Pete (The Cowboys) (35 page)

Chapter Eighteen

They stayed in the forest four days while the blizzard howled around them. Pete used branches to sweep the snow from their camp area and spent hours each day helping the horses find food under the deep snow. He also broke the ice in the stream twice a day so they could drink. On the third day, the stream froze to the bottom and he had to melt snow over the fire.

When Anne tried to bring water from the stream for cooking, it froze before she could get it back to camp. It was simpler to melt snow over the fire they kept going all day. After they used up all the firewood nearby, Pete used the horses to drag wood from a distance. They had nothing to cut up the larger trees and limbs, so Pete would put one end in the fire and keep moving the tree trunk or limb into the flames until the whole thing burned. Then he’d start on another. Anne decided he probably kept warmer from the work he did than from the heat of the small fire.

She, on the other hand, depended on the fire to keep her from becoming a human icicle. She had never known people could survive under such conditions. She had been certain she couldn’t. It still surprised her that she had. The worst part had been trying to keep her feet and hands warm. She’d been certain she was going to lose them to frostbite until Pete taught her to put rocks in the coals of the fire. Once a rock was warm, she could take it out of the fire and put her feet directly on it. While warming herself with one rock, she’d have two or three more in the fire so she’d have another ready when the first one got cold.

It was so cold, their food froze almost before they could eat it. It was a race to eat quickly and often. Only a steady intake of hot food provided enough fuel for their bodies to keep warm. Pete had said he thought the temperature was probably down to zero.

The only time Anne got really warm was at night, when she and Pete crawled into their pine bower. Pete made love to her every night. It wasn’t languid love. It wasn’t leisurely love. It wasn’t even thoroughly satisfying. It was too cold for that. But it was wonderful, and she looked forward to it from the moment she crawled out of their tent in the morning.

Her mind told her she was an idiot, that she was acting like a crazy person, that no woman in her right mind would make love to the man who’d killed her husband. She could only respond by telling herself the world around her was crazy. Normal people didn’t live in pine bowers in the forest in the middle of blizzards. An ordinary woman didn’t have to sit on hot rocks all day just to keep her feet from freezing. Ordinary people didn’t have to melt snow to have drinking water or eat stew that was boiling in the middle and freezing around the edge. Nor did they have to sleep with their clothes on, bundled up next to another person to keep from freezing to death in their sleep.

When her world returned to normal, she’d try to sort things out. Until then, she’d have to do the best she could. And the best she could do right now was hang on to Pete. He was her lifeline.

Pete came back from the meadow leading the horses. “I think we ought to try to get to Big Bend,” he said.

“How can we leave now? The snow must be several feet deep.”

“I know, but we’re running out of food. If we stay longer, we might get caught by another storm.”

She had no attachment to the pine bower, even though she was certain that at some time in the future she would look back on it and smile in remembrance. For a few days she’d been able to push her problems, conflicts, and contradictions out of her mind. She’d allowed herself the privilege of thinking only of the here and now, of Pete and herself, of their feelings for each other.

He loved her. He’d told her so over and over again. He made no promises, offered no excuses, gave no explanations. He said he loved her and that he always would. Despite being stranded in the middle of a forest by a dangerous blizzard, she felt loved. She could see it in his eyes when he looked at her. She could feel it when they sat close to the fire, Pete holding her wrapped inside his coat so their shared body heat could keep them warm. They’d sat that way for hours at a time, sometimes talking about nothing in particular, sometimes not talking at all.

She no longer told herself all the reasons why she shouldn’t love and trust him. She had finally admitted to herself that all the fears, accusations, implications, made no difference. She loved him, and nothing could change that. Chance had given her an opportunity to escape the rules and restrictions of the world she lived in, a few days in which to pretend nothing was wrong, that love could, and would, triumph over all. For a few days she’d allowed herself to luxuriate in the warmth of his love, in the wonder of gradually realizing she could be the most important person in a man’s life, that he would endanger his own safety to protect her.

She had reached another conclusion. Pete was not a killer. She didn’t know who was responsible for the deaths of Peter and Belser, but she was certain it wasn’t Pete. Not that he couldn’t kill. She was certain he could kill to protect those he loved, to defend what belonged to him, but he wouldn’t kill to steal from someone else. She didn’t want to leave the protection of the forest, to face all the difficulties that lay ahead, but they couldn’t hide forever. “When can we start?” she asked.

“As soon as we can pack everything up,” Pete said. “We have a long way to go. The sooner we get started, the sooner we’ll get to Big Bend.”

There wasn’t much to pack. They’d eaten most of their food and they wore most of their clothes to keep warm.

The horses sank to their stomachs in the snow.

“We’ll have to try to stay under the trees or where the wind kept the snow from piling up,” Pete said. “Some of the drifts are ten feet deep.”

The bright sunlight reflecting off the snow nearly blinded her. She didn’t understand how Pete could find a trail, or solid ground, under all that snow, but they traveled hour after hour without any mishap more serious than the packhorse stepping off the trail and stumbling into a creek coated in ice and covered with snow. Their progress was very slow. It was clear they weren’t going to reach Big Bend that day.

Despite the cold and the pain of being in a saddle again, Anne found enough positive energy to realize the scenery was absolutely magnificent. All around her, mountain peaks rose skyward, their pink, orange, brown, and red rock strata brilliant in the sunlight. Wind kept the peaks mostly clear of snow, but patches on ledges looked like ermine collars.

Pristine blankets of snow, unbroken by footprints of man or animal, covered wide mountain meadows. Towering ponderosa pine forests bent low under their weight of snow, the green of their needles made all the more vibrant by the blanket of white.

If it just hadn’t been so cold, she might have enjoyed it.

They spent the first night in a grove of cottonwood, box elder, and green ash. Some juniper trees provided a shield from the wind. They cooked dinner and ate, made love and slept, each knowing the end would come soon.

It came sooner and in a different manner than they expected.

Next morning, they made it out of the mountains and into the foothills.

“We’ll spend tonight at the cabin,” Pete called back to her. “It’ll be warm and dry. You’ll be able to sleep under a roof.”

“Is it very far?”

“We ought to reach it by midafternoon.”

Pete had spent hours the night before massaging her sore muscles, but they continued to ache today. She doubted she’d ever learn to like riding horses, certainly not if it continued to make her feel as if every muscle in her lower body was on fire.

“You know,” Pete said, “I wonder if the men Mason hired to kill your husband are at his ranch.”

“Would you recognize them?” she asked.

“Not them, but their horses.”

“Wouldn’t they recognize you?”

“Probably.”

“Wouldn’t they try to kill you?”

“Probably.”

“Then what’s the advantage of finding them?”

“Outside of hanging them for killing Peter Warren, there’s my money and my clothes,” he said. “I could have used them these past few days.” He went on to list everything that had been stolen from him. “But what I most want to find are my saddlebags.”

“How can you tell one set of saddlebags from another?” she asked. She had never paid particular attention to saddlebags before, but as far as she could remember, they all looked alike.

“Mine are different. There’s a “J” cut into the leather, and they’ve got some decorative beading. I got the saddlebags made from an elk hide by an Indian woman in Montana. You’d know them the minute you saw them. I think that’s why they took them.”

Anne’s attention wandered as he went on to describe the saddlebags in detail. The day wore on—cold, monotonous, endless. She was practically asleep in the saddle, lulled by the gentle rocking motion, when several mounted riders burst out of a gully that had appeared to be choked by wild plum and hawthorne. Almost before she knew what had happened, half-a-dozen men had converged on Pete. He fought bravely, but it was a futile effort. One man—a rank coward, Anne was certain—rode up behind and hit Pete over the head with a gun butt.

Pete tumbled from the saddle into the snow.

Anne urged her horse forward only to find a man at her side, his firm grip on her mount’s bridle preventing her from moving.

“You don’t have to run away,” Bill Mason said. “These are my men.”

Her mind was in turmoil. She’d known she had to return to the real world, that she had to face the charges against Pete, come to grips with the fact that she didn’t have a shred of evidence to support her belief in his innocence. But she’d expected to have more time. This sudden attack threw her off stride.

Her actions were purely instinctive, and instinct said she had to do anything she could to protect Pete. “I wasn’t going to run away,” Anne said, trying without success to break Mason’s grip on her horse’s bridle. She’d never paid much attention to Bill Mason, but now that he seemed to be taking control of her destiny, she found she didn’t like him. She didn’t trust him, either.

“We’re going to hang him,” Mason said.

Panic threatened to scramble her wits entirely, but she knew she had to remain calm. She had to think. Pete needed help right this minute. If she couldn’t provide it, it might soon be too late for anybody to help him. “You can’t hang him,” she said.

“He’s a killer. He deserves hanging.”

“I don’t dispute that,” she said, trying not to show the panic she felt. “But you’ve got to take him into Big Bend to the sheriff. They’ll try him and decide what to do with him.”

“That’s a waste of time. We’ll hang him now and be done with it.”

“But that will make you as much a murderer as he is.”

She faced Mason squarely when she said that, but it was difficult not to quail before his fierce glare.

“It’s not murder to kill a mad dog.”

“It is when you take the law into your own hands and hang a man who’s not been convicted of any crime.”

“Nobody will care. They’ll all be glad to see the end of him.”

“I’ll care.”

His gaze became granite. “What do you mean by that?”

“Back at the ranch, you said you wanted to marry me. Do you still want to?”

“Yes. I’ve always wanted to marry you.”

Anne had never even guessed at such a long-standing passion, but she let that pass. “Then you have to take him to Big Bend. I will not marry a murderer.”

“But you married him!” Mason exploded.

“I married Peter Warren. I accepted that man as my husband because I thought he was Peter. I did not marry a murderer, nor could I accept a man I knew to be a murderer.”

“Then you admit he killed Peter?”

“I don’t know what he did. That’s for the court to decide on the basis of evidence. You don’t have any evidence, and you aren’t a court.”

“I don’t care. Find a limb, boys. We’re going to hang him high.”

“Any man who participates in this hanging is a murderer!” Anne shouted. “I know your faces, and I will find out your names. As soon as I reach Big Bend, I’ll have the sheriff arrest all of you on the charge of murder.” The men had slowed when she began to speak. Not one of them moved a muscle now. “I will also testify that you went ahead with this murder despite the fact that you’d been warned not to proceed, that you weren’t a duly constituted court, and you presented absolutely no evidence to support your charges.”

“He kidnaped you,” Mason said. “That’s a hanging offense.”

“I’ll testify that I went willingly.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“If you marry me, you will become the father of my children. What kind of mother would I be if I brought children into this world knowing their father was a murderer? What man will marry my daughters? What woman will trust my sons?”

“Thousands of men will be eager to marry them. They’ll be the daughters of a rich man.”

“I want my daughters to marry men of character, men who marry them because they cherish and honor them, not for their wealth.”

“That’s why he wanted you.”

“I married a man I thought I’d loved since I was six. Not this man.”

“Then you don’t love him?”