Crossings Read online

Page 17


  “Was there money in it from the day before?”

  Helena shook her head. “Not much. Nothing to kill over.”

  “Was money the only thing in the box?”

  “There was a picture of our family. And a special coin.”

  “A special coin?”

  “It was a half-dime and had my mother’s initials—J.G.—engraved on it. Father scratched them on the surface of the coin we took in for our first sale.” She blinked, fighting against crying.

  Carrigan’s eyes narrowed to hard flints. “You weren’t robbed for the money. A robber would have waited until the end of the day when the till was full.”

  “But maybe—”

  “No. Whoever shot your father had a reason other than wanting money,” Carrigan said, eliminating a card. “Why hasn’t that judge approached you with any information?”

  Try as she might, she just couldn’t condemn Bayard. He’d said he would make sure her father’s death was avenged if a killer was caught. That was all she could demand of him, especially now, given the set of circumstances surrounding their strained friendship. “Judge Kimball doesn’t have any suspects, but he’s not a sheriff. He can only prosecute criminals, he can’t apprehend them. If he had the means, I’m sure he would. I know he would,” she reaffirmed. “Why do you ask?”

  “Because I have a suspicion, whoever shot your father is still in Genoa. It’s the same man who let your horses out.”

  Carrigan’s words awakened her hope. She’d so wanted to find her father’s killer, but apprehending a suspect without witnesses, nor presumable reason for the heinous crime, seemed very unlikely. Not wanting to torment herself, she’d nipped any optimism she’d had in the bud before it had a chance to bloom. “Do you have any idea who? Mr. Wyatt and Mr. Lewis . . . Do you think it was one of them?”

  “Wyatt and Lewis want you to fail. But neither of those men is clever enough to arrange a shutout. They’re acting on orders from another source, though I doubt the man who freed the horses is the one giving the orders. He’s a hired gun. Could be the same man who shot me.”

  Definitive answers rested on the identity of the man who’d let the mustangs out. If she went on Bayard’s interpretation, she was looking at one of the culprits. But Bayard had misnamed Carrigan. So who, then, matched Carrigan’s height and build? There were many men who could fit the description if she stretched the measurements a little. Trying to discern which one was guilty would be nearly impossible. Confessions weren’t easily wheedled out, and there was no way she could think of to incriminate them.

  “I don’t know how to find a guilty man amid a town full of citizens who could have had a part in the murder. I can’t ask them all if they did it. No one would tell me the truth.”

  “You don’t ask.” Carrigan flipped his final card to the stack, winning the game. “You make yourself invisible, and you listen. I’ll try and find the man who killed your father. But it may take me some time.”

  “I have time.” Then a telling chord struck her heart. “But you don’t.”

  His gaze was penetrating, his voice firm when he replied, “Whether I’m in Genoa or on the land, I’ll keep looking for leads in both shootings. His and mine. I liked August. It isn’t right that his death is being swept under a carpet. I don’t give a damn if Genoa has a lawman or not. Justice doesn’t need a tin star on its lapel to get the job done.”

  As Carrigan added the points, Helena contemplated the prospect of actually being able to confront the responsible parties. She wanted to hold out hope that Carrigan could find her father’s killer. But even if he couldn’t, that he was willing to try meant more to her than anything. What he offered was beyond what anyone else had. And for that, she was grateful beyond words.

  * * *

  It took Carrigan another five days to gather the remaining horses. The next day out, he’d taken Esmeralda and her colt with relative ease while Helena rode Columbiana. He hadn’t found it necessary to halter the colt, which Helena had named Jake on the spur of the moment, for some damn reason. Jake ran alongside his mother, bawling for her teats.

  By Sunday evening, Carrigan had added Daisy and Lucy, the team horses, to the string he’d staked back at camp. Monarch and Maria Jane were caught on Monday. Maria Jane, a blood bay, hadn’t come peaceably. His rope had slipped, and he’d caught her by the forefoot instead of the neck. He’d had to come up behind her on the ground and put his knee on her withers.

  The line was full up on Thursday night with grazing horses whose mud-dappled coats were in need of brushing and currying. None were resisting the ropes, and all were taking water, so he hadn’t had to build an enclosure, and they’d saved valuable time.

  Everything would have gone smoothly if he hadn’t been bitten this afternoon by the last horse to round up—a mare Helena called Dolly. She was a dun-colored thing, and she’d gotten him on his left hand just when he was putting the hackamore on her. There wasn’t an opportunity to bind the wound, and by sundown he was smeared with blood.

  Since he’d sent Helena ahead to divide the last of their oats and feed the twelve and a half head, her face went white as a sheet when he rode into camp. On a glance, he saw that the bright blood had splattered his pants leg and Boomerang’s shoulder, making it hard to detect where exactly he was injured.

  On his approach, Helena dropped the open-lidded coffeepot she’d been holding. Water splashed her skirt, marking the fabric with blotches. She ran toward him, her fingers over her mouth as if she were stopping a scream.

  “What happened?” she gasped.

  Carrigan swung his leg over the pommel and hopped down from the horse. “She bit me in the hand when I was putting the bridle on her. At least it wasn’t my roping and gun hand.” Fisting the reins, he led Boomerang and Dolly—who was attached to a rope on the saddle horn—toward the other horses.

  Helena and Obsi trailed after him. “You need that looked at.”

  “I’ve got a horse to cool down first, and one to tie up.”

  “But—”

  “Don’t fuss over me, Helena.” Carrigan was tired and didn’t want to stop before he finished his day. Ducking slightly beneath the sprawling boughs of a wind-gnarled pine, he approached the tranquil herd and began unlooping the knot that kept Dolly from going anywhere. As soon as the mare was reunited with the other mustangs, she began to nicker and swish her black tail, as if she were happy to be back. Carrigan could have smacked her in the muddy rump.

  He immersed himself in the grooming of Boomerang, and only when he’d completed the task did he notice Helena had left. Since he hadn’t been paying her any attention, he couldn’t be sure when she’d taken off. He hadn’t meant to be short with her, but he was weary to the bone and just wanted to put things to order so he could clean up. As he walked toward the campfire, he saw her sitting there with her back to him. She was stock-still. In fact, the coffee was boiling over, and she made no move to yank the pot off the fire.

  Bending down, Carrigan grabbed a frayed towel, snatched the pot away from the low-burning flames, and set it on the scorched rock he used for hot pans. “You daydreaming?” he asked, rolling up his shirtsleeves with the intention of sinking his throbbing hand into Lake Tahoe’s numbing water. “Helena?”

  It was then he noticed her shoulders were quaking. He lowered himself onto his knee, the leg of his chaps pressing around his thigh. Turning her to face him, he saw that she was silently crying. Her tears hit him in the gut as surely as if she’d slugged him.

  “What’s the matter?”

  She shook her head and clamped her lips together to imprison a sob. She covered her face with her hands, her voice a choked whisper when she implored, “Don’t look at me.”

  He disregarded her plea and grabbed her wrists to lower her arms. Her eyes were rimmed with moisture, the fullness of her lashes wet from tears. He would have never taken her for the kind of woman to fall apart for no apparent reason. She could handle anything and had proved herself many times over. “H
elena, why are you crying?”

  “It’s just that . . . when I saw the blood . . . I . . .”

  He caught and held her gaze with his, trying to read what she was saying in the depths of her sky-blue eyes. They were clouded with sorrow and a pain that ran deeper than he could explain. “What, Lena? What are you so upset about?”

  She took a shuddering breath, looked at her lap, then at him. “I’ve lost my mother, and I’ve lost my father. As soon as I married you, I almost lost you, too. I couldn’t bear it if I had to bury another person I was close to. I just couldn’t do it. I’m not strong enough.”

  “You thought because of the blood, I was going to die?”

  Her lashes lowered, and a tear fell onto the billow of her drenched skirt.

  Without conscious thought, Carrigan drew her into his arms and held her tightly to his chest. “I’m not going to die. It would take a lot more than that damn horse’s bite to put me in an eternity box.” His hands ran over the trembling length of her spine in a reassuring massage. “Don’t ever waste your tears on me again. I’m not worth it.”

  “But you’re my husband.”

  “Not really.”

  Her soft crying quieted, and she spoke in an equally sedate tone. “In my heart you are, whether I want you there or not.”

  Carrigan didn’t know what to do with her declaration. He had none to give back to her. At least none that made any sense. His emotions were mixing into a storm of uncertainty, and he felt out of his element and out of place in this conversation. “Been a long time since I was in somebody’s heart.”

  Helena’s cheek lay softly against his shoulder when she whispered, “That doesn’t mean I love you.”

  The indirect endearment rocked through Carrigan. “Didn’t think it did.”

  “It just means that I feel connected to you because I’m your wife. If something were to happen to you, I’d feel responsible.”

  “Nothing’s going to happen to me.” He should have released her, but he couldn’t. The braid cuddled against her neck smelled like the fresh mountain air and faintly of the pungent campfire smoke. She’d never before come to him for this kind of intimacy. The union of body touches for the sole purpose of comfort and understanding was an option long since past for him. As soon as he’d been given a taste of it, he wanted more. His forearms circled her waist in a soothing hold that kept her close.

  “It already did. You were shot . . . just like my father.” Her voice thickened. “Only I never got the chance to take care of him. All I could do for him was bury him decent.”

  Carrigan rested his chin on the top of Helena’s head and closed his eyes. He knew what her frustration felt like. There were two faceless men from his past he couldn’t identify either. The lure of fury’s never-ending trail had obsessed him for a while. He’d pursued leads through the Cheyenne Territory until the tall grass shifting in the winds obscured his quest with its trackless stalks. His thirst to exact revenge had gone unquenched, but the insatiable hunger was still there. Always. And him not knowing if the men he’d sought were dead or alive.

  Helena lifted her cheek and pressed herself away from him. “I shouldn’t have bothered you with my melancholy silliness. I don’t know what got into me. I’m not a weepy woman.” Wiping beneath her moist eyes with her fingertips, she took in a shallow breath.

  “A scare got into you.” Carrigan’s hand rose, and he used his forefinger to blot a tear on the high point of her cheekbone. “Nothing wrong with being scared sometimes. You just had to cry yours out.”

  “Well, I’m over it now, so you can let me go.”

  Her pink lips were damp from the salty tears she just licked off. The compelling temptation to give her a thorough kissing knocked the wind out of him. But that one kiss would be all it would take for him to make her his wife in every way. The night on the haystack, she’d been willing until Eliazer had come. But afterward, she’d stuck to her resolve with embarrassed blushes that hadn’t fully convinced Carrigan she was relieved they’d been discovered.

  Since then, Carrigan had had some time to think about the consequences of an affair between them. While he would merely be fulfilling a physical desire, she would be left to pick up the pieces when he left her. But those pieces were the very same ones that were tumbling down around them now. Whether Helena wanted to admit it or not, they were headed in a direction she was desperately trying to veer away from.

  Carrigan needed a bath and a smoke. A minute to get away and clear his head. He was too dirty to be putting his hands on her. The left shoulder of her dress was now smudged with the blood from his cut hand. Jesus, there was also a vague hint of it on her cheek where he’d touched her. “Do you have a clean dress?”

  Following his stare, Helena looked at her bodice. “Yes.”

  “You better put it on.” The fabric of her skirt was still wet from the water she’d spilled on herself. “Might as well do it right and take a dunk in that lake.”

  Her eyes widened. “It’s too cold.”

  Carrigan rose to his feet, his gaze fastened to the noticeable rise and fall of her breasts. “It’s not cold enough.” He unbuckled his chaps and let them fall where he stood. Without a backward glance, he picked up his soap and a blanket, and brought them to the water’s edge. Removing his holster, he kept the Colt within a comfortable reach. Slipping his arms from his vest, then unbuttoning his shirt, he had a decision to make. Either he could take a bath in a half-assed manner—as he’d been doing—or he could strip down all the way. Seeing as she’d already seen him raw, it wasn’t a lengthy debate.

  The waning sun was still warm in a sky burgeoning with great masses of gold and purple clouds. As soon as his boots and socks were off, he flicked the top button of his trousers free with his thumb. The succession of five other flat disks followed, then he shucked his legs out of his pants. Naked, he bent to pick up the soap cake. Walking without self-consciousness, he went to the boulder and climbed on top. Then he plunged into the frigid water and drowned his carnal thoughts of Helena jumping in after him without a stitch on.

  Chapter

  11

  Helena stared in disbelief at the taut muscles of Carrigan’s backside. How could he walk so unabashedly in his altogether? The tight swells of flesh were paler than his back, which was a honey brown. His upper body was naturally darker in skin tone, but his bare behind proved, not by much. When he dove into the lake, she blinked out of her stupor.

  The moment regained clarity again. She’d shown him her weaker side by crying in front of him, and it was painfully humiliating. But seeing the blood on Carrigan and not knowing the extent or seriousness, she’d thought he was gunshot again. She didn’t want to lose him. Not because he was responsible for making Mr. Lewis and Mr. Wyatt treat her in a professional manner rightfully due any customer, and for saving her from ruination. That thought hadn’t crossed her mind. The reason for her overemotional state was that she cared about him. He was family now. Her name would forever be linked to his, even when he wasn’t living with her. She’d always be Mrs. Jacob Henry Carrigan.

  Splashing water drifted to Helena’s ears. She hadn’t had a proper bath since leaving town. Daily she’d been soaping her face, hands, and the private parts of her body with a cloth. And each night she slept in a clean change of clothes. She’d brought a poplin skirt, two shirtwaists, and one dark dress. The blouses, she’d washed out, and they were fresh, but not ironed. After she’d shaken the dust from the gathers, the skirt was in good shape. The dress she had on now wasn’t fit for another minute. A full body bath with her hair washed would be heaven. But Carrigan was in that lake, and she wasn’t going near it.

  Being in his arms had a dangerous appeal—one that would be deadly to her adamancy about upholding all aspects surrounding their premarital agreement. But she wasn’t blind. She could see what was happening. She’d absorbed the looks passing between them and felt the friction of his hot touch. She’d heard the comforting tone of his low-spoken words meant for
reassurance. The fundamentals of courtship had been there tonight when he’d held her whether she wanted them to be or not.

  Helena thoughtfully chewed the inside of her cheek. She was a woman who’d listened to her heart once. She should know better than to become entangled a second time. Generous impulses and sentiments had no place in her anymore. And yet . . . chance kept whispering in her ear. He’s different . . . he won’t care about what you did in the past. Take today for all your lonely tomorrows. . . .

  They were here alone, and no one would know. Emilie could never guess. She’d seen that Carrigan had his own bedroom at the house and that they weren’t living as husband and wife.

  Helena hadn’t given Emilie much thought since she’d been away with Carrigan. Knowing she was safe with Eliazer and Ignacia had been a source of Helena’s peace of mind. But that didn’t make up for the fact she hadn’t paused once to worry about her sister’s welfare. Perhaps it was something Carrigan had said to her about letting Emilie grow up or else she’d hate her. Maybe this was a start. Maybe it was time for Helena to try and begin living again herself. She was painfully aware of how reserved she’d become over the years. How boorish and matronly in her conduct and speech, when she was barely twenty-one. Her smiles were infrequent, her laughter dusty. Why had she allowed such a thing to happen to her?

  As soon as Carrigan started for the bank, Helena averted her gaze from him. When she detected his approaching footfalls, she turned her head. He’d wrapped the blanket around his middle and was going in the direction of the screen he’d put up. She came to her feet, the beat of her pulse thrumming swiftly through her body as she clutched the full blanket from off her bedroll. “I’m going in,” she said in what she hoped was a casual tone. “Could I borrow your soap? It would seem mine is used up.”