He swatted a fly, scowling at the fact that it existed at all. He thought it was too early in the season for flies. There would be enough of the pesky things around once the real heat of summer set in at the stockyards on the other side of the railroad tracks. He watched the same two young women coming toward him again, packages in their hands. They stopped to ask how his wound was healing.
“I’m doing fine, thanks,” he answered.
“Did you see the fancy train that pulled in at the depot a while ago?” the banker’s daughter, Elaine Byron, asked him. “Three of the prettiest train cars I ever saw. Mrs. Herrod was at the depot, and she said they must belong to someone very rich.”
Colt’s smile faded some. “That so? Maybe I’ll go take a look.”
“Are you going to the dance Saturday, Mr. Travis?” the other said, quickly reddening with embarrassment that she had asked at all.
Colt folded his arms, towering over both of them. He allowed himself a closer look, both girls plain, but pretty just from their youth, young breasts untouched, innocent eagerness in their eyes. “I expect I’ll try to make it.”
“Then we’ll both save a dance for you,” Elaine answered.
Colt grinned. “I’d like that.”
They smiled bashfully. “Have you really done all those things that writer is saying in the newspaper?” Elaine said, moving her eyes over him suggestively.
Colt had to grin at her youthful attempt at being seductive. “I haven’t been reading those stories,” he answered. “The man has pestered me to death. I hope he’s been telling the truth.”
“Oh, that you were once a mountain man, that you’ve lived with Indians and hunted buffalo, all sorts of exciting things,” Elaine answered. “Are you really from Texas?”
“I was pretty young then. I’ve even lost most of my drawl, but people tell me it’s still there sometimes. I can’t ever tell myself. What do you think?”
“Oh, we can still tell,” the blacksmith’s daughter answered. Her mother called to her from across the street then, and the two young women gave Colt their best smiles before leaving him, giggling all the way across the street. Colt laughed lightly, shaking his head and putting his cigarette back to his lips to take another drag. He watched them cross the street, scanned others across the way.
It was then he noticed someone standing and watching him—a woman who even from this distance he could tell had a beautiful shape to her and was elegantly dressed. He felt as though the blood were draining out of him as she stepped off the boardwalk and started across the street, looking hesitant, almost as though she might not make it all the way on her own. He knew that body, that walk, that air of dignity and wealth, but he could hardly believe it could be who he thought it was.
A wagon clattered past, and she waited, then kept coming. She was dressed in black, the bodice of her dress tightly fitted to her slender waist and hips, then flaring out slightly just below the hips and flowing into a short gathered train at the back. The high neck of the dress was adorned with a necklace of purple gems set in gold, and a row of purple buttons down the front added the only color to the dress. Her gloves and boots were a matching purple, the black velvet hat on her head trimmed in purple ribbon and displaying small purple feathers.
She was all elegance and beauty, her blond hair pulled back at the sides and coiffed into a cascade of curls. She carried a little purple handbag, but when she came closer Colt noticed none of the accessories. He saw only the face, thinner, the blue eyes showing deep tragedy—and there was a thin scar on her left cheek. Where had that come from? Where had she come from?
She came closer, watching his eyes, the usual bright smile with which she used to greet him gone. There was only a look of deep remorse, and her lower lip quivered slightly when she stepped up onto the boardwalk to stand only a few feet from him, holding back as though a bit afraid. “Hello, Colt.”
Colt took the cigarette from his lips and dropped it, stomping it out. “Sunny,” he managed to say when he finally found his voice. “What in God’s name are you doing here?”
Sunny could not help admiring his powerful build, the way his denim pants fit him, the snakeskin boots, the gun slung low on his hip. He wore a blue shirt and a leather vest, a leather-strung turquoise stone at his neck, the first few buttons of his shirt undone. His hair was short now. She could see a few dark waves from under his wide-brimmed hat. Still so handsome, she thought. He would be thirty-two now, and here she was twenty-seven. Maybe for a man like him she didn’t even compare anymore to the sweet young things with whom he had just been flirting. Maybe he was even interested in one of them. Maybe she was a stupid fool for coming here at all and butting into his life again.
“I…we have to talk,” she told him, wondering if it was really her speaking. She felt removed from herself, felt as though she were floating in some kind of unreal world, could hardly sense the boardwalk beneath her feet. After all these weeks of searching, it seemed incredible she could walk across a street and find him so easily. She had looked for the sheriff’s office, and here he was. Somehow she had thought it would be harder than this, and there had been times when she felt like he was some kind of distant dream who didn’t exist anymore.
But he did exist, and he stood in front of her. To her devastation she saw his first look of surprise and the hint of lingering love quickly replaced by something else. Yes, there it was, the hurt, the hatred.
“Talk?” His eyes moved over her. “What the hell about? It’s a little late for talking, isn’t it?” He looked past her. “Where is your beloved husband?”
A few people were beginning to stare. Sunny closed her eyes and grasped a railing. “Please, Colt. Is there someplace where we can be alone?”
He let out a bitter snicker. “No, thanks. We’ve been alone before, remember? It was the biggest mistake we ever made. What the hell is this, Sunny? Do you actually enjoy doing this to me? You wait until I just begin to think I can go on with my life without you, and then you show up again! Jesus, Sunny, I’m a man with more than a little pride,” he nearly growled. “How did you find me anyway? I suppose a woman of your wealth can hunt down anyone she wants and bandy him about like one of your damn tennis balls. Where’s Blaine? Did you decide he couldn’t be a part of your life either?”
“Colt, stop it!” She put a shaking hand to her face, as though to cover her scar. “Blaine is dead. He drowned at sea last September.” She clung to the railing, looking away from him.
“Dead!” Colt felt light-headed from a myriad of emotions. A soldier came out from the jail and spoke to him for a moment, and Colt struggled to keep his composure until the man left. He stepped closer to Sunny then, wanting to throw her out into the street, yet wanting to hold her. Could a man love and hate the same woman with equal passion? “Don’t tell me that just because Blaine is dead you think you can come running to me and pick up where we left off! What the hell kind of man do you take me for, Sunny?”
Her shoulders jerked in a sob, and Colt sensed she was nearly ready to pass out. “It isn’t…like that. I have to…tell you something. Please, Colt, where…can we talk?”
“Jesus,” he muttered. She felt him move away from her, heard him tell someone inside he would have to be gone for a while. He grasped her arm, and she felt the old fire move through her but sensed only coldness and anger on his part. He walked so fast that she had to hurry to keep up. He led her to Dancer, lifting her as though she weighed no more than a child. He plopped her on the horse and mounted up behind her, reaching around her to pick up the reins. He turned Dancer and headed out of town.
***
“I’ve been looking for you for nearly three months,” Sunny said, for the first time in her life feeling awkward in his arms.
“I don’t want to hear it,” he answered. “Just wait until we get someplace where we can stop.”
Sunny
wondered if he knew how badly she was shaking—to see him again, looking so wonderful; to have his arms around her, arms that once held her so lovingly; to be so close…If she turned her face, it would be only inches from his own. It was all as horribly painful as she feared it would be. He was so angry, so untouchable. In all the years she had known him, in all their other encounters, never once had he been like this, so cool and distant.
Colt headed Dancer toward a cottonwood tree near a stream, wondering in turn if she realized what it did to him to have her suddenly appear out of nowhere, to have to sit with her almost smack in his lap, to want to hold her and shove her off the horse both at the same time. Was this another torment, another short encounter that would leave him reeling? He halted Dancer and climbed down, wincing slightly from the lingering pain in his side. He reached up for her, and their eyes held as she let him lower her. He could feel her ribs, thought how terribly thin she was, noticed again the scar on her cheek.
“Are you all right now?” she asked when he set her on her feet. “I read you were wounded.” She turned away. “That’s how I found you—an article in the Omaha newspaper about some big shootout over water rights.”
He turned and tied Dancer to a low tree branch. “My luck,” he grumbled. “Yeah, I’m fine.” He turned, but her back was to him. “I probably should say I’m sorry about Blaine, but I can’t. I just wish he would have died a little sooner, like before you married him! You wanted to talk—so talk.” He reached into an inside vest pocket and pulled out a cigarette paper. Sunny turned, watching him prepare a cigarette as she had seen him do in happier times.
“You shouldn’t be sorry for Blaine even if you wanted to be. He’s the reason for the scar on my cheek.”
Colt stopped what he was doing and met her eyes. “How?”
She reddened a little, turned away again. “He beat me—not just a few slaps like some men might do, although even that much is unforgivable as far as I’m concerned. This was fists, my face, my stomach, my ribs. I was bedridden for weeks. I almost died from internal bleeding, and I…I lost a baby—a baby he knew nothing about.”
Colt sealed the cigarette but didn’t light it. He walked a few feet away from her, and for a moment there was nothing but the sound of a soft wind and birds singing. “Why?” He finally spoke up, their backs to each other.
“Tom Canary,” she answered. “You probably remember him from that day we returned and met with U.P. men about the Indians. He told Blaine I had gone riding alone with you before Blaine and I married. He said…you had won after all…called me several names I don’t care to repeat…made it out to be something dirty and sinful, just like—” Her voice choked. “Like…Vince did.”
“Dammit, Sunny!” Colt turned and walked closer to her. “Why in hell didn’t you come to me! Why didn’t you trust me to help you? For God’s sake, I’ve faced every danger there is! If you had told me Vince threatened my life, I could have been on the lookout. Jesus Christ, I’ve been taking care of myself in dangerous situations since I was fourteen years old!”
“It wasn’t just that,” she answered, turning to face him. “It was what he said he’d tell you about my mother and grandmother! Do you know how I felt when he told me that? Right after I spend two days with you, being intimate with you while engaged to someone else, my brother tells me what my mother was! Vince made me out to be hardly better than a harlot! He said you’d think of me the same way if you knew! He said others knew about my mother, that others were just waiting for me to show myself to be like her and the gossip about her would start all over again if I brought you into the family. He said you probably already thought of me that way, that you were probably laughing about how you got under Sunny Landers’s skirts!”
Colt turned in a circle, raising his hands in frustration. “Is that all the trust you had in me? After all the years we were friends and longed to be lovers, a few words out of Vince’s mouth and you’re afraid to come to me with the truth? I loved you, Sunny!” He came closer, towering over her. “Love means accepting everything about a person, good and bad! And what your mother was doesn’t make you bad! You let Vince make you think that way, and you didn’t put enough trust in my love to come to me!”
He was so close, shouting the words, needing to get them out. Sunny cringed, putting an arm over her face, memories of Blaine’s tirade becoming vivid. She tripped over a tree root as she backed away and fell. Colt reached down to help her up and she cringed, screaming for him not to hit her. Only then did it become clear to Colt that her beating had left lasting effects on her, and although he didn’t know anymore how he felt about her himself, the thought of Blaine beating her made him feel crazy with frustration. How could any man hit someone like Sunny, hit any woman, for that matter. A man had to be one hell of a bastard to do something like that.
He leaned over her, and she jumped when he touched her shoulder. “Is that what you think, that I’d hit you? Me? For God’s sake, Sunny, I’ve done a lot of things in my life, but hitting a woman has never been one of them. I thought you knew me so well.”
She remained sitting, breaking into sobbing. “Oh, God, Colt, you don’t know what it was like…finding out about my mother…marrying Blaine…all of it. I didn’t know enough about men…how they thought about women that way…to be certain you would still…love me…if you knew. I made such a mess of everything. I loved you so. I still love you. I’ve…never loved anybody else. Just don’t hate me. That’s all…I ask. You don’t have to love me. Just don’t despise me, and don’t hurt me.”
He tossed aside the still-unlit cigarette and grasped her wrists, pulling her hands away from her face and looking again at the scar—a scar on his beautiful Sunny. She sat shivering and weeping and looking much too thin. “My God, what have Vince and Blaine done to you? What have I done to you? I never should have let you go back alone that day.”
“It wasn’t…your fault. It’s never been your fault,” she sobbed.
He kept hold of her arms. “Come on. Get up, Sunny. This isn’t the Sunny I knew. Don’t do this.”
He helped her to her feet. “The Sunny you knew…died the day she got married.” She wept.
Colt put an arm around her and led her to a spot of soft grass, making her sit down under the cottonwood tree. He sat beside her, taking off his hat and running a hand through his hair. “Just calm down and I promise not to yell anymore,” he told her. He leaned back against the tree, his heart still torn between love and hate. “And for God’s sake, I can’t believe you think I would hurt you physically. It takes a hell of a coward to do something like that.” He sighed with disgust. “Why don’t you tell me why you’re here,” he said. “You had to know how insulting and cruel it would be to come running to me because your husband is dead.”
She took a handkerchief from her handbag and blew her nose. “Yes, I know,” she answered. “There is nothing I can do, Colt, about how you might feel about me now. I would never expect you to…come running back. I know I hurt you. But you have to know I never meant to hurt you. I was afraid…for your life, for what others would say about you, how ugly they might try to make our relationship look even if Vince didn’t have you killed. It was…the news about my mother that destroyed my trust, Colt. I was in shock. All my life I had been told what a sweet, beautiful young woman she was, how much Father…loved her. I knew you were probably familiar with common prostitutes…from the way you lived before you loved me. I was afraid you would…picture me like them…look at me with shame and disappointment. I would rather have you hate me.”
He shook his head in wonder at how convincing Vince must have been, how mercilessly he must have come down on her. He got up again, feeling restless and frustrated, wishing he could think straight. He put his hat back on and searched for the unused cigarette. Sunny noticed his slight limp with an aching heart.
“You still haven’t been clear about why you’re here now.�
�� He found the cigarette and picked it up, blowing grass off it and lighting it while he waited for an answer. He took a deep drag, turning to look at her when she still did not answer. He saw something close to terror in her eyes.
He frowned, keeping the cigarette between his lips. “What is it, Sunny?” God, she looked pitiful. He didn’t want to have any feelings for her, but how could he not? This was Sunny, the sweet, vulnerable, willing woman he had loved so passionately for so long. All he could see was the bubbly, beautiful fifteen-year-old girl he had met twelve years before. He took the cigarette from his lips. “Sunny, this is me, Colt. We used to be able to tell each other everything, remember? Whatever it is, I’m not a woman beater, and I promise not to hate you. I honestly don’t know what I feel anymore, other than a gut-wrenching hurt that has never gone away. But I don’t hate you, all right? Just tell me why you’re here.” He frowned at the way she visibly trembled. She got to her feet, managing to stand and face him squarely, her eyes wide with apprehension, her hand still at her stomach.
“Colt, you…you have a son. I mean, we have a son. My son…he’s not Blaine’s. He’s yours.”
He stared at her a moment, pure shock in his eyes. He tossed the cigarette and stepped closer, searching her eyes. The air seemed suddenly too still. Even the birds were silent, or was it that neither of them could hear? Sunny wondered if a more beautiful man existed on earth, wondered how she was going to allow him into Bo’s life and have to see him and talk to him without being able to touch him and be in his arms again.
“You’re serious!” he said in a near whisper.
“Very.” She felt her cheeks growing hotter. “I should have had my time of month—” She looked away. “Before the wedding. It…never happened. I married Blaine so soon that I was never totally positive, but I was afraid that if I waited to find out…with you wounded and the possibility of you dying…I didn’t want my baby to be called a bastard. That’s part of the reason I married Blaine as fast as possible, so he would think it was his. When he was born, such a beautiful, dark little boy with such black hair and those hazel eyes…I have no doubt, Colt. If you saw him, you would know.”
Thunder on the Plains Page 53
