Winter Fire

by Elizabeth Lowell

  Be damned, Case thought, startled. Why didn’t he ride his mule?

  Then, Wonder which Culpepper it is?

  There was no ready answer.

  Doesn’t matter, I suppose. One varmint is pretty much like another.

  Except for Ab, he amended. That old boy could teach evil to the devil himself.

  Once more Case blended his silhouette with that of the tall sagebrush. By touch alone he reloaded his six-gun and shotgun. The cartridges went in smoothly, almost silently.

  Once more he waited.

  This time nothing stirred, no matter how long he listened to the small sounds of the night.

  Slowly he let out a long breath. For the first time he noticed that he was cold, his wounded leg throbbed, and his forehead stung where bullets had kicked bits of bark across his skin.

  He had to lick his lips twice before they were wet enough to send a hawk’s fluting call through the darkness.

  A hawk answered from inside the cabin.

  Limping, he set out for the ragged black rectangle that was all that showed of the cabin. Though he didn’t expect to encounter any more outlaws sneaking around the underbrush, he wasn’t careless. He used every bit of cover to break up his silhouette.

  As a precaution, he whistled again before he touched the front door.

  A hawk cried sweetly from just beyond the rough planks. The door opened. The pale moonlight showed Conner standing just inside.

  His shotgun was leveled at Case’s belt buckle.

  “See?” Conner said, uncocking the gun and stepping aside. “I told you he would be all right.”

  Sarah hurried around her brother.

  “Case?” she asked huskily. “Are you hurt?”

  Her voice trembled. So did the hands that went lightly over him, searching for injuries.

  “Tired, dirty, and scuffed up a bit,” he said, closing the door behind him. “Nothing to worry about.”

  “Light the lamp,” she said to her brother.

  Conner looked at Case, who nodded.

  “What happened?” Conner asked.

  “Come dawn, we’ll have some shovel work.”

  A match scraped on the iron trivet. A tongue of orange-red light flared, followed by the more mellow light from the wick of an oil lamp. The glass chimney clinked softly against the metal holder as Conner replaced it.

  “Shovel work, huh?” he asked, looking at Case.

  “Any trouble up on the rim?” Case asked.

  “How many did you kill?” the boy persisted. “How did you find them before they found you? Where—”

  “That’s enough,” Sarah interrupted curtly. “Case is barely three weeks away from dying, he’s been out in the dark fighting for our lives, and now you’re pestering him to death.”

  “But—”

  A glittering silver glance shut Conner up.

  “Hell’s fire,” he muttered. “You’d think I was still wearing rompers.”

  She ignored her brother.

  “Sit down,” she said to Case. “You’re bleeding.”

  “Nothing to—” he began.

  Sarah exploded.

  “Will you just shut up and sit down!” she snarled. “I’m sick unto death of being ordered around by males who are too damned big for their damned britches!”

  Case gave her a wary look. Then he sat down in one of the two chairs the cabin had. The chair’s cottonwood frame creaked when it took his weight.

  She gave her brother a measuring glance, obviously seeking another target for her anger.

  “Uh,” Conner said, “I think it’s time for me to spell Ute up on the rim.”

  “Go ahead,” Case said. “But keep your eyes peeled.”

  “Are there more raiders?” Conner asked with subdued eagerness.

  “Not unless they rode double, and I doubt that those little mustangs could carry that much freight.”

  “Ute will wonder about the gunfire. What shall I tell him?”

  “To bring a shovel,” Sarah said sharply.

  Conner opened the door and left without another word.

  “Thank you for keeping your sister in the cabin,” Case called.

  “My pleasure,” the boy called back.

  Then his laugher rippled through the night.

  “You should have heard her when I sat on her,” Conner called through the wall. “I didn’t know she knew so many cuss words. Hell, I bet even Big Lola couldn’t—”

  “Conner Lawson,” Sarah said in a threatening tone.

  Laughter floated back, further outraging his sister.

  “Must have been something to hear,” Case said neutrally.

  Red burned brightly on her otherwise pale face. Then she saw the faint upward tilt at one corner of his mouth.

  Suddenly she was laughing too, almost dizzy with relief that Case was all right, Conner was all right, everything was all right.

  For tonight, at least, they were safe.

  “I didn’t know I knew that many words, either,” she admitted.

  The corners of his eyes crinkled.

  She smiled wryly.

  “I must have been a sight to behold,” she said, “cussing a blue streak while that overgrown boy sat squarely on top of me.”

  “When you do a man’s job, you aren’t a boy anymore.”

  Her smile faded as she thought what it must have been like for Case at fifteen during the war—and for him tonight, fighting a different kind of war in the dark.

  Come dawn, we’ll have some shovel work.

  But his eyes said more. They said that death took a price even from the victorious.

  Sarah turned aside, dipped water from the bucket with a tin cup, and poured it into a battered tin bowl. Silently she took a clean rag from a reed basket. When the rag was thoroughly wet, she squeezed water from it and walked back to Case.

  He watched her with eyes turned to shadowed gold-green gemstones by the lantern light.

  Blood slowly welled from a shallow cut on his forehead. Small, bright drops gathered in his left eyebrow, curved around his eye, and ran down his cheek like scarlet tears.

  “There’s no need—” he began.

  “There’s every need,” she countered instantly.

  It would have been easy for him to turn aside, to refuse the small service she offered.

  He did not. He sat and let her care for him as though it was his right.

  And hers.

  Silently she bathed his face with cool water, washing away the dirt and the red tears.

  The shadows in his eyes remained.

  I wonder if anything could wash them away, she thought unhappily.

  “Are you sure you aren’t hurt?” she whispered.

  “Yes.”

  “I was so afraid for you when I heard the second round of shots. And the third. And then the silence. The silence went on forever. Like death.”

  “Sarah…”

  But no words came to Case that would erase the memory of stark fear in her eyes.

  She had been afraid for him, as though he were family instead of a wounded stranger passing through.

  Gently he pulled her into his lap.

  “Your wound,” she protested.

  He settled her so that she was sitting on his right thigh. Then he held her and stroked her unbound hair.

  She gave a broken sigh and leaned against him. For a time she fought the emotions welling up within her, making her throat tight and her eyes burn.

  Then suddenly, silently, she wept, releasing emotions that had been dammed up for too many years.

  He caught her tears on his fingertips and wiped them away. Dust he had picked up fighting for his life in the clump of big sage turned dark red on her face, marking the passage of his hand.

  Tenderly he took the rag she had been using on him, shook it out, and found a clean corner to wipe the red dust from her face.

  Tears welled up faster than he could wash them away.

  “I’m sorry,” she said finally.

&nb
sp; “What for?”

  “I—can’t stop—crying.”

  “Nobody’s asking you to.”

  “But—but I don’t—don’t cry—ever.”

  “I won’t tell anyone if you won’t.”

  She made a sound that could have been a laugh or a sob or both together.

  And then she simply wept.

  “It’s not fair,” she said after a time.

  “What isn’t?”

  “That you had to go out there and—and—”

  “Better me than Conner,” Case said. “He doesn’t have the patience yet.”

  “P-patience?”

  “That’s what all the silence was about. One of the Culpeppers was trying to wear out my patience.”

  “Was it Ab?” Sarah tried to keep the hope out of her voice, but couldn’t.

  “No. But he was canny. Those Culpeppers might not be much when it comes to kindness or decency, but they’re pure blazing hell at fighting.”

  A tremor went through Sarah.

  “Conner,” she whispered. “Ab will kill him. My God, what can I do?”

  “Take your brother and leave Lost River Canyon,” Case said succinctly.

  “I don’t have any—” Her breath broke.

  It was a moment before she could speak.

  “I don’t have any money to send Conner off,” she said painfully.

  “He’s big enough to earn his own way.”

  Tears ran down her face. She shook her head with a combination of weariness and acceptance. When she spoke, her voice was as steady as the flow of her tears.

  “Conner won’t go and leave me on my own,” she said. “I’ve tried.”

  “Then go with him.”

  “And do what? Take Lola’s path?”

  His eyelids flinched. “There are other kinds of work.”

  She laughed bleakly. “Not for a girl who has only the clothes on her back.”

  “You could marry a—”

  “No,” she interrupted savagely. “I’ll never suffer a husband again. Never.”

  Case started to point out that all men weren’t as hard to live with as her dead husband obviously had been, but decided there was no purpose.

  It was like telling himself to go ahead and marry and have kids, because all children didn’t end up maimed and killed by raiders.

  That was true as far as it went. But he had lived the rest of the truth.

  Some children died.

  “All right, then,” he said. “Just kick Conner off your ranch.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “You mean you don’t want to.”

  Wearily she rubbed her forehead. She didn’t feel up to explaining that she had given half of Lost River ranch to Conner when he was thirteen.

  Case would wonder why.

  And that was something she never had talked about, ever, with anyone.

  Dear God, she thought. What a tangle. Why did those damned raiders have to settle around here?

  There was no answer.

  She didn’t expect one, any more than she expected to know why she and Conner had survived the flood that killed the rest of their family.

  Whys don’t matter, she told herself as she had so many times before. All that matters is here and now, not then and might-have-been.

  “I love Lost River ranch more than anything on God’s earth except my brother,” Sarah said calmly. “As soon as I find the Spanish silver and send Conner off to an Eastern school, everything will be fine.”

  Case hesitated. He had a hard time seeing the hotheaded, rawboned boy in an Eastern schoolroom conjugating Latin verbs and memorizing multiplication tables.

  “What does Conner think about that?” he asked.

  “It doesn’t matter. He’s going.”

  Case opened his mouth to point out that her brother was of an age to make his own decisions, then shrugged. Sarah would figure that out just as soon as she tried to push Conner into doing something he really didn’t want to do.

  “What if you don’t find the silver?” Case asked instead.

  “I will.”

  The stubborn set of her chin told him that the subject could be argued from sunrise to sunrise and nothing would change.

  Shaking his head slightly, he sighed and smoothed his hand over the cinnamon silk of her hair.

  “If only Conner and Ute hadn’t baited the raiders,” she said after a moment. “Maybe they would have left us alone.”

  “Maybe, but I doubt it.”

  “Why?”

  “Moody’s boys are too bone-lazy to raid very far from camp.”

  “What about the Culpeppers?” she asked.

  “They used to be that lazy, but it looks like most of those boys finally learned not to dig their outhouse too close to their drinking water.”

  “Damn those raiders.”

  “Amen.”

  Closing her eyes, Sarah sat very still for a time.

  Then she opened her eyes and started talking about an idea that had been growing in her mind. She talked fast, for she really didn’t want to ask.

  Yet she had no other choice except to wring her hands while Conner was killed by raiders who were older and far more cunning than her impulsive younger brother.

  “If you keep the raiders off my back while I hunt silver I’ll give you half what I find,” she said in a rush.

  It took Case a few moments to figure out what she was talking about. When he did, he shook his head.

  “No,” he said simply.

  “You don’t think I’ll find the silver.”

  “Even if you did, it wouldn’t matter. Silver, gold, paper money—none of it is worth dying for.”

  “What is?” she asked bitterly.

  “Half of Lost River ranch.”

  Sarah felt her blood drain away, leaving her as pale as salt.

  Half of Lost River ranch.

  Then she thought of her brother lying dead somewhere, ambushed by raiders.

  She tried to speak, but couldn’t. She swallowed painfully.

  “Half the ranch,” she agreed, her voice hoarse. “But you must promise you won’t tell Conner. Promise me.”

  “Done.”

  She sat very still, listening to the echoes of the bargain she had made. She was glad that she had finally cried all her tears.

  Only she would know how much the loss of her beloved ranch grieved her.

  10

  Breath from the horses hung in the air like silver smoke. Though the sky was every color of peach and pale blue known to man, daybreak hadn’t come yet.

  “Are you still fussing over your horse?” Sarah asked impatiently.

  Case looked up from the cinch he was tightening around Cricket’s sleek barrel. Sarah was sitting astride one of the mustangs he had first seen in Spanish Church, wearing a pack saddle.

  Normally she rode bareback. This morning he had insisted that the little horse she called Shaker wear one of the saddles the dead raiders no longer needed. As far as Case was concerned, riding bareback in rough country was too dangerous.

  The mustangs that had belonged to the outlaws were now scattered along the creek close to the ranch, mixed with Sarah’s stock. The new animals had quickly decided that the graze at Lost River ranch was better than Spring Canyon’s sparse feed.

  “Well?” she persisted.

  “The silver has been lost for centuries,” he said reasonably. “It will keep another minute while I take up the cinch.”

  Visibly she bit back impatient words.

  Lips compressed, she looked off toward the rim. She couldn’t see Lola, but knew the older woman was sitting somewhere up there, a loaded shotgun across her ample lap.

  Ute and Conner were still abed, worn out from long nights of broken sleep. Someone was always up on the rim, even though the raiders hadn’t come back since four nights ago, when Case had taught them that sneaking up in back of the little cabin was a good way to die.

  With an easy motion he stepped into the stirrup and swung
onto Cricket.

  “You’re sure you feel good enough to ride and hike?” she asked for the third time. “Sometimes it’s really a scramble.”

  “I’m sure,” he said for the third time. “And I’m damned sure we should be scouting firewood instead of wasting time looking for dead men’s treasure.”

  “Scout all the firewood you like,” she shot back. “I’m looking for silver.”

  With that she reined her little brown mustang around and sent the mare at a lope toward the distant mouth of Lost River Canyon.

  “Easy, Cricket,” Case muttered, reining in the stallion. “No need to rush off into a cold dawn.”

  He settled his hat firmly in place. Then he checked the shotgun and rifle in their separate saddle sheaths. He didn’t really need to look over the weapons, but it gave him an excuse to get a better grip on his temper.

  Sarah has been going her own way too long, he told himself. Real good at giving orders and no damned good at taking them.

  It’s a blazing wonder Conner didn’t sit on his sister sooner. And harder.

  With a quick motion, Case returned the shotgun to its sheath. The instant he lifted the reins, Cricket shot forward, eager to overtake the little mare.

  “Easy, you puddinghead,” he muttered. “She’s not going anywhere you can’t go faster.”

  The stallion shortened his stride, but not by much. He hated having any horse in front of him.

  The small brown mustang loped along Lost River. The horse was following a vague trail left by game and Indian hunters long before Hal Kennedy built his rough cabin and started hunting for Spanish silver.

  Sometimes a low cottonwood branch forced Sarah to flatten out against Shaker’s neck. At other times fallen logs lay across the way. The little horse leaped the logs with a lack of fuss that meant the nearly invisible trail was a familiar one to the mustang.

  And so was the speed.

  Often Sarah checked the position of the sun. It hadn’t peeked over the rim of the canyon yet, but it would very quickly.

  I should have been on the trail an hour ago, she thought in irritation.

  But Case had refused to let her ride off in the dark, even if he was with her. She had tried to argue, cajole, and reason her way to an agreement to leave earlier. Nothing had worked.

  When Case refused, he meant it.