“Your men won’t be going with us. I can’t take an entire group of strangers into Cochise’s camp. It will have to be just the two of us.”
“Dios!”
The girl glanced toward Carmen, apparently only just then aware someone else was in the room. Travis could almost read her thoughts as she eyed Carmen’s yellow satin gown and gripped the frayed edge of her own dirty poncho. Carmen stared at the girl’s hair with horror and revulsion. Daniella turned fiery red from the neck up.
“This is the most preposterous thing I’ve ever heard,” Carmen exclaimed. “Quierdo, you can’t possibly believe a word this…this puta says. I’ve seen her kind before. You get out on the trail somewhere, alone in the wilderness, just the two of you, and before you know it her father shows up with a shotgun, and poof! The next thing you know, you are married. It is the only way a girl like her can get a husband.”
The room grew silent as all eyes once again turned to Daniella.
“Well,” Travis drawled. “Is that what this is all about? Are you simply out to trap a husband?” Lord had said the girl would never catch a husband after spending all that time with the Apaches. Who’d have her? A shudder ran through him. He’d been trapped that way once in his life, but never again, by damned.
Daniella returned his stare coldly. “I assumed you were already married. Most men with children are.”
“My wife died several years ago,” he said. “Does that mean you’re not after a husband? I thought all females were after a husband.” He let his gaze flick briefly to Carmen. That one was definitely after a husband.
“Not this female. Do you know how I got this?” Daniella hissed, pointing to the white streak in her hair.
Travis indeed had no idea. But he did have a very good idea of what must have happened to her at the hands of the Apaches, and he felt uncomfortable with the subject. He didn’t particularly want to embarrass the poor girl, although why he should concern himself with her feelings was beyond him. He shrugged carelessly and said, “No.”
He watched her clench her hands into tight fists until her knuckles turned white. “Let’s just say I’m most definitely not after a husband. In fact, the next man who even touches me will find his throat slit before he knows what happened.”
Travis looked into her pale blue eyes and knew it was no idle threat. His gaze skimmed over her again and picked out things he hadn’t noticed before, like the bowie knife sticking out of the top of her knee-high moccasin, and the telltale bulge on one thigh. She had a holster strapped to that thigh, and the holster wasn’t empty. The look in her eyes said she knew how to use both the knife and the pistol.
“That’s something I’ll take your promise on right now,” she said. “We’ll be alone on the trail together for some time. I don’t care if I fall off my horse and get bit by a rattler, you’ve got to promise right now you won’t touch me, even accidentally, or I go without you.”
Travis almost felt like laughing, except the girl was so serious. Was she paranoid or something? He wasn’t the type to go for young girls, and this one couldn’t be a day over sixteen. But still, he felt like needling her. “What makes you think my promise is worth anything?” he asked.
“I just know it is, that’s all.”
Odd. As prickly as she acted, she didn’t seem like the type to give her trust blindly. “Besides,” Travis went on. “I haven’t said I’d go.”
“Will you?” she asked.
Travis just stared at her, trying to think. None of this made any sense. Still, the rumors, that streak in her hair…Hell, he’d seen her with Apaches himself. “When’s the last time you saw Matt?” he asked abruptly.
“I’ve never seen him,” she said hesitantly. “At least, not the way you mean.”
“You must have seen him, talked to him, to know what we were doing on that stage. What do you mean you’ve never seen him?” Jesus. She had to be the most infuriating female he’d ever met. When she didn’t answer, only looked down at her entwined fingers with a deep frown, Travis felt his temper rise. “If you haven’t seen him, then you don’t really know where he is, do you? You’re just guessing, aren’t you? Answer me, damn it!”
“Travis, I think—”
“Stay out of it, Dad. Let her explain herself, if she can.”
“I can explain,” Daniella said softly to Travis. Her expression turned defiant. She raised her eyes. “But you’re not going to like it, and you probably won’t believe me.”
“You’re probably right. Try me anyway.”
She paused a moment and licked her lips in a nervous gesture. “I know where Matt is the same way I know that last night, late, you sat on the edge of your bed with tears in your eyes and cried out your son’s name.”
“Sweet Jesus, you were here? In this house? I don’t believe it. You’re guessing again.”
“No.” the girl cried, her cheeks turning red. “I wasn’t here, and I’m not guessing. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I wasn’t here, but I saw you anyway. I’ve seen Matt, too, the same way. I…I have…visions.”
In the total silence that followed, Travis could do nothing but stare. Did she really expect anyone to believe her?
“I’m leaving now,” she told him softly. “I’m going to get your son. I’m going to bring him home. I can’t wait any longer. Are you coming with me or not?”
“Goddamn it, girl,” Travis roared, slamming his fist down on the table. “You expect me to just get up and walk out with you after the line of shit you just handed me?”
The girl sucked in her breath sharply and squinted her eyes. She sauntered toward him, slowly. “Which shit is that? The shit about my knowing where your son is? Or that I can get him back for you? Or that this isn’t some elaborate plan of mine to catch a husband? Or the fact that I’ve never seen Matt, but I know he’s got freckles across his nose and a loose front tooth? Which shit don’t you believe?”
Damn, Travis thought with sudden awareness. I think I’m beginning to believe every bit of it. Shit. But even if he never believed her, if there was the smallest chance she could lead him to Matt, he had to take it. Even if he ended up smack in the middle of Cochise’s stronghold. There was no place on earth he wouldn’t go to find Matt.
The girl spun on her heel and stalked toward the door, hands clenched at her sides.
“Wait!” Travis called.
She stopped and looked at him over her shoulder, her eyebrows raised in question, lips firmly sealed.
“I’ll get my gear,” Travis said.
She studied him gravely for a moment, then nodded. “There are a few things we have to get straight before we leave.”
“All right.” He fought a sudden grin. “I promise I won’t touch you, even if you fall off your horse and get bit by a rattler.”
“Thank you,” she answered. “Since we’ll be traveling together, would it be considered prying if I asked your name?”
Jason let out a whoop of laughter.
Travis glared first at his father, then at her. “Colton. Travis Colton.”
“Thank you, Mr. Colton. Besides the promise you’ve already given me, there are two others I’d like you to make.”
“What now?”
“Since I’m the only one of us who knows where we’re going, we go where I say, when I say, with no arguments.”
“Fair enough,” he replied. “And the other?”
“When we’re around any Apaches, you must do exactly as I say, immediately, with no questions.”
It galled him to have to take orders from a girl, but he didn’t see any way around it. She was possibly the only chance he had of finding Matt. If she was telling the truth. He studied her for a long moment, then nodded. “Agreed.”
Chapter Eight
Travis was ready to ride in a matter of minutes. “Which way, Miss Blackwood?”
The girl stuffed her hair back inside her hat and stared off toward the horizon. Without a word, she kicked her mare into a mile-eating gallop, heading southeast. She set the
pace, and it was a fast one. They rode hard across rugged land, following the foothills of the Santa Catalina Mountains. They crossed acres of natural pastures of lush green grass, scaring up several deer and jackrabbits hidden in the tall forage, as well as a few longhorn. The grasslands occasionally gave way to rocky, cactus-studded terrain, forcing the two to slow their pace for a time.
Travis studied Daniella out the corner of his eye. He’d never seen anyone like her. She looked about sixteen, except when he looked into her eyes. Those were the strangest, most captivating eyes he’d ever seen. Their pale blue shade reminded him of the morning sky, or perhaps a robin’s egg; their directness fascinated him. But they also looked weary, and sad. Old, as though she’d seen things other people could only guess at. He loved her eyes.
And that hair! He had heard about her last week at Fort Buchanan. The soldiers talked about how she saved herself and her vaqueros from Apache warriors simply by standing still and looking at the Indians. Magic? Probably not. That hair would make her instantly recognizable, and he’d seen her with Apaches himself. They knew her. She didn’t need magic.
Right now the only magic he wanted her to perform was to make that damn hat disappear so he could see all that black and white hair tumbling down to her waist again. He shifted his weight in the saddle, not at all sure he should be having such thoughts.
When he first saw that white streak of hair, he knew there was much more to her story than he was aware of. For some reason, he believed she really could find his son. And if she could, he’d give her anything she wanted, even though she said she wanted nothing but to find Matt. What a fairy tale. He’d never met a woman yet who didn’t want something—usually the moon, at the very least.
They stopped in the early afternoon to rest and water the horses, and Travis was further amazed by his companion when she sat on the ground, leaned back against a boulder and fell instantly asleep. He took a strip of jerky from his saddlebag, picked out his own boulder, and sat down to study her more closely.
He’d never seen a girl in men’s breeches before, and found himself wishing she would take off that poncho, which covered her loosely from neck to knees, so he could see the shape of her. He couldn’t even see her throat for that bandanna she wore wrapped around it. What was she like, he wondered as he sat looking at the delicate features of her face. She had taken off her hat when she sat down, and he decided he liked the look of that white streak in her hair.
Travis smiled to himself and looked over at Daniella’s mare. The markings were extraordinary. Was the horse her idea of a joke? Not that the animal was funny looking—far from it. But the similarity of coloring between horse and rider could not be a coincidence. Had someone chosen the horse especially for her? Her father, maybe? He knew she didn’t have a husband—besides, she didn’t look old enough to be married. And no husband would let a wife as pretty as this girl go riding through the wilderness with another man. Neither, for that matter, would a father. All his speculations only led to more questions.
The mare snorted and pawed the ground, then Travis’s big buckskin stallion did the same, as if answering. Travis watched in bemusement as the black horse with the strange white markings walked over and nudged the sleeping girl. Daniella came instantly awake.
They started out again, and Travis noticed she didn’t put her hat back on. He was glad. They rode hard and fast for the rest of the day, pushing their horses to the limit, slowing only when the terrain forced them to, stopping only when necessary for the sake of their mounts.
The sun beat down on them. The hot air sucked up every ounce of moisture it could find. Travis knew Daniella must be nearly roasting in that damn poncho, yet she seemed unaffected by its weight and the heat it trapped beneath its folds. She rode with her back straight and her head high. Her stamina amazed him. Many men he knew would have been falling out of their saddles by now; he nearly was.
When it got too dark to ride safely, they halted for the night. They made camp in the shelter of some huge boulders beside a small stream, about halfway through the pass between the Santa Catalina and the Santa Rita Mountains. They had made good time today, but Travis still didn’t know exactly where they were going. She hadn’t said. In fact, she hadn’t said anything at all since they left his house. He’d never met a woman before who didn’t talk constantly.
Travis pursed his lips in a soundless whistle. The girl had picked a good place to camp, unsaddled her own horse and rubbed it down, and had coffee brewing over a fire faster than any two men could have done. His fascination grew by the minute.
Daniella chewed on a piece of jerky and felt Travis’s eyes boring into her, trying to strip away all her secrets. It unnerved her. “Coffee’s ready,” she said in an attempt to distract him.
“Smells like it.”
After taking the proffered tin cup, he sat down a few feet away and kept staring at her. It was all she could do to keep from squirming in agitation. Was that a blush she felt staining her cheeks, or just the heat from the fire? She frantically searched her mind for some safe topic of conversation to occupy him, and came up with absolutely nothing. They ate in silence, his eyes riveted on her.
Halfway through the meal, she started to fidget. She couldn’t take any more. “You’re staring, Mr. Colton.”
“What? Oh, sorry.” He shook his head. “You’re a unique experience for me.”
“How’s that?” she asked without thinking, then cringed inwardly, not really wanting to hear his answer after all.
“I’ve never seen a girl like you before. You wear men’s breeches, Indian moccasins—Apache, from the look of them. You wear a pistol on your hip and a knife at your knee, and you look like you probably know how to use them. You carry a brand new Spencer repeating rifle on your saddle, a gun so new I only saw my first one a few weeks ago. You ride astride, like a man, and from what I’ve seen today, I’d guess you could ride most men right into the ground. You lift that saddle with an ease that seems impossible for someone your size. You look like a stiff breeze would blow you away. You have the stamina, and probably the ability, of a seasoned ranch hand, but you’re not one.” He paused and smiled slightly.
“You’re a very attractive young woman. Your refined speech tells me you’ve been well-educated, probably at one of the better schools back east, yet you’re obviously at home in this rough territory. You claim you have visions, and you make one hell of a mean pot of coffee. That’s enough to make any man stare.”
Daniella was dumbfounded. She sat perched with her tin cup halfway to her lips, returning his bold gaze. It sounded like he was actually…complimenting her…sort of…maybe. She lowered her eyes in confusion. “I-Is…the c-coffee too strong?” she stammered, unable to think of anything else to say.
Travis threw his head back and the sound of his laughter filled the night. “No,” he said when he could talk again. “The coffee’s perfect.” His eyes glowed warmer than the coals in the fire before he looked away and sighed. “I’ve embarrassed you, and I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry.”
She glanced at him once, then looked away and frowned. She shook so hard, coffee sloshed over the rim of her cup. She set the cup on the ground and clasped her hands together.
“Where do you live?”
She was concentrating so hard on hiding her nervousness, and trying to understand exactly why she was so nervous in the first place, that his voice startled her. Even though she was reluctant to talk about herself and reveal too much, she felt relieved at his abrupt change of topic. “A couple of hours northeast of you, at El Valle de Esperanza.”
“John’s place? You must be a relative of his.”
“He was my uncle.”
“John Blackwood was a good neighbor. We miss him. I thought he left his property to his brother, Howard.”
“You know Howard Blackwood?” she asked hesitantly.
“Dad knows him pretty well. I’ve only met him once or twice. I’ve heard, though, that he’s pretty tightfisted. How did you
ever get that property from him? Dad tried to buy it last fall, but Howard wouldn’t hear of selling it.”
“I bargained for it.”
“You what? I don’t get it.”
“I offered him something he wanted very much, in exchange for the deed.” Daniella cringed. She’d made it sound like…like she’d offered him…that.
According to the expression on his face, that was precisely what Travis thought. “Oh really?” His gaze swept over her. “Wonder what that could have been.”
She took in his narrowed, speculative gaze and knew he thought the worst. To not answer would only be to confirm his suspicions. She didn’t want him to think that of her. To tell him the truth would undoubtedly bring more questions, but she could get around those.
“My absence from his home,” she answered bluntly.
“Your absence?” The way he raised one golden eyebrow, as if he had a right to an explanation, made her want to scream.
She took a deep breath to control the urge. “Look,” she said briskly. “I was up all night last night, and you didn’t get much sleep either. We’ve got two or three more hard days of travel ahead of us. I suggest we turn in.”
She stretched out on her bedroll with her back to him and listened to his every movement. The rough wool blanket scratched her cheek. A stick made a lumpy ridge beneath the blanket at her hip, but she refused to move. Would he stay on his own side of the fire? Would he keep his promise not to touch her? Damn. What was she doing out here in the middle of nowhere with this stranger?
But, deep down, she wasn’t really afraid of him. It was a peculiar feeling, this trust in him that came from nowhere, yet trust him she did.
Soon she heard the sound of his deep, even breathing, mingled with the shrill chirrup of crickets and the raucous, undulating drone of a hundred cicadas.
She tried to shake off the low mood brought on by the mention of her father. She was glad she hadn’t admitted her relationship to Howard Blackwood. If anyone were to ask him about her, he’d probably swear he’d never heard of her anyway.
Apache-Colton Series Page 7