by Tess LeSue
It was like a curtain being ripped aside, revealing the machinations of backstage behind the players. Her life was a total lie. Mother wasn’t Father’s wife. Father had a real wife. A woman who might not have even known Mother existed, but if she did, she didn’t care, so long as Mother kept discreetly to the edges of Father’s life.
Father had a wife who lived with him, who had him every single day, not just here and there, after dark, on random days that broke like Christmas, full of cheer. Father’s wife was an everyday woman: a wife who went with him to balls and operas and luncheons, who bore his heirs, who was more than mere adornment. Father’s wife was central to his life while Ava’s mother was a decoration.
But it wasn’t the wife who bothered Ava. Well, she did. But not as much as the children did. The daughters. The half sisters she’d never met. The tall, beautifully dressed willowy blondes who were so similar to Ava and yet so different. Those girls and Ava shared a father, but not a history; they shared a resemblance, but not a name; they shared an inheritance of secrecy, but not the implications of it. Arthur Addison’s daughters were all tall; they were all striking, Ava included; but while the Addison heirs were blondes in shades from strawberry to moonlight, Ava’s hair was an indecent red; where their figures were elegant and slender, she was overly tall and rude with health; where their manners were sweet and their smiles coy, her charm bordered on boldness. Certainly according to Nanny Number Two. And Ava’s mother.
Her father’s daughters were girls slightly older and slightly younger than Ava; they led lives parallel to hers, separated from her by a yawning chasm. They didn’t even know she existed. While she went to a modest school and walked home to a silent social calendar, her father’s daughters had dancing lessons and painting lessons, piano lessons and singing lessons. They debuted to glittering seasons, belles of every ball. While Ava spent the summer sweltering in the city, her father’s daughters spent their summers by the sea and, later, taking tours of the Continent and even being introduced to the Queen of England. While Ava’s mother introduced her to older men who were hunting for fresh young mistresses, her father’s daughters had spectacular society weddings to powerful men. Her father walked publicly with them, beaming his pride, while Ava was closeted at home with her clingy mother. Those girls made her feel like she was nothing but cheap costume jewelry while they were diamonds and pearls.
Not a single one of them would ever be sitting here in the mud, struggling to keep a rapist-lawyer-Apache alive. They were all living in luxury, spitting out heirs to the fortune.
Well, screw them. And screw their luxury. Screw their blondness, their white skin, their easy smiles. She had something better than fancy jewelry and boxes at the opera and thin-nosed, uptight husbands. She had freedom.
It was just a shame it was so full of mud.
15
THE RIVER DIDN’T do much to assuage the Apache’s fever. It just made them both wet and filthy. Ava tried to nurse him as best she could, but after a full day and night she had to admit defeat. She couldn’t rouse him from his delirium, and no amount of cooling water reduced his fever. Touching him was like touching a brick oven in full burn.
“Right, Freckles, there’s no point in sitting around and waiting for him to die,” Ava announced. “We’re going to have to get moving. The last thing we want is for Kennedy Voss to find us. And we’re nearly out of food. If you can call jerky food.” She looked around at the scrappy trees and bushes. “I guess we’ll need to find a way to move him . . .”
A travois was the logical solution, the kind she’d seen Indian tribes use. She looked down at her bare hands and sighed. Why did everything always have to be so hard? She wished she had her packhorse. Her ax and all her useful tools were on it. Without them, fashioning a travois was damn hard work. Sweating through the heat of the day, she wrestled with fallen branches, which she gathered from where they’d tangled at the bend in the creek. She used a sharp-edged rock to hack at the dry limbs, getting a hand full of splinters in the process. She did her best, but her best wasn’t terribly good. The two main poles of the travois were different shapes and sizes, and the hammock was just a complete mess, a badly worked combination of her gown and what rope she had. He’d be lucky if he didn’t drag his ass on the ground the whole way.
She’d been forced to sacrifice more clothing in order to create makeshift ropes to bind the thing together, once she’d run out of actual rope, and she figured at this rate they’d both be naked soon. Why she was so doggone set on saving the Apache was beyond her now; her sheer stubbornness had kicked in, and her entire focus was on getting him out of here. She wasn’t losing him to death, and she wasn’t leaving him behind, and that was that.
By the time she was done with her toil, the Apache was slung across a badly made and clearly fragile contraption that only vaguely resembled a travois. If you squinted. Somehow she managed to harness the thing to Freckles, despite the horse’s disgust. Now she just had to hope it would hold together once they started dragging it.
“I’ll walk,” Ava told the horse. “That way I can keep him from falling off.”
It was a wretched way to travel, on foot, trying to lead the horse and watch the Apache all at once. And it was made worse by the heat of the day. They couldn’t travel through the cool of the night because it would be impossible to navigate the rough terrain with the travois. This way they could see, but the sun was cooking them alive.
Ava had soaked the blanket in the creek and draped it over the Apache before they set off, hoping the moisture would keep him cool as it evaporated.
“I wouldn’t be adverse to a reward if we get out of this mess,” she told him as she struggled to keep on through the worst of the day. She kept looking over her shoulder to check he was still safe. “I’m hoping you Apache lawyers are the wealthy kind?”
Freckles whickered.
“She’s right. You should probably factor in a reward for her too. After all, she’s doing all of the work.”
Freckles whickered again, and Ava noticed that she was looking skittish. Her ears had pricked right up, and her eyes were rolling. There was danger about.
“What now?” Ava’s heart rate spiked. She couldn’t take much more.
Freckles let out an alarmed neigh, and that was when Ava heard the barking. A high, staccato barking, getting closer. Freckles reared up, and Ava fought to hang on to her. “Don’t do that,” she scolded. “You’ll knock the Apache off!”
Freckles didn’t care. She was spooked by the sound of the dog. Or coyote. Or whatever it was. Did coyotes bark? Probably not. It was definitely a dog.
Oh hell, maybe it belonged to one of the Hunters?
A gray and black blur came exploding out of the chaparral. Jesus wept, it was a wolf!
Freckles reared and Ava screamed. The damn thing was launching itself at the Apache! It was going to kill him!
“Get off him, you horrid thing!” Ava wasn’t in her right mind. Obviously. Because no sane person would get between a wolf-dog and its prey. But she was damned if she was going to let the Apache get mauled, not when she’d worked so hard to keep him alive.
It was only once she’d reached the travois (which was no mean feat, the way Freckles was jumping about) that she realized the wolf-dog wasn’t trying to kill the Apache at all. It was . . . kissing him? The animal was whining and shivering and licking the Apache’s face in a fit of pure joy. It kept nuzzling him and letting out the most pitiful noises. Now that she was up close, she could see that it was an Indian dog and not a wolf at all.
The Apache stirred and spoke for the first time in more than a day. “Dog?” His voice was cracking and parched. The dog nuzzled into his hand, and the Apache gave him a limp pat. “Dog! Good boy.” Then he said something in a language Ava didn’t recognize.
It was his dog. . . . Didn’t that beat all.
The Apache struggled to sit up and wrap his arms
around the animal.
So he was feeling better, then. . . . Well, he had better give credit where credit was due, and not go thinking the miraculous return of his dog had made him recover. She was the one who’d dragged him for miles, and nursed him through the fever, and fed him drops of water and walked hellish miles in the hot sun to save him. This dog hadn’t done anything but lick him.
“Freckles,” Ava said sharply, stepping closer to the skittish horse and putting a solid hand on her side. “Stop that. It’s not a wolf. It’s his dog.” It took her forever to settle the horse. “He’s not trying to bite you. Look: he’s too busy having a cuddle. He’s just a big, cuddly puppy.” Albeit one that looked like it could tear your throat clear out.
The Apache had said that someone had stolen his dog. She couldn’t remember who now, whether it had been Pete Hamble or the army, or another Apache tribe, or his friend. . . . Not that it mattered. Someone had stolen his dog—and now here it was.
She groaned, as a thought struck her. Another mouth to feed. “We’d best be getting to some kind of settlement, quick smart, before we run out of food and water.”
There was another problem too. The dog wouldn’t let her get close to the Apache. The stupid man had overexerted himself and gone limp again. Ava needed to see to him, but the dog growled if she so much as took a step toward him.
“Look, dog, I get that you’re worried about him,” Ava said, when she found herself in a face-off with the animal. “I’m worried about him too. But who do you think made the travois? Who do you think is trying to drag him to safety? I could have left him, you know. I should have. But I didn’t. So how about you quit pointing those scary fangs at me and let me keep helping him?”
The dog was crouched between Ava and the Apache, teeth bared, growling low in its chest, its eyes an eerie shade of yellow.
“Dog,” the Apache rasped, and his hand managed to lift an inch so his fingers could curl through the dog’s hair. The dog glanced back, confused, gave a short whine and then resumed growling at Ava. The Apache spoke in that language again, the one Ava couldn’t place. It sounded vaguely familiar, even though she didn’t understand a word of it.
The dog understood though. It clearly didn’t like what he was saying, but it understood. It gave Ava one last threatening growl, its black lips drawing back from some truly terrifying teeth, and then it turned and plonked itself on the Apache’s feet. It rested its head on its paws, its yellow eyes fixed warningly on Ava.
“I’m sorry about Dog,” the Apache rasped. “He’s protective.”
“You two seem temperamentally suited,” she observed.
“I’ll take that as a compliment, Cleopatra.” He was definitely feeling better, even if he was as limp as a wet sheet.
“Can you make sure the dog doesn’t eat me if I come check on you?” she asked.
“He won’t eat you.”
Ava wasn’t entirely sure about that. The dog lifted his head and watched every move she made. She felt like it could all go horribly wrong at any moment, and clearly so did Freckles, as she was prancing from foot to foot like a nervy Thoroughbred.
“I knew I should have left you in the desert,” she told the Apache as she inched closer to him and the wolf-dog.
“You would never have left me,” the Apache said in that dry, scratchy voice that had her worried.
“Sure I would.” Ava kept a close eye on the dog as she reached out to touch the Apache’s forehead. He was clammy and cold. His fever had broken. She saw goose bumps break out on his arms when she touched him.
“No, you wouldn’t,” he disagreed. “You’re too softhearted to leave a man to die.”
“I’m just going to take this wet blanket off you, all right?” She eased it off. The dog gave a sharp bark, but the Apache lifted a hand, and he stilled. “And I’m about as softhearted as a viper. Don’t you go thinking otherwise. I’d just as soon shoot you as look at you.”
“If you say so.”
“I do.” She folded the blanket. “Now, we should get going again. I assume your animal is coming with us?”
The dog barked again, answering for himself.
“Fine. But tell him he can get off that travois and walk on his own four legs. My horse is tired enough as it is.”
They reached the one-horse town two days later. By then they were running low on water again, and Ava was feeling that whispery panic: water-water-water. At first a pale bluish blur on the far horizon, the town emerged like an answered prayer. She watched it suspiciously for a while before telling the Apache about it.
“It might be a mirage,” he warned. “Is it shimmering?”
“Everything is shimmering,” she snapped, not appreciating his negativity. She needed the town to be real. She was at the end of her rope, and she wasn’t sure she could keep going. “It’s hot. Everything shimmers in the heat.”
“Don’t get your hopes up,” he counseled.
“I liked you better when you were fevered,” she muttered under breath. What did he know anyway? He was blind. She was the one who could see it, and it was definitely a town. Although it didn’t seem to get any closer, no matter how many steps she took . . .
They certainly seemed no closer by the time dusk fell, and she had a mood-plummeting moment as they staked camp, when she faced the reality of their dwindling water and hardtack. If it was a mirage, they were right back to where they had started, lost in the middle of nowhere with no supplies. She found herself overcome with tears as she tried to get a fire lit. Her throat swelled up, and her chest felt tight. She wasn’t one to cry, but this seemed like as good a time as any.
Sometimes she just wished she wasn’t so alone. It was so hard to keep going day after day, knowing that there was no one to lean on when things got hard. And they got hard so often. She rubbed the heels of her palms into her eyes. Damn it. She didn’t want to be weak like her mother. She wasn’t weak like her mother. She could do this. She’d done worse.
But wouldn’t it be nice if someone else could make the fire tonight . . . if someone else could worry about finding food and water . . . if someone else could just shoulder some of the burden . . . even just for a few hours?
The hot tears tumbled as she piled up the dry horse dung she’d gathered the day before, trying to make a decent campfire. There was so little wood out here that manure made a better source of fuel. It was just one more way that Freckles had come to their rescue. As Ava indulged in a silent self-pitying cry, she got the fire lit, mostly for the sake of cheer, as they had nothing to cook and it was too hot to sit close to it. At least she could boil some of their last water and make a pot of weak tea, using the tea leaves she’d used at least a dozen times before.
“Cleopatra?” The Apache’s tentative voice came out of the rising purple dusk. He was still stuck on the travois, too weak to move. The travois itself had half fallen apart the moment they’d stopped, and he was mostly sprawled on the ground. “It’s not like you to be quiet. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” Ava swiped the tears from her face and poured the tea from the tin into their single mug. “Here, I made tea.”
“Are you crying?”
“No.” As if she’d tell him if she was. When she stood, she caught a flicker on the horizon. A tiny glow. She squinted. The flicker became a steady yellow light. It was joined by another. “It is a town! I can see light! It’s the firelight through their windows!” Relief swept through her like a spring rain. She laughed and rubbed the tears from her face with more vigor. “Thank God! I thought we were going to die out here.” She crouched next to him and offered him the tea. He tried to hold the mug, but she had to help him. The firelight edged his swollen face with amber light. He winced in pain as he lifted his head.
“We won’t die,” he told her calmly after he’d had a couple of sips. He pushed the mug toward her, encouraging her to drink the rest. “You’re
too stubborn to let that happen.”
“I’m not stubborn.” The tea tasted god-awful. Like river water. She wished there was coffee. She hadn’t had coffee in so long. . . .
“I meant it as a compliment.” He sounded drowsy. Before she’d even finished the river-water tea, he’d slipped back into sleep. Possibly unconsciousness. She leaned forward to check, resting a hand on his forehead. No fever. Not for the first time, she wondered what he looked like without the swelling. It was hard to even tell how old he was when he was all misshapen like this. She hoped for his sake the swelling went down and there was no permanent damage. Especially to his eyes . . . What would he do, if he were blind? He’d lose his warrior status.
Still . . . he could always fall back on being a lawyer.
She heard a rustling in the bushes and jumped a mile. Stupidly, she reached for her gun, even though she didn’t have a single bullet left.
But it was only Dog. He came slinking out of the shadows, his yellow eyes gleaming. He had something in his mouth.
“I didn’t even know you’d gone,” she said nervously. She tried to stand her ground, as she remembered her father telling her that dogs could smell fear. That had been one of the few fatherly things he’d ever done. And he’d told her that only because he’d bought her mother a dog, and it had scared the life out of Ava. Her father had turned up at the town house with an enormous Afghan, a hugely tall dog that towered over little Ava. Father couldn’t have bought Mother a Pomeranian or a bichon friese, could he? Something small and fluffy and cute? No. Her mother had wanted a regal dog, one she that she could promenade with. The Afghan hadn’t been an affectionate animal; it had been aloof and stubborn and prone to growling at Ava. It had scared the wits out of her.
You need to show the animal who’s boss, Father had told her. Just like with a woman. He’d winked at Ava’s mother then, and the two of them had disappeared upstairs, trailing her mother’s giggles, and leaving Ava alone with the imperious-looking dog. It didn’t matter how little fear she showed; the dog knew very well who was boss—and it wasn’t Ava.