by Jill Gregory
Then the big man let out a stream of oaths, followed by a question. “Who is he?”
“Wolf Bodine.”
“Damn! Son of a bitch!”
In the starry darkness the clean-shaved man studied the glowing tip of his cigarette. “He won’t be a problem.”
“He’d better not be. Wolf Bodine. Of all the rotten luck. What about the girl?”
“What about her?” The slimmer man, whose eyes gleamed brightly in the dimness, rewarded his companion with something very like a sneer.
“What’d she do, go running to Bodine for protection?”
“I don’t think so. She may not have said anything about the mine yet to anyone. At least I haven’t heard anything, and I’ve been listening closely.”
“I’d like to get my hands around her stubborn little neck for jest five minutes,” the big man growled.
“Leave her to me.”
“You seen her yet?”
“You ask too many questions, my friend. Let me handle this my own way. I want that deed as much as you do.”
“Then get to work,” the large man snapped. “Remember, she’s Bear’s daughter, so she’s tough. She’s got all his orneriness, as I remember.”
The other man laughed. “I like them ornery.”
His companion studied him a moment. “Is it true, that story they tell about you?” he asked slowly, almost in awe. “You strangled a woman down in New Mexico over a bottle of tequila? And then set her house on fire?”
“What difference does it make?” the man replied softly, throwing his cigarette into the swirling waters of the creek. His eyes glistened from beneath his hat as he glanced toward his horse.
“None, none at all. I was jest wonderin’.”
“Start wondering how you’re going to spend the money from that silver mine, my friend. We’ll meet back here in one week, same time.”
“I’ll be here.” The large man sprang into his saddle with remarkable ease for someone of his height and breadth. He turned the horse toward Helena and called over his shoulder; “You watch out for that girl. She ‘pears to have the devil’s own luck!”
“So do I,” the other murmured, smiling to himself as he gently stroked his horse’s muzzle. “So do I.”
11
He was back.
Rebeccah nearly choked on her raspberry cobbler as she heard the hoofbeats outside, and then Billy, racing to the window, cried out, “It’s Pa!”
She didn’t glance at him when he strode through the kitchen door, nor when he leaned down to give Caitlin a quick peck on the cheek, nor when he hung his hat on a hook and then slid his long, rugged frame into his chair.
“I’m starved,” he declared, as innocently robust as any man who’s just come in from a day’s hard labor. “Any grub left over for me?”
“Plenty—not that you deserve it,” Caitlin zipped back at him, but though she tried to maintain her starched demeanor, it wilted at his grin and disappeared completely when he reached out to nonchalantly pinch her lined cheek.
“Ma, will it help if I apologize?”
“Only if you apologize to Rebeccah.”
He turned to Rebeccah, the grin still locked in place, but stiffer now and obviously forced. His eyes had lost the playful glint he’d had when he’d addressed his mother. “Miss Rawlings, I beg your pardon.”
Like hell he did. “There’s no need, Sheriff Bodine,” she murmured dutifully, and stabbed viciously at the hapless raspberries oozing from beneath a wedge of golden crust.
Sensing his eyes boring into her, she peered up and met his glance with a steely gaze of her own. A gaze, Wolf thought, that could freeze a man to death in the height of summer.
“Glad to hear it,” he returned shortly, and reached out across the table to tousle Billy’s hair.
“Where’d you go, Pa? Why’d you have to leave right at suppertime?”
“I told you, I went to town. It couldn’t be avoided. But I’m back now, so pass me some of that beef, son, and a handful of those biscuits. With all that riding, I’ve worked up quite an appetite.”
“I’ve lost mine,” Rebeccah announced coolly, and pushed her plate away. It was all she could do not to hurl the cobbler at Wolf Bodine’s smug face as he proceeded to stuff himself with huge amounts of food, packing it all away with relish and precision, as if everything was jim-dandy in his world. He’s the most infuriating, arrogant, insufferable man I’ve ever met, Rebeccah thought for perhaps the hundredth time since she’d re-encountered Wolf Bodine. As she helped Caitlin clear the table a short while later, she made up her mind that the less she had to see him after tonight, the better.
“You going to the dance?” Caitlin asked as she washed the chipped plate with a soapy dishrag and Rebeccah dried the spoons.
“Dance?”
“Oh, heavens, didn’t anyone mention it? It’s to be held at the schoolhouse, matter of fact. Two weeks from this Saturday. Everyone will be there. You’ve got to come, Rebeccah. It’ll be a good chance for you to meet folks.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Wolf is going.”
Rebeccah rubbed furiously with a towel at the dripping plate Caitlin thrust into her hand. She said nothing.
“He’s taking Miss Westerly.”
Who was Miss Westerly? For some odd reason a knot like cat’s twine balled up tight in her stomach.
“You haven’t met her yet, have you?” Caitlin went on. “A right nice and pretty young lady, but a little too sure of herself for my taste. Of course some folks thought sure Wolf would ask Lorelie Simpson—she’s only twenty-four and already a widow, poor thing—her husband got killed on a cattle drive two years ago. But Wolf asked the Westerly girl instead. Do you have a dress to wear?”
“I won’t be needing one. I’m not going.”
“Oh, but ...”
Rebeccah gave her head a firm shake as she set the dry plate on the countertop and took another wet one from Caitlin. “I don’t care for dances,” she said airily.
Since it seemed Caitlin was loathe to drop the subject, Rebeccah changed it by asking the first question that sprang to mind. “I’ve been meaning to ask you,” she blurted out, rushing her words. “How did Wolf get his name?” She flushed a little as she spoke the words, and hurried on as Caitlin gave a short chuckle. “I mean, as a baby, surely you didn’t call him Wolf?” she finished doubtfully.
“No, as a baby I called him Joseph Adam Bodine, after his father, as fine and handsome a man as any woman would ever care to meet.” Caitlin’s expression grew warm and misty, even her faded, near-sightless eyes seemed to brim with soft emotion. “My husband was a Texas Ranger, a good man, Rebeccah, as strong and decent and honest as a man should be—like Wolf,” she said proudly. “He died when Wolf was only a little older than Billy—but I’m straying from my story,” she said, straightening her shoulders and giving her gray head a tiny shake. “Wolf was very young—oh, six or seven, I reckon—when he wandered off one morning when I had my hands full with laundry and gardening and the like, and to make a long story short, he got himself lost in the hills. We searched for him, Joseph and me, and our ranch hands, and even his little brother, Jimmy, came along, calling—but we couldn’t find him. Not that day, not all through the night. Finally, early next morning, Joseph found him—guess where! Sleeping near some mesquite, curled up on the ground with a great, mangy wolf, of all things. Do you know, that animal actually seemed to be guarding him? Strangest sight Joseph ever saw, or so he said. Well, the nickname Wolf stuck after that. No one’s called him anything else in all the years since that morning.”
“It suits him,” Rebeccah murmured, almost to herself, and marveled at the image of the young boy, Joseph Adam, sleeping in the open hills with a wolf.
Caitlin interrupted her thoughts. “Yes, it does suit him. And he’s amazingly similar in character to that wild wolf that guarded him that night, if you think about it,” she said firmly. “Fierce and tough and somewhat frightening when you first
look at him, but underneath it all, shrewd and smart and ... a protector. Not easy to know and understand, but a strong friend to have when you’re alone in the dark.” She broke off and smiled at Rebeccah, a bright, reassuring smile. “Don’t mind me, dear, I’m quite sentimental and even foolish when it comes to my boy. But I’m right fond of him.”
“Yes, I’m sure you are.”
“And I think you’ll be fond of him, too, when you’ve had a chance to get better acquainted,” Caitlin finished quickly. Before Rebeccah could protest, she shooed the girl into the parlor.
“Enough chores for now. Let’s visit with the menfolk.”
Wolf and Billy were engrossed in a game of checkers on the floor. Wolf glanced up and observed her entrance into the parlor with a hint of tightening in his expression. Rebeccah squared her shoulders and turned away, strolling to the mantelpiece with as much casualness as she could muster, trying not to think about Miss Westerly and Mrs. Simpson fluttering over that tall, lean man watching her from the floor.
Her gaze was drawn to the collection of framed photographs displayed upon the mantel. For a moment her heart skittered as she realized she would no doubt see a photograph of Wolf’s dead wife. She braced herself to see the woman whom he had loved so much and now mourned so deeply. But there was no young woman, only an old silver-framed daguerreotype of a wedding couple, taken perhaps thirty years earlier. The woman in the photo is Caitlin, Rebeccah realized suddenly, and the man with her must be Wolf’s father, a tall, imposing man with a lean, strong face remarkably like his son’s. The eyes, too, were strikingly similar, clear and keen and compelling. They wore wedding clothes and stiff smiles, but looking at the photograph, Rebeccah fancied she could feel the strong love flowing between them. After a moment her glance shifted to the photograph beside it, the one in the brass frame.
This one was of Wolf. His face, relaxed and handsome, stared out at her with a stark familiarity—identical to the young man who had come to the Arizona hideout shack so many years ago tracking her father. He wore a Union cavalry uniform: a snug-fitting dark woolen coat piped with yellow braid, silk neckerchief, and trousers with the traditional cavalry stripe on the outer seam. The trousers were tucked into straight boots, and to complete his uniform he wore brass spurs secured to the boots with a single spur strap, heavy brass epaulettes decorating his shoulders, and a large Kossuth hat set upon his head. He had his foot propped on a chair and was staring with a slightly bemused smile into the camera, looking so like the young man who had come to the hideout cabin in Arizona and captured her imagination that Rebeccah’s throat tightened with memory. She yearned to stare at the photograph, to memorize it, touch it—but feared someone would notice her absorption. So she moved hastily on and forced herself to peer at the one beside it, a small, brass-framed picture of a young man no more than sixteen or seventeen years old, holding his hat in his hand and grinning eagerly from ear to ear.
“That’s Uncle Jimmy,” Billy announced, glancing up for a moment from the checkerboard to follow her glance. “He was Pa’s brother.”
Caitlin, seated complacently on the sofa darning a pile of Billy’s socks without once glancing down at them, offered up a misty smile. “He was a fine-looking boy, my Jimmy, don’t you think so, Rebeccah? That photograph was taken in Carson City, when Jimmy was seventeen. He went to visit cousins in Nevada. It was his first and last trip away from home ...” Her voice trailed off.
A solemn tension settled over the parlor. The checkers game over, Billy began putting the pieces away. Wolf went to the window and gazed out toward the infinite glitter of stars. As the fire crackled and popped, Caitlin wearily closed her eyes.
Rebeccah longed to ask what had happened to Jimmy but bit back the question, sensing the answer would be a painful one.
Yet Caitlin opened her eyes and began to speak, responding quietly to her unasked question.
“The town was full of gamblers, outlaws, and thieves, you see, men drawn to the lure of all that silver and gold. It was a rough place, but Jimmy and his cousins wanted that, they wanted, as young men often do, to experience the excitement and adventure of the rawest part of the frontier. There was a sheriff in town, a man by the name of Luke Davis.” Caitlin’s lip curled over the words. “But he was a coward,” she told Rebeccah bitterly, and her fingers clenched on the socks in her lap. “Davis was in cahoots with a group of outlaws planning to steal some poor miner’s claim to a rich silver deposit. Jimmy and my nephews saw them drag the old man into an alley and start to beat him. They rushed over and tried to save that man.” Caitlin took a deep breath. “Jimmy always hated an unfair fight, and he loathed bullies. Same as Wolf.”
Suddenly, in the quiet of the parlor, silent but for the logs popping in the hearth, an anguished sound choked from her throat. Tears brimmed in her faded eyes. Wolf had not turned from the window, but Billy was listening to every word, and watching his grandmother’s sturdy, sorrow-wracked face, his own expression somber.
“What happened?” Rebeccah asked, suddenly aware that her palms were damp.
Caitlin picked up the socks and held them tightly between her small, strong fingers. “They killed my Jimmy,” she said in a low tone. “And my nephew Roy. Shot them both. Neither boy was armed. My younger nephew, Walt, was left for dead, but a passerby found him and sent for a doctor. He survived to tell us what had happened.”
“And that crooked sheriff was the one who shot Uncle Jimmy!” Billy piped up suddenly. Rebeccah realized that he must have heard and contemplated this story many times. “That’s why my pa hates crooked lawmen even more than outlaws—‘cause they’re charged with a solemn duty to uphold the law and protect people, and there’s nothing worse than when a lawman goes bad. When he heard what happened to Uncle Jimmy, he tracked that sheriff all the way to Abilene.”
“You killed him?” Rebeccah asked softly as Wolf turned from the window at last and met her gaze with stone-hard eyes.
“No.” He stuck his thumbs in his pockets and spoke slowly. “I brought Luke Davis back to Carson City and put him in jail to stand trial, along with the other two who shot Roy and Walt in cold blood. I let the law mete out punishment for them. And after they were convicted,” he said with grim satisfaction, “I watched them hang.”
Caitlin stirred on the sofa. She turned proud, tear-filled eyes in Rebeccah’s direction. “Wasn’t Jimmy a handsome boy?” she asked softly.
“Yes, Caitlin, I can see he was.”
“And he had the kindest soul. I’ve been blessed with both of my sons—and with my grandson.” She smiled stoutly then through her tears and wiped them away with a lace hankie tugged from her pocket. “Who else would take such good care of a useless, blind old lady?”
“Useless?” Wolf and Billy demanded in unison.
“You’re about as useless as a rope at a rodeo, and you know it,” Wolf commented drily, and Billy grinned. The heavy mood lifted. Rebeccah left the mantel and the collection of photographs and seated herself on the sofa with Caitlin.
“Well, I do manage to find my way around this house fairly well,” the gray-haired woman admitted, twinkling.
“And you prepared the most delicious meal I’ve ever tasted,” Rebeccah exclaimed. “I was wondering ... perhaps you’d teach me how to prepare that raspberry cobbler sometime?”
“I’d be pleased to do that. Why, you’ve probably never had the chance to get much practice cooking, have you?”
“No, my mother died when I was two. I don’t remember her at all, so I’ve mostly known only campfire cooking, which I learned when I was very young and rode with my father and his—” She broke off.
“Gang,” Billy supplied helpfully.
“Yes, Billy, his gang,” Rebeccah said, shooting a defiant glance at Wolf. He lifted his brows but made no comment.
“Anyway, the ‘gang’s’ cook, Old Red, taught me how to fix beans, biscuits, coffee, and a few other staples over a campfire, and occasionally I saw him use a stove, but after I went to Miss Wrig
ht’s Academy, my meals were all prepared by a kitchen staff, and I never had a chance to learn any more.”
“Did you like that school?” Billy inquired.
She met his gaze with dancing eyes. “I hated it. The teachers were stuffy and strict and boring. But the books were interesting. I brought some of them with me—you’ll get a chance to see them when school starts next week. And don’t you or your pards try any tricks on me, Billy, like spitballs or spiders on my desk, because I know them all,” she warned him with a grin, waggling her finger in his face with mock sternness. “I invented them—or at least I thought I did when I was pulling all those pranks at Miss Wright’s Academy.”
Gazing admiringly at her, Billy spoke with ingenuous innocence. “I never thought I’d look forward to school, but I do now. I think it’s going to be downright fun.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Wolf said drily. He pulled out his pocket watch. “Time for bed, son.”
Billy threw him a disappointed glance and edged closer to Rebeccah. “Will you play one more song for us, Miss Rawlings?”
“Only with your father’s permission.”
“Pa?”
Wolf studied her darkly as if deciding whether or not she had somehow instigated this small rebellion. “All right,” he said at last. “One song.”
As Rebeccah took her place at the piano, Wolf tossed another log onto the dwindling fire. The night chill had begun to permeate the ranch house, and Caitlin had pulled a sweater around her thin shoulders as she worked.
The melancholy strains of “Aura Lee” poured forth from the piano to resound with bittersweet valor through every corner of the cozy room. This time Rebeccah sang along with Billy and Caitlin. Her voice was huskily mellifluous, as lightly sensual as the silky lashes sweeping down over her brilliant eyes, and Wolf found himself fighting the overpowering urge to take her in his arms and kiss the lips from which those sweet sounds were tumbling.
