Desperate Hearts (35 page)

She lifted the lid on the strongbox and
withdrew a sack of coins, testing its weight in her hand. She
poured the gold out into her hand, counted it, and then replaced it
in the pouch. “Two hundred and fifty for Hardesty. What about the
clothes? How much did you spend?”

Her face was set and hard—he’d seen eyes as
cold staring at him above a revolver in a shoot-out. He knew they
masked the hurt he had caused her. How had things come to this
point between them? He wished he could tell her that he longed to
stay here more than anything he had ever wanted in his life. But
that would give a voice to the dream he had envisioned so many
times. As long as he kept it as a wistful image tucked in the back
of his heart, it wouldn’t hurt so much when the time came to ride
away. At least he hoped it wouldn’t.

“
I don’t remember,” he said
truthfully. He never intended that she pay him back. The things
he’d bought her had been gifts.

She glared up at him and shook her head.
Crouching there, she looked ready to spring at like a frightened,
wounded cat on the defensive. "Then I’ll pay you what I think they
were worth.” She began ticking off items on her fingers. “A pair of
jeans, a shirt, two coats”—her voice trembled and cleared her
throat—“a-a dress and—and the other things.” Briefly, she lifted
her hand and pressed against her shirt where he knew the locket hid
beneath. She cleared her throat again. “I figure another thirty
dollars.”

He dropped to one knee next to her. “Goddamn
it Kyla, I don’t want your mon—” She threw the sack of heavy coins
at him and it hit him square in the chest before tumbling to the
porch floor.

She gave him a cold smile. “Jace, it’s just
like I said—every man has his price. There’s three hundred dollars
in that pouch. Take it.”

Offended, he picked up the pouch and put it
in her hand. “I didn’t agree to help you because of money. It was
never about money between you and me!”

“
Just what was it between
us, then?" she demanded. He saw a glint behind her eyes, as if were
waiting for a specific answer.

Jace shifted from one foot to the other,
unable give it to her. “If I were just interested in the money I
would have asked for five hundred dollars or thousand.”

“
It doesn’t matter anymore,
though, does it?” she said, and pushed the coins toward him. “Take
it or not. It’s up to you.” She stood then with the box in her
arms, and gazed down at him with a long look that seared his heart.
Her chin quivered slightly, her voice was not much more than an
anguished whisper. “Good-bye, Jace.” She turned to open the
door.

“
What do you mean,
good-bye? Where are you going?” he asked, lurching up to grab her
elbow.

She pulled away from him. “That’s plain
enough, I think,” she said, sounding so weary he wished he take her
into his arms again. But he felt as if sometime in the last few
minutes he’d lost that right. “I’m home now.”

He stared at her. “You can’t stay here
alone. This isn’t over yet, you know.”

“
It is for me. I’m tired of
fighting, of sleeping in the open or in barns and
cabins.”

“
Kyla—“

“
I hope you find
hap—good-bye, Jace,” she said. Turning she fled into the house and
slammed the door behind her.

He stood there for a moment, his throat
tight and eyes stinging. Gazing at the door, he suddenly he felt
twelve years old again, friendless, scared, and crying, under a
soap crate on a hot July afternoon. He took a deep breath. He had
never expected to feel like that again.

But he did now.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“
I want a bath, and a steak
dinner in my room twenty minutes.”

The hotel clerk eyed Jace
askance until he spun register around to read the name his
demanding had written there. The bony little man practically
saluted him. “
Yessir
, Mr. Rankin. The bath is at the end of the hall upstairs,
and I’ll send someone to order your steak over at Connor’s. They
have the best food in—“

“
Twenty minutes,” Jace
reiterated and plucked room key from the counter. Then he turned
trudged up the stairs to the second floor.

“
Yessir
, Mr. Rank—“

Jesus Christ, Jace thought, disgusted with
all bowing and scraping his reputation had earned him. More and
more often these days, he wished for anonymity. He wondered what it
would be like to walk through a town without being called out by an
unknown enemy or having men pull their wives and children aside
when they saw him on the street, or fawned over by some cringing
bootlicker.

After a boy brought up buckets of water,
Jace sank into the wooden tub in a closet at the end of the hall.
The hot water closed over him, and he scrubbed with bar of white
soap and a brush. He wished he could wash off everything that had
happened to him today. He had taken Tom Hardesty’s body to the
undertaker, and had instructed the man to personally deliver the
bill to Luke Jory. That would definitely bring matters to a head.
Jory wouldn’t be able to ignore such an insulting challenge, and
Jace had no idea when or where the response might come.

His revolver lay on a stool within easy
reach. The most vulnerable moments of a man’s life were when he
took a bath, sat in the outhouse, or made love.

Making love. Even now, despite everything
that had happened, Jace had only to envision Kyla, beautiful,
delicate, finely spun steel, and his body responded instantly. He
lay back and closed his eyes. His mind took him on a journey over
her ripe smooth-stopping briefly at her breasts, then moved along
hips and her legs, and the slick moist heat that between them.

He groaned and sat up impatiently, splashing
over the edge of the tub. He loved her, he wanted her, but fate had
decreed that he could not have her. A deep sigh escaped him, and he
felt as if a stone sat on his chest.

His regrets were mounting up.

* * *

Kyla slept very little that night. She had
never minded her own company, but she felt miserably alone at the
ranch house. She was almost sorry she had insisted upon staying
here.

Although no ghost rose to haunt her
conscience, Tom Hardesty seemed to have left his mark on everything
in her house. Feeling as if there were no place to lie down, at
first she tried sleeping on the floor in the parlor. But when that
didn’t work, she gave up and began cleaning.

Late into the night she scrubbed and mopped
and washed. The man had lived like a pig, and the kitchen alone
took her hours to finish.

But the work didn’t take her mind off Jace.
All while, her heart ached for him, as much as her anger him
simmered. Ultimately, she blamed herself for falling in love with
him. He was right, she told self—what kind of life could she have
with him? Who would want a man who was smart and capable, so
handsome that women on the street cast subtle sidelong glances at
him? Why should she yearn for man who summoned such intense
pleasure from her body that he could make her forget she had ever
felt otherwise? And lastly, what woman would desire a man whose
heart was an empty jar, just waiting to filled with love, if only
he would allow it? But he wouldn’t allow it and she had to decide
how to go on with her life.

She continued working through the night, her
back and hands aching with the task.

Scrubbing Tom Hardesty out of her house.

Hoping to scrub Jace Rankin out of her
heart.

Finally, just before sunup, with only a
crescent moon and blue stars for company, Kyla stood in the yard,
soaking the heap of Hardesty’s belongings with kerosene. Lighting a
match, she tossed it onto the pile watched with grim satisfaction
as flames engulfed every trace the man had left behind.

Jace would not be so easily banished.

* * *

“
Mr. Jory?” Harvey Sewell
approached Luke Jory’s table in the Pine Cone Saloon.

“
Harvey,” Jory returned
over the top of his paper. It gave him the creeps to have an
undertaker around. He continued to sip his coffee and hoped that
the man would go away.

Jory did not make a habit of frequenting
saloons before noon, but he was looking for Tom Hardesty, and he
knew the man was inclined to drop by here as soon as the doors
opened. Tom’s drinking and immoderate habits were becoming a
serious liability to the Union. He had his value, just as a
vicious, snapping dog could discourage trespassers. And as with a
wild dog allowed to run loose, accidents were bound to occur. The
rape of that Cathcart girl was a good example. Tom had handled the
emergency with the bounty hunter and the Bailey woman well enough,
but he’d created the problem to begin with, and Jory believed it
might be time to rein Tom in.

“
Mr. Jory, um, Mr. Rankin
said that you would probably like to know about this.”

Jory’s head came up sharply, and he lowered
the newspaper, crumpling it beneath his hands. “Jace Rankin?”

Harvey held out a document. “Yes.”

All conversation in the saloon ceased.

Jory snapped the paper out of Harvey’s damp
grip. It was a bill for five dollars. “What is this, Sewell?”

Harvey laced his hands in a show of
deferential respect for the dead. “Well, Tom Hardesty is dead, Mr.
Jory. Shot in the forehead. Jace Rankin brought him in last night.”
He brightened then. “But don’t you worry—he’ll look all right for
the funeral.”

Jory felt the blood leave his face. Rankin
in Blakely. He was not supposed to have gotten this far. Hardesty
had assured him that everything was under control and now he was
laid out in Harvey Sewell’s back room. He shoved his chair away
from the table and stood.

“
What time would you like
to begin Mr. Hardesty’s funeral?” Harvey inquired.

“
Goddamn it, man!” Jory
whirled on the cringing undertaker, fury boiling in him. “I don’t
give a damn what you do with Hardesty, or what time you do
it!”

Clenching his fists, Jory stormed through
swinging doors. He jerked his horse’s reins from hitching post, and
climbing into the saddle, wheeled the animal about.

By God, he would not let this pass without
retaliation. One way or another, Rankin would answer for this.

* * *

Shortly after sundown that night, Jace sat
on a hay bale in Jim Porter’s barn. He had called for a meeting
with some of the Midnighters to let them know about Hardesty. He
didn’t tell them that Kyla had shot him. If she wanted them to
know, he figured it was her business.

“
How many men does Jory
have?”

“
About twenny-five or
thirty, I guess,” Ivan Kluss offered glumly. “And they’ll be on us
like ants on a sugar loaf now that Hardesty is dead.”

“
And how many Midnighters
are there?”

“
About the same,” Jim
Porter said, absently twirling straw between his fingers. “Maybe a
few less.”

This wasn’t good news, Jace thought. Most of
these men were farmers and ranchers, not hired killers with nothing
better to do all day than target practice.

“
We need to raise more men,
even ten or fifteen more. Can we do that?”

“
Well, I dunno,” Jim said.
“Everyone’s so scared of the Vigilance Union it’s been hard to get
most of ’em to help out. They’re afraid of rilin’ up Luke
Jory.”

A sense of futility washed over Jace. Damn,
why had he let himself get talked into this? If these people
wouldn’t even help themselves— In order to succeed, he had to think
of a way to rouse these people, to make them see beyond their fear
to an ultimate goal. They were counting on him to make everything
right, as if he could fell ten men with each bullet he fired and
they need do nothing. Yet for all that they seemed to expect of
him, he sensed their lack of trust.

He sighed with mounting impatience. “If you
people want to get rid of Jory and his thieves, you’re going to
have to—”

Just then a loud banging sounded on the barn
door. Although it was in code, two short and two long, it
reverberated through the cavernous building, and brought everyone
to their feet and their weapons.

Jim opened the door and on the other side,
Ivan Kluss’s young son panted, "Everyone . . . come quick . . .
the—the Springer place . . . is on fire! I saw the flames . . .
from our kitchen window!"

Jace felt as if his heart had stopped. He
took deep breaths but didn’t seem to be getting any air. “God . . .
Kyla.” He turned to them. “Kyla is out there by herself!” He
charged through the group and ran his horse, fear gripping his
chest with a cruel fist. The crescent moon provided little light,
but a lurid glow lit the southern sky and he cut across Porter’s
field and rode toward it.

As he spurred his horse, he cursed himself
from there to Sunday and back. He never should have walked away
from her and left her at that ranch alone She was stubborn and
willful, but he should have gone back after he delivered Hardesty
and stayed with her, whether she wanted him there or not. Now, Jory
and the vigilantes could have stolen her again or set fire to the
house, too.

The smell of smoke drifted to him on the
breeze. Pushing his horse faster than he should in the darkness, he
splashed through a creek, hoping that the animal wouldn’t step in a
chuckhole and snap a leg. Behind him, he became aware of hooves
thundering after him, and he turned to see some of the Midnighters
drawing close.

By the time they had galloped into Kyla’s
bright yard, the barn was a yellow-white skeleton, engulfed in
flames that seemed to brush the belly of heaven. Waves of heat
carried on the wind, and cinders floated on the hot drafts. There
was nothing that anyone could do but watch the fire consume the
building. At least the ranch house had been spared.