Connal

“How about a movie Friday night? We’ll run over to El Paso and eat supper before we go to the theater.”

“Terrific,” she agreed. He was loads of fun and she needed to get away.

“I won’t get back until midnight, I guess,” her father called out. “After we check that bull down at the Berry place, I want to look over Berry’s books before the tax man gets them. Don’t wait up.”

“Okay. Have fun,” she called back. It was a joke between them, because Jack Berry kept books that would have confounded a lawyer. It was almost estimated tax time, and Jack was the ranch’s only bookkeeper. They should have hired somebody more qualified, but Jack was elderly and couldn’t do outside work. Her father had a soft heart. Rather than see the old man on welfare, Ben had hired him to keep the books. Which meant, unfortunately, that Ben had to do most of the figuring over again at tax time. His soft heart was one reason the ranch was in the hole. He didn’t really have a business head like his own father had possessed. Without C.C.’s subtle guidance, the ranch would have gone on the auction block three years ago. It still might.

C.C. She frowned, turning toward the back door. She was worried about him. He hadn’t seemed too drunk when she’d gone to check on him earlier, and that was unusual. His yearly binges were formidable. She’d better give him another look, before her father thought to check him out at midnight.

The bunkhouse was filling up. There were three men in it, now, the newest temporary hands. But C.C. wasn’t there.

“He was pretty tight-lipped about where he was going, Miss Mathews,” one of the men volunteered. “But I’d guess he was headed into Juárez from the direction he took.”

“Oh, boy,” she sighed. “Did he take the pickup or his own car?”

“His own car—that old Ford.”

“Thanks.”

It was a good thing she drove, she thought angrily. One of these days she’d be gone, and who’d take care of that wild-eyed cowboy then? The thought depressed her. He wouldn’t have any trouble finding somebody to do that, not with his looks. And there was always Edie.

She turned off on the road that led to the border. The official at the border remembered the big white Ford—there hadn’t been a lot of traffic across, since it was a weekday night. She thanked him, went across and drove around until she found the white Ford parked with characteristic haphazardness in a parking space. She pulled in beside it and got out.

Fortunately she hadn’t taken time to change. She was wearing jeans and a checked shirt with a pullover sweater and boots, just the outfit for walking around at night. She was a little nervous because she didn’t like going places alone after dark. Especially the kind of place she was sure C.C. was going to be in. Too, she was worried in case her father came home and needed to ask her anything. Her closed bedroom door might fool him into thinking she was just asleep, but if he saw the pickup missing, he might get suspicious. She didn’t want him to fire C.C. He liked the man, but if C.C. didn’t tell him why he was drinking—and C.C. wouldn’t—then her father was very likely to let him go anyway.

There was a bar not a block away from where she parked. She had a feeling that C.C. was in it, but when she looked inside, there were mostly Mexican men and only one or two young Americans. She walked the streets, peeking into bars, and almost got picked up once. Finally, miserable and worried, she turned and started back to the truck. On the way, she glanced into that first bar again—and there he was, leaning back in a chair at a corner table.

She walked in and went back to the corner table.

“Oh…” C.C. let out a word that he normally wouldn’t have. He was cold and dangerous looking now, not the easily handled man of a few hours ago. She knew that her old tactics wouldn’t work this time.

“Hi,” she said gently.

“If you’re here to drag me back, forget it,” he drawled, glaring at her from bloodshot eyes. There was a half-empty tequila bottle on the table and an empty glass beside it. “I won’t go.”

“It’s hot in here,” she remarked, feeling her way. “Some air might help you.”

He laughed drunkenly. “Think so? Suppose I pass out, tomboy. Will you throw me over your shoulder and carry me home?”

That hurt. He made her out to be some female Amazon. Perhaps that was how he thought of her—as just one of the boys. But she smiled. “I might try,” she agreed.

He studied her with disinterested brevity. “Still in jeans. Always wearing something manly. Do you have legs, tomboy? Do you even have breasts—?”

“I’ll bet you can’t walk to the car by yourself,” she cut him off, trying not to blush, because his voice carried and one or two of the patrons were openly staring their way.

He stopped what he was saying to scowl at her. “The hell I can’t,” he replied belligerently.

“Prove it,” she challenged. “Let’s see you get there without falling flat on your face.”

He muttered something rough and got to his feet, swaying a little. He took out a twenty-dollar bill and tossed it onto the bar, his hat cocked arrogantly over one eye, his tall, lithe body slightly stooped. “Keep the change,” he told the man.

Pepi congratulated herself silently on her strategy as he weaved out onto the street. He took off his hat and wiped his forehead hesitantly.

“Hot,” he murmured. He shook his head, his breath coming hard and heavy. He turned to look at Pepi, frowning slightly. “I thought we were going for a walk.”

“Sure,” she said.

“Come here, then, sweet girl,” he coaxed, holding out his arm. “I can’t let you get lost, can I?”

It was the liquor talking, and she knew it. But it was so sweet to have his arm around her shoulder, his head bent to hers, his breath against her forehead. Even the scent of the tequila wasn’t that unpleasant.

“So sweet,” he said heavily, walking her away from the car, not toward it. “I don’t want to go home. Let’s just walk the night away.”

“C.C., it’s dangerous in this part of the city,” she began softly.

“My name…is Connal,” he said abruptly.

That was faintly shocking, to know that he had a real name. She smiled. “It’s nice. I like it.”

“Yours is Penelope Marie,” he laughed roughly. “Penelope Marie Mathews.”

“Yes.” She hadn’t known that he knew her full name. It was flattering.

“Suppose we change it to Tremayne?” he asked, hesitating. “Sure, why not? You’re always looking after me, Penelope Marie Mathews, so why don’t you marry me and do the thing right?” While she was absorbing the shock, he looked around weavingly. “Aha, sure, there’s one of those all-night chapels. Come on.”

“C.C., we can’t…!”

He blinked at her horrified expression. “Sure we can. Come on, honey, we don’t have to have any papers or anything. And it’s all legal.”

She bit her lower lip. She couldn’t let him do this, she thought, panicking. When he sobered up and found out, he’d kill her. Not only that, she wasn’t sure if a Mexican marriage was binding; she didn’t know what the law was.

“Listen, now,” she began.

“If you won’t marry me,” he threatened with drunken cunning, “I’ll shoot up a bar and get us landed in jail. Right now, Pepi. This minute. I mean it.”

Obviously he did. She gave in. Surely nobody in his right mind would marry them with him in that visibly drunken condition. So she went along with him, worried to death about how she was going to get him home. But she knew that he owned a Beretta and had a permit for it, and she couldn’t be sure that he didn’t have it on him. God forbid that he should shoot somebody!

He dragged her into the wedding chapel. Unfortunately the Mexican who married them spoke little English, and Pepi’s halting Spanish was inadequate to explain what was going on. C.C., she recalled, spoke the language fluently. He broke in on her stumbling explanation and rattled off something that made the little man grin. The Mexican went away and came back with a Bible and two women. He launched into rapid-fire Spanish, cueing first Pepi and then C.C. to say si and then he said something else, grinned, and then a terrified Pepi was being hugged and kissed by the women. C.C. scrawled his signature on a paper and rattled off some more Spanish while the little man wrote a few other things on the paper.

“That’s all there is to it.” C.C. grinned at Pepi. “Here. All nice and legal. Give me a kiss, wife.”

He held out the paper, took a deep breath, and slid to the floor of the chapel.

The next few minutes were hectic. Pepi finally managed to convey to the Mexican family that she had to get him to the car. They brought in a couple of really mean-looking young men who lifted C.C. like a sack of feed and carried him out to the parking lot. Pepi had him put in the pickup truck. She handed the boys two dollar bills, which was all she had, and tried to thank them. They waved away the money, grinning, when they noticed the beat-up, dented condition of the old ranch pickup. Kindred spirits, she thought warmly. Poor people always helped each other. She thanked them again, stuck the paper in her pocket, and started the truck.

She made it to the ranch in good time. Her father’s Jeep was still gone, thank God. She backed the pickup next to the bunkhouse, where it wasn’t visible from the house, and knocked on the door.

Bud, the new hand she’d spoken to earlier, answered the knock. Apparently the men had been asleep.