Chapter 26
Rafe took several blankets and spent the night at the pool. He watched as the bears came, the cub managing very well on three legs. The wounded leg seemed to be healing, the cub testing it now and then.
The cub came up to him as the she-bear held back, and Rafe looked at its leg. The splint was gone, but then he’d expected that. He knew Nature had her own way of healing.
If only this sharp ache inside him could be healed. But he had boxed himself in readily enough, and he couldn’t see his way out, nor could he continue to blame Randall for everything, not any longer.
He watched as the she-bear fished, slapping several trout out of the pool for the cub, who attacked them with ferocity.
Rafe had to smile at how fast the little animal had returned to normal.
And then he remembered Shea’s intent face as they had worked over the cub together days ago. Or was it years?
Supper had been a nightmare of strained emotions.
Randall had brought back one fish, which Shea had cooked over fire without comment.
Rafe had simply taken a can of peaches and the last of the hardtack and gone outside to eat, taking Abner with him for company.
It was time that Randall and Shea somehow sort out their problems, come to some kind of truce as he had.
Rafe no longer doubted that Randall would do as he said he would. He even thought about trying to change Randall’s mind because of what the revelations might mean for Shea, but he sensed it would do no good. It was something Randall had to do for himself.
Abner crawled up into Rafe’s hand, and he wondered about his own future, what he had to do now for himself.
Nothing was left here. McClary was dead.
Randall would in most likelihood go to prison, if not for the payroll robberies of years ago, most certainly for his knowledge of McClary’s activities here.
At the very least the rancher was guilty of accessory to murder.
Rafe had accomplished exactly what he’d set out to do, and now he could lose himself in some far piece of earth, just as he had planned. Too bad, he thought ironically, that triumph was so damned bitter. In gaining his “justice”, he was losing the most precious gift he’d ever been given: love.
And Shea. He would return the money he’d stolen from Randall. She would have enough money to go wherever she wished and do whatever she wanted. She would be fine. She would find some upstanding proper gentleman who could give her the family and life she deserved.
He looked up at the sky, at the three-quarters moon and the millions of stars that made it into a jeweled tapestry. He would never again take it for granted or lose his wonder at its beauty. But its very vastness and majesty made him feel incredibly alone.
Where would he go? And Clint and Ben? The others?
Would he run the rest of his life, like Jack Randall for the last ten years, if not from the law, from himself?
A decision started forming in his mind, and he didn’t, couldn’t, sleep. He didn’t want to lose this night of freedom, the lonely but magnificent power of such a bright clear sky. He wanted to memorize the brilliance of every star, to retain in his mind the delicate silver of the nearly full moon.
He knew he wouldn’t see the heavens again in a very long time.
Shea wanted to go to the pool. She wanted to be with Rafe, but he didn’t want her, and with good reason. She had just heard the whole ugly story, told with unvarnished frankness.
Her father had stolen from the army; and it hadn’t been the first time, he’d admitted. He had been stealing since he was a boy. Her own grandfather had been shot by someone he’d tried to cheat.
He’d tried to quit, Jack Randall told her, when he’d met Sara, but it had been too easy to continue, especially when he’d wanted so much more for his wife. He’d winced when he said that, knowing it for the excuse it was.
“But consciously framing another man for something you did?” she asked. “Lying about it in court?”
“I was a coward, Shea. I always had been. I never meant anyone to be killed, and troopers were. I’ve always been able to rationalize what I did, and then I convinced myself I’d just given away information anyone could have.
I was still hoping your mother would come back to me, that with the money, I could buy a ranch, become what she wanted. …”
“Then McClary discovered Captain Tyler was asking questions about me, and I knew it was a matter of time. McClary offered me a way out, and I took it. I did manage to save Tyler from being hanged. I’d thought I could do more, but the officer in charge believed Tyler was a traitor because he was a Texan. ”
“You just let him be branded and spend ten years in prison instead,” Shea said bitterly.
He was silent.
“Why come forward now?” she said sarcastically. “The damage is done. Do you really think it will change how I feel now?”
“No,” he replied wearily. “I know it won’t. But at least I can clear him of these recent murders.” He was sitting, and now he stood. “I know nothing I say now can excuse the past, but for what it’s worth, I’ve lived in my own hell these past ten years.”
“But you let … that man stay with you … knowing.…”
“He’s been blackmailing me for years. He shot me because I told him I was going to the authorities. Too late, of course.”
There was so much self-loathing in her father’s eyes that Shea felt the first vague stirrings of sympathy.
But Rafe’s anguished face kept coming back to her. The first time he’d shown her the scar, the way he always wanted to sleep outside so he could see the sky, the words of Clint Edwards: He loved the army. He was the best officer I’ve ever seen.
And then Rafe’s face a few moments ago. That closed, tight look when he said, “I have to make a life for myself somewhere.…” Even as he knew how difficult it would be with that brand marking him.
She swallowed hard and looked up at the man who had fathered her. “I love him, you know, and I can never be with him because of you.”
“I’m sorry,” he said in a gruff, broken voice. “If there is anything … God in heaven, I’m so damn sorry.” His shoulders slumped. “I’ll stay in the barn tonight and start down in the morning. Will … you go with me?”
No, she wanted to scream. I want to stay here. I want to be with Rafe. But that was impossible. She nodded, tears edging her eyes.
“Shea … I didn’t know about you until just a few weeks ago, but I …
love you. I would do anything, anything at all, for you.
I want you to know that. I also want you to know I …
don’t expect anything from you. I know you …
can’t love someone like me. Or even understand.
” He went wearily to the door and started to open it.
“Papa.” Her voice was low, so low she wondered if he even heard it, but he turned and faced her. There was no hope in his face. “Mama never stopped loving you. There was a picture of you … I saw her looking at it until the day she died.”
He stilled, his face like stone, then he silently left the room, leaving Shea utterly alone.
Shea lay awake all night, so many emotions battering her.
Part of her wanted to hate Jack Randall, but she couldn’t.
She kept seeing those sad eyes with so much regret, and she knew that he, too, had paid a desperate price for the past and would face another kind of punishment in the coming days.
She’d learned enough about him to know how much he loved the ranch, the position of respect he held, and now he would give all that up.
And Rafe? Dear God, what would Rafe do now? She’d sensed a difference in him tonight. Some of that deep, dark bitterness was gone, but none of the determination. He would leave her because he thought …
She remembered the words, each one of them, and suddenly she realized how hollow they were. The words that said he wanted a new life, that he didn’t want memories of the old one.
She had believed them then because she had been so distraught over her father’s confession to her, over her own guilt of somehow being a part of it because of the blood tie.
But now she remembered the tenderness with which he touched her, the wonder of those intimate moments, and she suddenly knew that they would never have been possible if she’d been a reminder of Jack’s treachery.
He had said them for her sake. How could she forget the number of times Rafe Tyler had tried to protect her in just this way?
Her mother had left her father. She wondered now what would have happened if Sara Randall had stayed with her husband, had told him of the coming child.
Would he have changed? She would never know, but she realized now that her mother had run away from something she couldn’t face.
She had thought it had taken courage to leave a man you loved.
Now she wondered if perhaps it wouldn’t have taken greater courage to stay.
She didn’t know, and the questions were all agonizing and unanswerable.
Just before dawn, she rose. Her clothes were still there, in the valise. She changed into a clean dress and pulled a shawl around her shoulders and started toward the pool as the first rays of the morning sun lightened the night sky.
She saw Rafe at the same time he apparently heard her. He had been sitting cross-legged near the rock, and he stood as she approached.
Without saying anything, he just held out his arms to her, as if he, too, had made some kind of decision. She walked into them and felt them close around her, and she laid her head against his chest, just standing there, comforted by his closeness.
She didn’t know how long it was before they moved. She didn’t want to move, to break this moment that somehow spoke of love more than words she’d wanted so badly.