The Renegades: Cole (26 page)

She leaned forward and touched his hand.

“You didn’t kill him.”

“I
did
,” he said, clamping his jaw tight. “You don’t understand. He hesitated, he said wait until we had more men, he counted seven of them against the two of us and we couldn’t see ‘em all.”

Sweat was popping out all over his face, running down the sides of his cheeks. He pulled out his new handkerchief to wipe it away.

“Trav was a captain, too,” she said. “He held the same rank as you. He didn’t have to follow your orders.”

“I told him I was going in alone,” he said, nearly choking on the words. “Like a green, cocky kid too young to know
he
could be the one killed instead of the other guy. Like an
idiot
kid. And me thirty-three years old and veteran of so many campaigns I can’t count ‘em.”

Confessing to that foolishness tangled his tongue into uselessness.

Her face and her eyes had long since lost all shock and surprise. Now she looked at him with such calm and such wisdom that he was reminded of pictures he’d seen of the mother of the Christ child.

“You’re a man, Cole. Travis was a man. Men set great store by their courage, and that’s as it should be.”

“There’s a difference between courage and foolhardiness.”

“And you were his partner,” she said slowly, as if he hadn’t spoken. “He wouldn’t let you go in alone.”

“Right. I’ll never know why I wasn’t the one who stopped that bullet instead of him. If there was any justice I would’ve been.”

She smiled.

“Surely you’re not thirty-
four
years old now, Cole, and still expecting life to be fair.”

He made a little sound of ironic agreement.

“I pushed him, I even hoo-rawed him, Ellie. Still he wouldn’t budge. Not until he thought I’d try it alone.”

She nodded, still calm as glass.

“You would have done the same for him, don’t forget. I know what it means to be partners. I know what you meant to him. I know his work was his life. Travis wouldn’t have had it any other way.”

He stared at her for the longest time. She meant that, and she held no resentment.

“What about …”

His gaze darted to her huge abdomen and then, embarrassed, away.

“He loved me,” she said, “and he would’ve loved this baby. But he would never have stayed at home with us very long at a time.”

“I feel so small,” he blurted, without having the slightest warning that he was about to say that. “I had a petty fear when you-all married that you’d become Trav’s best friend instead of me. He’d been my partner for years. He was the only person I’d ever been truly close to.”

“
I
was never close to him,” she said thoughtfully, “and I know now I never would’ve been.”

“You can’t know that. You were only married to him for four months.”

“And I only knew him for two weeks before that. But I have a … comparison,” she said, blushing. “A gentleman caller with whom I’m very close after only a few weeks. He has asked me to marry him, and I said that I would, but only after my confinement is done.”

Well. He didn’t know beans about anybody else’s life, so he could stop thinking he did.

“Are you shocked? That I’m making these plans when Travis has only been gone for eight months?”

“No,” he said honestly, “but I’m shocked at your whole situation. I’d never imagined you with your own shop, or a baby, much less a suitor. I thought you were too shy and retiring, that you were helpless without Travis, that …”

She laughed.

“I’ve never been helpless, Mr. McCord. I never will be.”

She laid the fluffy hat on the little table between them and folded her hands across her lap, although she barely could reach around it.

“That’s why I’m keeping my shop after Mr. Siddons and I are married. He agrees with my reasoning.”

Cole searched her sweet face, looked at her quiet hands.

There’d be no punishment here, no life sentence
to serve to take away his guilt.

He shook his head wryly. He had assumed too much, and too much importance for himself all around. Aurora had been right when she’d told him he wasn’t God.

The bell on the door tinged again, and a woman came in, shopping basket over her arm.

“You have a customer,” he said and stood, bending to take her elbow and help her to her feet. “And I must be going.”

“I’m glad you came to see me,” she said. “Please come back in a year or so and see the baby. I’d love for him to know you so when he’s older, you can tell him stories about his daddy. That way, he’ll feel he knows Travis a little bit.”

“I’ll try,” he said. “I have no idea where I’ll be.”

“Wherever it is,” she said, “let go of your worries. You would have done the same for Travis if things had been the opposite that day, and you know as well as I do that they easily could have been. Travis was just as …”

She paused. He supplied her with words.

“… foolhardy? Wild and crazy?”

Smiling, she shook her head.

“… bravely impetuous as you.”

She gave him a pat on the arm and went to serve her customer. He put on his hat and went out onto the street.

Ellie was incredible. How’d she get to be so much smarter than he was, although she obviously was a good ten years younger?

But it was Aurora who had first told him that Travis could have been urging him into the attack instead of the other way around. He’d never really heard her until now, had never
wanted
to hear because his guilt was all he knew, all he had left of his old life.

He’d been clinging to his guilt so hard he hadn’t let himself hear any hope.

So it had taken two women to make him see that a man is only a man. No matter how strong he is, how fast with a gun or close with a friend, he cannot control his own fate, much less that of his partner.

It was true. Travis would’ve done the very same damn thing to him if he’d been in a salty mood that morning in the wild, brushy brakes of the Nueces. And Travis did, sometimes, have his salty moods.

His mind was opening up, trying to take that in, and he didn’t see anything as he instinctively walked to the livery stable and collected his horse. All he wanted was to be horseback and out of the bustle of town so he could think.

But once he was mounted and riding out beneath the overhead sign of the stable, his brain darted from one thought to another like a scared rabbit. Where should he go? What direction should he take when he rode out into the street? Left or right?

Border Crossing, with no tug on the reins, no touch of Cole’s foot, and with no hesitation at all, turned west. Cole let him.

Why hadn’t he listened to Aurora? She had
told him he would’ve done the same for Travis. She had also told him he wasn’t God. Yet somehow the truth of it hadn’t soaked in until he’d heard the same from Ellie.

Until he had confessed to Ellie.

It all went back to Aurora, though. She’d been the reason he’d even
thought
of coming to see Ellie in the first place—admitting he’d been wrong was so foreign to him. As a matter of fact, he had first admitted it to Aurora.

Panic seized his gut.

Rory. God in heaven. He needed her more than he’d ever needed anyone or anything. She had healed him.

Would she be glad to see him if he went back? He had left her to whatever dangers might befall her, he had broken her heart when he’d climbed the canyon wall.

If he did go back, he’d never be able to leave her again, that much he knew for sure.

He grinned. Not only would he not be strong enough to tear himself away from her but she would kill him if he tried to leave again. She’d take a rifle and pick him off as he climbed the canyon wall.

But what if he did go back, and then, after a while, he wanted to keep on drifting around, looking for danger as always, as Travis had done? What if he didn’t want to spend much time at home?

Ellie had been right. Even with a baby, Travis would never have stayed home more than a week or two at a time.

Like Travis, he was a wandering man, used to a wild, hard life filled with danger and challenges.

His grin broadened.

Life with Rory would be wild and hard, full of danger and challenges.

He stopped the horse in the middle of the street.

He loved her. He’d known that for a long time, but he’d never admitted it, even to himself.

Now that he had, he’d have to do something about it.

Slowly, he squeezed Border’s sides and moved him down the street at a trot, to keep from getting run down by a buggy or a wagon. That thought, too, brought an image of Aurora, careening toward him in her gig wearing a saucy blue hat that matched her eyes.

Evidently, everything he ever saw or thought of for the rest of his days would remind him of her. He might as well head for the Palo Duro and find out whether she’d accept his love. But what if she sent him packing?

The very thought of it made him want to ride down to one of the saloons by the stockyards and pick a fight, let some no-good, horsestealing long-rider shoot him and put him out of his misery just as he’d wished he could do ever since Travis had fallen backwards into his arms with the life gone out of him. But even that probably wouldn’t cure him. He’d probably just wander around in the Spirit World forever, crying for Aurora.

A
urora woke to the raw, sweet smell of newly cut logs and the spice of cedar. Her home. This was home, now.

She lay in her blankets, staring at the roof that wasn’t there yet, looking for daylight, seeing the stars but imagining the dark was fading. Day passed much faster than night, that was a law of nature she’d noticed since Cole had left.

The window opening was there, too, cut squarely into the wall, standing empty and uncovered, she knew it, but all she could see was black. The air felt softer now, though, like there would be some dew to greet the sun, or maybe a haze hovering over the creek. Dawn was coming. The birds were beginning to slide from night calls to waking ones. Since Cole had been gone, she’d learned the feels and sounds of every stage of the night, she had become an expert, and she wasn’t wrong now.

She threw off her covers and began to dress, trying to get ready, get outside and get busy
before she could even think, before she could count. If Cole had had good luck and had reached Fort Worth in fifteen days …

Her mind stopped still in the ruts she’d created running through the problem over and over again. She’d promised herself not to think about him any more. She was
not
going to think about him any more.

But if he’d had good luck going and coming back, if he hadn’t wasted any time, today would be the first day he could possibly reach her.

Why would he come back? He wouldn’t.

He wouldn’t come back, though, he wouldn’t come back. That became her silent litany for facing reality as she threw on her clothes and went out into the darkest part of the night to walk along the creek. He wouldn’t come back. Telling herself that was the only way she could save herself from being consumed by the impossible hope that he would.

Dawn broke over the canyon in a bright spill of pinks and yellows, painting the thin mist that floated on the tall grasses, turning the deep red walls of the gorge into flames of a primal fire. She walked out of the trees by the creek and up the slight slope toward the house, holding her breath until she could see the trail to the rim. This would be the only time she would look at it today. This and right before dark fell.

She had disciplined herself to watching the trail only twice a day, and she wasn’t going to lose that progress now, even if it was the first
day he could possibly appear. Pretending no interest at all in the trail, she waved to Cookie, who was just stirring up his fire, and to Tom and Monte, who were heading for it with coffee cups in hand, but then, a stone’s throw from her start of a new house, she let herself stop and look up at the rimrock.

Nothing. No one. Exactly as any sane person would know.

She swept her gaze down, toward the floor of the canyon. The corner of her eye caught a movement. Something on the trail.

Walking forward without looking at her path, she shaded her eyes from the sun in the east and peered intently. Horse. Rider. Someone was coming.

The sight froze her where she stood. Insane hope battered in wave after wave like the ocean crashing against her wall of reality.

She couldn’t give in to it until she knew for sure who was there. Even if it
was
Cole …

But who else would have started down that twisting trail—or even found it—in the dark? He was already three-fourths of the way to the foot.

And who else rode a tall, leggy bay roan who moved like a Thoroughbred race horse?

The wall of good sense surrounding her heart tumbled down, and hope spilled into her blood. It was Cole, she’d known it from the instant she’d seen him. She could recognize him as far as she could see him by the way he sat a horse, if nothing else.

Yet he might not have come back to stay.

She tried to remember that, she let the chill of it wash through her, she put it in the front of her mind as she watched him come. Maybe he’d decided he couldn’t do without his cattle, that he’d earned them and he might as well take them.

Perhaps he planned to start his own ranch somewhere. Maybe he even planned to lay claim to another part of the canyon. He had loved it the first time they rode through it.

But he was no rancher, he was a renegade, a far-rider. He was wild, and he had to be free. She’d known from the minute they’d met that he was as different from other men as a stallion was from a gelding. Surely he would never let himself be tied down to one place, no matter if he
had
realized that he loved her.

Then she took a long, cleansing breath and blew all the thoughts away so she could live that moment, so she could remember it well if it turned out to be only another memory to add to her priceless remembrances of him. He rode with the horse, as always, with Border’s rhythm as he leaned to take the bends in the trail. They disappeared, and then, when she thought she could not bear it any longer not to be looking at him again, Cole filled her sight once more.

She stood without moving to watch him come.

Not until he rode into the edge of the yard did she walk toward him, slowly, through the
pearly dawn. They met beneath the big cottonwood tree.

“Morning, ma’am,” he said, pushing his hat onto the back of his head as he sat looking down at her. “Reckon a man could find a hot breakfast at this ranch house here?”

The early sun highlighted his cheekbones, glowed hot in the copper of his skin. He was exhausted, worn to the bone, she could see it in the dust on his clothes, in the way he folded his arms and leaned on the horn the moment Border stopped moving. She could see it in the deepened lines of his face, and she longed to reach out and smooth them with her fingertips.

His eyes showed no tiredness, though. They searched her face with a mission. What could he be asking of her? He knew how
she
felt. He himself was the question.

“Reckon he could,” she said, her voice gone husky with tears. “Get down and come to the fire.”

She walked to Border Crossing’s head and rubbed his soft muzzle. He snuffled at her and nudged her with his nose.

Cole swung his leg over and dismounted.

He moved with the same fluid sureness, he held himself with the same calm power that said he could cover the ground he stood on, but there was a tension pouring off him like sweat off skin.

“Rory,” he said. “I love you. I can’t ever leave you again, so I’m going to have to stay
here. Shall I build a bachelor’s shack down by the creek, or will you marry me?”

She could barely believe her ears. Yet she’d heard him right—no other words in the world could put that look of mingled triumph and fear in his eyes.

“I’ll marry you,” she said. “We’ve already cut down enough trees around here.”

“Oh,” he said, and began walking slowly toward her, “so it’s the trees you’re worried about.”

“Only you, the red cedar. What has opened your heart, He-Stands-In-Lightning?”

“You. You have more power than lightning. You are Red Woman, The Fire, and you have burned your way into my very soul.”

He took her into his strong, loving arms and held her close as his skin. So close and for so long that it seemed they’d stand just that way forever. Aurora closed her eyes, leaned her head against his broad chest, and drew in deep breaths of his smells of dust and horse and leather and … Cole.

Now
she was home.