Page 11 of West Wind

“Darlin’, Beans is a bounty hunter. The man on that horse out there is... was a cold-blooded killer. Beans is takin’ the body to the sheriff to collect his reward.”

Beans reached behind the counter and snatched a poster from the wall. “Might as well take this down.” He studied the wall, scratching first his nose and then his wide rump. “Look at this.” He pointed right at her own wanted poster. “A woman. Hell, a thousand dollars. I’d like to run across this one.”

The dense Beans looked directly at her. “You’re right lucky to have Shelley here escortin’ you with unsavory characters like this out there.” Beans shook his head as Annabelle thought that he was the most unsavory character she’d ever met.

“Let’s get out of here,” Shelley said casually after glancing at the poster his friend had pointed out. He placed the yellow sunbonnet on her head and tied the ribbons beneath her chin.

“I’ll get the money for the sunbonnet out of my bag.” She turned away from him, but Shelley stilled her with his hand resting heavy on her shoulder.

“I’ll get it. Small price to pay to get my hat back.”

When she glanced over her shoulder he smiled at her. She breathed a sigh of relief. He hadn’t recognized her likeness on the wanted poster.

Shelley secured the supplies on the back of the roan, settled her in her seat, and was just about to mount when he stopped short.

“Damn, I nearly forgot.” He stomped back into the store, returning a moment later clutching a bottle of tequila.

Annabelle felt safer when Shelley was in place behind her. She tried to look straight ahead as they rode away, but her eyes strayed to the horse Beans had led into town, and to the body that was slung over it like a sack of cornmeal. Lifeless. Cold. Dead.

Dead or alive.

CHAPTER FOUR

They stopped late in the afternoon, while several hours of daylight remained. The landscape was barren in spots, rocky in others. Ragged wildflowers grew at the edge of a muddy trickle of a stream. It was a stark contrast to the paradise they’d camped in the night before.

Shelley promised to cook her a dinner she’d never forget, but Annabelle didn’t have hopes for much. She sat on the bedroll he’d laid out for her, silent and scared. It had been stupid of her to relax, even for a day. Even for a minute. Her brief interlude by the pond had been a folly. Now she felt even worse than before. Men like Beans had her likeness, and were looking for her. A thousand dollars was a fortune to these men, to most men.

Her eyes followed Shelley as he tended his horse then started a campfire and began to prepare their meal. All the while he barely gave her a second glance, leaving her to her dreadful thoughts. Thinking of her escort was a much needed distraction.

She’d never known a man like him. Was there anything he couldn’t do? Any situation that would break through his cool charm? He said what was on his mind, as open and honest a man as she’d ever known. He was attractive, in a rugged, untamed way that both frightened and thrilled her, to her dismay. In spite of his teasing, he had no interest in a woman like her. If he knew who she was, what she’d been accused of, he’d despise her.

He handed her a full plate of beans, bacon, biscuits, and dried apples, and then gave her a cup of coffee. She couldn’t eat much—a bite or two of the beans, a taste of the apples. Her stomach threatened to send everything back up if she ate another morsel.

“You don’t like my cookin’?” He took the plate from her with a frown on his face.

“I don’t feel very well.” She had to force her voice to rise above a whisper. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to...” She stood. “I need a little privacy. I’m going over there.” She pointed a shaky finger to a large boulder just east of the campsite. “For a few minutes.”

Shelley sat back and watched Annie walk away, her skirt lifted so it didn’t drag in the dirt. Lack of privacy was one of the drawbacks of traveling overland, at least for a lady like her who had no business being here in the first place. He started to tell her to holler if she saw snakes or something, but the look on her face changed his mind. Damned if Beans hadn’t scared the bejesus out of her.

As she disappeared around the boulder, he reached into the inside pocket of his vest. He unfolded the paper to study the drawing once more.

Annabelle St. Clair. Brown hair, brown eyes. Murder and attempted murder. It didn’t look like the Widow Brown, not really. Ann. Annabelle. A singer. An opera singer.

The fine print at the bottom of the page identified the surviving victim as Albert Gibson. Gibson was the one who’d posted the private bounty. Miss St. Clair was to be delivered, dead or alive, to the police station in San Francisco.

There had been a split second, when he’d first seen the wanted poster, that he’d believed his Widow Brown was the murderer Annabelle St. Clair. Though the thought had been fleeting, now he frowned. He didn’t believe in coincidence, but what other explanation could there be? Ann was a common name, and the West was full of women with brown hair and eyes. Surely Annabelle St. Clair, wanted woman, wouldn’t be traveling to San Francisco.

He tried to push away the intrusive memory of another innocent girl, his little sister Sarah, dead at fifteen because she’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time. The burden of guilt he felt every time he thought of Sarah weighed heavily on his soul. If he’d been there when she’d needed him she’d be alive today. He was certain of that.

A bounty hunter acts on instinct much of the time, he reminded himself, pushing his sister’s memory to the back of his mind. Annie was in some sort of trouble, that was clear. But what kind of trouble? A jilted lover? Maybe her husband wasn’t really dead. Maybe she was running from the not-quite-deceased Mr. Brown.

No. The Pinkerton agent who’d been waiting for her in the alley behind the Silver Palace had mentioned her late husband. What was she running from?

He carefully refolded the wanted poster he’d snatched from the wall, returned it to his vest pocket, and put it out of his mind. Then he opened the bottle of tequila and took a long swig. He could stand to get good and drunk tonight. That was what he’d intended to do at Oscar’s place, but Annie had changed his plans. The desire to lose himself in the bottle always seemed to hit him after he’d had to kill an outlaw. Even after all these years...

“Shelley?” She stood over him. He hadn’t heard her approaching but there she was, looking down at him with wide brown eyes. A wayward strand of dark hair had escaped and fell across her cheek. She pushed it away. “Can I have a drink of that?”

He passed the bottle to her, and she sat down facing him. The sun was low, so she took off her new sunbonnet and tossed it onto her bedroll. Then she placed the almost full bottle beside her and wiped the rim with a corner of her skirt.