Crossings (23 page)

Helena wasn't so sure she wanted to hear any more. Jealousy wasn't a common emotion in her, but suddenly it sprang out of nowhere and crawled into her lap. Unbidden, a petty query took over her voice. “Was she pretty?”

“Very.”

Of course. Any woman who could turn Carrigan's head would have to be beautiful. Helena turned up the final card for trump and left it on top of the deck. Her concentration had been shot the moment of Carrigan's answer.

Picking up his cards, Carrigan flipped one over the trump. “Her name was Kate Hisom. She came to town the year I signed up with my first outfit. Her father opened a grocery store and turned a nice business.”

Helena played on Carrigan's discard.

“I'd just turned twenty, and I thought I knew everything there was about life. I figured I was ready to make a commitment to a woman.” Carrigan followed suit with a club, then tossed his cigarette into the fire. “Her family allowed me to call on her, and I did for a few months. Then I asked her to marry me.”

Helena's throat went dry as sawdust. It had never occurred to her that Carrigan might have been married before.

“But she turned me down flat. I thought she was interested in me, only she was interested in seeing what it would be like to be courted. She said she wasn't going to marry a man punching cattle and smelling like horse sweat. She'd set her sights on the banker's son.” Carrigan swallowed another gulp of coffee. “Milton Grimes smelled like money.”

“What an awful girl,” Helena commented, feeling guilt over her relief that Carrigan hadn't been married previously. She had no right to wish that he hadn't, because she'd almost had a husband herself. But there was something special in not having spoken vows to anyone prior to each other.

“After being made the brunt of many jokes between the other punchers, I didn't want to stay in Red Springs. The constant reminder of Kate turning me down had me resentful, and I didn't want to take on any of my father's ornery traits.”

Her brows rose with curiosity, but before she could say anything, Carrigan was shaking his head.

“No. One question. And I answered it.” Drawing his legs in tighter, he arranged his cards and gazed at her over the tops of them. “You never talk about yourself.”

Her heartbeat picked up speed. “There's nothing to tell.”

“You're full of secrets.”

She only had one. “I am not.”

“Who was the man in your life before me?”

“There was nobody,” she lied.

Carrigan shrugged with indifference, winning the trick. “I'm not going to make you talk about him.” If Helena had been paying attention, she could have discarded one of her hearts. “Tell me about August, then. What happened the day he was killed?”

Helena recalled the incident with an overwhelming sadness and had to prod herself into speaking of it aloud. “It was a normal day, just like any other. Father had opened the store, sent Emilie on an errand, and I was getting ready to help before the morning rider came. I heard a gunshot and ran to see.” Grief doubled back to Helena and ambushed her with the threat of tears. “I . . . I found my father on the floor. He'd been shot in the stomach. Our cash box was stolen.”

“Was there money in it from the day before?”

Helena shook her head. “Not much. Nothing to kill over.”

“Was money the only thing in the box?”

“There was a picture of our family. And a special coin.”

“A special coin?”

“It was a half-dime and had my mother's initials—J.G.—engraved on it. Father scratched them on the surface of the coin we took in for our first sale.” She blinked, fighting against crying.

Carrigan's eyes narrowed to hard flints. “You weren't robbed for the money. A robber would have waited until the end of the day when the till was full.”

“But maybe—”

“No. Whoever shot your father had a reason other than wanting money,” Carrigan said, eliminating a card. “Why hasn't that judge approached you with any information?”

Try as she might, she just couldn't condemn Bayard. He'd said he would make sure her father's death was avenged if a killer was caught. That was all she could demand of him, especially now, given the set of circumstances surrounding their strained friendship.
“Judge Kimball doesn't have any suspects, but he's not a sheriff. He can only prosecute criminals, he can't apprehend them. If he had the means, I'm sure he would. I know he would,” she reaffirmed. “Why do you ask?”

“Because I have a suspicion, whoever shot your father is still in Genoa. It's the same man who let your horses out.”

Carrigan's words awakened her hope. She'd so wanted to find her father's killer, but apprehending a suspect without witnesses, nor presumable reason for the heinous crime, seemed very unlikely. Not wanting to torment herself, she'd nipped any optimism she'd had in the bud before it had a chance to bloom. “Do you have any idea who? Mr. Wyatt and Mr. Lewis . . . Do you think it was one of them?”

“Wyatt and Lewis want you to fail. But neither of those men is clever enough to arrange a shutout. They're acting on orders from another source, though I doubt the man who freed the horses is the one giving the orders. He's a hired gun. Could be the same man who shot me.”

Definitive answers rested on the identity of the man who'd let the mustangs out. If she went on Bayard's interpretation, she was looking at one of the culprits. But Bayard had misnamed Carrigan. So who, then, matched Carrigan's height and build? There were many men who could fit the description if she stretched the measurements a little. Trying to discern which one was guilty would be nearly impossible. Confessions weren't easily wheedled out, and there was no way she could think of to incriminate them.

“I don't know how to find a guilty man amid a town full of citizens who could have had a part in the murder. I can't ask them all if they did it. No one would tell me the truth.”

“You don't ask.” Carrigan flipped his final card to the stack, winning the game. “You make yourself invisible, and you listen. I'll try and find the man who killed your father. But it may take me some time.”

“I have time.” Then a telling chord struck her heart. “But you don't.”

His gaze was penetrating, his voice firm when he replied, “Whether I'm in Genoa or on the land, I'll keep looking for leads in both shootings. His and mine. I liked August. It isn't right that his death is being swept under a carpet. I don't give a damn if Genoa has a lawman or not. Justice doesn't need a tin star on its lapel to get the job done.”

As Carrigan added the points, Helena contemplated the prospect of actually being able to confront the responsible parties. She wanted to hold out hope that Carrigan could find her father's killer. But even if he couldn't, that he was willing to try meant more to her than anything. What he offered was beyond what anyone else had. And for that, she was grateful beyond words.

*  *  *

It took Carrigan another five days to gather the remaining horses. The next day out, he'd taken Esmeralda and her colt with relative ease while Helena rode Columbiana. He hadn't found it necessary to halter the colt, which Helena had named Jake on the spur of the moment, for some damn reason. Jake ran alongside his mother, bawling for her teats.

By Sunday evening, Carrigan had added Daisy and Lucy, the team horses, to the string he'd staked back at camp. Monarch and Maria Jane were caught on Monday. Maria Jane, a blood bay, hadn't come peaceably. His rope had slipped, and he'd caught her by the forefoot instead of the neck. He'd had to come up behind her on the ground and put his knee on her withers.

The line was full up on Thursday night with grazing horses whose mud-dappled coats were in need of brushing and currying. None were resisting the ropes, and all were taking water, so he hadn't had to build an enclosure, and they'd saved valuable time.

Everything would have gone smoothly if he hadn't been bitten this afternoon by the last horse to round
up—a mare Helena called Dolly. She was a dun-colored thing, and she'd gotten him on his left hand just when he was putting the hackamore on her. There wasn't an opportunity to bind the wound, and by sundown he was smeared with blood.

Since he'd sent Helena ahead to divide the last of their oats and feed the twelve and a half head, her face went white as a sheet when he rode into camp. On a glance, he saw that the bright blood had splattered his pants leg and Boomerang's shoulder, making it hard to detect where exactly he was injured.

On his approach, Helena dropped the open-lidded coffeepot she'd been holding. Water splashed her skirt, marking the fabric with blotches. She ran toward him, her fingers over her mouth as if she were stopping a scream.

“What happened?” she gasped.

Carrigan swung his leg over the pommel and hopped down from the horse. “She bit me in the hand when I was putting the bridle on her. At least it wasn't my roping and gun hand.” Fisting the reins, he led Boomerang and Dolly—who was attached to a rope on the saddle horn—toward the other horses.

Helena and Obsi trailed after him. “You need that looked at.”

“I've got a horse to cool down first, and one to tie up.”

“But—”

“Don't fuss over me, Helena.” Carrigan was tired and didn't want to stop before he finished his day. Ducking slightly beneath the sprawling boughs of a wind-gnarled pine, he approached the tranquil herd and began unlooping the knot that kept Dolly from going anywhere. As soon as the mare was reunited with the other mustangs, she began to nicker and swish her black tail, as if she were happy to be back. Carrigan could have smacked her in the muddy rump.

He immersed himself in the grooming of Boomerang, and only when he'd completed the task did he
notice Helena had left. Since he hadn't been paying her any attention, he couldn't be sure when she'd taken off. He hadn't meant to be short with her, but he was weary to the bone and just wanted to put things to order so he could clean up. As he walked toward the campfire, he saw her sitting there with her back to him. She was stock-still. In fact, the coffee was boiling over, and she made no move to yank the pot off the fire.

Bending down, Carrigan grabbed a frayed towel, snatched the pot away from the low-burning flames, and set it on the scorched rock he used for hot pans. “You daydreaming?” he asked, rolling up his shirtsleeves with the intention of sinking his throbbing hand into Lake Tahoe's numbing water. “Helena?”

It was then he noticed her shoulders were quaking. He lowered himself onto his knee, the leg of his chaps pressing around his thigh. Turning her to face him, he saw that she was silently crying. Her tears hit him in the gut as surely as if she'd slugged him.

“What's the matter?”

She shook her head and clamped her lips together to imprison a sob. She covered her face with her hands, her voice a choked whisper when she implored, “Don't look at me.”

He disregarded her plea and grabbed her wrists to lower her arms. Her eyes were rimmed with moisture, the fullness of her lashes wet from tears. He would have never taken her for the kind of woman to fall apart for no apparent reason. She could handle anything and had proved herself many times over. “Helena, why are you crying?”

“It's just that . . . when I saw the blood . . . I . . .”

He caught and held her gaze with his, trying to read what she was saying in the depths of her sky-blue eyes. They were clouded with sorrow and a pain that ran deeper than he could explain. “What, Lena? What are you so upset about?”

She took a shuddering breath, looked at her lap, then at him. “I've lost my mother, and I've lost my father. As soon as I married you, I almost lost you, too. I couldn't bear it if I had to bury another person I was close to. I just couldn't do it. I'm not strong enough.”

“You thought because of the blood, I was going to die?”

Her lashes lowered, and a tear fell onto the billow of her drenched skirt.

Without conscious thought, Carrigan drew her into his arms and held her tightly to his chest. “I'm not going to die. It would take a lot more than that damn horse's bite to put me in an eternity box.” His hands ran over the trembling length of her spine in a reassuring massage. “Don't ever waste your tears on me again. I'm not worth it.”

“But you're my husband.”

“Not really.”

Her soft crying quieted, and she spoke in an equally sedate tone. “In my heart you are, whether I want you there or not.”

Carrigan didn't know what to do with her declaration. He had none to give back to her. At least none that made any sense. His emotions were mixing into a storm of uncertainty, and he felt out of his element and out of place in this conversation. “Been a long time since I was in somebody's heart.”

Helena's cheek lay softly against his shoulder when she whispered, “That doesn't mean I love you.”

The indirect endearment rocked through Carrigan. “Didn't think it did.”

“It just means that I feel connected to you because I'm your wife. If something were to happen to you, I'd feel responsible.”

“Nothing's going to happen to me.” He should have released her, but he couldn't. The braid cuddled against her neck smelled like the fresh mountain air
and faintly of the pungent campfire smoke. She'd never before come to him for this kind of intimacy. The union of body touches for the sole purpose of comfort and understanding was an option long since past for him. As soon as he'd been given a taste of it, he wanted more. His forearms circled her waist in a soothing hold that kept her close.

“It already did. You were shot . . . just like my father.” Her voice thickened. “Only I never got the chance to take care of him. All I could do for him was bury him decent.”

Carrigan rested his chin on the top of Helena's head and closed his eyes. He knew what her frustration felt like. There were two faceless men from his past he couldn't identify either. The lure of fury's never-ending trail had obsessed him for a while. He'd pursued leads through the Cheyenne Territory until the tall grass shifting in the winds obscured his quest with its trackless stalks. His thirst to exact revenge had gone unquenched, but the insatiable hunger was still there. Always. And him not knowing if the men he'd sought were dead or alive.