A Wanted Man (25 page)

“Neither,” he said. “It’s midmorning. The weather’s turning, and I don’t like where it’s headed.”

A storm was coming. Now fully awake, she could recognize its approach, the air charged and heavy with warning, causing the hair on her arms, the back of her neck to stand up in anticipation.

“I’m going to have to leave you for a little while. It shouldn’t take that long, I promise, but I heard shots—”

“Shots?” She snapped up. “How close?”

“Closer than I’d like.” He sat back on his heels. He’d gotten ready to travel while she slept, she saw in a glance. The horses were bridled, his pack strapped to Harry. He’d swept the ground in the small clearing, erasing any trace of their presence. “God only knows what they’re shooting at. Rabbits, ground squirrels, treetops. Each other, if we’re lucky.”

“Not us,” she said flatly.

“Not, not us.”
Yet
. He might as well have said, though she knew he never would. But it slammed her all at once, the danger she’d known existed but had
never felt as an immediate and physical threat, chilling her down to her bones, lumping cold and hard in her stomach.

“It might not even be
them
,” he said. “We’re off Silver Spur land. But I need to find out.”

Except it was them. Too much concern darkened his eyes for it to be random cowboys popping bottles off a fence. She could read his eyes now—dark, yes, but far from impenetrable. She couldn’t believe she had ever thought them expressionless. It was all there to see, everything he thought and felt, if she only knew how to look for it.

“I know I told you I’d stay with you, but—”

“So why are you standing there chattering at me?” she said, adopting the imperious tone her mother used when someone got a bit above herself. “Hurry off and attend to the details so we can get back on our way and out of these mountains. There has to be a decent hotel in Salt Lake City, doesn’t there?”

His faint smile told her he appreciated her attempt. He straightened, the creak of his knees surprisingly reassuring. He wasn’t flawless. He was human, someone who’d survived long enough to have his body start to show the wear of the years, and she was the only one privileged enough to witness his imperfections.

He strode over to his horse, rummaged in the pack, and returned with his hands full. “Here.” He handed her his waterskin, a small sack of dried beef. And then he hesitated. “This, too,” he said at last, shoving one of his guns at her.

“Sam…” She eyed it with as much suspicion as if he’d tried to hand her a scorpion.

“It’s not like you haven’t held one of my guns before.”

She lifted her eyes to his. “You might need it.”

“I’ve got another.”

“You might need them
both
,” she said stubbornly. “And I don’t know if I’d know what to do with it anyway.”

“Not that hard. Point and shoot.”

“All right, so I know
what
to do. I don’t know if I
could
.”

“You could,” he said, his voice firm and sure. “If you had to, Laura, you could do anything.”

Warmth bloomed over the chill. He believed in her; she could not doubt it. In her strength, her courage, her ability to perform in a crisis, all those things that everyone always thought she was too fragile for.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” she ordered him. “See who’s there, delay them if you can, fine, then come back. Don’t try taking out a half dozen of them by yourself.” It was a hopeless bid that she couldn’t help but make. If he thought he could stop them there, keeping them far away from her, he’d do it. “You were ugly the last time they got through with you. I prefer your face like this.”

“Then I’ll just have to stay pretty.” His smile faded. “Laura, you’re going to have to promise me. If you hear shots, you get on Harry and ride, as far and fast as you can. Don’t worry about me, don’t look back, just ride.”

“Harry?”

“He’s faster than Star, and he’ll go longer.”

“All the more reason you should have him,” Laura said. “And besides—”

“I’m serious, Laura, you hear anything, and you get out. You’ll only get in the way.”

She recognized the ploy for what it was and refused to be wounded by it. “I don’t even know where I’m going.”

“Just ride west. You’ll hit another ranch, a town,
sooner or later. All you have to do is tell them who you are, promise a reward, and they’ll take good care of you.”

He sounded certain. She didn’t believe it for a minute. “You’ll just have to hurry up and get back here, Sam, because I refuse to go on without at least one servant.”

He studied her, regret and concern etched into his handsome face. She didn’t want him to worry about her so much that it hampered his ability to protect himself. Because while he might have confidence in her abilities, she knew full well that, with Haw Crocker’s men on her tail but without him, she’d never make it to Salt Lake City.

“Go!”

“In a minute.”

He kissed her. No hands, no crushing passion, no impatience. Just a gentle meeting of their lips, soft, unbearably sweet. But it conveyed so much:
Keep safe, take care, I’ll be back. And if I don’t, this is what I want to remember
.

An ache hummed within her. It wasn’t physical, the grinding drive that compelled bodies together, the simmering heat that had kept her awake so many nights. This settled in her heart, piercing deep, the tenderness more devastating than any passion.

She felt her throat clog, the burn in her eyes, the tears she didn’t dare allow release. She battled them back, a sear of potential loss.

Finally, he pulled back—only an inch, so their mouths separated, but he was still so close she could see, even in the gloom, the flare of regret in his eyes.

“See you soon,” he whispered.

“You’d better.”

O
f all the things she’d left behind on the train, the one she’d never once considered she would miss was a clock.

Without the slide of the sun overhead she’d no way to judge the time. The clouds blotted the sky, robbing her of any hints.

She tried to be patient. Tried to conserve her strength, but she kept popping up and down like a jumping bean. Tried to fuel herself with food, but she couldn’t choke down the beef through a throat that was still tight.

Every sound—the skitter of a rodent through the brush, the creak of a weakened branch—sent her dashing for her horse until her nerves felt as tangled and frayed as one of Mrs. Bossidy’s knitting projects. The wind picked up, slapping at the trees, tossing the tops like whitecaps on the ocean.

And then he was back, coming through the trees like the sun breaking through clouds, leading her horse, the relief that flooded her piercing-sweet.

“Let’s go,” he told her.

“Right now?” she asked him. “Because honest to heavens, Sam, I’m thinking I might want to throw myself in your arms and start popping off buttons.”

He stared at her, open-mouthed, shocked to his toes.

“Hold that thought,” he said when he’d recovered his voice. She hadn’t meant it, not for a second, and he knew it, but it steadied them both.

“What happened?” she asked as he helped her mount Star.

“It was some of Crocker’s men all right. Eight in this group, and they’ve got a good enough tracker that they had no trouble following us this far. But with so many men they got lazy, figuring at least one of ’em would notice if anyone was sneaking up while they were passing around a bottle and nobody was paying attention.” He allowed a slight smile. “They’ll be after us again, but they’re going to have to catch their horses first. And those animals can
move
with the right incentive. They were too busy chasing them to notice me in the commotion.”

He swung into his saddle. “Ready?”

“Ready,” she said, though her legs ached, and her eyes were gritty.

Because Sam was by her side.

The weather had grander plans than cooperating with desperate travelers. Instead, two hours later, she decided to show off.

Sam and Laura picked their way up a mountain face, a zigzag path that hugged a slope far too steep to charge straight up. Gnarled evergreens clung to the rocky sides, their perch as precarious as Laura’s felt.

The wind turned cold and mean. Thunder rumbled in
the distance, a deep, rolling boom that made the earth tremble beneath them and the horses skittish.

The rain began with a couple of warning spatters. Those were easy to ignore. But they didn’t stay that way. Big, cold droplets, rescued from being hail by only a few crucial degrees, plunged down, heavier, and heavier still, until Laura and Sam were drenched. Sam offered Laura the only outergarment they had, a light coat he pulled from his pack, but she refused. She was already soaked; that would shield her for only a few moments, then it’d be so wet as to provide no protection, either. Better to save it for when it might make a difference.

The rain they could live with, though it made the trail slippery, the going slow. But it also washed out their trail behind them, the hoofprints disappearing into a swirl of muck. The best tracker in the world couldn’t distinguish the few broken branches caused by their passage from all the damaged vegetation that the storm ripped free.

The lightning, however, was another matter, a bright, close flash that charged the air and bleached the world white, destroying their vision for a minute. It terrified the horses, unsettling them to the point that Laura and Sam had to dismount and lead them carefully along the narrow path.

It was safer that way in any case. They were lower, closer to the side of the mountain, its bulk providing some slight protection, muting the fierce battering of the rain. Sacrificed in the equation, however, were their shoes, quickly caked in a half inch of thick, coppery mud.

Tension coiled painfully in Laura. Bad enough to have armed, unscrupulous men on their tail; a danger
ous storm on top of it seemed too much, as if the lack of adventure and danger in the last dozen years of her life had to be made up for in just a couple of short days.

“We’ll have to find some shelter,” Sam shouted over his shoulder at her, when another sharp crack of thunder faded. “But there could be a line shack twenty feet off the trail, and I don’t know as I’d see it.”

A tree might offer some slight protection from the rain. But Laura was far less worried about the rain than a lightning strike shearing the trunk off right above her so it crashed down on her head.

And then Sam paused on the trail, so abruptly she nearly walked right into Harry’s rump.

“What is it?” she said.

“I think there’s—” He swiped at his eyes, squinted. “There’s something beside the trail just ahead. A hollow, maybe a ledge. Come on.”

He hurried forward, leading Harry past the small opening, leaving her space to come up behind them.

“Man-made,” he said, his voice carrying over the wind and the rain. But then, she could have picked his voice out over a brass band, over the roar of the sea, over the shouts of a thousand men. “There are hundreds of ’em, pocked all through the mountains. Somebody caught a glimmer and dug at it until they figured out there wasn’t a good vein there.”

It was almost too small to call a cave. The opening was barely four feet tall, considerably less wide, but it spread into an arched area, perhaps three feet deep, once Laura ducked inside. Then the space narrowed abruptly, a hollow spike into the side of the mountain. It was too dark for her to see how far it might continue,
but one would have to crawl to go any farther in any case.

“It’s too small for the horses,” she called back to Sam. Her voice sounded completely unfamiliar, hollow and harsh. “It’ll even be a tight fit for the two of us.”

No answer. The wind howled, the rain pounded; likely he couldn’t hear her.

He stood just outside the entrance, staring into its depths, his eyes dark, unfocused. Water streamed over him, plastering his hair to his skull, his clothes to his body. Though she was right in front of him, he didn’t appear to see her, his gaze aimed into the depths of the small cave.

“Come on,” she said, voice raised over the clamor of the weather. “It’s big enough, just barely.”

He still didn’t answer. It was as if she ceased to exist. Lines scored his face, drew harsh furrows between his brows.

Lightning flashed. Close to them this time; the sound exploded but a moment later, a charge of danger crackling in the air.

“Now, Sam!” Had something happened to him during that brief moment she’d ducked inside? He seemed stunned. Perhaps there’d been another strike, one she’d not noticed while she was sheltered by the stone, and it had frozen him somehow…memories of the thunder of guns in battle? She’d read of that once, that men who’d been in a war heard the cannons in other sounds for the rest of their lives, and it could throw them immediately back to the battlefield.

But either way she had to get him inside. She grabbed his arm and pulled. Her feet slid in the muck, and she couldn’t gain good purchase.

“Sam.” She put both hands on each side of his head, forcing him to look at her. “Sam. We have to get inside. It’s not safe out here. You have to come with me. Please.”

She wasn’t even sure he knew her. There was no recognition in his eyes. They were empty, uncertain.
Afraid
. She would have sworn it was impossible for him, that nothing would ever put those anxious emotions there.

“Sam.
Please
.”

He shook his head slowly. “I can’t go in there.”

Rain blurred her vision; his face wavered in front of her, unreal, indistinct. “You have to.
We
have to.”

He stared at her like a drunken man, as if he knew he should recognize her but couldn’t quite dredge up the memory. And then his expression cleared. “Come on.”

Sam took Laura by the upper arms and steered her into the cave.

It closed around him immediately, driving the air from his lungs, the sanity from his brain, the last seventeen years from his life. It was as if he’d never left Andersonville, as if he’d been in that hole for months, he and Griff, the rain pouring down on them, collecting around their ankles, their shins, cold—so cold—wondering if the muck would just keep rising and drown them there, in that hole they’d dug themselves, their last hope corrupted into serving as their own grave.

“Sam?”

Her voice penetrated the past, like a needle prick of light after months of darkness, and he concentrated on it. On
her
.

“I can’t stay in here. I
can’t
, I’m sorry. It’s not like that day on the train, I’m not going to argue with you
about it. And I
will
tie you up to keep you safe if I have to.” The words burst out of him, staccato-sharp. “But I can’t stay.”

“Sam, it’s not safe out there.”

“It’ll just have to be. I’ll stay close to the side. I’ll keep the horses in front of me.” It took all the air he had to speak; he felt himself gasping, still couldn’t take in enough, his body becoming as starved for it as if he’d been underwater too long.

“Sam. What happened?”

“In Andersonville.” The memories swept desperately over him, drowning him. He took a step to the side, to the border between in and out, between reality and memory, so that the rain washed over him, the cool sweet air filling his lungs. See? He’d had a choice. He could move. There was not a guard standing over him with a gun, demanding that he stay in his crypt.

“They kept us in a hole.” The darkness in the tiny cave cloaked her, protected her. “Griff, me. We tried to dig our way out, and when they found us they made us stay there.”

“Sam.” He could see only the suggestion of her features; the cave was too dark, the rain washing through his eyes. It didn’t matter. He knew her face, knew every expression that flickered through those eyes. There’d be sympathy there, and understanding, and the kind of rich compassion that made a man say all the things he hadn’t intended to, believe in all the things he swore he never would. “You don’t have to tell me.”

“It’s all right.” He had never mouthed these words before. Even he and Griff, from the instant they walked out the gates of Andersonville, had never again mentioned those days. But wiping them away and trying to forget it had never worked, had it? Maybe, if he spilled
it all, he could finally sluice it away, as the rain poured over him and rinsed him clean. “Six months. We could barely move. Couldn’t lie down, couldn’t even sit down at the same time. They threw us food. Sometimes poured hot soup right overhead and all we got to eat was what we could catch. Sometimes they threw in a shovel of dirt just to remind us how easily it could become our grave.”

“Sam.” She said his name again, as if she knew that her presence, her voice saying his name, were the only things keeping him in the here and now, the only things that prevented him from being sucked back into the brutal and tortuous past.

“We tried to crawl out at first. Scrabbled up the side—me on him, him on me. Sometimes they’d let us get almost all the way to the top before they’d kick us back in.” He held up his hands; the little finger on his left hand was bent at the knuckle from when a guard had stomped on it. It ached in damp weather, and he’d wake up sobbing, sweating, until he saw the wide spaces around him and realized he wasn’t back there.

She reached through the mouth of the cave, out into the rain, and took his hand. She brought it to her mouth, kissing the crippled finger, her breath soft and very hot, and the memories lost some of their power. Yes, there were terrible things in the world.

But there was also
Laura
in the world, and that made up for a lot.

She pulled his hand down, away from that wonderful mouth. But she still held it, her grip firm and sure.

“Ever since then, I can’t…I can’t be in small spaces. Dark, narrow—I’m going to suffocate if I go in there. I know I’m
not,
I know it’s stupid, but if I go in there, I’m not going to be able to breathe.”

There. He’d told her. He knew before now she had admired him, that part of her had built him up into a hero just as Erastus had. He’d spent years developing his reputation: the fastest gun, the fearless soldier-for-sale. He’d never allowed anyone to witness the thinnest crack in his armor, the slightest weakness in his facade.

And now she knew he was a fraud. He could ride after the most vicious criminal or walk into a strikers’ camp with a dozen guns trained on him without the slightest twitch. But he could not enter a cave to get in out of the rain.

“In my room…you were in my room that night, after my sketchbook was stolen. How?” she asked, her voice conversational and curious, without a single hint of disappointment or reproof. She could have been asking him why he didn’t like cream in his coffee for all it seemed to disturb her.

“It’s a bigger space. Open windows, lights…sometimes I can handle it, for a little while.”

“There were no lights that night.”

“You want the truth?”

“Of course.”

She still held his hand. He turned his wrist, curled his fingers so that he held hers instead. Her bones were long, narrow, and felt as fragile as a bird’s. And yet they’d painted those landscapes, huge and magnificent, and gave him a lifeline through the darkness.

“You distracted me.”

“Excuse me?”

He was about to shock her. She would know that, somewhere deep inside, no matter how many other things were going on around him, every second he spent in her company he was imagining her naked and beneath him.

“We were in your bedroom. You were in your nightgown. If I concentrated hard enough on what lay beneath that nightgown, what we could do in that bed, I could almost forget that there were walls around me.”

Her hand went limp in his. Now she would surely pull away. He had to force himself not to tighten his grip, to hang on no matter how hard she tugged.