"You should have stayed in town," Zac said, inspecting Willie with a disapproving eye. "You look like you spent the night in a snowdrift."
"Never did like Albuquerque," Willie said, sinking into a chair. "Too many scalawags ready to take everything you got."
Tyler took some of the stew he kept on the back of the stove, put a generous helping in a tin plate, and handed it to Willie. The old prospector dug in like he hadn"t eaten in days.
"Hey, take it easy," Zac said. "Tyler hasn"t been able to find another deer."
"He won"t until this weather breaks," Willie said through a mouth full of stew. "They can stay holed up longer than you or me."
Willie ate in silence for a few moments. Tyler opened the stove and ran a poker through the coals to stir them up, but Willie drank the coffee without waiting for it to get hot.
Willie swallowed the last mouthful of stew and allowed a look of satisfaction to lift the deep lines on his face. "I think I"ll live now," he said.
"You don"t look like it," Zac observed.
"I"ll look a lot better for some sleep." Willie got up and started toward the portion of the cabin set off by the barrier of sheets and blankets.
"You can"t go in there!" Tyler said.
"Why?" Willie asked.
"Because I"m back here," Daisy announced. Before Willie could demand an explanation, she stepped from behind the curtain.
Willie looked from Daisy to Tyler then back again. "Two young men," he muttered, suddenly understanding. "So that"s why--"
"Why you can"t go behind the curtain," Tyler finished for him. "You can sleep in my bunk if you want."
Willie dragged himself back to his chair and sank down. "I"m not as sleepy as I thought."
"This is Daisy Singleton," Tyler said. "We found her in the snow a couple of days ago. She had injured her head. Daisy, this flea-bitten old crookshanks calls himself Willie Mozel. He claims he"s a prospector, but I figure he"s just looking for a claim to jump."
Daisy cast Tyler a questioning glance, but his expression gave nothing away. She looked at Zac, but his was equally uninformative. It was clear they didn"t mean to let Willie in on the true state of things. She wondered why.
"What were you doing so far from your cabin?" Willie asked.
"Her father was dying, and she was trying to reach a doctor."
Daisy marveled at Tyler"s ability to invent a tale on the spur of the moment.
"What happened?"
"He died, so we buried him and brought her here so she could get better."
Willie looked skeptical. "Well you"re going to have to find some place to take her."
"I"m going to the Cochranes in Albuquerque as soon as the snow melts," Daisy announced. "Adora Cochrane is my best friend."
"That"s as may be, but they"re in Santa Fe," Willie told her. "They won"t be able to get back until the snow melts."
"How do you know that?" Zac demanded.
"Like Tyler said, I"d been to town when I got caught in the storm," Willie said, tying into Tyler"s story.
Daisy hoped her surprise didn"t show. All along she had depended on being able to go to the Cochranes. It was a shock to realize that option was cut off. She would have to stay here for several days more.
But that wasn"t the worst. Daisy realized the news hadn"t upset her very badly because she didn"t really want to leave. That was more than she could understand.
Because for the first time in your life, somebody is taking care of you, not the other way around.
Her father had always been the center of their household. But now she was the focal point of Tyler"s day. He might spend hours fussing with his mules, reading his books, or taking longer than necessary with the meals, but nearly everything he did had to do with her comfort and well being.
But there was more to it than that. She could feel it sometimes. She could see it in his eyes once in a while when she caught him off guard. He liked her. He wouldn"t say so. He wouldn"t do anything to indicate it, but she could tell he liked her. She found this as hard to believe as the understanding that sprang up between Tyler and Zac the moment Willie Mozel came into the cabin. They hadn"t said a word. It was just there.
It was a bond meant to protect her.
It was an experience so new, so unexpected, she was tempted to question her judgment at first. But it only took a moment to realize she was right. That"s when Daisy decided she didn"t care how long the snow lasted.
"I guess that means I"ll have to go hunting again," Tyler said. "We"re getting low on meat. You can come with me, Willie."
"Me!" Willie exclaimed. "I can"t go tramping through that snow. I"m worn to a nub."
"I"ll let you rest up an hour or so," Tyler said. "You ought to be recovered by then."
Willie looked like he was going to argue but changed his mind after a glance at Tyler"s expression. "I guess I"d better get what sack time I can," he said, getting up and hobbling over to the bunk. "Probably a good thing if I do go with you. You"d never find so much as a rabbit by yourself."
Toby stared into the malevolent eyes of Willie"s burro. "Where do you think the old fool got to?" he asked Frank.
"How the h.e.l.l should I know!" Frank barked. "I can"t find a single footprint in all this d.a.m.ned snow." They had come out expecting the old prospector to be ready to talk after a miserably cold night spent in the shed with the burro. Frank was stunned to find him gone.
"Shouldn"t have tied him up," Ed said. "Made him jumpy."
"Shut up!" Frank growled. He looked all around the shed and down both trails from the cabin, but the snow had covered all trace of the old prospector"s escape.
"You think he knows where the girl is?" Toby asked.
"I don"t know," Frank said. "These old codgers stay as far away from each other as possible. There could be a dozen females living up here and him not know."
"I think he knows," Toby said.
"More likely he knows the men," Frank said. "And if he knows them, so do others."
"What are you going to do?" Ed asked.
"We"re going to saddle up and go from one cabin to another until we"ve hit every one of them," Frank said. "They"ve got to be up here. With her hurt and all this d.a.m.ned snow, they can"t have gone anywhere. We"ll find them."
Frank"s temper was on edge. His instinct told him to cut and run. The plan was doomed. Too many people knew. But the longer it took him to catch up with the girl, the more chance others would find out.
He intended to kill the old b.a.s.t.a.r.d for sneaking out during the night. No one would miss him. Probably n.o.body wouldn"t even know he was dead for several months.
He also meant to kill the two men with the girl. n.o.body made a fool of Frank Storach.
"You"re both to stay inside," Tyler told Zac and Daisy as he and Willie prepared to go hunting. "Neither one of you is completely well, and it"s a lot colder out there than it seems."
"I"m sick of staying this cabin," Daisy said.
"Me, too," Zac agreed.
"You"ll get plenty of chance to get away soon enough," Tyler said.
As soon as the trees screened them from the cabin, Willie stopped and turned to Tyler. "Now tell me what"s going on in there, or I"ll not go another step."
"Those men are after Daisy. They killed her father and twice tried to kill her."
Willie whistled between his teeth. "You think they came up here looking for her?"
"What other reason would they have to go around asking about two young prospectors."
"Aren"t you worried about leaving her alone?"
"They won"t find us today. The wind blew the snow into your tracks. Besides, I warned Zac not to let anybody come near the cabin."
"That useless piece of fluff!" Willie scoffed. "He"d probably hide behind her."
Tyler chuckled. "Zac may not look like much, but he"s the most cold-blood cuss you"ll ever meet. And he can shoot the spines off a cactus."
"You can"t be talking about that slicked up kid back in your cabin."
"The same," Tyler a.s.sured him. "Now stop worrying about Daisy and show me where the deer are hiding. We"ll soon be out of meat."
But Tyler wasn"t so sanguine as he tried to appear. If it hadn"t been necessary to find more food, he wouldn"t have left Daisy. The killers had shown a greater degree of speed, persistence, and intelligence than he had expected. He still believed someone else was behind them, a sharp, devious, cruel mind. That really frightened him. It might not be so easy to protect Daisy as he first believed.
And he knew he had to protect her. She might consider herself practical, but she had no more idea how to survive in this country than an easterner.
"I said I"m surprised you didn"t lay in extra supplies," Willie repeated when Tyler didn"t answer him. "It ain"t like you to be short."
"I wasn"t expecting Zac," Tyler said, refocusing his attention. "He eats enough for two."
"How about the girl?"
"I wasn"t expecting her either."
"You could have left her with some farmer."
"I couldn"t, could I, when I didn"t know who"d tried to kill her?"
"That"s what I figured."
"You didn"t figure any such thing," Tyler said. "You figured I got her up her for some nefarious purpose."
"I don"t know what you mean by nefarious -- I don"t strain my brain reading all them books like you do -- but if it means what I think it means, no I don"t. I don"t think you"re worth a d.a.m.n as a prospector, but you got enough of the gentleman in you to get yourself killed over of some female." Willie halted when they came upon a set of footprints. "I see you got a cat hanging around."
"He"s got his eye on my mules."
"I"d shoot him first chance I got. Otherwise he"ll get "em sooner or later. Them cats are determined critters."
While Willie busied himself studying the cat"s tracks, Tyler"s mind wandered back to Daisy. He wasn"t anxious for the snow to melt just yet. He needed to understand his attraction for this woman. Was it just l.u.s.t? He couldn"t be sure. It didn"t take much to excite his body. Just touching Daisy was enough. He"d lain awake half the night remembering the feel of her in his arms, the warmth and softness of her body as it pressed against his, the stiffness in his groin that made every step the mule took a misery.
But there was something more than l.u.s.t working inside him. He recognized that. He didn"t identify the feeling that took hold of him whenever he looked at her. It tugged at something inside him, its pull gentle but insistent. Something forgotten or never known. Tyler couldn"t decide which. He wasn"t sure it mattered. Whatever it might be, thoughts of her were in his mind, waking and sleeping.
Maybe his interest stemmed from the fact she had been hurt and he wanted to protect her. That was a natural instinct with all the Randolphs, even Zac. If so, once he had taken her to the Cochranes, he"d be able to forget about her.
He could be interested in her because she was a gutsy young woman who had a poor opinion of herself and had been left with no way to survive except marry the first man who asked her.
"That cat"s probably got a den somewhere around here," Willie decided. "From the looks of his tracks, it"s been a long time since he"s had much to eat."
Tyler was afraid the cat"s presence meant they wouldn"t find any game within two miles of the cabin. "Maybe he"ll eat one of those killers if they show up," Tyler said.
"You think they will?"
"I"m certain of it."
Tyler couldn"t understand why a woman who thought so little of herself, who expected even less of the world, should be of such importance to the killers. The world rarely took notice of any but the most beautiful women.
Tyler understood all about not being beautiful. He couldn"t count the times he"d been unfavorably compared to his brothers, and not just by his father. He"d even heard one woman commiserating with George for being burdened with such brothers. George had defended him -- George always did -- but that didn"t change things.
For a long time, Tyler pretended not to care, not even to be aware of people"s opinion of him. The most immediate result was that, believing he truly didn"t care what they said, they spoke more freely around him. It drove him to silence. Finally it drove him into a solitary existence.
Never once did anyone imagine he took with him a terrible feeling of unworthiness. He"d even refused to admit it to himself. Seeing it in Daisy had forced him to recognize it himself. He couldn"t help her until he figured out how to help himself.
But he couldn"t go prospecting for the gold he needed to build his hotels, the hotels he needed to feel worthy of his family, without deserting Daisy. He couldn"t take her with him, and he couldn"t leave her behind. Even if she were safe from the killers, leaving her would only reinforce her poor opinion of herself.
"If I"m going to have to keep speaking to you two or three times before I get your attention, I might as well be out here by myself," Willie complained.
"Sorry. I was thinking."
"If you don"t get your mind off that gal, you"re not going to find a deer, even if it"s right in front of you."
"What makes you think I"m thinking about Daisy?"
"Nothing but a female can make a man stumble along like he"s blind as a bat. If you"re not careful, that cat"s going to have you for dinner."
Tyler stopped in his tracks. "I"m going back."
"What for?"