The way she said it the Kansas cow town sounded distant as a planet. “And when…?”
“I don’t expect him back for quite some time, Miss Russell.”
“I see.”
No, she didn’t see at all, Emily thought. Disappointment was fairly crushing her, squeezing her heart and turning her brain into a tight, aching knot. “I’ve come so far. Such a long way.” Her own voice sounded even farther away.
“You staying or going, lady?” the driver asked impatiently. “If you’re going back to Corpus, it’ll cost you triple, seeing as how it’s gonna be dark pretty soon.”
Emily didn’t answer. Staying? Going? She barely understood the meaning of the words, much less how they pertained to her. Dark? Was it? She felt numb all of a sudden, and dumb. For a moment she wondered if a sunstroke had robbed her of her ability to speak and to move.
The driver was angled around in his seat, staring at her, his eyes mere slits beneath his twisted brows. John Bandera was staring at her, too, but there was no reading his dark face. He might as well have been a cigar store Indian with rigid, wooden lips and deep, expressionless eyes.
“Well?” the driver snapped. “What’s it going to be, lady? You staying or going? I ain’t got all day.” He tapped a restless boot on the floorboards.
“She’s staying.”
Now, with a scowl carved deeply into his face, John Bandera reached for her valise, then the carpetbags and the big steamer trunk, and finally—not quite so roughly—for Emily herself.
“Come on,” he said, his big hands circling her waist, lifting her up and out and setting her down before she was even aware that she was moving.
“How much does she owe you?” he asked the driver.
“Already paid for the one-way trip,” the man replied.
“Fine.” Having said that, Bandera slapped the haunch of the horse closest to him. “So long, then,” he said, stepping back and drawing Emily with him as the wagon took off with such a lurch that the driver nearly pitched backward over his wooden seat.
They stood there a moment, the two of them, in the tan cloud of dust the horses had kicked up, watching the mud wagon bumping wildly away while the driver tried to hold on to his hat and the reins.
Go? Stay? Emily really hadn’t made up her mind yet, but here she was anyway. She wondered if the driver would hear her if she called him back.
But just then, without a word, Price’s scowling partner picked up her valise and wedged it under one arm before he collected her heavy trunk and both carpetbags. Still silent, he turned and headed toward the house with all of her worldly possessions.
Emily, obviously unwelcome, followed slowly in John Bandera’s wake.
“You’ll be comfortable in here. For now, anyway.” John dropped the carpetbags on Señora Fuentes’s quilt-covered bed. “My housekeeper and her daughter are off in Mexico for a while,” he said, then quickly corrected himself. “Our housekeeper, I mean.”
“That would be Mrs. Fuentes,” she said, standing in the doorway. “Price has written me about her. About her chickens and her garden and her daughter, Lupe.” She laughed softly. “Why, I almost feel as if I’ve met them both.”
Still with his back to her, John closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath. Dios. This wasn’t going to work. His brain was already dizzy from trying to keep things straight and his tongue was tangling around every word he spoke.
He should have sent her away. He should have paid the damned driver his triple fare and had him take the woman back to Corpus Christi. He should have said, “Price McDaniel’s gone, lady. Long gone. Chances are good he’s dead. Your trip was for naught. Adios.” That, after all, was the truth.
“It was kind of you to let me stay, Mr. Bandera.”
She was right behind him now, so close that if he turned he could take her in his arms the way he’d longed to do, ached to do, year after year, night after night after night.
When he did turn, she stepped back, obviously uncomfortable, perhaps even afraid. He was a stranger, after all. He wasn’t Price.
“You’re probably hungry, Miss Russell,” he said. “I’ll fix us something to eat.”
“That would be wonderful.” She was pulling off her gloves now, one dainty finger at a time. “I wish you’d call me Emily. I feel as if I’ve known you long enough and well enough, Mr. Bandera, to call you by your Christian name. May I? John?”
“Sure,” he said. “Why not?”
She tossed her gloves on the bed. “Good.” Then she started plucking the pins from her prim little hat. “You’ll think this strange perhaps, John,” she said, “but this place, The Crippled B, feels more like my home in many ways than Mississippi ever did.”
John didn’t respond. He was already on his way out of the room, hurrying, fleeing, before his Emmy pulled the last pin loose and uncovered all those glorious golden curls.
Exhausted as she was, Emily lay awake for a long time that night in the housekeeper’s narrow bed with its starched muslin sheets and ancient, threadbare quilt. She tried with all her might to think about Price, but her mind kept returning to John Bandera. What a peculiar man he was, and not in the least as Price had described him.
She recalled one particular letter in which Price had referred to his partner as a mongrel. Emily had written back, asking for details. “His mother was a Comanche,” Price had replied. “As for his father, I assume the man was white, light-eyed, and quite tall—as John is over six feet—and the culprit was probably fleet of foot since he didn’t stick around to even witness the birth of his child.”
“Bandera’s a man of few words,” another letter had said. Having met John now, Emily thought that was an exaggeration. He was a man of fewer than few words. It was her impression this evening that speech was almost painful for him and that he was grateful for their frequent lapses into silence, and then thoroughly relieved when it came time to say good-night.
A very peculiar man. And at the same time an extraordinarily handsome man whose features seemed to blend the very best of his diverse bloodlines. His long, dark Indian hair had the merest suggestion of curl, a gift of his father no doubt, along with the amber light that glowed in his dark eyes. His features weren’t finely sculpted the way Price’s were, but rather ruggedly chiseled from brow to jaw.
He was as different from Price as night from day, and yet there had been a time or two during their meal when John had somehow reminded her of Price, not in looks but in his speech. Not that there was so much of that, but once or twice he’d used a word or turned a phrase that sounded uncannily like Price. It probably shouldn’t have surprised her, though, since the two of them had been together—in the Army and now at The Crippled B—for eight years or so. It only made sense that they would pick up each other’s habits, mannerisms, and patterns of speech.
She fell asleep finally, wondering what Price’s voice sounded like and if it was as deep as John Bandera’s and if the Mississippian she loved so well had acquired the subtle Spanish accent that made the sound of his
