Texas Lucky

by Maggie James

  “If they’re around here,” she said as she hastily dressed, “how come they never bothered Saul?”

  “Indians don’t bother prospectors all that much, because they’re no real threat to their game or their land. Then, too, Saul probably made friends by giving them beads, things like that.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t have any beads.”

  “No, but you’ve got something they want.”

  She looked at him and quirked a brow.

  He grinned. “The same thing I want.”

  “That’s not funny.”

  “Come on. We’ll be fine once we reach the mesquite. I’ll buckle the horse and make him lay down, too, so they won’t spot us. There’s probably not many of them, anyway. It’s a hunting party, not a war party. So there’s no need for confrontation if we lay low.”

  He mounted and held out his hand to her to swing her up behind him, but then she cried, “No, wait…” and ran back inside.

  Curt frowned to see the white bundle, but made no comment.

  They rode in tense silence for a time, and then Tess dared ask, “Have you fought Indians before?”

  “A few times.”

  “How many have you killed?”

  Suddenly he reined to a stop and twisted in the saddle. “I don’t like shooting people, Tess. Not outlaws. Not Indians. Not even Yankees during the war. I do it to survive. I do whatever it takes to survive. That’s what life is all about. Or you die. Especially in the West. But I don’t brag about killing, and I try to avoid it. That’s why we’re going to hide now.”

  She indicated she understood with a somber nod and said nothing more.

  A few moments later, she felt his back go rigid, and terror rippled up her spine even before she heard the dreaded words: “Dust. They’re behind us. We’ll just make it to the mesquite in time.”

  Finally reaching the forest, Tess watched, awed, as Curt was able to get the horse to lie down like he wanted. Then he drew her with him to curl at the horse’s belly.

  “Don’t move. Don’t make a sound,” he ordered. “We have to stay this way till they ride by.”

  The minutes dragged, and Tess became cramped and stiff.

  Curt held her against him with one arm while stretching his other across the horse, gun in hand.

  She could feel his breath warm against her ear. Her neck was aching, and she struggled to bend it, just a little, to try to get relief.

  He squeezed her tighter and whispered, “Stop squirming. They’re right nearby.”

  She heard the faint sound of hoofbeats on the rocks.

  The pain in her taut neck was like a hot knife, slicing into her muscles. She had to move it, just a little, for it was unbearable.

  Gritting her teeth, she pushed her chin down to see the huge, ugly monster creeping toward her leg…and screamed.

  Chapter Eleven

  Curt leaped to peer out through the bramble of mesquite and saw the Indians. Perhaps thirty feet away, there were two of them, and already they were raising their rifles in his direction.

  But Curt was quicker and fired off two shots.

  One was struck in the neck, the other square between the eyes.

  At the same instant, his horse, which had been obediently laying on the ground, scrambled up at the sound of gunfire and galloped away.

  Tess had rolled into a ball, drawing her knees up to her chin and covering her ears with her hands, and was staring, transfixed, at the huge lizard.

  Curt followed her gaze to see the stubby orange and black creature, perhaps a foot and a half long. It was fierce-looking, all right, but if Tess knew anything about the desert she would have known it was no danger unless she provoked it.

  With a swift kick, he sent the lizard sailing into the brambles and said, disgusted, “It’s a gila. He would have crawled over you and kept on going.”

  “I…I didn’t know that,” she said uncertainly as she got to her feet. There, looking out to see the bodies laying on the ground, cried, “Oh, God, no. You killed them.”

  “They would have killed us…or made us beg to die.”

  He made his way through the mesquite, with Tess right behind him.

  They were laying facedown. Curt rolled them over to make sure they were dead, though he had no doubts.

  Tess gasped, “Oh, my God. They’re just boys. No older than Perry. And you killed them, and it’s my fault.”

  “Yeah, it’s your fault, all right,” Curt said matter-of-factly, not about to gloss over the situation. It was her fault, damn it, because if she’d kept still and not acted like a silly fool when the gila came along, the Indians would have passed by, never knowing they were there.

  “I…I’m so sorry, Curt,” she managed to croak, backing away in horror at the sight. “They’re so young…”

  Curt gave a disgusted snort. “They weren’t boys. They were Apache. That makes a difference. They’ve probably been going on raids and killing and scalping for years.”

  They were bare-chested and wore buckskin breeches and moccasins. A tattered yellow cavalry bandanna held back the ink-black hair of one of them; the other wore a hat made of a bison scalp with horns sticking out. They were known as deadly warriors, and Curt said as much to Tess.

  “So now we’ve got to bury them,” he explained, “because others will come looking for them when they don’t turn up, and if they find the bodies, they’ll track us. We’re still a day’s ride from Fort Verde, and they might catch up with us before we get there.”

  “But we can ride their horses. We can go faster.”

  “They aren’t horses. They’re ponies—pintos. And we aren’t taking them, because we might be taken for Comanche and get shot at. I’ll round up our horse once we get the graves dug, then I’ll run the ponies off.”

  Tess was still feeling sick. In her whole life she had seen only three dead bodies, and they had all been relatives lying in peaceful repose in someone’s parlor. The bloody scene before her was alien and unnerving and magnified by the guilt of knowing it had happened because she was such a coward.

  “Let’s dig.”

  She blinked at him. “With what?”

  He knelt and handed her a sharp stone, then motioned her to follow him as he started walking toward the mesquite grove.

  She stared from the stone to him. “You expect me to dig a grave with this?”

  “It’s all we’ve got, Tess, but it won’t be too difficult. The ground is mostly sand, and we aren’t going deep—just enough to tuck the bodies in and then pile rocks on top to keep scavengers away long enough for us to make Fort Verde.” He cast a wary eye skyward and frowned to see vultures already starting to make sweeping circles overhead. “They’re the problem. The Chiricahua will spot them right off, so we have to hurry and get the bodies covered.”

  Curt chose a spot where there did not appear to be many mesquite roots to hinder digging. Dropping to his knees, he grasped his own sharp rock and began to dig.

  Tess watched for only a moment before joining him. Soon blisters formed and her fingers began to bleed, but she dug in a near frenzy, determined to do her share.

  Curt watched out of the corner of his eye, and though he was still annoyed with her for causing him to kill when it could have been avoided, he could not help but feel sorry for her. He was almost tempted to shoo her away and say he would finish the job. Hell, he was digging ten times faster and deeper, anyway, but figured she needed the lesson…needed to be shown, by God, just how damn hard life could be. Then maybe she would high-tail it back east—where she belonged.

  Sweat dripped from her brow, but Tess kept toiling, well aware that she hardly made a dent in the rocks and sand. Curt was way ahead of her, but she continued working.

  At last Curt said, “It’s deep enough. Help me carry them over here.”

  Tess swallowed hard.

  She had not thought about having to touch the bodies.

  Doggedly, she followed him.

  “I’ll take the shoulders. You grab
the ankles. They aren’t—” he hesitated, about to say they weren’t all that heavy, because they were just kids but decided that would be a cruel reminder. She felt bad about it—as she should—but there was no need to rub it in—“heavy,” he finished.

  It was all Tess could do to force herself to reach down and wrap her hands around the flesh that was already turning cold. But she did so, keeping her eyes averted so she would not have to look at the boy whose death would haunt her, she knew, for the rest of her life.

  Curt pitched him into the grave, then reached in and took his knife, which had been tied around his waist with a rawhide thong. “I might need it,” he murmured.

  When the second Indian was in the ground, Curt said, “You can gather rocks, as big as you’re able to carry, and pile them on while I take one of the ponies and go find our horse.”

  She gulped. “You’re leaving me here?”

  Exasperated, he snapped, “We have to hurry, Tess, because there’s no way of knowing exactly how far they were from the rest of their band, or how long they’ve been gone. We’ve got to get the hell out of here…and fast. So don’t argue and start piling rocks.”

  “But I’m not—”

  He walked away, ignoring her and feeling more than a little bad about being so hard on her. But it was for her own good, dammit.

  After finding his horse and shooing the pintos away, he hurried back to find Tess had managed to cover a third of the grave with rocks.

  He helped her finish and was gratified to glance up and note that the vultures had disappeared.

  When they were at last on their way, Curt rode hard, and Tess declared, “The first thing I’m going to do when I get my ranch is learn how to ride. I don’t intend to ever ride behind anybody bouncing on a horse’s bare butt again if I can help it.”

  Curt almost jerked to a halt, because her words struck like a rock falling out of the sky.

  When I get my ranch…

  Had he heard her right?

  Surely not, not after all she had been through. Dammit, she should well be convinced the West was no place for somebody like her.

  But he had heard her right, because she continued, “You said ten thousand dollars was enough, and—”

  “And I never thought for a minute you were serious. You’ve got no business even thinking about it,” he growled above the wind whipping their faces. “What’s it going to take to make you realize that, Tess? First you send me to jail and almost get me hanged because you were too scared to listen to reason. Then you go to jail yourself because you don’t know a gun handle from a hole in the ground. And two people just got killed because you screamed over a lizard. If anybody was not meant to live in the West, it’s you.”

  He felt her pull away from him. “Well…well…” she sputtered, then yelled in a rush, “Don’t you worry about it, you hear? Just get me to the fort and then forget you ever knew me.”

  “Don’t worry,” he fired back, hating himself for his anger when all the while he wanted to grab her and crush her against him and hold her tight and tell her he’d never let anybody or anything ever hurt her again.

  But he couldn’t.

  Not now.

  Maybe not ever.

  She wasn’t his kind, and not because she wasn’t a soft woman, either, for, skinny as she was, the truth was she felt good. Real damn good. She just wasn’t tough enough, that’s all, and the kind of life he planned to live, rugged and rough ranching, would take a rugged and rough woman.

  Which she wasn’t.

  And never would be.

  They lapsed into silence, which suited him fine, and when the sun began to sink, dragging the last vestiges of day with it, he was gratified to realize they had made it to the boulder-strewn Granite Dells.

  He rode the horse into a jumbled mass of huge rocks with soft, flat areas between. Dismounting, he helped Tess down and could feel her stiffness against him…could see her tight-set lips and the angry fire smoldering in her eyes. Good. She was mad. Let her stay mad. It would make it easier when he had to leave her.

  “We’re far enough away to make a fire,” he said as he got the small hunk of deer meat he had found tied to one of the ponies. “Gather what sticks you can find while I get this cleaned. There’s a little stream running between those two big rocks where we can bathe and get water.”

  Without a word, Tess went to her task. By the time Curt returned with the meat skinned and skewered, he was surprised to see that she had the fire going. But he did not compliment her, hating to be so cold but again reminding himself it was for her benefit.

  He had also taken blankets from the Indians’ ponies and noted Tess winced when he gave her one to bed down on. He knew she would have preferred not to, but it was better than sleeping with nothing between her and the ground.

  They ate in silence, and then she left him to sleep.

  He tossed and turned restlessly, wishing she were in his arms, wanting her. But he knew it had to end sometime, and the sooner, the better.

  The next morning, she was up and ready to ride before he was.

  “We’ll make Fort Verde by midday,” he told her as he saddled the horse. “The soldiers there can get you on to Prescott. It’s only seventeen miles or so north from there.”

  Quietly, as though she had spent a lot of time thinking about it, she said, “I’d hoped you’d take me with you to Dallas. There’s nothing for me in Prescott.”

  He gave the cinch an extra-hard yank. “There’s nothing for you in Dallas, either.”

  Her chin jutted upward. “That’s not for you to say. And I’m willing to pay you to take me to Dallas.”

  He turned to flash a wry grin as he said, “You don’t have that much money.”

  She snapped, “Then maybe you’d like to just leave me right here.”

  “Yep, I would. Because you’re nothing but trouble, princess. But I’m a gentleman and my conscience won’t let me.”

  “To hell with your conscience.” With a swish of her skirt, she strode angrily to the horse and took down the bag of money he had hung around the saddle horn. “And to hell with you. I’d rather walk to the fort than ride one more mile with you.”

  He was a head taller, but she did not wither beneath his sudden icy glare as she continued to berate him. “You talk about me being trouble. Well, I’ll have you to know I’m not to blame for your being charged with murder. That was your doing, because you were so stupid. As for being a gentleman”—she poked him in the chest with an angry finger—“you took advantage of me, and—”

  He grabbed her finger and squeezed. “Wait a damn minute. I did no such thing. You wanted it as bad as I did, and you know it.”

  She tried to pull from his grasp, but he held tight. “That’s not true. I was frightened and lonely, and—”

  “And hot and horny.” He grinned down at her. “And you’re cuter than a kitten spitting at a pesky puppy, but I don’t have time to stand here and play with you. Now, you are riding with me to the fort, and then you can do whatever you like, but I’ll see you there and safe.”

  She kicked and struggled as he picked her up and sat her on the horse. Then he took the money bag away from her and retied it to the saddle horn before mounting himself.

  “I wish I’d never met you,” she cried, leaning as far back from him as possible. “I wish to God I’d stayed in my part of the shaft, and—”

  “And like I said before, you talk a lot for a little girl.”

  He popped the reins, and they both lapsed into stony silence.

  At last the fort came into sight, a fortress of logs pointing skyward, the American flag flying proudly from a post just inside the high, wide gates.

  After the sentry saw they were white, the gate was opened and they rode in, to be immediately surrounded by soldiers.

  Tess looked into the sea of men in dusty hats, blue shirts, yellow bandannas around their necks, a gold stripe down the side of their pants, and all wearing scruffy boots, and she realized it was the firs
t time she had not felt surrounded by unfriendly faces since arriving in Arizona.

  The crowd parted for a man who looked neater and cleaner than the rest. As he drew closer, Tess saw that he had gold bars on the shoulders of his uniform.

  He held out a white-gloved hand to her. “I’m Captain Brent Halliday. Welcome to Fort Verde, Miss…?” he lifted his voice in question.

  “Tess Partridge,” she obliged pleasantly. “And I know I must look a sight. We’ve come a long way and been through a terrible ordeal. If you’ve a store where I might buy something to wear…”

  “No, I’m sorry. You’ll have to go into Prescott for that. But I’m sure one of the officers’ wives will have something to fit you.” He turned to Curt. “And you, Mr. Partridge, are also welcome.”

  Curt was quick to correct him. “The name is Curt Hammond, and I’m merely escorting Miss Partridge. You can take over now. All I need is a stiff drink of whiskey and I’ll be on my way.”

  Despite her smoldering ire, Tess could not deny the tremor of regret that swept over her to see him go, but she would be damned if she would let him know it.

  “Nonsense,” Captain Halliday was saying. “You’ll stay the night. Give your horse food and rest, and the same for you. The general will expect it. Now, Miss Partridge”—he held out his arm to her—“I’ll show you to the guest quarters.”

  Tess hesitated only long enough to take the money bag from the saddle horn, giving Curt a blistering glare as she did so. Then, tucking her hand daintily in the crook of the officer’s arm, she offered her brightest smile as he explained the layout of the horseshoe-shaped compound while they walked.

  The general’s office and quarters were in the middle, with married officers and wives sequestered on one side, barracks for the enlisted men on the other. Situated in the rear were the munitions building, stables, and supply house.