Scotsman Wore Spurs (38 page)

Her eyes went to the silver band again. She was staring at the man who had killed her father and tried to kill her. Her head began to spin, and red spots appeared before her eyes, but she held on desperately to sanity and reason, knowing lives, including her own, depended upon it.

She wished she had her papa's Colt.

Her gaze took in the man's gun and the easy familiarity with which it rode on his thigh. None of the farmers would be a match for him, nor, she thought, would Drew. Not with the rifle still in the wagon. She hadn't seen a sheriff's office, either.

And the man was still awaiting an answer.

“Cowardly bushwhacker shot him, killed him dead,” she finally said. “Nephew's running the drive now.”

The man's eyes grew colder, and he stared at her face. For a moment, she wondered whether she'd gone too far. She put her hands in her pockets, and clenched her fingers into tight fists. Only that way could she keep herself from flailing out at him.

She glared at him, though, daring that much, wishing she could dare a great deal more.

The crowd of farmers had inched away from the man who was obviously a gunfighter and who made little pretense that he was anything else. She didn't want to back away from him. Everything in her protested at that. But if she didn't move, she knew Drew would eventually see them and come to her rescue. Actually, she was surprised he hadn't already appeared. He must be settling up with the shopkeeper.

Gabrielle forced herself to turn away from the man with the silver hat band. And she vowed she would say nothing to Drew about the encounter. Not now. Not for a few days.

Her legs seemed wooden as she moved on toward the feed store, unimpeded now by the men who had slunk away under the gunslinger's cold eyes. She felt the man's gaze follow her, burning a hole in her back.

She finally made it to the feed store. Hands shaking, she handed the clerk her list.

As had the other storekeeper, he asked, “Got cash money?”

She nodded. “My partner's loadin' supplies at the dry-goods store. He'll be here directly with the money.”

Unlike the keeper of the dry-goods store, this man was rail thin and ready with an easy smile. “Kinda young for a drover, ain't you?”

Ordinarily, she might have played cocky Gabe Lewis to the hilt and acted unduly annoyed. But the clerk clearly meant no harm, and she had more important fish to fry. She ignored the comment and went after what she wanted to know. “Got any law in this town?”

“Nope. Last sheriff was gunned down by a drunken cowboy. You Texans ain't real popular right now.”

“I'm finding that out,” she said grimly. “Fact is, I just saw somebody on the street with a mean-lookin' gun and an attitude to match. Wore his Colt real low, like maybe he was a paid gun.”

The clerk shrugged. “Cow towns are always full of gamblers, cowboys, and killers.”

“This one had a silver band around his hat,” she said.

“Ah. You must mean Killian. Has a real bad reputation. Been hangin' around town a few days. No one knows what he wants. You stay clear of him, y'hear? He's a bad 'un.”

Her questions were answered. There was no law to go to. But she had a name: Killian. Once they returned to Texas, they could take the name Killian to a marshal, then let justice take its course. Meanwhile, she'd bought them some time; it gave her no small measure of satisfaction that Killian now believed Kirby dead.

Still, she felt sick inside. For she would have to lie to Drew again. She couldn't tell him about Killian. She'd seen his reckless courage over and over again.

Kirby had much the same sort of stubborn courage. But, as much as she admired them, she knew neither Kirby nor Drew was a match for a ruthless professional gunman. And she wasn't about to take even the slightest risk that they might decide to take on the gunslinger themselves.

Drew wouldn't appreciate her trying to protect him—especially if it meant lying to him. But she remembered her father's death, and she still felt guilty. She would not—would not—be responsible for another death.

You're an actress
, she told herself.
Play a part. Play the most important role in your life
. She could do it. She
had
to do it. She straightened her spine, set her chin. Justice for her father would come in time. Silently, she begged his forgiveness, and she knew he would understand. But for now, nothing was more important than keeping Drew Cameron, her Scotsman, safe.

She watched as the clerk dragged three large bags of oats to the door for her. She grabbed the fourth, struggled out after him, and looked down the street. The gunman, Killian, had disappeared, probably into a saloon to celebrate yet another death. She shivered again in the hot noonday sun.

“You okay?” the clerk asked, his eyes on her coat. “You aren't sick, are you?” He stepped several feet back from her.

She was, but not from the kind of contagious illness he feared. She was spared an answer as she saw the Kingsley hoodlum wagon creaking down the dusty road. She waited, her body tense, hoping Killian didn't suddenly emerge from the saloon. She'd told Drew about the silver hat band, and that kind of decoration was an expensive rarity in these parts.

Drew stopped the wagon and leaped down. He took one look at her face and questioned her with his eyes, but he said nothing, instead going inside with the clerk to settle the bill. She tried to lift one of the sacks of oats into the wagon but failed. She tried again, compelled to do something, anything, to hurry their departure.

Then Drew came back, lifting the sack easily from her arms and setting it in the back of the wagon. The other three sacks followed, and she climbed up onto the bench.

He climbed up after her, took the reins, and snapped them. She didn't look at him, but just as she'd felt the gunman's eyes on hers, she now felt Drew's.

You're an actress
, she told herself again.

But a huge lump formed in her throat, and she wanted to be sick as he turned the wagon and started east. The trip to Caldwell has been all too short. The return journey, she thought, would be all too long.

Chapter Twenty

Drew leaned against a tree and listened to Gabrielle sing a poignant ballad from the Civil War.

He looked around at the rapt faces of the drovers. Kirby had persuaded her to entertain them, and she'd agreed willingly enough. Yet she'd seemed uneasy about putting aside her duties in favor of a more relaxed evening activity. Indeed, since Caldwell two days earlier, Drew had watched as she'd immersed herself in cooking and taking care of Ha'Penny and the rest of her brood, keeping frantically busy every minute of the day, as if each one might be her last. One thing she hadn't done was spend any time alone with him. Indeed, she'd avoided it like the plague.

Something was wrong. Something that worried her, and she was refusing to discuss it with him. More bloody secrets, driving another wedge between them.

He recalled her sitting, tense and silent, beside him as they'd ridden back from Caldwell. He'd been trying ever since to imagine what had happened to change the lighthearted sprite who had chattered all the way into town. She hadn't been out of his sight long, only the ten or fifteen minutes when she'd gone to the feed store.

During that time, he'd queried the storekeeper about any strangers who'd come to town recently, but to no avail. Apparently Caldwell always had strangers—drovers, gamblers, and such—passing through.

The real purpose, though, of his having sent Gabrielle to the feed store without him had been to give himself a few moments to make a special purchase. The package he'd bought still lay hidden in the back of the hoodlum wagon behind the sacks of oats. He wanted to give it to her. Bloody hell, he'd bought it for her. But something about her evasiveness—his suspicion she was lying or at least withholding something from him—kept him from giving it to her.

He'd tried. He'd asked questions, but he'd received vague, monosyllabic responses that reminded him of her lying days—days not so far in the past. Something had happened in Caldwell, and she wouldn't tell him a bloody thing about it.

The drovers were grinning as Gabrielle started singing “The Yellow Rose of Texas.” Ha'Penny squirmed in Hank's grasp, and Honor nuzzled closer, keeping a careful eye on the child.

As she sang, Gabrielle looked anywhere but at Drew.

Blast it all, he had started to believe in her, and he'd thought she was returning that trust. Now he knew she wasn't. Trusting, he mused bitterly, was highly overrated.

The song came to an end.

“What about you, Scotty?” Hank yelled. “Don't you have a favorite?”

He shrugged and started to move away from the fire. It was time to get some sleep. He had the midnight watch.

“Drew?”

Gabrielle's voice stopped him, and he turned.

“I know some English songs,” she said. “Would you like to hear one?”

“I'm a Scot,” he said curtly. “I don't particularly care for the English.” He saw surprise on the faces around the fire. He seldom snapped at anyone. Hell, he
never
snapped, having never cared about anything or anyone enough to bother.

He heard Damien ask Gabrielle, “Can you do ‘Lorena'?”

She smiled at Kirby's nephew and nodded. It seemed an automatic smile, a performer's smile, but Drew still wanted to strike Damien. He strode off as he heard her strong contralto fill the quiet night.

Maybe he would go out on watch. As he approached the horses, the pinto came over to greet him, nuzzling his hand, then his face. Drew felt the weight of the animal's affection. Since his father had killed his first horse—a lesson, the old man had told him, not to ever get attached to an animal—he'd never kept a horse for very long. He'd never wanted that kind of pain again.

But needs were simmering inside him now, needs he'd always denied before. They were hammering at him, giving him no peace. For the first time in his life, he wanted to love, he wanted to need, he wanted to be needed. And he thought he'd found what he wanted.

Damn her.

He saddled the pinto, catching himself in the act of considering names for the bloody beast. Grudgingly, he allowed that perhaps it was all right to name the horse; he would need a mount after the drive, and he'd thought about asking Kirby if he could buy the pinto.

Walking the horse slowly until he was away from the herd, not wanting any quick movement to stir the cattle—the last thing they needed in Kansas was a stampede—he spurred his horse to an easy canter. A few more weeks and they would be in Abilene. And his grand adventure would end. He would have decisions to make, decisions about the rest of his life. About whether he would continue to drift through the years, ever a wanderer, or try to make something worthwhile of his existence.

But whether he drifted or put down roots, remained a gambler or became a rancher, he couldn't, for the life of him, imagine any kind of future without Gabrielle.

Gabrielle watched Ha'Penny sleep, his long lashes lying on his cheeks, the little fingers of one hand clutched around a doll she had made him out of a coffee sack. The fingers of his other hand were buried in Honor's fur as the dog lay contentedly next to him. Gabrielle mused that the two of them—child and dog—seemed destined for each other, each making their own tragic journey to find the other.

She had thought that she and Drew were destined for each other, too, but now she wondered. She'd seen the coldness in his eyes over the past several days and worried that he would not understand yet another time why she'd lied to him—even if the lie was one of omission. He had his own private code of honor, one that beggared most, and she loved him for it, even as she violated that which he most valued.

Better his contempt than his death.

They were five days from Caldwell, but that was only a couple of days of hard riding if unencumbered by a herd of cattle. Was it safe yet to tell Drew and Kirby about Killian? She wasn't sure.

Sighing, she fussed for a moment over Ha'Penny, making sure he was not too warm, not too cold, then she climbed down from the wagon to stoke the fire and put on a fresh pot of coffee. Pepper had always tried to keep coffee available, and so did she.

The drovers not on duty were asleep in their bedrolls. The night sky was clear, the stars as bright as she'd ever seen them, the moon a brilliant crescent. In the distance, she saw the dark silhouettes of thousands of cattle. There was an odd serenity about the scene.

The loneliness inside her deepened, became agonizing, as she realized her days on the trail were coming to end. In such a short time, she'd grown close to the men with whom she was traveling, and she'd come to look forward to the physical demands, too, for they led to an intense satisfaction and even joy.

She'd never considered any career but performing. Now she found it difficult to think about returning to the stage, to the open leers as well as sincere appreciation, to the paint and the corsets and revealing dresses. She loved the freedom of her shirt and trousers; she enjoyed the easy company of men who appreciated her for what she was rather than how she looked.

She didn't want hundreds of men's appreciation. She only wanted one man's appreciation—and his trust and his love—for the rest of her life.

She swallowed tears, knowing she was losing the man she wanted. But she didn't dare tell him the secret she was harboring. Not yet. Not until they were farther north, much farther north. And by then, it might be too late.

She leaned against the wagon wheel, knowing sleep wouldn't come easily tonight.

Kirby couldn't sleep. Tonight it seemed that the ground was too hard, his bedroll too warm, and his thoughts too disturbed. So instead of frustrating himself any further, he sat up, looked around the campsite, and saw Gabrielle leaning against the hoodlum wagon. She was one of the things keeping him awake.