CHAPTER 5
A few minutes earlier, Hunter thought he’d heard Anna’s voice in his sleep.
He opened his eyes and turned to see that her side of the bed was empty. Then through the fog of sleep and dreams, he remembered she’d awakened and said she was going to take a walk. He didn’t much care for that idea, he realized now but had been too tired to realize earlier.
He rose from the bed. Having learned from his experience earlier, he pulled on his denims and buckskin tunic and stepped into his boots. He even donned his hat just because, like most westerners, he didn’t feel complete without it. He didn’t feel complete without his knife and gun, either, but he decided to leave them. He was just going to go out and have a look around for Anna.
To that end, he strode through the open French doors onto the balcony and, leaning forward, rested his arms on the balcony rail. Peering down into the courtyard, he couldn’t see much. There being no moon, the darkness was relieved only by starlight.
Deciding to go down and have a closer look, he turned to his left and gave a sharp grunt as someone walked straight into him, her warm body pressing against his. At first, he thought she was Anna but then Lucinda Scanlon lifted her face to his and she was smiling, lips stretched back from all those perfect, white teeth, starlight glinting in her eyes.
“My gosh, you’re a big man! You know, I didn’t realize just how big till now! Why I feel like a child in your arms!”
“Miss Scanlon—what in the holy hob are you doin’ out here this time o’ the night?” And dressed in only a thin nightgown? he did not add but wondered. Obviously, she wore nothing under it. Her hair was down again and blowing in the breeze. He could smell her perfume that had fairly filled both the dining room and parlor earlier and as well as brandy and . . . what?
He’d frolicked in Deadwood enough times before he’d married Anna to recognize the distinctive, cloying aroma of the midnight oil.
Why, this little scamp of an English-educated debutante had an opium pipe in her room!
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I couldn’t sleep, and I guess I was just wandering around and . . . found myself up here.” She peered into the guestroom. “Is your wife asleep?”
“No, she’s out here, too.” Hunter looked over the balcony rail again. “Somewhere.”
“Getting some air, eh?”
“I reckon.”
“Did you have an argument . . . big man?” she said, jeeringly, obviously drunk and addled from the Chinese tobacco. She wrapped her arms around Hunter’s neck and stepped up close to him. “It’s okay if you did . . . if you’re alone. I’m always alone. I’m always alone and . . . well, sad, if you must know. My brothers are dead. Mother is dead. And . . . well, if you must know—shhh!” She placed a finger to her bee-stung lips, then wrapped her arms around his neck again. “Father is dying.”
Hunter gently lowered her arms from his neck, frowning down at her with genuine concern. “I’m sorry to hear that, Miss Scanlon.”
“Lucinda.”
“Lucinda, I mean.” Hunter’s head was suddenly aswirl with questions and conflicting feelings.
If the man was dying, why on earth had he bought the horses?
Standing before him, entwining her fingers down low before her, Lucinda Scanlon looked up at him and shook her hair from her eyes. “I think that buying the horses was his way of trying to stave off death. Of denying it, somehow. Of telling it to go to hell—it’s not going to get him. Not Rufus Scanlon!”
Suddenly, her eyes filled with tears. She leaned forward and placed her cheek against Hunter’s chest. “I’m so sad,” she sobbed.
Hunter felt about as awkward as he’d ever felt. Having all this female flesh in his arms and yet not wanting her here. Yet she was obviously feeling very dark and depressed, and she was crying against his chest, dampening his shirt. He couldn’t very well just push her away—now, could he?
But what if Annabelle returned?
He steeled himself with a deep breath, filling up his chest. He placed his hands on the sobbing young woman’s shoulders. “I’m very sorry to hear that about your pa, Miss . . . er, I mean, Lucinda. But I need to go out lookin’ for my wife. I’m afraid she might’ve taken a walk and got turned around. I’d best see to—”
She reached up and placed a finger on his lips. “Wait.” She tilted her head back, looking up at him, a devilish little light in her eyes and curling her lips. “Kiss me first. You’ll make it better that way.” She started to rise up onto her toes, sliding her mouth toward his. “Please. She has enough man . . . she can share . . .”
Hunter pushed her back away from him again. “I’m sorry, Lucinda. Truly, I am, but—”
“Oh, God!” she cried and, hardening her jaws, slapped him hard across the jaw.
It was a stinging, burning blow.
“You go to hell, then,” she seethed.
She swung around and stumbled away on her bare feet. Her pale nightgown was quickly absorbed by the darkness.
Hunter stared after her in shock.
“Hunter?”
Annabelle’s voice nudged him out of the fog.
He turned to peer down into the courtyard. Anna stood there, gazing up at him. It was then he realized that during his enervating encounter with Lucinda Scanlon he’d heard a commotion out in the darkness beyond the yard. “Anna?” he said, turning and squeezing the balcony rail in his hands. “Where on earth have you been?”
“Bobby Lee and I have been chasing away a shadow.”
Hunter scowled. “A what?”
Anna walked to the stairs and then stood before her husband, looking up at him, incredulous. “How has your night been?”
Hunter chuckled and took his young wife in his arms, drew her close against him.
“Your shirt’s wet,” she said.
“Yeah, well, it’s been rainin’ Lucinda Scanlon.”
Anna looked up at him. “Pretty rain.”
He turned Anna toward the open French doors. “I’ll tell you tomorrow. Let’s go back to bed. We might get a couple of hours in before dawn . . . if we’re lucky.”
“If we’re very lucky,” Anna said.
* * *
On the trail early the next day, headed back in the direction of their ranch near Tigerville, in the Black Hills, Hunter said, “Whoa!”
He reined Nasty Pete to a halt.
Riding on his left, Annabelle stopped Ruthie and glanced at Hunter. “What is it?”
The ex-Confederate glanced up at the high rocks lining the trail. “Seen a shadow of some—”
He stopped as that shadow dropped straight down onto the trail from the rocks above it. Plop! Bobby Lee turned to face them both, giving a devilish smile with those long eyes of his, and shook himself.
“Bobby Lee,” Hunter said, removing his hand from the grips of the LeMat holstered on his right thigh, “you about took another seven years off my life!”
The coyote swung around and trotted up the trail, riding point.
Annabelle laughed as she and Hunter booted their mounts on up the trail. “I was sure glad he was out there last night, looking out for me.”
“That’s the strangest dang thing,” Hunter said. “What in holy blazes would someone be doin’ out there in the middle of the night?”
“I think he or whoever it was, was keeping an eye on us. For some reason. I don’t know why.”
“You know who I think it was?” Hunter said.
“Who?”
“Jack Tatum.”
“You think Tatum still holds a grudge over the dove du pave you two were fighting over in Deadwood?”
“Well, she wasn’t just any dove du pave,” Hunter said.
“Oh, really?” Annabelle said, arching both brows in that schoolmarmish way of hers. “Do tell!”
“Well, she was really purty an’ I think he wanted to marry her. You know—make an honest woman out of her. But then I came along—an’ I have to make a confession here. I ain’t braggin’ or nothin’ like that. But I think I mighta stole her heart a little.”
“Oh, you did. And you left her high and dry?”
Hunter laughed. “Heck, no. She’s one of the biggest, notorious madams in Deadwood even to this day.”
Annabelle stared at him, aghast. “This dove didn’t happen to be Maud ‘Frenchie’ Devereaux?”
Hunter grinned. “Gentlemen keep their secrets.”
Annabelle beat him with her hat, saying, “You big rebel galoot—I had no idea I was married to such a man about Deadwood!”
“Annabelle—stop!” Hunter said, raising an arm to defend himself. More seriously, he said, “Wait—hold on. Stop!”
He was staring up trail, his eyes wide and serious.
Annabelle stopped and followed his gaze to where Bobby Lee sat on a flat rock fifty feet ahead and on the trail’s left side.
He checked Nasty Pete down to a stop. Annabelle did the same with Ruthie. At nearly the same time, something buzzed through the air between them to smash into a boulder just behind them. The loud thud! was followed by a rifle’s distant bark.
“Bushwhack!” Hunter yelled just as Nasty Pete gave a shrill whinny and rose sharply up off his front hooves.
He’d been so concerned about Annabelle that the horse’s sudden start caught him off guard. He reached for the horn, but his fingers merely brushed it before he was rolling down the horse’s left hip. The ground came up fast, rocks and pebbles growing in his vision, until he slammed onto the trail with an ear-ringing crash. He struck on his left shoulder and hip; his hat flew off his head. Bobby came mewling around him, raking him with his nose, worried about his master.
Another bullet tore up dirt inches to his right, throwing grit in his eyes. Bobby screeched and ran off into the brush. He was a brave, protective coyote, but when it came to bullets coming too close for comfort, jackrabbits became more important.
“Hunter!”
In his blurred vision, he saw Annabelle leap out of her saddle and Ruthie go tearing up the trail after Nasty Pete, dust roiling behind the frightened mounts.
“No!” Hunter said, shaking his head to clear his vision. “Grab Pete—the money!”
Annabelle dropped to a knee beside him. “Are you all right?”
Another bullet buzzed through the air over both their heads before slamming into the same rock the first one had. It was followed by the distant, echoing bark of the rifle that had fired it.
Hunter leaped to his feet, grabbed Annabelle’s arm, and pulled her off the side of the trail and behind the large boulder the bullets had slammed into. He edged a look around the edge of the boulder, staring up trail in the direction in which the horses had fled. “The hosses!” Hunter bellowed. “The money’s in the saddlebags—my saddlebags!”
As another rocketing report echoed from a pine-stippled ridge off the trail’s right side, following the bullet it had fired an eye wink earlier, Annabelle said, “At the moment, I think we have more important things to worry about!”
“Nothin’ more important than that money!” Hunter barked, edging another look to the north as both horses disappeared around a bend in the trail. “Pete has my rifle, too.”
Annabelle said with no little mockery, “I thought to grab mine!” She held out the carbine she’d shucked from her saddle boot just before Ruthie went thundering after Nasty Pete.
Hunter looked at it. His ears warmed with chagrin. “Well, ain’t you so handy.”
“For a horseman, you know little about leaving a saddle!”
“Oh, hell, this ain’t no time to add insult to injury, my sweet Yankee darlin’!” He turned to where Annabelle stood pressing her back against the boulder behind him. “Cover me. I’m gonna work my way up that ridge!”
“Hunter, hold on!”
He turned to her. “What is it?”
“Our lives are more important than that money.”
“So—what? You don’t want me to try and save it?”
“No.” Annabelle shook her head and gave a grim smile. “I just wanted you to hear it.”
“Oh, hell—I know that.” Hunter grabbed her by the back of the neck, drawing her to him brusquely and kissing her lips. “But if we don’t get that money back, we’ll be movin’ to town soon an’ you’ll likely have to go back to saloon work. Not that the men of Tigerville wouldn’t love to see you in a pair of fishnet stockings again, but—”
Taking advantage of a lull in the shooting, Hunter turned away from Annabelle and ran across the trail and into the prickly brush beyond.