A Lady of the West Read online

  Where had he seen the man before?

  Then it came to him, and he turned pale. He’d had a beard when Garnet had met him, but there was no doubt it was the same man. It was Tanner, the gunslick who had ridden in late one afternoon and hired on, but only stayed a day or so before leaving as quietly as he’d come. But his name wasn’t Tanner; it was Sarratt, and he would know Garnet on sight.

  Garnet gave the room a good look, but didn’t see anyone he knew. That didn’t mean anything. The Sarratts had hired a lot of new men. There could be any number of Sarratt men in here right now, surrounding him.

  There was no way he was going to go up those stairs. There’d be another time, and a better chance.

  Being careful not to catch anyone’s eye, he got up from the table and slipped out the back door. When he was in the sour-smelling alley he started running, slipped and almost fell, but caught himself at the last moment with his hands. His left hand was in something foul-smelling and squishy. Garnet cursed viciously as he got up and scraped the sticky crap off his hand the best he could, rubbing it against the rough side of the building. That was just one more grievance he had against the goddamn Sarratts.

  He waited until he was a piece down the street before washing his hand in a horse trough, then he hurried to the crib where he was sleeping. It wasn’t anything more than a lean-to built against a stable, and the walls were made of unfinished planks nailed across some logs. The cracks were big enough to shoot through, and it had started getting damn cold at night. He’d have to find something better soon.

  He was sharing the crib with Quinzy, who was already rolled up in his blanket and snoring his head off. Garnet nudged him with his boot. “Quinzy! Wake up. One of the damn Sarratts is in town, maybe both of them.”

  Quinzy came awake without any of the mumbling and wiping his eyes that most men did. He sat up. “Is it Jake?”

  “I didn’t see Jake. It’s the brother, I don’t remember his front name. He’s the son of a bitch who rode in calling hisself Tanner, and left right after that. Guess he came to talk to Jake about something. Goddamn bastards were planning it right under our noses!”

  Quinzy was silent. This latest plan of Garnet’s was stupid, but there was no talking sense to him. He had it in his mind that the little gal was his, and that he had a right to the ranch. Damned if Garnet hadn’t gone as loony, in his way, as McLain had. Quinzy had drifted along with Garnet out of habit, but it looked like the time had come to part.

  “Don’t look like I’ll be riding back to the kingdom with you, Garnet,” Quinzy said. “Heard tell the land up along the Snake is mighty pretty and mighty lonesome, a good place for me to lay low for a spell. Reckon I’ll do that. Twenty years ago I was game to take on the Sarratts, or anybody else come to that, but I’m twenty years older and twenty years slower. It’s time for me to think about retiring.”

  “I hate to hear you’re not going with me, Quinzy,” Garnet said. “We been together a long time, but a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do.”

  “Glad you’re being understanding about it, and all. I’ll ride out early in the morning, before anybody gets a good look at me. Don’t know if any of the Sarratt men know who I am, but iffen they don’t I’d like to keep it that way.”

  Quinzy rolled back up in his blankets and listened to Garnet doing the same. After a while Quinzy began to snore again. He never heard the quiet snicking of a hammer being pulled back. If there was a fraction of a second after the trigger was pulled that he heard the explosion of the shot, it was too tiny a slice of time for it to do him any good. Garnet’s bullet plowed into the back of Quinzy’s head, splattering a big portion of the front of it across the wall.

  Garnet rolled up his blankets and got his gear. There wasn’t much chance of a single shot in this part of town being investigated, but it was best to clear out anyway. He looked down at the body. “Like I said, a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do,” he said in an undertone. “If you ain’t with me, you’re against me.”

  It snowed early that year, a light dusting that barely covered the ground but gave hint of the coldness to come. That morning when Victoria left the bed to look out the window at the layer of white, she felt the child move for the first time. She went very still, her hand pressed to her lower abdomen as she waited for it to come again.

  Jake looked up from stamping his feet into his boots, noticing her stillness. “What’s wrong?”

  “The baby moved,” she replied in a low tone.

  He came over to stand beside her. She had donned a shift but nothing else, and he felt a surge of lust as he looked at her. She lifted her hand and his replaced it on her belly, while his other arm circled her and pulled her against his body. They stood motionless and finally it came again, a flutter so faint that Jake barely felt it. He caught his breath, his heart pounding at this evidence of life. Until now, the baby had been defined by symptoms, most of them unpleasant for Victoria. But this was different; this was life.

  She let herself lean against him, knowing it would do no good to try to put distance between them. He made love to her whenever he wanted, just as he had before, with a searing sensuality that became more intense with time, rather than weakening. There was no part of her body that was sacred from his touch, and pregnancy seemed to have made her that much more responsive. Even her skin felt sensitized. Sometimes she felt she would drown in sensuality, but the loving playfulness that she had found with him before their fight didn’t return.

  Instead she resented his physical power over her, because he wielded it without love. Even after all that had happened, she still loved him; he would not have been able to hurt her so deeply if she hadn’t. He cared for her, she thought, but she was carrying his child, so why wouldn’t he feel some concern? And he enjoyed sleeping with her, that was plain enough. But not one word of love ever crossed those hard, chiseled lips.

  She bitterly resented his lack of faith in her. It still rankled every day that he could believe her capable of such betrayal. His accusation had sprung from the legacy of hate he still carried around with him; even though McLain was dead, the hatred in Jake hadn’t dissipated. Sometimes Victoria could almost feel McLain still in the house, with the ghosts of Jake’s parents, keeping the hatred alive.

  It would be best if she took the child and left. She didn’t want it to grow up surrounded by hatred; she wanted it to grow up happy, in a house without shadows. The idea of leaving teased her mind every day, but the difficulty of it defeated her. How could she leave? Where could she go? Moreover, neither Emma nor Celia would want to leave. Emma might watch Ben with great sad eyes whenever he wasn’t looking, but the ranch had become her cousin’s home. She wouldn’t want to leave it or Ben, even if he had apparently lost interest.

  Celia was growing up, rapidly leaving her helter-skelter ways behind. She was calmer, more dignified, more thoughtful. Her hair was usually neat now, her dress tidy, and she walked instead of skipping. She still spent a lot of time crooning to Rubio and trying to make friends with the great stallion, but she no longer seemed so obsessed by it. No, Celia wouldn’t want to leave.

  Jake turned her in his arms, his hand sliding up to cup her breasts. Victoria looked up at him, her eyes grave. He looked back at her with his intention plain. He’d just finished dressing, but the clothes came off as easily as they went on. He led her back to the bed, and it was another hour before they left the room.

  The winter months came with a vengeance, with more bitter cold than snow, though there was enough of both. Victoria grew increasingly rounder, her pregnancy immediately apparent to anyone who took the time to look. Her mood changed, becoming both calmer and a bit dreamy as she was increasingly preoccupied by the changes in her body. Everything was out of her control. At least the last of the morning sickness had gone and physically she felt wonderful, though she still tired easily.

  She would have thought that her increasing bulk would dampen Jake’s carnal desires, but not so. He handled her with incr