The Rustler's Bride (15 page)

Declan waited in silence. Sinclair was not looking at him. There was an admittance of guilt in his father-in-law’s slumped posture as he sat on the corner of the desk, toying with the money pouch as he spoke.

“I was there. The morning the cattle stampeded across your farm. A rider had come up from the south to tell me my wife had been bitten by a snake. They didn’t know what kind of snake, but she was in a bad way. The man who rode in with the message was exhausted. He went to get something to eat from the cook wagon, but he tripped over something on the ground. When he flailed his arms for balance, he brought crashing down a shelf stacked with pots and pans. The noise set off the cattle.”

“You were there, and yet you had no idea who I was.” Declan’s voice shook with suppressed anger. “You knew, but you cared too little to even remember their names.”

Sinclair rubbed his jaw, now shadowed by a thick coat of stubble. “Perhaps I made myself forget,” he admitted quietly. “You see, I didn’t stay to deal with the stampede. My wife was dying. Or so I thought. I rode south. By the time she recovered, two weeks later, the cattle drive had already turned east toward St. Louis. I went up the shortest way. The trail boss I had left in charge told me what had happened. After we got to St. Louis, I gave him every cent of the profit I made on that drive to bring out to your father while I hurried back home to my wife.”

“No man ever came,” Declan said. “There was no money.”

“I can’t argue against that. I heard Walt Judson—my trail boss on that drive—bought himself a ranch up near Denver the next year. He claimed to have won the money in a card game.” Sinclair picked up the money pouch once more and weighed it up in his hand. “I’d never seen that man do anything but lose in a game of cards.” He looked up, guilt etched on his face. “I think I knew all along. I just didn’t want to admit it to myself. I couldn’t do anything to bring your mother back to life, so it was easier to convince myself to forget.” He gave an uneasy shrug. “I didn’t know about your Pa, though. At least on that account I don’t have to shoulder the full blame.”

“You could have brought the money yourself.”

“I took the shortest route home. I was in a hurry to get back to my wife. And I had no wish to face your father. He might have tried to kill me, but I’m fast with a gun and I would have killed him first, and I didn’t think I had the right to do it.” Sinclair dropped the money pouch on the table, got to his feet and faced Declan. “I can’t say if your revenge is justified or not. I don’t deny I’m responsible, but no man can stop a stampeding herd. You saw it yourself today.”

Sinclair paused, lifted his gaze to the window where sunlight was streaming in. “After that trip, I was sick of the fights between farmers and ranchers, and I guessed a war was coming between the North and South. We sold up and came out to the Arizona Territory. Victoria was born two years later. Ellen lived for another two after that.”

Sinclair raked his gaze around the room, as if to say goodbye to the walls. “I can see what you want, son. You want me driven from the land where my wife is buried, just as your Pa was driven from the land where he buried your Ma.” In a sudden, swift motion, he picked up the money pouch, tossed it over to Declan, and said. “Well, son, don’t spoil the revenge you’ve worked so hard to achieve.” A hard, determined look entered his eyes. “As to my daughter…she’s your wife now. What do you plan to do about her?”

“The marriage will be annulled if I don’t give her a year’s labor.”

“The hell it will,” Sinclair roared. “You wed her and you bedded her, and she’s yours to keep now. Or does your revenge include leaving behind a bastard child?”

Declan clutched the bag of gold coins, not knowing what to do with it. Nothing made sense anymore. It felt to him as if his whole life had been unreal, as if he were caught in some kind of dream that might change direction and content without any warning.

“She won’t come with me.” He forced out the words. “She’s chosen you over me.”

“Well, son,” Sinclair said in a cutting tone. “You’ve cursed yourself then, haven’t you? To roam the earth, forever thinking of her, forever wondering where she is, what’s become of her, if she is with some other man. If she’s forced to earn her living by whoring. Your wife. In bed with any man with five dollars to spare.” His voice grew whisper soft. “Your wife. And all you’ll have of her is dreams and memories.”

Declan couldn’t take it, the cruel, mocking voice that was pounding the truth into his brain. “Take the money,” he said, and dropped the bag of coins of the table with a clunk. “It’s yours anyway, from selling cattle that I stole from you.” He shifted on his feet. His body seemed awkward, like a machine he didn’t quite know how to operate. “Tell Victoria I love her,” he said, and walked out of the house, out of her life, out of the world that had stripped away the triumph of his revenge, leaving him with nothing but a hollow defeat and a burning sense of shame.

****

Dear Mr. Sinclair,

There is $ 2,000 in this bag. It should be enough to make the next three repayments of your mortgage. You told me once that if I hurt Victoria you’ll put a bullet through my head. I won’t blame you if you do.

Tell Victoria I love her. I always have, from the first moment I saw her. I’m a coward, for not telling her before, and for not realizing that a man needs to make different choices as he grows up. It’s too late to change the choices I made, but perhaps this money can help Victoria keep the home she loves so much.

Declan Beaulieu

PS. Don’t forget to tell Victoria I love her, or fail to do it because you hate me. I believe it will help her heal. You don’t need to tell her where the money came from.

Victoria finished reading the note and lowered her hands.

“The letter was in the bag with the money,” her father said.

They were in standing in her bedroom, where she had stood by the window and watched Declan ride in and ride out again, anger building up inside her as he visited the stable and the bunkhouse and the cookhouse and the forge, saying his goodbyes to Abe and Cookie and the men, even pausing for a minute at the alphabet game, as if the circumstances of his departure were not framed by hate and betrayal and shame.

“Why don’t men ever talk about how they feel?” she muttered. “They just try to guess what everybody else wants and thinks and feels, and they always get it all wrong anyway.” She flapped the folded note against her palm. “What am I supposed to do now?” she said, more to herself than to her father. “Stake out the hanging oak, in case Sheriff Weston and his deputies catch up with Declan before he makes it clear out of the county?”

“Since when have you asked anyone else to tell you what to do?”

Victoria did not reply. Everything was mixed up inside her. Agony of betrayal. The aching loneliness. The fear for Declan’s safety. Why did God play such cruel tricks on women, making them love men who didn’t deserve to be loved?

Her father laid his hand on her shoulder and gave her one of his reassuring squeezes that offered strength and stability. “Ria, don’t make the same mistake Declan did.”

“What?” she asked tartly. “Whom could I betray?”

“Don’t behave like a child who clings to petulant pride. Act like a grownup. Decide what you want, and then figure out the best way of getting it.”

Startled, she stared at him. “And if…if I wanted Declan?”

“Then you’d best go after him.”

“You would…you would have him back? You would forgive and forget, after everything he’s done? He deceived us. Betrayed your trust, and mine.”

Andrew Sinclair, never a man to shirk away from the truth, met his daughter’s questioning gaze. “I told you about Walt Judson, how I sent him with the money to Declan’s father and then I heard he’d suddenly become a man of property. Deep down I always knew he’d stolen the money, but I did nothing about it. I chose to hide my guilty conscience behind pretending ignorance.” His grip on her shoulder tightened, but he didn’t avert his gaze. “I’d have done what Declan did.”

She gaped at him. “You would?”

“I’d like to think so.” Her father paused, lowered his voice. “He only came after my property. Do you realize, Ria, that a man with less honor might have taken his revenge much more easily? Instead of waiting for ten years, building it up step by step, he could have challenged me into a gunfight, or even put a bullet in my back the day he found me, leaving you an orphan.”

 “I…” Victoria swallowed. “I didn’t think of it like that…”

“And,” her father continued, with a wry twist to his mouth. “Regarding tarnishing your honor, it seems to me that you didn’t live the poor lad much choice. Mrs. Flynn stays up at night reading those ghastly novelettes, and she hears what goes on in that small room by the kitchen. Once or twice, she’s spoken up in Declan’s defense. According to her, he put up a good fight before you lured him into your bed.”

“Lured?” Victoria blurted out.

Her father grinned, mischief in his pewter eyes. “Just like you Ma did to me.”

The thud of an approaching rider echoed from the yard. Her father moved closer to the window and turned to look out.

Victoria hurried beside him, full of hope. “Did he come back?”

Down in the stable yard, she saw the stocky frame and freckled face of Mick O’Malley. He leaned down in the saddle to talk to Abe, and then raised his gaze to survey the hills on the horizon. A moment later, the red haired deputy urged his sorrel horse into a sharp turn and galloped out of the yard toward the town.

“He’s gone to alert Sheriff Weston,” her father said.

“Damn it. How many times do I have to rescue that stupid man?” Victoria said.

Without another word, she whirled around on her mud-caked boots and hurried across the room, down the stairs, and out of the house. Not pausing to reply to the curious questions from Abe and Cookie, she saddled Buttercup and set off at full speed toward the hanging oak.

****

The small clearing was as peaceful as a picnic meadow. Wind rustled in the leaves of the mighty tree. Birds chirped as they hopped from branch to branch. It seemed impossible to imagine that several men had died there, and that women who loved them had collapsed on the ground, their tears leaking to the parched earth.

Victoria dismounted. Perhaps she’d been wrong. Maybe it was female vanity to believe that Declan no longer wanted to live, and was taunting fate by remaining in the county after the news broke that he hadn’t served his full year of labor for her.

A flash of something pale, half buried in the dirt, caught her attention. She hurried closer. At the root of the tree, she found four small wooden squares. L-O-V-E, spelled in alphabet blocks. Her heart gave a painful jolt in her chest. Foolish, foolish man. Why didn’t he save himself and go?

She turned back to Buttercup, rammed the toe of her boot into the stirrup and swung up into the saddle. With a soft command to the mare, she danced in a circle, searching the horizon in all directions. Nothing. She couldn’t be in two places at once, waiting by the tree and searching for Declan. She understood now about choices, the difficulty of making them.

Stay.

Go.

It dawned on her that action would always win, even when inactivity was the sounder choice. It felt better to be doing something, instead of merely waiting. She cantered across the plateau, up into the wooded hills, to the small box canyon where she had first met Declan.

In the sheltered dip behind a cluster of huge boulders, she found him, stretched out on his bedroll. An old felt hat he must have found in the bunkhouse to replace the black Stetson he’d lost in the stampede covered his face. She dismounted and left her palomino grazing by the creek beside Declan’s blue roan.

He was sleeping, so soundly he didn’t awaken as she approached. She crept closer and closer, and finally she bent over him, ready to reveal his face. Like a flash, one strong arm snaked out, fingers curling around her wrist. A jerk sent her toppling onto him, and then Declan rolled over, pinning her beneath his body, his weight braced on his elbows, his hands framing her face.

“Haven’t you learned that it’s dangerous for pretty young women to go poking their noses in outlaw camps?”

Idiot
, she berated herself, even as her skin tingled at his nearness, at the familiar feel of his weight on top of hers. How could she have been foolish enough to think that a man who had spent ten years evading capture could sleep through her bumbling approach?

“The sheriff is coming for you,” she told him in a breathless rush. Her eyes roamed his features, once more committing them to memory. God, she’d missed him, and he’d only been gone a few hours. “Mick O’Malley knows you lit out on me,” she added. “They’ll hang you if they catch you.”