Scarlet Sunset, Silver Nights Page 6

  “You’re wearing guns,” Pamela said. She didn’t know why she noticed them when Slade was standing before her naked to the waist, his abdomen heaving from his exertions. She was mesmerized by the cords of powerful muscles that played across his stomach. A strange feeling akin to nausea spiraled out from her middle making her feel weak and lightheaded. “Were those your shots?” she asked in a breathy voice.

  “For Christssake, Pamela!” Gaddy exclaimed. “The man’s just saved your barn from being burned to the ground.”

  “She has a right to know, especially after I promised to hang them up,” Slade said. “I picked them up without thinking, a matter of habit, but I wouldn’t have left the bunkhouse without them. With all this talk of trouble, I couldn’t know what I might be getting myself into.”

  “But I told you it was perfectly safe here.” But that didn’t make sense now, did it?

  Slade glanced expressively at the still-smoldering barn. “I called out, just in case it was some of your boys. You’ll find their answer embedded in the walls of the bunkhouse. I shot at the torches, but the sparks started the fire.”

  “He hit them while they were in the air,” Gaddy exclaimed. “I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it myself.”

  “Did you shoot anybody?” Belva asked.

  “They both rode away.”

  “How do you know there were two?” Pamela asked.

  “I heard them whispering.”

  “I don’t know about you, but I could use a cup of coffee,” Belva said, interrupting the tense exchange. “I’ll have some ready in a jiffy.”

  They both turned toward Belva when she spoke, and the moonlight fell on Slade’s shoulder.

  “You’ve been hurt!” Pamela exclaimed. She automatically reached out to touch him, but he jumped back as though the fire in her fingertips burned hotter than the pain from the bullet.

  “It’s nothing much,” he protested. “Just a flesh wound.”

  But Pamela didn’t see it like that. The streaks of blood and torn flesh were an accusation against her. He might not have been hurt if he hadn’t promised not to use his guns.

  “Come up to the house so I can take care of it. This is precisely why I don’t approve of guns. “Caught between her disapproval of guns and her concern over his wound, her indecision amused Slade.

  “I don’t like them either, especially when they’re being used on me. Unfortunately your visitors seem to believe in them rather strongly.”

  Pamela refused to be drawn into an argument she couldn’t win. Nothing could change her feeling about guns, but what would have happened if Slade had been unarmed? What could have happened to all of them? At the very least they would have lost the barn.

  But that didn’t concern her at the moment. She felt only relief that Slade was safe. Why? Certainly a man’s life was more important than a barn full of hay, but wasn’t the hay more valuable to her than this man? He could disappear tomorrow just as though he never existed. She had known from the moment she sat down on the porch to wait for him he wouldn’t stay, but he hadn’t been out of her thoughts for as much as five minutes since he arrived.

  The way he dominated her thoughts scared her. She felt this overwhelming compulsion to know everything about him. She had never felt this way before, and she didn’t like it.

  All the more reason to go back to Baltimore, Pamela thought to herself. Then she wouldn’t have to worry about Slade Morgan. Besides, people there understood how to live peacefully with each other. They didn’t go around stealing land or burning barns. They most certainly didn’t go around shooting each other.

  “Sit down and let me look at your shoulder,” Pamela said as soon as they reached the kitchen.

  “Are you the official nurse of the Bar Double-B?” Slade asked, his eyes unsettling in their intensity.

  “I see the men’s wounds are taken care of if that’s what you mean,” Pamela said rather stiffly. “That’s more than a flesh wound.”

  “It went right through the muscle,” Belva added. “You’re lucky it missed the bone.”

  “And to think he hit one of the men anyway,” Gaddy said.

  “What?” Pamela demanded, whirling to face her cousin.

  Slade did his best to warn Gaddy not to say anything, but the boy was so awed by Slade’s shooting he couldn’t wait to tell Pamela what he had found.

  “After you left, I went over to where those guys must have been.”

  “I hope you didn’t destroy the hoof prints,” Slade said, hoping to forestall Gaddy. “Maybe we can identify their horses if we see them again.”

  “I didn’t,” Gaddy assured him, impatient to get on with his story. “I found traces of blood in the sand. They rode out, but I’ll bet you one of them didn’t do it under his own power.”

  When Pamela returned her gaze to Slade, he saw an expression in her eyes that made his heart grow heavy in his chest. It wasn’t hate. It wasn’t even anger. He saw abhorrence, as though he were some kind of monster. On the whole, Slade would have preferred hate or anger. He had seen revulsion, disgust, even loathing in his mother’s face. It had flashed from Trish’s eyes as well.

  But he didn’t deserve it now any more than he had deserved it then. Sure, he had put on his guns after he had promised not to, but he had tried not to use them. Like a fool, he had spoken up and betrayed his position. He might as well have stepped out in the moonlight to give them a better target.

  When you looked at it in a certain way, Pamela was responsible for his being shot. If he’d done things his way, he would have circled around behind and fired the second he saw them light that torch. Then the barn wouldn’t be a smoldering mess, he wouldn’t be sitting here with a hole in his shoulder, and the foolish woman wouldn’t be glaring at him like he had arranged the whole thing on purpose.

  It wasn’t his fault no one had thought to place a guard at night. It wasn’t his fault that someone had a grudge against her father. And it certainly wasn’t his fault they had tried to bum her barn. But you couldn’t tell that from looking at her now. She looked mad enough to use a shotgun herself.

  And there she stood, still looking like a fashion plate out of a ladies’ magazine and holding him responsible for the outcome of a situation not of his making. She hadn’t even thanked him for saving her barn.

  And that made Slade mad.

  “What’s really going on around here?” he demanded, the ragged edge of his temper showing in his voice. “It didn’t matter before, but when anybody shoots at me, I want to know why.”

  “I told you,” Pamela said. “Too many cows on the range.”

  “This wasn’t about too many cows. There’s a lot more to it than that, and I mean to find out what it is.”

  “I have no idea why they wanted to burn the barn,” Pamela said, too shaken by her reaction to Slade and the shooting to be able to relax the rigidity of her expression. The attempt to burn the barn didn’t help either. Until now, all this talk about cattle and barbed wire and extra hands had been just that, talk. But now it was much too real.

  “Someone ought to tell Mr. Bagshot what’s happened,” Slade suggested.

  “I’ll go,” Gaddy offered. Now that he had news to tell, Slade noticed none of his previous reluctance.

  “You’ll need some breakfast,” Belva said.

  “That’ll take too long,” Gaddy protested, his excitement apparent to everyone. “I can eat with the boys, but you could wrap up one of your sausages. Angus can’t cook anything like you do.”

  “We don’t keep you just so you can eat, you young wastrel,” Belva admonished. “Now get going. If Dave finds out we had a barn burning and you didn’t come tell him straight away, he’ll skin you alive.”

  “Daybreak will be soon enough,” Pamela decided. “I don’t want you riding about at night,” she explained when Gaddy looked ready to argue. “Besides, someone has to watch the barn to make sure the fire’s completely out. Mr. Morgan has had a very eventful day. I think he ought
to go to bed.”

  It wasn’t a severe speech, but it had so much the feel of a boss speaking to her employees that it made everyone feel uncomfortable. Gaddy slipped out the back door and Belva busied herself at the stove.

  “There, it’s all cleaned up now,” Pamela said as she handed Belva the pan of bloody water. “Come with me to Dad’s office. That’s where I keep my medicines.”

  Slade fell in love with Josh White’s office. For the first time since he’d stepped into the house he didn’t feel out of place. A huge stone fireplace dominated one wall. The weather was too warm for a fire now, but the soot of age and use indicated that Arizona winters often made a fire desirable. A bookcase spilling over with books almost entirely covered a second wall. A third wall contained an enormous window that during the day afforded a view from the ranch house of the valley to where it opened onto the desert floor. The last wall held another window that provided an equally unobstructed view of the moonlit valley floor as it inclined and disappeared into the mountains that rose behind the house.

  The room itself was quite large, and in its center stood an enormous table which served as Josh White’s desk. Other furnishings included several deep, leather-covered chairs, hand-carved wooden tables, and rag rugs spread two and three deep over the flagstone floor. Several paintings and countless mementoes, presumably of Josh White’s years in Arizona, hung on the whitewashed walls.

  “This is a beautiful house,” Slade told Pamela as she directed him to sit in the light of an oil lantern so she could begin to bandage his wound. “No wonder your father is so determined to protect it. This is a place worth fighting for.”

  “Then you’ll stay on.” It sounded like an assumption rather than a question, and it angered Slade.

  “No.”

  “What?” Her gaze riveted on him, disbelief and consternation just two of her conflicting emotions.

  “I said no.”

  “What’s wrong with working for us?”

  “I don’t want a permanent job. And I don’t want to work for anybody.”

  Odd how feeling vulnerable moments ago could make her feel betrayed now. She had no real reason to take Slade’s refusal as a personal affront, but she did. She had no reason to care whether he stayed or left, but she did. Nor did courtesy require that she clean a wound he got from using guns after he had promised he would hang them up, but she did. In fact, she could conceive of no reason for her to concern herself with him in the least.

  But she did.

  “I’m grateful to you for keeping those men from burning our barn. That alone is of sufficient worth for me to give you the horse you need.”

  Slade stiffened. She didn’t need to talk to him like he was some lower form of life. She didn’t sound exactly condescending, but he didn’t know what else to call it. It certainly seemed close enough. His anger boiled over.

  “I didn’t ask you to give me a horse. I have more than enough money to pay for it. Money I earned,” he added when he saw surprise fill her eyes. “I don’t ask you to thank me for saving your barn. Those men could have set fire to the bunkhouse just as easily. However, I do thank you for taking care of my feet and my shoulder. It’s not something I could have done myself, at least, not half so well. I’ll leave as soon as we can settle on a horse.”

  “I didn’t ask you to leave,” Pamela said, angrily pulling a bandage around Slade’s wound so tightly it caused him to wince and stare at her questioningly. “I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “I didn’t mean to hurt you, but you made me mad. Why won’t you work for us? My father has the best reputation in the territory and the finest ranch. There hasn’t been any trouble here in more than five years.”

  “My leaving has nothing to do with your trouble, Miss White.”

  “My name is Pamela.”

  “Okay, Pamela. I’m just passing through. I’m going to California, and I can’t do that if I stay here.”

  “Where are you from, Mr. Morgan?”

  Damn! The way she called him Mr. Morgan made him feel like curdled milk. It was a form of rejection, an impersonal way of referring to him. People had called him worse and it hadn’t bothered him, but from Pamela it hurt. “If I’m going to call you Pamela, you’ve got to call me Slade.”

  “Okay, Slade, where are you from?”

  “I told you. Texas.”

  “You didn’t get here from the Texas trail, not if you walked those sixty miles.” She stared at him. Her words laid down a challenge.

  Now how did she know that? Either she had been asking questions about him, or somebody else had. He felt the old uneasiness begin to stir within him. “I am from Texas. I just didn’t take the usual route.”

  “Did you come up from Mexico?”

  “Why does it matter where I came from?”

  “You came to this ranch asking for help. We gave it. If you’re running from something, we have a right to know. I won’t do anything to endanger my men.”

  Here we go again, Slade thought. Why do people always assume if you didn’t do a thing the way they do it, you must have something to hide? He could say one thing about the carnival. As long as he kept the customers coming, nobody cared what he did. Maybe he had made a mistake by leaving. No, he didn’t want to go back.

  “You won’t have to worry about your men any longer.” He started to rise, but Pamela pushed him back down in his seat. After walking through the desert and taking a bullet in his shoulder, he felt too weak to resist.

  “If you want to leave now, that’s your decision, but you won’t set one foot out of here before I’ve finished with your arm. Nobody is going to say I turned you out with a bleeding wound.”

  That’s it, Slade thought cynically. You don’t give a damn about me, just what other people will think of you. You ought to fit well in Baltimore.

  “Why should you care what anybody says about you?”

  “What people think of me is my reputation, the value I have in the eyes of the world. It’s what a person sees when they look at me.”

  “But suppose everything else they see is false? Does that make you the kind of person they say you are?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then why worry about what they say? You and I both know you’ve had to fix me up twice. Nobody else needs to know. They’re more likely to take advantage of your kindness than praise you for it.”

  “I’m not looking for praise,” Pamela said haughtily, “and I can’t agree with you. I’ve always been taught that a person’s reputation, what other people think of you, is extremely important.”

  “Only if the people doing the thinking are important to you. And sometimes not even then. No person knows all there is to know about another person.”

  “You’re a strange man. Where did you learn to think like that?”

  “Don’t you mean how did a saddle bum like me ever manage to have a thought that didn’t have to do with his basic urges?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You might as well have. The way you’ve treated me since I got here has underscored how little you think of people like me. You’re one helluva snob, lady. But don’t let it worry you,” Slade added caustically when he saw the look of shock on Pamela’s face. “You hurry on back to Baltimore, and you won’t have to be concerned with me any more than I have to be concerned with you.”

  But he did care what she thought of him. For the first time in years, somebody else’s opinion mattered. He didn’t know why it should but, in spite of Pamela’s surface coldness and disapproval, she had reached out and touched him. He had felt it. It had been ten years since anyone had wanted to know anything about him. He had to reach back.

  A great need had risen up within him; no, it had literally burst forth from some deep chamber where he thought it had been safely contained. His need stemmed from loneliness which had grown into a painful ache over the years. Now, like a parched desert plant in a rainstorm, it thrust out its tentacles toward the promise of nourishment.

  “
I did come through Mexico, but there’s nothing wrong in that,” Slade told her. “It just so happens a lot of people like you aren’t too anxious to have me around.”

  “That’s not at all what I meant,” Pamela hastened to assure him. His calling her a snob had shocked her, but that was nothing compared to the horror she experienced when she realized he was right. Against that, the chance that he hadn’t told her the whole truth about himself didn’t matter. “I don’t dislike having you here, but I’m responsible for the ranch while Dad’s gone. I have to be careful whom I hire.”

  “And that doesn’t include saddle bums with no future and a questionable past,” Slade finished for her.

  Pamela tried to speak, but she was so stunned—the course of the conversation so unexpected—she couldn’t think of anything to say.

  “Don’t feel you have to apologize. I don’t think you’re even aware of your attitude. You probably can’t help it.” He stopped, a little ashamed of the harshness of his accusation. It was true, but if he could judge from her reaction, she hadn’t done it consciously. Now, seeing her crushed, he experienced a strange kinship with her. “I had the feeling you were almost afraid to touch me,” he said with a question in his voice, “as though I would somehow contaminate the perfect little world you have here.”

  “I … You …”

  “But you did touch me,” Slade continued in a softer voice. “Why? You didn’t act like a great lady lowering herself to help someone beneath her.”

  “No.”

  “Then why? You don’t want me here. You don’t like me. You don’t approve of me.”

  Pamela struggled to keep her hands steady; she clenched her jaw to keep it from trembling. She had never felt so much like crying and screaming at the same time. She finished her bandaging and straightened up, her face flushed with anger and humiliation. She hadn’t actually thought any of the things he accused her of, but she had felt them.

  “Don’t put words in my mouth,” she told him.

  “Then don’t give me cause,” Slade said, rising to his feet, too. Her flash of anger vanquished his momentary tenderness. You’re all too anxious to think up excuses for this girl, he told himself. “I’ll go as soon as I can saddle a horse. What’ll you take for that hammerhead dun I saw in the corral. And a saddle to go with him?”