He took a big gulp of water. “Yep, they disappeared a ways north of the cave. Dense scrub brush kept the rain from washing them away completely.”
“So let’s go. We’ve come this far, and I don’t plan on going back now.”
“Just be warned that if you think the first part of the climb was treacherous, it’ll only get worse. The trail skirts the ridge line and doesn’t look like it flattens out for a while. So this is a good time to turn around and go back.”
“No. Considering everything Dakota did for me, I’m not giving up on him now,” she said.
The rain fell in earnest as they snaked through monstrous switchbacks dotted with mesquite and cedars.
She stayed behind Ethan as instructed and refused his help when a small boulder got in their way. With his long legs, Ethan stepped over it as though it were little more than a puddle, while she had to make two attempts to clear it. She landed on two feet but stumbled over a rock slide.
Ethan grabbed her arm to steady her. “Savannah, this is your last chance to go back to the dugout. Are you sure you want to go on?”
“Please don’t ask me that again.”
“Okay, then don’t look down, and keep as close to the inside of the ledge as possible. Just watch for more rock slides. It’s only a few feet across, and I’ll be right in front of you.”
Eyes focused ahead, she tried to forget that the trail skirted the eastern edge of the ledge and overlooked a creek bed brimming with rainwater.
Her throat constricted and her feet rebelled. Panic rose from the pit of her stomach. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. If she set her mind to it she could scurry across the ledge before she had an opportunity to think about the distance between her and the water below.
Another breath and she prepared to make her move. She looked ahead. Ethan had already passed through the narrow path and disappeared around the bend.
Beads of sweat rushed down her spine. She rubbed her moist palms on her pants, while her heart pounded out of control.
“Ethan, wait a minute.” She inched forward.
A clap of thunder drowned out her words. Yet another cloud-to-cloud strike of lightning zigzagged across the backdrop of the ancient layers of earth.
“Slow and easy. Don’t look down,” she said under her breath. “One step in front of the other.”
As she snailed her way along the winding ledge, mesquite bushes, sagebrush, and cactus jutted out of the rock formations like a prickly porcupine.
Gushing rain, mixed with dust and sand, cascaded over the rock beneath her feet. Cautiously she slid one foot from side to side and felt the uncertainty under her.
A howling gust of wind sucked her against the jagged wall.
“Ethan!” His name echoed out of the bowels of the canyon.
“Savannah!” Ethan stood within two arms’ length of her. “Are you okay?”
She could barely make out his words over the wailing winds and piercing claps of thunder.
“Just a little scared.” Damn, she hated to admit to herself that coming along to prove a point was probably a little on the stupid side.
“Don’t move. I’ll come to you.” Ethan tested the ground before stepping forward.
A vicious burst of wind sucked her legs from beneath her, and she tumbled forward, falling on her right shoulder.
In slow motion, Savannah grabbed at the slippery mud and felt her body drift farther and farther away from the security of Ethan’s extended hand.
The Winchester slipped from her grip and slid over the edge of the trail, landing somewhere below.
A stabbing pain shot through her body, and she forced herself to take a deep breath to absorb some of the discomfort.
Cold air and rain slammed against her face. Anna closed her eyes and blundered into the warm protective arms of unawareness.
She remembered Ethan sweeping her into the cradle of his arms. A salty taste penetrated her lips. Blood mixed with rain soaked her shirt.
Anna slowly peered through heavy eyelids. “Dimples . . .” She gasped with pain, and her eyelids dropped shut.
Visions of losing her footing and sliding in the mud within only inches of the trail’s edge clung in her mind for what seemed like hours.
The light crunch of breaking stones echoed in the vivid darkness. Cold air settled around her, yet she felt warm and safe.
Anna forced her eyes open to see gray skies somewhere beyond the mouth of a cave.
Chapter 14
For about the first time in his life, Ethan was happy to see rainwater. To stop any infection from setting in, he had to get Anna’s wounds cleaned pronto. He hadn’t hesitated to pull up her dress and tear the hem off her petticoat to make bandages.
Ethan had no idea how long they’d have to be holed up in the cavern. Even if the weather permitted, Anna needed rest before they could set out, plus darkness would overtake them soon, but that was the least of his concerns at the moment.
Anna moaned and tried to sit up. Ethan grabbed the canteen and kneeled beside her. “Try not to move, Savannah.”
“Did I die or did you find Dakota’s cave?” she murmured.
“You didn’t die, but you’ve got a nasty gash in your back just below your shoulder blade.” He checked her forehead for fever.
She flinched. “My head is splitting open.”
“You’ve got a few fair-to-middlin’ scratches and scrapes, but nothing worse than a goose egg on your noggin. I think you probably passed out from pain.”
Anna reached back and touched the wet rag covering her shoulder. “How’d you make a bandage?”
“I ripped up part of your petticoat.”
“Thanks.” She squirmed and made a feeble swipe at her lips with her parched tongue. “Did you wash my mouth out with a cactus?”
“No, but over the last week, there’ve been times I thought about washing your mouth out with soap.” He smiled, hoping to draw attention away from her pain.
Ethan lifted her head and placed the canteen to her lips. “Take a sip, and when you’re through, I’ll help you to sit up, so I can get a better look at your back.”
She took a drink. “You don’t need to check it. It’s fine. I’ll dress it when we get back to the dugout.”
“Savannah, I know what you are trying to hide from me, but I’ve already found the scars left over from some pretty bad beatings you took, so let me help you.”
As Ethan thought of the welts and jagged scars on her perfect skin, furor rushed dangerously through his body like nothing he’d experienced in a long time. Only once before had he been that sickened and angry, but that was a long time ago and he kept those memories at bay as much as possible.
Anna gave in and stopped fighting him. She clenched her eyes closed and bit at her lower lip but allowed him to assist her to sit up.
“Bear with me. I’ll see what I can do to make you more comfortable.”
Anna didn’t resist his touch when he unbuttoned her shirt and pulled back the fabric to expose an ivory camisole protecting full, deliciously tempting breasts. Rolling her halfway onto her left side, he removed the blood-soaked rag. She gasped in agony.
Slowly Ethan washed away the surface blood and inspected the wound. Lingering much too long, he savored the feel of her warm flesh and wished he could erase her suffering.
Although riddled in pain, Anna dropped her chin to her chest, almost as though she enjoyed his touch.
He folded a strip of the cotton fabric into a bandage and tied a longer piece of cloth around her shoulder. Closing her eyes from time to time, she grimaced, then took a deep breath.
“Hurts pretty bad?” Ethan asked.
“No. I might be scared of the dark, but after everything I’ve gone through, this is little more than a scratch from a mesquite bush.” She attempted a faint smile. “I made up my mind not long after the first beating that it’s my spirit, not my body, that dictates what I can tolerate.”
“It got you through some really bad times, huh?”
&n
bsp; She nodded.
“Finished until we can get you out of here. Even without the rain, we won’t be able to go back down until morning,” he said.
“And Dakota?”
“Nothing. But someone was here not too long ago. There’s dried wood, saddlebags with everything needed to survive for a day or two. So if he left them here, he plans on coming back.”
“They aren’t his. Dakota’s bags were at the dugout when we left.” She buttoned up her blouse.
Ethan helped her move to her back, then slid down beside her. He took her into his arms and pulled her close to him. “Rest while we wait for the sun to set.”
She snuggled against him.
Swirls of purple and orange washed the western rim of the canyon wall as the sun slowly sunk behind it. Shadows of night enveloped the hideout.
Anna shivered, and he tucked her closer to him.
“You’re cold, but I can’t light a fire because we sure as hell don’t want to let whoever staked their claim here know they have squatters, especially—”
“If it’s Bradford Jackson,” she completed his sentence.
“It’s gonna get dark soon, but with the rain washing away our tracks, whether it’s Bradford or not, they won’t expect anyone to be inside.”
“I’m not as scared of the dark as I am of spiders.” She rested her hand on his thigh.
He tried to put a trace of laughter in his voice. “I plan to stay up all night, so I’ll take the first spider watch.”
“And coyote?”
“And coyote too. I brought you as far back into the cave as possible, so if anyone gets past me, they probably can’t see you. We have the advantage of the dark. If anybody comes from outside, they’ll have to wait until their eyes adjust before they’ll be able to spot us.”
“But we’ll be able to see them.” She rested her head on his shoulder. “Thank you. Ethan, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Dakota sooner—”
“Sooner?” He found himself frowning. “How about not getting around to mentioning it at all? You know my mama always told me that not being honest and justifying it by omission is just nothing but a bald-faced lie in sheep’s clothing.”
“I tried to so many times but could never find the right words, or the timing was bad.”
“And you couldn’t just say . . . sit down, we need to talk?”
“I tried, but something always seemed to come up that caused me to lose my courage. Dakota saved my life and I felt like I owed it to him to keep him safe, knowing he couldn’t stand up for himself. Gator and Shorty took full advantage of him because he was good with the horses and did what he was told to do without asking questions. So I figured if they thought he was dead, they’d not track us down. I was more scared of them than any lawman.”
“I’m trying to understand, but why didn’t you just take him back East or somewhere nobody knew either of you? A church or something?”
“My heart wouldn’t let me. He’d been discarded enough in his life, so I couldn’t just send him away. Find someone to take him in like a lost puppy.” She took a deep breath before she continued, “I just couldn’t do it. So when I finally found him in Abilene and the situation presented itself where a photographer with a traveling medicine show was there and was showing off the pictures he’d taken of outlaws, the idea came to me. It seemed such a simple plan to get a picture taken and send it to the sheriff so everyone would stop looking for Arlis Buckley. The photographer didn’t care as long as he had a picture for his collection.”
She shifted around so she could see him. “I didn’t even send a name along to collect the reward because I was afraid someone would try to track us down.”
“I know your intentions were good, but . . .” He wanted to be the hard-assed lawman who saw everything in black and white or right and wrong, but he realized she’d done what she knew was right, not necessarily legal—and with total disregard for her own well-being. That shone a different light on the subject. He continued, “But we’ve got more problems than Dakota being charged with anything. We’ve got to find him before your friend Bradford Jackson does.”
“My friend?” She sounded perplexed. “He’s never been my friend, Ethan. I could hardly stand the sight of him, but because his daddy was Father’s attorney and Brad worked for him, I had little choice.”
“Don’t give me that, Savannah. I saw you kissing him the night I had planned—”
“Me kissing him!” Her voice was weak but irate. “You didn’t see me kissing him, but him trying to take advantage of me,” she said with a renewed vigor in her voice. She stiffened in his arms before managing to sit upright. Facing him she added, “I can’t believe you’d ever think I’d jeopardize what I thought we had over someone like Bradford Jackson.” Her voice was even more unwavering with anger.
A rush of dejection flooded over Ethan. For six years, he’d made choices based on something he thought he saw, not on the facts. He’d always prided himself on never going off half cocked, yet doing just that had caused him to recklessly veer off the path to his dreams.
One night had changed his life forever . . . and Anna’s too.
Breaking into the loneliness of his thoughts, she hurled at him, “Plus, you have no room to hold grudges, since you forgot to tell me about Jenny.”
“Jenny!” Just the fact that Anna had brought up her name flat-ass infuriated Ethan. “What does she have to do with any of this?”
“How could she not?” Anna’s emerald eyes danced with annoyance.
“How do you know about Jenny?” Ethan asked.
“And don’t forget your little boy.” Her voice was heavy with cynicism.
“Here we go again. Why don’t you just drop the subject? I’ve already told you that I don’t have any children.”
“Ethan, please don’t play me for a fool. Now that I know you saw me with Bradford, I realize that’s why you left town without saying good-bye, but why into the arms of another woman?”
“Let’s get a few things straight.” He attempted to check his furor, because he knew she spoke out of pain, and he was afraid he wasn’t equipped all that well to help her get through it.
He took a deep breath, corralled his anger, and continued, “I didn’t leave for another woman, Savannah. I had just received notice that I’d passed my test to be a lawyer, and I had already gone to your father and turned down his offer to work for him so I could take a position in a law office in San Angelo. I wanted you to go with me—as my wife—and that’s why I was looking for you that evening.”
She gasped. “You came looking for me?”
“Yes, to tell you that I loved you and wanted a life with you.”
“But you found me and Bradford instead. So you decided not to work under his father . . . the lawyer who trained you?”
“No. I could never work for a man who had the personality of hog slop.” He almost shuddered at the thought of having to spend his whole career under the helm of such a shyster pettifogger as Bradford Jackson Jr.
“And that’s why you turned down Father’s offer to work at the bank?”
“Yes. I’d envisioned a life in a big city like Austin with you someday, but thought San Angelo would be a good beginning. But even that turned disastrous . . .”
“So that’s the reason your mother never spoke to our family after that?” she asked curtly. “Because I hurt her little boy?”
“No.” He tried to disguise his annoyance at her comment. “It had nothing to do with it. She was madder than a hornet at him long before that, because your father tried to buy our land when Pa died. When Mama refused, he insulted her by telling her that a woman shouldn’t be trying to run a few head of cattle on land that was more valuable to the cotton merchants.” The memories of his mother’s disappointment rushed through his mind. “She never forgave him for it, because she said he meant to say a woman couldn’t run it like a man could. Mama was just that way.”
“And, unfortunately, my father is just that way too.�
�� Her voice rang with perplexing emotions. “Oh God, Ethan.”
He watched the sadness come over her face in the near darkness.
“Your mother is dead,” she whispered.
“Yes. I came back to Galveston a couple of days before the robbery to see her for the final time. She passed the next morning. That’s the reason I was even around to listen to your father’s plea to find you.”
“So you’re here at my father’s request—not to arrest me?”
“Yes, but I’ve never forgotten that I’m a lawman first. And if I had to arrest you, Savannah, you can bet your sweet cheeks that I would have done so without giving it a second thought.”
“So you’re a lawyer and a lawman? You left Galveston years ago as a lawyer, and ended up joining the Texas Rangers because you were mad at the world?”
“More or less, but it wasn’t right away.” On safer ground now, he took time to gather and weigh his thoughts. He hated to divulge the remainder of the story, but he had come too far to turn back now. He expected the truth from her, and she should get nothing less from him. “I went on to San Angelo—”
“Where your brother, Robert, lived.”
“And his wife . . .”
It took all of the courage Ethan could muster to tell her how not long after he got settled into the law office at San Angelo his brother was charged with horse thievery when a gelding was found in his corral. Robert was set up, and Ethan was well on the trail of proving it. Being a young legal eagle, Ethan didn’t take the advice given to him by more experienced lawyers to not go to trial. Instead, he was hell-bent for leather to clear his brother’s name . . . with an outcome nobody wanted.
Ethan found himself keeping a steady eye on the entrance to the cave as he relayed the vile events for which he felt responsible. “And since the horse belonged to one of the town’s favorite sons, while I was occupied with reading case law and trying to show off what I’d learned in my training to be a lawyer, some of his friends thought I was abusing the judicial system with delays, so they took things into their own hands. A vigilante committee broke into the jail and lynched my brother right before my own eyes.”
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