Amelia (34 page)

She gasped. "Quinn does not drink,
señor
. Well, perhaps a drop or so of mescal…"

"He drinks to excess and has for the past few weeks since Rodriguez killed himself," he informed her. "Now there's only one way this can end. He'll keep on going downhill until he ends up dead."

"No!"

His eyebrows arched. "Isn't that what you want? That's what he told me."

"No, no, a thousand times no, I do not want him dead!" she cried, tears welling in her eyes. She went close to King, grasping him by the shoulders. "Please. Will you take me to him? Will you permit that I ride back to your ranch, to speak with him?"

"Why do you want to?" he asked shrewdly.

She shrugged and moved back. "Because I am sorry for him, of course."

"I'm glad. But that really won't do," he told her.

She lifted her eyes to his. "Then, because I love him," she said gently.

He smiled. "That was the reason I hoped to hear. Do you have a horse?"

"I will borrow Juliano's, my brother's!"

She ran to get it, her face radiant. Minutes later she was back, in the saddle, waiting for King.

He looked around as he got back on the horse. These people lived in the most appalling sort of poverty, but they seemed happy enough. They waved, along with the boy Maria had called Juliano, as they rode out.

"My papa was not happy about what he had done," Maria said as they went toward the border. "He said that the past haunted him. It was for us that he did it. And it was for us, for his people, that he died, so that the authorities would stop persecuting us in their search for him." She glanced toward him. "He was a great, and good, man,
señor
. I owe him my life, and so does Juliano. Whatever the gringos say about Rodriguez, he was no devil."

"I had discovered that through Quinn. He is not the sort of man to love a devil," he told her. "He has mourned Rodriguez."

"Yes. As have we all. I was wrong to accuse Quinn. I hope that it is not too late to show him how much I care for him."

King nodded. But privately, he hoped the same thing. Quinn had been belligerent and uncooperative on the way out to the ranch, and since. He spoke of Maria but not in any complimentary way.

Amelia was sitting on the porch when they arrived long after dark. She stood up with relief written all over her when they dismounted, leaving the horses with a ranch hand, and went into the house.

"I had no idea where you were," she told King irritably, and then ruined her angry stance by going into his arms and hugging him hungrily. "Where have you been!"

"Getting Maria," he said simply. "This is Maria," he added, introducing her. "Rodriguez's daughter."

Amelia smiled warmly. "I am happy to meet you at last. Our poor Quinn is very lonely without you."

Maria flushed. "It is the same for me. I was very cruel to him. I hope that he can forgive."

"I think you'll find that he's more than willing to meet you halfway. Come."

Amelia shot a loving look at her weary husband and led Maria down the hall to the guest room.

She opened the door, and Quinn, very hung over and headachy, looked up from where he was sitting, fully dressed, on the side of the bed.

"What the hell do you want?" he asked Maria coldly. "Another slice of my heart?"

She went forward, kneeling in front of him. "I am much too greedy,
señor
. I want all of it."

She smiled and held out her arms. With a rough cry, Quinn went into them, lifting and turning her roughly. He kissed her hungrily, and she answered his kisses without reserve.

Amelia chuckled softly to herself. She went out and left them, but she didn't close the door.

"Well?" King asked.

"I think we'll have another wedding very soon," was all she said. She took his hand, and they walked back toward the kitchen.

 

The elder Culhanes came home a week later to find incredible changes at Latigo. Alan was not with them, having gone to Beaumont, Texas, to work with his brother Callaway in the search for oil.

"I can't believe it," Enid said, laughing as she was introduced to Quinn's new wife. The newlyweds were living in a boardinghouse in El Paso, and Quinn had joined the El Paso police department, where he was working into a fairly decent deputy according to the sheriff.

King and Amelia were radiant and announced a little sheepishly that they were going to become parents. Enid took this revelation not without shock but also with a great deal of pleasure. Brant got out the brandy and began making toasts. It was a late night for all.

As they waved off Quinn and Maria, King circled Amelia's thickening waist with a long, powerful arm and pulled her close in the warm May evening. "They say we're going to have an eclipse of the sun soon," he remarked.

"A heavenly event," she agreed. She looked up at him. "But I have to tell you that the most heavenly event I know of will happen in just a little over six months."

King didn't realize what she was saying for a minute. When he did, he laughed so loudly that his father and mother came out on the porch to see what the noise was all about. The four of them, sharing the joke, looked out at the horizon where Quinn and Maria, in the buggy, were driving slowly back toward town.

"The beginning of a new generation," Brant remarked, clapping his son on the back. "I am glad that I have lived to see it."

"And think," King told him. "You can tell your grandchildren how you fought off Comanches and settled here with Mother when El Paso was barely a town. You will be a hero to them."

Brant thought about that and began to nod. "Why, so I will."

"Now see what you've done," Enid grumbled. "He'll strut for a week."

She followed him back into the house. Amelia snuggled close to King as they settled down in the porch swing to watch the clouds sail across the moon. She closed her eyes and sent a prayer upward for her poor father and her mother and little brothers, and even Rodriguez, none of whom would see the next generation that King had spoken of.

Somewhere in the darkness, a lone coyote began to howl, and the faint echo of it was hauntingly sad. But there was independence in it, and strength. It was, a dreaming Amelia thought pleasantly, a wild song for a fierce country that, like King, would never quite be tame. She nuzzled her face against his broad chest, and stronger than the lament of the coyote was the regular, firm beat of his heart at her ear.

^