She didn’t need Cole any more, she told herself constantly. She didn’t need him. What she needed was to pay attention to her business of ranching.
Several days in one place and on the lush graze rested the remuda and the cattle and put flesh back onto them at a heartening rate. The last hard weeks of the drive were no longer evident in the animals or the men, who rested while she and Cole rode mile after mile. They found no sign of other people and no good source of water for a ranch site unless they stayed on the river.
One morning, as they were saddling their horses, Aurora began to decide that that was what they’d have to do and said as much to Cole.
“Not good,” he said. “Any bandido riding across the Llano—and there are plenty even though we haven’t seen them—will be following the river. There are comanchero camps on it. We need to get you situated in a more private place because you’ll have enough to contend with without every bunch of long riders in the country dropping in for breakfast.”
“I’m more worried about them running off my cattle.”
“Or worse,” he said, pulling his latigo tight and securing it.
“Riders coming,” Cookie called from his post at the coffeepot hanging over the fire. “Half a dozen of ‘em. Lookin’ fer breakfast, no doubt.”
In spite of his grumbling, his voice held excitement. It had been so long a time since they had had news of any world but their own or talked to anyone not in their outfit that all the men except the two who were assigned to the herd wandered back toward the fire for another cup of coffee.
“What’d I tell you?” Cole muttered.
Then he turned and called to the crew.
“Could be comancheros. Stay close to your guns, men, and keep your eyes open.”
He had already put his rifle in its saddle scabbard, but now he drew it out.
The leader of the newcomers rode out a little ahead of the others.
“Hello, the camp,” he called in Spanish-accented English. “Rudy Gomez, mesteñero, at your service.”
“Wild horse hunters,” Cole said. “Watch yourself, Rory, maybe kind of stay out of sight until we find out if that’s what they really are.”
“Stay out of sight? This is my camp!”
He grinned.
“I thought that’s what you’d say. But if they’re a bunch of cutthroats they might try to take us and carry you off as a prize.”
She laughed.
“That’s what I hired you for, Cole McCord. To prevent that kind of happening.”
“I mean it,” he said dryly. “The very sight of you could incite them to kill us all to get to you.”
“Light-ning! You should be called He Who Is Full of Hot Wind.”
He gave her a crooked, teasing grin, held her gaze with his in that knowing look that bonded them beyond belief. She thought for a minute that he was about to kiss her.
Heat rose in her blood. Never. She could never let him do that again.
She knew it all the way through her bones and her sinews, now that she was living in torment. Cole McCord was a wise man. The kiss she had begged for at her wagon that day would only have made the torture a thousand times worse.
“Have you forgotten our potentially dangerous guests?” she whispered.
He shook his head.
“You are beautiful this morning, Rory,” he blurted in an uncharacteristically unguarded moment. “You’re a definite danger to us all.”
She had to reach for more air.
He was still wanting her as much as she wanted him. Oh, dear Lord, what would happen if he made her be the strong one?
Finally she found a few words and a light tone.
“Are you getting sick? Going soft in the head? That doesn’t sound like you, Lightning, throwing compliments in all directions at the crack of dawn.”
He laughed, but the serious hunger for her flashed in his eyes for an instant. It roused an answering desire in her, one so sharp it took her breath away completely.
“I know you won’t hide,” he said at last, “but keep your hand near your gun and stay close to me.”
That’s all I want to do. Stay close to you.
Somehow, she made her feet move and her legs hold her up. Somehow, she walked beside him, wishing he would touch her, aching to touch him, and they went out to meet their rough-looking visitors.
Gomez didn’t bother with the names of any of his men, three of whom appeared to be grizzled, hard-looking Anglos. But they all sat their horses until asked to get down, and they didn’t mention food until invited to eat. They weren’t too clean, and their clothes and gear were well-worn, but they seemed to be friendly, at least, and intending no harm. With a hot meal in their stomachs, they rolled smokes and accepted a second cup of coffee.
“Had any luck with the mustangs?” Monte asked.
Gomez nodded.
“We have spotted several small bands of them,” he said. “We find them. We look to see if there are bigger bands, then we catch some.”
The conversation immediately turned to methods of catching wild horses.
“We used to drive ‘em into a lake,” Frank said, “tire ‘em out fightin’ the mud and the water.”
“You have a hard time to find a lake around here,” a small, older mesteñero said, and everyone laughed. “And this river is too full of quicksand.”
“How about box canyons?” Monte said. “It’s easy to make a trap to drive them into a box canyon.”
“Si, we do that sometime,” Gomez said, and he and Frank began exchanging advice on that method.
Aurora liked the old mesteñero with the twinkly eyes who had said there was no lake, and she felt bad the others had cut him out of the conversation before he’d gotten into it.
“Are there any box canyons near here big enough to hold a band of wild horses?” she asked him.
He widened his snapping black eyes and laughed.
“Big enough,” he said wonderingly, and shook his head as he took a sip of his coffee. “Big enough. Is uno canyon big enough to hold the earth.”
He spoke so reverently, with such awe in his voice, that it piqued her interest.
“Near here?”
He shrugged.
“Mucho, mucho far.”
He busied himself with his coffee again, then leaned forward to take the last biscuit from the Dutch oven near the fire. He ate it in two big bites and stared into the distance, seeming to forget the conversation.
“Have you seen it?” Aurora persisted. “This big canyon.”
“Oh, si,” he said.
He held up a gnarled forefinger.
“Uno dias.”
One day. He’d been to the canyon one time.
“Es grande,” he said. “Muy grande.”
He set down his tin cup and opened his arms to show how huge it was.
“Una ciudad,” he said, “can be on its floor.”
He stretched his arms even wider.
“Agua,” he said, “creeks y uno big creek. Los arboles, the trees, and muchas … grasses.”
He patted the grass where he sat.
An indescribable thrill ran through Aurora’s bones. This sounded like the tallest of tall tales, but it wasn’t. She could hear the truth in his voice, see the surety in his eyes.
Water and trees. A canyon would be a protected place on these endlessly exposed high plains. It might be perfect for her ranch.
She looked into the bright, twinkling eyes until she saw that the old man knew she believed him.
“Can you take me there, señor?”
He stared back at her with a look as serious as her own.
“Si.
“I will pay you to be my guide.”
He waved away the suggestion.
“No, you must take pay,” she said. “Scouts work hard, and they earn their pay.”
Cole had been listening to them the whole time, even while he’d been joining in the wild horse talk—she realized that when he leaned across her and spoke t
o the old man in fluent, rapid Spanish that was much better than her awkward efforts. Why had she studied French in Philadelphia? Spanish was what she needed now.
“He’ll take you to the canyon for ten head of horses,” he said. “He claims money is of no use to him.”
“Ask if five head can be delivered when we find the canyon,” she said, “and five this time next year. We’ll need lots of fresh horses while we’re building shelters and getting settled.”
When Cole translated that, the old man laughed.
“La señorita,” he said, nodding sagely. “She will be here next year. She is a tough one, this señorita.”
He wasn’t making fun of her, though. The teasing glint in his eye held an edge of respect, and so did his voice.
He reached up and tipped his sombrero to her.
“Gabriel Martinez,” he said.
“Aurora Benton,” she replied.
They didn’t shake hands, they didn’t touch, but they sealed a bargain with their eyes. They trusted each other. They would be friends.
An hour or so later, the mesteñeros got to their feet and said their good-byes. All except Señor Martinez.
“I work for La Señorita,” he told them.
And then, in a long spate of Spanish, he bid them good-bye.
“He’s staying with you until this time next year,” Cole told her, after listening to Gabriel and his friends.
His eyes were twinkling as much as Gabriel’s had been.
Then he burst out laughing.
“You’ve been shorthanded since we threw the cattle on the trail,” he said. “Now you have a new Slash A man.”
She stared at him, surprised.
“He’s staying with us until he gets all his horses?”
“Yes, but it’s not because he doesn’t trust you to pay. He told his friends he wants to eat some good cooking for a change.”
“Oh, no, don’t tell Cookie that,” she cried, “or his head will be too big for his hat. We’ll never hear the end of his bragging.”
Cole was still laughing.
“Or the end of his grumbling,” she said. “He’ll whine about another mouth to feed until this time next year.”
“Gotta be careful what kind of deals you make, Miss Rory. Maybe you should’ve paid all the horses up front.”
“Laugh if you want,” she said. “But I’ll gladly feed and shelter Señor Martinez for the rest of his life if that canyon is everything he says it is.”
Cole rode with Rory and Gabriel south from the herd for several days, finally ending up wandering across the plains with the old man almost in despair because he was so confused by the many other canyons they came across. Cole marvelled that he didn’t feel the least impatience with the wild-goose chase, that he found himself perfectly content to ride alongside his pair of unlikely companions over mile after mile of the huge, wild country.
Maybe it was because he and Rory were no longer alone, and, even though that didn’t lessen his desire for her, it did set a boundary that made him feel freer to watch her for hours, to drink in the sound of her husky voice and think about everything she said. He was becoming as weak and pathetic as any drunkard or inveterate gambler who ever drew breath, he thought, as he saddled their horses on the morning of their seventh day out from camp. He had to have the crutch of a third person there to bolster his self-control where Rory was concerned, so he must be sliding downhill fast.
“Thanks, Cole,” Rory said, as she came to take Shy Boy’s reins. “I was just telling Gabe that we have supplies enough for two more days and then we’ll have to turn back.”
The strangest combination of relief and regret ran through him.
“You think the old man dreamed the whole thing?”
“Oh no,” she said as she swung up into the saddle, “it’s real and he can find it. We’ll just have to go back and re-outfit ourselves.”
The flat surety in her tone made Cole laugh.
“Sorry to have asked such a stupid question.”
“It surprised me, that’s all,” she said with a grin, “since you’re always pointing out how stubborn I am.”
They turned their horses and rode to where Gabriel was waiting with his mount.
“I think ride south,” he said, kicked his horse into a trot, and led the way.
Only a couple of hours later, when the morning sun was filling the plains with yellow light and the prairie birds were calling, dipping in and out of the deep grasses, the three of them suddenly rode up onto the rim of a colorflaming canyon whose bottom lay so far down it took their breath away. The level land beneath them dropped away so abruptly that the horses snorted and stepped back and Aurora cried out that it made her dizzy. But she couldn’t stop looking into it, and neither could Cole.
Gabriel was clapping his hands with joy.
“Al fin! Al fin!” he cried.
“Yes,” Aurora said absently as she stared into a paradise watered by a wide creek with willows and cedars growing along its banks. “At last. At last.”
Then the three of them dismounted in silence, as if the vision before them would vanish if they spoke again, and peered down into the wild chasm, mesmerized. The entire valley was carpeted with buffalo grass.
“Graze and water,” Rory said softly, “and it’s protected from the weather and from intruders. I don’t even see a trail down the sides.”
“Ees a trail to the east,” Gabriel said. “Vamanos.”
But not one of them moved. The sight held them captive, filling their eyes with dozens of shades of spring green, with bold bright stripes of reds and vermilions stacked eight hundred feet deep.
Cole’s heart twisted in his chest. It looked like heaven, which is what it would be to live in it with Aurora.
“Come,” he said brusquely, “let’s see what’s down there.”
Still hardly able to look away from such beauty, they reached for their reins and mounted up. They rode along the top at a trot, keeping an eye on the way the canyon lay, the way it widened and narrowed.
“We can make the headquarters easy to defend,” Rory said. “We can barricade one of the narrow places if we have to.”
“Right,” Cole said.
Then, for the sake of his own discipline, to prove he could face the truth, he made himself say it.
“You could do that for sure.”
She could. This would be her place. It had nothing to do with him.
But she wasn’t thinking about that, not now, with her eyes full of her new ranch. The minute she was settled, the minute she felt secure here, she’d forget all about him.
“The trail!” Gabriel cried, as they rode around a small bend in the rim.
Clearly, it was an old Indian trail, one worn into the side of the cliff by thousands of moccasined feet, a narrow path that wound in and out of the natural contours of the land, hugging the shape of the earth’s side, looping back into itself and then leading down again. It was probably a thousand feet from the spot where they stood at the top of it to the bottom on the canyon floor.
“This entrance could be guarded too,” Rory said, elation filling her voice. “Let’s explore and see if it’s the only way in, at least for this section of the canyon. It seems to go on for miles and miles.”
How could he ever feel alive again without hearing that husky chortle of hers? How could he ever be alive without her?
“Let’s go,” he said, suddenly desperate to get this over with, eager to be done and be gone, anxious to be free of the torment he couldn’t escape as long as he was with her.
Gabriel insisted on leading the way, since he’d gone down this trail and a short way into the valley when he and his companions had discovered it. Cole put Rory in the middle and he followed, trying not to watch her natural seat in the saddle, trying to put his mind onto the surroundings. Danger. He had to think about danger. Anyone or anything could be looking at them from the opposite wall or lurking in the trees in the valley.
Not even that thought
could occupy him fully, though, for no bad man or wild animal could be more fearsome than this pain in his heart.
As soon as they descended past the rim, Aurora could feel the magic of the place growing more powerful, could feel its beauty reaching out to enfold her. And she could see that it was even more perfect for her purposes than she had thought.
“Oh, look,” she called to Cole, looking back at him over her shoulder. “The caprock will keep in any cattle who graze far up the sides of the canyon—although the thick grass at the bottom will keep them off the sides most of the time, anyway. Oh, and can you believe it actually has plenty of water?”
He nodded agreement after a moment, as if he hadn’t been listening to her at first. Then he scowled at her.
“Watch where you’re going,” he snapped. “It’s a thousand-foot drop to the bottom.”
“My horse is watching,” she snapped back.
Stung, she turned around. What was the matter with him, anyhow? They’d just wandered all over the face of the earth for days without a complaint and now that they’d found what they’d been searching for, he had to turn into a grouch.
The scents of cedar and sage floated on the air, along with the cry of a red-tailed hawk. Wildflowers bloomed in scattered patches all along the big, swift-running creek. Or maybe it was a river.
“I want the headquarters to be near the creek,” she said. “I want to let its splashing put me to sleep at night.”
“You won’t need that,” Cole said wryly. “You’ll be tired enough to sleep.”
I hope. I do hope so. I hope I’m so tired I don’t have any strength left to think about you.
Once she reached the bottom, the canyon was like a huge wonderland, tempting her to go in every direction at once. She chose to explore the north side of the creek and then the south, with Cole and Gabriel riding near enough to keep her in sight.
“This feels like a haven,” she said. “I can’t imagine danger here, at least not from people.”
“Imagine it,” Cole said. “A whole bunch of cutthroat comancheros could have a hideaway in here.”
She made a face at him, but he wasn’t looking at her.
“I can feel it,” she said. “There’s nobody but us in this whole canyon.”
The Renegades: Cole Page 22