by Linda Broday
That was an inelegant name for a community, Julia thought, but it might be a nice place to live anyway. She certainly hoped so.
A gust of wind rattled the canvas cover over the window next to her and clawed at her with chilly fingers. She reached under the seat and groped for the blanket the guard had mentioned. She pulled it out and wrinkled her nose at the musty smell. It could have been worse, she told herself. The blanket could have smelled like livestock.
She spread it over her legs, tucked it in around them. That helped a little. She wanted to wrap herself up in it completely, but it was too dusty for that.
Better to take her mind off the cold, she decided. She opened her bag and took out the small gilt frame. Inside it was a photograph of a handsome, distinguished looking man with well-combed dark hair and a mustache that curled up slightly at the ends. Judging by appearances, Henry Everett was every bit the stalwart frontier lawman that Uncle Creighton claimed.
"You doin' all right in there, miss?"
The shout came from up on the box. The guard must have twisted around on the seat and leaned over to call through the window to her. Julia responded, "Yes, I'm fine! Thank you!"
That was a lie, she thought as she sat back on the uncomfortably hard seat. She was cold, and the coach bounced so much on the rutted road she felt like it was going to jolt her teeth right out of her head.
And despite the assurances her uncle had given her, despite her own willing agreement, despite an obviously fine match in Marshal Henry Everett, she wasn't sure she wanted to get married.
She looked again at Henry's picture but realized after a moment that she wasn't really seeing him. Instead, the image of the shotgun guard was in her mind's eye. She hadn't gotten that good a look at him, and she hadn't really been paying attention.
But if that was the case, why was she able to summon up so many details? She remembered the way the cloth of the pants he wore hugged his legs. His short sheepskin coat had made it impossible to tell how he was built in his upper body, but it couldn't conceal the impressive width of his shoulders. Mostly, though, she remembered the lean face under the brown Stetson, the strong jaw, the keen gray eyes, the generous mouth curved in a reckless, devil-may-care grin.
She had managed to smile back at him politely, but she was glad when he closed the coach door and went on about his business, because something about him had set her heart to tripping faster than usual. An unexpected heat had kindled inside her when their eyes met, and she'd had to struggle to keep that from showing on her face.
It had been the only bit of warmth she'd experienced since getting off the train, and she savored the memory of it now, even as she realized she was still holding Henry's picture. She felt a twinge of embarrassment as she shoved the frame back in her bag and pulled the drawstring closed.
****
"Why do they call you Scalphunter, anyway?"
"Why do you reckon?"
"Because you fought Indians and took their scalps, I suppose," Grant said.
Scalphunter grunted. Grant figured that meant his guess was correct. The portly jehu didn't look that tough, but appearances could be deceptive, especially out here on the frontier where some of the deadliest hombres looked more like store clerks or preachers.
After a while, though, Scalphunter said, "It weren't exactly that way. I told a lot of stories, but they, uh, weren't all strictly true, if you know what I mean."
Grant chuckled and said, "You mean you exaggerated a mite."
"Just a mite," Scalphunter said. "I done my share o' scrappin' with the Comanch', back in the days when it was worth a man's life to ride west o' the Brazos, but I never lifted any hair from red man or white. When I color up the tales a little, it makes gents in saloons more likely to buy a fella a drink." He slapped the lines against the team and added, "But don't go to thinkin' I ain't still got most o' the bark on me."
"Wouldn't dream of it," Grant said with a smile.
The coach was about halfway between the two way stations on the route, which meant it was halfway between Buffalo Springs and Flat Rock. The trail topped a rise, wound down a brushy slope, then headed off across some boulder-strewn flats.
Grant's eyes narrowed as he studied those big slabs of rock. This would be a good place for an ambush, he thought as the coach descended the slope.
"Might ought to speed up while we go across those flats," he suggested to Scalphunter.
The old-timer reached for the whip and popped it a couple of times. The horses surged forward against their harness.
"You think them desperadoes might be somewheres around here?" Scalphunter asked over the pounding hoofbeats.
"Just don't want to take a chan—"
The sharp crack of a rifle shot interrupted Grant. Beside him, Scalphunter grunted and rocked back against the seat. The old frontiersman struggled to hang on to the reins.
Grant searched for the source of the shot, but at the same time his worried gaze darted to Scalphunter. A red stain spread on the old man's shirtfront, blossoming like a crimson flower.
From the corner of his eye, Grant spotted a man standing on top of a boulder with a rifle. He lifted the shotgun and touched off one of the barrels just as the man fired a second shot. This bullet hit the brass rail running around the top of the coach and spanged off. As far as Grant could tell, his buckshot didn't hit anything.
More shots cracked. They had driven right into an ambush. A bullet creased one of the horses and made it let out a shrill whinny as it leaped ahead.
That was all it took for things to get even worse. The team bolted, leaving the road behind and taking off across the flats.
The reins slipped out of Scalphunter's fingers and slithered to the floorboards. Grant made a lunge for them, but they fell under the hooves of the stampeding horses. Now there was no way to control the team. They would just have to run off their panic.
Grant twisted on the seat to look behind them. Half a dozen riders galloped after the coach, about a hundred yards behind. They all wore long dusters, and although he couldn't be sure at this distance, he thought they had bandannas tied over the lower halves of their faces.
If the horses slowed down and stopped without wrecking the coach, Grant could put up a fight. As it was, all he could do was hang on for dear life and hope that the passenger hadn't been hurt.
The passenger. That pretty, close-mouthed young woman. Fear for her safety suddenly stabbed into Grant's heart. The gang that had been pulling these holdups had killed a driver and a couple of guards, along with one passenger—a drummer who'd been foolish enough to pull a pistol—but they didn't have a reputation for harming passengers other than that.
Grant hoped fervently that would continue to be true. He was paid to risk his life battling outlaws, but she was just an innocent bystander.
Scalphunter suddenly gripped his arm. The old driver's derby had fallen off. He had his other hand pressed to his chest. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.
"Devil's…Ravine!" he gasped.
At first Grant wasn't sure he had heard the weak voice correctly. But then Scalphunter went on, "Got to stop the coach…'fore it gets to…the ravine!"
Grant realized now where they were. He'd heard of Devil's Ravine, a wide, deep slash in the landscape where the Rio Hondo flowed down to the Rio Grande.
"Scalphunter, are you sayin'—"
The old-timer lifted his bloodstained hand and pointed. "That's it…right up yonder!"
Grant's eyes widened as he looked up and saw the ravine less than a quarter-mile in front of them. If the runaway horses didn't stop or veer off in another direction, in a matter of moments the coach would plunge over the brink and plummet to certain destruction.
****
Julia had never known fear like this. She'd heard shooting, and now the coach careened across the landscape. She was smart enough to realize the team must be out of control.
What if the two men on the driver's box were dead?
The chance tha
t the coach might wreck at any second clogged her throat with panic. She had to do something. She had to get out of here!
She could open the door, but if she leaped out while the coach was going this fast, she would break a leg if she were lucky—her neck, if she wasn't.
"Hello!" she shouted. She leaned forward and pounded frantically on the front wall of the coach. "Hello! Is anybody up there?"
She thought she heard somebody clambering on the side of the coach, then suddenly the door was jerked open. Julia screamed, not knowing if the man about to invade the coach would be a ruthless outlaw or a bloodthirsty Indian.
Instead the young shotgun guard hung there on the side of the swaying, bouncing coach, and extended a gloved hand toward her.
"C'mon, miss!" he yelled. "You've gotta get out of here! We gotta jump!"
"What?" Julia quailed back against the seat. "No! We're going too fast! I'll be killed!"
"You durn sure will be in about half a minute if you don't grab my hand! This coach is goin' over a cliff!"
He had to know what he was talking about. He would be risking his own life, too, by jumping.
"Miss," he said, his voice softening a little, "I'll take care of you. I swear."
Something about the words exerted a powerful pull on Julia. Someone had always taken care of her, first her parents, then her uncle. Now, this man whose name she didn't even know was promising to.
She knew instinctively that she didn't have time to think about it. She threw the blanket aside and reached out to grasp his hand.
Through the gloves they both wore, she felt the strength in his fingers. He brought her to him in the open doorway and told her, "Throw your arms around my neck and hang on tight!"
She did so. He smelled of leather and horses and smoke. He put an arm around her waist and pressed her against him, and even in this terrifying situation, there was something reassuring about his grasp.
Then she saw the open air right in front of the runaway team and screamed.
He leaped away from the coach, and Julia had no choice but to go with him. She was still screaming as she clung to him and they hurtled down, down, down. Far below, sunlight sparkled on what appeared to be a narrow ribbon of water.
She was going to die in the next few seconds. Julia was certain of that. So much left undone in her life. She would never know the warmth of a home and family of her own, the exciting touch of a man she loved, who loved her, the good work that only she could do, all the things that made life worth living. All gone, ripped away from her before she even had a chance—
They hit the water.
****
Grant tried to keep them as straight up and down as he could, which wasn't easy with the woman's skirt and petticoats flapping around in the wind as they fell. He didn't know how deep the Rio Hondo was, but he knew their only chance lay in hitting it clean and hoping it was deep enough. He had leaped away from the coach at an angle in an attempt to carry them to the middle of the stream.
He wanted to avoid the coach and the horses, too. If he and the woman landed in the same place they did, the two of them wouldn't have a chance.
But realistically speaking, he knew they were both about to die anyway, which was a damned shame.
He would have enjoyed putting his arms around this woman under different circumstances. She smelled so nice with her hair right under his nose…
That was his last thought in the split-second before they landed in the river.
With an icy shock that seemed to freeze him to the core instantly, they plunged deep, deep, into the river. Grant expected to feel a bone-crushing impact at any second as they struck bottom, but they kept descending. The water gradually slowed them, so that by the time his feet hit the gravelly riverbed, he and the woman had almost stopped.
They had made it into the river without dying. Now their most pressing concern was to get out of the river before they drowned or froze to death.
That wouldn't be easy. Because the weather was cold, both of them were dressed in several layers of clothing. All that sodden fabric held them down. Also, the Rio Hondo was a swift-flowing river, and the current already had them in its grip. As Grant pushed off the bottom and stroked urgently with one arm in an attempt to reach the surface, he felt the water pulling them along and trying to hold them down at the same time.
The woman was limp in his arms, either unconscious…or worse. Grant tried not to think about that. His teeth chattered like castanets, and he was going numb through and through from the cold. He tried not to fight against the water, but under the circumstances it was hard not to panic.
Something brushed his face. He grabbed at it, closed his hand around what felt like a tree limb. That didn't really make sense to him, but he wasn't going to turn his back on a stroke of luck. He clung to the limb and pulled his way up with all his remaining strength. The current tried to yank the woman away from him, but he kept his grip on her, too.
When his head broke into the open air, he didn't even realize it for a second. Then he gasped for breath and shook his head to get the river water out of his eyes as he looked up and saw what had saved them.
At some point in the past, one of the cottonwoods that grew in the ravine along the river had died and fallen, so that some of its bare branches extended down into the water. Grant worked his way along the branch until he was close enough to the bank to lift the woman out of the river and rolled her onto shore.
That took all of his strength. He couldn't do anything except cling to the branch and let the icy water steal more and more of his warmth. It would have been easy just to let go, close his eyes, and drift away to death.
But then he looked at the woman, who lay on her back. The jacket of her traveling outfit had come open, and the soaked shirt underneath it molded to her breasts like a second skin.
Grant might have appreciated that sight under other circumstances, but right now it interested him because he could tell that her chest was rising and falling. She was still alive. But she wouldn't be for much longer if he didn't get out of this river. In this weather, she would freeze to death in those wet clothes.
With that knowledge goading him on, he reached up with his free hand and closed it on one of the branches higher up. He groaned from the effort as he climbed slowly out of the Rio Hondo. Finally, after what seemed like a month, he crawled onto the hard, rocky ground along the river.
The job wasn't done, though, not by a longshot. Now he had to find a place for them to get out of the wind. They needed a fire, too, to warm them and dry their clothes.
That might be possible. He always carried several matches in a watertight tin container in his pocket. He reached down with a trembling hand to make sure it was still there and relief flooded through him when he felt it.
All right, Grant, he told himself. You've survived that stagecoach goin' off a cliff, and since that's pretty much impossible, you might as well keep it up for a while.
With his teeth still chattering to beat the band, he bent and got his hands under the woman. Manhandling her like this wouldn't be acceptable in the sort of polite society she probably came from, but he couldn't help that. Keeping them both alive was a lot more important than any notions of propriety. He lifted her senseless form, draped her over his shoulder, and started staggering along the river bank in search of shelter.
He had to stay alive now, because if he died, more than likely so would she. That fact beat in him like a drum.
That, and the need to settle the score for old Scalphunter Reeves, who had died and toppled off the driver's box just before Grant swung onto the side of the runaway coach to try and save the woman.
****
The heat was the first thing Julia became aware of. It felt wonderful, sliding all around her like a thing alive, driving the cold away. Gradually she realized that the heat in front of her came in waves, as if from a fire, while that behind her was more steady, although it pulsed slightly like the beat of a heart. She shifted slightly and felt
herself pressed intimately against a hard-muscled form.
That was when she figured out she was nude—and so was the man holding her.
She let out a startled cry and instinctively started struggling to get away from him. His body jerked, as if she had woken him, and his arms tightened around her.
"Let me—"
That was as far as she got in her shout before one of his hands closed over her mouth.
"You got to be quiet," he said with his mouth close to her ear. "We don't know where those owlhoots are. They could still be out there."
Out there? What did he mean by out there? Julia tried to calm the hysteria she felt building inside her and looked around.
They were in a cave with a low, rugged ceiling riven with cracks. It was roughly circular, maybe fifteen feet in diameter. In the center was the fire that provided the heat she felt. Julia and the man holding her lay on one side of that little blaze, while on the other their clothes were laid out on a framework made from sticks shoved into the sandy cave floor.
Off to one side was the dark mouth of a tunnel small enough that a person would have to crawl to go through it. The man must have dragged her in here, Julia thought.
She made noises against the hand clapped over her mouth. The man said, "If I move my hand, do you promise not to yell?"
She nodded. Even though she could breathe through her nose, having her mouth covered like that was making her more panicky.
He lifted his hand. She moaned in pure humiliation. Being pressed together so intimately, so…nakedly…was something she should have been doing with Henry Everett after they were married, not with this stranger.
He must have taken her reaction for one of pain, because he said, "Are you hurt, miss?"
The way he called her "miss" told her who he was. She said, "You're that stagecoach guard!"