Give Me Tonight(2)

The tune on the radio changed to "Blue Skies," and Addie sang along with the chorus.

"You're off-key," Leah observed, sitting up in bed, and Addie bent over to place a smacking kiss on her forehead.

"I'm always off-key."

"How is everything in town?"

"The same," Addie said matter-of-factly, shrug­ging. "No work. People standing on street corners with nothing to do except chin-wag. This afternoon the line at the unemployment relief station is all the way down to the barbershop."

Leah clicked her tongue. "Goodness gracious."

"Nothing interesting to tell you today. No new gos­sip, nothing going on. Except there's the strangest old man wandering around town." Addie walked over to the nightstand and picked up a spoon, flipping the bowl of it against her palm as she spoke. "I saw him outside the apothecary shop after I picked up your medicine. He looks like one of those old drovers—heavy beard, long hair, and kind of a weather-beaten face."

A tired smile crossed Leah's face. She was paler than usual and strangely listless. During the past few months her perfectly white hair had lost its brilliance, her dark-eyed liveliness had all but vanished, leaving behind a mixture of resignation and peace.

"Lots of old cowboys wandering around nowadays. Nothing strange about that."

"Yes, but he was standing outside the shop as if he was waiting for me to come out. He looked at me so hard, just staring and staring, and he didn't stop until I reached the end of the street. It gave me the strangest feeling, all creepy inside. And he must have been around seventy or eighty years old!"

Leah chuckled. "Older men always like to look at a pretty girl, honey. You know that."

"The way he looked at me made my skin crawl." Addie grimaced and reached for a green glass bottle. It was one of a large assortment of medicines on the nightstand, medicines that could not cure the relent­less spreading of cancer through Leah's body but eased the pain of it. Dr. Haskin had said it was all right for her to take a dose whenever necessary. Now every hour of her day was punctuated with a spoonful of opiated syrup. Carefully Addie held a spoon up to Leah's lips and used a handkerchief to dab at a stray drop which had fallen on her chin.

"There. You'll feel better in just a minute."

"I already feel better." Leah reached for her hand. "You should be visiting with your friends instead of fussing over me all the time."

"I like your company more." Addie smiled, her dark brown eyes gleaming impishly. For all its charm, her face was not spectacular. Her cheekbones were blunt and her jawline too pronounced. However, she gave the impression of striking beauty. She had an al­lure no one could precisely describe, a luminous warmth that shone through her skin, a ripe intensity in the color of her eyes and honey-brown hair. Jealous women could point out the flaws in her looks, but most men considered her to be nothing less than perfect.

Addie set the spoon down on the bedside table and eyed the high stack of sensational novels filled with stories of helpless maidens, daring deeds, and villains foiled by conquering heroes. "Reading these again?" she asked, and clicked her tongue at Leah. "Are you ever going to behave?"

The gentle teasing pleased Leah, who had always prided herself on having plenty of spunk. Until the cancer had struck she had been the most active and independent woman in Sunrise. The idea of marriage, or any other claim on her freedom, had never tempted her. But she admitted it had been a blessing in disguise when Addie had come to live with her.

The child and a nominal inheritance had been left to her at the unexpected death of her sister and brother-­in-law. Raising a three-year-old girl had been a re­sponsibility that changed Leah's life, making it richer than she had ever thought possible. Now at the age of sixty, Leah seemed happy as a spinster. Addie was the only family she needed.

Although Addie had been born to Sarah and Jason Peck and brought up in North Carolina for the first three years of her life, she couldn't remember any other parent but Leah, any other home but this little town in central Texas. She was a Texan down to the marrow of her bones, had inherited the Texans' lazy way of speaking and flat, stretched-out accent, their need for open sky, their hot temperament and deep-rotted sense of honor. She had inherited the strength and backbone of the Warner family, which had risen to greatness and fallen into decay long before Addie was born.

The Warners had founded the town of Sunrise near an overland trail that was eventually replaced by miles of railroad track. Texas cattle had stamped out that trail, tough, hardy longhorns with square faces and eyes that glittered with the fire and meanness of the Mexican fighting bulls they had descended from. Twice a year the longhorns were driven up north on long trail drives to Kansas, Missouri, and Montana.

It had taken tough men to run those cattle drives, men who couldn't afford to have families, men who were willing to live in the saddle for weeks on end, breathing thick dust and eating food that had been cooked over a fire made with dried buffalo dung or cattle chips. But in spite of the hardships, there was freedom in the life they had chosen, and an irresistible challenge in taming the longhorns and the land they rode. Leah often entertained Addie with endless sto­ries about Russell Warner, her great-grandfather, who had owned one of the largest spreads in Texas.

Now the time of cattle barons and their huge cattle outfits was over. The range was no longer free and open, it was fenced into barbed-wire pens. Everyone had a little piece of Texas. The cowboys, the life and spirit of the old system, had drifted west, or turned into homesteaders, or even turned to rustling. The clumsily sprawling acres that had once been the Sun­rise Ranch were now covered with oil workers, metal fences, and oil rigs. Addie felt sorry for the old cow­boys that ocasionally wandered through town, so tac­iturn and resigned to the fact that the only kind of life they could· ever belong to had been taken away from them. Old men with no place to rest.