“I am hungry. You’ve been here before?” She realized they must indeed have been through the area to know there was a river in that spot. She could see no sign of it from her position on the horse.
“We’ve traveled through here a few times,” Caleb answered. Did he seem even more on guard than he had been? Sarah wondered at the way he seemed to look all around, as if expecting danger.
“It’s pretty land.”
“Yes, the Cherokee think so, too,” Joshua said. His gaze, like his brothers, seemed to look everywhere at once.
“Cherokee? Aren’t they Indians?”
“They are indeed.”
“And they’re near here? Near us, right now?” Sarah would admit that her real knowledge of the Indians and Indian matters was almost non-existent.
When she’d been younger, her father had taken to purchasing dime novels that he read late at night. Sarah used to sneak into her father’s study to peruse these dramatic accounts of the violent clashes between “God-fearing, patriotic American settlers” and the “wild Indians”. She recalled some of her earliest nightmares had centered around those stories, some of which had been quite gruesome in their depictions of Indians or soldiers or even the settlers themselves being massacred. Her mother had never known about Sarah’s clandestine reading, nor had she ever approved of those novels being in the house in the first place. As far as Sarah knew, her father still liked to pick up those simple books to while away an afternoon.
Sarah had no idea what her father’s current wife thought of the practice.
“Of course they’re near here. This is their land, sweetheart. We’re in Indian Territory.”
“Indian Territory?” She heard the squeak in her voice and wondered if the smiles both men gave her were because they thought her funny or because they wanted to reassure her she had nothing to fear.
She rather suspected the former.
“Relax, Sarah. The Cherokee are a peaceful people. At least the ones we’ve met have always been. We need to travel through their land, then through that of the Choctaw. In fact, once on Choctaw land, we’ll be passing within ten miles of Durant. It’s not a large city, but it has many of the same amenities you’d find almost anywhere in Arkansas or Texas.”
“Oh. I thought hostilities existed, still, between the Indians and some of the settlers.”
“Some settlers seem to be of the opinion they can just move into the area, claim it as their own. So in a sense there are some hostilities. But nothing any of us have to worry about. Necessarily.”
“Joshua.”
Caleb’s tone of censure made his brother chuckle. “I’m sorry, Sarah. You looked so spooked I couldn’t resist teasing you a little. Seriously, we have nothing to worry about. The Cherokee and the Choctaw, at the heart of it, are no different than us. The people here just want to live their lives in peace.”
Sarah found her gaze drawn to Caleb. There were moments when she found it impossible to remember the brothers were twins. Caleb always seemed older, more serious. He was, between the two of them, the undisputed leader.
“He’s right. We are relatively safe here because he and I have spent some time among both the Cherokee and the Choctaw. Besides, you have to know we’ll keep you safe.”
“Bet your ass.” Joshua said.
Sarah widened her eyes in shock at the crude expression, then burst out laughing. She was beginning to understand that before she’d left her sheltered existence at her father’s house in Chicago, she really hadn’t known anything about the world at all.
She pushed aside her nebulous fear of the unknown and seized onto the only reality that mattered at the moment. She was with two men she had come to love. They would keep her safe.
* * * *
Caleb couldn’t shake the feeling they were being watched.
Well able to split his attention, he focused on Sarah and on the area around them. They’d come off the large plateau Springfield had been built upon, picking their way through the sometimes rocky slopes of the Ozarks. Now the ground gradually leveled, and they would continue to descend until they reached the border of Texas.
A series of lakes and rivers assured them of plenty of water for themselves and the horses. They’d packed supplies from the general store in Springfield, enough to last them several days more than they needed. He’d hoped to be able to avoid civilization during their journey. Safer to stick to the untamed land, to make their way depending only upon themselves.
He turned from hobbling his horse by the stream and caught the sight of Sarah stretching the kinks from her back.
They hadn’t been able to keep their cocks out of her last night, either. She had to be sore, riding astride all day.
She hadn’t complained even once.
Sarah noticed him staring at her. She blushed, lowering her arms slowly, then smiled. He smiled back and went over to her.
“We’ve stopped maybe a couple hours sooner than I originally planned but only because we made it this far. It’s a good place to camp, and the shorter day will give the horses a good rest. We haven’t been setting a blistering pace, but I want to keep them working for us as long as we can. There are a couple of places we can get fresh horses but not for several days. Will you be all right to put in another long day tomorrow?”
“Yes. I won’t lie to you. I’m sore. But I’ll ride as long as we need to ride.”
Sarah had a way of lifting her chin slightly when she asserted herself. He didn’t think it a trait she’d indulged in much in the past—hell, she’d married a man at her father’s behest. So he bent down and placed a quick kiss on her lips. He’d allow her the display of grit, and he’d keep an eye on her. If she flagged at any time, then he’d simply carry her.
Joshua had gathered enough wood for their fire. Since it might take a bit of time to catch their dinner, they opted to have some coffee first. The smell of it brewing always perked Caleb up, and it seemed to have the same effect of Sarah.
“I’ve been thinking,” she said. “When I look back on it, I realize Mr. Maddox couldn’t have been too pleased with the idea of marrying me in the first place. On top of that whole wedding night fiasco where he passed out, drunk, he barely spoke to me and hardly looked me in the eye. Father, on the other hand, held the man’s full attention. I’ve come to the conclusion he only married me as a favor to my father.”
Caleb looked from Sarah’s sincere expression to his brother’s doubtful one. A man might do a lot of things for another man. Caleb wasn’t altogether certain that getting married to the man’s daughter fell into that category. Of course, Sarah made his mouth water—she would any man’s. He could buy her theory if Maddox had ravished her. The fact he hadn’t touched her was not just damned odd, it bothered Caleb.
“He didn’t speak to you or look you in the eye?”
“Barely at all. In fact, he treated my step-mother the exact same way he treated me. I’ve served as hostess for my father before he married Miranda and if I saw Maddox and Miranda like that at one of my dinner parties, I’d make certain I didn’t have them seated anywhere close together at any future gathering.”
“Because you thought perhaps he didn’t like her?”
Sarah shrugged. “He didn’t seem to like either of us, was more interested in talking with Father. Well, some men, especially older men, don’t pay much mind to women.”
“And stupid ones,” Joshua said.
Sarah smiled. “Thank you. But my point is he likely really doesn’t care about me one way or the other. So I shouldn’t have much trouble getting him to agree to the annulment, especially once I tell him that I don’t want to be married to him.”
Caleb looked at his brother. Joshua’s expression told him they thought basically the same thing. He didn’t think Sarah’s disentanglement from Tyrone Maddox would be as simple as she believed it would.
He felt torn. He didn’t want to upset her by disagreeing with her, but neither did he want to treat her in a patronizing way by agreeing wi
th her. He imagined she’d had a belly full of that kind of treatment all her life.
“There’s still the matter of the five thousand dollars,” Caleb said.
“Oh.” Sarah’s face turned a pretty shade of red. “Right. My bride price. I’d almost forgotten about that.” She stared into her coffee cup for a long moment.
“Are there any lawyers in Waco?” she asked.
“One or two,” Joshua said.
Caleb laughed. “One or two dozen, you mean.”
Sarah brightened at the news. “A lawyer could help me write a promissory note. When I turn twenty-five, I come into an inheritance—my maternal grandfather left me a little something. I’m not certain how much it is, but it must be enough to pay back Maddox. A lawyer could verify the terms of my grandfather’s bequest. Don’t you think?”
“He won’t want to wait for the money, sweetheart,” Joshua said.
“No, he won’t.” Caleb agreed. “But that’s all right. We’ve got that much. We’ll pay him.”
“Oh, but I couldn’t—”
“Stop right there, sweetheart,” Caleb heard the harshness in his tone and strove to soften it. “You’re ours, remember?”
“And we take care of what’s ours,” Joshua finished for him.
“Then I’ll pay you back,” Sarah said.
“Maybe you didn’t understand what Joshua and I just—”
“My father sold me!”
Caleb had known that knowledge wounded Sarah, but he hadn’t understood how deeply until just now when he heard the pain in her words.
“He sold me as if I had been no better than a horse or a slave. I know I’m yours. And you’re mine, both of you. But this is something I have to pay back.”
“All right, Sarah.” If he ever had the opportunity to meet Sarah’s father, he hoped he had his anger in hand enough that he didn’t beat the shit out of the man. For now, he worked at keeping his tone gentle.
“We’ll help you do that,” Joshua said, with much the same forced gentleness.
“Thank you.”
“Sarah, how is it you don’t know how much your inheritance is?” Caleb asked her after thinking about it. She had mentioned the same thing once before, and he’d wondered then, but that had been before she’d become his lover and thereby his business.
“Oh, well, the money had been left to me by my mother’s father. He’d cut mother out of his life when she ran off to marry my father. I don’t think she ever saw him again. And then she got sick and died. Father has never spoken of the man and only mentioned in passing that he’d left me something.”
“So you don’t know the terms of the bequest or the amount?”
“No, just that the money can’t be touched until I’m twenty-five years old.”
“Why are you looking so uncomfortable, sweetheart? You know we’ve seen you naked.”
Sarah laughed at Joshua’s words. “That means,” he continued, “that there should be no embarrassment between us about anything at all.”
“It’s just that I realized I only knew that last part because Miranda told me. She told me that Father wouldn’t have had to sell me if he could have gotten his hands on my money.”
“Miranda is your stepmother?”
“According to the laws of Illinois, yes.”
Caleb laughed. It was good to see that prickly side of her.
“The laws of the land are made by men, and men, by and large, don’t seem to be able to see women very clearly. Our Dad died when we were small—kind of the opposite of what you went through—and our Mom raised us, took care of the ranch. She was one hell of a woman. She could stand toe to toe with any man. And I see some of her in you.”
He didn’t expect to see Sarah’s face soften at his words or for her to crawl into his lap, put her arms around his neck, and lay her mouth so sweetly on his.
Caleb wrapped his arms around her, the taste of her igniting his hunger. He kissed her long and deep and found her a more compelling drink than the coffee he’d just sipped. His tongue swept her mouth, challenged hers to a dance hot and sultry, a dance where clothes vanished and only the glide of body against body mattered.
Sun still up or not, he wanted to be inside her. She excited him as no other woman ever had. She wanted him with such honest desire, he wondered if she understood what a miracle she was to him, to them both. Her need for his brother matched her need for him, and he would surely spend the rest of his life thanking God for her.
“Caleb.”
The note in Joshua’s voice alerted him. He gently weaned his lips from Sarah’s, tucked her into him, and looked to see what had his brother’s attention.
From the west, stretched across the landscape like a snake moving sideways, the sun a blazing orb above them, a line of horses and riders approached. The cloud of dust in their wake left it unclear as to whether there was more than one row of them, if they had reinforcements waiting farther back.
Caleb got to his feet slowly. Not taking his eyes off the advancing column, he set Sarah behind him. His rifle rested in its scabbard at the back of his saddle and out of reach. He had every faith in his Colt .45 side arm, but pulling out his Peacemaker would raise the situation to an entirely new level, and Caleb wasn’t certain he wanted to do that unless he had to.
“Cherokee,” Joshua said. Caleb shot a glance beside him and saw Joshua had also left his gun holstered.
He could feel Sarah trembling behind him. He couldn’t blame her. “No matter what, Sarah, don’t say anything,” he whispered.
The column drew steadily closer, and it became easier to make out the details. Bare-chested warriors, black hair pulled back, and adorned by the traditional black and red headdress, black paint marking faces that appeared fierce and forbidding.
The column stopped barely two hundred feet from them. Silence thicker than the dust kicked up by their horses’ hooves descended.
Three horses stepped forward, two paces ahead of the rest. The riders waited a moment as if giving them a chance to see just what they faced and just how unhappy the warriors were.
“The one in the middle of the three is their Chief,” Caleb said softly.
The horses came toward them, bringing their riders closer, so close that it became easier to discern the individual features of the men, to judge the degree of hostility each face wore.
The three riders stopped. The man on the left of the Chief leaned forward on his horse. He scowled, his manner brusque.
“You are trespassing on the land of the Ani-Yun' wiya. Our Chief demands to know the reason why.”
Chapter 12
Adam was worried about Caleb and Joshua. He couldn’t push away the thread of guilt that wound its way into his thoughts. He’d been the one to get them into whatever mess they had ended up neck deep in. Having been alerted by Sheriff MacFarlane’s telegram, he had immediately begun to come up with a plan. But the plain truth of the matter was that until they crossed the border into Texas, he could do very little to help or protect them.
The sun dropped to the horizon, providing a blazing sunset to trumpet the end of the day. Temperatures had soared this afternoon, and if the colors on display in the sunset could be counted any indication, there’d be no relief from the heat tomorrow.
Adam couldn’t rid himself of the feeling of impending doom. He looked down at the notes he’d made. He’d reached out to several friends and colleagues, asking questions, looking closely where he’d not looked before. He was uncovering the puzzle pieces one by one, but they didn’t seem to fit. Things weren’t adding up, and that made him nervous.
Lack of evidence didn’t prevent Adam from having his suspicions. What he suspected was just plain ugly.
He got to his feet, stretched. The door opened, and his relief officer, Sergeant Fred Saunders, nodded as he came in. He hung his hat on a peg and tossed his saddle bag on his desk.
“Beamer cattle drive is on the outskirts of town. You may have a lively night, Fred. Peter Beamer promised he’d ke
ep an eye on his crew but once they get drinking…” Adam let the sentence hang, giving Fred a huge smile.
“Did anyone even once consider that having the primary cattle trail pass so close to Waco was going to just be a continual headache for us poor, over-worked, and under-paid rangers?”
Adam laughed and slapped his deputy on the back. “Yeah, likely for about a minute and then thoughts of all the money to be made pushed that piece of logic away. I’ll be at home tonight, so if you need me, someone can come get me.”
“Hopefully it won’t come to that. If I need immediate reinforcements, I’ll wake up Johnny and Wilson since they both live here in town.”
“There you go.” Adam grabbed his hat and headed out. He always took a few minutes at the end of the day to walk The Square, making contact with the citizens of his town. He’d been assigned to Waco right after the war. When the Rangers had been disbanded, he’d bought himself a small ranch outside town. He could make a living that way if he had to. He’d been born and raised on a ranch and knew cattle nearly as well as he knew the law. But his first love had always been working as a lawman, and he’d considered enlisting in the new Texas State Police at the time.
Then Governor Coke got elected, and he and the legislature had the good sense to reinstate the Rangers.
That was a few years ago. Adam had every confidence the Texas Rangers would remain a force to be reckoned with for some time to come.
Waco was a good town. They saw a lot of transients but for the most part, those tended to be law-abiding folk, only interested in doing their business then relaxing at the end of the day. They got a lot of drovers, thanks to the Chisholm Trail running so close to Waco. He shook his head. His town stood on the verge becoming a city, growing every year, and he didn’t know how he really felt about that because he was a country boy at heart.
Adam ended his rounds at the livery where he collected his horse, Houston. He lived about forty minutes outside of town. His nightly ride generally made for good thinking time. But this night, as he made his way along the familiar trail, no answers came to him.
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