“Did he hurt you?”
She shook her head. “It was nothing. I’m all right now.”
“Did he—”
The word went unspoken. She knew what he was asking.
“No. He didn’t rape me.”
He pulled her back into his arms. She winced at the force of his hug, but didn’t complain.
“Jess, it wouldn’t matter. Nothing matters as long as you’re alive.”
She thought of how close she had come to suffering the fate of the Meeker women, of being “outraged” by her captor, and knew that it would not have mattered to Rory. Still, she offered up a silent prayer of thanks.
“Piah’s dead.” He never took his eyes off her as he gave her the news.
Jessica closed her eyes. “Did you kill him?”
He reached for her shoulders, remembered her injury, and took her hands in his instead. “Yes. I thought he had killed you. Let’s see about your shoulder,” he said, carefully lowering her to a sitting position.
“I’m sure I broke my collarbone. I don’t know about my arm.”
She studied him closely as he gently examined her. He had left his hat up on top of the mesa, so she was able to take in the sight of his dark, shining eyes without the overshadowing hat brim. She reached up to smooth back the shock of dark hair that hung over his forehead.
He started to unbutton his shirt. “Glad to see me?”
She let her fingers trail down the side of his cheek before she dropped her hand in her lap. When she realized he was about to take off his shirt, she was shocked. “Of course, I’m glad to see you, but if you think we’re going to—”
“Hold on, Jess.” He laughed aloud. “I’m going to let you wear my shirt so that you don’t have to go around half-naked.”
Feeling more than sheepish, she whispered, “Oh.”
Slipping out of his shirt, he then helped her slide one arm and then another into the sleeves and buttoned it back up again. “Can I have your petticoat? I’ll tear it up to bind your shoulder before I tie the rope around you.”
“Are they going to haul me up?” Jess peered skyward.
“Yep. But you’re a lot lighter than I am. You’ll be back up in no time.”
She grabbed his hand as he started to raise her skirt. “I don’t think I can do it.”
“After what you’ve been through? This is nothing.” He rocked back on his heels. “Now give me your petticoat.”
Jessica sighed. “No matter what I do, it seems you’re always trying to get my clothes off.”
He gave her a quick kiss. “We can talk about that later, when we’re home.”
Home. He said the word so easily, included her so matter-of-factly. It made her feel warm and wanted and part of his world.
Then she remembered the saurian skeleton she’d seen beside the cave, her promise to the museum, and Carmichael’s death.
“Piah killed Carmichael.”
“When?”
“Last night. They were working together—”
“What?”
She nodded. “It’s true. Carmichael sold Piah guns, lots of rifles, I think. From the looks of the boxes there were enough for an army. Dynamite, too. They were hiding them in a cave, I don’t know how far from here.”
“I know the place. It’s where I found Piah and two of his men. They had a crate of guns and dynamite.”
“There were lots more crates and Carmichael’s body is inside, too. In one of the underground rooms.” She remembered the bats and shivered. “They took me down there. Carmichael wanted Piah to kill me, but Piah refused. He said—” Grim reality came rushing back to her and she covered her cheeks with her hands. “Piah said that he had watched us the night we made love in the canyon . . . ” Her voice drifted away to nothing.
He squeezed her hands. “He’s dead now, Jess. He can’t hurt us.”
“Piah wanted me for himself. He promised Carmichael gold for the guns, but he killed him instead. There was something else, too. Something about a spirit dance. They planned to kill everyone in the area, all the ranchers, farmers. Carmichael didn’t care. All he wanted was enough money so that he could disappear and never come back.” “The Ghost Dance. Piah tried to spread it through these parts. He learned about it from the Paiutes. He told me there would be an uprising. I guess he thought his ghosts needed a little armament.”
Rory watched Jessica shrug off her petticoat. When she handed it to him, he began to rip it into wide strips. “I’ll have to notify the sheriff.”
“They killed Jerome Stoutenburg.” Jess squeezed her eyes shut as he slipped a bandage behind her and bound her arm to her side so that it couldn’t move.
“I was afraid of that. Carmichael will have to stay buried because there’s nothing left of the cave.”
Her eyes flew open and she grabbed his wrist. “What?”
He knew then that she had seen the saurian skeleton embedded in the cliff beside the entrance to the cave. “There was a little matter of a torch and some dynamite getting together when I shot Piah.”
“Oh, my God.”
“Right. I was almost blown to smithereens.” He knew she was no longer paying any attention when she didn’t even react to his last statement. He could see her obvious disappointment.
“The cave is gone?”
“Sealed up tight.”
“And the cliff? Oh, Rory. You can’t imagine what I saw on the side of the cliff. It was remarkable, unbelievable, it was—”
“The largest, most complete saurian skeleton ever discovered.”
She looked aghast. “You saw it, too? You recognized it in the dark?”
He tied the last knot in her sling and then untied the rope around his waist. He was afraid of what the truth was going to cost him; still, he voiced it all the same.
“I knew it was there all along.”
Chapter Twenty-two
“YOU KNEW THE skeleton was there?” If he had tossed her over the ledge, she couldn’t have been any more surprised. Shock and hurt followed close on the heels of realization. Afraid she already knew the answer, she asked, “When were you planning to tell me?”
“I wasn’t.” He tested the knot in the riata around her waist and tied another.
“Never?”
Rory looked her square in the eye. “Not if I could help it.”
She stiffened, looked down at the front of the shirt he’d loaned her, and straightened the collar. “I see. May I ask why?”
“Because of a promise I made my father. When he settled the land beside the reservation, land that cut through the mesa and the cave, he made a promise to the Utes to protect it because it was sacred land. My father stood by that promise and so did I.”
The explanation didn’t lessen the hurt. “You didn’t trust me enough to tell me about it? At the very least it would have helped me prove my theory was correct, that a find in the area was not impossible.” Her shoulders slumped. She stared at the ground.
Rory reached out and cupped her face in his hands, forcing her to look at him. “You had the tracks and the bones you found in the dry wash.”
“But—”
“Jess, I just couldn’t do it.” When she didn’t respond, he added, “I didn’t want you to have to make a choice.”
“Piah warned you away from the mesa because of the guns, not only because of the sacredness of the cave.”
“That’s true, but I didn’t know that then. I was protecting what I thought was a sacred site.”
The pain in her shoulder was intense. She was hungry, tired, and on the verge of tears. “I’m feeling ill. Could you have them pull me up now?”
“Jess—”
“Please.”
Rory helped her to her feet. When she swayed into him, he wrapped an
arm about her. Drawn to the familiar warmth of his bare skin, Jessica instantly straightened and stepped away.
She took a deep breath and looked up the rope. It ran up the cliff face and disappeared over the rim. “What should I do?”
“Hold on tight with your good arm. Use your feet to keep yourself away from the rock.” He looked up and hollered to the men above them. “She’s ready.”
The response was a confusion of sound.
Rory could tell Jess was not only hurt, but madder than a rained-on rooster. He pulled her close and kissed her anyway. When he released her, she didn’t say a word. “You ready?” he finally asked.
“Yes.” She took another deep breath.
He cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, “Haul away, boys.”
The rope snapped taut and creaked as the cowhands began to pull her slowly upward. Rory’s hands left her waist when she was too high for him to hold on to any longer.
“Use your feet. Don’t look down.” He called encouragement up to her while the men above yelled down.
Jess held her breath until she began to feel light-headed, then forced herself to breathe. She tried to ignore the sharp ache of the rope around her waist as it cut into her and kept a tight grip on it with her left hand.
Inch by inch she moved up the cliff. She used her feet to push herself away from the wall, but at times the sandstone was a mere handsbreadth away from her face—shards of rock, bits of shell. Clay. She moved upward, watching the veins of color pass, layers of time pressed one upon the other. The cowhands argued among themselves as they worried over her safety. Finally, when they could reach out to her, they pulled her up and over the rim.
She couldn’t help but blink back tears when she saw the eager, familiar faces glowing in welcome.
“Are you all right, Miss Jess?”
“Miss Jess, how’d you get yourself into this pickle?”
“Miss Myra’s sore worried about you, ma’am.”
They all spoke except Gathers, who was intent on unknotting his rope so they could use it to pull Rory up.
She touched him lightly on the sleeve. “Thank you, Mr. Gathers,” she said, amazed when his hard gray eyes softened. She looked around the circle of faces. “Thank you all.”
Woody Barrows cleared his throat and nudged Gathers with his fist. “We’re just lucky we got this long-roper here ridin’ on our side.”
One by one they returned to the edge of the mesa to retrieve their boss. In a quarter of an hour, he was standing beside Jessica again, leading her over to the horses tied to the branches of the low pines.
“You found the mare,” she said quietly as she stroked her mount’s nose.
He hated the way she avoided meeting his eyes. Any fool could see that she was hurting and it nagged him to know that his deception was behind it. She was angry, too, and typical of her, fighting not to show it. There was no way he could change what he had done, nor would he have done anything differently. He was frightened to think that she might never understand how he could keep the secret of the saurian skeleton at the cave and still profess to love her. But if there was one thing he knew she did understand, it was commitment. She was as committed to the work that was her inheritance as he was to his. When they were alone, when she was rested, he would try to talk to her again, to convince her that he was only doing what he had to do. For now, all he wanted was to hold her and ease her pain.
“The boys found the mare wandering on the mesa. They found Pancho, too. But you’re riding with me.” He made certain there would be no argument. “I don’t want you alone on a horse with that bum shoulder.”
Jessica watched him as he walked bare-chested over to his horse. With his back to her, he loosened the leather ties on the back of his saddle and shook out a lightweight wool jacket. She felt a surge of relief when he slipped into it to cover his upper body. Jessica pushed her hair back off her face and tried to look away. It was one thing to know what lay beneath a man’s clothes, to feel his smooth flesh in the dark. It was quite another to face taut muscles and bronzed skin in the light of day.
Rory looked over his shoulder and caught her eye. She blushed, infuriated to think that even as upset with him as she was, she could still be moved by the sight of him.
Rory walked over to the campfire and picked up her knapsack. He dusted it off and carried it back to where she stood staring off into the canyon. He tapped her on the shoulder.
“Here.” He offered the knapsack to her.
When she reached out to take it, tears filled her eyes. “You found it.”
He helped her slip it over her good shoulder. “In the cave.”
She hugged it close. The contents of the smooth, worn leather bag—her father’s binoculars, her notebook, compass, measuring tape, maps, chisel, brushes, pencils, and pens—felt lumpy, but oh so dear. Here were things she could trust, things she knew and could hold on to.
“Thank you.” She paused briefly as she continued to hold the knapsack close. “I lost your mother’s beads,” she confessed. “They must have been broken when Piah—” She glanced down at the borrowed shirt she wore.
Rory wanted to do more, but he contented himself with reaching out to brush aside a stray lock of her hair. “Forget about the beads. You can’t imagine how I felt last night when that knapsack was all I thought I had left of you.”
Reading the sincerity in his eyes, she remembered what it had been like to sit on the ledge in the darkness and wonder if he was dead or alive. “I think I do.”
“Ready, boss?” Fred Hench was the last of the men to mount up. They sat their horses, waiting for Jessica and Rory, looking everywhere but at the couple standing in the midst of them.
Rory wanted to tell them all to head back to the ranch so that he would have Jess all to himself, but one look at her face told him the effort would be useless. Not only was she exhausted, but obviously in no mood to talk about what had happened.
“All set,” he told his men, then he remembered the boy, Chako, who had escaped into the night. “Tinsley, you and Gathers look for Piah’s nephew. I doubt he’ll give us any more trouble, but see if you come across him hiding anyplace up here. If he was in the cave, I didn’t see him.”
As the two men rode off Rory helped Jess mount Pancho and then swung up behind her. When he put an arm about her waist, she settled back against him, but didn’t say a word all the way back to the ranch house.
THREE DAYS LATER, after moving cattle to a spring-fed canyon, Rory rode up to the ranch house and noticed Myra seated on the front porch with an open bode in her lap. When she waved in greeting, he waved back and then reined in before the porch and dismounted.
Looping the reins over a hitching rail that fronted the house, he then used the cast-iron boot scraper on the bottom step to wipe the cow patties off the bottom of his boots before he walked across the porch. Myra slipped her glasses off her nose and laid them on the book.
Rory pulled up a ragged cane-bottom chair and settled down before he said a word. He put his boot heels on the porch rail, crossed his legs at the ankles, and rested his head on the back of the chair.
He pushed back his hat and then smiled over at Myra who had watched him patiently. “You’d make some cowboy a good wife, Myra.”
Her eyes widened and she laughed boisterously. “What makes you say that, Mr. Burnett?”
“You know when to talk and when not to.”
She picked up her spectacles and fiddled with the single stem. “I sensed you have something on your mind. I believe a person needs quiet contemplation to straighten out his thoughts.”
“Is that what Jess has been doing? Straightening out her thoughts.”
“I’m certain it is.”
Neither of them had to remind the other that it had been three days since Rory brought Jess down from the mesa
. At first, pain had been her excuse to stay locked away from the rest of them—and indeed, when the doctor finally arrived, he found that both her collarbone and one wrist were broken. But it had been three days now and she still refused to see him.
Myra hesitated before she asked, “What really happened on the mesa, Rory?”
He swung his gaze over to her. “What do you mean?”
“I know that agent conspired to sell guns to the Utes and that the man called Piah was behind it. I know he took Jessica, that she fell, that you and your men rescued her. I know everything except why she won’t talk to you.”
“She hasn’t told you?”
“No. She hasn’t.”
Rory was in no mood to explain. Instead he told her, “I need your help, Myra.”
Armed with new purpose, Myra drew herself up and assured him, “You have it, young man, if your request is within reason.”
“I need to know all you know about Jessica’s work, how she searches for those damn fossil bones, and the kinds of places she might look for them.”
Suddenly a willing conspirator, Myra scooted up to the edge of her chair, glanced over her shoulder, and whispered, “Where would you like to begin?”
THE OUTCROP ON the graveyard knoll was bathed in early-morning light. Jessica sat alone and watched the sky come to life. The high plateau was patterned with color, not unlike the carefully pieced quilt that covered her bed. The morning sun highlighted the wildflowers and set afire yellow blazing stars on their slender stems and snakeweed topped with golden blooms. On the hillside at her feet, the pink and scarlet penstemon that thrived among the rocks danced in the morning breeze.
The air was fresh and dry; the sunlight warmly kissed her cheeks. She looked down and watched as the deep ruffle of the long black dress Rory’s mother once wore brushed the dust when a gentle draft pressed it back against the toes of her brown shoes. Absently she reached up, found the knot in her arm sling, and eased it away from her neck. With her sling and bandages, it was far simpler to get in and out of Martha Burnett’s dress than her own tailored clothes.
As she stared out at the high plateau she couldn’t help but let her gaze slide over the mesa. It was hard not to recall all that had happened there. It had been days now since she’d left the house, nearly a week, and in all that time she had not seen Rory. Last night Myra had tried to convince her that she couldn’t hide forever, that she had to face him and talk over whatever had caused the breach between them, but Jessica refused to discuss it with her friend.
Past Promises Page 33