had been good, but not nearly good enough to evade a man who’d spent four years in a war, reading signs.
He crossed the water far enough upstream that she couldn’t hear him. Then he tied his horse, walked over to her, and sat down in the grass. For a long while, he studied her. She really was a pretty woman in a wild kind of way. Some men might find her quite attractive. She had hair that was made to be touched and eyes that looked all the way into her soul. Yes, once she was settled with her family she’d have no trouble finding a man.
Not him, of course. She wasn’t his ideal of beauty. He’d always admired women who emphasized their looks with makeup and padding. And tall. He liked a woman he could look directly in the eyes. But for a man who liked his women plain, simply dressed, and short, Allie would stand out as prime.
Wes smiled, realizing it didn’t really matter to him if his women had been hookers or fine ladies; he liked a lady who wore her beauty as if it were a canvas, fully colored and fully framed. He’d always been attracted to women who were realer than real. Who wore their hair higher or more brightly colored than nature intended. Whose lips were blood red and breasts were powdered white.
He watched Allie sleeping. She was truly plain, he thought. Brown hair, small built, thin. If she’d been a fish, he’d have thrown her back for a better catch. But something about her made her not all that hard to look at. He’d thought it was her eyes and the way he could read her every thought in them. But that couldn’t have been it, because her eyes were closed now and he was still looking.
Maybe she wasn’t pretty, exactly, he thought. There was nothing wrong with her. She just wasn’t his type of woman.
Wes groaned. He was wasting far too much time thinking about something that didn’t matter at all. The only thing that should be on his mind was getting her to Brady, then finding the treasure as fast as he could. If Vincent was right and other men were looking for it, they might have given up trying to find the map and gone down there planning to rip every stone out of the floor. It would only be a matter of time before they found the tunnel.
His groan woke her.
Allie blinked and jumped at the sight of him beside her. Like an animal alert at the moment of waking, she was several feet away before he could react.
‘‘Now hold on.’’ Wes raised his hands. ‘‘Don’t go running off again.’’
She moved a step back. ‘‘You’re angry?’’
‘‘Because you ran?’’ Wes shook his head. ‘‘You got a right to go where you want. I don’t own you, Allie.’’ He had to smile-she’d finally decided to talk to him.
Allie watched him closely. Her eyes darted from her shoes to him. She knew she couldn’t grab them without him being able to reach her. ‘‘I lost your horse.’’
‘‘There are other horses.’’ He watched her closely.
‘‘And your saddle.’’
‘‘It was Adam’s saddle.’’ Wes smiled as though he’d told a joke.
Tilting her head, she studied him. ‘‘Then why did you follow me?’’
Wes made no effort to reach for her. ‘‘Because,’’ he began, ‘‘we have to talk.’’
‘‘We are talking.’’ She’d already said more to him in the past two minutes than she’d said to another human being in five years.
‘‘We have to talk about you.’’ Wes pulled the letter from his pocket. ‘‘I received this-’’
‘‘I know.’’ She might be quiet, but she was not deaf. She’d heard everything Vincent and Wes had talked about last night.
Wes glanced up at her. ‘‘Don’t you realize this could be your family?’’
‘‘I have no family.’’
‘‘But-’’
‘‘They all died. I saw their bodies piled like wood to burn.’’ Allie lowered her head. She didn’t like to think about the way the camp had looked after the raid. When she brought the image to mind, she could still smell the odor of burning flesh.
Long-buried memories flooded back. The sounds of screams and gunfire. The taste of terror in her mouth as her mother pushed her away, telling her to run for the trees. Her mother then grabbed the baby and ran for the shelter. Black smoke billowed from the barn, as if a great storm was being born there and would spread over the whole world.
‘‘There’s a sheriff forty miles south of here who thinks you might still have a grandmother alive.’’
Allie remembered no grandmother.
‘‘You’ve got to give it a try.’’
He said no more, but Allie heard the words as clear as if he’d spoken them aloud.I can’t go on worrying about you.
She lifted her chin. ‘‘I’ll go,’’ she said. ‘‘But I won’t promise to stay.’’
‘‘Fair enough.’’ Wes stood. ‘‘I’ll go round up your horse.’’
By nightfall, they were in the small settlement of Brady, Texas. The huddle of houses and stores could hardly be called a town. A mercantile, a six-table cafe with a chalkboard menu outside, a blacksmith with livery stable, a three-story hotel with a saloon in the back half of its first floor, and several houses.
Some people didn’t consider a place a town until it had a courthouse or newspaper or bank, but Wes always thought the difference lay in the presence of a barbershop. Once a place had a shop, he knew folks were settling in. His reasoning wasn’t based on the fact that the barbershop was a meeting place to exchange information, as well as take a bath, get a shave, or have a tooth pulled. He’d decided, by observation, that when men start shaving regularly, it’s usually due to females. And once women are settled into a place, it’s only a matter of time before there are schools and churches, banks and newspapers. A town.
Brady hadn’t yet become a town, but from the looks of things, it was only a matter of time.
If he’d been alone, Wes would have stayed with the horses in the livery for a quarter, but he couldn’t do that with Allie along. The little money he’d picked up from a stash he always left at Adam’s would be gone fast with hotel prices and double meals.
He paid the two bits for the horses’ care and walked across the street to the hotel with Allie at his heels. She hid behind him as he ordered a room and asked to have a bath brought up.
The hotel owner told him the only room fit for a lady was on the third floor and, due to its size, cost twice as much as any of the others.
Wes groaned and took the room. When he climbed the stairs, he was relieved to find the accommodations much nicer than expected.
‘‘Not bad. At least we’ll be comfortable tonight.’’ He tossed his saddlebag on the nearest of two small beds and turned to face Allie.
She stood just inside the doorway, her face ghostly white. Her hands knotted the fabric of her dress on either side.
‘‘What is it?’’ Wes reached out to touch her shoulder.
Allie jerked away, backing as far as she could into the corner.
‘‘Allie, talk to me.’’ He knew if he took a step toward her, he’d only frighten her more. She was in that private hell of hers where everything was threatening and everyone was an enemy.
Her huge blue eyes stared at him with a terror in them so deep he wasn’t sure it wouldn’t kill her.
Wes glanced around the room. There was nothing frightening. The room was almost totally white, from bed covers to curtains. The floors had been scrubbed recently, and the water in the pitcher looked fresh. Even the chamber pot beneath the first bed looked to have been cleaned.
Wes backed toward the windows and sat down in the room’s only chair, a rocker made with most of the bark left on the wood. ‘‘I’m no good at this,’’ he mumbled to himself.
He leaned back and rested his head, closing his eyes, blocking out her suffering. ‘‘Allie, I’m a hard man who’s spent most of my life fighting one way or the other. You need a man like Daniel with faith enough to help you or Adam with his soft, easy way of healing.’’
He heard the movement of her dress and the slight swish of a blade clearing leather. She’d drawn her knife. After all the nights they’d spent together, she still didn’t trust him. Did she think he’d traveled over half of Texas, waiting until he reachedthishotel, to kill her?
Wes tried again. ‘‘Allie, there is nothing to be afraid of here. We’re just in a hotel. There’s even a lock on the
