Small gifts that they gave each other, but they were filled with love. She would miss them both.
There were other gifts. From Rafe. She looked at the gloves he had insisted he put on her hands. Fine tanned pigskin, thin as her tape measure, but made for hard use.
Even her hat was worn, one J.P. had taken in trade. Barter was the way most folks supplied themselves with what they needed when new goods were not available.
Her hair was tucked beneath the crown, and it was a good fit. From afar, Rafe had told her, no one could tell she was a woman. Safer for them all.
Beth had fallen into the spirit of looking like a little boy by rubbing dirt on her cheek. She remembered the boys at the army fort always had dirt smears on their hands and faces. On their clothing, too, she’d added, but, thankfully, she’d stopped at her father’s order.
There was no arguing with the child’s logic. Later, when Mary mounted, Rafe tucked a handgun and a box of .44 shells in her saddlebags, despite her telling him that she knew little about guns. He’d said he hoped that Mary hadn’t been fooled by Beth’s illness. His child was as much imp as she was sweetness.
No, she hadn’t been fooled. Beth had confided so much of her mother’s neglect that Mary could only rejoice in every act that proved she was healing from all her wounds.
They were still following the road north. Rafe said they would for an hour or so, then veer off for the Black Range. She glanced to her left at the open land and saw the long, sinuous shadow the mountains cast.
Mockingbirds sang their endless song in the cottonwoods. From far off she heard the clear, bell-like tone of the meadowlarks greeting the new day.
The sight of a white-tailed deer bounding into view made her look closely at the brush the animal sprang from. She had to remember that this was no Sunday ride into the hills and keep a sharp lookout for the men Rafe was sure would follow them.
A sobering thought. One she kept foremost in her mind throughout the day. By the time they made camp in a deep-sided dry wash, Mary was far more exhausted by the tension that had ridden with her than by the physical strain of hours in the saddle.
Darkness had not quite closed in on the land, and the moon, which had been increasing in size with each night’s passing, had not yet risen. The night was warm, but before morning, she knew, they would all be glad of the thick wool blankets that made their beds over the ground sheets.
Rafe dumped a load of deadfall branches he had gathered after staking the mustangs and mules in a stand of trees a little distance from the camp. Rebel and Owl, stripped of their saddles, were picketed close by, eating grain from their nosebags.
Mary was stacking the smaller pieces of wood when Rafe hunkered down beside her. He scooped out the sandy soil, lined the pit from the pile of rocks they had cleared from where they would spread their beds and had a fire started before she unpacked what she needed to make supper.
“The fire’ll burn hotter and longer with the heat reflecting off the stones,” he said. “But never pick up a rock bigger than your hand.”
“You shouldn’t worry that you need to remind me to beware of rattlesnakes.”
“But I’ll worry about you anyway, Mary. ‘Sides,” he added, grinning, “you’re not trail-broke.”
“Yet.”
“Yet,” he confirmed. “Always act on the side of caution. It can save your life.”
Mary followed his gaze to where Beth sat against his saddle and fed her kitten tiny pieces of ham.
“I’ll beware of all danger, Rafe. She’s become precious to me, too.”
“Then you understand how I feel.” He took up his rifle. “Where’s the handgun?”
“In the saddlebag.”
“Get it. Keep it within easy reach. I’m going to scout around.”
He waited until she got the gun, then helped her lift the heavy lined-canvas water sack to fill the coffeepot. By the time she added the coffee grounds and set the pot on the fire, Rafe was gone.
Mary looked, but the wash was deep enough that even standing on tiptoe she couldn’t see where he had disappeared.
She moved around the fire, keeping an eye on the horses. They would be the first alarm if danger in human or animal form approached.
Leaving the skillet filled with ham slices on the fire, Mary went to Beth. She had solved the problem of keeping the wound clean, since she’d have no time to change and wash out the linen wrapping.
“Let’s take care of you while we’re waiting for your father and supper.”
“Look, Mary, my kitten’s already sleeping. I put Muffy in the basket with her so she wouldn’t be lonely.”
Mary smiled and quickly pulled up the blanket over Beth. She opened her jacket and shirt. Untying the knot of the linen wrapping, Mary loosened it just enough to slip out the pad. A fresh square of linen with salve slipped into place, and she was done.
“Does it hurt, Beth?”
“Just a little.”
“Have you thought of a name for the kitten?”
“Papa said I shouldn’t rush. Names are important, you know. I’m Elizabeth Mary Victoria McCade. But Papa likes Beth best. I told Papa I shared your name. Sarah told me.”
“I hadn’t thought to ask. And my middle name is Elizabeth.”
“Were you named for the queens, too?”
“No, love. My grandmothers.”
“I have only one. She let me play with her pretty gold watch that had a tiny diamond swan on the case. Grandmère said I could have it when I was a big girl, but Mama said it belonged to her. Grandmère didn’t like Mama much. They used to fight. Grandmère called Mama a red woman.”
“Red woman? Beth, that couldn’t be—”
“Was too.” She frowned, trying to remember. “She yelled at Mama. Bright red…No, a scarlet woman is what she called her. That’s a bright color, Mary, and Mama didn’t like bright colors.”
“Oh, sweetie, I’m sure your grandmère didn’t mean to yell at her.” Mary struggled to explain without detailing exactly what a scarlet woman was. “Beth, sometimes people fight, but that doesn’t mean they don’t love each other.”
“Do you fight with Papa?”
“Not as much as she’d like to,” Rafe answered, stepping into the firelight. He met Mary’s worried gaze with a quick shake of his head.
She didn’t hide her sigh of relief that he’d found no signs they had been followed.
After they finished supper, Rafe banked the fire. Mary stretched out next to an already sleeping Beth. Exhaustion begged her to close her eyes, but she waited until Rafe came to his bedroll on the other side of Beth.
Far off a coyote yipped in a frantic, broken cry, the call drawing eerie replies from others close by.
Mary moved her arm protectively over Beth’s small body and encountered Rafe’s hand, moving with the same intent. A trembling warmth and feeling of safety filled her with his hand over hers. She fell asleep with the thought that Beth was more than a bridge between them—she formed the strongest bond.
Rafe lay awake long after the sounds of child’s and woman’s breathing warned that he needed rest, too.
He wondered if he should have lied to Mary.
He had not done it with words, but he hadn’t mistaken her sigh of relief. She believed he had found no sign that anyone trailed them.
But he had.
One man. Traveling light.
Balen? Shell Lundy?
He didn’t know. But he wondered where the other one waited.
Two days later, Rafe was still looking out for the place of ambush.
And Mary had been told.
She was riding with Beth this afternoon, thinking how this nameless canyon reminded her of narrow, rugged Percha Canyon, where it seemed a dozen hideouts were waiting above them. Mary had tried to remember some landmark, but Rafe told her he had doubled back over North and Middle Percha creeks. She wasn’t sure she could find her way back to the few mining claims scattered along their banks.
In these few days on the trial,
they had spoken to one old prospector who shared coffee with them. He told them that, despite the renegade Apache Victorio’s presence in the range, miners were flocking to the area.
Rafe was glad of the warning, even as he swore later. More men meant less chance of spotting one.
And Mary’s tension dived deeper inside her, until she half expected a bullet between her shoulders.
At Thief Creek they stopped to eat cold cornbread and the last of the ham. They refilled the water bags. Rafe put two canteens on each of their saddles. He warned her again to cut the pack animals loose if shooting started.
The trail he led them to had been made by animals. Each twisted, sharp turn took them higher into the mountains.
Scattered clumps of juniper, cedar and scrub oak mixed with pine grew in the bottoms of canyons. A land by turn beautiful and terrifying.
Before nightfall, Rafe promised, they would climb the crest of the Black Range.
Rafe signaled a halt. He rode back and handed over the lead line for the mustangs. Twice before he had done this, and left them for a little while.
“I’ll ride ahead. Look around.” She nodded, her gaze calm. But Rafe caught her tightened grip on the reins. Catherine’s boast about Mary’s riding skill hadn’t been an idle one. And she learned trail savvy after being shown once. Last night she had picked out their campsite in a cluster of thick-growing pines, a hundred feet from a clear-running stream. Two small things, but ones that could save a life. He knew that well. Never camp near water, for animals and humans headed there first. Build a fire beneath the thickest covering you could find, for the spiraling smoke would disappear through the spreading growth of branches.
Looking at Mary was a distraction he couldn’t indulge now. She made him think of the fire’s glow on her hair, flushing her pale skin. He wanted to be the one to heighten her color with a fire of his own. If it wasn’t for Beth…
“There’s shade here for a short rest. And it’s safe,” he added. He knew she was worried, despite her repeated denials.
“We’ll be fine. You be careful.” Mary noticed that he no longer kept the powerful army field glasses in his saddlebag, but rode with the strap wrapped around the saddle horn.
“Half an hour, Mary.”
“We’ll be waiting for you. Won’t we, Beth?”
“And as quiet as mice, Papa.”
Rafe backed Rebel clear of the mustangs before he spurred the horse up the trail. He carried the sight of their smiles with him. And his own deep-seated worry.
Mary lifted Beth down, saw the way she clung to her basket and suggested she sit under the trees. Beth went to a towering pine and took the kitten from the basket.
“Keep her close, Beth,” Mary warned. “I don’t want to chase after her like this morning.”
Mary tied off the reins and lead ropes of the pack animals, keeping a sharp watch on Beth. A feeling of unease as if she were being watched, sent chills up her spine.
She thumbed her hat back, and gazed at the dense forest of trees that lined the narrow trail. Where she could see clear to the canyon wall, only stunted pockets of growth and holes too small to be called caves broke the wall of rock.
She saw no sign of life.
If Rafe had come back at that moment and asked why she was removing the handgun he’d given her from her saddlebag, Mary couldn’t have answered him. She tucked the gun into the pocket of the jacket. She wasn’t sure what good it would be. She had warned him she was a poor shot.
She slipped one of the canteens from her saddle horn, looked long and hard at the horses, but saw nothing to alarm her.
With the intention of sitting with Beth, she turned.
Only the basket remained under the pine.
“Beth,” she called.
Mary wasn’t aware she dropped the canteen and took off running into the dense brush. “Beth! Answer me!”
Up ahead, she heard Beth calling her kitten. She pushed on, unable to shake off the fist of fear that closed around her. It was almost like her dream, racing to get to the child.
“Mary! Kitty’s hurt!”
“Stay where you are,” Mary shouted. She broke through the trees into a rock-strewn clearing.
Mary’s stomach became one knot while her heart raced in alarm. Beth was not more than five feet in front of her, clutching her little kitten. There was nothing wrong with her pet.
A cougar’s cub was pinned beneath the massive limb of a tree. A second cub whined while it pawed the earth near the injured one.
Mary saw the torn edge the deadfall branch had made coming free of the pine’s trunk. She surmised that one cub had been climbing out on the dead branch and its weight had caused it to fall. From the faint spots on the cubs’ sandy, shaded coats, she judged them to be about six months old.
Mama would not be far away.
Much as it pained her to see the glazed eyes of the cub, Mary had to get Beth out of there.
“Listen to me, Beth,” she whispered. “We can’t help the cub. I want you to walk backward toward my voice. I don’t want you to make any noise, Beth. Just obey me.”
“But he’s hurt, Mary. It cried just like my kitty when I hold her too tight.”
“Beth! Don’t argue with me. Please. You’re in danger there. Move.”
Mary started forward. Sweat dampened her body. Fear dried her mouth. She was afraid to move her gaze from the scene in front of her. Afraid of what else she might see.
The uninjured cub turned and snarled at Beth.
Mary pulled the gun from her pocket. It wasn’t until she attempted to cock the hammer that she saw her hand was shaking so badly she couldn’t take aim.
She clamped her left hand over her right wrist to hold the gun steady. “Beth, come to me.”
Another step forward. She could almost feel the child’s fear growing and keeping her in place. The scream for Beth to move lodged in her throat.
The cub snarled again.
One more step. Just one step, and she would have Beth’s shoulder beneath her hands.
Nothing prepared her for what she heard.
An inhuman scream of rage. A shower of small rocks tumbling into the clearing. Beth turning, her foot slipping. Her startled cry. The loud report of the gun going off before the huge cat on the rocks above could make a life-threatening leap.
Mary missed. Splintered rock flew up and brought another feral cry of rage from the big cat. One her cub seconded.
Mary fired blindly, filling the small clearing with a rolling explosion of sound until the gun clicked. Empty.
She yanked Beth behind her. “Run! Get down to the horses!”
Mary couldn’t spare a moment to see if the child obeyed her. Her gaze locked with that of the cat. She still held the empty gun as an extension of her hand. It was all she had between her and certain death.
She knew that if she moved too fast, the cat would be at her throat.
If she didn’t move, the cat might kill her anyway.
She strained to listen for Beth’s passage. All she wanted was the child safe.
And then came the sound of someone crashing through the brush behind her. Her muscles clenched against the stillness she imposed on them. The sound wasn’t away from her. Someone was behind her.
Someone? It could be only Rafe.
Was that a whimper? Mary drew her right foot back. One small step to safety. That mewling noise was coming from her own throat.
Beth was safe. She’d gotten away.
The rifle blast forced a scream from her. The shot caught the big cat in flight.
Mary stumbled back, turning her head away from the fallen cat. The clearing rocked with another rifle blast. The cub fell over on its side.
Mary sprang into the shadowed forest behind her.
“Rafe! Thank God!” she cried, flinging herself at him.
At the last possible second, she recoiled and threw herself to the side.
“Balen!”
Chapter Twenty-One
The
twisted, stunted cedar wasn’t much cover for a man as tall as Rafe, but he’d had made do with less. With the cedar at his side and a flat slab of rock beneath him, Rafe had a good view of the surrounding terrain.
He fit a shield of hard leather over the top of his field glasses to prevent the reflection of sunlight hitting brass. An old buffalo hunter had shown him this, for such small things kept a man alive. That old man had blackened every bit of metal that could give away his position.
The rim of the canyon where he’d settled wasn’t the highest point around, but it served as he worked the field glasses slowly over rocky spires and mesas. Bighorn sheep scrambled up the Buckhorn, a lone buzzard circled overhead. Thick stands of juniper and pine gave way to meadows, but showed no signs of human life.
He knew the long climbs out of the deep valleys, the rugged, rocky canyons, knew the seeps and water holes and remote streams. Scattered stands of golden-leafed aspen and spruce forests required the longest time to study. But nowhere did he see a lone horseman.
He had done what he could to hide their trail when possible, doubling back, riding into streams, then coming out the same side he’d gone in. Most men would go out the opposite side. Each time he alternated, so there was no pattern to follow.
Instinct said Balen or Lundy were still on his trail.
His telegrams had not garnered much information about Shell Lundy. But he learned that Balen was a man-killer by choice. He had been a scout for the army, as Rafe had, but had been dishonorably discharged. Balen had ridden as a paid gunhand for the big cattle outfits in Texas, then turned manhunter. Every bounty he collected was for a dead man.
Rafe made a quick scan over the same land again. Nothing moved but the wind. He lowered his left hand and carelessly brushed the rock. Exposure to the sun made it burn like hot metal. He should be moving on, yet he stayed.
He used the glasses again, studying the bottom of the canyon they would need to cross. A jackrabbit bounded from brush near the canyon’s mouth. Rafe went still and waited.
A few minutes crawled by before an Apache warrior started his iron-gray horse out of the brush. He kept his animal to a walk, following the very trail that Rafe had to cross. If Rafe had ridden on without stopping, he would have been caught halfway down the game trail with no cover to hide him.
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