Comanche Woman (39 page)

Bay had spent the rest of the day searching Rip’s office for another set of books—the one that revealed his indebtedness—and thought her heart would break when she discovered it behind a collection of old reports on actions taken by the Texas Congress.

It was suppertime before Rip returned to the house. Bay confronted both her father and Sloan at the supper table with what she’d discovered.

“Why didn’t either of you tell me you’d mortgaged Three Oaks?”

“You found the books,” Rip said, his tone even.

“After Jonas told me about the debt,” Bay admitted. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Sloan looked at Rip, who sighed and said, “It was my decision not to say anything. I didn’t want you to worry. Besides, what could you have done?”

“Is it true you don’t have enough money to pay what’s due on the note this year?” Bay demanded.

“Yes.”

“How could this have happened? I thought we had so much!”

“I made some bad investments, and of course the house burned and the cotton gin had to be replaced. We’re not destitute, Bay. I’ve invested quite a bit in the cargo of several ships, but they’re not due back to California from the Orient for another year at least, maybe two.”

“But if you don’t pay Jonas, he’ll own Three Oaks!”

Rip laughed. “I’ve gotten myself into a bind, all right. But Jonas is a reasonable man. We’ll work something out.”

“I suppose it helps that I’ll soon be his wife.” Bay couldn’t keep the aggravation out of her voice. Rip seemed so . . . so
cheerful
. Didn’t he understand the gravity of the situation?

Rip’s frown indicated he’d caught a hint of Bay’s desperation. “Your being Jonas’s wife has nothing whatsoever to do with our business dealings. Has Jonas suggested that it does?”

This was Bay’s chance to detail her conversation with Jonas, but she hesitated to do so. After all, Jonas had withdrawn his initial threat, and it wasn’t Jonas’s fault Rip had invested unwisely, or that it would be—dear God—two years before his ships were back from the Orient. Rip seemed to think Jonas would have been reasonable enough to extend the loan another year if she hadn’t gotten involved in what was essentially a business matter, and after their discussion she was convinced he probably still would.

But what if she married Long Quiet and Jonas ended up having to foreclose on Three Oaks two years from now? Then she’d be much worse in her father’s eyes than simply a disappointing daughter. She’d be the reason he’d lost his life’s blood—Three Oaks.

Bay shuddered. She couldn’t handle the burden of that responsibility. She took a deep breath and made one last try at finding a way to save Three Oaks that didn’t require her marriage to Jonas Harper.

“Is there anyone you could borrow the money from to pay Jonas?”

“I don’t have anything left to use for collateral. The ships’ cargoes could go down at sea, and everything else is already mortgaged.” Rip pursed his lips ruefully. “I’m sorry, Bay. I wish you could have come home to find things in the same shape as when you left. We’ll come out of this all right. I’ll work something out with Jonas to tide us over until my ships sail back to California or the next bountiful cotton crop gets sold.”

“And if the ships sink and the crop fails again?” Bay demanded, irked by Rip’s optimism.

“Let’s not predict a storm when the sun is shining,” Rip cajoled. “Everything’s going to be fine.”

Bay dropped the subject. Arguing with Rip wasn’t going to change the facts. If she didn’t marry Jonas Harper, Rip was going to lose Three Oaks. Sloan would lose her inheritance.

And Bay would forever be his disappointing daughter.

In the quiet of her room that evening, Bay allowed herself the tears she’d been fighting all day. She wasn’t a gambler by nature, and certainly not when the stakes were so very high as Three Oaks. Rip was sure everything would turn out fine. But then Rip had always gambled and won. Bay couldn’t take that chance, and she was devastated by the non-gambler’s choice she felt compelled to make. Wishing and dreaming and hoping didn’t necessarily make things so. Otherwise she would never have spent three years among the Comanches.

Bay cried until her chest ached, until her throat was sore and raw, until her eyes were puffy and red. But her tears had changed nothing. She chewed on her lower lip until it bled, but could come up with no alternative. The only way she could be absolutely certain Three Oaks was safe was to marry Jonas Harper.

Once she’d made her decision, she realized she still had one more hurdle to cross. She must find Long Quiet before he made any more plans to stay in Texas. Because once she explained to him that she couldn’t marry him, it was entirely possible he would return to
Comanchería
. That realization convulsed her body with wrenching sobs that she muffled in the soft feather pillows on her even softer featherbed.

It took Bay several days to locate Long Quiet. He was staying in an old adobe house near the Atascosito Road. She donned a pair of britches and a short gown and rode out early one morning to tell him what she’d decided.

She found the house without any trouble and was both relieved and disappointed when she realized it was empty. She almost turned around and went home, but the knowledge that she couldn’t postpone this meeting pulled her off her horse. She led the animal into the musty-smelling shed that served as a stable before she turned back to the house.

As she stepped across the threshold, a yellow scorpion scuttled across the dirt floor. Bay could see tiny beams of sunlight streaming through the roof, which consisted of small branches of willow and cottonwood layered with grass and sod. She suspected it would leak like a sieve the first time it rained. Several small brown spiders had spun silver webs across the open windows.

Bay smiled wryly. Anyone living in this house would be even more exposed to the elements than if they lived in a tipi. She looked around for something to do to keep herself busy while she waited for Long Quiet and found a straw broom in the corner. It seemed silly to sweep a dirt floor, so Bay used the broom to send the spiders searching for new places to nest. She kept an eye out for the scorpion, which had apparently gone through a hole along the floor somewhere, since she couldn’t find it.

The house consisted of only two rooms. She examined the contents of the front room as though it were going to become her home. It wasn’t, of course; but she could imagine, couldn’t she? The room contained a table and chairs for eating. A small empty pottery vase sat on the table. Bay imagined it full of Indian paintbrush or bluebonnets.

There was another table with a single chair that she could see was serving as a desk. A quick glance confirmed Long Quiet had already established a ledger with entries concerning mustangs and longhorns. She was surprised at the neat lettering, the precise-looking numbers. She shouldn’t have been surprised, because he’d told her he’d been to school in Boston. But she was. Here was actual proof that he had one of the skills necessary to make a go of his ranch in Texas—that he was better qualified, in fact, than many white men, who could neither read nor write.

Finally, there were two heavy rawhide chairs cozily facing a fireplace, with a wool rug on the dirt floor in front of them. Bay imagined sitting with Long Quiet before a crackling fire, a mongrel dog lying at their feet and a cradle rocking between them.

She forced herself to leave that idyllic picture to examine the rest of the adobe house. In the back room, perched in an ornate Mediterranean wood frame, stood the largest bed Bay had ever seen. There was plenty of room for two people to make love there and never have to worry about feeling constrained. The table with six spooled legs beside the bed looked ridiculously fragile in comparison. At the foot of the bed was a trunk, which Bay supposed held Long Quiet’s new clothes and other possessions. She resisted the urge to look inside.

The sheets were disheveled, as though Long Quiet had thrashed in his sleep. There was still a depression in the pillow where his head had lain. Bay set the broom down in the corner, removed her boots, and crawled up onto the bed. She carefully laid her head beside the depression made by Long Quiet’s and reached down to pull the sheets up over her. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply. The sheets smelled of him. She turned on her side and curled into a ball.

How was she ever going to spend the rest of her life with another man?

Chapter 20

L
ONG
Q
UIET SURVEYED THE OVAL-SHAPED BRUSH CORRAL
with satisfaction. Soon he’d be ready to go hunting for mustangs.

“Is pretty good, no?”

Long Quiet turned to the short, spare Mexican who’d spoken. “It’s more than good. Thanks for your help, Paco.”

The middle-aged Mexican shrugged. “Señor Cruz, he say work, I work. For you, for another—it does not matter. I am like the mule, no? I obey when the master bids me lend my back to his labor.”

There was a trace of bitterness along with the resignation in Paco’s voice, but Long Quiet was too excited about the progress he’d made on the corral over the past few days to question the Mexican about it. “We’ll start early again tomorrow, all right?”

“
Sí
, Señor Coburn. When the sun rises I will be here.” The Mexican slipped onto the back of his horse as easily as though he were stepping over a low fence. “I send my sister, Juanita, to come and cook breakfast for you, no?”

“No, but
gracias
.” The Mexican had talked often of his sister ever since he’d realized Long Quiet wasn’t married. While Long Quiet would have welcomed the help, he didn’t want the complications that accepting Paco’s offer would undoubtedly raise. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“
Adiós
, Señor.
Vaya con Dios.”

“
Adiós
, Paco.”

It was a short ride from the brush corral to the house that had been built by Cruz’s grandfather. Long Quiet eyed the adobe house that had become his home. It hadn’t been as hard to live here as he’d feared. But that was because no one knew who he was.

To the planters he’d met at Rip’s house he was Walker Coburn, the cocky firebrand who’d said he planned to marry Jonas Harper’s fiancée. To the
vaqueros
and
mesteñeros
he was the
anglo
for whom Cruz Guerrero had said they must work, respected only for his grace on horseback. Neither Texans nor Mexicans would have accepted Long Quiet, the half-breed Comanche, in their midst.

But between the flat-crowned hat covering his short hair and the roweled spurs on his knee-high black boots, no trace of Long Quiet remained. The deception was easy. It was his knowledge of the deception and the necessity for it that he found hard to live with.

He stopped at the lean-to beside the house that served as a kitchen and started a fire beneath the kettle of black beans he’d left to soak all day. It would have been nice to come home to food that was already cooked, but he had nowhere to keep Juanita in the small adobe house, and that meant she’d have had to ride back and forth from the Mexican
pueblo
near the Guerrero’s hacienda every day. Besides, he reasoned, it wouldn’t be long before he’d be coming home to a meal cooked by his wife.

He walked to the well and drew a bucket of cool water. He scooped up a handful to dash on his face, rinsing it free of the day’s sweat and dust. Then he pulled off his cotton shirt and, leaning over, sluiced the rest of the water from the bucket over his head. He threw his head back and shook like a dog, slinging drops of water across his broad shoulders and in a wide arc around him. He used the cotton shirt to dab at the remaining water that dripped from his nose and eyelashes.

He was tired, but glad the brush corral was finished. The four
vaqueros
Cruz had loaned him, known for their excellent horsemanship, hadn’t bargained on having to work on foot. They’d done the work he asked, but they’d made their disgruntlement known. Long Quiet smiled. No one had worked harder or complained louder than Paco. He liked the wiry Mexican. Perhaps if he talked long enough, he could convince Paco to come to work for him permanently.