Territory (29 page)

Jesse laughed. “All right, we’ll take this up again later. Lung, is there a reason why someone can’t just find this bastard and throw down on him?”

Lung crooked his eyebrows.

“Call him out.” When the eyebrows didn’t change, Jesse sighed and said, “Draw a gun and try to be the first one to pull the trigger.”

“Ah. By ‘someone,’ do you mean you? A pity you are not in the habit of shooting people.”

“I try not to be,” Jesse said, thinking of Arthur Ortega. “And I’d rather the law dealt with the fellow. But if it comes to it—
Can
he … be killed?”

Lung swirled the tea in his cup. “It depends.”

“Now that’s the wrong answer if ever there was one.”

“A sorcerer may bind others to his service. Those bound become … I do not know the word. They become images of him. The sorcerer draws strength from them, and blows directed at him strike them.”

“But he’d have to be trained to do that—to bind people. Wouldn’t he?”

Lung snorted. “Loyalty, friendship—are you trained to feel them? He need not be taught. He may be doing it without knowing.”

“Or he may not be doing it at all.”

“But if he is, he would be difficult to kill. Certainly he would have to be taken alone, far from his allies.”

“Well, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

“It may not. He will know his work here has been undone, and will seek the one responsible. If he finds you before you identify him, he can shoot you in the back and spare you the anguish of dealing with him.”

Jesse had the vulnerable feeling between his shoulder blades again.

“Jesse. Leave town.”

“No.”

Lung banged his cup down in the dirt. “First you go wherever you are pushed, and now this! Is this your stupid way of proving me wrong?”

“Shh.” In his bones and flesh, a beating rhythm.

The sound of horses cantering toward the river. His revolver was in his saddle holster, fifteen feet away. Whoever it was might ride past, might not see
them. Unless he stood up and went for his pistol. The fire—would they have seen smoke? Hell, go for the pistol. It could be Apaches.

He was halfway to his saddle when Sam neighed. He crossed the last feet of ground, the back of his head buzzing with that target feeling, snatched the pistol, and turned.

The two riders must not have noticed anything until he stood up; they were just now reining their horses in. A gray roan and a sorrel. The sorrel’s rider was a woman. In fact, it was Mrs. Benjamin.

He should have bolted for his shirt instead of his pistol.

He avoided meeting Mrs. Benjamin’s gaze and turned to the other rider. It was Tom McLaury, and even as Jesse watched his expression changed from surprise to amusement.

“Good afternoon,” Jesse said in as ordinary a voice as he could manage, and turned away to holster the pistol. If this damned nonsense of Lung’s worked the way it ought, Jesse would be able to sink into the ground right now.

“Nearer evening, really,” McLaury said, as if desperate for something innocuous to say. It was true: the sun burned low through the trees on the other side of the river.

Lung popped up like a jack-in-the-box from beside the fire, startling the horses and riders about equally. Jesse used the moment to fetch his shirt. He buttoned it as Lung bowed to the new arrivals, ridiculously low. A mesquite branch scratched at his cropped hair, and he swatted it like a fly, looking offended. If he’d still had his queue, he’d likely have found a way to get it tangled in the thorns.

“Greetings, honorable sir, honorable missy. I make Missa Fox tea. You wantee tea?”

Jesse sighed. “Lung, please don’t.”

Lung straightened up. If Jesse hadn’t been struggling with so many other emotions he’d have laughed out loud to see the grinning idiot expression fall from Lung’s face, replaced by a raised eyebrow and a quirk at the corner of his mouth.

Jesse turned to Mrs. Benjamin. She was looking from Jesse to Lung with blank politeness, as if she’d found herself at a stranger’s party. “My friend, Chow Lung. Lung, this is Mrs. David Benjamin, and Mr. Tom McLaury.”

“Delighted,” Lung said, with a perfect, modest bow and a straight face.

Mrs. Benjamin inclined her head, making the veil of her neat little riding hat bob. “Mr. Chow.”

How did she know about Chinese family names? Dear God, she was the
perfect woman, and he had no chance of making an impression good enough to offset all the previous ones.

“There
is
tea,” Lung said. “Would you care to join us?”

McLaury frowned at Lung, then at Jesse. But Mrs. Benjamin smiled and replied, “Thank you, but I’m afraid we need to start back. Perhaps another time.” And she turned the smile on Jesse. Her lips pressed together as if she were trying not to laugh.

She could laugh at him; he didn’t mind. Better that than scorn. He’d like to make her laugh. “Have a good ride,” he said. She nodded and wheeled her horse. It wasn’t until they were out of sight that he realized he hadn’t looked at McLaury since Mrs. Benjamin had smiled.

“What do you know about that woman?” Lung asked.

Jesse turned to find Lung watching after their visitors, his eyes narrowed. “She’s a widow, works for the
Nugget,
Jewish, lives in a little house just off Fremont.”
And clever, and brave, and I like the way her face moves.
“Why?”

“She is …” Lung shrugged. “I cannot say.”

“Not the fortune-teller business again.”

“It is only a feeling.”

“Well, stop feeling. That’s what I’m trying to do.”

“And you have had such success in the past.” Lung looked up at the sky, smiling sweetly.

“I’m going to finish putting my damned clothes on.”

Jesse wasn’t sure, but he thought he heard Lung murmur, “Too late,” and snicker.

The sorrel mare was tired, and willing to trot peacefully toward the line of conical hills between the river and Tombstone. From this side, Mildred reflected, they looked like a range of little volcanoes. For all she knew, they
were
volcanoes.

Was there anything in the world that was precisely what it looked? Hills, perhaps, but Mildred doubted it.

Tom’s roan came up alongside the mare. “Do you know anything about those hills?” she asked Tom.

“No.”

There was a line marked between his brows. He was dwelling on something unpleasant, and Mildred was almost certain it was Jesse Fox.

But it was a few moments before he said, “He had no business introducing you to a Chinaman.”

“I don’t know how he could have
not
introduced me.” She had to struggle again to keep from laughing. The feelings that had crossed Fox’s unguarded face! Horror, dismay at the sight of her, resignation as he’d told his friend to leave off playing the Oriental clown. Now
that
had produced a dramatic transformation. But not, perhaps, as dramatic as the change in Fox when she’d smiled at him.

Fox had felt like a fool, so much so he hadn’t bothered to hide it. But he wasn’t a fool. Mildred remembered her first impression, when she’d found herself facing a shirtless man, his hair wild and dark and wet, looking at her over the barrel of a pistol.

Just for an instant, she’d thought she knew what the Angel of Death looked like.

Tom said, “He could have kept his mouth shut. It wasn’t right.”

She drew rein and looked into his face. It was still handsome, even when sullen. Handsome, and uncomplicated, and safe.

A sudden contrary seizure made her say, “It would have been rude not to introduce someone standing in plain sight. I’m surprised at you, Mr. McLaury.” She touched the sorrel mare with her spur and cantered ahead. When Tom caught up with her, the subject and the chill between them were both dropped.

But the fact was that Tom was right. No one she knew would have introduced a Chinese man to a white woman as if they were social equals.

The sorrel mare jigged sideways under her. Tom grabbed for her bridle, but Mildred had the mare in hand before he could reach it. A coyote might have startled the horse, or a ringtail—

A creak of leather, a jingle of metal as a horse shook its head. There was a mounted man in the shadows beside the road.

Tom had a pistol in the pocket of his coat. Mildred reined the mare back, trying to make it seem as if the horse were only sidling with nerves, clearing the way between Tom and the horseman.

The figure rode forward, right hand raised and empty. He was light-haired, round-faced, and smiling.

“Why, hello, Tom. Ain’t it fine to meet with friends on the road of an evening?” The man chuckled as he spoke. Well, if he was the sort to be amused at other people’s reasonable caution, it was good to know it right off.

Tom nodded, unsmiling and stiff. “Jim. Didn’t think to see you here.”

“Oh, likely you haven’t. Business bring you this way? Or pleasure?” The stranger smirked at Mildred.

Tom’s horse flung up its head.

The stranger laughed at that. “I’d best be going. Give your brother my regards, hear, Tom?” He tugged his hat brim at Mildred and turned his horse down the road, away from town. Dust rose behind him, pearly in the twilight, and in moments he was out of sight.

“Speaking of introductions,” said Mildred, “I assume that was someone I don’t want to know.”

“That was Jim Crane.”

It was an instant before Mildred realized why she knew that name. “He’s wanted for the Benson stage holdup!”

Tom nodded, tight-mouthed.

“He must be crazy. Why isn’t he in Mexico?”

“I don’t expect he’s welcome there, either. If that makes odds with him.”

“We’ll find the sheriff when we get to town.”

Tom’s horse sped up, and Mildred had a good view of his shoulders, stiff in silhouette. She nudged the mare until they rode in tandem again, and looked at Tom.

His gaze stayed between his horse’s ears as he said, “I run cattle for a living.”

For a moment, Mildred didn’t understand. “Oh. And he’s a rustler.”

“If I talk to Behan, word will get back. The best that’ll happen is that they’ll clean us out. The
best.”

His jaw muscles stood out in ridges. She wanted to say
I’m sorry,
but that was wrong—it would sound like pity. But wasn’t pity the right response to the sight of a man in a trap? “If he takes this sort of risk often, he’ll be caught soon, anyway.”

His face softened, and he looked at her, an apology in his eyes and his voice. “He will, right enough.”

Lamps shone in windows and beside doors, and dark was chasing down the western sky, by the time they rode up to her house. Tom swung himself off his horse and tied hers to the porch rail. As he did, Mildred slid down from her sidesaddle, too quickly for grace.

He turned from the railing, surprised. Something wary in his face said he suspected what she meant to do.

Mildred squared her shoulders and held her hand out to him. “Thank you for a lovely afternoon.”

“May I call—may I see you when I come back into town?”

She’d done few things harder than meeting his eyes. “I—I’m sorry, Mr. McLaury.”

“Not even friends, then?”

He sounded so hopeful. How dreadful to hurt another person like this! Had she really done it before, at balls and parties and picnics, to young men who’d begged her to be kind? But she had been kind, though they would have denied it.

“Not the way we used the word last night.”

He looked down at the toes of his boots. “No, I guess I wasn’t playing a straight game then.” He looked up swiftly, and his eyes shone in his grave face. “I was playing to win, though.”

“I’m sorry. I’d make an awfully bad rancher’s wife, and I can’t see you as a—as a newspaperwoman’s husband. I shouldn’t have let you hope.”

He lifted his chin. “Is this about me not going to Behan? D’you think I’m a coward?”

“No! But more talk like that, and I’ll think you’re a damned fool.”

She sounded like Harry, she realized. But it cracked a grin into Tom’s stern face.

“Time won’t change your mind?”

“No, Tom. I can be your friend, but …”

Tom’s eyes were on his fingers as they turned his hat around and around. “But not more.” He took a breath. “Well, I can’t say I’m not sorry. But one of the things I like in you is that you know your mind.” He shrugged, and smiled. Mildred thought it cost him some effort. “I’ll wish you a good night, then.”

He untied the mare from the rail, mounted his own horse, and led the mare away toward the livery stable.

Mildred watched him go. Was she closing a door, or opening one? She tried hard not to think about the way the light had come into Jesse Fox’s face when she smiled.