by Laurie Grant
“But Morgan, please listen to me. I have something to tell you, and I’ve been holding it inside for a long time—”
“Duchess, whatever it is, maybe we’d better save it for tomorrow,” he said, ruthlessly cutting her off “We’ve got a lotta ground t‘cover, an’ it’s time we got some shut-eye.” He slid his hat down over his eyes to shut out the firelight and the sight of her leaning over him, her face full of naked entreaty.
A nearby scream woke him—how much later, he couldn’t say as he grabbed for his Colt. His brain registered the fact that it was just light enough to see a dazed and sleepy-looking Sarah struggling out of her blanket roll, reaching for her spectacles and stumbling to her feet. It hadn’t been Sarah that had screamed, then, but who?
“Who...wha—?” she muttered.
“I don’t know...”
Then the sound came again from down the draw, and he realized that the scream hadn’t been human, but equine. It was Rio, and it wasn’t coming from the end of the draw where the stallion had been tethered. And then he heard the thoroughbred’s answering whinny from the same direction, and the pounding of hooves.
“It’s Rio, Duchess—he’s broken loose, and he’s going for your mare.”
“But he—he c-can’t! We can’t let this h-happen,” she stammered, and then she began to run down the draw in the direction of the horses, and he followed, afraid she would get hurt trying to prevent what was no longer preventable
Rio trumpeted again, and it was the sound of a fully aroused stallion announcing his impending conquest of a mare. Trafalgar, still tethered but pawing and stamping, nickered back at the pinto, lifted her tail and arched it proudly, then presented her hindquarters to Rio. The pinto reared up over her, clamping his teeth into her neck as he came down on her. They heard her squeal, saw her tremble as the stallion’s hindquarters pumped frantically against her
It was a raw and primal sight, and yet somehow magnificent in its violence, too. Morgan felt the woman he was holding by the back of her shoulders shuddering beneath his hands.
“I’m sorry, Sarah,” he breathed into her hair. “I reckon Rio broke his tether. Normally he’s the most biddable stallion I’ve ever seen, but around a mare in season...”
She turned and buried her face against his shirt just as Rio came off the mare with a thud of his front hooves and a shrill whinny.
“It’s all right, Morgan. I suppose...it was meant to be,” she breathed, her breath coming in ragged pants. “And it’s right, in a way.... Animals don’t understand these distinctions we humans place upon them...about breeding, and class....” She gave an unsteady laugh and raised her head to meet his gaze. “Now I understand why Ben would never allow me near the breeding barn when a stallion was servicing a mare. It’s a very...ah...unsettling sight, isn’t it?”
Out of the corner of his eye he could see Trafalgar standing still, her head down, her flanks and withers still quivering, but he had eyes only for the woman who had turned in his arms so that his former restraint of her now became an embrace.
Yeah, he felt unsettled, all right, and from what he could see, she felt the same. Her eyes were gleaming; her breasts were heaving, creating little jolts of pleasure where they brushed his chest. As he watched, she licked her lips and pushed herself up on her toes, her arms stealing about his neck.
“Morgan,” she breathed, “I want you to kiss me....”
Lord, he was going to do it. He was going to lower his lips to hers, and then he was going to pick her up in his arms and carry her back to her bedroll by the campfire and make love to her until she screamed with the pleasure he was going to give her. To hell with her Frenchman and the fact that she was a duchess and he an outlaw...
Crack!
They both heard the gunshot, and hit the dirt simultaneously, even though it sounded as if it came from some distance.
“Are you all right?” they asked each other in unison, passion forgotten as the crack sounded again. By now Morgan’s ears had located its direction. It was coming from some distance to the right of them beyond the draw.
“What is it? Who’s shooting?” she asked. And then the sound came to them on the wind—a muffled, human cry of pain.
Of course he didn’t know. “You stay right here, Sarah. I’m going to find out.”
“But—”
“I said stay right here. Don’t worry about the horses—Rio will stay right near your mare. And if anything happens to me, you ride back to Pueblo as if the devil himself was at your heels.”
Leaving her in the draw with the horses, he crept over the plains until he found the source of the gunshots. He crawled the last few yards in the tall, concealing, dry buffalo grass. He knew that its rustling would alert an Indian, but he had a hunch the men causing the cries were white.
He was right Two white men stood over an Apache brave staked out on the ground. One of them was holding the reins of a swaybacked buckskin, the other a pistol.
The Indian’s face gleamed with sweat and he clenched his teeth in his effort not to cry out. The rising sun revealed a red slash through his scalp, and his arms cratered with scarlet-centered sores—cigar burns, Morgan realized, seeing the half-consumed stogie clamped between the teeth of one of the white captors. The gunshots they had heard had each cost the brave a finger on his right hand. As Morgan watched, pondering the best thing to do, the other man raised his pistol again and aimed, shooting off one of the fingers on the Indian’s left hand. Again the Apache was unable to suppress his moan of pain.
“C‘mon, now, Injun, tell us where you hid the horse you stole from us,” demanded the stogie-smoker, who was obviously the leader. “I’d purely despise havin’ to leave you with no fingers a-tall.”
The Indian’s obsidian eye blazed hatred and defiance, and he gave no answer.
Morgan saw that the other man was about to shoot off another finger. “That’ll be enough of that, gents,” he said, standing and leveling his Colt at the one aiming the pistol at the Apache.
The two white men whirled to face him. “Mister, where’d you come from?” the one with the stogie asked. “This here red man stole one o’ our horses. We was jest...questionin’ him.”
The Apache was watching him with sullen eyes, probably thinking that he had just gained a third tormentor.
“Well, I reckon I don’t like the way you were goin’ about it,” Morgan responded. “Did it ever occur to you that he might not speak English?” Keeping his gaze fastened on the two white men, Morgan addressed the Indian in rusty Apache.
The Apache brave blinked in surprise, then warily answered.
“He says he doesn’t have your horse,” Morgan told the other two men. “He said he wouldn’t steal your horse if it was the last horse on the plains, because you’ve beaten it and starved it and its spirit is broken. He says he saw it wandering loose, but he didn’t take it. He tells me you creased him with a bullet and knocked him off his horse, otherwise he would not be lying here at the mercy of such dogs as you.”
The two white men growled and bristled. “You believe the nonsense a red Injun’d spout, mister? He’s jes’ tryin’ to play on yore sympathies, like—until he kin steal yore horse, an’ mebbe yore hair, too.”
“Just the same, I’d be obliged if you’d turn him loose—right now.” To prove he was serious he cocked the gun he had leveled at them.
Behind him, a rustling in the grass told him Sarah had disobeyed and crept up behind. A click told him she had brought her pistol and had cocked it, as well. The sound made his blood run cold. He had not been afraid before, but now there was no more room for error. He could not afford to make a mistake, or let the other two men make one, for it might cost her life. He didn’t even dare glance back to see if she had tucked her hair back up under her hat so they couldn’t tell she was a female.
“So there’s two of you,” the man who did not have a stogie said conversationally. “Ya must be campin’ down in that draw yonder, right? I thought I heard horses over there
, an’ figured mine mighta found some mustangs, but we were havin’ too much fun with the Injun, there.”
“You heard my friend,” Sarah said in a deep, husky voice that might just fool them into thinking she was a man. “Let the Indian go.”
“You some kinda furriner?” the one in charge asked her, and while Morgan was waiting and wondering whether she would answer, he saw the other man raise his pistol.
Morgan shot the man through the arm, causing him to drop the pistol with a yelp, sink to his knees and clutch his bleeding arm with his left hand.
“I’d purely despise havin’ to shoot you, too, mister,” Morgan mocked. “Why don’t you drop the pistol you’ve got in your belt? That’s it, nice and easy in this direction, then you loose that Indian like I told you to. Cover the one on the ground, Challoner.”
The man with the cigar threw his Colt so that it landed a few feet from Morgan. Never taking his eyes off the man, he picked up the gun and stuck it in his belt, then motioned toward the Indian.
“You’re makin’ a mistake, mister,” the man protested. “This brave won’t be grateful, if that’s what you’re hopin’. He’ll call the rest of them Apaches down on ya and you’ll lose yore hair jest the same.”
“I reckon that’s our lookout, ain’t it?” Morgan drawled as the man bent to comply with Morgan’s order.
A quick flash of movement from the man on the ground warned Morgan he was going for his boot gun. Morgan shifted his pistol’s direction, but Sarah was quicker. She fired, hitting the man in the hand. He screamed, then raised his hands in the air in surrender, one of them dripping with blood.
“See how it feels?” Morgan taunted him. “If this Apache wasn’t already hurtin’, I’d let him lift your hair if he was so inclined” He saw the leader finish loosing the Indian’s bonds, and the Apache warily staggered to his feet, but his color, under the coppery tint of his skin, was ashen. He wasn’t going to be able to make it back to his people without some help.
“I’m afraid we’re gonna have to relieve you of your other horse, gents,” Morgan announced. “Looks like the Apache’s gonna be needin’ it.”
“What about us? We’ll die out here on the plains without a horse!” screamed the wounded man.
“You shoulda thought of that before you started torturin’ him,” Morgan retorted easily. “But you’ll make it, if you’re careful with your water. Pueblo’s back that way just about thirty, forty miles. Oh, one more thing, fellows—you got any whiskey?”
“Yeah, we got some,” the leader snarled. “Ya gonna take that, too?”
“Yup,” Morgan replied. “Wouldn’t want y‘all to be gettin’ drunk when you should be walkin’.” He wasn’t thirsty for spirits himself—it was for the Indian. By the looks of him, he was going to need something for the pain, and soon.
“Go ahead, but we’ll catch up with you sons of bitches and you’re gonna wish you’d never interfered, damn yore hides.”
Morgan shrugged. “Challoner, I’ll cover you while you help our Indian friend onto that plug they call a horse and find that whiskey in their saddlebags. Then we’ll let these fellows be on their way. I don’t reckon they’re gonna bother us again, but we’ll be watchin’ for it, won’t we?”
“Yeah.” Morgan was amused to hear Sarah growl in her best imitation-American-male. “So don’t try nothin’. I’d jest as soon kill you as look at you, you ugly galoot.” He was going to have to be sure to ask her which sensational novel she’d gotten her lingo from.
By the time Morgan and Sarah were packed and ready to go in the draw, they could see the two men as tiny dots on the horizon, heading due north back toward Pueblo. Even at this distance, Morgan could see that the wounded man was leaning on the other for support. Those two wouldn’t be riding after them seeking revenge any time soon.
The Apache’s name, Morgan learned, was Naiche, and he’d been on a hunting expedition for his hungry people. When Morgan translated for Sarah’s benefit, she immediately walked over to the packhorse, got the remains of their antelope feast and offered the Apache some, but he shook his head.
“He will not eat until the N‘de, his people, can eat,” Morgan told her. “We’re going to have to see him back to his village, Sarah. He’s in a lot of pain, and he’s stayin’ conscious out of pride alone.”
“Of course. I wouldn’t think of leaving him here alone,” Sarah replied firmly.
The Apache eyed her, and smiled slightly as he made a comment and then asked Morgan another question.
“He asked what you said,” Morgan told her. “After I translated, he said you are a woman of great heart, and asked if you were my woman. So I guess you can quit usin’ the deep voice, ’cause he wasn’t fooled. I’m goin’ to tell him you are my woman, okay? I think it’s safer.”
“Go ahead and tell him so, Morgan,” she said, her voice steady as she looked him in the eye. “It’s true, anyway.”
He stared back at her. “Duchess, what are you sayin’? Careful now, don’t say something you’re going to regret—”
“Let’s not argue, Morgan,” she said with serene resolve. “We’ll talk about it later, when we’re alone.”
They’d talk about it, all right, Morgan vowed. He had to make her see he couldn’t accept her generous offer of herself, no matter how much he wanted to. It wasn’t right. He wasn’t right for her, not for a few nights of passion, and certainly not for the rest of their lives.
“Which way?” Morgan asked the Apache once they’d bandaged his hands and helped him to mount. The scrubby horse they’d taken from the white men had shied from the smell of blood, but once the Indian was atop him, he didn’t seem inclined to buck.
Naiche pointed southwest to the mountains they’d been skirting all along.
“Is it far? My woman’s mare was not bred for the mountains,” Morgan told him.
The Apache eyed Trafalgar admiringly, and said in Apache, “She is much horse, just as your golden-haired woman is much woman. I would trade all my string of horses for her.”
Morgan wasn’t sure whether he meant the thoroughbred or Sarah, but knew he had to be careful what he said either way. “My woman and the mare’s spirits are attached by an invisible, magic cord,” Morgan told him, adding, “Each would wither without the other, and I would wither without her.”
The answer seemed to satisfy the Apache.
An hour later Morgan spotted a mule deer and shot it, then tied the buck over the packhorse’s withers. It wouldn’t hurt to have some meat to offer when they met up with Naiche’s band of Jicarilla Apaches.
Naiche had tried to remain stoic, but his face got paler with each mile, and finally he consented to drink some of the whiskey Morgan offered. He drank deeply and long, prompting Morgan to urge him to stop. He had to remain alert, Morgan told him, for how would they find his people if Naiche was insensible with firewater?
The Apache just gave a weak grin, and said, “Do not worry if that happens, Texan. Just ride into the mountains, and they will find you.” A few minutes later he sagged on his mount and would have fallen off if Morgan hadn’t caught him. They stopped and transferred him onto Rio, and Morgan rode from then on with the limp figure of the Indian cradled in his arms.
They rode until the sun was high in the sky. Morgan figured they were in New Mexico by now. He’d planned for them to enter the territory over Raton Pass, and join up with the Santa Fe Trail, but at least this way they wouldn’t be charged the toll travelers paid to go that way—four bits each horse, a dollar and fifty cents per wagon.
Just as Naiche had promised, “the People” found them before Morgan and Sarah found the village. One minute they were alone on the narrow mountain trail, the next, four copper-skinned men clad in breechcloths, fringed, tanned-hide shirts and knee-high moccasins had surrounded them, rifles held at the ready.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Sarah froze in the saddle. It was one thing to read tales about wild red men in novels about the West, quite another to confront the
real thing.
Silently she stared at the copper-skinned Apache men with their straight, raven black hair held back with wide cloth bands across their foreheads. They stared back at her. The unblinking obsidian intensity of their gazes made Sarah look away first.
One of them, who had gray liberally mixed with the black of his hair, pointed to the limp Indian Morgan held in his arms, and uttered something in Apache. There was no doubt from his tone that it was a question, and more than that, it was a question for which Morgan better have the right answer.
Morgan answered in Apache, nodding toward Naiche’s bandaged hands, which had been concealed in his lap. The four men came surging forward, exclaiming.
Their sudden movement caused Trafalgar to rear and whinny in alarm, and Sarah momentarily forgot the Indians as she struggled to keep her seat. Then, once she succeeded in quieting the mare, Sarah saw the gray-haired leader point straight at her and heard him ask another question.
Morgan spoke again, pointing to Sarah, then back to himself
“What’s he saying? What have you told him?” she asked.
“I’ve told him what happened to Naiche, and that we brought him here because we mean well to the Apache. And I said I have told you, my wife, to dress like a man for your safety on our journey,” he said.
The leader made a gesture toward her head, and seemed to demand something.
“He wants to see your hair, Sarah,” Morgan said. His eyes said, Trust me. It will be all right.
Slowly, keeping her gaze locked with Morgan’s and trying to keep her hands from shaking, she lifted the hat and allowed the thick blond plait to fall down her back.