Her only answer was the sound of the rain pounding against her back and shoulders as she crouched low against the deluge. Tiny rivulets of water streamed past her, cutting paths in the gritty soil. Thunder rumbled across the mountains, and a flash of lightning split the sky in two. The rugged landscape flashed bright as day for several seconds, then faded back to murky lavender.
The cold rain stung her face, and she blinked it back while a bone-rattling shiver raced down the length of her. Slipping down further inside her oversized coat, Libby kept her eyes trained on the rocks straight ahead. The coyotes, she noted, had taken shelter under them while she sat out in the middle of this gully-washer, getting soaked to the skin. All for a little filly who would not, in all likelihood, survive the night.
Libby frowned and wiped her eyes with the back of her soggy sleeve, her mood disintegrating with the weather. "Damn you, Lee!" She cursed him out loud to the angry evening sky. The valley brightened briefly with a flash of lightning.
Tipping her face defiantly up to the needle-sharp rain, she shouted at the top of her lungs, "Damn you for leaving me alone out here!" Her voice ricocheted around the rock-enclosed valley, coming back to her like the drawn-out echo of thunder. She sniffed and pressed her mouth against her wool sleeve. "Damn you for leaving Tad without a father," she mumbled. "And me... without a friend."
* * *
Chase Whitlaw tugged the collar of his leather-caped, oilcloth duster up around his ears, pulled his hat down low over his eyes, and squinted at the black specks circling low over the valley a mile distant.
Turkey vultures.
Damnable creatures, he thought with a sickening shiver. What are they after this time? He'd caught enough sign of game in this valley to account for dozens of possibilities: deer, bear, rabbit, even a few human tracks. None of which, he decided, were his concern. He put the scavengers out of his mind.
His own destination weighed heavily upon him. Glancing at the thunderheads gathering in the distance, he wished he'd taken El's advice back in Santa Fe and waited until morning to head out to the Honeycutt place. God knew, he'd waited two years. Twelve more hours couldn't have hurt.
But somehow, he couldn't bring himself to put it off. He wanted it done. Over with. Maybe then he could—
The sound of a gunshot echoed up the canyon walls, causing him to jerk in the reins of his horse and duck down instinctively. Bloody hell!
The odor of sweaty horseflesh mingled pungently with the familiar scent of his own fear. He took a deep breath and trained his eyes on the high copses of rock rimming the canyon ahead. This country could play tricks on a man's ears, he knew.
Straightening slowly, he stared in the direction of the vultures again. Could have been thunder, he thought reasonably, looking at the gunmetal gray sky. He drew his Henry rifle from its scabbard beneath his right knee in spite of his doubts, and nudged his mount in the direction of the sound.
The rain started with a whimper and gathered fury as the heavens opened up in a torrent. Thunder pounded heavily across the valley, and the downpour cut Chase's visibility by more than half. Suddenly, from behind the solid sheet of rain, a horse shot past him. Its diminutive rider he could only assume was a young boy. Though only fifty feet separated them, Chase knew the boy hadn't seen him.
"Hey!" Chase called over the din of the rain. But the boy rode on, hellbent for shelter, no doubt. For a moment, he thought about chasing him. Was the boy the shooter? he wondered.
He didn't have to wait long for the answer.
The high whine of a carbine split the air again, easily distinguishable from the surrounding thunder.
Damn.
Chase touched his horse with the tips of his spurs and the beast took off at a run, splashing across the muddy ground. Within minutes, he spotted a huddled figure beside a poncho-draped heap as a flash of light jagged across the sky. It only took him a few more seconds to realize the bedraggled unfortunate boy was holding off a pack of hungry-looking coyotes with only a rapidly shrinking pile of rocks and the upended stock of a carbine. Shouldering his Henry, Chase took aim at the nearest animal and fired.
Startled, the boy fell backside-first into the mud with an undignified splat. The barrel of his gun was now buried nose-deep in the mire. The coyote that only moments ago had been sneaking up on him, landed feet away, dead as a tree stump.
Chase's rifle belched another round of fire. A second coyote slammed into the ground muzzle-first and twitched in death throes. He heard the boy cry out as he cocked his rifle again and picked off another retreating animal. The rest scattered, like windblown tumbleweeds, in every direction. He fired two more shots at their heels in quick succession, then turned his horse back toward the kid at a lope.
He pulled his horse up short and dismounted, slogging through the mud to the boy's side. But the kid scuttled backward, crablike, toward the lump of rain-slickered something lying on the ground behind him and raised his empty rifle in Chase's direction.
"That's close enough, mister."
Chase stopped short, blinking back his surprise. His lips parted when he saw the barrel of the gun pointed at him, and he took a wary step back.
He narrowed his eyes. Rain dripped off the brim of his hat in a steady stream, and his fingers tightened around the stock of his lowered Henry. "That's pretty unfriendly of you to point that thing at me, considering I just saved your neck," he said at last.
"Maybe," the distinctively feminine voice allowed.
I'll be damned. He couldn't get a good look at her face, not with her hat pulled down that way. But the voice peaked his interest. It was throaty, with a hint of a soft Southern drawl. He took a step forward, his eyes on her gun. "You a... girl?"
He watched the mud-clogged tip of the gun waver slightly. It took her a moment to answer, as if she were considering the possibility of an outright lie.
"That's none of your business. I thank you for your help, but I'll be fine now." Another streak of lightning tore at the sky close-by.
He tipped his face up to the driving rain. "Fine? Yeah, that's perfectly damned obvious."
Before she could react, he crossed the distance between them and yanked the rifle from her hands, wrenching a surprised gasp from her throat.
"Didn't anyone ever tell you not to point a gun at a man unless you intend to shoot him?"
She scrambled to her feet. "Give that back to me."
"You can't shoot a man without any bullets," he said, holding the gun out of her reach. "That's a damn dangerous bluff out here in the middle of nowhere."
"What makes you so sure I was bluffing?"
"Right..." he said, ejecting the gun's spent cartridge onto the wet ground. "And I suppose you were trying to cold-cock those coyotes with the butt end of this thing for the hell of it." His gaze took in the smudge of mud that traversed her face from cheek to chin. He couldn't see much more of her than that under the brim of her battered old hat. But he had the sudden, uneasy feeling she was no girl, but a woman.
Libby's scowl traveled from the damning evidence at the man's feet back up to him. His speech branded him a Yankee, probably a stray from the war. She'd seen enough men like him drift through the territory in the past year to recognize one on sight. Most of them were harmless, but he looked far from that. She lifted her chin with false courage. "So maybe I was bluffing. I wasn't going to shoot you. I just wanted to... to warn you off."
"If I was the kind of man who needed warning off, that would have been too little, too late."
"And how do I know you're not?"
"Not what?"
"Not... that kind of man."
He snapped her gun shut with a crack. "You don't," he replied. "That's my point."
Libby swallowed hard and forced herself to breathe. "Well, what did you expect me to do, riding up to me that way in the dark?"
"I'd expect," he replied, gritting his teeth together, "that a woman with a lick of sense wouldn't have gotten herself into a dangerous situation like this in the fir
st place." His beard-darkened jaw was grimly set.
Rain pelted Libby's back and gathered in a small pool on the brim of her hat. "You don't know what you're talking about. How could you? You're... you're a man."
"Ah, you noticed that right off, did you?" He didn't smile. He merely shifted the rifles in his hands and cocked a knee insolently.
Libby's face flushed a bright pink. "That's not what I meant."
The stranger ignored her, turning to the small, moving lump beneath the rubber slicker. "You got somebody hurt under there?" he asked.
"Not somebody. Something." Libby saw one dark eyebrow go up.
"I beg your pardon?"
"It's... it's a horse," she told him as a shiver of cold raced down her back.
He cast a suspicious look at the smallish mound. "Did you say a horse?" The brim of his hat concealed a frown, but she heard disbelief in his voice.
"I did." She threw her shoulders back defensively. "A small horse. A foal, actually."
His head came up with a snap. "Hell. Are you telling me that you're sitting out here in the middle of a driving rainstorm, working on a good case of pneumonia, trying to save the life of some... some foal who's probably half-dead anyway?"
"Yes." The challenge in her voice was clear. "That's exactly what I was doing."
He let out a snort of disbelieving laughter. "Either you're a fool or you're plain crazy."
She let out a snort of her own. "Maybe I am. But that's my business, not yours, isn't it? Besides, help is on the way. They should be here any minute."
He peered into the gloom in several directions, then made it plain he didn't believe her. He stooped down and lifted the edge of the poncho to get a good look at the foal. Balanced on the balls of his feet, he let out a disgusted sigh.
"Listen, Mr.... whoever you are—"
"Whitlaw. Chase Whitlaw. And I suppose this is your rain gear protecting her instead of being on your back," he accused, breaking off her thought.
"I don't know where you're from, Mr. Whitlaw, but around here life is too dear to part with so easily and foals are too precious to squander."
He didn't look up at her—didn't even move—but she saw his broad shoulders bunch with tension.
She shifted her stance when he didn't respond. "Besides, I... I can't afford to lose her."
"How old is she?" he asked finally, his back still to her.
Libby wiped the rain from her face and stared down at the moisture gathering on the back of the stranger's muscular neck. It beaded and ran in small rivulets toward the collar of his coat. "A few hours, maybe not even that."
"Where's the mare?"
Libby glanced off into the darkness. "Dead, probably. Or she just abandoned her. That's rare."
Chase stood up and let out a long breath. Without another word, he stripped off his long oilcloth coat and handed it to her. "Put it on."
"I will not. It's... it's yours."
"Please, don't argue with me," he snapped. "We're both getting wetter by the minute and I'm not in the mood to sit here and argue with you." He shoved the garment into her hands, turned and whistled for his horse.
She was stunned to see the big-boned gray come trotting up like an obedient dog. It was the darndest thing she ever saw. After slipping his rifle back into its scabbard, and thrusting hers back into her hands, he scooped the foal up—covering and all—into his arms.
"Wh-what are you doing?"
"What does it look like? You've got a spread somewhere nearby, I assume?"
Tight-lipped, she tipped her head affirmatively as she pulled on the too-long duster.
"Get your horse and let's go."
There was no decision to be made. He was right. And how could she be anything but grateful that this man—whoever he was—had appeared? She supposed she'd worry later about what he was doing riding across her ranch in the middle of a storm.
Libby slogged back to her horse, which was partially hidden by the leafed-out screw-bean mesquite, and gathered up the reins. From behind her mare, she watched Whitlaw stand perfectly still with his burden for a moment in the driving rain. Confoundingly, he crooned softly to the frightened foal to quiet her before lifting her up with him onto his horse. Then, he settled her, with surprising gentleness, across his knees. He made the awkward movement seem effortless.
Groaning inwardly, Libby remembered how she and Tad had struggled together to get the foal up on her mare's back. But the squirming, ninety-pound creature was too much for the two of them. She swept the long tails of the stranger's coat out of her way as she swung up into her saddle.
Whitlaw's horse shied a bit at the unfamiliar scent of the foal on its back, but the man soothed his mount with a gentle hand. "Lead on, Miss—?"
Libby pulled back on the reins of her horse, who pranced for a moment, no doubt as anxious to be home as she was. "Honeycutt," she told him. "My name's Elizabeth Honeycutt."
Without another word, she kicked her horse into a lope under the curtain of sheeting rain.
Chapter 2
Chase felt as if the bottom had dropped out of his stomach. Dumbstruck, he swallowed hard, tightening his grip around the squirming foal.
Honeycutt! Bloody hell!
He realized he'd just broken out in a sweat—in spite of the cold rain. With a touch of his knees, he nudged the gray forward, inordinately glad for the distance the woman had put between them.
He tried to reconcile the dirty, bad-tempered urchin he'd just met with the silvered image of the woman he'd carried with him for the last two years. It didn't seem possible these were the same woman. He'd expected...
Hell, he didn't know what he'd expected, he admitted with a frown. A ridiculous sense of disappointment filled him, and he swallowed it back. He had no right to feel disappointment or anything else, not about her, he reminded himself.
He was here for one reason and one reason only.
In one hour, maybe two at the outside, he'd have his business done and be gone. He shrugged his rain-soaked shoulders with new conviction.
Right.
The rain fell harder, if that was possible. The storm seemed to be hovering over the valley, snagged there between the mountains like deadwood in a stream. Chase felt the cold drive right through his body and he reached down to rub his achy thigh. Cold weather always made it worse.
Night had enveloped what little landscape had been visible through the torrents, making the going not only tricky, but treacherous. Ahead, he saw the Honeycutt woman waiting for him—steady, sitting straight astride her saddle, uncowed by the storm. She was shouting something at him.
"What?" he called as he drew closer.
"We'll take the road!" she yelled, motioning to him with a wave of her hand. "Footing's better, even though it's a little farther that way."
He caught up to her and a flash of light illuminated her face. Moisture beaded her full lips and the part of her cheeks visible beneath the brim of her battered hat. His gaze fell to the smudge of mud that ran across the hollow of her cheek and down her chin. A wet strand of hair was plastered against her face, but she didn't seem to notice it. He had the craziest impulse to reach over and brush it back, but thinking better of it, he dug his fingers deeper into the rubber slicker covering the foal.
"She all right?" Libby asked.
"Snug as a bug," he replied with an involuntary shiver. "How much farther is it?"
"Only about a mile or so." She sniffed and rubbed her nose with the back of her hand. "Tad lit out to fetch the wagon just before the storm started. I don't want to miss him cutting cross-country."
"Who's Tad?"
Her head tilted sideways for a split second, as if she were studying him. "He's my son." Yanking on the reins, she touched the heels of her boots to the mare's side and took the lead again.
Son? Chase's memory supplied the image of the boy streaking past him through the rain. Honeycutt hadn't mentioned a boy. Could he be their son? She looked too damned young to have a boy that age. Chase clamped
his mouth shut on any more questions and struck out after her.
He had to admit that she rode a horse as well as any woman he'd ever seen. Then again, he'd never seen a woman ride astride the way she did. Or wear pants. He supposed there were a lot of things about this particular woman that were... unique, if his first meeting with her was any indication. As irritated as he was with her for getting herself into this mess, he was nonetheless intrigued.
Soon, the lights from her place wavered in the distance like a full moon over the water, beckoning them with the promise of relief from the dank, miserable weather.
The hollow swell of thunder rumbled close by as Chase followed the woman down the mud-rutted wagon path toward the house; he couldn't bring himself to call it a road. It was a far cry from the paved streets of Baltimore, he reflected without so much as a twinge of regret. The air carried the strong, damp fragrance of the wet trees that scraggled nearby, green skinned, with curly bean-like pods hanging from the branches. They were oddities he'd never seen before in the East.
The rustic feel of the land held a strange appeal for him in spite of its stark nature. Maybe it was that very starkness that attracted him.
A man could find solitude in a country like this. Maybe even... peace.
A hundred yards or so from the house, a flash of lightning revealed a small picketed grave plot with three white markers. Chase supposed one of them belonged—in name at least—to her late husband. One freshly turned mound caught his eye and, as the plot disappeared behind them, he wondered who she'd buried lately.
The house was a small, natural-colored adobe that almost disappeared into its surroundings. Round wood beams poked out the sides just under the eaves of the flat, grass-covered roof. Rainwater gushed from several broken drainage spouts to form a small lake beneath the wooden-barred front windows before which two scrawny rose bushes struggled to survive.
The door hung slightly askew on its leather hinges and slender triangles of light streaked out from the inside. The inky night prevented Chase from seeing much more, but he suspected the rest of the house was as badly in need of repair as the front.
Chase the Fire Page 2