“What if you want to catch them?”
He shrugged. “They’ll come to me.” He could feel Lauren looking at him like she found that unbelievable, but it was the simple truth, not bragging. Horses came to him-it was a fact. They always had.
“Gil told me you were the best horse wrangler there ever was,” she said after a moment as if she’d heard his thoughts. “Is that true?”
Again he shrugged. He didn’t consider it a question that needed answering.
They walked a ways in silence, listening to the swish of grass against the legs of their jeans, watching grasshoppers jump up out of their way and go skimming across the meadow ahead of them. Then Lauren said in a musing tone, “Gil told me he hired you after you got…discharged from the service.”
Bronco acknowledged that with a wry snort. This was his cover, well rehearsed and often repeated-safe enough ground. “Kicked out, you mean.”
“He said you’d had some bad breaks.”
“Yeah, well-” his smile was easy, even a little bit cocky “-Gil talks too much.”
Again he could feel her eyes on him, for what seemed a long measuring time. Then she said, “Is that why you’re doing this?”
“Doing what?” And now he felt a quietness inside himself, and the first vibrations of warning.
“This-” she kicked with sudden anger at a hummock of meadow grass “-this crazy revolutionary start-your-own-country militia stuff. Or whatever you call it. Is it because you think you owe something to Gil McCullough?”
He looked at her, but she was glaring at her boots. He could see the bright flush in her cheeks. He said, “What makes you think I don’t believe in the cause as much as he does?”
She lifted her head then and met his eyes in open chal lenge-and, oh, he wished she hadn’t. He was reminded of the leaden blue of monsoon rain clouds, with flashes and flickers of lightning hidden in their depths. “Do you?”
“Yes, ma’am, I sure do.” But he knew even as he said it that it was too quick, too glib. And he watched her eyes turn silvery bright with speculation as she considered whether to believe him or not.
Having reached her own conclusions, she shook her head and said softly, “If you say so.” She looked away again and after a moment went on in that musing tone, as if she was trying to figure it out in her own head, “You’re not the type. I don’t know why, but there’s something about you. You just don’t…fit.”
This time his snort was mildly derisive. “Fit? Fit what-some romantic idea you have of what a revolutionary’s supposed to be like?”
Her eyes lashed at him, and he felt their sting like a summer squall. “I don’t find anything the least bit romantic about people who go around blowing up government buildings.”
“Who?” He felt genuinely outraged. “We haven’t done any such thing!”
“Well,” she snapped, “it’s probably only a matter of time. Anyway, that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? Guns, bombs, violence, fear, intimidation-the usual weapons of power and control-that’s what it’s always about.” She paused for a beat or two, then played her ace, making her point with it. “You don’t even carry a gun.” She glanced at him, waiting for him to deny it. He didn’t. For lots of reasons, but mostly because it was one of those clashes between conviction and duty that he’d have had a hard time explaining, even to himself.
They’d come to the creek at a natural ford, a place where the water was wide and shallow, with a rippled sandy bottom and sloping banks, and quiet eddies where dragonflies darted and hovered among the cattails. The grass here was trampled, and patches of muddy earth showed the imprint of deer hooves. The mares forgot their manners and forged ahead, pulling against the limits of their leads as they waded into the stream and began sucking greedily at the clear cold water.
Bronco waited until they’d taken the edge off their thirst, then clucked to the mares, bringing them close to the bank so he could remove their lead ropes without getting his boots wet. Meanwhile, Cochise Red, who’d patiently stood watch while his mares drank their fill, tossed his head and danced impatiently. Bronco took the lead from Lauren’s hands, murmured, “Easy,” as he slipped the rope from the stallion’s neck, then waved him away with a soft laugh. “Go get ’em, boy.”
He turned, coiling rope, to find Lauren watching him. She was standing on the creek bank with her arms loosely folded across her breasts and the wind blowing back her hair, and he thought suddenly of the stories his grandmother Rose used to tell him, of Changing Woman and how the People came to be. And though the sun was hot on his shoulders, he felt a shiver go through him.
Maybe, he thought, it was because her eyes had that silvery speculative look again. Still trying to figure him out. What made him uneasy was the thought that she might just be smart enough to do it.
“Something on your mind?” he asked, and the uneasiness made him gruff and snappish. The last time he’d asked her that, he remembered, she’d looked at him like he’d just sprouted devil’s horns.
This time, though, he saw no fear in her eyes, but only a certain wariness, as if she had herself cocked and ready to deflect anything he might send back at her.
“I was just wondering,” she said, jutting her chin at him. “What do you believe in, Johnny Bronco? Do you believe in anything-besides horses, I mean?”
He laughed out loud.
He laughed to cover his discomfort because she’d gotten way too close to the truth-the truth of who he used to be, anyway. It had been a long time since he’d thought about that Johnny Bronco, the one who hadn’t believed in anything-least of all himself. Why was it that today he seemed unable to think of anything else?
Why was it that, just when he was faced with his most crushing responsibility, his greatest professional challenge and personal danger, for the first time in recent memory his perceptions of his own reality were blurring and wavering, in a way that was most alarming for a man working under deep cover. Who was he? What did he believe in? Those were questions he couldn’t afford to think about, lest they get in the way of who he pretended to be, what he pretended to believe in. If he started having difficulty remembering which was which, he was in big trouble.
So it was for his own sake, as much as to satisfy his prisoner’s curiosity, that he decided it might be a good idea to let her in on some of his personal history. While he was at it he’d remind himself of things he couldn’t afford to forget.
“What do I believe in?” He took off his hat and slapped it against his pant leg while he pretended to think about it.
And Lauren, watching him, thought suddenly, Why am I even asking? I can’t believe anything he tells me, anyway. She turned and took a few steps away from him in utter frustration.
But she halted when she heard him say-and she could have sworn it had the ring of truth-“I don’t know, but you’re right about this much. I do owe Gil McCullough a lot. He gave me a chance when nobody else would.” She turned slowly back to him and saw that he’d taken his hat off and was squatting on the creek bank, dipping his handkerchief in the stream. He rose, twisting the square of red cloth into a rope. “It’s for damn sure I owe more to him than I do to a government that’s been cheating, killing, starving, stealing and lying to my people for the last couple hundred years.” He met her eyes with dark defiance as he tied the rolled bandanna around his forehead.
Her breath caught. Faint as the sound was, he heard it and jerked his chin toward her. “You tell me-why should I owe any allegiance to the United States government after what they’ve done to us-the Apaches, all of us Indians?”
She shook her head; she had no answer for him. And even if she’d had one, how could she have spoken when her heart was a hot pulsating lump in her chest?
He came slowly toward her and it took every ounce of courage she possessed to stand her ground and not take a step backward. “My Apache ancestors were some of the last holdouts against the U.S. Army-you probably knew that, right? Did you know they used to hide out in these moun
tains? Right around here, where we are now. That was when they were being hunted to the last man…”
The last man? Then how was it that one of those men was standing before her now, with the fierce proud look of the warrior and his long black hair blowing in the wind?
“So there’s something fitting, me being here, I guess.”
He’d halted a short distance away from her, close enough to touch, if she’d dared to reach out her hand. Close enough that she could feel his heat, smell his sweat, see the gold-dust shine of it on his skin. A flesh-and-blood man, not a ghost. A modern-day man with a wry little half smile on his lips and the anger fading from his eyes, only to be superceded by something that stirred her awareness like a hand brushed lightly the wrong way over her skin. Instead of fear, she felt a vague uneasiness, and at the same time a familiar melting in her heart that could only be sympathy.
But she didn’t want to feel sympathy! She should not feel sympathy. Not for her abductor-her jailer! She could not-must not-allow herself to fall victim to hostage syndrome.
“You should have worn your hat,” Bronco surprised her by saying, still regarding her with his head slightly tilted and that crooked smile on his lips. “That fair skin-” he reached out and touched her nose with one finger, so lightly it tickled “-you’re gonna get burned. Better take mine.”
She didn’t look down at the dusty white Stetson he offered, but kept her head high and her chin up as she raked her hair back from her forehead with one hand and replied unevenly, “Then you’ll get burned.”
He laughed; it was his easygoing charmer’s laugh. “Naw, I don’t burn. We ‘redskins’ just turn darker. You take it.” He placed his hat on her head with a careless gesture and turned away before she could object. Though she couldn’t have, anyway-words of any kind would have stuck in her throat.
Resigned but still vaguely upset, she resettled the hat with clumsy hands. When she dared to look at Bronco again, she saw that he’d moved a short distance down the creek and was seating himself cross-legged on the grassy bank. After a moment, since it seemed awkward to do anything else, she walked over and, much more slowly and carefully than he, also settled cross-legged in the meadow grass.
Bronco lifted an arm to shade his eyes and looked up at the sky. “Getting on toward noon,” he said. “You hungry?”
Lauren was beginning to feel the first pangs, but she hated to think about going back to the tent-or to the cabin, which was worse. Here in the open meadow she had at least the illusion of freedom. She glanced over her shoulder in the direction of the cabin, which was out of sight behind a rock formation that jutted into the meadow like the prow of a ship. Far in the distance and barely audible above the insect hum and the chuckle of running water, she could hear an occasional shout, vague thumps and rumbles of activity that filled her with unease.
She turned back to Bronco. “When do they…when do these people eat?”
He shrugged as if it wasn’t something that concerned him much. “Couldn’t tell you. I don’t spend much time here, if you want to know the truth. Not since Gil quit running cattle on the open range. That’s what this used to be, you know-a cow camp. Ranchers used to graze cattle up here in the high country on federal permits-that was before the environmentalists put a stop to it. We’d come up here in the summertime for the roundup and branding.” He looked at her sideways, one eye squinted shut, his smile wry. “Not much use for a horse wrangler up here now.”
Lauren listened and nodded, but inside she felt restless, edgy. She didn’t want to be interested in this man. But she was. She told herself it was just her way. She was interested in people. She couldn’t help it.
The sun was high and hot and she was getting hungry and thirsty, but she still didn’t want to go back to the camp. She got stiffly to her feet and moved to the edge of the creek bank. The water slid by like liquid glass, so clear and clean she could see tiny tadpoles darting about in the shallows. She lowered herself gingerly, balanced on the balls of her feet, and let her fingers trail in the water. She shook them, then touched the cool moisture to her lips.
“Thirsty?” Bronco’s voice seemed very close.
She nodded. “Is it safe to drink?”
He gave a short laugh. “Is it polluted, you mean? Who knows? It’s never bothered me. I guess you take your chances.”
Lauren didn’t bother to answer. To her the water looked clean and she was thirsty. She cupped her hand and brought it to her lips, but got only a sip-most of the water wound up on her shirtfront.
“There’s two ways to do that,” came a lazy drawl from behind her. “You can stretch out on your belly and scoop one-handed, or you can use two hands-like this.”
Though the stubborn and childish part of her didn’t want to, she turned her head and watched him demonstrate, keeping her eyes on this hands. When he lifted them to his face, her eyes followed and she said seriously, “I thought I’d use your hat.”
Bronco’s laugh was short and sharp; she couldn’t account for the little sting of pleasure it gave her. “You do and you owe me a new hat.”
Her heart fluttered as she pretended surprise. “Come on-they do it in the movies all the time.”
“There’s a lot of things in the movies you won’t catch me doing,” he said dryly. “Jumping on a horse from the top of a building, for one. That’s just plain stupid-and the horse doesn’t like it much, either.”
He watched the smile that hovered over her lips as she turned away to hide it from him, just enough of one to make him think about how long it had been since he’d seen her really smile. And how beautiful she was when she did.
Regrets filled him-and then were forgotten as it occurred to him that she was pondering a small dilemma: How was she going to get herself a drink without showing him her backside? Basically, as he’d told her, she had two choices-she could stretch out flat on her belly, which was going to involve some complex maneuvering and result in her being altogether vulnerable; or she could lean way over from her present position on her knees and give him a view that made his mouth go dry just thinking about it.
To his undeniable delight, she chose the latter option. He knew he ought to look away-for the sake of common courtesy, as well as his own peace of mind-but he didn’t. Pretending complete lack of interest, he stretched himself out on his side with his elbow planted in the grass and his head resting on his hand and watched from under his eyelashes as blue denim stretched over her round firm bottom. The day suddenly got humid as a sweat lodge, and thunder grumbled in the pit of his stomach.
“Better not let my hat fall in that creek,” he drawled in a voice that sounded like a big daddy bullfrog.
She straightened up and sailed the hat back to him, then went back to dipping her hands in the creek. And this time there was almost defiance in the way she poked that bottom up in the air, as if she knew well and good what kind of effect it was likely to have on him, and was doing it to make him suffer.
Damn her. What he ought to do, he decided, was turn her over his knee and- Oh, Lord. Funny, he thought, how her boldness was just as much a turn-on to him now as her shyness had been earlier. Then again, maybe it wasn’t so strange, and the two were only different sides of the same thing-her awareness of him as a man. It was a dangerous notion. Intoxicating as peyote.
He was thinking he might need to take a quick dip in that creek, just to cool himself off.
Chapter 8
Her thirst quenched, Lauren straightened, smoothing water over her face and neck like oil. She gave Bronco a sideways look and said, “I’m curious. If you hated the U.S. Army so much for what they did to your ancestors, why did you join?”
Shoot, thought Bronco, if that wasn’t just like a lawyer. Ask him a question from a conversation so far back he could hardly remember it-probably just trying to trip him up. Erotic thoughts scattered like pollen on the wind, and as before, there was a part of him that felt disappointed at their going.
“I was young and stupid,” he snapped. T
hen, his irritation dissipating as quickly as it had come, he added philosophically, “And out of options.” He pushed himself to a sitting position and slapped his hat once on the leg of his Levis before he handed it back to her, along with a wry smile. “I was a pretty wild kid.”
“Gil said you had a problem with alcohol.” She pitched that at him boldly, then waited for his response.
He looked at her for a moment while he considered what it would be, and decided on a line drive up the middle. “Runs in the family,” he said evenly. “My old man was a drunk.”
If he’d hoped to shock her, he was disappointed. She fielded it with a nod, without even flinching. “Gil told me your dad was killed in an automobile accident.”
“Seems like Gil told you a lot of things about me.” He offered her the half smile again, sort of as a peace offering.
“I think he was trying to warn me off,” she said dryly, then threw him a quick glance and added before he could get in a smart remark, “Not that he needed to.”
Bronco gave a short huff of laughter and replied in a tone as sardonic as hers, deliberately misunderstanding which way she’d meant that remark. “Ol’ Gil looks out for me.”
He got to his feet and took his time stretching out his kinks so he wouldn’t have to look at her. “As far as my old man goes, the best thing you could say about him is at least he didn’t kill anybody besides himself.”
“I take it he’d been drinking?”
He nodded. “As always. His luck finally ran out. I was in…seventh grade, I guess.” He made a show of thinking about it. “Yeah, that’s right, because he’d have been my math teacher the following year.”
He expected Lauren to be surprised by that; he knew the kind of preconceived notions most people had about Indians. She didn’t let him down.
“Your dad was a teacher?”
He turned to find her squinting up at him, shading her eyes with one hand. Her skin had already dried to a rosy matte velvet that made him think of ripe peaches. “Both my parents were,” he said matter-of-factly.
The Cowboy’s Hidden Agenda Page 12