The Fires of Paradise

by Brenda Joyce

  When he walked in, silence descended.

  Shoz went to the bar. He’d already taken stock of the four riders. They all wore crossed bandoliers, carried their rifles, and had knives on their persons. They were banditos, typical ones, dangerous ones. How could he leave Lucy here?

  He couldn’t. Not alone. Fernando couldn’t protect her, wouldn’t even try. She’d be raped no matter what kind of dress she wore, raped again and again until she died.

  Damn! His frustration increased. He couldn’t leave her here, alone, waiting for her family to come and fetch her. And there was no way he could spend the night with her here, guarding her. Not when they were so close to the border. Casitas was not a safe hiding place. There was no other town near by on this side of Death Valley. Unless he went out of his way to drop her off somewhere else, he’d have to take her with him. And he had no intention of going out of his way. It was too dangerous. His only intention was to seek the safety of his impenetrable hideout. Which meant he was taking her to Death Valley.

  The Braggs could search high and wide, but they’d never discover them there in the eastern Sierra Madres. Never.

  Lucy’s reunion with her family would have to wait. When it was safe, he would send her down to one of the towns on the Gulf, or even escort her himself. The decision made, Shoz felt all of the hot tension draining from his body. He didn’t dare question why; after all, he was, as usual, reacting to the spin of Dame Fortune’s wheel.

  With the money he’d taken from the deputy in Paradise when he’d trussed him up, Shoz bought and downed two whiskeys, sheer heaven. He and Fernando went into the back to discuss business, and when Shoz left the saloon, he had a revolver tucked into his belt, a stiletto knife in his boot, a rifle and a small sack of supplies in one hand. The four riders watched him leave intently.

  Lucy wasn’t where he’d left her. His exasperation was light, despite the urgent need to get going. Where was the chit? Had she finally decided to run away? Her sense of timing stank!

  The thought struck him that some cutthroat had found her, or a rattlesnake. He plunged through thick stands of cactus to find her, unable to call out her name, well aware that his heart was thundering from fear, not fury. He pulled to a halt. Very intently, he listened to the descending night.

  He could hear, far away, the yelping of a pack of coyotes. Closer, he heard the softest, slightest movement, something softly brushing stone. He whirled, but only chased an opossum into hiding.

  Had she run away from him? Alone, barely dressed, fled into the Mexican wilderness? Or had some damn bandit found her? A feeling of helpless outrage assailed him and he clenched his fists. He urged the bay on, into an expanding circle.

  Periodically he stopped to listen. And then he heard her—soft gasps. Maybe pain. The gun in his hand, he galloped toward the sound, and some dozen yards away, he burst through an outcropping of boulders. He found her with her back against one, sitting on the ground, alone—crying.

  His first thought was that someone had hurt her, and his rage foretold murder. He was off the bay, about to grab her, but she had seen him and risen to her feet, wiping her eyes.

  “What happened?”

  Her glare was directed at him, full force.

  “What in hell happened?” he demanded, releasing her.

  “Nothing.”

  He stared, unable to believe her words, not when she was crying, hidden here, and it had taken him half an hour to find her. “You’re lying. Why are you lying? What happened?”

  “Nothing!” she screamed.

  Shoz stepped back. He had told her to hide if she saw someone, but apparently she had been hiding from him. And crying. He told himself he didn’t care, didn’t give a damn, damned if he did. “Why are you crying, Lucy?” The problem was, he knew why she was crying, and secretly he hated himself.

  “Why am I crying?” She laughed hysterically. “You kidnap me and drag me across half of Texas and all the way into Mexico and you ask me why am I crying?”

  “You weren’t crying yesterday.”

  “No.” Her mouth trembled. “I wasn’t crying yesterday.”

  Another image of her touching his forehead swept him, followed by a flashing remembrance of their recent lovemaking. “If you play with fire,” he said harshly, “you risk getting burned.”

  She stared at him. Her chin lifted. “Don’t flatter yourself.”

  This he could handle. Her fighting anger was infinitely preferable to her hurt and tears. “Get up,” he said, mounting.

  She held out her hand and he swung her behind him. He urged the bay into a canter, for the first time heading east.

  Lucy clung to him. “Where are we going?” she gasped. He could feel her full breasts against his back. “Casitas is back there!”

  “Unless you want a fate worse than death, I can’t leave you there—and I sure as hell don’t dare spend a night so close to the border.”

  Lucy’s mind froze—then it began spinning. “What are you saying?” she cried. “I don’t understand!”

  The bay plunged into a rocky gorge. “There were four outlaws back there, and frankly, my dear, they wouldn’t give a damn who you are just as long as you’re a woman. Understand?”

  “Oh,” she said faintly, her mouth touching his ear as she bumped against him.

  He wanted to put distance between them and Casitas, and he pushed the bay, hard. Yet intent as he was, he waited for her unspoken question, and then it came. Tremulously. “If you’re not leaving me there, then where are you leaving me?”

  “I’m not.”

  “What?! But you said you were going to let me go!”

  “Give it up. You’re staying with me.”

  21

  The ground shook beneath the hundreds of galloping hooves, the sound filling the air like thunder. A mass of horses and riders raced across the hot Texas desert, toward the Rio Grande. Almost as one, the cavalcade turned slightly and slowed, coming to a rolling halt.

  “The Rio.”

  Rathe turned to his father, his blue eyes blazing. “We can’t stop now—we lost too much time as it is.”

  Derek Bragg, Nick, Rathe, Brett, and Storm rode in front of the fifty-man posse with Sheriff Sanders and four Texas Rangers. They were an imposing, frightening lot. They were all identically clad, even Storm, in dusty leather chaps, worn boots, wet cotton shirts, bandannas knotted at the throat, and battered Stetsons pulled low. Everyone packed hardware, and lots of it. Rifles were in their scabbards, six-shooters strapped to their thighs. Derek carried a bowie knife—and so did his daughter.

  But it wasn’t just their sheer number or their cumulative firepower that was so frightening. It was the aura of power, rage, and determination that would make anyone hesitate to cross their path.

  Fortunately, Fred had been discovered just an hour after being tied up and locked up in the prisoner’s cell. Lucy’s disappearance had not been noted yet, and might not have been remarked upon until much later if Fred had not been found so soon. He garbled the entire story. Immediately a posse was formed, and within two hours of Lucy’s abduction, the fearsome group had ridden out.

  Unfortunately, the consensus was that Shoz would ride directly south for the border, and that was how they had gone, looking for his trail. They hadn’t found any sign by that afternoon. They had to backtrack all the way back to Paradise. The man was canny. He’d actually followed one of the Pecos River’s tributaries west, first, to throw them off the scent. They knew this for sure because, late in the day, Nick had found sizable pieces of Lucy’s skirt and petticoats clinging to the branches of a bush by the bank. Apparently they had been cut off and tossed aside. This obviously meant that, for the moment, they were walking downstream. Rathe had nearly been out of his mind.

  A terrible argument had ensued. Would their quarry ride west into the New Mexico territory? Or was he trying to confuse them? Would he head south after all?

  At this point, the Rangers they had wired joined them. The posse split up. Half
went west, led by three Rangers, the rest headed directly south for the border. Each and every Bragg believed with his gut instinct that the outlaw would run for Mexico, and they all rode south together.

  Now they had reached the Rio, almost a full day later. They hadn’t found another sign of the outlaw and Lucy since the one by the creek yesterday. They were relying on instinct and common sense, and without hard evidence proving that they were on the right trail, frustration rose hot and hard among them all.

  “We can’t stop,” Rathe repeated. “Not now.”

  His brother, Nick, astride next to him, laid a comforting hand on his shoulder.

  “It’ll be dark soon,” Derek said flatly. “We won’t be able to do much in the dark.”

  Brett moved his blowing stallion forward. “We can’t let them get into those mountains,” he said.

  Everyone looked southeast, at the jagged mountain peaks etching the dimming mauve-hued sky. They looked ominous and forbidding. The eastern Sierra Madres. Up until now, they had been riding though hill country, then desert. But once a man got into those mountains, he could hide forever.

  “We must find another sign,” Storm said firmly. “And we must find it soon.”

  Clark Wade, the captain of the Rangers, gave orders to fan out on foot, very, very carefully. This was the moment when they had to find a sign of where Lucy and Shoz Cooper had crossed the Rio—if indeed they had come this way. But time was against them, in more ways then one. The outlaw was ahead of them, and would soon escape into the twisted guts of the Sierras, if he had come this way. And soon it would be dark, too dark to find any trail. Everyone felt the powerful urgency to work fast.

  It was Rathe, spurred on by desperation, who found the one barely visible track in the loam by the river’s bank. The water had eroded most of it, but to an expert—and many of these men were just that—it was the mark of a horse’s hoof, one that was heavily burdened—carrying the weight of more than one man.

  “It just could be them,” Sanders said. “The horse he stole was small, like this one.”

  “Or it could be a pack mule,” Clark Wade said.

  “It’s them,” Rathe spat. “I know it! Let’s go!”

  Holt turned to Derek unhappily. “I’m sure you know that we can’t cross that border.”

  “I know.”

  “Even ten years ago, we could have done it, but not in these days, in these times.”

  “Have the Pinkertons meet me in Casitas,” Derek instructed. “It’s six or seven miles south of here. If we’re not there, have them wait. I’ll send word, or we’ll come.”

  Wade nodded and gave Derek, who was an ex-captain of the Rangers himself, a salute. He signaled to his men and they broke from the group, riding east.

  “You know I can’t go any farther either, Derek,” Sheriff Sanders said. Then, uncharacteristically, he cursed.

  “Get back to Paradise, reassure the women.”

  Rathe grabbed Sanders’s arm. “Tell Grace not to worry. Tell her I said everything will be all right.”

  Sanders nodded, knowing he was being asked to lie, and knowing he would do it.

  “Let’s go.”

  The posse split up again. The sheriff and his deputies and the men from town who had volunteered out of respect for the family turned to head back to Paradise. A few dozen other riders remained, those whose allegiance was stronger. Many were cowboys who worked at the D&M, others were close family friends. Some were just plain decent folk outraged that something like this could happen to this family, in their town. The Braggs led all of them across the Rio Grande and into Mexico.

  He had lied after all.

  Lucy sought refuge in the hot anger that swept her. Anger was better than the hurt and disappointment that had filled her after their lovemaking. Her fingers dug into his shoulders as they cantered through two buttes, leaving Casitas farther and farther behind. And with it, his broken promise. “You said you were going to let me go!”

  “Shut up,” he said, as the bay scrambled up a twisted path that would begin their ascent into the mountains.

  Lucy didn’t think. She was too consumed with emotions for logic. She acted. She let go of his shoulders and slid backward off of the horse.

  The fall hurt. It momentarily knocked the breath out of her. It had jarred her neck hard, but she’d landed on her side, saving her head from any injury. Furious desperation fueled her. She heaved herself to her feet. And then she ran.

  She heard his shout behind her.

  She crashed through wiry brush, leaving the trail to scramble down a rocky slope into a gorge. She tripped and fell with a cry. She rolled once, twice, helpless to stop, stones and roots digging into her, scratching her, and then she came to a stop in a heap on the flat floor below.

  “Lucy!”

  Fear laced his voice. Shoz didn’t hesitate, he forced the bay over the side of the gorge, riding him for hell. The animal scrambled and slid down the steep slope, kicking up a wake of debris. Before they got to the bottom, Shoz was leaping off. The horse lost its footing and went down with a cry. Shoz didn’t lose his, and he ran to the inert figure lying facedown, sprawled in the dust.

  Panic knifed him, but as he knelt beside her, his voice was calm and controlled, and his hands were steady and gentle when he touched her shoulders. “Can you hear me?”

  Lucy’s voice was faint. “Yes.”

  “Are you all right? Did you break anything?”

  Still facedown, very aware of his hands probing her, Lucy tried to determine her condition. It was hard to tell if she was all right, her entire body hurt like hell, but it had started hurting two days ago, and she couldn’t distinguish her previous aches from her current ones. She sat up; he helped her.

  Now he cursed. “Goddammit! That was the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen!” His grip on her tightened.

  “You lied!” she cried. To her horror, tears welled in her eyes. She was in a very fragile state, and it had nothing to do with her physical agony. Lucy sought control. What did it matter that he could so intensely make love to her and then so casually prepare to leave her? She should have known better than to expect anything from him! But she had been naive, so naive, and this time the hurt was worse than the first time. At the least, couldn’t he have given her a tender smile? Couldn’t he have even acted like their parting would bother him?

  But their near parting hadn’t bothered him, and he wasn’t nice enough to even pretend that it would. Just like he wasn’t nice enough to hold her and kiss her and tell her she was, well, special. Or even to lie, and say he’d miss her. He wasn’t nice, he was a bastard, and she had been so utterly stupid to give in to her attraction to him.

  “Why are you crying?” he said, grim. “I seem to be asking that question a lot.”

  “I’m not crying,” she said fiercely. “I want you to leave me here. I know that promises don’t mean much to a man like you, but …”

  He scowled, and she was glad she’d succeeded in irritating him. “Didn’t you hear me, Miss Bragg? Those men back there would have raped you if I left you there. And you wouldn’t have enjoyed it, believe me. Now, get up.”

  Lucy let him help her up only because he didn’t give her a choice. Then he left her standing there, trembling, aching, bruised, and went to their mount. The bay was blowing softly. He was also lame.

  Shoz cursed, stroking the animal’s neck. Lucy felt a rush of guilt; the poor animal had given himself heroically to them, and his injury was her fault. “What are we going to do?”

  “We’re going to walk,” he said shortly.

  Lucy gasped. Her feet were killing her. She knew she could not possibly walk. “I can’t!”

  “Oh yes you can,” Shoz said, ridding the bay of the rifle, bedroll, and saddlebags. The horse would wander back to Casitas, or be found by a farmer. Shoz was looking at her expectantly, and be held out a hand.

  She balked. “I can’t.”

  “I hate to tell you this, Lucy,” Shoz said, “But those m
en in Casitas are thieves, and I have no doubt they’re riding this way right now, looking for me as a victim. Now, let’s go.”

  Every step was torture, but Lucy ignored the pain and stumbled to him. He took her hand and pulled her up the slope. Lucy knew she would have never made it without him. They didn’t stop once on the path, they started to run.

  It was the longest ten minutes of Lucy’s life. He half dragged her as they raced up the narrowing, twisting path, up, always up, and she tripped and stumbled repeatedly. Although he carried their supplies and the rifle, he never let her fall. His arm became a clamp around her waist. Now he was dragging her; only his strength and determination kept her going. Lucy knew that soon, no matter what he did, unless he carried her, she would drop in her tracks.

  “Good girl,” he muttered, suddenly leaving the path and hustling her through large boulders. The opening was so narrow, Lucy would have never attempted to enter, but he gave her no choice. He pushed her ahead of him and through. Before Lucy knew it, he was propelling her from behind, pushing her upward, forcing her to climb the mountainside between rocks. Just when she was going to give in and beg him to stop, he shoved her into a narrow fissure.

  It was twilight. The sky was crystal gray, edged with purple, and very soon it would be dark. In that last moment of light, Lucy could still see. Shoz was wet with sweat, breathing hard, but his eyes were as hard as diamonds, and determined. “No matter what,” he said, “don’t move.”

  Lucy’s eyes widened, then he dumped their supplies down at her feet and was gone.

  Fear was immediate. There had been no mistaking the urgency of their flight into the mountains. They were definitely running from someone. What if these outlaws found them?

  Lucy had a terrible image of Shoz hurt or captured and herself a prisoner at the mercy of dark, shadowy, menacing men.

  She shoved it away, inhaling deeply, trying to calm her taut nerves. She was shaking, and not just from their recent flight. If they hadn’t been running so hard just now, she would have questioned if there really had been such dangerous bandits in Casitas. After all, she hadn’t seen them. Shoz had seen them. And she didn’t trust him.