Slade felt reproached even though she obviously intended no reproof. Besides, it was none of his business if old man White wanted to spend every cent he made on his house. What had possessed him to suddenly start asking questions anyway? This kind of curiosity could be dangerous. He ought to turn around and ride out of here now.
“I’ll bring your dinner in here,” Pamela said, breaking in on his thoughts. “We can talk about your job then.”
“I’ll eat at the table,” Slade said.
Their gazes met in open challenge, and Pamela could tell Slade didn’t mean to give in this time.
“I’ll see that Gaddy calls you in plenty of time.”
Slade was momentarily thrown off stride by her unexpected acceptance. He got the impression she usually had things her way. “Speaking of that job, I’ve been giving it some thought….”
“You shouldn’t worry about anything until you’ve had some rest. You’ll think much better tomorrow.”
“Yes, ma’am, I’m sure I will.”
He would leave tomorrow as planned, but right now that bed looked mighty inviting. He didn’t mind sleeping in the open, he preferred it most of the time, but there were times when a man wanted a bit of cossetting, and this bed looked like just the thing to do it. The cool and quiet of the room beckoned, and the pain in his feet urged Slade to spread out on the bed.
“You sure you don’t mind me sleeping here? Everything looks awful nice.”
There’s nothing you can do to this room which can’t be fixed with a little soap and water,” Pamela said. “Besides, a room is no good until somebody uses it.” Then, with a smile, she left and closed the door behind her.
Slade suddenly felt too weak to stand. He had no idea how much the tension of being around Pamela had bolstered his flagging energy. Now that she was gone, he felt almost sick with exhaustion.
He didn’t know just what to think about the mess he found himself in, but he figured he could think just as well stretched out as on his feet. He was mistaken. No sooner did his body relax into the welcoming softness of the mattress than sleep began to clog his mind. Two weeks on the run with little sleep, less food, and no chance to relax his guard had worn him down. Walking sixty miles across the desert had left him utterly exhausted. He had a lot of thinking to do, but it wouldn’t do any harm to wait a few more hours to do it.
He fell asleep inside a minute.
On the other side of the door, Pamela reached the conclusion that she needed to do some thinking, too. Only she didn’t know what to think.
What had made her clean and bandage his feet herself? Belva had looked stunned. Even Slade had tried to protest. She always saw to the health of the men, but she had never personally tended their cuts and scrapes. Yet the minute she saw Slade’s feet, she thought only of doing what she could to make them better. Why? What made this cowboy so different?
His down-at-the-heels-cowhand bit had to be an act. He might be what he seemed, but there was more to Slade Morgan than he wanted anyone to see.
Even as her fear receded that Slade was nothing but an ignorant cowboy she would do well to be rid of as soon as possible, she started to worry he might have done something unlawful. He could be a fugitive. Her father had often told her that while many cowboys carried a rifle in a scabbard, few of them wore two guns, especially tied down. That equipment belonged to a fighting man, a man who was used to guns and knew how to use them.
Pamela hated violence, and guns stood for killing, the thing she hated most about the West. Nothing could excuse the unnecessary death of a man, and she didn’t want anything to do with a gunslinger. Most particularly, she wouldn’t have one living on the Bar Double-B. If Slade Morgan was a gunfighter, he would have to go.
Now?
Well, no, not right away, but as soon as he could stand on his feet.
Chapter 3
Slade opened his eyes. For a moment, he didn’t recognize the room, then he allowed a crooked smile to soften the lines of his face. You’re in a pickle now, he thought. Your every footstep is being hounded by a blood-thirsty Texas sheriff, you have to keep an eye out for green kids itching to make a reputation by killing the infamous Billy Wilson, and you’re laid up in a fancy bed with blisters all over your feet.
He considered it highly unlikely anyone would come looking for him here. Not the Billy Wilson they knew in Texas. No self-respecting female would be seen with him, much less invite him into her house. Hadn’t Trish McDevitt broken their engagement when he got into a brawl with the Whittaker crowd over a stolen horse? Well, she hadn’t broken it then. She had waited until after he had shot up two Whittakers and well-nigh beat a third to death before she told him not to come back.
Funny thing about that. Nobody in Brazos ever bothered to ask those Whittakers why they stole Billy’s horse or what they did to make him so mad. No, he was nothing but the trouble-making son of a no-good drunk. The most widely accepted opinion held that if a pillar of the church like Sarah Wilson couldn’t do anything with Sam or his son, it was pointless for anybody else to waste time trying.
As for the Whittakers, well, they shouldn’t have stolen Billy’s horse. Everybody knew he set great store by that animal. He had raised it from a colt and taught it to do all manner of tricks. But Billy still shouldn’t have acted the way he did.
Of course that wasn’t the worst of the things Billy Wilson did. It was merely the First.
With a growl of disgust, Slade threw his legs over the side of the bed and stood up. He regretted it immediately. Blinding pain reminded him why he was in bed in the first place. He lay back down and let the pain gradually subside.
It looked like he would have to stay here for a few days. It would be foolish to get back on the trail before he could put his boots on. Besides, he’d never had such a good place to hole up. Not only did he have food to eat and a place to sleep. Unless that sheriff came to the door asking after him, no one would suspect he wasn’t who he claimed to be.
He could even take off his guns.
Slade couldn’t remember when he had been without a gun. Certainly not in the ten years since he had fought the Whittakers. That fight earned him a name as a gunman. After that someone always lurked around the next corner waiting to challenge him in hopes of making a reputation of their own. That’s why he finally changed his name, gave up appearing in the carnival, and became a cowhand. It was also his reason for heading to California. There had to be somewhere he could go where his past wouldn’t follow.
He thought of Pamela’s questions about his roots. A man’s past wasn’t always his doing. Things happened he had no control over, things he had to do if he was to keep on calling himself a man. Strange though how these same things could prevent you from living like a man.
Slade used to think if he could find where he had taken that wrong step he would know what to do about it. He thought people were basically fair. But he was younger then. He had learned differently since, and he had stopped asking himself questions about his past. Lately he had begun to wonder if there was any point in asking them about his future either. If anyone ever figured out he was Billy Wilson, he wouldn’t have one here.
Hell, he never had a future here anyway. As far as he was concerned, it was just a place along the way. As far as they were concerned, he was just a passerby.
Slade prayed the meal would soon come to an end. He had eaten his dinner sitting in flea-infested sand, on rocks that cut into his flesh, kneeling until the muscles at the back of his legs ached, or in the saddle on the run. But he’d never been as uncomfortable as he was now, seated in a silk-covered intricately carved mahogany chair.
His mother used to make them dine formally every evening, but he had never sat down to a twelve-foot long, linen-covered, mahogany table, or served himself from bone china, drunk wine from crystal goblets, and eaten with sterling silverware. And all in the kind of room he had seen only once, and that in New Orleans. He felt so miserably uncomfortable he could hardly swallow his food. But t
he brocade curtains and candle-filled chandelier didn’t seem to bother anybody else. It certainly didn’t stop Gaddy from enjoying his dinner. That boy had enough appetite for two.
And to top it off, Pamela had dressed for dinner. He had dressed too—he hadn’t come to the table naked after all—but Pamela wore an evening gown of primrose silk. If she had looked stunning on the porch this afternoon or unbelievable as she knelt at his feet, she looked absolutely breathtaking now.
Slade couldn’t figure out why someone hadn’t started a war over her. Hell, how could anybody think of cows or grazing land with a woman in their midst who looked like something out of a dream?
Slade put another piece of steak into his mouth and forced himself to turn back to Gaddy. If he kept looking at Pamela he would soon lose all sense of reality. Her kind of woman caused men to do desperate things, but Slade had already had two turns with such a woman. He didn’t feel anxious to step up to the line again.
“I’ll think about it. That’s the best I can do,” he said when Gaddy pressed him for the half-dozenth time to sign on for the roundup. Dave Bagshot had failed to show up for dinner, but Gaddy was making a gallant attempt to convince Slade to stay on.
“You got to hang around because of your feet,” the boy pointed out. “Besides, Pamela says you blew in without a cent. Uncle Josh doesn’t keep just any kind of horses. It’ll take a couple of months to earn enough money to buy one.”
“I expect it will,” Slade said glancing at Pamela. “Miss White has already warned me not to expect charity.”
Pamela’s expression didn’t change one iota. “You know what I meant,” she said as she looked directly at Slade. “But there’s another consideration Gaddy hasn’t mentioned. It’s not fair to offer you a job without telling you of the risks.”
“There’s no risk….” Gaddy began, but Pamela interrupted him.
“My father has gone to Santa Fe to hire extra hands and buy barbed wire. He said he wanted to look for family men because women help settle the country, but married men can’t afford to work as ranch hands. I think he’s looking for gunfighters.”
“He’s doing no such thing,” Gaddy protested, but Pamela ignored him.
“I do know something about ranches, even though I’ve spent a lot of my life in Baltimore. We always hired hands as they drifted in. I don’t think Dad ever sent out for them. He certainly never had to pick them out personally.”
There’s pressure on the range from some new herds,” Gaddy explained, “but it’s nothing we can’t handle.”
“I’ve been in trouble most of my life,” Slade said carelessly. “I doubt I’d even notice this little fracas.”
“That’s something else I want to mention,” Pamela said.
Something in her voice caught his attention, and Slade looked at her, straight into her eyes. He could see wariness there but no flagging in her sense of purpose. However reluctant Pamela might be to broach this issue, it concerned something about which she wouldn’t compromise.
“I couldn’t help but notice your guns. My father insists that men need to be armed when they’re on the range, but I won’t allow anyone to wear guns here at the ranch.”
“Pamela’s still skittish about western doings,” Gaddy explained.
“That’s not true. I don’t expect anyone to allow himself to be shot without defense,” she said, turning back to Slade, “but I dislike violence. I particularly disapprove of guns being used on other human beings. My father is responsible for the welfare of the men who work for us, and we wouldn’t be setting a good example if we encouraged the use of guns to settle disagreements. Don’t you agree, Mr. Morgan?”
Slade couldn’t tell her he had left his home to avoid having to use guns or that he had given up the only work he knew to be free of the necessity of having to wear them for the rest of his life. Neither could he tell her that even though he disliked the way most people used guns, he didn’t disapprove of them. After the way she looked as she knelt to bathe his feet, he wouldn’t willingly do anything that would make her look on him with disfavor. No one had ever done anything like that for him. Hell, Trish wouldn’t even have let him in the house looking like that, much less have allowed him to lie down on one of her beds.
But worst of all, this afternoon, while he slept, he had dreamed of having just such a place as this. No, worst of all would be trying to explain to her that for a ranch such as this, half the men in the world would use a gun. Himself included.
Now, sitting at this table, looking at her in the candlelight, listening to the soothing sound of her voice, feeling the excitement of her presence, he couldn’t believe such a dream was impossible. As long as he could sit at the same table with her, anything was possible.
“I agree in principle,” Slade said, pulling himself out of his thoughts, “but it’s been my experience that people don’t always live up to the good in them. I don’t know how it is in Baltimore, but out here it seems the badness is the first thing to show. Guns are just about the only way an honest man has to protect himself.”
Pamela’s expression relaxed into a smile. “My mother always said if you showed people what you expected of them, they would try to live up to it. I’ve found that to be true.”
It wouldn’t do any good to tell her about his experiences. Besides, he couldn’t imagine how any man living could look into Pamela’s eyes and not try his dead level best to do anything she asked. He had to get out of here before he started making promises he couldn’t keep.
“I suppose I could do without my guns for a day or two, but I won’t turn them over to anybody. Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I ought to see about settling into the bunkhouse.” He did his best to ignore the pain that radiated up from his feet. “If you’ll just tell me where you put my boots.”
“Gaddy took them over while you were asleep. I don’t want you wearing anything but moccasins until those blisters heal.”
“Ma’am, you’re going to ruin me with all this cossetting. A couple more days and I won’t be fit to hit the trail.”
“By then maybe you won’t want to.”
It just slipped out. Pamela didn’t mean anything in particular by it, but it sounded like she did, and that made her blush.
Slade knew she didn’t mean anything by it either, but the blush meant she might possibly mean something someday. His heart seemed to skip a beat at the thought.
If he just didn’t have a beard, Pamela thought, I might be able to tell what he’s thinking.
Thank goodness I’ve got a beard, thought Slade. Now if I could just keep my eyes from giving me away.
“Everything tasted mighty good, Mrs. Bagshot,” Slade said as he slipped his feet into the moccasins, “especially after eating my own cooking.”
Belva acknowledged his compliment with a nod.
“Thanks for taking care of my blisters, ma’am,” Slade said, turning to Pamela. “However, there were a few moments when I wondered whether the cure might not be worse than the disease.”
“Just make sure you wear your moccasins.” She paused, clearly struggling with herself. “I guess you’d better call me Pamela. It makes me feel strange when you call me Ma’am. I keep thinking you must be referring to my mother.”
“As long as you don’t think it’s disrespectful.”
“Everybody does it.”
“Okay then, Pamela, I guess I’ll say good night.”
“He seems like a nice man,” Belva said after the men had gone. “I can’t imagine why he should want to go wandering around the desert by himself.”
“His horse broke a leg.”
“I heard him, but you and I both know the trail to California ain’t no sixty miles away. And it doesn’t go across the desert neither. He must have come in through Mexico. Now why would he be doing that?”
“He could have gotten lost. He did say he was from Texas.”
“If he can find his way around a place as big as Texas, he can find his way across Arizona,” Belva stated
. “I like him, but he’s not telling you everything.”
“If I give him a job and a place to stay, he’d better tell me everything.”
“You don’t ask a man out here about his past. Hell leave if you do, and I have the feeling you don’t want him to go just yet.”
“I don’t care what he does you have just tried to convince me he’s a liar Maybe I should tell him to leave in the morning.”
“I didn’t say he was a liar,” Belva corrected her. “Do you think that man would lie?”
“Yes, if he thought it was important.” She paused for a long moment before adding, “But I don’t think he would lie to me.”
Pamela’s words surprised her more greatly than the shock that showed on Belva’s face. She didn’t know what made her say that, but even as the words passed her lips, she knew it was true. He might try to evade telling her what she wanted to know—he had already done that several times—but his eyes told her he wouldn’t lie to her.
But why? He didn’t know any more about her than she knew about him, yet a vein of understanding existed between them, something she felt almost from the first. Though how this could be, when he represented just about everything she disapproved of, she didn’t know.
But even as these thoughts crossed her mind, she reminded herself she didn’t really know anything about him. He didn’t look like the kind of man she would approve of. He didn’t act like it either, but she had no proof he’d actually done anything wrong. She had to keep an open mind.
But why should she bother? He would ride out in a day or two. She’d probably never think about him again.
Yet even before she completed that thought, she knew it wasn’t true. If he were to ride out this very evening, she would never forget the way he had walked up to the house, the way a man walked who knew he was a man, the way a man walked when he was afraid of nothing and asked for nothing. That he should have done so with his feet covered with bleeding blisters was an act of courage, or stupidity—at this point she didn’t know which. But she could be sure of one thing. She had never in her life seen the equal of his nerve.
Scarlet Sunset, Silver Nights Page 4
