The Outlaw

by JoAnn Ross

  "I'll buy it." She placed the book on the counter.

  Audrey examined it for a price sticker. "It's pretty weather-beaten. How about two bucks?"

  "Two dollars seems more than fair." Noel did not volunteer that she would have been willing to pay a hundred times that.

  "It's hard to imagine a man with so much going for him, professionally, killing a family of innocent people for no apparent reason," Noel murmured, more to herself than to her gregarious hostess.

  Perhaps this was what she was doing here in Whiskey River, she considered, trying to make sense out of a situation that defied logic. Perhaps she was here to clear Wolfe Longwalker's name.

  "I always thought that was kinda odd, too." Audrey shrugged her well-padded shoulders once again. "But, those settlers were sure as shootin' dead. And someone had to have done it. I guess we'll never know for certain what happened at that cabin out at Whiskey River. Besides," she said, an irrepressible dimple creasing her powdered cheek, "if Wolfe hadn't become an outlaw, people probably wouldn't want to have their picture taken with him."

  "Have their picture taken?"

  "I can make a sepia print of you standing beside the cutout. Five bucks a picture. Three poses for ten dollars. And that includes a period costume and a cardboard folder with an easel back." She handed Noel her change. "Makes a real nice souvenir."

  Noel turned back to the life-size cardboard figure. Although she suspected she was letting her imagination run away with her, she could almost read the mocking challenge in those indigo eyes.

  "Perhaps another time," she said, shaking off the strange feeling. "I'm a little tired."

  "Well, of course you are," Audrey clucked sympathetically. "After your long trip. What you need now is a nice hot bubble bath, a glass of wine and a good night's sleep. Perhaps you'd like to pose with Wolfe tomorrow."

  Noel dragged her gaze from the figure of Wolfe Longwalker and gathered up her purchases. "Perhaps."

  "I'll bring the wine right up."

  "If you don't mind, I think I'll forgo the wine." Noel offered her most charming smile. "Jet lag." A frequent traveler, she'd never suffered jet lag in her life.

  Audrey seemed determined to prove herself a good hostess. "Tea then," she suggested. "I've some nice herbal tea that should hit the spot."

  Someone, somewhere in time, was belting out a chorus of "The Yellow Rose of Texas" on the piano. Once again, Noel heard the sound of laughter. The clink of glasses. She pressed the fingers of her right hand against her temple and took a deep breath.

  Royal training, drilled into her from the cradle, proved invaluable as Noel managed a smile. "Herbal tea sounds wonderful."

  After a soothing soak in the lion-footed bathtub and nearly an entire pot of Audrey's steaming-hot Red Zinger tea—which the animated innkeeper had served with a plate of rich dark homemade brownies—Noel's normally rocklike equilibrium had returned.

  Enough so that she forced herself to unpack before turning to the book of short stories that were calling to her like a siren song.

  As she took the clothing from her luggage, Noel's mind wandered, as it did so often these days, to her fiancé.

  She loved Bertran. Truly.

  She extracted a long silk nightgown from its folds of snowy tissue paper and placed it in the top drawer of the dresser.

  Unfortunately, she considered as she returned to the suitcase for panties and bras, there were times, and this was one of them, when it crossed her mind that looking at her childhood playmate was like looking in the mirror.

  They were both studious, intensely serious-minded individuals. Both could also be accused of being workaholics. Noel couldn't remember the last time Bertran had done anything just for fun.

  "And you're just as bad," she muttered.

  A picture of the two of them, sitting side by side in a lacy, flower-bedecked wedding bed, talking on their individual cellular phones while engrossed in their individual schedules and timetables and stacks of dry data flickered unattractively through her mind.

  "You love him," she reminded herself firmly. "And he loves you."

  So why, she asked herself with growing frustration, did her upcoming marriage to the handsome Montacroix banker—which had come as a surprise to absolutely no one in the kingdom—make her feel so despondent?

  She shook her head in self-disgust as she took a trio of cashmere sweaters and matching slacks from the suitcase.

  "What's the good of inheriting Katia's gift," she asked herself, "if it can't work for me?"

  Experience had taught Noel that when it came to her own life, she was no more psychic than the next woman. As she stacked the sweaters on the shelf of an antique pine armoire, she decided she was going to have to come to terms with her misgivings. And soon. Because once she walked down the long aisle of the historic Montacroix Cathedral and pledged her troth to Bertran, she would be Madame Rostand for life.

  "I love him," she insisted, closing the armoire door with more force than necessary. "I do!"

  More than a little frustrated, she poured out the last of the tea and climbed into the high four-poster bed with Rogues Across Time and turned to the section on Wolfe Longwalker.

  Wolfe was the illegitimate son of a U.S. Cavalry officer who'd been in charge of guarding the women captured during Kit Carson's campaign against the Navajo during their internment at Fort Defiance. Whiskey River's most infamous citizen had been born during the tribe's notorious three-hundred-mile forced "Long Walk" to imprisonment at Fort Sumner. Hence his last name. His first name, Noel read, was due to a birthmark in the shape of a wolfs head, on the inside of his wrist.

  His weak, exhausted, half-starved mother had died after giving birth along the trail, which gave Wolfe every reason to hate his father's people. According to the unknown author, he'd spent his early years plotting revenge.

  Which he eventually obtained. Not with bows and arrows or the ubiquitous Winchester rifle, but with the formidable power of the white man's words. After returning from the missionary school the government Indian agency had sent him to back East, he'd been apprenticed to a Whiskey River newspaperman. It was there Wolfe had learned that the pen truly was mightier than the sword.

  His reports of Indian life in the Arizona Territory had proven immensely popular with those same Easterners who'd made Frederic Remington a household name. His stories were printed in the Atlantic Monthly, Harper's Weekly and the New York Herald. His books became bestsellers not only in the United States, but in Europe, as well, earning him an audience with Queen Victoria. The elderly monarch, Noel read, had appeared suitably charmed by the powerful, handsome young man.

  Intrigued, Noel turned next to Wolfe Longwalker's book of short stories.

  The tea had gone cold, but totally immersed in the starkly drawn, yet mesmerizing depiction of Wolfe Longwalker's long-ago Navajo world, Noel didn't notice.

  It was late when she finished reading. Although she was exhausted, Noel couldn't fall asleep.

  She spent the long night lying in the cozy four-poster bed, staring out the window at the seemingly endless expanse of starlit sky, thinking about Bertran. And her upcoming marriage.

  But most of all, Noel thought about Wolfe Longwalker.

  3

  When she came downstairs the following morning, Noel discovered that Audrey took the breakfast part of her bed-and-breakfast commitment very seriously.

  "Breakfast was Jake's favorite meal," Audrey confided as she poured Noel a cup of steaming coffee. "It's a pleasure to have people to cook for again."

  Not wanting to throw cold water on Audrey's obvious enjoyment, Noel did her best to make inroads on the amazing variety of fruit and muffins, but turned down her hostess's offer of a western omelet, Canadian bacon and hash-brown potatoes.

  While she ate, she opened the copy of Rogues Across Time she'd brought downstairs with her, rereading the part about Wolfe's alleged crime.

  The author obviously believed the Indian writer had not committed the murders that resu
lted in his hanging. But believing and proving were two different things. Especially since there was no proof that anyone other than Wolfe Longwalker had killed those settlers.

  Since his jury consisted solely of local ranchers, it came as no surprise to anyone when he was convicted of the cold-blooded massacre of five settlers—three of them under the age of eight. The other men, who had presumably returned to the reservation, were never sought. Apparently, capturing the alleged ringleader satisfied everyone's blood lust for revenge.

  "The Massacre at Whiskey River," Noel murmured. Reaching into the pocket of her suede and denim jacket, she pulled out Chantal's invitation and studied the woodcut depicting the event.

  Considering that this was yet more proof that she'd been drawn here to clear Wolfe Longwalker's name, she returned the engraved invitation to her pocket and continued reading.

  The territorial judge had sentenced Wolfe to death by hanging, but before the sentence could be carried out, Noel read, he'd escaped. He'd managed to elude his captors for twelve days, but in the end, he'd been recaptured. And hanged.

  Noel closed the book with a sigh and rubbed her temples. During her sleepless night, she'd come to the conclusion that she'd been brought to Whiskey River to clear Wolfe's name. She'd also decided the best way to start her quest was to see where Wolfe's life had ended.

  After thanking Audrey for the breakfast, she left the inn, headed toward Whiskey River in her rental car. The rain, which had been a soft drizzle when she'd awakened, turned into a downpour. It was as if the sky had opened up overhead: thunder rumbled, lightning flashed and torrential rainfall lashed against the windshield, rendering the wipers nearly useless.

  Her fingers tightened on the steering wheel as she leaned forward and tried, with scant success, to see the road. She supposed the water was much-needed in this arid land, but it certainly made driving on the slick narrow road a challenge, even for someone who'd grown up in the Alps.

  The radio, tuned to a Winslow country station, began to crackle with static, stretching Noel's already taut nerves even tighter. She reached out and pushed the scan button.

  She'd only taken her eyes from the road for an instant. But it was long enough. When she looked up again, she saw a horse and rider galloping straight toward her.

  She twisted the wheel. Hard. The brakes locked up, throwing the rental car into a wild skid which she desperately tried to control, but couldn't.

  The car rolled over, coming to a shuddering stop on its crushed roof. The bloodred mare, which had just barely avoided being struck, whinnied loudly. The car horn blared.

  And then there was only deadly silence.

  And the lonely sound of falling rain.

  1896

  It was not going to be easy, Wolfe told himself as he galloped through the rain, away from Whiskey River. Certainly not as easy as escaping from that ramshackle wood and stone building the marshal laughingly called a jail. Or retrieving his mare from the terrified stable hand at the livery.

  He knew that as soon as they discovered him missing, they'd be after him. He also knew that there'd be a hefty price on his head. He was, after all, a very convenient scapegoat.

  His trial had been nothing more than a kangaroo court. A parade of witnesses had taken the stand, each placing his hand on the Bible, before swearing to some aspect of the Indian's guilt.

  That they were lying under oath had not seemed to bother them. He suspected they'd been paid to put aside any fears of divine retribution. Such behavior didn't surprise him; he'd already discovered that white men were willing to do just about anything for money.

  Which was what those killings were all about.

  The Anglo ranchers, who conspired to steal land that had once belonged to his people in order to graze their cattle, had all the forces of the United States government behind them. With guns and laws, they succeeded in having the Dineh rounded up and consigned to a small corner of the world Wolfe's mother's people had originally claimed.

  Not so long ago, the Navajo had roamed the land as far as the eye could see. Now there were houses. And towns, like Whiskey River. And all because the white man had discovered precious metals and coal in the distant, purple-hazed mountains.

  The whites wanted the mountain timber for their houses, and the grassland, home to the elk and the deer, for grazing their cattle. That it belonged to Indians did not sit well with these white newcomers. These men who made their fortunes at the expense of others.

  And now, the very same ranchers who'd stolen the Dineh's land were being vexed by a new group of settlers. Families who'd come West, foolishly believing that they could farm this arid, high desert rangeland. They were determined to conquer the land; diverting streams, pumping the water with their windmills, and with their sharp plows, ripping open the earth until she bled. The final straw had come when they'd begun stringing barbed wire over what had been open range.

  That such intruders had to go had been obvious to the ranchers. It was, admittedly, preferable that they leave willingly. But those who stubbornly dug in their heels were treated by the ranchers to harsher methods.

  And if the Indians could be blamed, so much the better.

  Everyone knew what was happening. Wolfe suspected that there were even those white men who considered murder for profit wrong. Unfortunately, they hadn't been on his jury.

  He didn't have a plan. There was, of course, always Mexico, although that was too obvious for his liking. Another possibility was to make to California, where he could become lost in the mining camps and gold-fields of the Sierra Madre.

  He could go to Alaska, that place where some old-time medicine men professed his people had once lived. Or to New York, where he had powerful friends in the publishing world who'd help him attain honest legal counsel, rather than the drunken, half-wit who'd been assigned his case by the territorial governor. The lawyer had been recommended to the governor by a coalition of Whiskey River ranchers who had their own reasons for wanting Wolfe Longwalker to hang. His stories depicting native life, which had so caught on back East where the laws were made, did nothing to further the ranchers' cause.

  He was not without choices, Wolfe reminded himself as he galloped his mare, hell-bent for leather, away from Whiskey River. The thing to do was to get to the reservation where he could hide out in the canyons until he decided which option was best.

  The rain was pouring from the blackened sky, making visibility difficult. But he was a man of the land, accustomed to such powerful Father rains.

  Wolfe would later decide that it was his inattentiveness that caused him to ride into the path of that black buggy.

  His mare saw it at the same time he did. Wolfe pulled up hard on the reins at the instant the mare rose back on her hind legs. Only the immense power in his inner thighs kept him from being flung headfirst over the horse's head.

  Unfortunately, the driver of the buggy was not so lucky. Its horse reared, as well, causing the carriage to overturn. The horse broke free of its harness and tore off into the rain.

  Cursing, Wolfe dismounted and walked over to the woman who'd been thrown free.

  She'd landed beneath a tree, on a thick layer of pine needles that had fortuitously cushioned the blow. When he rolled her over, a faint sense of recognition tugged, but concerned by her unconscious state, Wolfe didn't stop to dwell on it. Kneeling beside her, he bent down and felt the soft breath coming from her pale lips. He picked up her wrist to check her pulse. Her blood-beat was thready, but even.

  A knot was rising on her forehead, which explained her unconsciousness. He combed his fingers through her wet hair, looking for scalp wounds and finding none. Turning his attention to the rest of her, he ran his hands first down her arms, then her legs. When his probing touch drew a response, he took her ragged moan as a good sign and unbuttoned her denim and suede jacket.

  Beneath the jacket she was wearing a silk shirt. It crossed his mind that the combination of rough denim and silk was an intriguing, if unorthodox, choice. I
t also made it more difficult to pinpoint exactly who— and what—she was.

  Most of the women who wore denim in territorial Arizona were miners' wives, who labored long hard days working hardscrabble claims alongside their husbands.

  Silk was reserved for whores and the occasional cavalry commander's wife who quickly learned that the fabric was highly impractical in a place where, too often, the laundry was beaten to near death in huge copper kettles over a fire.

  The fact that this woman was not wearing a wedding band suggested she was no officer's wife. And her complexion was too smooth, her skin too soft, her scent too subtle for a whore.

  Her blouse was fastened with tiny pearl buttons that echoed the pearls adorning her earlobes. Having traveled among the royalty of Europe, Wolfe recognized the pearl earrings to be of excellent quality. Nearly as excellent as the icy diamond she was wearing on the fourth finger of her left hand.

  Whoever this woman was, she was obviously wealthy. Which meant, Wolfe determined grimly, that when she didn't arrive wherever she'd been headed, people would undoubtedly begin searching for her.

  Frustration laced with impatience roughened his touch as he continued to probe for injuries. When his fingers pressed against a rib, she flinched. When they moved down her side, she moaned.

  But still her eyes did not open.

  Assuring himself that his interest was solely that of the Good Samaritan, Wolfe unbuttoned her silk blouse. Rocking back on his heels, he gazed in surprise at the skimpy band of flowered lace that barely covered her breasts in lieu of a more proper camisole.

  Her torso was bare. Her flesh was as smooth as her silk blouse and distractingly fragrant. From what he could tell, her ribs were not broken, but merely bruised.

  When his fingers brushed against the sides of her breasts, her lids flew open and he found himself suddenly staring down into a pair of eyes that were as crystal blue as the lakes in the territory's high country.