Next to the small fire she’d just rekindled, Bess froze and stared at him.
“The hell ye say,” Innes protested.
“We all stand a better chance of getting away clean if we split up.”
“That may be,” Innes said with a low growl in his throat. “But my place is with me daughter. And yours is with your daughter and sister.”
“I know that.” Carson plowed his fingers through his hair, then winced. Even touching the top of his head made the back of it hurt where the bullet had grazed him yesterday.
God, had it been only yesterday? It seemed a lifetime ago. Yet every time he closed his eyes he saw those painted warriors bursting out from behind the rocks, yelling and shrieking, shooting at him and the girls. Megan screaming. Bess falling from the wagon. The warrior lifting her by the hair. The memories were so vivid that they could have happened only moments ago.
“Look,” he said. “I’m the one they want. If they catch up with us, they’re going to start shooting, and they won’t care who else gets hurt. Agreed?”
Innes stared at him through narrowed eyes. “Aye, ‘tis the way I figure it.”
“But if they come upon you and Hunter and the girls, and I’m not with you, chances are better than average that there won’t be any shooting. Right?”
Innes frowned, unable to argue.
“He’s right, Da.”
Again Carson was taken by surprise. He hadn’t heard Hunter return. Hell, he thought with frustration. If he wasn’t any more aware of what was going on around him than this, he deserved to get shot.
“The one person they won’t risk hurting is Winter Fawn,” Hunter said. “Crooked Oak would never allow it, and you know he’s the leader of that group. He’ll be the most likely to come after us.”
“Aye.” Innes frowned harder. “Not that I like the idea of throwin’ ye to the dogs, so to speak,” he said to Carson, “but all of us would be safer if you weren’t with us. Winter Fawn should go with us.”
“Look at her, man,” Carson protested. “She shouldn’t be moved so soon. She needs rest.”
The object of their discussion stirred. “I’m not so feeble that I canna ride,” she protested quietly. “But if we split up, I should ride with Carson.”
Innes started to protest, but she cut him off.
“If it is plainly seen that I’m with him, they won’t take a chance on hurting me. Hunter is right about that. I might be able to talk them out of killing Carson right then and there.”
“Now hold on,” Carson protested. “You’ve stuck your neck out for me more than enough.”
Winter Fawn put a hand to her neck and frowned in confusion. “My neck?”
“He means you’ve taken enough risks for him,” Innes said.
“That’s right. I would never use you to protect myself,” Carson claimed.
“You would rather die?” she asked, one brow arched.
“No, I would rather live. I’d rather all of us live. That’s why we should split up. You and Hunter,” he said to Innes, “take the girls and get to the ranch. Tell my men there to round up some help and go back for the wagon and supplies, if they’re still there. I can’t afford to replace them just now. I’ll stay here with Winter Fawn until she’s stronger, then I’ll get her to a doctor.”
“Nae!” Innes’s protest was sharp and swift.
“I don’t need a doctor,” Winter Fawn said.
“I’ll not have ye takin’ me lass to some town full of whites who’ll spit on her because of the color of her skin. Not when sentiments be running so hot these days against the Indians. It wouldna be safe for her. Besides which, by the time she’s stronger she won’t need a doctor. Ye’re the only white man I’d trust with her, and only because I trusted yer father with me life, and I’m thinkin’, hopin’, the apple didna fall far from the tree and that ye’re as honorable a man as he was.”
“I will protect her with my life, and expect you to do the same with Bess and Megan.”
“Carson?” Bess asked, her voice shaking. “You don’t mean to leave us.”
“It’s the best way, Bess,” Carson told her.
“Best?” she cried. “How is it best? What if—”
“It’s the best way to keep us all safe.” Please, Lord, he didn’t want to deal with one of her petulant fits he’d grown accustomed to on the trip west. Not now, when he needed her cooperation more than ever before. “I know you’re scared. We’re all scared. But if you and Megan go with Innes and Hunter, I think we’ll all be okay.”
“But I don’t want to go without you,” she pleaded, her eyes round with fear.
“And I don’t want you to, honey, but it’s the only way I can see for us to all stay safe.” The plea in her eyes was nearly his undoing. But for her sake and Megan’s, he had to hold firm. They would be much safer without him. “If you and Megan go with Innes and do everything he tells you to do, Winter Fawn and I will meet you at the ranch in a few days. Do you trust me, Bess?”
“You know I do.”
“Then believe me when I say that this is the way it has to be.”
Hunter approached and stopped several feet away, but he did not look at Carson. His gaze was for Bess. “I will protect you,” he said solemnly. “I—my father and I—will keep you safe.”
Before Carson’s eyes, Bess seemed to change. The lines of fear on her face altered, shifted, became lines of determination. Her trembling lips firmed. Her shaking hands fisted. Her head raised. Her shoulders straightened.
As Carson watched, his baby sister seemed to cross that invisible threshold from child to adult. It was, he knew, a crossing she would make many times in both directions during the next few years as she grew from girl to woman, but this crossing, this time, both hurt him—because it was so very necessary—and made him proud.
At the same time, something private passed between her and Hunter, something that made Carson feel like an intruder, something that made him want to protest.
“All right,” Bess said quietly. “We’ll go with Mr. MacDougall and do as he says. I’ll look after Megan and we’ll be at the ranch waiting for you when you bring Winter Fawn.”
Carson nearly sagged in relief. He rose and crossed to his sister, pulled her into his arms and hugged her. “Thank you,” he said with feeling. “I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”
Bess looked up and gave him a shaky smile. “I’ll hold you to that. I’m probably going to want a new dress. Especially if we don’t get the wagon back. All my clothes are there, you know.”
Carson laughed. “A new dress, it is.”
“But Carson,” she said, frowning. “If having Winter Fawn with you will keep them from shooting at you, then why would they shoot at us if we’re all together? She’ll be with all of us. Won’t that mean they won’t shoot then, too?”
“In theory, yes,” he told her. “But—”
“But nothing,” Innes interrupted. “The lassie’s right, lad. We’ve missed that fine point, we hae, in all our figuring. Since Winter Fawn says she’s up to riding, the safest thing for all of us is to stay together.”
Carson gnawed on the inside of his jaw. It sounded right to his head, but his gut urged him to separate himself from the others to keep them safe.
“It’s settled, then.” Innes uncorked his flask and took a drink. “We stay together.”
They shared a quick meal of hardtack and jerky, with more willow bark tea for Winter Fawn. Carson didn’t know where the trail would take them before they made it to the ranch, but if they climbed much higher into the mountains there might be no more willows. He cut several small sticks and added them to one of Innes’s packs.
As they mounted up to leave, Hunter and Innes worked to erase all traces of their presence in and around the cave.
When they rode out they paired up the same way they had the night before. It was the best distribution of weight for the horses. Innes was the heaviest and Megan the lightest, so pairing them up made sense. It would have bee
n better if Hunter and Winter Fawn rode together, as Bess was some few pounds lighter than Winter Fawn, and having her ride with Carson would have eased the burden slightly for his horse. But the difference was slight, and Winter Fawn was not as strong as she thought. Someone was going to have to hold her in the saddle. Hunter was undoubtedly a strong young man, but he didn’t yet have the sinewy strength that came with maturity and rock hard muscles.
In addition to two people, each horse now also carried water, a blanket, and a rifle or pistol. Everything else stayed on the mule, packed tightly so nothing would rattle.
Carson had added another item to his horse’s load. He had folded the buffalo robe into a thick pad and placed it over his thighs and the saddle horn to give Winter Fawn a more comfortable ride. She’d said she could ride behind him, but he knew she wouldn’t be able to hold on if they had to make a run for it, so had ignored her over-confident assumption.
The trouble for Winter Fawn was that she wasn’t merely seated sideways before him, she was surrounded by him. While she couldn’t really feel him against her hips because of the thickness of the buffalo robe, she was still more than aware that she was essentially sitting on his lap. Not since she’d been a small child had she sat on a man’s lap, and then it had been her father or grandfather or Uncle Two Feathers.
As Carson held her, her right arm and side pressed flush against him. His upper arm and chest were rock hard with muscles. His right arm rested across her thighs, while his left curved around her back like an iron band, yet it was not uncomfortable. Indeed, that was part of her problem. As awkward as her position was, and as badly as her twin wounds hurt—and they hurt worse with every step the horse took—she found that she liked being held this way by this white man. Within the circle of his arms she was snug and warm in her blanket.
She knew she should not be feeling so content. Her gaze should not linger on his profile. Her head should not long to rest against his shoulder. Her nostrils should not drink in the scent of him.
Winter Fawn closed her eyes. She had left her mother’s people, with no idea if or when she might return. She had left her grandmother and grandfather to wonder and worry about what had happened to her. A pang centered in her heart. She did not wish them to worry about her.
But to go with her father, she and Hunter both, was a dream come true for Winter Fawn. From the time he had left them during her twelfth spring, she had prayed for his return.
And he had returned, every year. But only for a few days. Then he would start drinking the white man’s whiskey and get a faraway look in his eyes, and he would leave. She had never admitted to herself that her father would probably never again live with Our People, but in her heart she knew it was true.
Yet now here she was, traveling with him and his friends to evade pursuit. It was like the grand adventure stories she had heard around the campfires on long summer nights.
Part of her was jealous, perhaps even a little resentful of this man named Carson Dulaney. Her father risked much to help this man. It seemed to the child inside her that her father cared much more for the son of his dead friend than he did for his own son and daughter. And it hurt.
Yet if Carson were not so important to her father, she would be asleep in her grandmother’s lodge this very moment, and in a few days her father would leave them again, and she would not see him until next spring. In that regard, she was glad for this man who held her so gently in his arms. He had provided her and Hunter with the means to be with their father.
“Hang on,” Carson told her.
Looking around, she realized they were about to climb up out of the canyon. Hunter had already done so and waited for them above on the bald, rocky rim.
They would be exposed up there, clearly visible to anyone in the vicinity, she thought.
Then she did not think at all. As the horse lunged up the steep bank, agony, sharp and deep, sliced through her side. It was all she could do to keep from crying out as her vision grayed.
By the time the pain settled down again, they were a couple of miles from the canyon.
“I’m sorry,” Carson said. As he had the night before, he spoke softly so that his voice wouldn’t carry.
“For what?”
“Your pain.”
“My pain,” she said, feeling her strength ebb rapidly and resenting it, “is no fault of yours.”
“Seeing as how you took that arrow meant for me, I kinda think it is.”
She wanted to argue with him, but she was suddenly so incredibly tired. Arguing took too much energy, so she said merely, “Crooked Oak is responsible, not you.”
“I agree. But that doesn’t make it any easier to see you suffer.”
“You have a good heart, Carson Dulaney.”
“So do you, Winter Fawn MacDougall. Not many people would have risked so much to help a stranger.”
“You have already thanked me,” she told him. “You are more than repaying me now.”
“How so?”
“My brother told me it was you who carried me from camp.”
“That was nothing. You were unconscious.”
“It was everything. My father might have taken me to my grandmother and left me there.”
“She could have cared for you. You would certainly be more comfortable than you are right now.”
“Aye, perhaps. But I would rather be with my father. For that, I thank you.”
Carson shook his head. “You could have done without an arrow in your back.”
“I will survive.”
I hope so, Carson thought fervently. He hoped they all survived.
He was still hoping that near dusk that evening when they stumbled smack into a Cheyenne dog soldiers’ camp.
Chapter Six
Throughout the afternoon they had gradually angled east, deciding to leave the foothills for the plains, where they could make better time, and travel after dark in relative safety if necessary. At dusk, with the light fading fast, they stopped to rest the horses behind a tumble of boulders and juniper at the head of a long narrow valley that disappeared around a bend some two miles ahead.
According to Innes, the valley widened beyond the bend and opened up onto the plains. There, he said, was a better place of concealment where they could camp for a few hours, or the whole night if they chose. Whoever stood watch would be able to see for miles up and down the trail and across the plains, plus back up the valley where they now stood.
Behind them, up in the mountains, thunder rumbled. When Carson glanced west he saw lightning streak from cloud to cloud. He hoped this shelter Innes led them to would keep the girls dry. The storm would catch up with them soon.
The plan was to rest at the end of the valley for a few hours, then hit the trail south again. By this time tomorrow they would be home.
With the animals rested a short time later, they headed out again, keeping to the tree line along the edge of the valley so as not to leave a broad flat trail through the tall grass. Winter Fawn, Carson noted, had long since given in to her pain and weakness. She was asleep, uncomfortably so, he was sure, in his arms.
He was more than ready for a little sleep himself. How the hell had he lived through four years of war, which equated with four years of little food and less sleep, not to mention flying bullets? He was just so damn tired.
He’d thought after the surrender at Appomattox that he wouldn’t have to fight anymore.
With a smirk, he wondered how he had ever come to be so naive. Here he was again, involved in his own private battle.
But no, he acknowledged, it wasn’t private. He was but one small part of the larger conflict between the Indians and all of the Americans coming out to the territories. This, to the ones involved, was nothing less than an all-out war. As he understood the situation, the government was trying to push the Southern Cheyenne and Southern Arapaho completely out of the territory, and the tribes did not want to go. It was a powder keg waiting for a match. And here he was, right smack dab in the mid
dle of it.
For a man who had vowed never to fight again, never to aim his rifle at another human being, he’d picked a hell of a place and time to live.
He just wanted peace. Was that too much to ask?
Not that he was ready to sit in a rocking chair for the rest of his life. That wasn’t the kind of peace he sought. He expected to work. Wanted to work. The constant struggle to wrest a living from the land was a war in and of itself. But that was a war he welcomed. He could pit himself against the land and look forward to good times among the bad that awaited every man.
The peace he sought was of the soul. Maybe the heart. Peace from killing. Peace from having to be constantly on guard from a bullet. Peace to provide a safe place to raise his daughter and watch his sister complete the transition from girl to woman.
But first, he must survive this new war he’d stumbled into. And he was tired. Soul-deep weary of fighting other men.
Then again, he thought wryly, the fighting in the Colorado Territory had been going on long before he’d arrived. Yet he had chosen to come anyway. He wondered what that said about the man named Carson Dulaney. Telling himself he wanted peace, then coming to a land filled with war.
His head, and his heart, hurt just thinking about it. He would be wiser to keep his mind on the here and now.
And here and now, there was a woman in his arms who had placed herself between him and certain death. He’d seen men on the battlefield do the same. He knew he would have taken the bullet that had killed his father if he’d been looking and seen it coming. Yet, while Carson had a fair respect for women and their struggle to civilize the world—aside from those like Julia, who left some men with an overwhelming urge to smash something—it was difficult for him to accept that a woman would do such a thing.
Yes, some men would do it without a thought. Others would run. She had not run.
It felt odd to hold her, he realized. Good odd, despite the ache in his arms from having held her all night and half the day. It had been a long time since he’d felt a woman’s softness against him. A long time since he’d even thought about it. Maybe Julia hadn’t completely soured him on women after all, if he could enjoy the feel of Winter Fawn in his arms.
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