door, which is more than I can say for a few of the hotels I’ve been in since coming to Texas.’’
He folded his hands. ‘‘How about I leave you to take your bath? The desk clerk downstairs said I could probably find the sheriff who sent me the letter in the saloon.’’
She didn’t move or answer him. He really didn’t expect her to.
A maid tapped on the door then entered with two pails of water. The woman was clean and neatly dressed, but there was a hardness about her. A hatred of life that ran bone deep. A boy of about twelve followed with a small hip tub. She glanced from Allie to Wes, but she’d seen far too much to comment.
The boy set the tub down with a thud. Before the noise stopped echoing around the room, the woman backhanded him hard. He didn’t react, not a sound, as he turned and left the room. The woman followed him out without saying anything to Wes or Allie.
Wes glanced at Allie and saw a reaction to the cruelty in her eyes. He gave her time to speak, but, as always, she didn’t say a word.
‘‘Well.’’ Wes stood, not knowing how to comfort her. ‘‘I’ll leave you. Enjoy your…’’
The sudden panic in her eyes made him forget to finish his sentence.
‘‘D-don’t go!’’ she stammered.
‘‘But…’’ Wes watched her closely, realizing her terror was not aimed at him. ‘‘Do you want to go with me to meet the sheriff? Allie, what frightens you so?’’
She gulped down her fear. ‘‘I hate hotels.’’
Wes took a deep breath and smiled. Fear of hotels seemed a much smaller problem than the thought that she might have suddenly gone insane and planned to kill him in his sleep. He relaxed. At least he wasn’t the one who sparked her fears.
‘‘You’ve nothing to fear here. I’ll lock you in.’’
He’d said the wrong thing. She was backing away again. It took Wes a moment to realize what he’d said.
‘‘No, I didn’t mean what you think. I only meant we can lock the door so that no one will disturb you while you bathe.’’
‘‘No.’’ Allie shook her head violently, making her mass of hair fly around her. ‘‘I will not stay here. I hate this place.’’
Wes tried to reason. ‘‘But you love taking a bath. How about you take a bath and I’ll wait for you? When you’re finished, we’ll go down and look for the sheriff together.’’
Allie nodded.
Wes moved toward the door. ‘‘I’ll be right outside.’’
She darted, beating him to the opening. ‘‘No! Stay. I don’t want to be in this place alone.’’
Wes didn’t understand, but he was too tired to argue. He pulled the rocker to face the window and sat down with his back to the tub. ‘‘Let me know when you’re finished.’’
To his surprise, he heard her knife slip back into her boot. He pulled the last thin cigar from the silver box in his breast pocket and lit it.
As he rocked back and forth, he thought he’d had some crazy things happen to him in his lifetime, but being forced at knifepoint to stay in a hotel room while a woman takes a bath had never been one of them. Until now.
He leaned back as he took a long draw on his last cigar, enjoying the sounds of her bathing just behind him.
Allie watched his back as she removed her clothes. He had been right about the bath. If she took a bath every day for the rest of her life, she’d never feel clean enough. But he’d been wrong to come to the hotel. Allie couldn’t tell him, but she knew about hotels. They were places of evil where she’d been locked in a room. Deep into the night, the devil walked the hallways of hotels.
When the preacher had locked her up, she’d learned to wait in the darkness. Between midnight and dawn, the devil would unlock her door. She’d fight for as long as she could, then she’d try to numb her mind to what he did. But even through the numbness, she’d known she’d gone to hell and back with him in the blackness. At dawn, she’d wake bruised and alone. The preacher would come to get her, angry, he said, because the devil visited her. Sometimes he’d be in a hurry and only rant and rave about how evil she was, but other times, he’d try to help her by whipping the evil out of her.
Allie remembered days passing when she’d sleep in the cage, knowing that as soon as they reached the next town there would be another hotel and another visit.
Wes must not know of the evil of this place, or he wouldn’t have walked in without his guns drawn. Maybe if he were with her, the devil wouldn’t come. She watched his back as she slipped into the water and washed. He was a strange man, but one thing she knew, he wasn’t evil.
As soon as she was scrubbed, she pulled her clothes back on and moved to stand beside him.
‘‘You ready?’’ he asked in a voice that told her he’d almost fallen asleep in the chair.
She nodded.
He stood slowly and pulled the thin ribbon used to tie back the curtains from the window.
‘‘I thought I’d borrow this,’’ he said smiling, ‘‘to tie back your hair. We can’t very well go downstairs with it flying about.’’
Allie slid her hand to her knife but didn’t pull it from her boot as he looped the lace beneath her hair and tied it.
‘‘There.’’ He stepped back and seemed pleased with his work. ‘‘Shall we go downstairs?’’
He offered his hand.
Allie didn’t take it but let him guide her out of the room and down the stairs.
The lobby was empty except for the clerk behind the desk. He glanced up at Wes. ‘‘That old sheriff you’re looking for is in the saloon.’’
Wes thanked him with a casual salute.
‘‘If you want any supper, you’ll have to order it in there. Nowhere else to get food this late.’’ The clerk returned to his reading, not expecting an answer to his comments.
Wes slowly reached for Allie’s hand and placed it on his arm. ‘‘Shall we?’’ he asked as though they were a normal couple.
As always, she didn’t answer.
When they entered the saloon, Allie moved a little closer to Wes. He crossed to a lone man sitting at the back of an almost empty room.
‘‘Sheriff Hardy?’’ Wes asked as Allie peeked around him to see the old man.
Hardy ignored Wes’s outstretched hand as he stood slowly, staring wide-eyed at Allie.
‘‘Victoria,’’ he whispered. His eyes brimmed with tears. For a moment, he was somewhere far deep into the past and not with them. ‘‘Victoria,’’ he said again, with a love and a sorrow too great to fathom.
TWELVE
ALLIE WATCHED THE OLD MAN CAREFULLY. GRAYhair hung past his collar, and his eyes were the color of the whiskey he drank. He raised a hand, weathered with age, and lightly brushed her cheek as reality of the present straightened his stance.
‘‘I’m sorry.’’ He tried to pull his emotions back into a body and mind too fragile to hold them in check. ‘‘There for a moment I thought I was looking at a woman I knew fifty years ago. You’re her spittin’ image, girl.’’
Wes tried again. ‘‘You are Sheriff Maxwell Hardy.’’ The words were far more a statement than a question. ‘‘I’m Wes McLain.’’
The elderly man nodded. ‘‘I’m Max Hardy. Retired sheriff. I’m the one who sent you the letter. Thought it was a fool thing to do at the time. Never dreamed you’d answer so fast.’’
He paused and stared at Allie again. ‘‘We’ve been looking for a survivor of the Catlin clan for years. Everyone but me gave up long ago, but I still go over to the Rangers’ office in Austin and check the reports now and again. Hoping.’’
