as the rugged landscape of south Texas was from the gentle hills of Russell County, Mississippi. The two men had almost nothing in common.
Physically, they were as mismatched as daylight and dark. McDaniel was a slight man with hair as fair as corn silk. John Bandera, the dark half of the equation, had bronze skin and cast-iron black hair. Part Comanche, part Mexican, and part anybody’s guess, he was imposing in size alone, but it was his amber, catlike gaze that kept most men at a wary distance. His partner, Price McDaniel, was usually too drunk to be cautious.
When drunk, which was often, Price was a man given to lengthy proclamations uttered in a drawl that was one third Mississippi and the rest pure Tennessee whiskey. John Bandera rarely drank and said little in return.
The two men didn’t even particularly like each other. Still, they were partners, bound by a single and uncharacteristic burst of heroism at the Cimarron Crossing in 1864 when Lieutenant McDaniel had saved Scout Bandera’s life.
Despite their differences, the partnership—thus far—had proven beneficial for both of them. The year before, after being mustered out of the army, Price had had more money than good sense, and he had wanted to build a ranch in Texas to rival anything back in Russell County, Mississippi, no matter that he didn’t know a longhorn from a mule deer or a heifer from a steer.
John had been broke, physically as well as financially. The army had no use for a scout on crutches and John had needed a place to heal. He’d owed Price for saving his life, and he figured one year of his sweat and expertise would cancel his debt to the Southerner.
Now that year was up.
The house was finally finished. Its pine floors and door frames glowed a rich gold beneath a first coating of shellac. The place still smelled of sawdust, but that raw odor mingled now with the fragrance of oiled walnut and rich leather.
Price McDaniel’s furniture—two wagon loads all the way from Mississippi—had arrived earlier in the day. There were wardrobes, chairs and sofas, dressers, mirrors, all manner of beds and bedding. There was one big swivel chair that matched one enormous desk. And there had also been one cream-colored letter tucked neatly inside the center drawer.
Price had been on a tear ever since finding it. He had read the letter at least a dozen times, and had looked at the enclosed carte de visite long enough and hard enough to wear the chemicals right off the little photograph. At the moment, the picture lay facedown on the desktop, the envelope was strewn in little pieces on the floor, and Price was fashioning the letter itself into a rough approximation of a bird.
“Ladies,” he slurred as he folded one edge of the vellum, then crimped it, “especially those of the Southern persuasion, are like gardenias. Have you ever seen a gardenia, John?”
As lamplight glanced off the fresh pine paneling, it made the half-breed’s eyes all the more amber when he looked up from the list of supplies he was composing—goods intended to see his soon-to-be ex-partner through the coming winter.
“Nope,” he replied, about to add that he’d never seen a lady, either. Instead he returned his attention to his list, knowing Price would go on with his drunken declamation whether anyone was listening or not.
He did, interspersing his words with wet, laborious sighs.
“They’re all pale and creamy and petal-soft. Dewy and cool to the touch. Only you can’t. Touch them, I mean. Southern ladies are just for the looking. Touch them, and they bruise. Just like a gardenia. You remember that, John, if you ever have the supreme misfortune to meet up with one of them.”
“I’ll keep it in mind.” His chances of meeting up with a lady, Southern or otherwise, were slim, slimmer, and none, John thought. The notion that he’d ever have the opportunity to touch one struck him as ludicrous. He’d learned early and at the painful end of a switch not to want what he couldn’t have. Ladies were high on that particular list.
He made a last notation now on his own list, then parked the pencil stub behind his ear. “If you’re all done ranting, Price, maybe we could go over a few things.”
The Mississippian smiled sloppily as he lifted the folded letter, held it shoulder-high a second, then launched it across the room. The pale paper flew like a snub-nosed, stubby-winged owl before it plummeted to the floor beside John’s moccasined foot.
He ignored it a moment, then picked it up and smoothed it out across his knee, instantly intrigued by the daintiness of the penmanship, trying to imagine the pale, fine-boned fingers that had drafted each delicate word.
He read not the whole, but separate, beautifully crafted words and phrases here and there. How delighted we all were. Sympathetic to your dire circumstances as a prisoner of war. Russell County. Do remember. Forever your home.
His amber eyes flicked up to meet his partner’s. “You going back?”
Price chuckled softly as he filled his empty glass from the bottle near his elbow, then raised the glass in a wavering salute.
“Here’s to Russell County, Mississippi, where a Russell is always a Russell and everybody else is…everybody else.”
He downed half the whiskey, then continued. “And here’s to Miss Emily Russell. May she bloom and prosper in Russell County soil. Here’s to gardenias in all their pale and untouchable glory.”
Price drained his glass and thumped it down on the desktop. “Here’s to us, partner. And to the frigid day in hell that finds me back in Mississippi.”
“You’re staying.” It wasn’t a question so much as an acknowledgment. A disappointed one. John had hoped for a moment that Price would go home. It was where the man belonged, after all. So what if he had turned his back on the Confederacy in order to get out of a Yankee prison? He hadn’t been the only Rebel prisoner who’d put on a blue uniform and headed west as a Galvanized Yankee.
But he didn’t belong out West anymore. He belonged back home with well-bred gentlemen like himself and with ladies like gardenias. And he was damned lucky, in John’s estimation, to have a place where he belonged.
“I’m staying.” Price’s clenched fists banged hard on the desktop. “Russell County be damned, along with all the Russells in it.” He picked up the little carte de visite and, without even glancing at it, flicked it across the desk toward John. “Good riddance to them all.”
John’s dark hand shot out to catch the photograph before it fluttered to the floor. It felt warm in his palm, almost alive. He stared at its blank side a moment, as if hesitant to look at the face of the woman…no, the lady…whose delicate hand had composed the letter still lying on his leg. What face could be flawless enough? What pose perfect enough? What tilt of chin or hint of smile could be worthy of the lady in his head?
This one! His heart bunched up in his throat when he gazed at Emily Russell, and as his sun-bronzed thumb smoothed over the photograph, he wouldn’t have been at all surprised to see her lovely image begin to wither and fade. What was it Price had said? Touch them, and they bruise.
John had to clear his throat before he spoke, but there was still an unfamiliar, nearly ragged catch.
“She’s a lady, Price. You ought to write her back.”
“Like hell,” his partner snorted, replenishing his glass, sloshing whiskey over the rim. “Since when are you so concerned with proprieties?”
Since
