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“No, no! Can’t you see how pointless it would be? Todd’s always surrounded by armed men, and even if you did kill him, you’d end up being killed yourself.”
“Haven’t I told you before that you talk too much, Ro?”
I opened my mouth, to cry out in protest, only to find my angry arguments stilled by his kiss. For a while, my mind went on protesting, but as his body moved over mine, reclaiming it, I found my senses taking over, leading me to passion, to need, and from there to oblivion.
In spite of all the questions that still went unanswered I could have stayed there forever, but for the gradual, inevitable diminishing of all the sounds that had surrounded us for so long. I half-woke when I felt Lucas pull one of the blankets over us; sleepily becoming aware that the fire that had burned so strongly had subsided into a red glow. The wind no longer seemed to push against the door with a frustrated rattle, and the rain had faded from an angry chattering to a muted whisper. Why must happiness always carry with it the burden of fear? The pleasure we had taken in each other suddenly seemed fragile, like a thin crystal—too easily shattered by the pain that must surely follow. My arms held my love, and I pressed closer to him, seeking comfort; but already, insidiously, I had started to feel within myself the beginnings of apprehension, and a kind of sadness. Without quite knowing how, I had already begun to suffer.
Part V:
The Bitter Season
Thirty
The storm died, hissing and grumbling into a silence broken only by the slow, monotonous dripping of water from the edge of the roof. The outside world pushed its way obtrusively under the door with the first groping finger of pale sunlight. Where before time had seemed of no consequence, now it appeared we had not enough left.
There was tension between us that we both tried to pretend didn’t exist. Lucas prowled restlessly about the cabin, pushing things around on shelves, opening boxes, and swearing when he couldn’t immediately find what he was looking for. His beard-stubbled face wore a forbidding look that made me keep silent even when he began, clumsily, to pull on the bloodstained pair of pants he had worn on that evening of the fiesta, with a tear in it where Ramon’s bullet had grazed his thigh. I could tell that the wound in his shoulder was still painful, from the stiff way in which he moved his arm, but I turned my back on him and made myself busy preparing a makeshift meal. Everything was running low, even the tequila with which we had fortified ourselves against the cold. Another reason why we must return… but to what?
I was determined that he should not see how I agonized inside myself, and I took refuge behind cool politeness, my mask of reserve slipping only for a moment when I saw that he had buckled on a gunbelt. He caught my eye at that moment, and I thought I dete
cted a slight, sardonic twist of his lips.
He was deliberately reminding me, of course, of the argument that had kept us awake for most of the previous night—an argument ended in the usual way, with Lucas kissing me angrily and desperately into silence, making love to me as if it were the last time ever. When we had both fallen asleep, exhausted and drained, it had been dawn.
And now it was sometime in the afternoon, and the sun was shining again, and nothing had been resolved.
I gave him a cold, level look that I hoped would tell him nothing.
“I’m goin’ outside for a while.”
Well, this time at least I would not call him back. We both needed space—a short time to be alone, to think.
“All right,” I said, and was surprised that my voice sounded cool and emotionless.
Our eyes clashed, and then he was gone, leaving the door open behind him so that the sunlight streamed in. Another reminder, I thought angrily, brushing tendrils of hair off my face. The world was back with us again, and last night it had been Lucas, and not I, who had talked of being practical. God, how I hated that word!
“For Christ’s sake! Why isn’t it in a woman to be sensible?” He had paced up and down the tiny space like a trapped mountain lion while he spoke to me. “Ro, you don’t know what you’re saying. I can’t live in your world, and you can’t live in mine. An’ before the damned storm trapped us here together you saw that for yourself. I can’t take you with me where I’ve got to go.” His voice had hardened. “You’d slow me down, get in the way. What would I do with you?”
“What did you do with Flo? You told me you’d begun to hate her, and yet you…”
“Flo! My God, do you think she meant anything more to me than a woman to keep me warm in bed and a weapon against Shannon? Do you think I could risk the same thing happenin’ to you that happened to her? Look, half the bounty hunters and lawmen in the territory are after me. Everywhere I go, there’s always the chance someone will be shooting at me, and with you along…”
“We could go somewhere else, Lucas, listen to me! We could go away—anywhere you wanted to go. California, Mexico, even Europe, until things died down.”
“No. It won’t work. I ain’t gonna run away, an’ I ain’t gonna be no kept man.”
“But you’re running now!”
“That’s different.”
“You said this was what my father wanted. To end the feud. You wanted me to marry Ramon.”
“Ramon’s not wanted by the law.”
Stalemate.
The silence between us was like a sword, until I broke it.
“You didn’t kill Elmer Bragg, and you didn’t fire that shot at Todd. Don’t you even care that everyone says you did? Don’t you wonder who arranged so carefully for you to take the blame?”
