“No, That’s Stefan’s bed inside. Mine’s here,” he stated, wondering at the peculiar lines men drew. He had taken the man’s wife, but he didn’t want to sleep in his bed. There was no regret in her eyes, no remorse for her actions. At least he had that.
After she had left, Webb stared at the door for a long time before he finally turned the lantern out and crawled under the quilt. He piled the straw around him, then rested his head on the saddle. There was a flatness in him now. No happy end could come from this, and it would scar her worse than it would him.
He shut his eyes and watched the tormenting images of her in his mind. She had come to him smiling. In some things, women were braver than men.
Sleep was a long time coming, and even then it was in fitful dozes. Along about three o’clock in the morning, he was awakened by the nervous snorting of his horse. He was vaguely conscious that the storm had abated; then he heard the barking exchange of a wolf pack. They’d probably found the entrails from the butchered cow and were feasting on it. When that was gone, their noses would lead them to the shed and the beef carcass hanging in the corner. The man smell would probably keep them from trying to get at it, but just to be on the safe side, Webb reached out from under the quilt and slipped the rifle out of its scabbard to lay it alongside him. The gelding snorted again.
“I hear ’em,” he murmured, and the horse seemed to blow out a satisfied breath.
16
A noise awakened Lilli from her fitful slumber. At first she thought it was the wolves again. Then she recognized it as a different sound and tiredly pushed off the bed, pulling the loose shawl more firmly about her shoulders. It sounded like a horse outside. She wiped at the sleep in her eyes and pushed back the hair she hadn’t bothered to braid last night.
In a flash it hit her that Webb might be leaving without saying good-bye. She raced to the door and flung it open, then stopped cold when she saw Stefan sliding off the bare back of a draft horse. There was a second horse, carrying Franz Kreuger. She darted a worried look at the shed, wondering if Webb was still there or if he’d heard the riders come in.
“You vere vorried about me,” Stefan judged by the hint of concern in her expression, “I am fine. I stayed vith Franz. As soon as the storm ended, I told him I must get back to my Lillian.”
“I hoped you were there,” she said and stepped back from the door to admit the two men.
“Vere you all right? I vorried about you being alone.” A little frown creased his forehead. His vague bewilderment increased when he noticed the wisps of straw clinging to her hair and the straw chaff on the back of her shawl as she crossed to the stove. “Have you been out to take care of the horses this morning already?”
“No, I haven’t.” Her back was to him as she bent to open the stove grate and stir up the coals. “As a matter of fact, I haven’t stoked the fire or put coffee on yet.
I’ve been sleeping. I guess it was the sound of your horses that woke me up.”
She had been sleeping in her clothes? And her hair wasn’t in its nightly braid. Stefan’s frown deepened. Neither of these things was normal for her. She straightened from the stove to pick up the coffee pot and carry it to the water pail, giving him a side view of her.
“And you needn’t have worried about me being alone,” she said, busying herself with filling the pot with water, “Mr. Calder came by. He went out looking for you before the storm began, but he couldn’t find you. He barely made it back here himself.”
“Calder vas here?” A bitter anger began to fill him with its birthings in jealousy and fear.
“Yes. He slept in the shed with the horses last night.” The information came out with a certain quickness that pulled Stefan’s gaze to the particles of straw in her hair. “I haven’t seen him this morning, so I don’t know whether he’s left or not.”
“You vere in the shed vith him.” His voice rumbled in accusation, surprising a slightly stricken expression to cross her features before she stopped it. For all her outward show of calm, Stefan sensed a tension about her, and his hand tightened its grip on the rifle.
“I took him a quilt,” she admitted, lifting her chin a fraction.
“Look at her eyes.” Franz Kreuger stood at Stefan’s side and leaned slightly toward him when he spoke, as if to share some secret knowledge with him. “They are puffy and red. She has been crying. What do you suppose happened to make her cry?”
The question only increased Stefan’s dark suspicions. He was vibrating with the anger that welled within him. “Did he violate you?” He glowered at her, channeling his rage into vengeance to justify its existence.
“No!”
she denied, her shocked gaze flying to Franz Kreuger, then back to Stefan.
“Look at how frightened she is.” Franz turned the brooding fire glittering in his eyes on Stefan, certainty burning in his expression. “He has threatened her. She is afraid to tell the truth.”
“Stefan, don’t listen to him,” Lilli protested in alarm.
But Stefan looked at the evidence his own eyes had seen and the supporting observations from his wise friend, and drew his own conclusions. Revenge was much nobler than the jealousy of an old man for a younger one. Always a man of few words, Stefan did not speak of his intentions as he turned away to stride toward the door, his rifle in hand.
“Stefan!” Lilli pushed the coffee pot onto the stove and ran after him, but Stefan ignored her cry as he bolted out of the shack and levered a bullet into the rifle chamber.
The black gelding stirred restively, its ears swiveled to the human activity outside, and its animal instinct sensed something was wrong. The horse’s movements roused Webb from a deep sleep, his subconscious picking up the primitive warning from the animal. Automatically he reached for the rifle lying alongside him, still not fully awake, and expecting to hear the snuffling and clawing of wolves outside the shed as they had been doing off and on through the predawn hours.
When the door was thrown open, suddenly and violently, instinct took over, bringing Webb to his feet in a crouched, defensive posture. The rifle was aimed low from his hip as he prepared to meet this unknown attack. All in the same instant, Webb recognized the whiskered man charging into the shed as Lilli’s husband and started to relax his guard before he saw the murderous look in the man’s eyes.
An explosion, red tongues of flame from the rifle in Reisner’s grip, and a woman’s cry all mingled together as Webb was spun backward by the impact of a bullet fired at close range. It knocked him against the carcass hanging in the corner. He grabbed at it for support, his own rifle lost somewhere in the straw.