Read Online Texas Woman by Joan Johnston - Free Book Online

She had ridden hard to reach him, not believing Cricket’s tale.
    But she had arrived too late. Tonio had already been killed and his body sent home to his family. She had followed as quickly as she could.
    Sloan would never forget the pain in Cruz’s blue eyes as she had pleaded with him to intercede with his parents to permit her to see Tonio’s body. She heard again his mother’s voice raised in anguish and remembered Cruz’s flushed face as he had returned and said, “Come with me.”
    The suffocating smell of incense returned to her, and the feel of Tonio’s cold lips as she had kissed him one last time in the candlelit shadows of his bier. She had felt the tears form behind her eyes. But she had not cried.
    She shivered at the memory of Tonio’s mother, Doña Lucia, regal even in her sorrow, dressed in stark black, her eyes red-rimmed as she clutched a wrinkled handkerchief in her hand. Sloan had offered Tonio’s mother the only balm she could.
    “In the winter I will bear Tonio’s child.”
    “Ah.” There had been a wealth of condemnation in the Spanish woman’s voice. “Do you seek someone to take the bastard child off your hands, Señorita Stewart?”
    Sloan had been appalled at Doña Lucia’s words. But to her shame, she had eventually fulfilled their prophecy.
    She had buried her pain in work. She had tried not to think of her son, or his father. She had loved and nurtured Three Oaks instead.
    Rip simply could not take Three Oaks from her now. Not when it was all she had left.
    Caught up in the turmoil of her thoughts, Sloan had paid no attention to the direction the stallion took. Without her being quite aware of it, they had gone beyond the borders of Three Oaks and she found herself surrounded by wilderness.
    Nothing except sagebrush and an occasional pin oak stood between her and
Comancheria,
the vast land to the north claimed by the Comanches. The sudden awareness of her danger brought Sloan from her stupor, and she yanked the stallion to a standstill.
    The stallion fought the bit, demanding his head. Instead of quieting him, she turned him toward home and spurred him hard. Startled, the beast bolted away at a gallop.
    Sloan let him run until his chest heaved like a bellows and foamy sweat lathered his chest and flanks. Her eyes teared at the whip of the wind, and the smell of leather and sweat stung her nostrils.
    The more tired the stallion became, the harder she pushed him. How far could he run? How long could he last? How soon before the pain became too awful for his great heart to bear?
    At last she pulled him to a stop. She slipped from the saddle and, finding her knees weak, clung to the animal’s thick black mane. His nostrils flared as he sucked air. He stomped a hoof in agitation. She ran a hand down his foam-flecked, sweat-slick shoulder in an attempt to calm him.
    Her eyes felt painfully dry. Rip had beaten the tears out of her long ago. Her chest hurt from the pressure inside as she offered soft words of solace to her horse.
    “Take it easy, boy.” Sloan took a deep breath and slowly let it out again as she regained a measure of calm. Her face was pinched as she admitted, “I’ve got a bit too much of Rip in me, I guess, taking my pain out on you.”
    She spoke in a soothing tone of all she had lost and all she feared to lose. How she felt trapped and saw no escape. How she could no more bear the stinging bit of restraint she expected Cruz to apply if she became his wife than the raking spur of sharing Three Oaks with Luke if she stayed with her father. How her helplessness galled her like a wrinkled blanket under the saddle.
    There was no way she could have explained her feelings to Rip. He did not expect it; he would not have approved of it. A Stewart never explained, because a Stewart was never wrong. A Stewart never felt pain, or at least never admitted to it. A Stewart wasn’t vulnerable like ordinary human beings.
    Only Sloan felt awfully, terribly fragile.
    The