And that Vasa still had not appeared. But no one said that Kee was crazy for mentioning him.
“Vasa!” Kee yelled. “Show yourself or this woman of yours is going to die.”
“You gonna shoot a woman?” Benton stopped chewing long enough to ask.
“No, Kee,” Isabel said. “Just take your saddle and leave us. There is nothing here for you. I will say it again. My cousin and I will share the gold when we find it.”
But Isabel couldn’t find the gold in the morning or at any other time if he left. He still had the gold disk and without it…What the hell was that woman trying to do? Offer herself as hostage and then sacrifice so he could get away? She had to know that Clarai wasn’t about to let him ride out of here knowing about the gold.
“Please, Kee. Just go.”
And then Kee’s eyes shifted to the man walking out of the shadows. He topped Kee’s height by a good two inches and had about thirty pounds on him, but there was nothing to suggest that the man wasn’t a fighter. This had to be the missing Vasa. He wore his gun tied low on his thigh. Butter-soft buckskins, the kind the Apache made for themselves, clung to a powerfully built man. His skin was dark; a scar ran from his eye to his jaw.
Kee took this in with a quick glance, for the man stood directly behind where Isabel sat. And he felt the surge of his blood at the way Vasa looked at Isabel not Clarai.
Right then and there, Kee knew this was going to end as a shooting matter between the two of them.
Thumbs hooked in his gun belt, Vasa stood with his legs spread, waiting for Kee to make the next move.
And his heated blood cooled rapidly when he saw Vasa lean down to whisper something that made Isabel pale.
Kee damned his luck to catch that bullet graze. The man’s cruelty gleamed in his eyes.
“I’m not leaving without Isabel. Gather up our gear. We’ll ride out together.”
“She won’t go with you,” Clarai said. “We’re cousins, blood, family. That’s important. Not you, a stranger. And you only want the gold.”
“Kee,” Isabel called quickly, “I know I promised you a share if you helped me, but I do not need you now. They will get their reward.”
“The lovely señorita speaks the truth,” Vasa added in a slightly accented voice. “We are the ones who will help her and she is gracious with her promised reward.”
If Kee hadn’t known Isabel, he would have missed the flare of fear and rage that showed in her eyes. But she said nothing to contradict him. And she said nothing to ease Kee’s mind about the kind of reward she had promised Vasa.
Clarai had heard him, too. She hissed something in Apache at him, but Vasa merely shrugged and smiled.
“Well, now, I figure we all deserve a share of that gold. So I’ll just help myself to some coffee and we’ll sit here until morning.”
Benton looked at Kee as if he were loco. Clarai put arrows in him from her black, snapping eyes. Vasa smiled and Isabel stared at him with dismay.
Kee didn’t care what they thought of him. He was laying out the scene in front of him. Benton wasn’t about to get himself killed. He might stay out of it, figuring he’d end up with the gold and a woman no matter if Kee did the killing or Vasa did. What worried Kee was that Vasa hadn’t moved. He had Isabel to grab as a shield. Nor could he dismiss the threat of Clarai, although he couldn’t see that she held a gun. His horses were gone, not far, he hoped, but theirs were staked up the short bank of the wash. Not far from where he stood was the pile of saddles. His own and Isabel’s were on top.
As if she had followed his every thought and knew he would be making a move, Isabel jumped up and ran around the fire toward Kee.
“You must go. I insist. We had a bargain. I hold you to your word.” She came forward with every word until she stood in front of him. “Kee, go. I beg you.”
This last was so soft that he barely heard her. As she meant it to be, for her voice rose with the next words.
“I used you. Are you too stupid, gringo, to understand that? I have no more need of you. Take your horses and get out of my sight.”
Her eyes pleaded with him to do as she said. But he was torn. What threat were they holding over her head? He had only to grab her and put her behind him. Once more she seemed to divine his thoughts and divert him from acting.
“Is it the gold that you want? I will make sure a share is sent to you after the sunset tomorrow. We wait for that.”
“Enough!” Clarai rose from her place near the fire and Kee saw the glint of the knife that she held. The blade had almost cut him once, and she must have been holding that against Isabel. He thought there was still a chance, but Isabel had already turned her back and was walking away from him.
And Isabel had hidden something else from his view. Vasa and Benton had drawn their guns and were holding them on him.
“If you kill him now,” Isabel calmly stated, “I will never show you where the gold is. He will ride away and none will stop him. Call them again, Clarai, and tell them that. And remember, cousin, we speak the same language.”
Kee expected to hear Apache from Clarai, but it was a Mexican dialect mixed with English that ordered he go free.
Isabel was not done. “Tell them to come to the fire. I want no bullet in Kee’s back.”
Kee, more confused than ever, saw that Clarai was going after Isabel, then she stopped at a gesture from Vasa. And she called in three more men. Mixed breeds, Kee thought, when he saw the men. Renegades and outlaws from the other side of the border. One wore double guns slung around his hips, the others held rifles. New ones.
“Guess this is where you expect me to say adiós.” But Kee made no move toward getting his saddle. He wasn’t about to set down the rifle he had taken from the man he had killed, and he wasn’t about to put his gun hand on anything but the butt of that gun. Yet he knew the odds were stacked too heavily against him.
Vasa seemed to weigh his decision before he motioned to one of his men. “Carry the saddle for him. Do not worry, Pedro, he will not shoot you. The señor is a man of honor, sí? Unlike you,” he added.
“Hold up. It’s not that simple. There’s the little matter of having my own rifle back. You understand that, Vasa. A man’s gun is like his woman. She only responds to his hand. And then there’s my pack. Cowhand works too damn hard for his money. Gets real possessive over what he owns. Don’t figure I’ll be leaving without those things.”
Kee did care about the family gifts, and some of his possessions, but right now he wanted hands busy on anything but guns.
“Where the hell is Muley?” Benton asked. “That sure looks like his rifle.”
“He is dead, courtesy of the señor,” Vasa answered.
So Vasa had found him, and Kee knew that Vasa had been watching him work his way up the dry wash to here. But why hadn’t he killed him? Isabel was the only answer.
He saw that they had raided his packs and taken most of the supplies. But he had gotten what he wanted—two men carrying his gear and his rifle.
He went up the short, soft slope of the bank at an angle to them. He whistled for Outlaw, and as he had hoped, the mustang had not gone far. He trotted up, but shied from the strange man who tried to grab his bridle.
“Just leave my gear and get back to the fire where I can see you,” Kee ordered.
The men moved fast, but not so fast that Kee didn’t manage to throw his saddle and pack over the mustang’s back. The horse wasn’t happy with the additional burden but he stood still. Kee didn’t attempt to cinch the saddle. He wasn’t riding out and giving them his back.
From below, he heard Isabel call out to him.
“Vaya con Dios, Kee. Remember the ledge.”
The men had been in such a hurry that they had left his rifle and forgotten to take the other one. He walked out into the night beside his horse, steadying the packs and Isabel’s words replayed over and over in his mind.
“Go with God,” she had said. A common enough goodbye in the Southwest. He n
eeded the good Lord and a host of saints and angels to help him out of this.
But what had she meant about remembering the ledge? He’d almost gotten the two of them killed there. Was she warning him? Or sending him a message?
Chapter Twenty-Three
He worried and worked over her words as he made his way with a slowness and caution over a leg-killing talus slope so steep that even the horses had trouble with it.
“Go with God,” he whispered, stopping to rest and wondering why that bullet he’d been waiting for never came. He leaned against one of the mares who butted her nose against his shoulder demanding some attention.
As he absently stroked her neck, Kee stood up straight. Isabel called Weaver’s Needle the Finger of God. Was she telling him to go there in the morning and use the disk to find the gold? But when he added her words to remember the ledge he drew a blank.
She said something about a gully and nothing that he recalled about any ledge. And his head ached again.
She had done everything but physically shove him out of there. His lips twisted into a bittersweet smile. Clever and lovely. She had made sure he knew there were three more men to deal with. And that Vasa had some hold on her.
Kee glanced down to where their fire had burned to coals. He couldn’t see the guards they posted, but he knew they were out there, likely waiting for him to make a move to rescue her.
Isabel was safe enough with them tonight. There wasn’t a man down there that didn’t want his hands on the gold.
And her. He couldn’t forget the possessive cruelty in Vasa’s eyes. His stomach churned with sickness.
He searched and found a pebble that he brushed off on his jacket. He placed it in his mouth to generate moisture. He had no canteen, and no coffeepot even if he would risk a fire.
He took the disk from his money belt, and held it up. This was the key to the gold. But how? And where?
He had the strongest feeling that Isabel had bought him time to get there first. That had to be why she lied to them and said she couldn’t find the gold until the sun set.
Her message at the end had to do with one of those black basalt towers. All he recalled was something about standing at the head of the gully and holding the disk up to the rising sun. Somewhere a ledge came into play. A ledge that was as dangerous as the one they had come down.
It had to be that. Nothing else made sense.
The moonlight played over the needles and the deep shadows hid the crevices and ravines that guarded it. He couldn’t stand here and look, he had to get down there. He had to block the thought of Isabel from his mind, and fight off every weakness that threatened to put him down.
She was counting on him, and he’d made his vow to her.
He needed more time. Time to scout the land, time for Isabel to tell him everything her grandfather had told her. He couldn’t forget about the earthquake that happened here almost six years ago. And in May, too.
The thought went round and round as Kee worked his way to that one gully. He rested for only a few minutes at a time, cinching Outlaw’s saddle during one period.
Moonlight helped him find his way. The horses found him water. A hollowed-out stone nearly his height across and about ten inches deep held enough for him and his animals to drink. Kee rested there, drinking every few minutes after he recalled something Logan had taught him. The Apache could go for days without water because when they had this precious liquid of life, they drank and saturated their bodies until they could not hold another drop of water. But as he lay there, the awareness of time slipping quickly by came with his notice of stars beginning to fade from the night sky.
He took one last drink of water, which he held in his mouth as he started off once more. Outlaw trailed him, the mares and packhorse picking their way close on the path the mustang chose.
He reached the gully between the towering rocks just as night faded into that dark grayness that preceded dawn.
Exhausted, and afraid if he sat down he wouldn’t get up, Kee just stood there, head hanging like that of a played-out horse. Isabel! Her name was a silent cry in his mind.
He removed the disk once more. Studied it with his fingertips. When he held it up for the first sun rays, whatever it pointed to would be behind him. Then he realized the utter impossibility of what she wanted him to do.
If he held the disk with the open crescent moon in proper position, the graduated cuts of arrows pointed toward the west. If he held the disk so that he had the curve of Isabel’s sweet smile or reversed it like the arch of her brow, he’d either have to climb or dig.
Or go east, he added, turning the disk over and over in his hand.
He turned and faced west. A hundred places and all dangerous. He did that with each direction, one more deadly than the next. He could search here, like Julia Thomas and others who had hunted for the Dutchman’s gold, Peralta’s mine, and all the other stories, for the next thirty years and never find it.
Isabel depended on him to figure it out. He was missing something. And he had too little time. He was counting off the seconds in his mind when that sky would change to its painted colors like the bunting hung for one of his grandmother’s fiestas.
But this was a party of one. Until sunset.
The calluses on his fingertips had thickened them, so Kee used his lip to test the edge of the disk. At first he dismissed the slight indentation as a chip. After all, the piece had age to it. But when he chanced lighting a match he saw that wasn’t true. The pointed notch was so tiny that it was easy to miss. It had to be the sign he prayed for…the way to hold the disk to find the mine’s opening.
And he was going to test that belief, for the color spread over the sky welcoming the sun’s rise.
“You are all fools to believe her,” Clarai whispered as she stirred the fire with twigs, then added a few sticks. “He will not go as you believe. He will hide and wait his chance to get to her.” She glared at Vasa. “You should have killed him when you could.”
On the opposite side of the fire, Isabel fought to keep her breathing even and her eyes closed as she strained to listen to her cousin’s low voice. But as the seconds ticked by in her mind, Vasa’s continued silence worried her. She knew he was not asleep, not as Benton was, snoring and mumbling on his bedroll a few feet from her. The three other men had melted into the darkness minutes after Kee had disappeared.
She prayed they were not following him.
There had been no real chance to give Kee more of a message. She had to trust him to figure out what she meant. She sent her prayers out to him as the darkness slowly began its fade and the world took on a grayish cast.
Minutes, only minutes more and the sun would rise.
Doubts plagued her. Kee’s head injury could prevent him from getting there in time. And she had never showed him the key to using the golden disk her grandfather had made.
Trust him, she told herself.
She had. And she still did trust him. No questioning doubts lingered, and no regret for loving him. Love…
Even silent, the word, the thought, the very strong feeling behind it, sent shock waves through her. How did it happen? When? She needed to know the moment love for Kee had come to her. But she could not afford to allow her wary guard to drop and daydream of the time spent with him. She had to remain alert.
She discovered a truth and now found regret. She had never told him. So she sent her silent message on the edge of a prayer. I love you, Kee Kincaid. God keep you safe for me.
She was jerked from her quiet by the sound of a slap and Clarai’s hissed accusations. Isabel could no longer pretend to sleep, for even Benton awakened to groggily ask what the hell was going on.
Isabel looked across the fire. Vasa held a struggling Clarai on his lap, whispering to her, but his eyes were pinned on Isabel, and she could not stop the cold shiver that crawled up her spine. Only the thought that she had to stay here and lull them into the belief that she would show them where the gold was, and buy time for Ke
e, kept her from running.
That, and the fact no one had searched her. She still had her boot knife.
Her stomach turned over when she saw that Vasa was kissing Clarai to silence. Kissing her with those dark eyes open, staring at her. Isabel hoped disgust showed in her eyes as she rolled over and turned her back on them.
The thought flashed into her mind that she had felt vulnerable and alone at times, but never like this. It was like watching a mountain storm, the black clouds gathering in strength, knowing there was nothing she could do to prevent it, nothing but to hang on and pray she would survive until the storm had passed.
Out of the black despair that encompassed her at that moment, the image of Kee’s face appeared. She saw that dark intensity in his eyes and knew he thought of her, too. Her fear for him was his for her. Reaching out across the distance that separated them were his arms to enfold her in their loving warmth and strength. And she let that feeling of love grow, until its heat and power filled her mind and heart and body. She protected him by staying there and he kept her vow by going after the gold.
Somehow, someway they would be together.
The wind rose up suddenly, blowing over the land, swirling dust clouds and a long, low wail came with it.
Isabel did not hear it, did not see it. She put herself with Kee, whispering what he needed to know, guiding him to the exact place as the first blinding rays rose to pierce the gully between the towering stones. She saw his hands holding the disk up. Those long, strong fingers that moved over her body with such passionate gentleness, delicately held the golden circle between them. Now, lift it slowly, center that tiny notch until you see its open points touch each of the black stone fingers. Look up to the first small arrow. The sun is nearly there. Turn, Kee, turn. But watch the crescent. Slowly, ever so slowly comes the sun and there! There, Kee, it is waiting for you.
But hurry now. You have only minutes to get to the crevice.
The sudden clamp of a hand on her shoulder brought her scream.
Once a Hero Page 21