IRONHEART

by Rachel Lee

  His first thought was that the mugger had returned in broad daylight, but then he realized Sara would hardly be standing in the yard shouting for him if that were the case. His long legs ate up the ground as he ran down the hill to her, ignoring the pain in his shoulder and arm as his cast bounced in the sling.

  "Joey's gone," Sara said just as soon as he got within talking distance.

  "Gone? You mean he went someplace?"

  "I mean gone." Her eyes were wide, worried. "Zeke took him up to the falls this morning to finish fixing the fence."

  Gideon nodded. "I know."

  "Anyway, Zeke left him working there and went out to check on another section where we have trouble sometimes and the mustangs might get out. When he came back, Joey wasn't there." She bit her lip and shook her head. "There's no place he could have gone. Not by himself without a vehicle. Not from there. Zeke said his hat and gloves are there by the fence, along with ail the tools. Zeke called and called and called…"

  Instinctively, he reached out and drew her into his arms. She came without resistance, surprising him. "Where's Zeke?"

  "Inside calling the sheriff. Oh, Gideon, I'm so worried!"

  After the other things that had happened, so was Gideon. Especially after his conversation with Joey last night. He really didn't think the boy intended to get up to any mischief right now. "Micah will be able to tell if he wandered off—"

  She shook her head, interrupting him. "Micah's up in the mountains looking for that woman who disappeared from her campsite yesterday." It would take hours and hours to get him out of that wilderness and back to Conard County, she thought. Too many hours. They had to find Joey before nightfall, because if he was hurt and out there all alone, exposure might kill him before morning. The nighttime lows were still falling into the forties and fifties, depending on altitude.

  She refused to even consider the possibility of abduction.

  "Take me up there and show me the place," Gideon said after a moment, feeling an overwhelming need to do something. "My eyes are better than Zeke's. Maybe I'll be able to see something he missed."

  Sara hesitated only a moment. "All right," she said. "Just let me tell Grandfather."

  At that moment Zeke stepped out onto the porch. His expression was impassive. Too impassive, Gideon thought. Sara, who had just turned from Gideon, froze when she saw him. "What are they going to do?" she asked.

  "Not much," Zeke said. "It's not as if the boy has never disappeared before. One of the deputies is going to come up and look things over, but without some evidence that he didn't just walk off on his own, they're not going to do a damn thing, Sarey."

  * * *

  Chapter 12

  « ^ »

  Gideon found the blood. It was spattered across the grass and brush not ten feet from where Joey's gloves lay. There had obviously been a struggle of some kind, judging from broken branches and trampled grass. Deputy Charlie Huskins agreed, and by midafternoon search parties were combing the vicinity for some sign of Joey or his attackers.

  By nightfall, nothing helpful had been discovered. The search parties returned to the command post that had been established near the place from which Joey had disappeared, all with negative reports. Nor could the search continue after dark. Important clues might be trampled, but just as importantly, someone might get hurt stumbling around in terrain full of gullies, crevices, gorges and boulders.

  Gideon and his search partners returned to the command post just as the last light faded and turned dusk into night. Sara had been manning the communications base station at Nate's insistence and despite her own overwhelming urge to participate in the search.

  "It's better this way," Nate had told her. "This way you'll know everything we find the minute we find it. You won't have to wonder."

  So she had stayed, and now she watched as Gideon's party, the last to return, emerged from the shadowed woods into the light of kerosene lanterns.

  "We'll start again at dawn, Sara," Nate promised her before he left.

  Gideon approached and stood beside her as they watched the last of the searchers pack up and drive off. A few minutes later they stood alone in the eerie silence and darkness of the deserted wood

  "He's got to be all right," Sara whispered, as much to herself as to him. "He's got to be all right."

  Unable to offer any other comfort, Gideon turned her into his arms and stood hugging her as night drew more deeply around them. He didn't want to think about how it was already growing chilly up here and would grow even colder before dawn. He didn't want to think of Joey lying unconscious somewhere out there and dying of exposure. He didn't want to think of Joey already dead and buried in a shallow grave.

  And Sara was surely thinking of those things herself, right now, as she shuddered in his arms. He would have given anything to spare her this anxiety.

  "Come on," he said presently. "Let's go back. Zeke's probably going out of his mind wondering if we found anything."

  "He would know."

  Gideon tipped his head back and looked down at Sara. "He'd know? How?"

  She shook her head distractedly. "Zeke always knows. Sometimes I think the wind whispers to him. Oh, God!" she exclaimed in a burst of utter frustration. "Oh, God, I'm so scared! What if he's out there somewhere? What if he's hurt and…" She couldn't even make herself complete the thought.

  "Come on," Gideon said after a moment. He squeezed her and urged her toward the truck. "I haven't eaten since breakfast and I bet you haven't either. I don't know about you, but my head works better when I'm not starved."

  Stupid, he thought, to discuss food at a time like this, but necessities had to be dealt with, even when they felt out of place.

  As he helped her into the passenger seat of his truck—a formality that she accepted awkwardly, as if it embarrassed her—a huge fist suddenly gripped his heart.

  "Sara?"

  She turned her head to peer at him in the dark. The moonlight cast mysterious shadows over her delicate features, darkening her eyes to bottomless wells. Catching her chin gently in the palm of his hand, he turned her face up just a hair.

  "I'm sorry," he said.

  "Sorry?"

  "For not telling you—"

  She covered his mouth swiftly with her fingertips. "No," she said.

  "No?"

  "I don't want your apology."

  Until that instant he hadn't realized just how much he had been hoping she would forgive him. Hadn't realized just how much he had been counting on it. With those words she ripped hope from him and left him standing in an icy void of the heart unlike any he had ever imagined.

  Slowly, suddenly feeling very old, he dropped his hand from her chin and closed the truck door. I don't want your apology. That said it all, didn't it? The words, the denial in them, cast him back into his solitude with a pain so old it seemed part of his skin. With a pain so new and so huge that its magnitude was beyond comprehension.

  His feet felt like lead as he walked around the truck and climbed in behind the wheel. He would stay until Joey was found, he told himself. And then he would move on.

  * * *

  When they returned to the house, they learned that Chester had hurried up his timetable and was just about to begin Yuwipi, the ceremony to ask for help.

  "He's going to ask where Joey is," Zeke told Sara and Gideon. "Come if you want, but once he starts, you mustn't disturb him."

  Chester had taken over one of the rooms in the bunkhouse. Everything had been moved out, and the floor had been covered with sage. In the center, a square had been marked out by small twists of cloth all tied together on a rope. Inside the square stood a can full of dirt with a red-and-black stick poking up out of it. Tied to the top of the stick was an eagle feather. Beside that were a buffalo skull and some gourds, and some other items that were difficult to see in the poor light.

  By the illumination of a single lantern, the arrangement looked eerie. Not even moonlight penetrated the room, for the windows had been
covered by blankets.

  "Sit against the wall," Zeke said, motioning Sara and Gideon to one side. "Keep your thoughts pure and don't be afraid."

  Chester was bundled mummylike in a blanket, and tied inside it by Zeke, who then rolled him over so he lay facedown on the floor.

  "Okay," said Zeke. "Now it begins." He doused the lantern.

  Gideon wondered how Chester could even breathe. Beside him, he felt Sara shift restlessly, and then, causing his breath to catch in his throat, she leaned against him. Closing his eyes tightly against an unwelcome uprush of emotion, he wrapped an arm around her shoulders and waited tensely for her to stiffen or pull away. But she didn't. Instead, she snuggled a little closer, and his heart nearly stopped.

  For a long, long time, the room was silent. Then the drum began to beat, steady and low, and Zeke began to sing.

  It was hypnotic, Gideon thought. Slowly, gradually, tension seeped away, and in its place came a sense of restful expectancy. And little by little he felt himself going into the silence.

  * * *

  The climb was long, arduous. The air grew thinner with every step, and overhead gray-green thunderheads boomed and rumbled as they swallowed the sun. The sound of his own breathing was loud in his ears, and from time to time he slipped on loose rocks.

  There were no shadows, he realized as the sun vanished in the leaden clouds. It was the Black Light, the light that cast no shadows. Around him, trees swayed and groaned in the wind, and then he left them behind. Ahead, above, there was nothing but rock. And a red buffalo that stood far ahead, looking back at him as if it was waiting. Waiting.

  Calling.

  Fluttering wings brushed his face, invisible wings, the wind, yet more than the wind. From behind, someone pushed him forward, a silent command to climb. Glancing back, he saw nothing but darkness. Even the trees and the slope below had vanished into the pit of night.

  Ahead, the buffalo looked back at him, glowing now, a red as brilliant as fire, as beckoning as flame on a cold, empty night.

  "Come," whispered the voice of the breeze. "Come see."

  Pressing forward, he toiled upward, struggling against gravity, against the slippery rock, against the force of weariness that dragged him down. The air seemed to grow thick, fighting him, too.

  And always, always, the buffalo stayed exactly the same distance ahead.

  But finally, aeons later, he reached the pinnacle, a small point of land high above the sea of night below, and there the buffalo awaited him. The beast looked at him with sad, knowing eyes, with a sorrow beyond words, and said, "Ironheart, below you lies the sea of your making, and in the midst of the void you stand alone. You have been given all the colors of the universe, yet you have chosen to paint your world in only one tone. Take out your palette now, and paint the colors of the rainbow into your void."

  As the buffalo spoke, the black sea below began to shimmer, at first like the dim rainbow colors of an oil slick. But as he watched, the colors blossomed into brilliant, blinding hues of gold and red and green and blue, colors so bright they drowned the stormy sky and made his eyes sting.

  "These are your colors," the buffalo said. "Take them with you."

  He watched the buffalo turn away, and the great beast began to walk off into the rainbow colors as if they were a road made for his feet.

  "Wait!" Gideon cried. "The boy. Joey!"

  The buffalo glanced back. "The deer will show the way."

  Just then a huge wind blew, toppling him from the narrow peak and throwing him down the rocky slope. He bounced against rocks and felt the bite of their sharp corners, felt the tearing of his flesh and the breaking of his bones. Only when he lay again in the dark void did the pain cease. But this time, inside him, he felt the rainbow.

  Turning, struggling to bring the colors inside him back out into the world, he saw the deer.

  * * *

  The pounding of the drum was loud, seeming to reverberate from the walls. Zeke's singing had long since stopped, and now the drum fell silent, too. And into that silence came the rattle of the gourds, a hissing sound like a rattlesnake. First it came from here, then there, seeming to fly around the room. Light flashed near the ceiling, a small blue burst. Another flash burst near the floor, revealing Zeke and the drum for one blinding instant.

  Sara curled closer to Gideon, frightened at the strangeness of all that was happening. Lightning seemed to have come into the room with them, lightning and thunder and the rattle of hail. These were powers her grandfather and Chester had spoken of all the years she could remember, but not until now had she truly tasted them.

  And then, as abruptly as it had begun, it ceased. Silence reigned for several minutes; then came the flare of the match as Zeke lit the lantern. Chester now lay unwrapped within his square of tobacco ties. Sara wondered how he had gotten untied. A glance at her watch told her the night had passed, and that dawn was less than an hour away.

  Chester sat up, and he and Zeke sang softly. Sara looked at Gideon.

  "I know where Joey is," Gideon said quietly. "I saw him."

  Sara caught her breath as her heart climbed into her throat. "Saw him?" She hardly dared believe.

  "I saw him," Gideon said again. "He's hurt, cold and hungry, but he's alive. Up the mountain. Near a tree that was blasted by lightning and then grew into two, like a Y."

  "I know that place," Sara said excitedly. And there was no way on earth Gideon could have known about that tree. It was on one of the most remote parts of the ranch. She started to rise, in her eagerness, but her grandfather motioned sharply. His meaning was clear. She was to stay until he finished the song of thanks and farewell to the spirits who had aided them.

  And for the first time in her life Sara Yates honestly felt she had something to thank the spirits for. Slowly she turned to look at Gideon. This man had had a vision during the night, and even as he spoke of it and prepared to act upon it, he didn't look very happy about it.

  "Grandfather said you have power," she murmured.

  "We'll see how much damn good it does anyone," he muttered back. "It hasn't ever done me any good that I can see."

  Impulsively, she lifted her head and stretched until she could brush a kiss on his cheek.

  The kiss struck Gideon like a bolt of lightning. Why was she kissing him? Because she thought he was going to find her brother? Was this the same woman who had told him just last night that she didn't want his apology?

  "Ironheart." Chester had come over to them, and now he knelt facing Gideon. "The blasted tree is a power place. The boy is alive because of it. Don't break your neck trying to get there. He'll be alive."

  * * *

  A half hour later, with dawn just a faint gray line of promise at the horizon, Sara and Gideon started up into the mountains on horseback, to a place they could get to no other way.

  "Except on dirt bikes," Sara said.

  Gideon glanced at her. "What? Did I miss something?"

  "I was just thinking that the only way to get to this tree is on horseback. Or on dirt bikes."

  "Yeah. Well, I kind of suspected our dirt-biking friend might be involved. The question is, what is he after?" Feeling almost helpless against himself, he watched Sara, who was riding to one side and just a little ahead of him, as hopelessly as any sixteen-year-old in the throes of a major crush. The crystalline light of dawning day began to wash across the world, bringing sharp-edged clarity and color to their surroundings.

  Watching her, he drank in every graceful line of her face, her neck, her thigh. Thought how lovely she was. How achingly, sweetly lovely. How badly he wanted to hold her again and tell her just how much she meant to him. To admit that she had become the only rainbow in his colorless world.

  "Sara?"

  She glanced back at him and smiled, just a small smile, but one that warmed his soul. Considering that she had been up all night, she looked awfully fresh, he thought.

  "Sara, I really want to apologize for not telling you about Micah."


  "That's not necessary. I told you that last night."

  "But I…" Not necessary? How was he supposed to interpret that? "Of course it's necessary."

  She shook her head. "In the first place, it's none of my business how you choose to handle your personal affairs. In the second place, it was presumptuous of me to think I had a right to know anything so personal about you."

  "Presumptuous?" Now that was a word he hadn't heard anybody actually use in his entire life. He looked at Sara, taking in her crisp khaki uniform, the sage nylon jacket, the tan Stetson and the .45 riding on her hip, and thought what a unique delight she was. A black-satin voice in a black-satin woman who hid behind a tough-as-nails veneer.

  "Now wait one minute," he said, heeling his mount forward until he was right beside her. "Spending a few nights in my bed gives you certain rights." Damn, he thought, feeling a little shocked at himself. Was he actually saying that? "You can't be presumptuous."

  "No?" She glanced at him, and from somewhere in the depths of her anxiety over Joey came a glimmer of humor, just a faint sparkle in her brown eyes. "Well, it doesn't matter, anyway. I accept that you had your reasons. I shouldn't have gotten mad."

  He frowned at her, feeling off-center and unsure of what was happening. "You had every right to get mad."

  Sara shook her head. "Not really. The truth is, I wasn't really mad at you. I was feeling … uncertain, I guess. Scared. Afraid that I was making a fool of myself again. Sort of a knee-jerk reaction because of George. After he left, I always wondered how many secrets he'd had that he never told me about. I guess that was part of the worst of it, besides the humiliation. Thinking I had known this guy, and having it turn out that I didn't know him at all."

  Everything inside Gideon winced as he realized the magnitude of the wound he had dealt this woman. "Mouse—"

  "Let me finish. Please?"

  Meeting the uncertainty of her gaze, seeing her determination to say difficult things, he nodded and fell silent.

  "My reaction to you was filtered through my experience with George," Sara said after a moment. "When I calmed down enough, I realized that your being Micah's brother wasn't just your secret. It was Micah's secret, too, and you had no business sharing it with anyone before you shared it with him. And I got to thinking about how I would have felt in your shoes… Honestly, Gideon, I'm not at all sure I would have done anything different from what you did. When I really thought about it, I saw how complicated and scary and difficult it would be, and why maybe you wouldn't want anyone at all to know, ever.