A hard day of riding saw them heading steadily south, following the Santa Cruz River, and then turning more easterly across desert plateaus and dry gullies. Late that afternoon, Zant finally reined in a short distance from a warped-clapboard shack built against the stone base of a rocky abutment.
Mounted on Knight, Jacey turned a dubious eye on the falling-down corral and the gaping, half-rotted door of the one-room cabin. “This is it? This is where Tully Johnson lives?”
She watched Zant shift his weight in his saddle and notch his Stetson up. “Yep. He did five years ago, anyway. Looks empty now.”
Jacey squinted at him. “You’re one heck of a guide, Chapelo, what with your five-year-old information. I could’ve gotten this all wrong by myself.”
Zant spared her a glare before calling out, “Hello in the cabin. Is anybody about? We’re looking for Tully Johnson.”
Silence. A Gila woodpecker ceased drilling a dead juniper to stare at them and then fly away. Watching the bird take wing, they both started, along with their mounts, when a woman’s voice called out from the cabin door. “Who’s lookin’?”
Jacey reined Knight hard and stared at the dirty, stringy-haired woman whose skeletal nakedness was more or less covered by a too-big faded blue daydress which had seen better days. Jacey exchanged a look with Zant, whose expression seemed to mirror her first impression.
He then turned to the woman and said, “Afternoon, ma’am. Name’s Chapelo. And this is Jacey Lawless. We’re looking for—”
“I heard ya. Tully ain’t around.” With that, the woman spat and stepped back inside the cabin. From the dark interior, she yelled, “I don’t want no truck with a Lawless, much less a Chapelo. They ain’t never done nothin’ for me. Now, git.” A steel rifle barrel poked out to glint in the sunshine and back up her sentiments.
“Son of a bitch,” Zant muttered, his inflection suggesting this was the last thing he needed. He turned to Jacey, keeping his voice low. “Let’s see if money makes her any friendlier.” He then called out, “We’ll pay you for your time, ma’am. We just need to talk to Tully.”
“Pay me? What do I need money for? An’ I done tole you—you cain’t speak with Tully. Cain’t nobody speak with ’im. ’Cepting the devil. Tully’s been dead nigh onto three years or more.”
Jacey edged Knight over to Zant’s roan and whispered, “This could be a trick. He might be hiding inside.”
Zant turned a long-suffering look on her. “I think he’s dead, Jacey. And it’s a particular habit of mine never to call a person pointing a rifle at me a liar. But go ahead—call her bluff.”
Thus challenged, Jacey turned toward the cabin. “How’d he die, ma’am?”
“I shot ’im, that’s how. You aimin’ to be next, lady?”
Jacey’s eyes widened. “No, ma’am. Sorry to’ve bothered you.” As she turned Knight away from the cabin, Zant followed suit, but his chuckle only heated her face up more. “If you’re so all-fired smart, Chapelo, where’s Tully’s grave?” she hissed.
Zant nudged his roan into a canter before answering. “She shot him, Jacey. You think she went to the trouble of giving him a proper Christian burial? Hell, she probably dragged him out and let the vultures eat him.”
“Skinny as she is, she should’ve eaten him herself.”
Zant’s eyebrows shot up. “Remind me not to let you get too hungry.”
Jacey didn’t dignify that with a response. Instead, she asked, “Where to next?”
“Well, I plan on riding back to the Santa Cruz, making camp for the night by its waters, and eating some of that good food Rosie packed. You coming?”
* * *
You coming? As if she had a choice, what with him having the food and the close-held knowledge of where the other four men in the Lawless Gang were. Jacey fussed around their small campfire, laying out her bedroll. Why don’t you call her bluff? Danged near got her shot, was what he did.
Looking up, she searched out the source of her fuming. The big outlaw, sipping his coffee from a tin cup, stood quietly still with his back to her at the river’s shore. With the blood-crimsons and bruised-blues of the setting sun in front of him, he stood as if framed in a picture.
Jacey’s scowl slowly softened into a frown of longing. She couldn’t look away from him. A great sadness swept over her, a sense of loss. Loss of a part of herself. When she could no longer deny it, she admitted that she wanted nothing more than to go to him, wrap her arms around him, and lay her cheek on his warm back. She should hate that feeling. But didn’t. She put a hand over her mouth, as if trying to hold back a sudden queasiness. Why him?
Just then, Chapelo shifted his weight, drawing the seat of his denims tight over his buttocks. She swept her gaze over the man’s broad back, down to his tapering hips and long legs. And knew. He’s got that lost part of me. She shook her head against the sharp prick of awareness and the sinking feeling that told her she cared more than she should, and in all the wrong ways, for the Stetson-wearing, smart-mouthed, swaggering quick draw.
Look at you, a voice in her head taunted. You can’t even stay mad at him, not even when he’s provoked you and threatened you and darn near gotten you killed—or killed you himself. But that was just one side of him, she argued. All the other sides of him showed he felt the same about her. He’d kissed her, followed her, protected her, killed for her. And now, he was here with her, putting himself in danger just to make sure she didn’t run into any herself.
Jacey admitted she’d never been one to think about fate and great celestial designs. And she never saw herself as a pawn in a game of destiny. Not before now, anyway. Because all she could think was … why this man? Why was he the one who stirred her fires? His last name alone made him as forbidden to her as the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge had been to Adam and Eve. And look what happened there.
Shaking her head, refusing to give up any more of herself to him, Jacey steeled her heart, seeking to explain his behavior in other ways. Could he be here with her, and pretending to have … strong feelings for her, just to make sure she didn’t find the keepsake and discover the truth? It could be that he was. And what about that danged plan of his to get her with child? Maybe that too was his real reason for being here with her.
Squatting down, she picked up a handful of gravelly sand, which she allowed to run through her fingers. All right, so she’d guard her heart from his charm. Jacey let out the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. And almost burst into tears. See there? the voice chided. He’s changing you. Jacey jumped up. She had to get away from him. An inch away from running to Knight and jumping on him and clearing out, she clamped down hard on her back teeth. Just calm down. You can’t go anywhere at night. You’re safe enough with Chapelo, for the time being.
But what about when she got closer to the truth? What then? What if he was the one she sought? Working her lips, biting at them, Jacey aimed a suspicious look at the gunslinger’s back. I’ve got to keep my eye on him, and at the same time, keep him away from me. And, yes, me away from him. Lordy, what am I going to do?
At that moment, Zant turned away from the river and called out to her, “You know what you should do?”
Jacey caught her breath. And let it out. He couldn’t read minds. “No, outlaw,” she called back, “what should I do?”
Without replying, he walked toward her, his muscled legs carrying him effortlessly up the sloping embankment. When he stood right in front of her, towering over her, looking down at her, Jacey realized she was breathless. She looked up, trying to see his eyes under that black hat of his. And caught herself returning his easy grin before she could think to guard against his charm. Instantly sobering, she fussed, “Well? What should I do?”
“For one thing, you should stop calling me outlaw and Chapelo and gunslinger. My name’s Zant. And two”—he pointed with his coffee cup to a point behind Jacey—“you should train some manners into that horse of yours.”
“My horse?” Jacey turned to see Knight’s ears laid back against his head as he showed his big teeth to Zant’s fine-boned roan stallion. She chuckled. “Knight doesn’t think much of that prissy ride of yours.”
“Prissy? You think Sangre is prissy?”
“Sangre? What’s that mean?”
“Blood.”
“You named that animal Blood?” She turned back to stare consideringly at the now-snorting, nostril-flared stallion as he responded to Knight’s bad manners. “Well, maybe old blood. He’s kinda rusty or coppery-colored. But nothing like reddish-orangy new blood.”
She watched as Chapelo pinched his features into a prunish old-man grimace. She’d insulted him. He tossed his empty mug onto the ground by the campfire and stalked over to his stallion. For once, Jacey’s chuckling followed his red-faced retreat. Just maybe her own smart-mouthed, swaggering attitude—so much like his, come to think of it—would be the very thing that kept him at a distance.
She watched as the outla—no, Zant—as Zant untied Old Blood from his place next to Knight and restrung the stud’s lead rope to a piñon tree farther away. As he stomped back over to her, Jacey asked, “Is that all you wanted to tell me—about my horse not having any manners?”
“Hell, no, but what is wrong with that nag of yours?”
Jacey shrugged. “He’s been in a bad mood ever since I castrated him.”
A shocked and guttural sound came out of Zant’s open mouth. “You gelded that animal yourself?”
“Well, I had some help, holding him down and all. But, yeah, I did the honors. And with that same knife of mine I showed you on the way to Sonora. It’s still strapped to my leg. You wanna see it again?” Loving the look on Zant’s face as he shook his head no, a look that said he was just shy of crossing his hands in front of his own crotch, Jacey grinned up at him. “Now, what else were you going to tell me I should do?”
Zant began backing up. “Nothing. Not a damned thing.” He turned, grabbed up his bedroll, and took it with him to lay it and himself close to his stallion. And far away from her.
Boots off, holster wrapped in its belt and lying beside her, Jacey climbed into her own bedroll … and grinned until she fell asleep.
* * *
But she wasn’t grinning the next morning when she woke up. Lying on her side, she pricked her ears for the sounds of movement. Any movement. Nothing. Still, some sixth sense told her things were amiss. Never again would she tease Hannah about her feeling things. Because this feeling was consuming her. Taking a chance, she pushed her blanket down to her waist and sat up abruptly. She braced herself with her arms behind her and pivoted to face the far piñon tree. No Zant, no Old Blood.
He’s left me out here. Jacey swept her gaze over to where, please, God, Knight should be … and slumped. He was still there, tied where she’d left him and dozing contentedly. So, Zant had left of his own free and sneaking will, the lop-eared polecat. Because if there’d been a struggle or stir of any kind, Knight would’ve raised a ruckus that would make a flock of nervous chickens proud.
Still, heeding Papa’s oft-repeated words of not taking strange surroundings for granted, Jacey looked all around her, listening to the dead quiet of the sandy desert basin. The giant saguaros stood with their thick, thorny arms raised, as if gunmen confronted them. The chuckling waters of the Santa Cruz competed with Jacey’s pounding heart. She slid her hand under her blanket, located her holstered Colt, and drew it out. She hid it in a fold of her blanket. Come on, you. I’m ready.
Just then, Knight snapped to, raising his head and whinnying as he peered over his shoulder. Following his lead, Jacey looked to the bend in the river, but whoever was coming remained blocked from view by high bluffs. Great. Realizing she was a wide-open target, Jacey jerked free of her bedroll and sprinted, gun in hand, to a scrubby creosote bush. As if it offered any cover. But it was the best she could do, in the time she had. Raising her Colt, steadying her aim with her other forearm propping her gunhand, she waited.
Damned if that ornery outlaw didn’t ride around the bend on that prissy stallion of his. Jacey let out her breath and lowered her Colt … before she could use it on him for scaring her. She stood up, arms at her sides, and waited.
He reined in front of her. Eyed her. Eyed her gun. Eyed the creosote bush. “Morning, Jacey. You expecting trouble?”
Jacey’s temper flared, but she bit the inside of her cheek until tears stood in her eyes. She refused to let him goad her, just so he could tease her. “Not until you rode up.”
The big man chuckled as he dismounted. “You think I’m trouble?”
Did he have to stand so close and grin down at her? Jacey pinched up her mouth. “No. I know you are.” Then because her danged curiosity wouldn’t quit nagging her, she blurted out, “Where have you been?”
“Were you scared?”
Jacey took in a deep, calming breath and let it out. “A day’s ride from Tucson? Hardly. Now, I asked you—where have you been?”
“Did you miss me?”
That did it. Jacey screamed out all her red-faced anger and frustration. Birds flew up into the air. Critters scuttled through the underbrush. Horses whinnied. The Santa Cruz stopped flowing for a startled second.
But Zant? He laughed and pulled her to him to smack a brotherly kiss on her damp forehead. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
Jacey wrenched away from him, went to her bedroll to toss her Colt on it, and then stalked off toward the heavy cover of oaks and scrubby bushes under a near bluff.
Zant was right behind her, following her step for step. “Where you headed?”
Not slowing down, Jacey called back over her shoulder. “I’ve got to relieve myself, outlaw. And I don’t need any help from you.”
The crunching of his boots said he still kept pace with her stiff-legged strides. “Okay.”
“I’d like my privacy. Go away.” Jacey stopped, selected a likely spot and stepped behind it. Turning around, her hands on her skirt’s closure, she came face to face with the outlaw.
He was still grinning. “What?”
His feigned look of pure, wide-eyed innocence didn’t fool her. “I said I need to relieve myself. And I don’t need any help from you. So, get.”
“Don’t you want to know where I’ve been?”
“No.” If he didn’t walk away soon, she’d be dancing in place, so urgent was her need.
And he knew it. The son of a rattler grinned, stood spread-legged, and crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m betting I can outwait you.”
Jacey crossed her legs. “I’m betting I can get a clean hit in your chest with my frog sticker.”
“Not before you wet your pants … skirt.”
He didn’t think she’d do it. He didn’t think she’d drop her skirt and wet with him standing right there. Fine. She’d show him. “Suit yourself.”
Jacey undid her skirt and began lowering it along with her drawers. Zant abruptly turned his back to her. Jacey squatted. And grinned. Even from the back, he looked uncomfortable. But he didn’t walk away. She knew he wouldn’t. Not now. Not if his very life depended on it. It was her turn to make the most of his discomfort. “You make a mighty big target … from this angle.”
He cleared his throat and shifted his weight. “Just … take care of your business. I’ll do the talking. I got up early and rode back to Tully’s cabin, just in case that woman was bluffing, like you said. I watched the place for a while, hoping to catch them off guard. But I never did see him. She wasn’t bluffing.”
Her business done, Jacey stood and rearranged her clothing. So he had taken her concern about Tully seriously. Out loud she said, “Hmm. Too bad you didn’t scare up some bacon and eggs while you were out there.” She stepped around him and headed casually back to the campsite. “Because I’m starving.”
This time, his footfalls didn’t sound behind hers until she was halfway back to her cold breakfast, and the ashes of last night’s fire.
* * *
Later that afternoon, and more than a few miles south of last night’s campsite, Zant reined in at the well-kept fence line surrounding Buckeye Davis’s property. The man had made a good life for himself and his huge family along the Santa Cruz River. Some cattle. Some horses. A few hardscrabble crops. But all of it, including the various cabins spread about the place, were neat and orderly. Just like Buckeye. Who looked well fed and contented with his lot in life as he approached on horseback.
“I couldn’t believe my eyes when I looked up from that broke wagon wheel and seen you, boy. I told Arturo—you remember my oldest boy?—that it looked like you.” Grinning, chuckling, the older man looked Zant up and down. “And it is. I said to him, ‘Arturo, I’ll be a ring-tailed coyote if it ain’t Kid Chapelo’s boy all growed up.’ How long’s it been, son?” The big, sunburned, smiling old man held out a hamlike hand to Zant.
Grinning, Zant reached over the fence to shake it. “More than five years.” He then turned to Jacey and back to Buckeye. “Buckeye, I brought some real royalty with me this time. Meet Jacey Lawless.”
The man’s eyes widened as he looked Jacey up and down. “Lord above, who’d’ve thought? A Chapelo and a Lawless riding together again. Why, I plum feel me a need to bend my knee to you, sweet thing. So, you’re little Jacey? Your pap talked about you all the time. Always said you was just like him. Yep, the apple of his eye. How is your old pap? He still full of piss and vinegar?”
Zant watched Jacey’s face. Her chin went up a notch. She stilled in her saddle. Zant quickly spoke up for her. “Buckeye, we’re here because of some trouble.”
Buckeye sobered, splitting his gaze from Zant to Jacey, evidently assessing her grim quietness, and then finally refocusing on him. “Let’s take it inside, then. I’ll get the gate. And don’t mind all the kids underfoot. They’ll move out the way afore you trample ’em. Now, y’all plan on staying for supper. Maria and the girls are cooking up a heap of fresh beef.”
Within a few minutes, they were in the main adobe cabin, introductions were made all around, Zant found himself hugged by Maria and her brood of daughters and grandkids, and then he, Jacey, and Buckeye settled at the smooth-cut and sturdy wooden trestle table. With cool drinks of water in front of them, with the kids shooed back to their chores, with Maria, an ample and pleasant Mexican woman, overseeing the cooking, Zant briefly told their story. At the end of it, he shrugged. “And that’s what brought us to your door, Buckeye.”
At turns sad, incredulous, angry, and disbelieving while Zant spoke, Buckeye now sat up straight, clamping his big hands on his knees. “Now, you young’uns don’t think I had anything to do with any of those goings-on, do you?”
For the first time since they’d arrived, Jacey spoke up. “I didn’t know until I met you, Mr. Davis. But now I can see you didn’t.”
“I thank you for that, little lady. And it’s right sorry I am about yer ma and yer pap. I loved him like a brother.” He smacked a huge fist onto the table. “Damn, I wish I could help you. But I don’t have no doin’s with the gang no more. I’m a law-abidin’ man. Got this here family to feed.”
“I understand. But maybe you can help, Buckeye. I’m a little rusty concerning the whereabouts of the rest of the gang because I’ve been in a Mexican prison for five years, so—”
“You what?” Buckeye bellowed out his laughter. He reared back and called out to Maria, “You hear that, Mama? The Kid’s kid’s been in prison.”
Occupied with making tortillas, Maria turned and grinned broadly. “Sí, sí.” Zant felt his face heat up. He dared a glance at Jacey. Bright-eyed with held-back laughter, she quirked up a corner of her mouth. Glad to see her smiling again, even if it was at his expense, Zant shrugged his shoulders and grinned back at her. She shook her head and turned to Buckeye as he recovered and spoke again.
“I swear if this don’t beat all. Now, how can I help?”
Before Zant could say a word, Jacey jumped in. “Were you there the day my father and Zant’s … got into it?”
“Hell, sweet thing, which time?”
Grim now, Zant merely stared at Jacey when she cut her gaze to him and then looked back to Buckeye. “The last time.”
He sobered and shook his head. “No. I’d already quit the gang by then. And I’m not sorry I had. Would’ve hated to see J. C. and the Kid go at it with guns.”
Zant tamped down his own emotion to ask, “Do you know, or have you heard, what caused them to come to a final standoff?”
Buckeye firmed his lips together as he looked off to a point out the, open front door of his good-sized home. A group of dark-skinned, laughing children ran back and forth outside. But when he shook his head, Zant’s hopes fell. “No, not directly. But I did hear tell it was over a baby.” Now he looked right into Zant’s eyes. “That baby was mostly likely you, son.”
“Me?” A cold chill swept over Zant. Next to him, Jacey’s tense quietness spoke more than anything she could’ve said.
Buckeye frowned and worked his mouth, as if he were having trouble coming up with the right words. His blue eyes held a hint of sympathy when he finally spoke. “I’m figurin’ you know how your pap left your ma and you to fend for yerselves? You mayhaps was too young to remember that he also … well, he used his fists on her. Ya see, J. C. wasn’t having no part of a man who’d act like that. He already had a wife and two little girls of his own. Already knew what it was to be a pa.”
Dim, distant memories, all of them ugly, flooded Zant. A hand gently squeezed his forearm. He looked over to Jacey. She was unsmiling, but her soft, luminous eyes spoke for her. He looked down at her small hand on his arm. He’d been around her long enough to know that expressions of sympathy from her were few and far between. Which made her simple gesture all the more wrenching. He abruptly stood up. “Excuse me.”
Only quietness followed him out the door. With long strides, Zant walked a good ways from the cabin, from the laughing kids, from the pleasant and loving family here. He’d never known this kind of family devotion in his whole life. Only Don Rafael’s bullish and manipulative variety. Within a stride or two of the boundary fence, Zant stopped, bent a knee, put his hands to his waist, and stood with his head hung down. Staring blindly at the ground, his mouth worked around the erupting emotion that threatened to send him to his knees.
He stood like that for a long time. How long, he didn’t know. He looked up only when Jacey silently walked past him and stopped at the fence. Keeping her back to him, she rested her forearms on the split-rail fence and looked out over the vast desert on the other side of the Davis property. She stared silently, as if something of great interest were happening in the far mountains. “You heard some mighty rough things back there, Chapelo.”
Zant eyed her slender back, her long black braid, and her booted foot up on the fence’s bottom rail. And felt instantly better for her lack of gushing sentimentalism. Had she come out here and put her arms around him and cried and carried on, he’d have been so humiliated—because he would have given in to the same things—that he could never again look her in the face.
Instead, this way, he regained his control and shook it off. “Wasn’t anything I haven’t heard before.”
“That doesn’t make it any easier, I suppose.” She was silent another moment and then said, “Buckeye and his family are nice people.”
Zant nearly grinned at her offhand attempt to cheer him up. “Yeah, they are. He kept up with me all my growing-up years. He started coming to see me and my mother after … my father died. He’d always bring me a little present and leave my mother some money to get by on.”
Jacey turned around to face him for the first time. “Money? I thought Don Rafael was rich.”
“He was, still is. But he wouldn’t help her or allow her to live with him after she gave birth to me—a bastard. Hell, the only reason the old son of a bitch took me in when she died was because he finally accepted that I’d be his only heir.”
Jacey shook her head. “It’s hard to believe someone could be that cruel to his own flesh and blood.” She looked down and then up at him again. “How old were you … when she died?”
“Three years old, almost four.”
“No more’n a baby.” She got quiet again, stared at him. When he didn’t offer anything further, she became matter-of-fact. “I came out here to fetch you for supper. Maria wants us to stay the night, too. Leastwise, I think she does. I can’t understand her Mexican. Or her English.”
Zant wanted to hug her for making him laugh. “Then we’d better get going. With all those mouths to feed, we won’t get anything but bones and gristle if we’re late.”
Jacey pulled away from the fence and sauntered toward him. “Even that sounds pretty good right now. I never did get my bacon and eggs this morning.”
As she sashayed by him, Zant turned with her, matching his stride to hers. Restored now, grateful, but not knowing how to thank her for what she’d just done for him, he put his arm around her shoulders and held her close to his side.
She didn’t move away. Not then, and not all the way to the house.
* * *
“Guess I was right, huh?” Jacey chuckled in a self-deprecating way as she looked over at Zant.
Freshly bathed and in clean clothes, as was she, he sat his roan like a nobleman on parade. “Yeah, I guess so. Maria did want us to stay overnight.”
“What’d you make of all the shuffling around of kids and grandkids last night to find places for us to sleep?”
“You mean her putting me up in one house and you in the farthest one away from me? I’d say Maria was making sure your virtue stayed intact.”
Jacey gave a less-than-delicate snort. “If I stayed around her long enough, there’d be no danger of me losing it, what with all the food she stuffed into me. I’d be as big as a heifer, and about as pretty, inside of a month. I still may not want to eat for another week.”
“Good. Then I’ll keep all these vittles she gave us for myself.”
“Just try it, outlaw.”
At total ease with him for the first time, Jacey laughed right along with him. Since yesterday afternoon, since she’d come out to the fence, he was different with her. She was different with him. Almost brotherly and sisterly. Almost as if they liked and respected each other. As if they could have been good friends, if all this other stuff wasn’t between them.
But friendly wasn’t exactly what she felt when she looked at him, when she found she had to increasingly look down from his steady gaze. It seemed he couldn’t look at her, either, without that certain light flaring in his eyes. In self-defense, Jacey tugged her slouch hat down low over her brow and rode along beside him in a silence she chose to call companionable.
But they hadn’t gone half a desert-heated mile over endless sand and gravel and around tumbled outcroppings of huge boulders, before a sudden thought broke the quiet between them. She looked over at the big outlaw to her left and said, “It could be a girl, you know.”
He met her gaze with a frown already tugging his mouth down. “What? What could be a girl?”
“Your baby. The one you think I’m going to carry. You kept calling it your son. It could be a girl.”
She watched several emotions play over his face before he conceded, “All right. It could be a girl.”
“That wouldn’t change anything for you?”
He stared as if afraid to look away, as if he thought she’d go for his jugular if he did. “No.”
Jacey nodded, looked down, fiddled with Knight’s reins, and then tilted her chin up at a questioning angle. “Then, what about your spurs?”
Zant blinked. Sniffed. Swiped his hand under his nose. And frowned. “Jacey, what the hell are you talking about? Do we need to find some shade and get you some water, girl?”
Jacey scowled. “It’s not the heat. And I just had a drink from my canteen. I know what I’m asking. I said, what about your spurs?”
“And I’m asking you—what about them?”
She looked down to his stirrup and stared at his boot heel. Large-roweled silver spurs. He’d been wearing them since the night he’d thought he had his hands on Papa. “Where’d you get ’em? And why?”
“In Nogales. Before I came back to Tucson. And because I felt it was time to get my own pair. Why—you want some now?”
“No. I have my father’s.” Through with questioning him, Jacey fell silent again.
But still the man’s gaze stayed riveted on her. Heat that had nothing to do with the shimmering desert bloomed on Jacey’s cheeks. She frowned and looked over at him. “What’re you starin’ at?”
He didn’t answer her, except to finally look away and glare at the far mountains. She thought she heard him say, under his breath, “Beats the hell out of me.”
* * *
“Beats the hell out of me,” Zant muttered. Why’d she go and bring up the baby? Yesterday at Buckeye’s, when she’d questioned him out at the fence about his mother, was the only time he’d even thought about his plan since they’d left Tucson two days ago.
Well, at least now she knew why he felt the way he did—about a lot of things. But was being with her causing him to lose his edge, softening him toward the Lawlesses? Maybe making him think twice about such a cruel plot as his? Cruel plot? Zant frowned. Since when had he thought of his intentions as a cruel plot? Far from it. They were just. They were warranted. He stole a quick glance at his companion. Damn her for being so little and ornery and painfully desirable.
But, no. Hell, no. It wasn’t her wearing him down. It was this desert. It had a way of doing that to a man. Made you think about nothing but your next patch of shade, your next drink of water. Made you wary of rattlers and Gila monsters and scorpions. And not just with regard to yourself. You’d best have a care for your mount, lest you find yourself afoot and as good as dead out here. Plenty of bleached bones about to testify to that.
Having thus sidetracked his thoughts to the daily concerns of survival, Zant turned to Jacey. “Come tomorrow, about nooh, if we keep heading west, we’ll be at Two-finger McCormack’s place.”
With her dark eyes shaded by her hat’s floppy brim, she looked over at him and grinned. Knowing why, he grinned right back. She then chuckled and shook her head. “Papa’s best stories were about Two-finger. He said bad luck chased that old outlaw like coyotes do field mice.”
“Yeah. I heard the same. Heard he got the name Two-finger because he blew the other three off his hand while cleaning his own gun.”
Jacey went wide-eyed and leaned over her pommel, giving in to her hilarity. To Zant, the musical sound was like tiny tinkly bells. But the desert citizens apparently had different opinions. Lizards dived into rock crevices. Furry creatures scurried under yuccas. Two wrens took wing. But Zant’s chest swelled with sudden high spirits. He wanted more than anything else to hear more of her unrestrained laughter. So he quipped, “I wonder what he looks like after so many years. You think he’s got a three-legged horse and maybe only one eye by now?”
Grinning ear to ear, Jacey sat up, stared wide-eyed at him, and gurgled out, “You think there’ll be enough left of him to recognize?”
Zant pretended to consider that. “Well, maybe if he’s lost an arm or a couple legs, we can just roll him into a corner and search his place, see if he has your keepsake.”
Jacey held a hand against her belly as she laughed with him. Her words came with gasping gaps between them. “Yeah … and he wouldn’t be … able to shoot at us … like that old woman back at … Tully’s aimed to do.”
A score more far-fetched predictions and storied remembrances of Two-finger McCormack accompanied them west, toward their next encounter. And toward the gentle, starry … waiting night.