Tía rode astride. Johnny let her set the pace. Tall and lithe in his saddle, he rode in silence beside her.
On the north side of the compound, just a few feet from the adobe wall, a peccary rooted in a tin can. Cans—some burned and some with paper labels—littered the sandy soil beside the wall. Some of the cans had bullet holes in them. Tía guessed the riders stacked them on the fence and shot at them.
The wild boar was a dark charcoal-gray color with a yellow circle of bristles around the musk gland on its back where a tail would normally be. Other pigs had tails, but peccaries just had that bright yellow crater of stiff bristles that surrounded the musk gland. The boar gave up on the can and walked over to a prickly-pear cactus, mouthed the pad of cactus until it blunted the spines, and gobbled the pulp. It didn’t even look up at them. Tía looked around for his companions. Peccaries rarely traveled alone.
Johnny pointed to a spot where one of the peach tree limbs hung over the wall. A dozen boars rooted at the ripe and rotting fruit that had already fallen. Desert peccaries didn’t have a horn on their foreheads, but they had been known to charge a horse if they were mad enough. These didn’t charge or even seem to notice, however.
West from the compound, Tía struck quickly into gray-green sagebrush—miniature trees two to three feet high—tufts of bunch grass, and stands of greasewood. Thirty feet from where they rode, a rattlesnake coiled in the shade of a six-foot boulder. It lifted its head and watch them ride past. Tía kept a tight hold on the reins just in case, but the mare didn’t seem to smell the rattler. Tía smelled it after they were past.
They rode toward the hills to the west. A thin black-and-silver coyote ran along beside them for about a mile, then loped off.
“Want to see the creek?” Johnny yelled over the sound of their horses’ hooves.
Tía nodded. Johnny angled northwest, and she followed.
The creek was narrow. Clear water ran downstream to a point, and then the water disappeared into a wide pipe that lay atop the sand and angled toward the compound, its pink walls glistening like sugar in the sunlight, its water tower looking like a gray coffee mug on stilts.
Tía dismounted and loosened her saddle cinches. Johnny did likewise. His was a big, sturdy cow saddle, its seat completely covered by rattlesnake skins, from the finest diamondback rattlers. The yellow-and-black-patterned leather shone in the sunlight.
“Did you kill them yourself?”
“Yes.” He turned back to his horse and fiddled with the cinches some more. Facing his broad, tapering back frustrated Tía, made her want to aggravate him into talking to her.
“Are you mad at me?” she demanded.
“Nope.” Johnny knelt beside the stream, cupped his hand, lifted water to his lips, and drank. Tía walked away.
Johnny drank his fill and looked up at his companion. Tía Marlowe gazed beyond him at the mountains. She wore a thin white lawn blouse and a brown riding skirt. Her wispy blond curls were mostly hidden under a broad-brimmed black hat she must have borrowed. It came down over her ears and emphasized the fragile grace of her neck and shoulders and the tenderness of her slender arms. From where he knelt by the stream, the sun coming from the side and behind her outlined one small, cone-shaped breast—a swell of firm flesh capped with a smaller swell of pouty nipple. He could see the outline of her camisole inside her blouse. It was edged with lace, and square-necked.
Johnny forced himself to look away. He shouldn’t have ridden with Tía. That look had been a pure accident, but it reminded him of the other, which hadn’t been. Embarrassment flushed through him.
He needed to be doing things to get his mind off Steve Burkhart’s future woman, and here he was loading grist into the mill so he could spend another miserable night thinking about Tía and questioning his sanity.
“Well, you don’t seem like yourself,” she persisted.
“Maybe you don’t, either.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Johnny stood up slowly and hooked his thumbs in his pocket tops. The look in his dark eyes was probably meant to intimidate her, but it didn’t. It raised her ire.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Tía repeated.
“Hoping you might tell me.”
“How would I know?”
“You’re the one that got too busy to see me.” Johnny did not know where that reply had come from. It had not been on his mind, which seemed intoxicated with the nearness of this sassy young woman.
“I did not.”
“I asked you three times to walk with me.”
“I don’t like to walk. I like to ride.”
Tía dropped her reins and walked north along the creek. Johnny stood, kicked at a rock as if to stand his ground, and then followed.
“Does this creek dry out in August?” Tía asked.
“Sometimes. Not always.”
“What do we do for water when it does?”
“Lower a bucket into the well.”
Tía blushed. She should have known that.
She was sorry she had come with Johnny. She had no idea why he had consented to come. She felt more miserable than she had all week. At least having him look at her from a distance, she had her own thoughts about how it would be if he approached her. But now he had, sort of, and nothing had changed. He was just as distant, only doing it while he walked right beside her. She was glad she had decided not to like him anymore.
Tía turned and headed back to her horse. She’d picked up the reins and started to mount when Johnny’s voice stopped her.
“Wait.”
“What?” she asked, turning.
“Look over there.”
Tía scanned the stretch of desert between them and the compound and finally saw what Johnny pointed at.
“Be quiet. Follow me,” he said, reaching into his saddlebag to take out his spyglass.
Tía followed Johnny ten yards, then stopped beside him. He lifted the glass to his eye, then handed it to her.
“What am I looking for?”
“A roadrunner and a rattlesnake.”
Frowning, Tía put the glass to her right eye. Johnny moved behind her and lifted the glass slightly. “See it?”
“No.” Then she did. The glass brought the bird so close she could make out the tiniest detail. The roadrunner was brown, with a pattern of white-tipped feathers that made it look almost striped. White tips formed broken stripes from the roadrunner’s neck down to a few inches above the tail at the end of its pear-shaped body. Its tail feathers were brown, edged in white also. At the moment it stood still, alertly facing a rattler, its broad, flat head lifted, swaying.
“What’s going to happen?”
“I reckon that rattler’s going to have a bad day.”
“How can you tell?”
“See that cholla cactus laying around the rattler?”
Tía adjusted the glass. “You have good eyes.”
A moment later she murmured, “Yes, I see it. What does it mean?”
“The snake can only move one direction without sticking himself. He must have gone to sleep, and the runner broke off those chunks of cactus with its beak and laid ’em around him.”
“Are you sure? I thought that was an old wives’ tale.”
“He didn’t finish. Rattler isn’t completely penned in.”
“Good.” Tía had a weakness for underdogs. “What would happen if it was?”
“Legend has it a snake will bite itself to death if it gets trapped. I’d like to see if that’s true, but it isn’t quite trapped. Course it’s at a disadvantage…”
As Tía watched, the nimble bird ran around to the side of the rattler, which struck at the bird and missed. Then the bird ran around to the other side, and the rattler missed again.
A young one, judging by its size, the rattler struck again and again, every time the bird darted in, but each time the fleet-footed bird just danced out of reach again. Finally, when the rattler slowed down, the bird ran around behind it
, pecked it hard in the back of the neck at the base of its skull, and walked away with the snake impaled on its beak. The snake writhed for a while. The bird put one claw on the rattler to hold it down, then pecked it a few more times until it stopped writhing. The road-runner opened its gullet and took the snake in headfirst.
“What a crafty bird.”
“Probably just hungry.”
His voice had dropped to a lower, more sensuous tone. Tía’s heart thumped in her breast. Carefully she handed the glass back to Johnny. “Thank you.”
“Welcome.”
Usually he would have smiled or even grinned at her, but now he did neither. His dark face remained impassive. She’d seen more expression on a cigar-store Indian. “I guess I’d better go,” she said.
Tía walked to her horse and started to mount. Uncertain and tempted to tackle Johnny again to find out what was wrong with him, she hesitated. He must have misread her signal because he walked up behind her, put his hands on her waist, and lifted her effortlessly into her saddle.
With her seated on her horse, Johnny’s handsome head reached up to her shoulder. In the sunlight it appeared every pore on the bottom half of his face was darkened with the stubble that made it look as rough as sandpaper. He had the most relentless beard of any man she’d ever seen. Indians had no beard at all. Indians had the same dark skin he had, but few of them had the richness of his eyebrows, mustache, and sideburns to lure a woman. Johnny’s features were so distinctive that Tía could spot him from hundreds of yards away.
His warm hand still rested on her hip. Tía looked at it. She should thank him for helping her mount, not that she’d needed any help. For no reason she wanted to cry suddenly. His passive black eyes, narrowed and squinty from looking into the sun, made her so lonely she wanted to put her head down on her hands and sob.
Abruptly Tía turned the mare and let her prance sideways. Johnny walked to his own horse and mounted. Tía turned the mare back toward the ranch. She had lost her desire to ride.
At three o’clock on Saturday afternoon gunshots rang out. Tía’s heart leaped into her throat. Outside, men ran for their rifles. Dropping her dust cloth, Tía lifted her skirts and ran out the door toward the front gate, grateful Steve had decided to keep the riders in the compound.
Because of the Indian scare, they had discouraged riders from going into Tombstone or to the fort.
Johnny ran ahead of Tía. He hadn’t seen her. Steve had reached the south wall first and was watching through field glasses. “Open the gates!” he yelled. “When he gets into range, give him some cover!”
“Who is it?” Johnny asked, climbing up to join Steve.
Tía clambered up between Steve and Johnny. Johnny glanced once at her and then swung his rifle up and lowered his ruddy cheek onto the rich mahogany barrel.
“Looks like Morgan Todd,” Steve said.
Johnny made a wry face and lowered his rifle. Steve brought his rifle up and yelled, “Fire!”
Johnny ignored the command. He merely watched the lone rider’s frantic flight.
Whipping his horse into a frenzy, followed closely by a dozen yipping braves, Morgan Todd rode pell-mell toward the open gates. Rifles cracked as men all around Johnny fired to give cover.
Without warning, Johnny took Tía’s wrist and led her down the ladder and away from the wall.
“Why aren’t you helping?” she demanded when they were far enough away to hear over the gunfire. She was so surprised by his action that she was too distracted to control the leap of her heart.
“Some of these boys are not too sure with a weapon. If Morgan Todd gets shot, I can’t afford to be pointing a rifle in that direction,” he said, propelling her along beside him.
“Oh.” So darkly attractive against the light blue of the sky, Johnny’s manly profile filled her with a strange queasiness. Pink and slightly moist, his bottom lip was smooth and inviting beneath his crisp black mustache. He slanted a look at Tía. His narrowed eyes ignited a strange warmth inside her that spread up to her cheeks.
“How’s your arm?” she asked, looking away, ignoring the fact that they were far from the others and he was still forcing her toward the house. She could not imagine what had gotten into Johnny. Yesterday he had taken her for a ride and practically ignored her. Today, in front of fifty people, he was holding her arm and dragging her along beside him.
“Reckon it could use a new bandage.”
Tía wasn’t sure what had happened to her, either. She had been so miserable last night after that short ride that she had gone directly to bed after supper. It had been all she could do to keep from crying. She had decided that Andrea was right: Johnny was just like Papa. He’d end up on a Wanted poster himself someday. He was no fit husband for any woman. He didn’t have anything, except his horse and saddle. And he probably didn’t want anything else.
“I thought your arm was healed,” she said.
They reached the steps that led up to the curved arches of the casa grande, and Tía stopped. She didn’t want to go inside and be alone with him; besides, he hadn’t turned loose of her arm. He would no doubt follow her in, and everyone else was at the front gate or somewhere on the wall.
Tía glared down at her arm where his hand still held her. Reluctantly Johnny let her go.
He didn’t know what had gotten into him. Maybe it was just knowing that Morgan Todd was coming; he would probably take this woman, too. It caused him to forget all his good sense, if he had any.
“I guess you’re too busy to change my bandage.”
“Does it need to be changed?” Tía didn’t wait for Johnny to answer. “Well, come along, then.” She could not believe she’d said that. She probably would have said anything under the influence of his intent, dark eyes. Anyone would.
She led the way around the side of the house instead of through it. When they reached the back door, Tía stopped. Her medicine box and supplies were in the kitchen. She didn’t want Johnny Brago to follow her inside, but she wasn’t sure what to say to him to get him to wait outdoors for her.
Johnny must have seen or guessed her confusion. His smooth lips twitched and flattened into a smile. His dark eyes flickered with tiny glints, of amusement. His old reckless humor seemed to be back.
“I’m housebroke,” he said, his rich voice husky.
“It’s not those habits I’m concerned about.” Tía had no idea why she liked to see him grin like that, but when he did all her resistance dissolved. She wanted to try their aborted ride all over again, to be on horseback, racing across the desert, free as a tumbleweed. She turned to go inside, but he moved at the same time and stopped her.
“Are you in love with Steve?” he asked.
“No.”
“But you want to marry him?”
That was so ridiculous Tía laughed. Johnny watched her a moment and then abruptly pulled her into his arms. The heat of his hard chest surprised her and took away all desire to laugh.
“We’re gonna have to shorten your stake rope,” she said. She’d meant it to be funny, but her voice failed in the middle.
“You talk more than any woman I ever knew.” Without waiting for her permission, he ducked his head down and brushed her lips with his. This time she felt his mustache. It sent a little tingle through her body that felt like a sidewinder crawling down her spine. His mouth kissed her lightly, sweetly, and her body flushed with a strange dry heat.
Like the rush of wind through tall pine trees, a whooshing sound buzzed in her ears. Of its own accord, her mouth sought his. The buzzing sound in her head grew louder, more intense, and then she was lost, lost to everything except the taste and feel of him. His hands bit into her waist and back, pressing her close to him.
“Tía, Tía, Tía,” he groaned, his warm breath rustling the hair at her cheek. Had he stopped kissing her, then?
“Tía, I need you so bad.”
Her mind formed a picture of Judy Burkhart working night and day to save Grant Foreman’s life. That
was need. Tía opened her eyes, pushed against his chest, and freed herself from his strong arms.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“I can’t kiss around on you, Johnny Brago.”
“Why not?” he asked, his hands encircling her arms like slaves’ bracelets.
“There’s someone else,” she said. Even to Tía that sounded false, but she realized it was true. Judy was someone, and Judy had already staked her claim.
“Tell him you changed your mind.”
Judy had completely forgiven her and even tried to cover for Johnny, but Tía was not willing to accept a sacrifice like that…
“No. I can’t.”
She stepped back, and Johnny let his hands drop to his sides.
“I don’t want to,” she lied.
Chapter Twenty-One
Walking slowly, swishing one side of her gown with a careless hand, Judy glanced at Grant. He was moving very carefully. His cheeks were unusually pale. He shouldn’t be up walking around. He should be sleeping. Why had she agreed to this? He’d insisted he was too restless to lie in that bed another second, but she suspected he’d only been saying that to get her outside. The house had been stuffy and hot.
It did feel good to be walking, to be free again, to be relieved of the fear of his dying. Grant always surprised her. He seemed to anticipate her needs and arrange for them even before she realized them herself. She didn’t deserve such a good friend, but she was glad she had him.
Judy shuddered at the thought of Grant dying. She wouldn’t have been able to bear it.
“What’s wrong, pretty lady? You look so sad.”
“Look who’s talking. Two weeks ago we could have used the arrow in your back to hang coats on. You still look a tad green around the gills.”
“If I weren’t made of cast iron, I wouldn’t have come west.”
“I must admit you do appear to be as strong as an ox. A lesser man would have died immediately.” Judy sighed. “All I did was have one tiny glass of wine, and I have a headache.”
Grant chuckled. “One tiny little glass too many, you mean.”
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