The Gunman's Bride. Catherine Palmer

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СКАЧАТЬ course not. In fact…I couldn’t have known the Bart Kingsley they’re hunting. At least…I don’t think it could be the same man.”

      “But it might be,” Etta stressed. “Remember how scared you were when you first heard his name—same as yours.”

      With a sigh Rosie smoothed down her black cotton skirt. Right now she wanted nothing more than to untie her soiled white apron, slip off her stockings and soak her sore feet in a basin of water. She didn’t want to think about the past. She didn’t want to remember Bart Kingsley.

      “He was handsome,” she murmured, unable to look at Etta. “My Bart Kingsley had green eyes…strange green eyes with threads of gold. And straight hair, black as midnight. He was skinny—rail thin—but strong. Oh, my Bart was so strong. He was kind, too. Always soft-spoken and polite to everyone. He loved animals. Stray dogs and cats followed him around the farm. When he sat down to rest, there’d be one cat on his shoulder and another on his lap.”

      “He worked on your father’s farm?”

      “In the stables. He was wonderful with horses. He broke and trained them with such gentleness. It was like magic the way they obeyed him. And you should have seen my Bart ride.”

      “What do you suppose turned him into a cattle rustler and a murderer?”

      “It couldn’t be the same man,” Laura Rose retorted. “The Bart Kingsley I married never hurt anybody. He wouldn’t even say a harsh word if someone was cruel to him.”

      “If he was so kind, why would anyone be cruel to him?”

      “The other farmhands taunted him because…well, because he was part Indian. His father was an Apache.”

      “Apache!” Etta cried. “The sheriff just told us that outlaw they’re hunting for goes by the name of Injun Jack. I’ll bet it’s him, Laurie. How many men could fit that description?”

      “A lot,” she shot back with more defiance than she felt.

      “So you married him when you were fifteen. Did you actually keep house together?”

      “No, of course not. We weren’t even…we didn’t sleep together like married people. We were just children really—children with such beautiful hopes and dreams.”

      “I don’t see how you could bring yourself to marry a savage even if he was nice to you,” Etta rattled on.

      “Did you get a…a divorce? Harvey Girls aren’t supposed to be married—it’s against regulations. You could be fired.”

      “We were married two weeks before my father found out,” Rosie explained. “He was furious. The two of them had a long talk, and Bart left the farm that afternoon.”

      “He left you? Just like that?”

      “There was a note.” Her voice grew thin and wistful as she thought of the special place in the woods where they had first kissed each other. The place where she had found the note. “Bart wrote that he realized the marriage had been a mistake. He said we were too young to know what we were doing, and he’d begun to realize it right away after we got married. He said…he said he didn’t really love me after all, and I should forget about him. I was to consider that nothing had ever happened between us.”

      “Nothing?”

      Rosie focused on her friend. “Nothing. So there…I wasn’t really married to him at all. Not in the Bible way. Our marriage didn’t count. And that’s the end of the story, so if you’d please just leave me alone now, Etta, I want to go to bed. I have the early shift tomorrow.”

      “You’ve got that blister, too,” Etta added, her voice sympathetic as she gave her friend a quick hug.

      Pulling out of the embrace, Rosie stood and smoothed the rumples in the pink quilt on her bed. There were probably lots of Bart Kingsleys in the world. Besides, she was about as far as she could be from Kansas City and the life she had shared with him. No one was going to find her in Raton, New Mexico. Not her pappy. Not the man who had been her fiancé for the past two years. And certainly not Bart Kingsley.

      “Lock up now, Laurie,” Etta said from the doorway.

      “I’ve put your shoes out in the hall. You’ll see how much better everything will be in the morning.”

      Under the bed, Bart watched as Rosie bolted her door and set a chair under the knob. He knew she was afraid. But afraid of Bart, the murdering outlaw? Or afraid of him, the Bart who had married her and then had run off and left her high and dry?

      It wasn’t going to matter much either way if he up and died right under her bed. He needed to slide out from under this bed, wash his wound with some clean water and try to take a look at the damage. He needed ointment and bandages. He needed water. His mouth felt like the inside of an old shoe.

      But he couldn’t risk scaring Rosie by edging out into the open. She’d holler, her friends would come running and that would be that. The sheriff would cart him off to jail, the Pinkerton agent would haul him back to Missouri and the law would hang him high. A half-breed Indian who had robbed trains and banks with Jesse James wouldn’t stand a chance in court.

      Bart swallowed against the bitter gall of memory as he recalled the years he’d squandered. And now, after all this time, he’d found his Rosie again. She had been the one bright spot in his life, and once again she was his only hope.

      He studied her feet as she peeled away her stockings. There had been a time when she would let him hold those feet, rub away their tiredness, kiss each tender pink toe. Her black dress puddled to the floor and a soft white ruffle-hemmed gown took its place, skimming over her pretty ankles.

      She began to hum, and Bart worked his shoulders across the hard floor in hope of a better look. The thought of dying this close to his Rosie without ever really seeing her face again sent an ache through him. He tilted his head so the pink quilt covered just one eye and left the other exposed.

      Her back turned to him, she sat on a chair, let down her hair and began to pull a brush from the dark chocolate roots to the sun-lightened cascade that fell past her waist and over her hips. “Forty-eight, forty-nine, fifty,” she counted in a soft voice.

      She swung the mass of hair across her shoulders and began to brush the other side. “Fifty-one, fifty-two, fifty-three…”

      She had put her feet into a basin of water while she worked on her hair, and Bart could see those bare ankles again. He shut his eyes, swallowing the lump that rose in his throat at the memory of the first time he’d caught a glimpse of Rosie’s feet.

      They had been down at the swimming hole where he and his stepbrothers liked to fool around. But this was a chilly autumn afternoon, and Bart’s stepbrothers were nowhere in sight. Rosie had agreed to meet him at the swimming hole, and he’d been waiting for her like a horse champing at the bit.

      When she finally came, she was full of silliness and laughter, her head tilted back and her brown eyes shining at him with all the love in the world. She had dropped down onto the grassy bank, unlaced her boots and taken off her stockings. Then, while he held his breath, she had lifted the hem of her skirt and waded right into the icy pool.

      Hoo-ee, how СКАЧАТЬ