[Montacroix Royal Family Series 03] - The Outlaw (4 page)

Noel took the hint. Not that she needed any prompting where Wolfe Longwalker was concerned. "I'll buy them." She added a volume entitled
Sand Paintings on A Hogan Floor and Other Short Stories
to the others. "This one, too."

"Good choice. That's my favorite of the three." While Audrey rang up the sale, Noel roamed the room and continued to study the old photos and newspaper clippings depicting Whiskey River's rambunctious past, and most particularly, the turbulent life and times of Wolfe Longwalker.

She was just about to return to the old-fashioned cash register, when another book caught her eye. "
Rogues Across Time
?" she read the gold inlaid lettering out loud.

"What's that?" Audrey's forehead furrowed in a puzzled frown.

Noel picked up the weathered text and began leafing through the pages. "It appears to be a collection of short stories about various adventurers." Each story was accompanied by a black-and-white ink drawing.

"I don't remember buying that." The innkeeper's frown deepened. "Who's the author?"

"I don't know." Noel held up the brown book for Audrey's perusal. "There's some type of stain over the name."

"Oh, well," Audrey decided with a shrug, "my memory isn't what it used to be, that's for sure. I must have gotten it in that barrel of old westerns Newt Watt-son sold me when he needed money to pay off his drunk-and-disorderly fine."

It
definitely
was a rogues' gallery, Noel determined as she leafed through the stories of pirates and highwaymen and gunslingers. When she turned a page and came face-to-face with Wolfe's glowering visage, she imagined she could feel the book growing warm in her hands.

"I'll buy it." She placed the book on the counter.

Audrey examined it for a price sticker. "It's pretty weather-beaten. How about two bucks?"

"Two dollars seems more than fair." Noel did not volunteer that she would have been willing to pay a hundred times that.

"It's hard to imagine a man with so much going for him, professionally, killing a family of innocent people for no apparent reason," Noel murmured, more to herself than to her gregarious hostess.

Perhaps this was what she was doing here in Whiskey River, she considered, trying to make sense out of a situation that defied logic. Perhaps she was here to clear Wolfe Longwalker's name.

"I always thought that was kinda odd, too." Audrey shrugged her well-padded shoulders once again. "But, those settlers were sure as shootin' dead. And someone had to have done it. I guess we'll never know for certain what happened at that cabin out at Whiskey River. Besides," she said, an irrepressible dimple creasing her powdered cheek, "if Wolfe hadn't become an outlaw, people probably wouldn't want to have their picture taken with him."

"Have their picture taken?"

"I can make a sepia print of you standing beside the cutout. Five bucks a picture. Three poses for ten dollars. And that includes a period costume and a cardboard folder with an easel back." She handed Noel her change. "Makes a real nice souvenir."

Noel turned back to the life-size cardboard figure. Although she suspected she was letting her imagination run away with her, she could almost read the mocking challenge in those indigo eyes.

"Perhaps another time," she said, shaking off the strange feeling. "I'm a little tired."

"Well, of course you are," Audrey clucked sympathetically. "After your long trip. What you need now is a nice hot bubble bath, a glass of wine and a good night's sleep. Perhaps you'd like to pose with Wolfe tomorrow."

Noel dragged her gaze from the figure of Wolfe Longwalker and gathered up her purchases. "Perhaps."

"I'll bring the wine right up."

"If you don't mind, I think I'll forgo the wine." Noel offered her most charming smile. "Jet lag." A frequent traveler, she'd never suffered jet lag in her life.

Audrey seemed determined to prove herself a good hostess. "Tea then," she suggested. "I've some nice herbal tea that should hit the spot."

Someone, somewhere in time, was belting out a chorus of "The Yellow Rose of Texas" on the piano. Once again, Noel heard the sound of laughter. The clink of glasses. She pressed the fingers of her right hand against her temple and took a deep breath.

Royal training, drilled into her from the cradle, proved invaluable as Noel managed a smile. "Herbal tea sounds wonderful."

After a soothing soak in the lion-footed bathtub and nearly an entire pot of Audrey's steaming-hot Red Zinger tea—which the animated innkeeper had served with a plate of rich dark homemade brownies—Noel's normally rocklike equilibrium had returned.

Enough so that she forced herself to unpack before turning to the book of short stories that were calling to her like a siren song.

As she took the clothing from her luggage, Noel's mind wandered, as it did so often these days, to her fiancé.

She loved Bertran. Truly.

She extracted a long silk nightgown from its folds of snowy tissue paper and placed it in the top drawer of the dresser.

Unfortunately, she considered as she returned to the suitcase for panties and bras, there were times, and this was one of them, when it crossed her mind that looking at her childhood playmate was like looking in the mirror.

They were both studious, intensely serious-minded individuals. Both could also be accused of being workaholics. Noel couldn't remember the last time Bertran had done anything just for fun.

"And you're just as bad," she muttered.

A picture of the two of them, sitting side by side in a lacy, flower-bedecked wedding bed, talking on their individual cellular phones while engrossed in their individual schedules and timetables and stacks of dry data flickered unattractively through her mind.

"You love him," she reminded herself firmly. "And he loves you."

So why, she asked herself with growing frustration, did her upcoming marriage to the handsome Montacroix banker—which had come as a surprise to absolutely no one in the kingdom—make her feel so despondent?

She shook her head in self-disgust as she took a trio of cashmere sweaters and matching slacks from the suitcase.

"What's the good of inheriting Katia's gift," she asked herself, "if it can't work for me?"

Experience had taught Noel that when it came to her own life, she was no more psychic than the next woman. As she stacked the sweaters on the shelf of an antique pine armoire, she decided she was going to have to come to terms with her misgivings. And soon. Because once she walked down the long aisle of the historic Montacroix Cathedral and pledged her troth to Bertran, she would be Madame Rostand for life.

"I love him," she insisted, closing the armoire door with more force than necessary. "I do!"

More than a little frustrated, she poured out the last of the tea and climbed into the high four-poster bed with
Rogues Across Time
and turned to the section on Wolfe Longwalker.

Wolfe was the illegitimate son of a U.S. Cavalry officer who'd been in charge of guarding the women captured during Kit Carson's campaign against the Navajo during their internment at Fort Defiance. Whiskey River's most infamous citizen had been born during the tribe's notorious three-hundred-mile forced "Long Walk" to imprisonment at Fort Sumner. Hence his last name. His first name, Noel read, was due to a birthmark in the shape of a wolfs head, on the inside of his wrist.

His weak, exhausted, half-starved mother had died after giving birth along the trail, which gave Wolfe every reason to hate his father's people. According to the unknown author, he'd spent his early years plotting revenge.

Which he eventually obtained. Not with bows and arrows or the ubiquitous Winchester rifle, but with the formidable power of the white man's words. After returning from the missionary school the government Indian agency had sent him to back East, he'd been apprenticed to a Whiskey River newspaperman. It was there Wolfe had learned that the pen truly was mightier than the sword.

His reports of Indian life in the Arizona Territory had proven immensely popular with those same Easterners who'd made Frederic Remington a household name. His stories were printed in the
Atlantic Monthly, Harper's Weekly
and the
New York Herald
. His books became bestsellers not only in the United States, but in Europe, as well, earning him an audience with Queen Victoria. The elderly monarch, Noel read, had appeared suitably charmed by the powerful, handsome young man.

Intrigued, Noel turned next to Wolfe Longwalker's book of short stories.

The tea had gone cold, but totally immersed in the starkly drawn, yet mesmerizing depiction of Wolfe Longwalker's long-ago Navajo world, Noel didn't notice.

It was late when she finished reading. Although she was exhausted, Noel couldn't fall asleep.

She spent the long night lying in the cozy four-poster bed, staring out the window at the seemingly endless expanse of starlit sky, thinking about Bertran. And her upcoming marriage.

But most of all, Noel thought about Wolfe Longwalker.

3

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When she came downstairs the following morning, Noel discovered that Audrey took the breakfast part of her bed-and-breakfast commitment very seriously.

"Breakfast was Jake's favorite meal," Audrey confided as she poured Noel a cup of steaming coffee. "It's a pleasure to have people to cook for again."

Not wanting to throw cold water on Audrey's obvious enjoyment, Noel did her best to make inroads on the amazing variety of fruit and muffins, but turned down her hostess's offer of a western omelet, Canadian bacon and hash-brown potatoes.

While she ate, she opened the copy of
Rogues Across Time
she'd brought downstairs with her, rereading the part about Wolfe's alleged crime.

The author obviously believed the Indian writer had not committed the murders that resulted in his hanging. But believing and proving were two different things. Especially since there was no proof that anyone other than Wolfe Longwalker had killed those settlers.

Since his jury consisted solely of local ranchers, it came as no surprise to anyone when he was convicted of the cold-blooded massacre of five settlers—three of them under the age of eight. The other men, who had presumably returned to the reservation, were never sought. Apparently, capturing the alleged ringleader satisfied everyone's blood lust for revenge.

"The Massacre at Whiskey River," Noel murmured. Reaching into the pocket of her suede and denim jacket, she pulled out Chantal's invitation and studied the woodcut depicting the event.

Considering that this was yet more proof that she'd been drawn here to clear Wolfe Longwalker's name, she returned the engraved invitation to her pocket and continued reading.

The territorial judge had sentenced Wolfe to death by hanging, but before the sentence could be carried out, Noel read, he'd escaped. He'd managed to elude his captors for twelve days, but in the end, he'd been recaptured. And hanged.

Noel closed the book with a sigh and rubbed her temples. During her sleepless night, she'd come to the conclusion that she'd been brought to Whiskey River to clear Wolfe's name. She'd also decided the best way to start her quest was to see where Wolfe's life had ended.

After thanking Audrey for the breakfast, she left the inn, headed toward Whiskey River in her rental car. The rain, which had been a soft drizzle when she'd awakened, turned into a downpour. It was as if the sky had opened up overhead: thunder rumbled, lightning flashed and torrential rainfall lashed against the windshield, rendering the wipers nearly useless.

Her fingers tightened on the steering wheel as she leaned forward and tried, with scant success, to see the road. She supposed the water was much-needed in this arid land, but it certainly made driving on the slick narrow road a challenge, even for someone who'd grown up in the Alps.

The radio, tuned to a Winslow country station, began to crackle with static, stretching Noel's already taut nerves even tighter. She reached out and pushed the scan button.

She'd only taken her eyes from the road for an instant. But it was long enough. When she looked up again, she saw a horse and rider galloping straight toward her.

She twisted the wheel. Hard. The brakes locked up, throwing the rental car into a wild skid which she desperately tried to control, but couldn't.

The car rolled over, coming to a shuddering stop on its crushed roof. The bloodred mare, which had just barely avoided being struck, whinnied loudly. The car horn blared.

And then there was only deadly silence.

And the lonely sound of falling rain.

1896

It was not going to be easy, Wolfe told himself as he galloped through the rain, away from Whiskey River. Certainly not as easy as escaping from that ramshackle wood and stone building the marshal laughingly called a jail. Or retrieving his mare from the terrified stable hand at the livery.