West Wind by Linda Winstead Jones

Author:Linda Winstead Jones [Jones, Linda Winstead]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

“I know, darlin’,” Shelley said gently. “I know.”

Shelley had watched Annie and little Pearl all night, not dozing in the chair as he might have, but studying the accused murderess closely.

His Annie, a killer. He’d learned long ago not to expect too much from people, not to take anything at face value. And still, it was unbe-lievable. He’d begun the long evening cursing his stupidity, fretting over every clue he had missed.

And then his thoughts had turned to Annie’s behavior. She hadn’t been able to pull the trigger of the derringer he had given her, even when her life was in danger. She’d panicked when she’d seen the scratch on his arm. She had probably, he grudgingly admitted, saved his life by stopping Swift Eagle’s knife. The pretty knife he had returned to her after he stabbed the Pinkerton agent. The pretty knife she still wore strapped to her hip. It had never occurred to him not to return it to her, because he couldn’t imagine her using it.

Does a woman who relies on a child’s dreamcatcher for a decent night’s sleep cut a man’s throat? Could a woman who cries her heart out for a little girl she didn’t even know take a life so easily?

Shelley buried the child beside her father, while Annabelle fashioned a crudely carved marker. She used Swift Eagle’s knife to write PEARL on a scrap of wood she had found, and the wood shavings collected in her lap as she sat on the ground and turned all her attention to the task. There was a deep frown on her face, and an occasional single tear trickled down one cheek.

Her tears were all gone by the time they rode away from the shack, leaving behind two freshly turned mounds of dirt. Shelley was silent again, but not as angry as he had been. That little girl’s passing had affected even his stony heart.

180

Twenty-Seven

Shelley glanced over his shoulder at the woman who rode silently behind him, her face pale and glum.

They’d been following the Truckee River Pass for days, their progress slower than he had anticipated. Alone he could’ve traveled faster, but he knew Annie’s limits, sensed them even though he never let on that he knew or cared how the journey across the Sierra Nevada tired her.

The death of little Pearl had affected her deeply, but he had expected her to shake off her melancholy after a day or two. She hadn’t. As they had ridden away from the shack, he’d reassured her tersely that there was nothing more she could have done . . . and she’d agreed with him, her voice little more than a whisper.

After that, Annie hadn’t mentioned the child again, or complained to him that life wasn’t fair, but her silence was profound. She followed him. She ate. She slept. That was all.

As he set up camp by the river, Annie sat tiredly by the fire. They had taken to sleeping on opposite sides of the campfire, his

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