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She would get quite a shock when she realized he saw right through her. He was looking forward to that moment.
“I thought you said you lived in Texas,” he said.
“Is that important?”
“Most Texans I know ain’t quite so delicate in their ways. But then, you had an education.”
She chose to disregard his mockery. “You were born in Texas yourself, weren’t you?”
“You wouldn’t know the town. Whereabouts did you live?”
Immediately she became guarded. “We had a place in Palo Duro country.”
She clearly didn’t want to continue on that subject. Sim whistled a few introductory notes and then began to sing.
“Well I come from Alabamy with my banjo on my knee, I’m goin’ to Lou’siana, my true love for to see.” He grinned at Tal’s dubious expression. “Lou’siana.”
“What?”
“That’s where you were born.”
She frowned. “You hear it in my speech.”
“Like I said, I’ve been all over.”
She considered that with a thoughtful tilt of her head. “You are too young to have fought in the war.”
“So’re you.”
“I saw what it did to people on both sides.”
“Is that why you left Texas?”
“My brother saw promise in this country,” she said. “He imagined what it could become.”
A dreamer, just like Caleb. Looking for something he couldn’t see with his eyes, never content with what he had right in front of him. Always wanting more.
And exactly how are you different from either one of them?
Sim spurred ahead. Tal caught up, and they left Turquoise and the Dragoons behind them. To the east rose the Chiricahuas, a range of peaks extending north to south across the horizon. The grassy expanse of Sulphur Spring Valley spread almost unbroken for over twenty miles, but Castillo Canyon was nearly another twenty miles north once they’d crossed the plain. Sim didn’t intend to push the horses too hard when they’d soon be facing much harsher terrain in the mountains.
Grass grew high where water collected in the draw down the center of the valley. A few hardy ranchers squatted on the richest land beside springs and creeks. Sim knew that the infamous McLaury gang had their own spread near Soldier’s Hole, but he and Tal had no cause to pass that way.
“We’ll make camp at Squaretop Hills,” he said, indicating the cluster of buttes rising up from the valley some fifteen miles to the northeast. “There should be water there for the horses.”
He watched Tal carefully, noting the slight stiffening of her shoulders and the jut of her chin. She didn’t suggest that they stop at one of the squatter’s holdings or the few more established ranches between here and the mountains.
“Do you know Castillo Canyon?” she asked.
“I know where it is,” he said. “It’s long and deep, cuts right into the high rocks. Hundreds of spires and pinnacles like towers on a castle. That’s what gave the canyon its name.”
Tal glanced at him with raised brows. “You have some poetry in you, Mr. Kavanagh.”
He almost gave in to the urge to spit. “The whore—the lady—in Turquoise was right. Ain’t no mining up there, at least not on the west slope. Anything else in the canyon that might interest your brother?”
“Not that I know of. I’ve heard there are settlers there—a family by the name of Bryson. I haven’t met them.”
“If your brother went that way, they might have seen him.”
She nodded, lost in her own thoughts. They left the dwindling trail and rode across washes and gullies, past occasional beeves grazing on the yellowing grama, threeawn and bunchgrass that thrived in the valley. The dry season was on Arizona Territory, but Sim sensed rain coming in the days ahead. With any luck, it wouldn’t fall until he had André Bernard right under his nose.
The shadows were growing long when they reached Squaretop Hills. Sim chose a campsite partially shielded by a thick growth of mesquite and unsaddled Diablo. Tal saw to her own horse while Sim sniffed out water running just under a dry creek bed.
He dug out a basin and let the horses drink. Once they’d been rubbed down and staked out for the night, Sim went hunting. He shot a brace of cottontails and brought them back to camp, where Tal had already gathered brush for a small fire. Once again he was grudgingly compelled to admire her practicality, no matter how schoolmarmish she could be when the notion struck her.
Damn all women. Most weren’t worth the confusion they inevitably brought with their presence. But as he began to skin the rabbits, he remembered why he’d looked forward to this night.
He tossed the bloodied animals to Tal. They flopped into the dirt beside the new-made fire, and she gave a little jump. Sim smothered a grin of satisfaction.
“I got our supper,” he said. “You cook ’em.”
She picked up one of the carcasses and examined it with a critical eye. “Not much, is it?” she said. “Well, I’m not very hungry, myself.”
Sim shot to his feet. “How many do you want?”
“I said I’m not hungry.” She drew a knife and set to work without the slightest sign of squeamishness.
He went to stand over her, hands on hips. “Never heard of any boy who wasn’t always hungry.”
She wrinkled her nose, sniffed and waved at the air as if she’d smelled something distasteful, and after a moment he realized that her broad gestures were aimed in his direction. “Some things can spoil even the healthiest appetite.”
“You ain’t exactly a nosegay yourself,” he snapped. “If you only knew how bad humans—” He broke off in consternation and quickly recovered. “Would you get your appetite back if I washed up, Bernard?” He yanked off his neckerchief, shed his buckskin jacket and unbuttoned his waistcoat. “I found a little water that ain’t too muddy. You scrub my back, and I’ll scrub yours.”
The anticipated blush turned her face pink under its layer of dust. “That won’t be necessary.” She focused her attention on the rabbits. “You can make yourself useful by rigging a spit—that is, of course, if you have an appetite.”
“A man on the trail takes what he can get—even if it ain’t the sort of meat he prefers.”
Her knife slipped, and he wondered if she’d guessed that he had seen through her masquerade. Sim rigged the spit as requested, letting her do the rest. He leaned back on his elbows a little way from the fire and studied her as night fell over the valley. The moon and stars had the peculiar effect of softening Tal’s features, breaching her disguise more effectively than the brightest sunlight.
She knew he was watching her, but she pretended to be oblivious. “Your supper is ready,” she said, stepping back from the fire. “I’ll be with the horses.”
“You prefer their company to mine?”
She braced her hands on her hips and stared him down. “I don’t have to explain myself to you, Kavanagh. Is that clear enough?”
Sim grinned, showing all his teeth. “Very clear, hombre.” He crouched by the fire and tore into the meat with gusto. When he’d finished one of the rabbits, he took a tin plate and seldom-used fork from his saddlebags, rinsed them in a freshly dug water hole, and sliced off steaming chunks of meat from the second carcass. He piled them on the plate and went in search of Tal.
She never heard him approach. She’d laid her bedding next to the mesquite where the horses were picketed and now sat cross-legged on the blankets, her hat beside her, raking her fingers through her mass of tangled flaxen hair. It wasn’t as short as Sim had imagined, for she wore it in tight braids that fit under the crown of her hat. She had a female’s natural vanity after all.
Sim crouched and breathed in the woman-smell of her body. He’d lied when he suggested that she needed a bath. There was nothing unpleasant about her scent. Damn near the opposite. She smelled like a natural female—real and warm, like Esperanza, but different….
The memory of Esperanza cleared his head in a hurry. He set down the plate where even a human would find it and retreated as silently as he’d come. He walked around to the side of the hill, shucked his clothes and Changed.
Even after so many times, he still marveled at the miraculous novelty of the transformation from man to wolf. It was good to run free—free in a way he’d never understood before he accepted his MacLean blood, free as no human could comprehend. Stronger than either man or ordinary wolf, containing the best of both in one agile and powerful body.
He shook his thick brown coat and twitched his large, mobile ears. He raced across the valley floor, rattling the dry grasses and leaping waxy-leaved creosote and saltbush. Wind sang in his fur. Mice scurried under his broad feet, and a startled cow with a young calf stoutly turned to face him as if she could drive him away with her lowered horns and snorts of alarm.
He left her alone. He wasn’t after prey this night, and when he hunted cattle it was for some gain other than the filling of his belly. Not that the wolf had ever brought him any profit but this…this shedding of human law, human conscience, human desire.
He opened his senses to their almost painful limits, heard the frantic heartbeats of quail in their nests and smelled the musk of an angry skunk. He sifted one scent from the next and found the place where André Bernard had made camp a few nights ago. The man’s trail joined the wagon road that ran parallel to the Chiricahua foothills.
Sim circled back to Squaretop Hills and resumed his human shape and coverings. He washed his face at the water hole and spread his blankets under the open sky.
He was still wide awake when Tal approached, heavy-footed like all humans but more graceful than most. He heard her crouch several feet away, felt her study him as he’d watched her before, with a bewilderment he sensed like a hum behind his eyes.
“You’re awake?” she asked.
He rolled over to face her, resting his chin on his folded arms. “I don’t sleep much.”
She nodded as if that fact were of little surprise to her. Her hat brim cast her face in shadow, but he could see the gleam of her eyes.
“You didn’t have to do it,” she said in a low voice. “The food, I mean. I can take care of myself.”
“Not if you’ll pass up a fresh meal on the trail,” he said. He sat up, scraping hair out of his face. “You ate it?”
“Yes.” She set his cleaned plate and fork in the grass, staying out of reach. “I just came…to thank you.”
Those words came hard to her, just about as hard as they did to him. He’d thanked maybe half a dozen people in his life, if that. Never for something so small.
“Go to bed,” he said. “I’ll watch.”
She retreated awkwardly. He heard her lie down and toss and turn on her blankets, trying to get comfortable. He didn’t think it was because she was too delicate for the unyielding ground. Something about her scent had changed, and he knew instinctively what it was.
Until now, she’d regarded him as a temporary employee and treated him like one. She’d been aware he was a man about the same way any female would be, sizing him up without even realizing it, cool and objective. But somewhere between his banter about the bathing and her accepting the food he brought, she’d started looking at him different. Not so objective. Not anywhere near so cool.
His body stirred in spite of itself, and he cursed softly. So what if she was interested? She would never admit it. She had some stake in playing the boy, and no reason whatsoever to act on her impulses, given that he was a stranger and she wanted to keep her respectability.
André Bernard had been something less than respectable in Texas. Tal must have known that their ranch in the Palo Duro was a haven for rustlers, but she didn’t seem the type to approve of such illegal activities. She made plenty of excuses for André Bernard, but she hadn’t been running the Texas spread.
Sim flung his hand over his eyes. Why was he making excuses for her? He didn’t give a damn one way or the other, and nothing would come of some fleeting attraction that was about as meaningful as a bull and heifer rutting in a field.
That was all it ever was to him—rutting. Drop your pants and thank you, ma’am. They were always whores, and he always hated himself when it was finished.
He’d only stop hating himself when he took Esperanza in proper marriage, touched that unsullied skin and knew she accepted him. Needed him. Loved him.
Tonight he would dream only of Esperanza. But as he slipped into that netherworld of shades and memories, he saw Esperanza dressed in a soiled dove’s garish plumage, turning from Sim with disgust in her eyes. It was Tal Bernard, in robes of virgin white, who held out her arms to welcome him home.
CHAPTER THREE
TALLY BRACED HERSELF on the saddle horn like a raw-faced tenderfoot, trying to stay awake. She’d slept miserably last night, and not because of the meal Kavanagh had foisted on her. It wasn’t the first time she’d eaten game roasted over an open fire, and once she’d decided to accept Kavanagh’s “gift,” she’d been glad for the hearty sustenance after a long day’s ride.
It would be more accurate to say that the man himself was the source of her sleeplessness. God knew she hadn’t expected him to go out of his way to feed her…and of course she’d wondered with every bite how much he’d seen when he’d left the plate at her bedside.
She sneaked a glance at him from under the brim of her hat. He hadn’t shown any new awareness last night or this morning. He still treated her with an offhand indifference that sometimes bordered on contempt, just as she would expect a man like him to behave toward someone he clearly regarded as an overeducated, untried boy.
She’d been careful to pin up every stray lock of hair and powder her face with a fresh coating of dust when they broke camp early that morning. Kavanagh, on the other hand, had washed his face and combed out his dark hair, almost as if he’d taken to heart her rude comments about unpleasant odors.
Ever since she’d met him, Tally had been on the defensive. He hadn’t threatened her in any way, but she felt the need to keep proving herself, striking before he struck. And that was absurd, especially when he scarcely bothered with conversation and seemed content to ignore her most of the time. He hadn’t spoken after breakfast except to confirm that André had followed the road running north from Turkey Creek to Castillo Canyon.
Yet she knew he was watching her. Maybe he’d guessed her secret and was only waiting for a chance to expose it. But if he could sneak up on her as easily as he had last night, why wait? Perhaps he was simply not interested in the truth, one way or the other.
Dieu du ciel, she should be down on her knees in gratitude that he was so indifferent.
A meadowlark called from the grassland to the east. Tally cleared her throat. Kavanagh glanced at her and away again, turning his head toward the Chiricahua foothills. The mountains seemed an impenetrable wall from the valley, but Tally knew they were riddled with arroyos and streams that shrank to trickles in the spring, drawing abundant wildlife to the shallow pools left behind. Birds of brilliant plumage flashed like jewels in the darkness of the forest. Wolves and pumas roamed the highlands as once the Apaches had done. Miners might dig and scour the earth for precious metals, but the few settlers who’d made homes in the canyons had so far done little to alter the pristine world the Indians had been forced to abandon.
André wouldn’t notice the beauty of this land. The promise he saw lay only in the profit to be had.
“Petit fou,” she muttered.
“That’s French, ain’t it?”
Tally welcomed the rough sound of his voice even when it drowned the lark’s melodious song. “It is a common enough language in Louisiana.”
“I hear it’s useful for swearing.”
She laughed in spite of herself. He cast her an unreadable look. She wondered if her voice had gone too high and quickly stifled her incongruous amusement.
“Teach me,” he said.
“What?”
“We got another ten miles’ ride to Castillo Creek,” he said. “I figure that ought to be good for a few cuss words.”
“I can’t imagine that a man like you needs that kind of instruction.”
“And what kind of instruction do I need, boy?” He snickered at her silence and flicked the ends of his reins across his muscular thighs. “You know, when we met in Tombstone, I thought maybe you had more experience than your looks suggested. But Ready Mary…like most whores, she has an eye for easy prey. You’ve never been with a woman, have you?”
He didn’t know. Tally swallowed a sigh of relief. “What business is that of yours?”
He shrugged. “Let me give you a bit of advice, hombre. Stay out of saloons and whorehouses. When you find your brother, stick to that little rancho of yours and never trust anyone who offers you a free ride.”
“Is that a warning drawn from personal experience?”
An ominous hush fell about him, like a calm before the storm. “Everything costs. You don’t get nothin’ without paying for it.”
“What makes you dislike women so much, Mr. Kavanagh?”
“I only ever met one female who could be trusted as far as a man can spit, and…” His voice softened almost to a whisper. “She’s more angel than woman.”
