Teresa Bodwell (15 page)
Authors: Loving Miranda
Miranda nodded, and Thad had sense enough to put a hand over his mouth to hide the victorious grin that appeared on his face.
“We’d best be moving,” Miranda said as she stepped toward the wagon. “It’s gonna be a bumpy ride. With luck we’ll be there before O’Neill wakes up.”
Thad followed Ben over to his horse. “I want to thank you, Mr. Lansing.”
“Ben.”
“Ben. I was too far away to help Miranda when those men came after her. I don’t like to think what might have happened if you hadn’t arrived when you did. . . .”
Ben glanced at the body of the man who’d been aiming at Miranda’s back. “No need for thanks.”
“I’m trustin’ you to see her home safe, now.”
Ben nodded. He watched Miranda bend over O’Neill in the back of the wagon. “You just get O’Reilly and the other bastards who were with him.”
“Rest assured we will,” Thad said.
“I’m leavin’ now,” Miranda shouted as she jumped into the driver’s seat of the wagon. “If you’re gonna come with me, you’d best stop jawin’ and get on that ugly beast.”
Thad grinned as Ben mounted Lightning and set off to follow the wagon.
“Seems like she’d be more grateful to the man who saved her life,” Thad said.
Ben shrugged. He was glad he’d been of some help today, but he knew it didn’t make up for his behavior when Miranda came to his room. After what he’d nearly done to her, he certainly didn’t deserve her gratitude.
Ben watched Jonathan draw two parallel lines in the dirt with the edge of his boot. “Do you think you can shoot the marble from this line to the other line?” Jonathan asked as he dropped three glass marbles from his pocket onto the ground. “I bet I can. Do you want to go first?”
“You go first, Jonathan,” Ben said. “Show me how it’s done.”
Ben had offered to watch the boy while Mercy and her father took care of O’Neill. He’d worried he wouldn’t know what to do with a five-year-old child, but so far Jonathan hadn’t run out of ideas. The boy launched the marble with his thumb, and it rolled nearly the entire distance between the lines.
“Well,” Ben said, “I’m impressed. I doubt I can do so well.”
“You have to try, Uncle Ben. You won’t succeed if you don’t try.”
Ben grinned at the boy. Then he leaned over his marble. He tapped it, sending it skidding toward the line, but not nearly as far as Jonathan’s had gone.
“Hmm.” Jonathan leaned over the marbles, examining their positions carefully. “I reckon you’d better try again.”
“I believe you’re right.”
At that moment, Miranda came out of the house and began pacing across the porch, back and forth, until Ben thought he’d grow dizzy watching her.
“It’s your turn, Uncle Ben.”
“Right.” Ben made another feeble attempt at shooting the marble, falling far shorter than he had on his first try. “I’ll tell you what,” Ben said, “you keep practicing. I need to talk with your aunt.”
“I don’t reckon I need as much practice as you do,” the boy called after him as Ben strode toward Miranda.
“What’s wrong?” he asked as he stepped up on the porch.
She glared at him, opened her mouth to speak, then shut it again.
“Is it the boy . . . O’Neill?”
Miranda shook her head. “Mercy reckons he’ll recover.”
“That’s good news.”
“I’m not needed here.” Miranda resumed her pacing. “But Mercy don’t want me goin’ after O’Reilly.”
“Thad and the others will find him.”
“The more folks lookin’ the better chance of findin’ that old son of a . . . birch tree.” She shoved her hair back away from her face. “He’s been hidin’ for a year. The sheriff stopped lookin’, figurin’ he must be long gone. We all figured he’d never get justice. Now here he turns up again. If we don’t get the snake before he digs under his rock again, we might not find him at all.”
“I’m sure you’re right about that, but that doesn’t mean you should—”
“I’m not afraid.”
“Maybe you should be.”
She stepped closer and pressed her palm against him, sending warmth through his chest. “You listen to me, Ben Lansing. I know damn well what you’re up to. You promised Thad to look after me, didn’t you?”
“I—”
“You think I’m slow-witted? I know you didn’t come along to watch O’Neill in the back of the wagon. I was just tired of arguing.” She glared up at him. “I know you didn’t want to be saddled with me.” She looked down at the boards under her feet. “Sorry.”
“Saddled?”
“You know what I mean.”
“I’m glad to have a moment with you. It gives me a chance to apologize . . . for the other day.”
Miranda walked away from the house, and Ben followed her until they stood near a pair of apple trees. “You ain’t to blame. There’s plenty of folks who find it hard to . . . look at me.”
Ben squinted at her. “Hard to . . . ?”
She lifted her chin. Her lips curled up in a smile that held more pain than joy. She touched a finger to her scar. “I pretty much avoid mirrors myself, truth be told.”
“Miranda.” Ben reached for her, but she turned away.
“No.” She stepped quickly toward the house. “I know you can’t help the way you were raised. Talkin’ fancy to ladies, sayin’ her face is like a blushing pink rose, or a bright angel. Well, my face ain’t so pretty, and it hurts to hear you lie about it!” She spun around and Ben flinched at the sharp look in her eyes. “I wanted nothin’ so much as to have the earth open up and swallow me when you told O’Neill to look at my face!”
“Miranda—”
“No!” She raised a fist, then let it drop to her side. “No more talkin’. You should be out helpin’ find O’Reilly, and so should I.”
“All right, then, let’s go find him.”
“What?” She took a step back and stared.
“Let’s join the hunt,” Ben said. “I have an idea where he might have gone.”
Miranda raised an eyebrow but didn’t question him further. “I’ll saddle my horse.”
Chapter 13
Miranda trailed behind Ben on the steep, narrow path. Her heart was pounding at the thought of finding O’Reilly. If they caught him red-handed with her sister’s cows, the wise thing to do would be to mark their location and head back to find Thad and the others. But there was a part of her that really wanted to get the cows and take them home.
“Tell me again how you know about this place?” she asked.
“O’Reilly sent a message to me in town. I didn’t know who he was, of course. But his message said he had information about what happened to my brother.” Ben turned to speak over his shoulder. “He told me he could prove Thad and Mercy were cheating Jonathan.”
“And you believed him? He’s . . . he’s an ass!”
“I know that!” Ben snapped. “I refused to get involved with his scheme unless he gave me real proof.” He hesitated for a moment. “I promised to pay them fifty dollars for evidence that proved his accusations.”
“And the cattle would be proof?”
“I told them not to do anything illegal.”
“You mean you knew they were going to try and take the cattle?”
“I didn’t! How could I know that?”
“You just said they were going to try something illegal.”
He turned Lightning in a tight circle and went back to face Miranda. “You’re not listening to me!” Ben glared at her. “I suspected they might try something like this, and I urged them not to do it. They don’t work for me, and they certainly don’t follow my orders.”
“You could have warned us.” Miranda pushed her hat back off her head so she could look Ben directly in the eye. “Someone might have been killed.”
Ben let his eyes drop to Lightning’s gray and white mane. A man
had
died. Ben’s stomach had been churning for hours. Not that he regretted shooting the sorry bastard. It was the knowledge that the son of a bitch had nearly killed Miranda that had Ben’s innards working themselves into knots.
had
died. Ben’s stomach had been churning for hours. Not that he regretted shooting the sorry bastard. It was the knowledge that the son of a bitch had nearly killed Miranda that had Ben’s innards working themselves into knots.
“You’re right. I . . . I should have said something to Thad. I . . .” He gazed into her eyes for a long moment. “If I’d known you would be in danger—”
Miranda turned away from his gaze. Then not wanting him to think she was hiding her scar, she looked back at him, letting him see her whole face again.
“I’m sorry,” Ben said.
“Ain’t no call for you to be apologizin’.”
“If I did or said anything to cause O’Reilly to—”
“O’Reilly’s a fool. Goin’ after cattle while we’re brandin’. Why not go after the cows we weren’t watching?”
“My guess is that he planned to take some of the freshly branded stock and show that they didn’t have the Lansing brand.”
Miranda laughed. “Did you see the brands they were usin’?”
Ben shook his head. With all the shooting he’d completely forgotten to check on the cattle at all.
“Thad helped Jonathan design his own brand—Circle J. The men were usin’ the Circle J iron on half the cattle.”
“So the brands wouldn’t be proof of anything. . . . Then what did they hope to prove?”
“Who knows how O’Reilly’s mind works. Maybe he thought if he did some shootin’ you’d . . . take the boy. Get him away from this dangerous country.”
“Maybe he just wanted to hurt you?” Ben turned again to look into Miranda’s eyes. “Most of them were after the cattle, but it looked like . . .”
Miranda felt a chill creep up her spine. “O’Reilly has sworn to get even with Mercy. Killin’ me would . . .”
“They weren’t after the cattle. They were after you—”
“And Thad.”
Ben nodded. “He couldn’t convince me to take Jonathan away. Now he’s found another way to attack her.”
“He’s not going to get away with it.” Miranda spoke through gritted teeth.
Ben stared up the mountain. “It’s not far now to the camp. Don’t forget your promise. We’re only observing.”
Miranda pulled her Colt, then let it slip back into the holster at her side. “I’ll be observing, but if they start the shootin’, I’ll be happy to be the one to finish O’Reilly.”
“We’re going to stay close to the tree line for cover. We’ll go in, see what we can, and get out. If they see us and if they start shooting—no heroics!” He pointed a finger at Miranda. “I want to see O’Reilly come to justice, but not at the cost of your life.” When his words didn’t seem to have much impact on her, he added, “Think about your family.”
He could almost see Miranda thinking through his words before she nodded.
“I ain’t afraid of dyin’, but I don’t reckon it’s my time quite yet.”
With those words they turned their horses and continued up the mountain in silence. A quarter of an hour later, Ben pulled Lightning to a stop. “The mining camp is beyond the next rise,” Ben whispered.
They went over the rise. Ben pulled into the trees beside the road, and Miranda pulled up alongside him. She hadn’t been to this particular mining camp, but she recognized the usual assembly of oil cloth tents and ramshackle wooden buildings. Everything that was needed to keep body and soul alive thrown together overnight as a gold or silver strike was found, or sometimes if a precious metal was merely suspected.
“Where’s O’Reilly’s tent?”
“Down this way.” Ben turned where a road created by the pounding of hooves and feet meandered between two rows of tents. “But we’re not getting close enough for them to see—” Ben pulled Lightning up short.
“What?” Miranda stopped next to Ben.
“Hellfire and damnation,” Ben whispered. “Their tent was there.” Ben pointed to an empty space in the middle of the crowded row. “Damn!”
Miranda saw the likely cause of Ben’s cursing in an open space fifty yards down the road. Two small calves were roasting on a spit over an open fire, while men gathered around for a celebration. Miranda wondered what kind of price O’Reilly had gotten for the cows.
“They find any gold or silver here?” she asked.
“One of O’Reilly’s men told me it was a rich silver strike.”
Miranda took in a deep breath. “Most likely they got a good price for the calves, then.”
A few drops of rain wet her cheek so she pulled her hat back up onto her head.
“Let’s see if they’re ours.”
They rode through the camp, keeping an eye out for O’Reilly and his men. It didn’t take them long to find out from one of the miners that O’Reilly had sold the calves before leaving.
“He made enough money selling his claim here to buy these cows and head to Texas,” one miner said.
“Says he’s gonna build up a cattle ranch,” a toothless man added. “Tired of diggin’, he was.”
“Can’t blame him for that!” the first miner said, and several men joined in laughing over the joke.
The rain was coming down in fat drops now, causing a general round of cursing from the gathered men.
“Come on,” Miranda said, “let’s get out of this rain.”
Ben followed Miranda as the horses picked their way down the steep, rocky trail. The rain grew harder, pelting at his hat and soaking into his woolen jacket. They’d reached the main road before the driving rain turned to pounding hail.
Miranda led Ben into a copse of trees for a moment to escape the pummeling. She looked through the branches up to the sky. “Don’t look like this is gonna let up any time soon.”
“It’s near an hour to the house, but I know a shelter close by.”
Ben nodded. “Shelter sounds good to me,” he shouted over the sound of hail pounding earth, rock, and trees.
Miranda led them out of the trees but kept to the edge of the road where there was some protection from the hail. After a few minutes, she turned Princess to follow a narrow trail back up the mountain. Ben could see the small cabin braced among the rocks on the hillside. They settled the horses on the downwind side of the cabin, working quickly to remove their saddles. Both Ben and Miranda were soaked by the time they made it inside and closed the door behind them.
Ben was impressed as he closed the tight-fitting door. The small cabin was sound and very dry inside. Miranda immediately went to work to start a fire in the stone fireplace on the back wall. There was a small pile of dry wood on the stone hearth. Ben tried to recall whether he’d seen any more wood outside.
There was sufficient light from the two glass windows, though Ben noticed a good supply of tallow candles on the shelf above the fireplace. The sparsely furnished room held a small table with three upended crates that served as chairs around it, a large wooden chest under one window, and a chest of drawers next to a narrow bed.
“Who lives here?”
“No one,” Miranda said. “We built this cabin for shelter should anyone find themselves in a situation like this one. Cowboys’ll sometimes stay here for a few days at a time when they come up to watch the cattle in the summer.”
Ben wasn’t sure whether that made him feel better. Suddenly, the room seemed too small to share with her. There wasn’t much he could do about it. It was a long way to the ranch house and even further to town. Even if he were willing to ride for hours through this hail, he wasn’t going to leave Miranda alone here. Not when there was any chance O’Reilly could still be around.
Miranda looked over her shoulder at him. “There’s a wood box outside. Would you bring firewood in before you take off your coat?”
Ben nodded and made his way back into the storm. He held his arm over his face to shield it from the hail, which was a goodly size and stung as the wind drove it at him. He gathered an armload of wood quickly and made his way back to the door. Miranda held the door open for him and closed it behind him. The small fire she’d set was blazing. Ben dropped the wood onto the pile and pulled off his soaked jacket, brushing hail from it. Miranda had already taken off her own jacket; it was hanging from a peg that protruded from the stone wall of the fireplace. Ben found another peg for his coat, then stood shivering a few feet away from her.
“This ain’t no time to be shy, I reckon,” Miranda said, though she made no move to remove any more of her clothing. “There’s plenty of blankets in that chest.” She pointed with her chin. “I reckon we both should take off our wet clothes and wrap up in blankets before we catch our death.”
“Yes,” Ben said, “that seems wise.” Yet he couldn’t help feeling terribly foolish for being in this enclosed space with that delicate body and his lusty thoughts.
They dug through the chest, releasing the spicy aroma of cedar that had woven its way into the blankets nestled inside. The scent reminded Miranda of walking through the woods on a fresh spring day. She opened her mouth to remark as much to Ben, but he had gathered his blankets and rushed away to the far corner of the room with his back to her.
The sight of him pulling his wet shirt over his head, baring those proud shoulders, rendered Miranda speechless. There was a small scar under his right shoulder blade; otherwise, his back was perfect—not smooth, but sleek and muscled. She swallowed hard and turned back to the blanket chest, closed the lid and walked away from the window to pull off her own clothes, careful to keep her eyes away from Ben.
“Tell me when it’s safe to turn around,” Ben said, with a slight tremor in his voice.
Miranda smiled, thinking of all that masculinity suffering as much as she was. At least they could share this misery—they dare not allow themselves closer contact. That would be a mistake. Stupid. If she was ever going to have a husband and family, she had better learn to control her impulses. She bent forward so that her hair fell in front of her and she wrung the moisture out of it, then combed her fingers through it, as though that would do any good. As soon as her hair was dry, it would curl every which way.
She pulled a small blanket around her waist, tying it to make a kind of skirt. She wrapped a second blanket around her shoulders, trying various methods of covering her chest until she finally found a way to wrap the blanket and tie it over one shoulder in an imitation of a Greek toga she’d seen pictured in one of Mercy’s books. “I’m covered,” she said, smoothing the blanket over her chest to be certain.
He was bending to retrieve his wet clothes off the floor and she caught a glimpse of his bare calves. More than a glimpse, since she couldn’t seem to take her eyes off them. Up until that moment Miranda had not considered men’s legs to be very different from her own willowy limbs. Ben’s, however, were thicker, with a distinctive shape that tapered down to his ankles. As he bent forward, the muscles rippled, seeming to invite a woman’s touch.
She managed to look away as he straightened and turned to face her. As they worked together to string a line across one corner of the room and hang their clothes to dry, a little thought prickled in the back of Miranda’s mind. She’d come to think of herself as an experienced woman. After all, she’d shared kisses with several men and a bed with one of those men. Yet, she had to admit, no kiss had ever touched her as deeply as Ben’s did. No man had ever made her want him the way she wanted Ben at this moment. The memory of his kisses stirred a wanting deep inside her. Miranda longed to persuade Ben to kiss her now. Except that she couldn’t bear the thought of him rejecting her again.
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