Joan Johnston - Texas Woman

“I know. I don’t plan to stick around for it. Anyway, thanks.”

“Just doing my job.” Luke stood up and gestured toward the ladder-back chair across from the desk. “You want to set a spell, Sloan?”

“No, I need to get started home. I don’t want to leave Rip alone too long.”

“I thought your father was completely recovered from his stroke,” Luke said.

“Oh, he is,” Sloan was quick to reassure him. “Except for having to use a cane to get around, he’s back to being his same ornery self. But he pushes himself too hard. If I’m not there, he’s liable to do more than he should. Why don’t you come for a visit and see for yourself how well he’s recovered?”

“I just may do that when Captain Hays returns and I’m not tied to this desk taking care of Ranger business. Are you traveling back to Three Oaks by yourself?”

“I came by myself,” Sloan said, as though that answered his question.

“But you are not riding back alone,” Cruz said.

Sloan’s eyes narrowed.

Luke looked from Sloan to Cruz and back again. “Between Comanches, bandidos and immigrants anxious to stake a claim before Texas gets herself annexed by the Union, the Republic isn’t the safest place to travel these days. Maybe you ought to let me send some Rangers along for the ride.”

“I can take care of myself.”

Luke gauged Cruz’s temper and said, “Josey and Frank are shoving down some vittles at Ferguson ’s Hotel, but I know they’d enjoy the ride. Shall I give them a holler?”

“No,” Sloan said.

“Yes,” Cruz said.

Sloan stood toe to toe with Cruz and poked her finger against his unyielding chest to emphasize her speech. “I don’t need anyone to follow me home. I take care of myself . Do you understand ?” She pivoted on her heel and marched out of the office, slamming the door behind her.

Luke fought the smile that threatened. “I’ll send Josey and Frank after her.”

“Be sure you do.”

Cruz slipped off his boots and settled onto the soft feather bed in Ferguson ’s Hotel. He lit a cheroot and let the sweet smell of tobacco swirl around him as he waited for dawn. One step at a time, he was slowly but surely clearing the devastation left upon his brother’s death-a woman despoiled, a son orphaned, a country betrayed. Each deserved something beyond the legacy of selfishness and greed that Antonio had bequeathed them.

Cruz had to admit that taking Sloan Stewart as his wife was proving to be more of a challenge than he had expected.

He had not ever thought he would marry again after watching his very young wife Valeria die during childbirth. His parents had arranged the match, and he had not objected because Valeria was comely and compliant and he had wanted a home and children of his own.

Before long he had discovered his pretty wife was obedient because she had no thoughts of her own. He had ceased to feel any fond emotion for her long before she had died shrieking with the agony of birthing their still-born son.

At her death, guilt smote him that he had made her short life less happy than it could have been. He had sworn he would never marry again until he found a woman who could engage both his heart and mind.

That had not proved a simple feat. Indeed, he had turned away many offers of marriage to the daughters of neighboring rancheros over the past ten years.

Then, in the course of one brief conversation with Sloan Stewart, he had found what he had been seeking. She possessed a mind and a will that challenged his own. He had looked deep into her large, liquid-brown eyes and discovered an inner fire that burned far more brightly than in any other woman he had ever known. At last, he had found the woman he would spend the rest of his life loving.

It had been a shattering experience to discover that the woman he wanted to make his wife had already given her heart-and her body-to his brother. God help him, he had envied Tonio.

And when he had seen Sloan’s pain upon learning of Tonio’s betrayal, he had hated his brother for the cruel theft of her innocence.

Over the years, he had come to understand that the spirit he so admired in Sloan also kept her at arm’s distance. He did not understand her need for independence or her desire to play the man’s part or her rejection of his offer of a husband’s protection.

But he had convinced himself that once he and Sloan were living together as husband and wife, once she was carrying his child, those issues would resolve themselves. Soon, that belief would be put to the test.

Dawn came on slow, tired feet, dragging the huge Texas sun behind it. Cruz felt the weight of the day as he left the hotel and walked toward the dusty central square. This would be a day of endings… and a day of beginnings.

Two men were flogged in the plaza before Alejandro’s turn came to meet the hangman. Two Texas Rangers escorted the bandido to the raised platform and secured the black bag in place over his head with the hangman’s noose. The bright Texas sun glinted off Alejandro’s silver-and-turquoise bracelet as his hands were tied behind his back.

The bandido’s bold threats of escape had come to naught, Cruz thought. This morning he would die.

Cruz scarcely noticed when Luke came to stand beside him. He heard the murmured incantations of the priest at the gallows and, a moment later, the abrupt crack of the trapdoor as it dropped open, leaving Alejandro kicking his legs frantically against the pull of the noose.

Cruz felt the bile rising in his throat. The bandido took a long time to die. The smell of urine pinched Cruz’s nostrils, and the thought of Alejandro’s grizzled face beneath the mask, his tongue purple and swollen, his eyes white-rimmed with fear, nearly made him gag. At last the bandido stopped fighting, and the smell of death rose up to suffocate Cruz.

“Let us leave this place,” he said to Luke.

Cruz headed for the stable where he had left his powerful bayo stallion. The palomino whickered when he saw Cruz and sidestepped impatiently. Cruz quickly bridled him and led him from the stall.

Luke reached out to run his hand along the palomino’s flank. “He’s a beauty.”

“Yes, he is.” Cruz grabbed a striped wool blanket and slung it on the palomino’s back, then added a black leather saddle that was beautifully inlaid with silver and edged with tiny silver trinkets that jingled when he rode.

“You seem in a godawful hurry,” Luke noted.

“I am.” Cruz led the bayo out of the stable and mounted him in a single agile move. Once mounted, he fit the high-cantled saddle as though he had been born in it. He pulled his flat-brimmed black hat down low to shade his eyes, then met Luke’s solemn, hazel-eyed stare. “ Hasta luego, mi amigo .”

“Hey! Where you headed?” Luke shouted as Cruz spurred the bayo into a distance-eating lope.

Cruz called back over his shoulder, “I am going to collect on a bargain.”

“I HAVE COME FOR MY WIFE.”

Rip Stewart leaned back in his rocker on the front porch of Three Oaks until the floorboards creaked. His flinty gray eyes never left the tall, proud Spaniard who stood spread-legged, fists on hips, confronting him. Cruz Guerrero wasn’t a man to be crossed. “And who might that be?” Rip inquired.

“Your daughter Sloan.”

Rip threw back his head and bellowed with laughter. “You want to back up and try that again?”

“You did not mistake me. I have come to take Sloan to Rancho Dolorosa as my wife.”

Rip’s auburn hair, tinged now with silver, fell in careless hanks over his brow as he shook his head in disbelief. “There’s been some mistake here, son. Sloan didn’t say anything to me this morning about going anywhere with you-not as your wife or otherwise.