Patricia Potter (43 page)

She heard snatches of conversation. Curses. The name Lobo. Canton. Threats.

“By God, I’ll teach her who owns this territory.” Her father.

“I want Lobo.” Keller, the new man.

“Damming the river can’t be legal. We should contact the sheriff.” The voice of reason was Edwards’s.

“Hell no. He’s no more use than a worn-out mule.”

“The only way is to kill Lobo.” Keller again. “And burn them out for good.”

“I don’t want the woman and children hurt.” Her father.

“They won’t be,” assured Keller.

“Hell, you can’t guarantee that,” Edwards said, his dislike of Keller evident in his voice.

“I want them out of there,” her father roared again.

“I’ll get them out,” Keller assured them. “Just give me enough men.”

There was a pause. “Edwards, call all the men in. We’ll ride out in the morning.”

“You, Mr. Newton?”

“I’ll talk to her. If talk doesn’t work, then…” The threat hung in the air, and Marisa felt sick. She crept back up the stairs, and an hour later, when she was called to dinner, she pleaded illness. She wasn’t surprised when her father didn’t come to inquire. She thought bitterly of how he had other things to consider.

Well, so did she.

She waited until very late, her glances going continually to the front of the house, which was busy with cowboys coming in. Marisa rifled through some old clothes, finally finding what she was looking for: a pair of trousers that she’d worn several years earlier, before her father insisted she wear only dresses.

Her body had changed, and they were tight around her hips, too tight, she knew, for her to pass for a boy. She needed a jacket that would fall below the telltale curves, and she remembered seeing one long ago in a trunk of her father’s old clothes up in the attic.

It took her several moments to find what she wanted: a lightweight jacket that fell below her hips and a hat that, when the brim was down, would disguise at least part of her face.

Back in her room, she quickly pinned up her hair and tucked it under the hat, and waited until the area in front of the house cleared. Several horses, some of them still saddled, were tied to hitching posts. She slipped down the steps and out the back, and then tried to put some saunter into her footsteps as she walked around to the front. There were numerous new hands now, but she didn’t think she would be recognized.

Marisa stopped beside one of the saddled horses. No one approached her; no one questioned her. She could hear bits and pieces of conversation, and the click-clack of weapons being cleaned. Now or never. She lifted her left foot into the stirrup, swung up, and started down the road to the gate.

She received only mild stares of curiosity from two riders coming in. She touched her heels to the horse and felt the animal’s surge of speed.

Marisa looked up toward the western sky. A faint glow was rising from the mountains far in the distance. Less than an hour to dawn.

L
OBO BARELY TASTED
the stew. He was restless in the small kitchen. At least, that was what he told himself.

Damn, but he felt strange as part of a group. It was confusing, unnerving. Awkward, dammit.

There was something else too. A curling of warmth at the unquestioning acceptance, at Chad’s excited face, the respect of the twins, the brightness in Willow’s eyes. He would remember this on clear, starry nights, on lonely, storm-battered ones. He would remember.

He suspected he would no longer be needed after tomorrow. The thought made his gut constrict, and he felt the same emptiness, the same stark terror he’d felt as a child tied alone outside a wickiup. He thought he had conquered that fear long ago, the fear of loneliness.

He was almost completely undone when Sallie Sue left her chair, worming her small body up on his lap and leaning her blond head against his chest, thrusting a tiny hand into his large, blistered one. Willow had wanted to bandage it, but he’d said no, afraid that even the thinnest bandage might slow his gun hand. The pain of using it, even to eat, reminded him of why he was there, and he needed that.

“Thtory,” Sallie Sue lisped, and the twins echoed the request. Willow looked toward Lobo, and it was all he could do to keep his face guarded. She looked so pretty, the light of the oil lamp setting the auburn of her hair aflame and adding mystery to the pure blue of her eyes.

“Je—Lobo?”

He couldn’t quite stop the jump of his heart of her surrender to what he’d demanded, and now he wondered whether he wanted it. For moments in the past several days he had felt like Jess. Jess the farmer, Jess the rancher, Jess the protector. And it had felt good, even satisfying.

Don’t, he told himself now. Don’t torture yourself about something that can never be.

The moment this was over, he was going to make tracks. As fast and as far as he could.

But Willow’s eyes were searching his before she answered the children’s request. He nodded curtly and started to remove Sallie Sue.

“No,” she protested, clinging tightly to him. She felt good in his arms. He surrendered momentarily, and relaxed although he knew he should be outside and alert for trouble. But Brady was there. Perhaps a few minutes more, a few minutes of being in this charmed circle.

“Odysseus,” Jeremy said. “He’s just gotten away from the one-eyed monster.”

Willow looked apologetically at Lobo. “Odysseus,” she explained, “is the hero of a book written hundreds of years ago. He wandered for almost twenty years.”

“He killed lots of people.” Jeremy said with blood lust shining in his eyes.

“He tricked the Trojans,” Jimmy chimed in.

“And outsmarted monsters,” Jeremy added.

“Just like you.” Jimmy beamed triumphantly.

Lobo wasn’t sure whether he liked the comparison. He didn’t know a thing about Trojans or monsters or people with strange names like Odysseus, but Willow was eyeing him with amusement, and her lips were formed in a smile so sweet he ached all over.

“Now,” Willow said in voice low and compelling, “Odysseus is sailing toward home, but he has to pass the Sirens.”

“What are Sirens?” Jimmy asked.

“Irresistible women who attract unwary sailors with their beautiful songs and lure them to their deaths,” Willow explained.

“Aw, girls,” Jeremy said. “I liked the monster best.”

“These were very special girls with magic powers,” Willow said, bringing back their attention.

She grinned suddenly at Lobo. “But Odysseus had learned his lesson with other women,” she said, “and he was very wary. He’d heard about the songs that wrecked ships, so he made all his men plug their ears.

“Odysseus, though,” she added, “wanted to hear the song himself, so he had himself lashed to the mast. When the song of the Sirens became audible, he strained and strained to free himself, but he couldn’t, not until the ship passed.”

Lobo sat back, one hand resting lightly on Sallie Sue’s shoulder, and sympathized with the unknown Odysseus. Christ knew he’d heard his own siren’s song; only he hadn’t had the good sense to take precautions. He listened with half an ear as Willow continued, feeling the warmth of Sallie Sue’s body as she moved and stretched and finally fell asleep. Sirens. Just the feel of Sallie Sue’s body, the soft measure of Willow’s voice, the sound of excited small boys were his siren call.

He recognized it, and it scared the damn fool out of him.

Moments later he forced himself up, taking Sallie Sue to bed. He laid her down and watched as the child gave him a sleepy, trusting smile, and the eyes closed again.

He didn’t stop back in the kitchen, he just slammed out of the house.

Odysseus and Sirens. Monsters and faraway lands. Stars shaped like animals. Warm babies and curious boys. A woman with eyes so blue they made the heavens jealous.

His cold, practical world had no room for any of them. None at all.

25

L
obo watched the first glow of dawn spread its fingers over the distant mountains.

He had slept several hours and then relieved Brady on the hill. He’d always liked this time of morning, silent and golden and pure.

But now premonition crawled around in his belly like a snake. All his instincts told him this would be the day hell would break loose.

Ordinarily such feelings wouldn’t affect him. A showdown had never bothered him before. Part of the job. Part of his life. Now he wondered whether he just hadn’t given much of a damn about the outcome. He’d never known the excitement he knew many other gunfighters felt. He’d seen the glittering fascination, like the trance of locoweed, in the eyes of so many others like him, yet he’d never anticipated that moment when life and death hovered in the balance. He’d accepted those moments as part of his life, but he’d never relished them. Hell, he’d never enjoyed anything except his freedom.

Now even that didn’t send the usual surge of satisfaction through him.

He’d have all the freedom he wanted after today—if he lived. And now that freedom didn’t mean a damned thing. Christ, it even depressed the hell out of him.

Lobo looked back out at the road and saw a distant rider. His hands tightened on his rifle as he strained to see more in the first gray light of dawn.

It wasn’t the doc, he knew that. Sullivan Barkley was taller, and Lobo remembered the man’s horse. Who else would be coming alone at this hour in the morning?

As the rider moved closer, Lobo’s puzzlement rose. The body was slender, a hat pulled down over his face. He sighted his rifle, and his finger curled around the trigger. Lobo judged the distance, then pulled the trigger and watched a bullet spit the dust just a few feet in front of the rider.

The horse reared, but the rider kept his seat, finally calming the horse, and bringing the animal under control. Lobo stood so he and the rifle could be seen clearly. “Ride up this way. Slowly,” he ordered.

The rider obeyed, and Lobo squinted his eyes as his hands held the rifle steady. “Get off the horse,” he ordered curtly as the rider and animal came within twenty feet of him. There was something odd about the intruder, something different.

He watched carefully, his finger still on the trigger as he was obeyed, and his surprise mounted as he saw the graceful way the figure slid from the saddle, at the hand that went up to the hat and took it off. He saw the profusion of dark hair.

“Christ,” he exploded. “Newton’s kid. What in the hell are you doing here?”

She very carefully held out her hands. There was fear in her eyes and her hands shook, yet her mouth was rigid with determination. Lobo felt a moment’s admiration for her.

“I came to warn you.”

Lobo loosened his grip on the rifle and let the barrel shift slightly toward the ground. “Now, why would you do that, Miss Newton?”

She glared at him, and he realized she was angry at being ambushed. He leered at her. “Little girls shouldn’t be out this time of the morning.”

Suddenly she remembered their first conversation, and she smiled slightly. “I know. You eat girls for breakfast.”

He looked surprised for a second, then his grim mouth softened. Apparently his ability to frighten was going to hell in a handbasket. “You’re lucky. I already had breakfast.”

She stared at him for a moment, realizing at last what Willow saw in him. When he relaxed, there was something incredibly charming about him. He looked younger and handsome and very appealing. But the hard look quickly returned, and the mouth tightened. “I asked why you wanted to warn Willow?”

She stiffened. “I just have to talk to her.”

“Why?”

“It’s none of your business.”

Her defiance mixed with a trembling of her lips, and Lobo felt a weakening. He shouldn’t. She could just be a decoy. She was Newton’s daughter.

Yet her bravado was affecting. He knew she was scared. He could see it in her eyes and in the tense way she held herself, yet she stood her ground.

“You might just be a diversion, Miss Newton,” he said, studying her reaction.

“My father doesn’t need a diversion. He’ll be here just after dawn.” She hadn’t meant to tell him, only Willow, yet those fierce, compelling eyes seemed to force the words.

“How many?”

“More than fifty. They’ve been rounding up cowhands all night.”

“And why are you telling me this?”

She was silent, only too aware of her betrayal of her father.

“Because…because he’s wrong.”

Lobo remembered his meeting with her when he’d first come to Newton, when she’d asked him to leave. He had thought little of her then, a curious child playing grown-up games. But now he found himself admiring her. He knew this act hadn’t been easy for her.

His voice softened although his words were hard and uncompromising. “You’ve delivered the message. Go home.”

“No,” she said.

“No?” he echoed, drawing his eyebrows together in a way that usually intimidated.

She stood her ground, although she bit her lip, and his admiration increased. “No. I want to see Willow.”