Pete (The Cowboys) Page 10

  “I’m a quarter Indian,” Anne said. “My grandmother was a Crow.”

  He kept standing where he was, Anne still grasping his arm, a smile still pinned to her face. “It wouldn’t matter if you were full Indian,” he said finally. “You have a right to buy anything you want from any store.”

  His mouth was saying things he didn’t want to say, things he didn’t believe.

  But Judy came back carrying the gray dress and something in pink. The undisguised anger in her eyes, the mottled red of her cheeks, the obvious effort she was making just to serve Anne made Pete furious. He didn’t know why. He didn’t understand it. He just knew he couldn’t embarrass Anne in front of this poison-tongued clerk. The owner followed with two more dresses.

  “We have to return to our ranch tomorrow,” Pete said. “Can you make any alterations in the dresses by then?”

  “If they’re not too extensive. Maybe your wife has a sewing machine and could do up the hems herself. Since she is rather short, they’ll all have to be altered.”

  “Do you have a sewing machine?” Pete asked.

  Anne nodded.

  “Good. Try on as many dresses as you like. Look through all the rest of this stuff. Get yourself some of everything you need.” Anne looked at him as though she couldn’t believe he meant what he said. “No telling when we’ll get back to town. This may have to last you for a whole year.” He didn’t care how much money she spent. It wasn’t his.

  He couldn’t keep his mind on the dresses she put on for his approval or the coats, hats, blouses, or other endless items of clothing, enough to outfit half-a-dozen women. He said yes to everything because he didn’t really see anything they showed him. He only saw the massacre when the Indians killed his parents, his brothers and sisters, everybody in the wagon train except himself. He wouldn’t have escaped if he hadn’t been crouched in a dry wash a short distance away taking care of nature’s call.

  He could still hear the battle cry of the Indians as they exploded from a dry wash on the other side of the trail, hear the screams of the victims as they fell, one after another, to the arrows, hatchets, spears, clubs of the Comanche who were determined the white man wouldn’t take their land. He had cowered in that wash knowing there was nothing a child could do to stop the slaughter, knowing he would become a victim himself if they discovered him.

  He’d hidden there for hours, long after night had shrouded the grisly scene in dark shadows. When he finally came out, it was to drive coyotes away from the bodies. All night long he stood watch, protecting what was left of his family.

  Some hunters found him two days later. They buried his family and took him to the nearest town. They sold the wagons and their contents and gave the money to a family to take care of him. When the money ran out, the family turned him over to an orphanage.

  He’d never been able to forget hiding in that wash, shaking with fear, not daring to cry in case one of the Indians might hear him, wanting to do something to help, knowing he couldn’t. That helplessness had left him with a tremendous feeling of guilt that he hadn’t somehow saved his family, guilt that he had somehow survived and they hadn’t, guilt for being too afraid to move. It didn’t matter that he knew he couldn’t have done anything to help, knew they would have killed him if they’d found him. The guilt remained. No amount of reasoning, no broadened perspective that came with age, no accumulated knowledge that came with maturity had been able to get rid of it.

  “You can’t like everything I show you. You’ve got to choose something,” Anne said.

  Pete jerked his mind from the dark corridors of his past. “What?”

  “You’ve said yes to everything I’ve shown you.”

  “Then take them all.”

  “That’s nearly a dozen dresses. I can’t possibly use that many.”

  The possibility of such a tremendous sale seemed to have gone a long way toward making the two women more willing to be cooperative. That was when Pete noticed the pile of shoes, purses, and dozens of other items, some of which he didn’t recognize.

  “Those yours, too?”

  “Yes. You really must choose.”

  “Nonsense,” Pete said, gathering his wits. “They’re your clothes. You choose. Have them pack up anything you like. I’ll settle the bill when I return.”

  He had to get away, if only for a few minutes.

  “Where are you going?”

  Fear—or was it panic—showed in her eyes.

  “Outside to get some air. I’ve been closed up too long.”

  He forced himself to walk at a normal pace. He couldn’t decide whom he was trying to protect, Anne or himself, but at this point he hardly cared.

  “You look like you’re escaping from an Indian attack.”

  Pete whirled to find himself face-to-face with the banker. “Just from an hour helping my wife shop for clothes,” he replied.

  The banker laughed. “That’s nearly as lethal. I always make my wife take her sister.”

  “My wife has no sister. No mother, aunts, or cousins either.”

  “Then I’m afraid you’re stuck.”

  No, he wasn’t stuck. He had already sent for the papers that would prove Anne had married Peter before he was killed. The ranch would be hers. He didn’t have to protect her any longer. He couldn’t believe he’d defended her. He’d done more than defend her. He’d sprung to her defense with the eagerness of a medieval knight. He hated Indians. He always had. He refused to have anything to do with them. He—

  His brother was an Indian.

  He hadn’t thought of Hawk like that in years. He used to attack him whenever he got the chance. Isabelle had threatened to bar him from the table if he didn’t stop. Jake had sworn to chain him to the horse corral. But Pete had stopped wanting to attack Hawk. When? Why?

  When he’d finally been able to separate Hawk from the Indians that killed his family, when he had come to terms with the fact that folks are individuals regardless of skin color. He’d done the same thing with the Indians he met in the mine fields, in the saloons, the Indians who warned him of the coming winter. He’d stopped hating them, too. He just thought he did because he’d been in the habit of saying “I hate Indians” for so long, he hadn’t stopped to asked himself if he really did hate them.

  But when had he stopped?

  When he finally got over the need to feel shame, the need to blame himself for not being able to prevent the slaughter of his family. He was a child then, thinking as a child, feeling and reacting as a child, striking out against the world like a child. Jake and Isabelle had given him a home, love, understanding—had helped him realize he didn’t have to keep on carrying the burden of that tragic morning. He could still grieve for the loss and horror of his family’s murder, but the world was different now. He was different.

  He was a man.

  Pete felt the pressure inside him ease, then go away entirely. It felt good to let go. Now he could be proud that he’d defended Anne.

  He walked over to a bench in front of The Emporium and eased himself down. His hat annoyed him. It didn’t fit right. He was tired of wearing another man’s clothes even if they did fit nearly as well as his own. And he was tired of looking like a dude. He was going to buy himself some proper clothes, and he wasn’t going to let the fact that he didn’t have any money of his own stop him. Peter owed him something for saving his wife from her uncle, and for saving his ranch from Belser. A few clothes didn’t seem like a high price to pay.

  “We’re ready for you, Mr. Warren.”

  Pete turned to find the owner standing in the doorway of the emporium.

  “Your wife has picked out all the things she wants.”

  “Then add them all up.”

  “We have.”

  When he walked back inside that building, Anne didn’t look any different. She looked at him with the same almost childlike innocence, her big black eyes open wide, questioning, worrying, fearful. They seemed to say “You’re my only shield. Without you I
feel lost.” He realized that her Indian ancestry made it all the more important for him to protect her. He had managed to overcome his prejudice, but others clearly hadn’t.

  “I’m afraid it’s rather a lot,” she said.

  “How much?”

  “More than two hundred dollars,” Judy said, her tone giving the impression that it was a mortal sin that a woman like Anne should be allowed to squander such a large sum of money on herself.

  “That’s nothing compared to some of the bills Pearl used to run up.”

  “Who’s Pearl?” Anne asked. “You never mentioned her.”

  “Sean’s wife,” he said, reaching into his coat pocket for his wallet. “I’ll tell you about her later. How much exactly?”

  “The total is $233.68.”

  Pete paid and waited for his change. “Wrap everything up and send it over to the hotel by tomorrow morning.”

  “I’ll need a wagon to get all this over there,” Judy said.

  “Then get a wagon,” Pete said as he turned and headed out of the store.

  “Where are we going now?” Anne asked, hurrying after him.

  “You’re going back to the hotel to take a nap to make up for the sleep you lost getting up so early this morning. I’m going shopping.”

  Pete was late. Anne had probably been expecting him back hours ago. He swallowed the last of his whiskey and considered ordering another. No, better not. He had to keep his wits about him. If anybody found out who he really was, he’d be in jail five minutes later. He doubted he’d be able to make anyone believe he was only pretending to be Peter Warren until he could find his own money. Certainly not after spending so much of Uncle Carl’s cash.

  And if anyone found Peter’s body—and that was always a possibility—he’d probably be hanged for murder.

  He took his time walking back to the hotel. He was glad he’d had his new clothes sent back to the room. It would have been very awkward to carry such a large package through the streets. He entered the hotel at 7:08 P.M. He would be late for dinner. He hoped the dining room hadn’t closed. He hoped Anne hadn’t waited for him.

  But she had.

  She rose from the chair by the window when he entered the room. The vision that met his gaze caused him to stop in his tracks.

  “You had me worried,” she said in her soft voice. “I was afraid something might have happened to you.”

  His tongue lay like a dead thing in his mouth. He couldn’t speak. She had always been pretty, but in his absence, she’d turned into a vision. She was beautiful. She was wearing the deep-red gown. He remembered her showing it to him, but he didn’t remember seeing her wear it. Surely he couldn’t have forgotten something like that.

  “What have you done to yourself?” he managed to ask.

  “You don’t like it?” She was instantly fearful, crushed.

  “No. It’s very nice. In fact, it’s more than very nice. It’s stunning. But what happened? How did you change?”

  He had the distinct feeling that a suave, clever man who understood women and knew how to flatter them would have stated that very differently.

  “I met a woman here at the hotel who knew my mother. When I told her I’d bought all these new clothes and didn’t know what to do with them, she offered to help me.”

  “Your hair. What have you done to it?”

  “Do you like it?”

  Didn’t the woman have a mirror? Couldn’t she tell she was beautiful? He walked across the room, took her by the shoulders, turned her around, and marched her toward the mirror that covered about two feet of one wardrobe door.

  Always before she’d worn her long, heavy tresses in a loosely confined mantle down her back. Now they had been braided and coiled atop her head like a crown. A series of silver-tipped ivory combs he didn’t remember held them in place. She looked regal, queenlike.

  “Look at yourself,” he ordered. “You don’t have to ask my opinion to know you’re beautiful. You came here looking like a pretty woman. You’ve turned yourself into a beautiful one.”

  Anne smiled broadly. “I hoped you’d be pleased. Mrs. Dean said you would be.”

  Pete wasn’t very good at describing women’s clothes. His primary concern over the past decade had been how to take them off as quickly as possible. Anne’s dress was the kind a man admires as much as he respects the lady wearing it. It had a full skirt and ruffles at the bottom. But it was the top that made it unique and made Anne look special. It hugged her waist, outlining its slimness as well as the shapeliness of her hips. It opened at the front to show a white blouse and enough of the top of her breasts to get him aroused.

  It was completed by a little jacket—something like he’d seen one of the bullfighters wear when he was in Mexico several years before. It had long sleeves and a high collar and was lavishly decorated with black braid.

  “Any man would be pleased to be seen with you. He’d be the envy of every man he met.”

  Anne turned pink with pleasure. “If it’s going to cause people to stare, maybe I should change back into my old dress.”

  He’d have had to be ten times as insensitive as he was not to know that changing back into her old dress would crush Anne’s spirits. “Stay just as you are. I’m the one who ought to change.”

  “You look very handsome,” Anne said. Then she blushed a little more. “You always do.”

  Pete wasn’t used to thinking of himself as handsome. Growing up with Matt, Chet, Luke, and Will—especially Will—that had been impossible. The notion that any woman could consider him handsome made him wonder if she was trying to wheedle something out of him.

  “Come off it,” he said, trying to convince himself he didn’t care if nobody thought he was handsome. “I don’t scare the cows when I ride by, but that’s about the best you can say. Sean always said—”

  He stopped in mid-sentence. When was he going to stop talking about people Peter Warren couldn’t possibly have known? “Never mind what Sean said.”

  “If he said you weren’t handsome, he was wrong,” Anne said. “Dolores commented on it the day you arrived. She said I was fortunate to have got myself a man who was tall, handsome, and sensible.”

  “I think it’s about time we stop complimenting each other. We’ll have such big heads, we won’t be able to get through the dining room door.”

  “We’d better hurry,” Anne said, suddenly agitated. “They stop letting people in after seven-thirty.” She grabbed her purse—a beaded, sacklike thing that dangled elegantly from her wrist—and a black lace shawl Pete was positive he hadn’t seen before.

  “You should have gone without me,” Pete said as he draped the shawl over her shoulders.

  Anne turned to face him, her expression one of surprise. “Why would I do that?”

  Pete realized that the clothes had proved she had a woman’s body, but her mind and emotions were still those of the same innocent Anne.

  “Because my being rude enough to stay late drinking in a saloon is no reason for you to go hungry.”

  “I wouldn’t think of eating without you,” she said as he held the door for her to leave the room.

  “Why not?” he asked, as he locked the door.

  “You’re my husband.”

  He kept forgetting that. He had to remember.

  They descended the steps into the lobby. “Hold that door,” he said to the waiter who was removing the stops that held the dining room doors open.

  “You made it just in time,” the young man said. He might have been talking to Pete, but his eyes were glued to Anne.

  “I hope you saved some food,” Pete said. “I’m hungry enough to eat a horse.” He hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Anne hadn’t either. She was probably as hungry as he was, though she hadn’t had three whiskeys.

  The waiter seated them at a table in the center of the room. It would have taken just a few minutes to clear one of the tables in a more secluded spot, but Pete decided the waiter wanted to position Anne where he could look at
her. Pete could understand, but he wasn’t sure he liked that. She wasn’t his wife, but as long as he kept up this pretense, she was his responsibility.

  He was amused to see that most of the menu was in French. He was certain there hadn’t been a real Frenchman in Big Bend since the heaver gave out in the Big Horns fifty years earlier.

  “I can’t read anything,” Anne said.

  “What do you want to know?” He almost told her that he’d spent so many years in mining camps, eating wherever he could, that he’d gotten to the point that he could read almost anything in French, German, or Spanish, as long as it had to do with food. For once he managed to think before he spoke. Maybe he would survive after all.

  They ordered their meal. He even ordered a glass of wine for Anne to be brought to the table immediately. He ordered a whiskey for himself. It amused him to watch Anne’s tentative sips, the face she made when she got the first sharp taste of the dry red wine.

  “It’s bitter,” she exclaimed. “Why would anybody pay money to drink something like this?”

  He laughed. “It’s like coffee, an acquired taste.”

  She took another sip and wrinkled her nose. “I’d rather taste your whiskey.”

  “You wouldn’t like it.”

  “I might.”

  “It’s not suitable for a lady to drink whiskey. People will think… well, it’s just not suitable.”

  Anne blushed. She looked more charming than ever. Her cheeks glowed with heightened color. She looked excited, young, and extremely lovely.

  The food arrived. A smile of quiet pleasure wreathed Anne’s face.

  “What are you grinning about?” Pete asked.

  “This will be the first meal I’ve eaten in a very long time that I didn’t have to help cook.”

  “I thought Dolores did all the cooking.”

  “When Uncle Carl brought me to stay with him, he said I would have to help Dolores to earn my keep. I didn’t mind. After Papa died, Mama and I needed somewhere to stay. But Mama was too ill to work. I couldn’t expect Uncle Carl to keep us for nothing.”

  Clearly Uncle Carl wasn’t made of the same stuff as Jake and Isabelle. They’d adopted Pete and ten other orphans just because they had no place to go. They had to work, but neither Jake nor Isabelle made them think they worked for their keep. They worked for the family, for themselves. Clearly nobody had ever made Anne feel like that.