Dorothy Garlock (11 page)

He didn’t say anything at first, and Johanna thought maybe she had stunned him with her frankness, but she saw his lips quirk at the corners, and although she was sure he hadn’t smiled in years, he seemed very close to doing so.

“An outhouse, aye? Can’t a gal from town go out in the bushes and shit like the rest of us?” he jeered, and spat a stream of tobacco juice into the can beside his chair.

Knowing his words were meant to shock her, Johanna kept her face composed as though this were an everyday topic of conversation.

“Oh, yes, and I’m sure I can manage it easier than, say, an . . . older person. I was thinking of your convenience, Mr. Macklin, as well as my own.”

They stared at each other, and suddenly Johanna felt good. This arbitrary old man knew she was no spineless creature who would scurry away when he bellowed.

“You ain’t got no folks to go back to. You ain’t got nothin’,” he said suddenly. “Stay here and the valley can be yours.” His probing eyes searched her face, but she showed no reaction to the offer.

She smiled and got to her feet. “Thank you, but no. My sister and I will be leaving when the next supply train goes to town. Mr. Redford tells me the trip is made every six or eight months.”

Stung to anger by her blunt refusal, he threw back his head and spat out, “Ain’t good enough for ya, is that it? You don’t need to be actin’ so uppity with me, gal. I know what ya come from and I know you ain’t got a pot to piss in. I’m offerin’ you a chance to own the best valley in the Southwest and money to fix the house the way you want it. I’ll give it all to you and not to that bastard you’ll have to wed to get it.”

Johanna crossed her arms and lifted her head. Sparks of anger danced in her eyes.

“No!” she said firmly. “When I wed, if ever I do, it will be under circumstances entirely different from the ones you offer. Thank you for your most
generous
offer,” she said sarcastically. “But I want no part of your son or your valley.”

Her scorn cracked like a whip across his pride. He jerked erect and gritted out viciously, “Ya goddamn snotty bitch! Who the hell do ya think you are? I know ya ain’t nothin’ but a goddamn saloon gal!”

The vehement roar of his voice filled her ears. She backed away from him, opened the door, and walked into the house.

“Don’t walk away from me, you bitch! I ain’t through with you!”

The hall was dark and cool. She placed a hand over her madly thumping heart and leaned against the wall in an effort to compose herself.

“So the old man put the proposition to you, did he?” The cold voice of Burr Macklin broke the stillness of the hall.

Instinctively Johanna lifted her chin and a fiercely defiant glint came into her eyes. It seemed that her ordeal was not yet over. He lounged in the kitchen doorway.

“He offered the ranch. Why didn’t you accept his offer? Of course, the gift would include his bastard son served up on a silver valley!” His cold blue eyes pinned her glance. “Now that I think about it, it might not be such a bad idea. It would save me a trip to El Paso to visit the whores.”

Johanna would have gone past him and into the kitchen, but his bulk filled the doorway, barring her path. Coldly she stared at him, taking her time, her contempt no less obvious because it was mute.

“It doesn’t appear to me that you've deprived yourself, Mr. Macklin,” she said stiffly, and turned to walk up the stairs.

He gripped her wrist so viciously that she barely withheld a pained cry as he spun her around.

“What do you mean by that remark?” he asked through lips taut with suppressed anger. “You’ve got guts to be throwing accusations around. You’re fresh out of a saloon! A singer? A whore, if the truth were known!”

Her heart hammered wildly. The fingers that circled her wrist tightened their grip, discouraging any attempt to break away. They stood like that for several seconds, saying nothing, her expressive features giving some indication of what was going on in her mind. Then she shook her head slowly.

“That’s the second time you’ve called me a saloon girl,” she said frigidly. “Do you think that makes me unsuitable to be Mr. Macklin’s housekeeper? Are you waiting for me to defend myself? All right. I did work in a saloon for a while. It was necessary for me and my sister to have money to live on. It was honest work and I was paid for services rendered.”

He threw her hand from him in a gesture of contempt. “I bet you were,” he sneered.

Johanna’s control snapped. Her hand flashed up and she struck him a resounding slap across the face. She was as stunned by her action as was the man who stood before her. It was the last thing she ever expected to do; something she had never done in her entire life. These Macklins were far different from the men she had known. They seemed to bring out traits in her that had never surfaced before.

“Damn you!” His arms were around her and she was pulled forcibly against him even before he finished speaking, and one large hand entwined itself in the hair at the nape of her neck, pulling back her head. “Is this what you’re wanting, Miss Prissy? Are you an old maid, starving for a man?” Using the hand in her hair to hold her head, he covered her mouth with his, hard and angrily.

Johanna struggled to free herself. She wanted only to strike out at him, to treat him as violently as he treated her, but she was forced to yield to his superior strength and the cruel demand of his mouth. His arms held her so tightly against him that she could feel the wild beating of his heart against her breast. She was aware of the tangy smell of his freshly shaved face, and his mouth, as it ground into hers, tasted of tobacco. She was sure she would swoon from lack of breath when he released her mouth at last, and for a moment she stood locked in his embrace, breathing deeply and erratically as though she’d run too far too fast.

“Let go of me!” Her voice rasped huskily. She pushed against his chest, feeling that she would suffocate if she didn’t get away from him. “I said . . . let go of me!”

Slowly he let his arms slide from around her, and she saw a hint of a smile on his face that did not quite reach the cold eyes.

“Now you can say you’ve been kissed by a bastard,” he said softly.

Johanna felt choked with a bitterness that almost matched his. She allowed her lips to form a contemptuous sneer, but then she realized the futility of the gesture, for he had turned away.

“Do you think that’s something to brag about? Being a bastard is no excuse for bad manners,” she informed him in as cool and steady a voice as she could manage.

“Bad manners?” He laughed. The sound was short and dry. He turned and touched her cheek lightly with his fingertips. “I might point out, Miss Priss, that bastards are not supposed to have manners.” He tapped her cheek and laughed when she jerked her head away. “You came here thinking you’d found the pot at the end of the rainbow and all you found was a lot of bullshit thrown out by a crazy old man. Didn’t anyone ever tell you that bastards are survivors and that a lot of great men in history were bastards?”

Johanna felt her heart throbbing under her ribs in a strange and urgent way that alarmed her. Almost unconsciously, she raised her hand to wipe it across her lips, still warm and tingling from his kiss.

“Are you making a bid for my sympathy, Mr. Macklin?” she asked quietly, rashly uncaring that she might arouse his anger again. “You have so much to be grateful for, and yet you’re bitter and angry because . . . because your father didn’t marry your mother.”

It took her only a minute to realize that this time she had gone too far. She stepped back when she saw his mouth tighten and the twitch of the muscles in his strong jaw. His eyes bored into hers and his large hand tightened into a fist. He shook his blond head sharply as if to clear it, and when he spoke, the harshness in his deep voice chilled her.

“You little fool! Don’t you ever pity me, you hear?”

Johanna was not aware, as he was, that Ben had come into the hall from the back of the house and had caught those last few words. He came up to them, his face creased in an uneasy grin, his anxious eyes going from one to the other with the unasked question of why they were quarreling.

“Burr, did you tell Johanna her sister is going to spend the evening at Red’s and that she wants her to come down later with her guitar and the violin?”

Burr swung around, his features still hard and unrelenting. “No,” he snapped. “I hadn’t gotten around to it. We were busy, talking about . . . other things. What I came in to tell our . . . housekeeper, is this—Bucko and I will take our meals in the ranch house from now on, as is our due!”

He turned and strode out the door, his steps hard, his spurs leaving a musical sound trailing him as he crossed the stone floor of the porch and headed toward the corrals.

S
ix

B
en watched Burr leave, then swung around to face Johanna. She shook her head. Nothing would stop her tears, and Ben would probably misinterpret their meaning.

“That’s the most detestable, uncouth man I’ve ever met!” She turned swiftly and went into the kitchen. It was ridiculous to cry, she told herself, but there was nothing she could do about the tears rolling down her cheeks.

Ben followed her, his face full of concern. “What did he do, Johanna? What did he do to make you cry?”

She turned on him, not wishing to include him in her anger, yet unable to subdue it. “I’m just so mad, Ben, that’s all. I’m just so mad!”

“Sit down and we’ll have coffee,” he said soothingly.

Johanna wiped her eyes on her apron. Her thick lashes were spiked with tears and her lips quivered. She swallowed convulsively.

“I’m sorry, Ben. This must be embarrassing for you. I don’t know what’s the matter with me. I’m not a crying woman. First I cry because I’m mad. Now I just cry. I don’t know what’s the matter with me.”

“It’s perfectly understandable,” Ben told her quietly. “Beauty in a real woman is the capacity to feel things very deeply, and that includes pain as well as joy.” He clasped her hand warmly. “Don’t judge Burr too harshly, lass. He’s had so little of what really matters in this life.”

Her cheeks warm and pink, she looked at him with eyes that shone brightly through her tears, and her brain whirled with emotions from her contact with Burr. She couldn’t bring herself to pour out her feelings of disgust for the man Ben so obviously loved like a son, and yet she had to voice her disapproval.

“But . . . he’s so crude, Ben. He’s not like you, he’s arrogant and . . . demanding.”

“He is that, lass, but it’s due to his battling all these years with Mack. He resents his beginnings, girl, and who can blame him? Anna wanted me to tell him the circumstances of his birth as soon as I thought he was old enough to understand. She never wanted her son to think she had willingly submitted to a man like Mack. I told Burr as much as I knew, but there’s a depth to Mack that no one knows, possibly not even himself. He’s not a man who explains his actions. I only know he came riding in one day with Anna, and my life took on a different meaning.”

*  *  *

It had been an unusually wet spring in 1843. Mack Macklin was tired. He had been away from his valley for two months. It had been almost that long since he’d had a woman and the ache in his loins, added to his discomfort, made him impatient and irritable.

Hugging his rifle against his shoulder, the big man took careful aim at the rock and fired. The rock splintered and the boulder tilted. The boulder was propped by a small rock and piled behind it was a heap of debris and in front of it a steep incline. At the bottom of the slope the Indians were grouping for the next, more than likely final, assault on the wagon train.

Carefully, Mack Macklin took another sight and fired. He never knew if the second shot was necessary, for the instant his finger squeezed off that second shot the whole pile of rocks broke loose from the wet hillside and came thundering down. There was an instant of panic among the Indians, then a startled yelp, followed by another and another. Two Indians raced into the open and Mack Macklin calmly drilled the first through the chest, and dropped the second with a bullet from his six-gun. The stones tumbled down, bouncing off a shoulder of rock in their rush to the arroyo below.

Swiftly, before the Indians had time to adjust themselves, the big blond man positioned himself so that he had a view of the short gully leading into the main canyon. He grinned. A shrewd, experienced Indian fighter, he knew just exactly what the Indians would do. They would be on the trail fast, and he’d get them one by one.

Grinning with satisfaction, he leaned against the rock, reloaded, and methodically fired into the canyon. He picked off four men, being careful not to hit the horses, then he stopped firing and waited until one of the Indians commenced to crawl toward the bush, leaving a trail of dark, wet blood on the sand of the creekbed. The giant man smiled wryly.

“Bastard,” he muttered and squeezed off a shot. The Indian’s body jumped, then lay still.

Mack took off his hat and wiped the sweat from his brow with his shirtsleeve. He checked his rifle, replaced his hat, and with catlike agility moved across the rocks toward the horses. His blue eyes narrowed, bringing his sun-bleached brows together over his beak of a nose. His wide, thin-lipped mouth twisted in a sneer as he gazed with contempt into the canyon.

He shoved his rifle into its holder on the saddle bow and mounted his big sorrel, which carefully picked its way among the rocks as it descended. The man who had just calmly killed a dozen or more men felt his pulses quicken. If his eyes hadn’t deceived him, and it wasn’t likely they had, there was a blond woman with the wagon train. He had seen the sun shining on her blond hair as he peered over the rim of the rise after hearing the shots. It was then that he had decided to take a side in the skirmish between the Indians and the greenhorns, who had formed a half-assed circle with their wagons and were, in his opinion, doing a piss-poor job of defending themselves.

As he rode toward them he removed his hat. He didn’t want the sons of bitches to think he was an Indian and open fire. One thing he had learned in his almost five years in the territory was that greenhorns were unpredictable. He squinted against the sun and searched the site for a glimpse of the girl. He saw her bending over a figure sprawled in the dirt beside an overturned wagon. A look of smugness settled over his hard features. From the looks of things, it wasn’t going to be hard to get her.