Night of Shadows (4 page)

Just as she reached up and grabbed
it, her knees buckled. She found herself collapsed in a sitting position,
unable to move, with her back propped against the wall and her handbag clasped
to her chest.

A few minutes later, the outside
door opened. The man was by her side in seconds.

"Hey, what do you think you're
doing?" he scolded. He lifted her to her feet and half-carried her
to the sofa. "I would have brought you your precious purse, if you had
asked. I'm not a complete ogre, Miss Whoever-
You
-Are."

"You've been enough help
already," she retorted weakly. "And stop pretending you don't know my
name. You're bound to have snooped inside my handbag by now."

The stranger walked away, snatched
the blanket from the bed and then roughly tucked it around her. "No, lady,
I didn't. I've been kind of busy — remember? And the truth is, I forgot about
it."

He turned away to add more wood to
the fire.

"Oh. Well, then."  She
adjusted her voice to a more civil voice. "You may call me Melinda."

She watched him carefully for some
hint of a response, but he seemed to be ignoring her. "And you are — ?"

"Michael." He kept poking
at the fire with a stick. "That's all you need to know about me."

Melinda was beginning to suspect
that she might have stumbled across a fugitive from justice. If so, then he was
right. The less she knew about him, the better for both of them. She decided
not to question him further.

When he finally straightened from
his task, he pulled the rocking chair around to face the window. He sighed
audibly as he sat down to stare out at the dark sky that was now producing
another downpour.

Rain pounding the roof made a sound
so steady that it was soothing, in a way. Michael drummed his fingers on the
arm of the chair, almost in accompaniment to the beat. Then, he made a fist.

Melinda speculated that being
trapped here must be tedious for this man, who seemed used to action. And it
probably hadn't been easy tending a bedraggled woman who inadvertently had
invaded his domain.

Regardless of her personal feelings
about the man, it was time to express her gratitude. She had no idea how he
would receive her words.

"I want to thank you — for — saving
my life."

Her words were too stiff, formal in
her effort to overcome her frustration at being indebted to him — to anyone,
for that matter. He was oblivious, his gaze transfixed on the outside world.
She tried again.

"When I went under that last
time, I thought that was it for me. How did you ever manage to pull me out of
that torrent?"

He propped a booted foot up on the
window sill, and glanced back over his shoulder.

"By pure luck mostly. Me and
ol' Bismark — my horse — chased you down. I snagged you with my rope and tied
it to the saddle. Then, I went in after you. It was pretty rough. For a few
minutes, I thought we both were goners."

Melinda responded softly. "You
risked your life for me?"

His voice registered embarrassment.
"What did you expect me to do? Just let you wash down the canyon? I would
have done the same for a drowning cat."

He paused at her expression.
"I didn't mean it to come out that way."

This time they both lapsed into silence.
There was no way to carry on a polite conversation with
him.
Melinda
fumed silently. She wasn't used to this kind of treatment. In fact, most men
happened to find her quite attractive. She heard the vexation in her voice when
she again spoke.

"I don't suppose you happen to
have a mirror around here?"

"Why?" he asked. Then, he
turned to look at her. "Oh, I see."

That comment did nothing for her
self-confidence. He immediately got up and rummaged around in the kitchen area.
He returned with a piece of an old mirror he held outstretched in her
direction.

"Will this do?"

As he stood watching her, she took
it tentatively and looked at herself for the first time in days. She was
horrified at the reflection that stared back at her. One eye was black and
almost swollen together. Numerous cuts and abrasions marred her face. And
hanging down her shoulders were two braided pigtails tied with string around
the bottom.

In a word, she was grotesque. She
felt shattered.

"Not a pretty sight, is
it?" Michael asked, sounding genuinely sympathetic.

Melinda was too rattled to reply
sensibly. Instead, she blurted out the first thought that popped into her head.

"Why did you — how did you — braid
my hair?"

She intended to imply that it made
her look hideous, like a mangy Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. But he responded
as though she had paid him a compliment.

"Nothing to it, ma'am,"
he said in an exaggerated drawl. "I've been braiding horses' tails for
years."

She somehow restrained her first
impulse to throw the mirror at him. She realized now what an unsavory sight she
was to him. But her companion with his shabby clothes and unshaven face wasn't
exactly appealing, either.

Then, it dawned on her. He, too,
probably didn't look like this ordinarily. And by the skimpy accommodations in
this shack, she suspected he didn't even live here. This had to be some sort of
temporary shelter.

And in that case, there was a lot
more to know about this man. She examined him with microscopic intensity as he
sauntered back to his usual chair. This time he turned it away from the window
and faced her. He sat down and raised an eyebrow in anticipation of her
questions.

"You don't live here at all,
do you?" she asked.

"Well, ma'am, I hate to ruin
the sterling impression you have of me, but — no, I don't. I'm a rancher. We
just use this place for some of the hands when they're out branding. Lucky for
you and me, it's kept stocked with food and water."

"Then surely you have some
kind of vehicle. You can certainly use it to get me out of here," Melinda
said.

"Oh no. Not that again."
He spoke slowly then, emphasizing each word. "I explained all this to you
once before, lady, and now I'm going to go over it again. In detail. We can't
leave. The canyons are still running water."

"Then
call
someone."

"There's no cell phone coverage
in this area, but my people know we're here. I have a radio in my jeep, and it
keeps me in touch with the main ranch. Besides, even if we could leave right
now, it'll be a day or two before you can travel. Fate has thrown us together,
like it or not. And, believe me, I don't like it any more than you do."

There it was again — that
ambivalence, something he made sound like a personal dislike for her. Why? She
had done nothing to him.

As if to ward off more questions,
he stood suddenly. "Tell you what. There's a deck of cards around here
somewhere. Let's make the best of a bad situation, and pass some time."

He walked over to a kitchen drawer,
opened it, and pulled out some cards that he shuffled as he strolled back
towards her. He pulled up a chair to serve as a table between them, and
shuffled some more.

"How about some poker? We'll
use matches for the ante."

"I'd prefer gin rummy."

"I don't know gin rummy. So
we'll have to play poker." He started dealing.

With distaste, she picked up the
five grimy, dog-eared cards he dealt her. They were so thick she could
hardly spread them out to see what she had. But each time she exposed a card,
it was an ace or a king. The last card was a four.

By now, Michael had distributed the
matchsticks he had dumped from a box fished from his pocket. Melinda tossed one
out to indicate her bet. He did the same. He scratched the stubble of his beard
as he examined his hand.

"How many cards do you
need?" he asked, 

"Just one."

"One!  Is that all? I need
three."

He peeled several more off the
deck. She picked up her one, which gave her a full house — aces over kings.
When she looked up and saw his penetrating stare, she molded her face into an
implacable expression. His face showed nothing. She ran a fingernail over her
cards as he arranged his.

"Well?" he asked finally.
"Now what's your bet?"

Melinda smugly shoved all her
matchsticks out into the center of the table.

"Are you sure you want to do
that?" he asked.

"You play it your way and I'll
play it mine."

She gave him a superior smile. He
smiled back.

Then in one quick motion he pushed
out his matches. "Whatcha got?"

She triumphantly laid down her
cards, one at a time for effect, and reached out for the matchsticks. He placed
his hand down on hers.

"Not so fast, Missy. That's a
good hand, all right. But it don't beat four-of-a-kind."

He slapped his four deuces on the
table, threw back his head and roared with laughter. "Am I good, or what?
Here, I'll loan you some of my loot."

He shoved half the matches her way.
Then he proceeded to beat her at every hand. Each time, he gleefully raked in
the matchsticks as if they were real money.

"Well," she finally
informed him. "I'm just not playing anymore." She put down her latest
hand. "Besides, I think you're cheating."

"Cheating? No one would have
to cheat to beat you."

He looked wounded as he gathered up
the cards, and stood to put them away. "If you have to be such a spoil
sport, I'm going back out to check on the horse. He's better company than you,
anyway."

Michael stayed gone for a long
time. Finally, Melinda could hear him as he paced back and forth on what she
presumed was the porch outside, where he must have been protected from the weather.
Lightning zinged outside, causing her to jump. Apparently he preferred even the
storm to her company.

She sighed, then reached over to
examine some ancient Western magazines stacked on the table at her elbow. She
tried to become absorbed in a classic frontier adventure story, but it was hard
to read by lantern light. Exhaustion finally overcame her. She stumbled off the
sofa and back to the bed, where she crawled in and drifted off to sleep.

Much later, she awakened to a
different sound — a silence. Rain no longer pelted the roof. Good, she thought.
Maybe the floodwater would recede, and she could leave this place.

A few minutes later, she was
dumbfounded to hear the roar of a low-flying airplane that seemed to be
just overhead. Her heart lifted with hope. Maybe there was a nearby landing
strip where a plane could touch down. Maybe there was a way out of here other
than overland.

In the inky darkness, she was dimly
aware that the outside door opened and then closed. Then she heard the sound of
a motor starting up and a vehicle leaving. Odd. Where would Michael be going?
Where could he go?

She must have dozed off. Later in
the night, she again was awakened — this time by the grinding of gears as a
vehicle came to a halt right outside. The door creaked open. The dark, tip-toeing
man outlined against the red coals of the fireplace was Michael.

She pretended to be asleep as she
watched him silently pull off his boots, and place them carefully on the floor.
He stretched out on the sofa, and before long began to snore. She was too tired
to dwell on the mystery. Tomorrow would be time enough to question him.

The next morning, she was aroused
by the bright sunlight pouring through the window. The smell of coffee brought
her fully awake. She took a deep, appreciative breath as Michael approached
with a cup in his hand. She smiled involuntarily at him, and was treated to an
unexpected answering smile. Her spirits lifted with unexplainable affection
when he placed the coffee in her hand.

"Soup's on. It'll be ready in
a minute," he said cheerfully.

Later, they ate at the table in
companionable silence. And when he spoke again, she understood why he seemed to
be in such a better mood.

"I just took a look outside.
The water seems to be going down. I'm sure I can get you back into town today.
That is, if you feel up to it."

"That would be
wonderful!"

He grinned. "At no
charge."

"I guess I deserved you having
a little fun with me," Melinda said. "It was — rude — of me to treat
you like you were some sort of hobo."

"No problem," Mac said.
"I haven't exactly been on my best behavior either."

Already, she had pleasant visions
of a motel room and a hot shower. She would buy some clothes to replace the
ones she lost in the flood. And then, the next day, she would search for the
McClure place again — this time with a hired driver.

She considered asking Michael to
take her directly to the ranch, but somehow she couldn't face the McClures
looking like some kind of war refugee.

They leisurely finished their meal.
This man soon would be part of the past. Idly, she recalled the previous night
— the airplane and the vehicle noises that had so abnormally pierced the quiet
of their isolation.