Desert Dreams

Desert
Dreams

By

Deborah
Cox

Desert Dreams

Deborah Cox

Copyright © 1995 and
2013 by Deborah C. Minyard

Originally published by
Harper Collins

Chapter
1

He guided his horse
through the
crowded street with casual ease, one hand on the reins, the other resting on
his thigh. His gaze never wavered from its direction straight ahead, and yet he
seemed to be aware of everyone and everything around him. There was the look of
the predator about him, the menacing watchfulness of an animal on the scent of
its next kill.

Tension emanated from him and echoed in the hollow thumping
of Anne Cameron's heart. She wiped sweat from her brow with the sleeve of the
shirtwaist that had been white that morning when she'd put it on. A warm
whisper of a breeze caressed her hot skin, as a rivulet of moisture trickled
between her breasts in the blazing September heat.

Drifter. She'd seen his type before. There had been plenty of
them along the Mississippi River, rootless men who wandered from town to town,
game to game, dangerous men who had nothing to lose.

Not until he'd passed down the street did she notice the body
slung crosswise behind the saddle. The horse's movements caused the corpse to sway
in a macabre dance, arms and legs dangling on either side of the animal.

Bile rose inside her, and she held a hand to her throat in
reaction.

San Antonio, Texas was nothing at all like Natchez,
Mississippi—on the surface at least. You'd never see a man ride down the street
with a body draped over his horse, even in Natchez-under-the-hill, the part of
the city she was familiar with. But life in Natchez-under-the-hill was cheap,
and it was evidently cheap in Texas, too.

The man with the corpse stopped before the jail. He swung
down from the saddle and walked around to the side of his horse. At the same
time, a tall barrel-chested man emerged from the jail. He came to stand beside
the body and raised the lifeless head by the hair to get a look at the dead
man's face.

Anne strained to hear the words that passed between the two,
but the din in the street was too thick. She took the opportunity to study the
gunfighter more closely. Her gaze slid down from his dark head to his broad
shoulders to his narrow hips, where a gun rode low against his thigh. At that
instant, she looked up and met his gaze.

He smiled, touching a finger to his hat. Try though she
might, she couldn't break his gaze. She was rooted to the spot. Her heart
raced, leaving her breathless. A flush crept up from her throat, and she was
finally able to avert her gaze. A cold knot settled in her stomach. It was a
warning she dared not ignore. She'd disregarded her intuition before and paid a
terrible price.

"There's
gonna
be
trouble."

She turned at the sound of a deep male voice behind her to
see a whiskered, white-haired man standing in the open doorway of the hotel. He
nodded toward the horseman who had just dismounted in front of the jail.
"
Pistolero
.
Prob'ly
a bounty hunter."

That was pretty obvious. She moved past the whiskered man
into the relative coolness of the hotel, grateful to be away from the cold,
assessing stare of the man across the street. She stepped up to the desk,
placing her gloves on the polished surface, trying not to think about the
gunman.

"See those men on the other side of the street?"
the whiskered man persisted.

In spite of her resolve to remain detached, Anne peered
through the open door at two dangerous-looking men lounging across the street
in front of the saloon, their eyes fixed on the gunfighter.

"Vigilante scum." The whiskered man turned away
from the doorway with a scowl and walked around behind the shiny mahogany desk.

"Mark my words, somebody's
gonna
be dead before this day's over." He opened the large ledger book with a
snort. "Minutemen, they call themselves. Their leader, Captain
Asa
Mitchell, vowed to punish criminals and traitors.
Thing
of it is, they're deserters and desperadoes
themselves. They carry out their own brand of justice. Just last week, they
hung a man for getting drunk and turning over a few chili stands in Alamo
Plaza. Took him out of jail and strung him up from a chinaberry tree. Few
months ago, they hung twenty men in one week."

Anne closed her eyes tightly, tapping her fingers on the
wooden surface. Her temples were beginning to throb. She didn't care about this
town or chili stands or hangings. Her too-large boots had rubbed blisters on
her ankles and heels, despite the thick woolen socks she'd stuffed into the
toes to make them fit better. All she could think of was taking those boots
off, along with the rest of her clothes, and soaking in a hot tub.

"I need a room," she said finally. Her stomach
rumbled, reminding her that the last meal she'd had was yesterday's breakfast, and
she wouldn't eat tonight either. What meager funds she had left had to last her
until she reached her destination.

It wasn’t the first time in her life that she’d been hungry,
and it probably wouldn’t be the last. She’d drink water-a lot of water-and pretend
it filled that empty spot in her belly. It was a game she’d played before. If
never worked.

The innkeeper turned the guest register around without
another word and waited for her to sign her name.

"Pedro!" he called as Anne finished writing. A
Mexican youth appeared, smiling brightly from beneath a large straw hat.

"Take Miss"—he glanced at the register for her
name—"Miss Cameron's baggage upstairs, pronto!"

The Mexican bobbed his head and lifted the carpetbag Anne had
dropped at her feet. She followed him toward the staircase.

One more night in a hotel.

One more night and a stagecoach ride and she'd be in
Ubiquitous, Texas, where she would start her new life. Finally she would have a
home, a real home that didn't float up and down a river. She could almost
imagine her Aunt
Margarite's
face. She would look
like the miniature of her mother she kept safe in her locket, the only thing
she owned that had belonged to the woman who had died giving her birth.

"
Remember where you came from
," her father
had always told her. "
Your mother was a fine New Orleans lady from a
respectable family. Remember that.
"

When she was old enough to understand, he had explained that
her mother's fine, respectable family had disowned her for marrying an
American
,
which meant anyone who couldn't trace their lineage back to France for at least
three generations. The newlyweds were left to fend for themselves. But her
mother's older sister,
Margarite
, hadn't shunned her.
Her father had always told her to go to Aunt
Margarite
should anything happen to him, and so she had.

Closing her eyes, Anne caressed the locked that hung from her
neck and allowed herself to imagine what it would be like to have a real home
at last. Aunt
Margarite's
house would smell like
home-baked bread. It would be white with a large porch on the front. They would
sit and laugh together at dusk like the families she'd glimpsed in Natchez, the
part above the bluffs where the decent folks lived, and in Baton Rouge, and in
Vicksburg....

Hopefully Aunt Marguerite had received her letter. She'd
posted it from Natchez on her way out of town. There hadn't been time to wait
for a reply—it would have taken weeks to reach her, if it reached her at all—so
she had taken a chance and struck out for Texas.

She moistened her parched lips. The taste of Texas trail dust
was bitter on her tongue. Her gaze returned to the spot where the
pistolero
had been
standing, but he had turned to follow the sheriff into the jail. She glanced
across the street at the two vigilantes who were still watching and whispering
to each other.

If there was going to be trouble, as the innkeeper had
predicted, she hoped it would wait until she was well on her way.

* * * * *

Rafe Montalvo stepped out of the sheriff's office into the
noisy street, adjusting the brim of his hat so it shielded his eyes from at
least some of the sun's glare. He glanced down the street, looking for the girl
he'd seen standing in front of the hotel moments earlier,
her
curly fair hair peeking out from underneath a battered hat. She was gone now,
vanished, as if she'd never been there at all, as if she were nothing more than
a mirage.

Something about her struck a memory deep inside him. Tall and
fragile, she seemed out of place on the rough, dirty street. Her carriage, her
manner, everything about her spoke of breeding and pride, despite her slightly
shabby, travel-worn appearance. She was probably a refugee from the war.

With an effort, he deflected the empty knot of pain that
formed in his gut. There once was a time when women like that were a part of
his life, but that was long ago, before all the killing started. She was like a
ghost from his past, a past he would just as soon leave buried. Still, he
couldn't help wondering what she was doing in San Antonio, especially now, when
what little law and order there had been before the war had completely broken
down.

Rafe shrugged the question aside as he stepped off the wooden
sidewalk and strode toward his horse. She was nothing to him. A woman like that
would cross to the opposite side of the street to avoid passing too close to a
man like him.

As he lifted the saddlebags from the chestnut gelding's back,
he caught sight of a short bald-headed man hurrying across the busy street
toward him.

Undertakers, he could smell them a mile off. Smiling
vultures. They were all the same, from their white aprons to their serene faces
and calculating eyes that counted death as profit—just as he did. They were in
the same business, he and the undertaker, the business of death.

As he slung the saddlebags over his shoulder, the short,
smiling man stopped before him. "After you're done with the body, have my
horse taken to the livery stable," Rafe said without looking at the man.
"Make sure he's looked after, and I'll make it worth your while."

He didn't wait for a reply but sauntered toward the saloon.
What he needed was a shot of whiskey—make that a bottle of whiskey.

As Rafe walked, his gaze settled on the two men who lounged
on the sidewalk in front of the saloon. The taller one he recognized as Tom
McCoy. They'd run into one another in Laredo a few months back and McCoy had
ended up with a bullet in his leg.

Rafe could have killed him, but he had no beef with the Texan
as long as he stayed out of Rage’s way. McCoy, however, would be looking for
revenge.

It was just his luck the bounty he'd earned had to come all
the way from El Paso. If not for that, he'd be gone by morning and he and McCoy
could both go on living. Rafe didn't look forward to the inevitable
confrontation, but he would not run from it either. If McCoy wanted to test him
again, he would end up dead.

Rafe smiled as he approached the pair, noting that McCoy had
begun to squirm a bit under his unflagging gaze. He had made quite a reputation
for himself. Rumor had it he'd killed some dozen men. Rumor also had it most of
them were shot in the back. He'd have to be careful, but then, he could hardly
remember a time when he hadn't had to be careful.

Brushing past the two men without a word, Rafe stepped into
the cavernous saloon. The stench of stale beer and tobacco smoke stung his
nostrils as he paused just inside the door to make a mental note of the
positions of those present.

In less than a minute, he had measured everyone in the room.
Two men played stud at a table, one smoking a cigar and laughing with the
scarlet-clad woman who bent over him, revealing more than a glimpse of lush,
full breasts. Against the bar stood a huge, rough-looking character, but his
bulk was probably
more fat
than muscle, and his gun
was strapped on like that of an amateur. A lone figure, a Mexican, sat in a
dark corner. Rafe hesitated briefly as his eyes slid over this man.

Conversations died in mid-sentence as one by one the other
occupants glanced up. Rafe crossed the room to the bar, his spurs jingling
loudly in the suddenly quiet saloon.

The bartender ran a towel around the inside of a shot glass,
while a bored-looking redhead in black and red lace and black net stockings
leaned against the bar.

It wasn't much of a crowd, but that suited him fine.

"Bottle of whiskey," Rafe ordered, reaching into
his shirt pocket for a coin.

"
Yessir
!" The bartender
hurriedly placed a full bottle and a clean glass on the bar.

Aware that the saloon girl was watching him, Rafe turned to
face her, and she smiled an invitation.

His body reacted instantly to the heat in her expression, the
pale breasts that spilled out of her low-cut dress. Maybe later. She wasn't
unattractive. He knew what to expect of her, and he knew what she expected of
him. Nice and neat, no complications, no questions.

Rafe tossed several silver coins on the bar. "You got a
clean room?"