Megan sat on the porch steps, leaning against the post of the railing, and listened to the mournful melodic sounds coming from Patrick's harmonica. The night had grown cool, though not cool enough for a sweater, so she now wore a long-sleeved cotton shirt over her Tulsa Oilers T-shirt. But in spite of the shirt she felt chill little shivers and the prickling of goose bumps on her arms, not caused by any weather but by the unexpected yearning Patrick's music called forth from some deep, unexplored well within her.
The light of an almost full moon filtered through the leaves of the ancient hackberry tree. Stars as she could never remember seeing them sparkled like fairy dust across the black sky. And the flickering glow of half a dozen citronella candles brought a soft gentle illumination to the private haven of the porch.
Patrick sat in one of her blue canvas director's chairs, brought out to the porch for this evening, and Barbara sat on the porch floor beside him, resting her arm and her head on his knee with her eyes closed as she listened to him play.
Jake sat on the top porch step, leaning against the rail opposite her. With his head thrown back and his eyes closed he could have been asleep, but he wasn't. Megan knew he was as caught in the music as she was. Still, there was a tension in Jake, a tension that, on reflection, she supposed he must always carry with him.
You're so young, child, and so innocent. I wonder: Could you survive me?
Megan closed her eyes and let the music wash over her. She wasn't young, and she wasn't innocent, and Jake hadn't spoken those words. She didn't know who had said them, or to whom. But if Jake had, how would she have answered him? It was much too soon for either of them to begin any kind of relationship with another person.
Could you survive me?
Who are you?
She drew a ragged breath and opened her eyes. She saw no one new in their intimate group. She hadn't expected to. But who had spoken? Was it Jake? Was she hearing words he wouldn't or couldn't speak aloud? She shook her head in a silent, helpless plea: that she had been right in not telling Barbara everything; that Barbara had been right in telling her that some confusion was normal; that she hadn't, this time, heard an unspoken threat in the harshly spoken words.
Jake posed no threat. Not to her, anyway. As dark and as grim and as threatening as she had seen him in the brief time she'd known him, she'd sensed none of that directed at her. On the contrary, except for one brief flare of temper, which she supposed he was allowed, given the circumstances, he had been unfailingly kind to her. Was his just the kindness of one stranger to another?
She didn't think so. Interrupting the raid was probably an act of kindness to a stranger, but not the rest. He hadn't needed to take her home, or call Barbara, or feed her the next morning, or fix her door, or—or this.
Jake and Patrick had not returned to the house until quite a while after Barbara arrived. Obviously they had made a detour to Jake's place; he had showered and changed clothes and, she suspected, shaved. The two men had immediately started unloading things from the back of Jake's truck: a barbecue grill large enough for the four thick steaks she had already seen in her refrigerator; a box with sturdy plastic use-again picnic dishes; small metal pails, each containing a citronella candle to ward off stinging night insects; and various other things that appeared throughout the evening as necessary.
"Thought you might be needing this about now," Jake had told her when he handed her a thermal chest full of ice cubes.
"Yes," she'd admitted. And she had. Her old refrigerator couldn't begin to keep up with the demand for ice that more than one person put on it. "But wouldn't you and your friends be more comfortable at your house?"
He'd smiled then. "Humor me." And she wondered at that moment if she wouldn't have walked into town to get the steaks if he'd asked.
He'd filled and lighted the grill and tossed in foil-wrapped potatoes, and he and Patrick had finished installing the new door lock while the potatoes cooked and the coals burned themselves to what Jake finally declared the "perfect" stage for grilling.
While he took over that chore, she and Barbara had busied themselves in the kitchen, finishing the salad and pouring iced tea for the meal. Patrick had set up a card table on the porch, covered it with a red-and-white checked table cloth Megan suspected must also have come from the back of Jake's truck, and carried an assortment of chairs from the house.
Dinner had been wonderful, full of laughter, and gentle teasing, and reminiscences that Megan did not feel excluded from even though she had not participated years ago when the memories were made. Not once was Roger mentioned. Or Helen. Or Megan's father. Or Sheriff Pierson.
Now that was over. Everything was neatly tucked away, either in Jake's truck or back in her house, except for the chair in which Patrick sat, making his beautiful, mournful, soul-aching music.
The music faded with a last trembling note that lingered on the air before finally dissolving into the night. Silence surrounded them until the crickets began their melodies again, a whippoorwill resumed its imperious summons, and a bird she didn't recognize began a call that sounded surprisingly like jakekenyon, jakekenyon, jakekenyon. Deacon whimpered and got up, scratching his claws against the wooden porch floor as he did so.
Barbara sighed and straightened reluctantly. Silently she patted her husband's knee and rose to her feet. Patrick nodded, tucked the harmonica in his shirt pocket, and stretched up out of the chair. He bent to lift it, but Megan stood and stopped him with a hand on his.
"Leave it," she said softly. "I think I like it better out here. And thank you. For everything."
Then they were gone, with hugs and promises to get together again soon, and Megan was alone with Jake on the candlelit porch.
"I'd better be going too," he said. "Unless you'd feel better if I hung around tonight. Or you could come up to my place."
For a moment she wondered if he were inviting her into the relationship she'd just denied them the right to start. But of course he wasn't. His next words confirmed that.
"I don't think you have anything more to worry about from the sheriff's crew or, with the gate in place, from any casual intruder."
She would be alone, wouldn't she? Funny, but she hadn't thought of that before this moment. Should she impose on Jake one more night? He'd let her; he'd already volunteered. Would she be afraid?
No, she wouldn't. Not of burglars or police or military. Not of guns or violence or pain or dying. Of whatevers, perhaps. She took a step forward.
"Thank you," she said, stretching up. This much was allowable, for her and for him. But he turned and her fleeting kiss grazed his scarred cheek.
She felt a tremor work through him before he stepped back. "For what?"
"For sharing your friends and for giving my home back to me," she told him. "That's what this was all about, wasn't it? Replacing the bad memories with good ones? It worked. I'll be all right tonight, Jake."
"I can leave Deacon with you."
She shook her head. "No. I'll be fine. I promise."
"You'll call if you need anything?"
You. In the middle of the night. Holding me.
Good God, where were these thoughts coming from? Had she spoken aloud? No. She couldn't have. Jake wouldn't be looking at her with mild questioning if she had. "I'll call. I promise."
Megan sat on the porch long after Jake left. The light from the candles flickered comfortingly in the gentle breeze. In the director's chair with her legs stretched out and her feet propped on the porch rail, she felt at one with the night, relaxed as she could never remember being relaxed, at peace as she could never remember being at peace.
Coming to Prescott had been the right thing to do.
Coming to this house had been the right thing to do. In spite of her father's objections. In spite of what had happened last night.
In spite of the strange things that had been happening to her.
She hadn't recorded any of them in Dr. Kent's magic book, and maybe it was time she did. All of them? She'd see. The bare-bones facts were so improbable she doubted anyone would believe them anymore than the chimerical whatevers.
And who was going to be reading them anyway? This was to be her book, her private place, her soul.
Although Dr. Kent hadn't put it quite that way.
She pulled her feet from the rail and stood abruptly, reluctant to leave the cricket symphony for even a moment but knowing, if she didn't do this now, she'd put it off forever.
The house was dark except for the light over the kitchen sink but Megan found her way through it unerringly, first to the utility room to release the kittens from the safe haven to which they had been banished when they insisted on crawling over everyone there, including Deacon, and then to the bedroom she had decided to use until she finished the green one.
She retrieved the notebook from the top drawer of the cherry chest-on-chest that had belonged to her grandmother and carried it back to the porch. There, she gathered three candles on the rail and pulled the director's chair closer, giving her just enough light to see the pages.
The kittens had followed her to the porch, and now one was doing its best to climb the leg of her jeans. She lifted it to her lap and let it curl beside her in the chair, while the other one settled contentedly on her feet.
I promised in the last entry not to avoid my thoughts or myself or my life when writing in this book. I'm not sure I can do that. I've spent so many years hiding from the truth that sometimes I don't know what it is.
From a move that promised to be quiet, idyllic, perhaps even boring, I seem to have stumbled into something I have no skills to understand.
Who is Jake Kenyon?
And who is the man I see when I look at him?
—no, please no. Oh, God, no, no, NO!
Terror, greater than anything she had experienced, tried to claw its way out of her chest. Megan dropped her pen and shoved the book from her lap.
"Again?" she whimpered. "What is this? Who is this?" Shuddering and suddenly chilled, she scooped the protesting cat from her lap and cuddled him close. "Why is this?"
Jake hadn't meant to sleep; he hadn't thought he'd be able to. But after unloading his truck he'd hesitated a little too long by the inviting, oversized couch in his unlighted living room. Giving in to the weakness he had refused to let Patrick see, he dropped onto the couch, intending only to rest awhile, and settled into the familiar hollows of the sofa. His left thigh spasmed once, and his shoulders tensed in their persistent complaint before sinking into the oversized down pillow Barbara's mother had made for him last Christmas. "If a man's going to sleep alone," she'd told him, "he ought to have something soft to hold on to during the night."
Megan would be soft.
He shouldn't be thinking of her this way. It was too soon. But it had been a long time since he'd had anyone, soft or not, to hold on to during the night.
Yes. Megan would be soft. She looked all bones and angles, but he'd discovered that was a lie the moment he'd lifted her to carry her away from Rolley P's intruders. He remembered how she'd grasped his hand last night and how she'd turned in his arms, not even knowing who held her.
Oh, yes, Megan would be soft. He sank deeper into the down pillow, feeling the tension and physical strain of the day ease from him: soft . . . and welcoming . . . at last . . .
Megan!
He came awake instantly, listening, watching, feeling for the danger that had dragged him from a deep, insensate sleep. He heard nothing, saw nothing, felt nothing except an unremitting dread. Of what?
He twisted his head slightly to look at Deacon. His highly trained guard dog was stretched out on the cool stone hearth with his head between his front paws, snoring. Whatever threatened, it didn't threaten him or this place.
Megan!
He came off the couch in a lunge that had every abused muscle, joint, and scar in his body screaming.
Hell and damnation! And he'd left her there alone, after what had already happened in that house.
Keeping to the end of the room, away from the lighted kitchen and windows where shadows could give away his intention, he whistled softly for Deacon, slipped out the front door, eased open the door of his truck, and retrieved his pistol.
Deacon whined once and Jake stopped, listening.
"I hear it too, boy," he said softly. An engine in the distance. But where? With the way sound carried in these hills, it could be in the mountains behind him, on the abandoned road that bisected the Hudson place, or down on the county road. The only place he could be sure the sound wasn't coming from was Megan's house. No noise floated up from there.
Speed? Or stealth? Starting one of his vehicles would give whoever was lurking around ample warning to leave—or to finish whatever evil had prompted this middle-of-the-night foray.
Stealth, he decided. He wanted to get his hands on whoever was skulking around Megan. And if she had been harmed—
With a cold, clear certainty that betrayed all his years of training and shocked him with its intensity, Jake knew that if Megan had been harmed, Rolley P wouldn't have to go through the motions of pretending to find evidence for prosecution, he'd only have to identify the body of the man who had done it.
But stealth didn't mean slow. The narrow road wound around rocky outcroppings and the contours of the hillside for more than a quarter of a mile between the two houses, but Jake took an almost straight path through the woods, across one creek, and down one slight outcropping that cut the distance in half.
He came out of the woods at the hedgerow near the rear of Megan's house. He paused, listening, but still heard nothing. And even though Deacon appeared unconcerned, Jake's sense of dread hadn't lessened.
Why hadn't she called? She'd promised. Unless she hadn't been able to. Unless she didn't know she was in danger.
Keeping in the shadows, Jake eased from the hedgerow, through the overgrown yard, and around the side of the house.
The candles still flickered on the porch, and Megan—Jake felt an inordinate sense of relief when he saw her sitting, unharmed, in the canvas chair. And an inordinate sense of anger when he realized how exposed she had let herself be.
And then he saw the way she clasped the squirming kitten, the way she stared into the shadows of the night, not really seeing anything.
"Megan," he said softly, stepping from those shadows.
At first he thought she didn't hear him. He stepped closer to the porch, careful not to alarm her.
"Megan, what happened?"
She jerked to her feet and the cat struggled free, clawing its way over her shoulder and knocking over the chair.
Whatever he had expected, it was not that she would run from the porch and fling herself against him. Whatever he had expected, it was not that he would feel this wild rush of desire grip him and hold him, as tightly as he held this slender woman in his arms.
"You came!" she whispered.
What the hell was she talking about? Of course he came. He would always come to her.
And what the hell was he thinking about? He felt her shudder—a tremor caused by terror, not passion—and remembered that not quite three months ago she had seen her husband murdered, had seen Helen shot down, had seen atrocities she couldn't yet speak of and then spent weeks escaping through the jungle.
She had come to Oklahoma to recover, only to fall victim to Sheriff Pierson's incompetence, and tonight she had experienced still another—another what?
Whatever it had been, she'd had just about all the emotional trauma she could handle. She didn't need to confront his own physical and disturbingly emotional needs. Needs? For years he'd thought himself incapable of needing anyone. What was it about this woman that evoked this sense of belonging, of closeness, to someone he had known only by reputation—and had not liked what little he'd known—until twenty-four hours earlier?
Another tremor worked through her, calling him back to the night, to the unexplained sense of urgency that had brought him here, to her terror. Placing his hands on her shoulders, he stepped back from her, distancing himself in every way he could.
"What happened?"
She shook her head in a quick, jerky denial. "Nothing."
"Nothing?" he asked. "Nothing has you trembling so you can barely stand? Nothing had you running off that porch as though the devil were after you and I was your only hope of heaven? What happened?"
"I don't know!" she cried. "All right?" She sighed and dropped her head, not looking at him. "I don't know."
I don't know was hardly better than nothing, but at least Jake felt some familiarity with it. And did he honestly know what had brought him down the mountain in the middle of the night?
He gentled his touch and his voice as he drew her to him for what he knew must appear to be no more than a quick, comforting hug, then turned her, draping an arm over her shoulder as he walked her back to the porch.
But once on the porch, she balked and refused to enter the house, even when he held the wooden screen door open for her.
"Not just yet," she said, as she slipped from under his arm. She walked back to the steps and stood looking out into the night, aware, or perhaps attuned, to the night sounds, but Jake saw that this awareness was appreciation, not fear, and he eased the screen closed and walked to join her.
"I once thought I would never again enjoy being out in the night," she told him. "But just listen to the music the creatures make, look at the canopy of the night sky, and breathe in that wonderful aroma of fresh breezes and new growth. There's nothing here but us and nature. It's the most freedom I've ever felt."
"You're not afraid to be so far from town?"
Megan made a sound that could have been laugher, could have been derision, and eased herself down to sit on the top step. "Prescott is close enough for groceries and fuel and mail. After what I've been through, though, it's a relief to be away from the crowds and the meanness of even a place as small as Fairview." She shook her head and gestured toward the hillside. "There's nothing out there that's deliberately going to hurt me."
Jake remembered the reason he had come to her, the sounds he had heard in the distance, and her fear. He eased himself down to sit between her and the porch railing. "Are you sure?"
She turned to look up at him in the flickering light and grinned ruefully.
"Of course not." Her smile faded as she drew in a deep breath. "Once I would have been. Once I would have been sure that this countryside is as idyllic as it looks. Once I would have trusted law enforcement to protect me, my country to defend me"—her voice caught—"my father to believe me. Once I would have been sure that I was safe in my own home."
And now she didn't. Whoever Megan Hudson had been when she went to Villa Castellano, either the woman Jake had thought or someone entirely different, she'd come back more changed than even she herself realized.
"I'm sorry," she said. "You don't need me unloading on you."
"No, but maybe you need to unload."
She gave him a whimsical smile. "Thanks. Maybe you do too."
His own loss of innocence had come years ago, and there had been no one to listen, to understand, to share the awful aloneness that had followed. There seemed little else to do. He lifted his arm to her shoulder and hugged her close to his side. "Maybe later," he told her.
She sighed and accepted his offer of comfort for what it was, for all it could be at this time, and they sat in companionable silence for several minutes before he made himself speak. "What upset you earlier?"
She drew another deep breath and straightened, moving slightly away from him and staring out into the night. "I really don't know," she said finally. "A flashback, maybe? A dream?" She shook her head, denying either her words or the memory. "I thought I was awake," she told him, "but it could have been a nightmare. Whatever it was, I'm glad you came back."
I awoke in a cabin with vague memories of having awakened there before. For the first time I was consciously aware of feeling protected and comforted and safe. Through the open door, I saw the bright light of late afternoon, but in the dimly lighted cave of the room, everything was cool and quiet. I lay in a wide bed with a dusty-smelling but infinitely comfortable feather mattress.
I was clean.
My ribs and ankle were securely wrapped. The damnable insect bites had, for the moment, ceased to torment me. And beneath the long, soft, intact shirt I wore, my body carried the scent of nothing more offensive than strong soap.
I heard noises from outside and fear crowded into the room, into the bed with me.
I turned slightly and felt a heavy, steady weight by my side.
Sam's big revolver, the one I had never seen him without, lay on top of the light cover within easy reach of my hand.
"I'll never hurt you. No one will ever hurt you again." I touched the revolver as the nebulous memory of his—Sam's?—words danced through my mind. "You don't have to be afraid of anyone ever again. Not even me."
But I was afraid.
Almost too afraid to move when I looked through the open door and saw Sam's bare shoulders and chest as he pulled his shirt over his head and began washing in a shallow basin he'd placed on a stump just off the narrow porch. Almost too afraid to move when I saw a face from all my nightmares step from the edge of the woods. Almost too afraid to move when I saw Sam spin around, reach for the gun that had hung from his hip since long before I met him, and realize that he no longer wore it—that I had it.
Puckett loved to talk. I had learned that about him—and more—in the three days he had held me prisoner. He loved to spew forth his bitterness and his hatred. He loved to tell someone how he was going to wreak his revenge.
This day he laughed the laugh I had grown to recognize as the harbinger of pain, pointed his rifle at Sam, and spat his ever-present tobacco before beginning to speak in a low voice. I could not hear his words, but I didn't need to. I knew first-hand of his hatred for Sam. I also realized, dimly, that if I could not hear his words, perhaps he could not hear me.
My fear almost kept me quiet, praying he would do what he had to do and then leave without finding me. But I couldn't let him. It has to be further evidence of my madness that I honestly don't know whether I went to the doorway to rescue Sam from Puckett's revenge or because, since becoming the creature Puckett made me, I had promised him and myself that I would kill him.
My bound ankle supported me, but with the weight of the gun dragging my arm down and the pain in my ankle hindering my steps, I made my way to the door in an odd, shuffling gait and found when I reached it that I was almost too weak to raise the pistol.
But I did. Oh, yes, I did. To warn him or not? That was my only decision as I looked at the fat, filthy outlaw who had somehow found us.
A glance around showed me Sam's rifle perched against the tree stump a long reach and a mere moment away from his hand.
I wanted Puckett to know—I needed Puckett to know that I was able to keep my promise.
I raised the pistol in both hands, fighting to keep it steady, and aimed at the biggest and best target he presented me, a target I had threatened when he thought my words only idle threats: his belly.
I didn't warn him, at least not intentionally. It must have been some movement, some sound I made. He turned toward where I stood in the shadows of the cabin doorway. I knew the moment he saw me. His mouth parted in a feral smile that showed his rotten teeth, and he began to laugh. He was still laughing when I pulled back on the trigger. He was still laughing when my bullet caught him in the belly.
I heard his laugh over the reverberations of the pistol firing. I hear it still, in my sleep, in my quiet moments, and in the times when the madness threatens to overtake me.
Sam reacted as Puckett collapsed, snatching up his own rifle, rolling and tumbling out of the line of fire, behind the tree stump, and finally standing to go to Puckett and kick his weapon out of the way before running to my side.
He said nothing at first, simply took the pistol from my clenched hands.
"I killed a man," I said.
He took careful aim at the man on the ground and fired once. "No," he said, "I killed him. And he was vermin, not a man."
Vermin he might be, but I knew too well what could come of this. "He's white," I reminded him. "You could hang if this becomes known."
"And you? What could happen to you?"
Nothing could happen to me, but Sam Hooker was not yet ready to see that. The worst had happened. And if I walked and talked and even looked as though I still lived, I knew the truth. Much more than my youth had been killed on that bright June day. I was dead, as dead as my dreams. As dead as the outlaw on the grass in front of that tiny little cabin . . .
Sam sent Puckett's horse on its way with a slap and a yell. "In case someone's following him," he said, "this should attest that he left." Then he pulled aside briars without uprooting them and dug a grave on the outer edge of a small overgrown cemetery plot he found between the cabin and the bank of a slow-moving creek. I thought it a sin to put Puckett's body with those of the decent dead, but I saw the wisdom in Sam's choice—in a matter of days the briars would so completely mask the turned earth that no one would find a new grave—so I kept my silence.
Sam had wanted me to return to the safety of the cabin, in case any of Puckett's men had escaped the soldiers he now told me had gone into the camp after he had carried me away. But I knew there was no safety anywhere. I compromised, though. Holding his pistol in my hands, I sat on a fallen tree just inside the encroaching forest, out of sight of anyone who might stray into the homesite but able to watch Sam as he worked.
Along with the rusted shovel, Sam had found an abandoned tarpaulin in the one outbuilding—truly remarkable finds in the land where the inhabitants used and valued their every meager possession—and had rolled Puckett's body into the canvas and then into the grave. He had just started shoveling the rock-laden soil back into the shallow hole when his head jerked up. He dropped the shovel and grabbed his rifle.
"Stay out of sight," he said, in an urgent but quiet demand.
I needed no further warning; I had no desire to see again or be seen by any of the men who had made my life unbearable. I slid down from the tree and shrank farther back into the forest.
But the man who eventually rode to the edge of the clearing, hesitated, and then sheathed his rifle before dismounting and walking toward Sam was no one I'd ever seen before. He wore the blue wool uniform of the Union, the U.S. Army, dusty now and travel stained. He was tall—as tall as Sam, which was rare—and thin, and he wore his years heavily, almost painfully.
Sam lowered his rifle fractionally. "Captain," he said, which I thought strange since I clearly saw lieutenant's bars on the man's uniform coat.
"Hooker." The officer spoke quietly, wearily, and did not correct Sam's mode of address. He nodded toward the grave. "I'll have to see that."
Sam nodded and knelt beside the grave, reached down, and pulled the canvas away from Puckett's face.
No! I wanted to scream. Don't let him see! He'll take you away! But of course I didn't. Coward that I had become, I huddled in the woods.
But when the lieutenant saw who lay in the grave, he surprised me. "Good," he said. "I was following him, not you, you know. He deserved to die. In fact I half expected to find him and the others dead when we staged our raid. I do thank you for the sentry, though. With him taken care of, it wasn't quite the rout it could have been. I take it the woman was still alive when you reached her?"
Sam didn't answer. Instead, he again covered Puckett's face and started to rise.
"Pull him out of there."
Sam swiveled to look at the officer.
"I need to make sure there's nothing under him."
Sam nodded and moved to the end of the hole. He grabbed the body's wrapped feet and tugged and pulled until Puckett lay like a fat cocoon on the briar side of the grave. The officer looked into the hole, then jumped down and stomped around in it for a while, kicking at whatever loose dirt had fallen in, before he climbed back out, nodded at Sam, and the two of them tugged the body back to the edge of the grave and rolled it in.
"Where's the woman?" the officer asked.
"And if I told you she was dead?"
"I'd say you didn't get very far in almost three days. Not many things would explain that. An injured woman might; a dead one wouldn't."
"And if I told you there never was a woman?"
"Ah, that would mean you lied, something I've never known you to do. But it would also mean that what you carried out of the camp was the army payroll. Did you, Hooker? Is that what happened to it?"
For a moment Sam stood quietly, shoulders slumped, his weariness so tangible it pained me. "Oh, hell," he said quietly. "The others? What did they say?"
The officer shook his head. "One dead sentry and one dead—leader?"
With a nod, Sam acknowledged the accurate guess.
"And three others beyond questioning. It was quite a carnage," he said companionably. "One of his crew and three of the boys masquerading as men the army sent me to train hightailed it out of there at the first shots faster than any green colts you've ever seen. Who knows where they'll wind up, or when. The rest didn't stand much of a chance against seasoned fighters."
"So it all came down to you and him?" Sam said.
"And now you and me."
"We've never been enemies," Sam told him.
"And we don't have to be now. Just tell me where the payroll is."
Sam shook his head. "I didn't stop to look for it. And I saw no sign of their having done anything with it in the days I followed them. If it wasn't in the camp, I have no idea where it is."
"Maybe the woman does."
"No."
"Hooker, it's the only way."
Sam slammed his fist into his other hand. "Right now, no one knows she's gone. I'm going to get her back before anyone does. Do you have any idea what her life will become if anyone learns what she's been through? She'll be the one who is punished, even though she's clearly the victim. No. I won't let you do this to her. She's been through enough—too much—already."
"Your woman, you said."
"In that I did lie," Sam said quietly. "She's not my woman. She's never been mine, and now it's pretty obvious she never will be. But that makes no difference. I still can't let you talk to her."
"Then I suppose I'll have to take you in for killing this piece of trash. Too bad. If he'd had just a drop of your Choctaw blood, you'd be within your jurisdiction."
"His name's Puckett," Sam told him. "Tyndall Puckett. There's a reward for him in Texas, or used to be. Probably there's a price on everyone in his gang. You could claim the money. Get rid of that blue uniform. Get yourself a nice ranch somewhere out west where the war isn't still alive."
"Find myself a woman and settle down?" the lieutenant asked. "I don't think so. Because the only woman I'm interested in finding is the one who can tell me where the payroll is."
"I can't," I said, stepping closer but leaning weakly against a tree out of his sight.
"Stay back," Sam ordered.
"Oh, I will," I told him. "I surely will. But I still have your gun, and I won't let him take you. Puckett's been responsible for taking too much away from you already. I won't let him cost you your life."
"I don't want to cause you more pain," the officer said. "I only want to know what you heard."
I felt a wild laugh try to break through. "What I heard?" He made it sound as though that were something over and done with, as though I didn't still hear everything that had been said. "I heard about a wonderful little place in Mexico where I could continue to exist in the same kind of torture I knew for three days. I heard of other women they had taken and what they had done to them."
Sam didn't know the next part; I'd heard Granny wonder too many times to think he did. Now might not be the time for him to learn, but I couldn't stop myself.
"I heard of how Puckett hated Sam for only doing his job and how he had killed Sam's wife and child because of it. I heard in excruciating detail what they were going to do to him when he came for me, and what they were going to continue to do to me."
The gun was too heavy to hold. I let my hands drop, but I didn't release my grip on it. And now I was tired. Weak, exhausted, drained. And that man in the blue uniform, the uniform of someone who should be protecting me, not harassing me, wanted still more.
"I didn't hear a thing about the army or its payroll. And I have nothing else I can tell you about Puckett or the—or those who traveled with him."
Did he believe me? I thought at the time he did, because he left. Sam carried me back to the cabin; by that time I was too weak to walk, even with his help. And a day later, much too soon, Sam told me, but much too necessary to postpone the trip longer, we set out for home.