shock nor horror tainted his words.
Lucy laughed. “Oh, dear, yes. One would think I’d set the world aflame — or at the very least, Connecticut. You see, I’d had the incredibly poor taste to be female — and be caught in such a manner that my actions became widely known. I was so mortified, I wished that I could die — and I was very much afraid my father would oblige me. Yet he’s a United States Senator, and I’m sure he felt that murdering his daughter would put a damper on his standing in Washington’s social circle.”
“So was it his idea to marry you to Cameron?”
“Oh, yes. ‘A perfect solution,’ he told me. ‘Why, the man practically worships at my feet. He’d give anything to ally himself with Worthingtons,’” Lucy explained, “Besides, the judge was visiting from the Arizona Territory, too remote a place for him to have heard the rumors of my disgrace. Father arranged it all so deftly.”
“Did he know you were in a — er — delicate condition?”
“Of course not. At first, I didn’t know myself. And once I did, I only prayed to marry quickly enough that Ward Cameron wouldn’t guess.”
“But Cameron does know, doesn’t he?”
She nodded and squeezed her eyes shut at the horror of the memory of their wedding night, just days before. “I told him just after we were married. He — he was beastly. Oh, God, the way he used me . . .”
Her voice — and her composure dissolved into deep sobs. She lifted her hands to hide her face.
Horace pulled his horse to a stop and dismounted, then helped her down from the mule when it paused to chew a patch of grass. Then he held her, his hands stroking her hair and back as one might comfort a small child.
When she recovered, she felt a sudden rush of shame at her tears — so weak and unseemly, as her father might have told her. “I shouldn’t do this,” she muttered. “He had every right. I’d tricked him into marriage — and I am his wife.”
Horace pulled her closer. “We’ll have to see what we can do about that.”
“There’s nothing — nothing I can do. I have no money, no place to go. I should have stayed my course.”
“And gone back to Elena? You were right before. It’s very possible that no one would believe your accusations, and then she would kill you.”
Lucy stared up into his face. “Perhaps that’s what I deserve. I was proud and wanton, and I was dishonorable to marry under false pretenses.”
“You made mistakes, but you married Cameron and came to a new land to protect your child. In that act, there is great honor.”
He might believe that, but Lucy knew she’d been thinking only of how to save her own miserable existence. Motherly emotions hadn’t figured into it at all, only a base desire to survive.
Horace reached under her chin with gentle fingers and turned her face upwards, toward his. “And I will help you, Lucy. I swear it on my father’s grave.”
* * *
“Shoulda done this at night,” Hop said, staring at the dancing flames and the dark, smoky column rising above the canyon walls. “Fire this pretty’s wasted on a day this bright.”
“Better toss in that old Mexican, too,” Ned answered. Unlike Hop, who always took a special delight in fire, he didn’t give a damn about watching the flames’ dance, but whenever possible, he liked to get rid of bodies. Despite Cameron’s influence, someone would likely come after him if he left behind too
many corpses.
They walked to the side of the cabin opposite the corral and feed shed to find the old man’s body.
“Wasn’t it right here?” Hop asked, gesturing toward a patch of flattened dried leaves.
Ned looked around. “Somethin’ musta drug it off.”
“A bear?” Hop’s head swung rapidly from side to side, lifting his lank, red-brown hair in oily clumps. Hop had a special dread of bears. He’d told the story several times about how a grizzly in the Sierras tore apart his pap.
“Could be.” Ned shrugged. The more likely culprit would be coyotes or perhaps a cougar, but it never hurt to remind Hop that despite the killings, rapes, and burnings, he wasn’t far off bein’ a snot-nosed kid.
Hop peered intently at the ground, his gun drawn and at the ready. Backing away from where the body had lain, he said, “But I don’t see no tracks.”
Wood cracked, and Hop screamed suddenly. Before Ned could figure what was happening, Hop fell backward on the fallen needles and half-rotted leaves that blanketed the ground.
Ned saw the jagged piece of wood sticking up, sharp as a blade, out of the soil. Several drops of blood, beaded near its tip, ran down the side.
Hop howled with pain, grasping his deeply punctured lower leg. The onyx rosary had snaked its way out of his pocket. Beside the jet black cross lay another, this one larger and of wood.
“A grave marker,” Hamby said, and a chill gripped him, despite the bright heat of the fire crackling nearby. Hop had stepped on and broke off a wood grave marker. And it had bitten back.
“Forget the old man,” Ned suggested. “Let’s get your leg bound up to stop the bleeding. Then we’re getting out of here.”
For once, Hop didn’t argue. Instead, he struggled to his feet and hobbled toward where the horses waited.
Neither of them bothered to pick up the string of onyx beads, far blacker than a night sky, far warmer than their hearts.
* * *
Ward Cameron arrived home to a scene right out of Bedlam. Coming in from the bright sunshine, it took his eyes several moments to adjust to the dining room’s dim light. But even in those seconds, he could hear Elena wailing hoarsely, alternating between fits of begging, cursing, and denials. As his vision cleared, he saw her, bound hand and foot to a straight-backed chair and screaming at an old man at her right. Beside her, the thin old Mexican sat impassively, completely heedless of both her pleas and the still figure lying on the floor.
Cameron remembered seeing the old blind Mexican a few times on the streets of Copper Ridge. Ward thought he was some sort of medicine man, the kind that ignorant have-nots substituted for real doctors. From the sounds of Elena and the old man’s complete stillness, he might well have added deafness to his deficits.
Walking past the pair, Cameron approached the woman lying on his Persian rug, her shoes sticking out from beneath the blanket that had been draped over her body.
“Is that – is that your wife?” Hadley asked, standing behind him. He held a blue bandanna to his mouth to block the dreadful stench.
For one horrifying moment, Cameron wondered if it could be. His world careened as he once more imagined himself trying to delicately word the telegram he would have to send the Senator, her father. But he quickly realized the shape beneath the blanket must be Miss Rathbone’s, for both the figure and the feet were far too large to be those of his delicate bride.
“Where is Mrs. Cameron?” he asked the two Mexicans sternly.
Elena stopped screaming and blinked at him, as if only now noticing he’d come into the room. Then she renewed her pleas, more loudly, only this time she addressed him instead of the old man.
“I did not do this thing!” Elena’s voice, raw from shrieking, hissed in places, making her difficult to understand. “Manuel and Tío Viejo make a terrible mistake! It was her, Señor, the little bitch you bring here to destroy our happiness! Anyone could see how much she hated that old woman! Please!”
Thankfully, after that her words became inaudible, save for a few screamed snatches now and then. Seeing Elena’s state, he didn’t credit her accusation one bit. Lucy was as arrogant a schemer to ever come his way, but she was not a murderess.
He spoke to the old man. “Where is my wife? Tell me!”
It felt disconcerting, waiting for the old Mexican to answer. Whenever Cameron’s gaze leapt to Elena, Ward saw her jaw still working and her eyes gleaming bright with madness. Her thick, black hair, which he’d caressed so many times, cascaded wildly to her waist. She resembled more a witch than the woman who had for two years given him such exquisite bed-sport.
The old man might be blind, but his expression brimmed with a depth of understanding. At last, he turned his clouded gaze toward Cameron. Gesturing toward Elena, he said sternly, “She never would have come to this if you had not humiliated her with this Americana. She has been always far too proud for her own good.”
“Goddamn it!” Cameron roared. “I’ve asked you twice, where’s Lucy? Tell me now, before I throw you in the hoosegow!”
“Where she is I cannot say, but when I thought to find this poor broken child’s mother, I found my mule gone. Perhaps your new bride seeks help. Or perhaps she merely runs. Perhaps, even, from you.”
“Old man, I have been appointed by the President of these United States to stand in judgment! Do not presume to judge my marriage or my soul!”
The impertinent old son of a bitch dared laugh at him, at him, a man who had ordered men hung, whether or not they deserved it.
“As you wish, Señor,” the Mexican said calmly. “I now leave your judgment to Dios, who judges all of us, even your compadre, el Presidente Señor Arthur.”
Furious, Cameron stormed toward the front door. He bumped into Manuel, who’d just come in from tying up the horses.
“Take care of this mess,” he said, gesturing toward the dining room. “Have the undertaker put the old woman in the cheapest box he can build — nobody here knows her. And for God’s sake, keep Elena locked up until I can get back.”
He turned to Hadley. “Coming with me, Roy?”
The rancher nodded firmly. One thing Cameron appreciated about Hadley, he remembered who’d settled that water rights problem he’d been having with some dirt poor sheep farmers. Cameron could have set both Hadley and his hired gun swinging for the way they’d shot up those stupid mutton punchers. Now he’d do whatever was needed to help Cameron find Lucy and bring her back here, where she belonged.
Whether or not his young wife wanted to return.
* * *
Hamby was surprised at first that Hop didn’t complain, considering the blood still dripping down his trouser leg. His jaw, finely fuzzed with adolescent whiskers, remained set, though pain clouded his bulging gray eyes.
Then he realized that Hop must be playing possum. He no doubt remembered what had happened to old Pete when he whined, and he’d learned his lesson well.
Maybe too well. Hop kept riding with that bleeding, he was gonna fall out of that saddle, leaving Ned completely on his own. The idea was not without appeal. For months — years, in fact, Ned had cursed the brawling, swearing, thieving murderers he rode with. Leading them was like holding a grizzly on a leash. No matter how many steaks you fed it, it was as likely to turn on you as do your bidding.
But despite both bickering and betrayal, the men had formed a sort of pack, efficient as hell when it came time to do their deadly work. Thinking of the killing that would still be needful, Hamby decided he could afford to be a little generous when it came to the boy’s punctured leg. Besides, sitting on this horse was pulling something awful at Ned’s stitches. He felt like his innards were trying to bust out of his chewed-up body, like a tattered pillow whose feathers were popping through the seams.
“Maybe we should hole up in the caves a spell, give that leg a yours a chance to mend,” Ned suggested, as if his stitches didn’t feel about to explode. The cabin would have been a damn sight more comfortable, but he wasn’t sorry
Hop had set the fire. Those caves had always worked on his nerves, but his worst misgivings were nothing compared to the way he’d felt this morning in that clearing by the cabin.
He thought back to the nightmare image of his mama. This time, he could hear the deep coughs racking her frail body, could see the bloody foam that soaked into her sad gray handkerchief. And not long after he’d seen Mama, Hop had gotten stuck with a broken cross — off of a grave.
Ned shuddered. No, he wasn’t sorry they had burned the place. He wouldn’t spend another night down there for all the judge’s gold.
* * *
“Can I talk to you in private?” Max asked.
Quinn glanced back toward his deputy and noticed how he shifted in the saddle, the way he always did when something was bothering him. About half the time, it meant he wanted to see if Quinn brought whiskey.
With the slightest lift of the reins, he slowed Titania. Anna said, “Notion and I will ride up ahead a bit.”
“Don’t get too far away,” Quinn said. After her bay horse topped a hillock, he said to Max. “Sorry, but I didn’t bring a flask this time.”
Max shook his head. “It’s not that. It’s — on that last rise, I happened to look behind us. I saw riders, following.”
“You think Carl Stark and One-Arm Ramsey decided they weren’t too busy to join us?” Stark and Ramsey always offered handshakes (though Ramsey’s was left-handed) and drinks to their success, but as folks around here put it, both were about as useful as tits on a boar hog.
Max’s grin looked forced. “You’ve always been a dreamer, Quinn.”
Taking his cue from Max’s expression, Quinn grew more somber. “How many, do you think?” Max shook his head. “I’m not sure. Four, five, maybe more. Couldn’t tell for certain, and couldn’t recognize anybody that far away.”
“Damn,” Quinn said. “It’s getting close to time to make camp, and we can’t risk anybody sneaking up on us after dark. Could you at least tell whether they were Indians?”
Last he’d heard, Geronimo and his Apache raiders were somewhere in Mexico, but keeping track of anybody in the vast, mostly unpopulated territory was guesswork at best.
Canyon Song Page 24
