What an odd man. She couldn’t forget the look on his face as she’d pulled up her skirt—as if looking at her leg were somehow painful to him. In a fit of self-doubt, Millie glanced over to Sam to make sure he wasn’t looking, then lifted her skirt again to check her legs for herself. They appeared fine to her. Better than fine. Irving Draper, her intended two fiancés back, had even had the audacity to remark on her shapely legs once, moments before she slapped him silly. It amazed her to think that a boring, conventional sap like Irving could appreciate her, while virile, dangerous Sam looked at her as if he wished she would cover herself with a potato sack. She could only guess that she didn’t compare well to other women of his acquaintance, who, given his character, probably consisted of floozies in fleshpots.
Now if that wasn’t insulting, what was?
A long, slim leg, pale and shapely in the moonlight. Sam didn’t think he’d forget that sight as long as he lived. Sweat popped out across his brow just from thinking about it. Millie was completely oblivious, of course. How could a woman be so prim, so haughty, and yet at times so completely heedless of propriety?
Because she was a pampered rich girl, he told himself. A young lady who considered herself so far above him that she didn’t find anything at all wrong about prancing around in wet, clingy clothes, or hiking her skirt up to her thigh. He was so far out of her circle of consideration that he might as well have been another species entirely, as far as she was concerned. Frogs and toads didn’t mix; escaped convicts didn’t mix with rich men’s daughters.
He would do well to put stock in that way of thinking himself. He had problems aplenty aside from Miss Lively. He had a murderer to catch.
He reached down and felt the small lump in his pocket and was reassured that the ring was still there. His evidence. In his mind’s eye, he could see the inscription on the inside. T to D, it read in bold script. He had a good idea that D stood for Jesse’s old partner, Darnell Weems. But he couldn’t be certain. And who was T?
Finding Darnell Weems was only half the battle — assuming he could even make it out to Little Bend, Darnell’s home, without being caught by the law. Most likely, Darnell wasn’t going to confess to killing his friend’s wife. Why should he, when Jesse was about to hang for the crime?
Jesse hadn’t been able to understand why his friend would have traveled halfway across a state to murder a woman he’d never met. He and Salina had married after he and Darnell parted ways. Yet he swore he’d seen Darnell riding away from the house while he was out hunting the night of the murder. Then, when he returned home, he’d found Salina, and the nightmare had begun. The law had arrived, and when it became clear that the sheriff meant to have his revenge on Jesse by painting him as a wife killer, Jesse, still half out of his mind with grief, had run. The ring had been discovered later by a kind old neighbor lady who was by Jesse’s to clean up the place. She’d promptly brought the engraved band to the jail, but the mysterious clue had interested Sam more than it had Jesse, who by the time it was found was beyond caring about his own life.
Jesse always wanted to think the best of people. But Sam had no illusions. After their parents died, Sam had tried to bring his little brother up to be practical. Jesse had the dreamer in him, though, and had gone his own way. He’d met up with Darnell in Colorado, and for two years the two of them had tried several schemes together — from cattle driving to gold mining. Finally they’d won two plots of land in a poker game. To decide who got which, they had flipped for them. That was the last they’d seen of each other, except for Jesse’s last brief glimpse of Darnell in the night. Maybe Darnell harbored some resentment for getting the lesser plot of land out west.
Even so, Jesse didn’t want to think the worst of his old friend. All along, he’d sworn that Darnell wasn’t a bad character. But Sam didn’t believe it for a moment.
He was going to find Darnell Weems and, come hell or high water, he would squeeze a confession out of him. There had to be a reason behind Salina’s murder. And whether Jesse liked it or not, Sam intended to prove it was his friend’s doing. Or else die trying.
Chapter Three
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife. Bob Jitter remembered those words from when he was a kid. Back then he hadn’t known what coveting was all about, but he did now. Yes, sir, he sure did.
Jitter hung back in the cabin’s small kitchen and watched the newlyweds fight. Watching and coveting was about all there was to do around the place these days. Darnell’s cattle had up and died, the little garden they’d cultivated in the spring had dried up by July. If it weren’t for Darnell’s wife, Tess, Jitter was sure he would have left. Though he considered Darnell a friend, as well as his employer, that didn’t change the fact that there was little around the place for him to do. But ever since Darnell had brought his bride home at the beginning of summer, Jitter had found himself stuck on the old place as surely as if he were knee-deep in mud.
“C’mon, Jitter, back me up here,” Darnell said, turning away from his wife to plead with his friend in the corner.
“I ain’t sayin’ nothin’,” Jitter replied. A person would have to be a fool to go up against Tess. Maybe an even bigger fool to marry her. But she had the looks and a figure men were apt to make fools of themselves over — himself included, he feared.
Many was the night he lay dreaming about her, dreaming about what if she weren’t another man’s wife. Probably she wouldn’t spare him a second glance. But at least then he’d have a right to his dreams, to conjuring up the image of himself winding that long, silky blond hair through his fingers, and staring into those icy blue eyes. She was only a few inches shorter than his own six feet, and every inch of her soft, womanly curves. He doubted he had ever come so close to a woman so beautiful, yet she was completely out of his reach.
Once, she had been in his reach. Jitter and Tess had checked into a Buffalo Gap hotel together as man and wife, “Mr. and Mrs. Darnell Weems,” while Darnell went to take care of his old partner. Of course, his being in the hotel with Tess had been pretense, an alibi, but as he sat up all night in a chair, watching Tess as she lay across the big double bed, her blond hair flowing on the pillow, the temptation had been achingly real.
“What kind of man are you?” Tess shouted across the room at her husband, startling Jitter out of his guilty thoughts. Her blue eyes flashed with contempt at the slightly hunch-shouldered man standing across from her.
“I done what you wanted, Tess,” Darnell argued.
“Don’t try clearing your conscience by heaping your sins on my head, Darnell Weems.”
“But you was the one who said that if we’d have got Jesse’s land in Chariton instead of this patch of dust in Little Bend, we’d be a lot better off.”
“I’m sure you would have figured that out sooner or later,” Tess replied snidely.
But Jitter wasn’t so sure. It was Tess who, as a disgruntled new bride, had made the discovery that the deed to their land was actually in both Darnell’s and Jesse Winter’s names. At first she had only wanted to ensure that Jesse didn’t come snatch the land out from under her in the event of Darnell’s untimely demise. But after hearing the story of how Darnell and Jesse had won two parcels of land on either side of the state from a man who signed over the deeds in their names, and then flipped a coin to see who would get which, Tess had hatched an even better plan. Because if the deed to Jesse Winter’s land still bore two names, then Darnell — and she, too — would have a legitimate claim to it in the event of Jesse Winter’s untimely demise. Which she had soon convinced Darnell to arrange.
“You said you would be happy if’n I did what you wanted,” Darnell said, hurt. “But you ain’t happy. I’m beginning to think you ain’t never been happy.”