Anita Mills (30 page)

“I’ll go first,” he said. “There’s no telling what’s inside.”

As she followed him up the two steps, she looked down, seeing a dark brown stain on the bare boards. “I—uh—guess Papa died here,” she managed to tell him.

“According to what I was told, they found the body out in the yard. It looks like he was shot in the doorway, and he staggered down the steps before he died.”

“He didn’t even have a chance to put up a fight, did he?”

“His shotgun was in the house. I guess that goes along with what Jackson and Pierce are saying.”

“That Gib Hannah killed him?”

“Yeah. But they weren’t there to see it, so I don’t guess anybody could say for sure. The sheriff thought he was answering the door when he was shot. Said it looked like he was just sitting down to supper.”

“Mr. Hamer didn’t write any of that, you know. He didn’t even tell me how Papa died.”

“Yeah.”

“I guess if he stole the gold, he paid for it in the end, didn’t he?”

“Yeah.” Pushing the door open with his boot, he heard a dry buzz. “Watch out!” he shouted, jumping back to draw his gun.

“What on earth—?”

At close range, the revolver’s report shattered the air, and something shot across the dim, dusty interior. Jamming the Colt back into his holster, Matt slammed the door back against its hinges. A thick, patterned rope lay bleeding on the floor, its head about three feet away.

“Rattlesnake,” he said tersely.

“In the house?”

“They don’t like the hot sun any better than we do.”

“I don’t know if I want to look in there or not,” she said, hanging back.

“Tell you what—I’ll go in and open it all up so you can see, then I’ll come back for you.”

“I don’t know as I want to stay out here by myself, either,” she admitted nervously. “It might have a mate somewhere.”

“It probably does.” Stepping into the front room, he waited until his eyes adjusted to the dimness, then he walked across to a window and pulled back a dusty curtain. “Looks like somebody got here before us.”

She followed him, unprepared for the devastation she saw.

“Ransacked,” was all he said.

It was as if someone had gone on a rampage, turning things over, opening a cabinet, tearing everything out of the drawers, cutting open and pulling the stuffing out of the faded settee. A worn carpet had been flung back, a hole cut in the floorboards, showing the dirt below.

His hand on the butt of his gun, Matt walked into another room, finding more of the same. In the bedroom, the featherbed had been ripped lengthwise and shaken out, the feathers covering the floor like a carpet of wispy white. The slats had been removed from the bedstead, and an axe leaned against the headboard, directly above another hole in the floor. Even the walls hadn’t been spared. Whoever’d been there had vented his rage by chopping holes in the horsehair plaster, baring the laths beneath in a number of places.

“By the time he got in here, I’d say he was damned mad.”

“He couldn’t have thought he was going to find gold bars in the walls.”

“Maybe he thought Howard had converted some of it to money.”

“If my father had gone into a bank with gold bars, there would have been a lot of talk, I’d think.”

“He could’ve done it in Mexico, brought back pesos, then traded ’em for dollars.”

“If he did, he didn’t spend much of it here,” she decided. “He couldn’t have spent more than fifty dollars on every stick of furniture in here.”

“Yeah, he didn’t live like he had a lot of money,” Matt agreed.

Moving to the kitchen, he stared at the broken door on the cupboard, at the shards of broken dishes scattered over the floor. “About all that’s left is the tinware, a coffee pot, and some cooking pans.”

Turning up a ladderback chair, she sat down. “I can’t sell it like this—nobody in his right mind would buy this.”

“You’d have to fix it up some.”

“I don’t even have the money to hire anybody. I mean—look at it! There’s nothing worth anything left!”

“The land’s worth something,” he consoled her. “Looks like he had a cornfield going, and there’s a vegetable garden out back—with a little tending, there’s probably some things out there that can be saved.”

“I’ve never raised any food in my life. We lived a block and a half from a greengrocer.”

“I have. A little hoeing, a little watering, and the stuff just grows. You pick it, eat what you can, and put the rest up for the winter. It’s a selling point, Rena. The garden’s already in.”

“If it doesn’t sell right away, I guess I can learn,” she said, straightening her shoulders.

“You can do a lot of things when you have to. Right now I’m going out to look at the barn—I’ll be back.”

“Not without me.” Glancing to where the dead snake still lay in the doorway, she hurried after him. “You’re seeing a lot more here than I am—you know that, don’t you?”

“I’ve got a notion of what can be fixed, that’s all.”

The dirt floor of the barn was pockmarked with holes dug like a checkerboard from front to back, and the few hay bales had been dragged out and hacked open. Walking around it, he noted, “Roof’s good, and so are the walls.”

“If a horse fell into one of those holes, it’d have to be destroyed,” she declared, unimpressed.

“Yeah, but they can be filled pretty easy.” Grabbing a rung of the ladder, he swung up into the loft. “It’s dry.”

“It probably hasn’t rained in months.”

“The barn could be made habitable until the house is finished,” he decided.

“There isn’t any livestock left,” she pointed out wearily.

“Fixed up, it’s worth more.”

“It couldn’t be worth less.”

He dropped down and dusted his pants with his hands. “If you’d seen my old homeplace, you’d know better. If it was me, I’d fix it up. A few weeks, and you’d have something decent to sell. But you’re going to need a few things to tide you over—you can’t be running into town for milk and eggs.”

“If I spent my money on it, and then it doesn’t sell, I can’t go home. I don’t see it—I just don’t.”

“It’d be a gamble, all right,” he conceded. Walking to the open doors, he held a palm up to the light and tried to pick out a splinter. He turned back to her, his expression sober. “You’d have to work damned hard, Rena. It’s a different life.”

She made a full turn around, looking upward, then she met his gaze. Sighing heavily, she nodded. “I don’t really have a choice, do I?”

“I guess you could go back to Philadelphia.”

“With nothing. I’d planned on getting a little something out of this, but—”

“Yeah, you couldn’t do it alone—you’d have to have a partner. It’d be like an investment against the sale.”

“Nobody in his right mind would pour money into this, Matt. I mean, look around you.”

“I would.” As the words came out, he couldn’t believe he was saying them. “Yeah, I could help out for a while.”

“But you hate farming!”

“I’m not talking about farming. I’m talking about investing for a little profit. It’ll be a cold day in hell before I walk behind a plow, Rena.”

“You want to invest in this?” she asked incredulously.

He shrugged. “Might as well. For a few weeks, it’d be about as good a hiding place as any, I guess.”

“It’d be like pouring money down a rathole, and—” She caught herself before she actually talked sense into him. If he worked on it, he’d be staying. Hiding the surge of elation she felt, she told him, “But I guess it’s worth a gamble, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you think we’ll find the gold?”

“If it was buried around here, somebody would’ve already found it.”

“I’d share it with you.”

“That’s not why I’d be staying, Rena.”

“No, of course not, but—”

“I figure it won’t be long before Hannah shows up, and I aim to be waiting here for him. I’m not leaving you alone to face him.”

Stopping to wipe his dripping forehead with his shirt, Matt leaned on the axe handle, resting his aching muscles. It had been a long time since he’d chopped wood, but Verena couldn’t cook without it. And when he was done with this, he still had a full day’s work left filling the holes in the barn. But he had to keep working. He had to be too damned tired to think of Verena when he turned in tonight.

Last night had been rough, downright awkward, when he’d taken her back to town. The place was so damned little—just an odd assortment of adobe buildings, sod and picket huts, and a few ramshackle shanties on the north bank of the North Concho, right across the river from the fort—that he didn’t feel she was safe. After he finally persuaded her to stay with the sheriff and his Mexican wife, he’d spent the night outside on lookout for Gilbert Hannah.

In the early hours of morning, she’d crept out to keep him company, saying she couldn’t sleep either. With the bright stars and three-quarter moon overhead and a warm, oleander-filled breeze, it had been hard to keep his head. But he had to—then, now, and tomorrow— until he had the right to love her. He’d promised himself after that night at the Menger that he wouldn’t run the risk again of leaving her with a fatherless child. So he’d sat out there, talking about anything, everything, with her, denying himself what both of them wanted.

He was so damned tired he couldn’t see straight, and the sun was just now at its zenith, giving him another eight or nine hours of daylight. And yet he knew he was going to have to drive himself harder just to get through the night. There wouldn’t be anybody to play duenna tonight.

Picking up an armload of wood, he carried it over to the woodpile he’d made beneath a tree and stacked it. Staring at his progress, he thought of Drew and Wayne, wondering what they’d be doing now if they had lived. Farming. On cold winter nights, they’d piled between those old featherbeds together and lain awake talking about how things were going to be when they were on their own. For Drew, it had been the dream of buying himself a big piece of land somewhere along the Cumberland, someplace where the dirt was rich and black, where things would grow easy, where he wouldn’t be coaxing thin stalks out of hard clay. For Wayne, it was the animals. He liked ’em all. Nothing came onto the place that he didn’t name, including the chickens. And he had a way with all of them. Old Flora, the loose-skinned cow, gave more milk for Wayne than for anyone. But what he’d always wanted was sheep. Lots of them. He was going to buy himself the biggest flock in the state of Tennessee, he always said.

Those dreams had died with them. All they’d gotten was a little plot of Tennessee clay, just big enough to be buried in. And he, the last surviving son, had moved on, yearning for someplace clean, someplace where he wouldn’t get dirt under his fingernails, someplace where he wouldn’t have to break his back pushing a damned plow. Looking down at his dirty hands now, he wasn’t missing the irony.

In some ways, Verena reminded him of Wayne. When he’d gotten back into San Angelo last night, he’d decided maybe a dog wouldn’t be a bad idea, that maybe it would sound a warning if Hannah tried to sneak up on them. So he’d picked up the meanest stray dog he could find, brought it home with them this morning, and fed it a couple of fresh rabbits to make it stick around. The damned thing had a bark loud enough to wake the dead and a snarl that sent coyotes running, but Verena, with a true sense of the ridiculous, had named it Laddie. And within an hour, it was following her around, forgetting who’d fed it. But he guessed that was good. If he left, she’d at least have the dog for protection.

He had a splinter, the kind that turned nasty and festered, buried in the palm of his hand. Using his teeth, he tried to pull it out, but he couldn’t get a hold on it. By night, it was going to be sore.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Verena carrying out a big bucket of wet laundry, the dog loping behind her. He turned around, calling out, “Did you get any salve at Veck’s store last night?”

“No, but there’s some inside—I found a tin under the bed!” she yelled back. Setting down the bucket, she darted for the house before he could tell her he’d get it. Within the minute, she was heading for him, tin in hand. “Is it a blister?”

“A splinter.”

“Which hand?”

“Left.”

Taking hold of it, she took a closer look. “That’s a bad one—you need a needle before you salve it.” She looked up, and the sun caught the gold flecks in her eyes, taking his breath away. And there was no mistaking the naked desire in his face. “Uh—I’ll get the needle.”

“No.” His hand closed around hers. “Rena—”

Behind him, the dog starting barking, then it circled them, whining. As Matt drew Verena into his arms, the animal seemed to go wild, making a furious racket. “Damned beast’s jealous,” he murmured against her lips. “God, Rena,” he whispered, “I can’t stand this.”

“Neither can I,” she said softly, reaching her arms around his neck.

As her body pressed against his, he heard the shot. The bullet hit a branch, knocking off leaves inches above his head. Pulling away, he gave her a push, yelling, “Get down behind the wood!”

As she scrambled for cover, the second bullet kicked up dirt next to the dog, barely missing the animal. Across the yard, the Henry lay on the ground beside the axe. Drawing the Colt, Matt crouched low, trying to catch sight of the gunman. All he could see was the small hill some seventy to eighty yards away. Too far to make the shot with the revolver.

The sun flashed off metal as the third bullet buzzed past Matt’s ear. As Matt made a run for his rifle, the dog took off for the hill. Behind them, Verena raced for the house.

Diving to the ground, Matt rolled through the wood chips, grabbed the Henry, and came up shooting. The man on the hill raised up to take a shot at the dog just as Verena came out of the house, shotgun in hand.

“No!” she screamed. “He’ll kill Laddie!”

The damned dog was in Matt’s line of fire, headed for attack, when it yelped, dropped, and rolled. Matt squeezed the trigger, but the gunman had taken cover. Her eyes streaming, Verena racked the shotgun.

“Don’t—it’s too far!” Matt yelled. “You’ll waste the shot!”

But she was running, yelling over her shoulder, “He won’t kill me—he thinks I know where it is!”

“Don’t be a fool!”

“He killed my dog!”

But Laddie struggled up, snarling again. The dog leaped into the air, then landed amid a lot of cursing and growling. Matt saw a fellow flailing at the animal, using his rifle for a club. The dog yelped again and fell. Nearly up the hill herself, Verena took aim and pulled the trigger. The recoil knocked her backward, and she hit the ground as the gunman’s rifle shot went wide. Going after her, Matt got off several shots to distract him. Then the man behind the hill made a fatal mistake. He rose up to take aim, and a bullet from the Henry spun him around. He pitched forward, then tried to crawl for cover. This time, the wounded dog got him.

Matt stood up, and keeping the rifle trained on his assailant, he walked the rest of the way up the hill. “Laddie!” he shouted.

Still snarling and growling, the dog backed off to stand over the blond-haired man. Waving Verena back, Matt moved in for a closer look. It wasn’t a sight for the fainthearted. Gib Hannah had taken a measure of buckshot in his face, but it was the bullet in his left shoulder that had gotten him.

As Matt leaned over him, Hannah tried to talk over the blood foaming from his mouth. “Cheated,” he gasped. “He took … my share … of … the … gold. Got him … for it.”

“What about the others?”

“Got … them. All … except—”

“Pierce and Jackson?”

“Fools … escaped … and Mac—”

Hannah’s hand brushed at his mouth, trying to clear the foam away, then he coughed spasmodically, and his eyes rolled. He fell back, staring blankly into the sun.

Matt stepped back as Verena came up. “Don’t look— it’s not pretty.” Turning around, he enveloped her in his arms, savoring the very feel of her. “He’s done, so I guess it’s over. I guess that’s all of them.” As his hands rubbed the ridges of her spine, he said, “That was a fool thing to do, Rena—I thought you’d be dead before I could get the shot off.”

“I didn’t think he’d kill me, not until he got the gold. I thought I’d be the only one he wouldn’t shoot. And when I saw him hit Laddie—”

The dog edged its way to Verena, where it lay its bloody head on her shoe. Afraid to look down, she held on to Matt. “He’s going to die, isn’t he? I couldn’t save him.”

Loosening his hold on her, he stepped back, then knelt beside the animal. “Well, he’s peppered with buckshot,” he murmured, feeling over it. “And there’s a piece of his ear blown off, but I don’t find any big holes in him.” Rubbing along the dog’s bony nose, he comforted it. “Come on, big boy,” he said softly, “let’s go home.” Looking up at Verena, he added, “If you can get both guns, I’ll carry him in.” Lifting Laddie, he muttered, “If I’d known how this was going to play out, I’d have found a smaller cur, I can tell you that. Half-starved, he must weigh seventy or eighty pounds.”

About halfway down the hill, Laddie apparently decided he’d had enough. Wriggling free, he jumped from Matt’s aching arms and trotted the rest of the way on his own power.

“I’d say he’s going to live,” Verena murmured.

“Looks like it, anyway.”

“Well, I don’t guess we’ll have to worry anymore about the gold now,” she said, sighing. “I guess it’s just gone forever.”

“Would you be real disappointed if you never found it?”

She looked up, taking in his tousled black hair, dark eyes, and the strong, manly set of his shoulders. And she knew now that it was over, it was only a matter of time until he left her. “No,” she managed, “it’s already brought about far too much misery. And I never thought
my happiness lay in gold or money, anyway. If I’d found it, I was going to use it to engage the best lawyer money could get me, just in case you decided to go back to stand trial. But I was still hoping against hope you wouldn’t.”

“I want clear title to my own name, Rena. I don’t want to live in Matthew McCready’s shadow the rest of my life.”

“I don’t understand.”

“When I give it away, I want it to be the right one. I want it to be Morgan.”

“Morgan,” she repeated.

“Yeah. Matthew James Morgan. But for what it’s worth, that’s the biggest lie I told you. Everything else was more or less the truth.”

“Everything about being from Tennessee?”

“Yeah. So,” he said, smiling, “how would you feel about spending another night at the Menger?” Before she could answer, he added, “I figured on cleaning up the dog and taking a good soaking bath myself. Then I was going to head back to San Antone.”

She felt numb all over. “I see.”

“I’ve got business there—and you do, too.” Seeing that she just stood there, he reminded her gently, “This is why you came down here, wasn’t it? You said you needed to know why he left, didn’t you?”

“Yes, but—but what about you?”

“I need a few answers myself. And while I’m there, I aim to play some high-stakes poker. Right now, I feel pretty damned lucky. So, what do you say?”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“I’ll buy you the biggest steak in San Antone,” he promised her. “And I’m damned sure going to get another bottle of that wine. We’ll get us the nicest room in the place. And if I’m lucky, we’ll have one helluva celebration.”

As she looked into the warm depths of his dark eyes, he was smiling at her with a boyish eagerness, and suddenly nothing else mattered. While her mother had warned her about dangerous men, she’d also always said half a loaf was better than none. He might leave her day after tomorrow, or the week after that, but until it happened, she was going to love him with heart, body, and soul.

A slow smile curved her mouth and warmed her own eyes. “I don’t have much to pack, Matt. I can clean up, fix enough food to hold the dog for a few days, and put out a bucket of water. And I can be ready within the hour.”