“The only goddamn reason I stayed home from the drive was to keep you away from her, and now this.” With obvious disgust, Pace wadded up a piece of paper and threw it at the wall.
“What’s your problem? She’s probably gone to the kitchen or somewhere.”
“She’s not gone to the kitchen, you asshole, she’s gone with Dad.”
Matt blinked. A cold stillness settled in his stomach. “She’s what?”
“You mean she didn’t tell you, either?” Pace said with a smirk. “Well, that’s something. Guess maybe she’s not as crazy about you as you thought, huh?”
With the coldness in his gut starting to heat and churn, Matt picked up the crumpled note that had rolled to a stop beside Serena’s dresser.
There had to be some mistake. She would not have simply taken off on the cattle drive. Not now. Not after last night, for God’s sake.
A sudden memory of that sadness he’d seen in her eyes last night haunted him. But no, that couldn’t have anything to do with this. This had to be some sort of mistake.
His hands shook as he smoothed out the note. As he read it, his skin tightened. She was gone on the cattle drive, and asked, no, demanded that no one come after her.
A sharp thud hit him in the breastbone. From inside. The note crumpled in his fists.
Why? Why, damn it?
Chapter Twenty-Four
Thick clouds of dust swirled high, tossed skyward by five hundred sets of hooves. Cattle bawled; cow ponies darted after escaping steers; drovers whistled, coaxed, waved, and cursed the herd down the trail.
Travis rode a half-mile in front of the herd. With a tug on the brim of his hat, he squinted against the glare of the sun and frowned. Up ahead, a rider waited beside the trail, pack mule in tow. What fool would sit there in the burning sun that way instead of making tracks for wherever he was headed? If it was rest he was after, there was shade not a hundred yards south.
Yet the rider sat in the sun. And waited.
The closer Travis drew, the more he was convinced this wasn’t a stranger, but someone he knew.
Behind him, Travis knew the old moss-horned steer led the herd straight down the trail. Bonehead wasn’t a very flattering name for an animal as valuable as the Triple C’s best lead steer, but Jessie had named him when he was still a calf, and the name had stuck.
The point riders were a mere formality with Bonehead in the lead. The old longhorn would know the way to the San Carlos Agency blindfolded.
Travis kept his mount to a walk until he finally identified the rider up ahead. Recognition had him digging in his spurs in surprise.
“What the hell?” he said, drawing to a halt before Serena.
Serena took a deep breath for courage. “Hi, Daddy. Mind if I ride along with you?”
“You know I don’t, but what’s all this?” he said with a nod to her laden pack mule.
She swallowed hard and forced herself to exhale the breath she had unconsciously held. Here I go. “I’m taking a little trip.”
Travis braced both hands on his saddle horn. “What’s going on? What’s happened? Is it Matt? If he’s done something to send you running—”
“Daddy, no!” Serena squeezed her eyes shut briefly. “Please, please stop blaming him. It’s me, damn it—”
“Watch your language, little girl.”
“I won’t,” Serena cried. “I told you before, I’m not a little girl anymore, Dad. You’ve got to understand that. That’s what all this trouble between you and Matt, and Pace and Matt, is all about. You’re thinking of me as a child, and him as, as I don’t know what.”
“Rena, honey…”
“It’s me. I’m the one who started all this. Anything that has ever happened between Matt and me has been my idea. I’ve started it. Me. Do you hear? Me, not Matt.”
Her father’s lips stiffened. “Just what, exactly, is it you’ve started? What has happened between you and him?”
“Nothing too terrible, I assure you.” She gave him a sad little smile and looked off down the trail toward the herd. “He asked me to marry him.”
“He what?” Travis roared, rising up in his stirrups.
“Oh, don’t worry. I told him no.”
Travis dropped back to his saddle in shock. “You…you told him no? I thought…that is, Pace and your mother said you…you thought you were in love with him.”
“I am,” she managed around the sudden lump in her throat.
“Then why would you tell him no?”
“Because I can’t live with tearing the family apart like this.”
The pain in her face rocked him. Travis ached for her. Dani’s words from a few weeks ago haunted him. If she has to choose between you and Matt, love, it will break her heart.
Dear God, he hadn’t meant to make her choose. But then, he hadn’t really believed Serena was in love with Matt. Hadn’t wanted to admit she was old enough to understand her own heart.
Looking at her now, he could no longer deny what had been right in front of him for weeks. What she herself had been telling him. His baby girl, the daughter of his heart if not his loins, was a woman. A woman in love. A woman in pain.
A woman leaving home.
“So you’re going away, just like that?”
“It’s best for everyone, I think.”
“What does Matt think?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t tell anyone. I just left a note on my bed, and one in your room for Mama.”
Travis wanted to groan. Instead, he arched a brow. “You snuck out?”
She gave him a wry grin. “In the middle of the night.”
“Like a coward?”
Serena stiffened. Her father could have no idea what strength and courage it took for her to leave home, to leave Matt. Especially after last night.
She couldn’t let him know about last night. God, help her. He would drag her home by the hair. If he didn’t shoot Matt on sight, he would at the very least force them to marry.
And he would never, ever forgive Matt. All Serena’s efforts, the pain she had caused both herself and Matt, would have been for nothing. For the family would still tear itself apart, and Matt would hate her.
Like a coward? How could he think that?
Instead of arguing, she merely looked at him. “It was the only way.”
She’d left him. Matt couldn’t believe it.
Sure, she’d run out on him in Tombstone, but he’d driven her away. When she’d headed for Tucson—and got herself kidnapped—it was because Joanna had hurt her, and he had…hell, he had hurt her. She had needed time to herself.
But damn it, he hadn’t pushed her away the night before the cattle drive. He hadn’t driven her off, and he’d stake his life on the certainty that he hadn’t scared her. She had come to him, for Christsake. Knowing exactly what he wanted, what would happen, making him think she meant to marry him. Telling him how much she loved him. Giving herself to him so sweetly.
Then she had crawled out of his bed while he slept and disappeared into the night.
God, it hurt.
His first instinct upon reading that damn note was to ride after her. But no. If she had meant any of the things she’d said to him the previous night, she wouldn’t have left.
Trouble was, he’d been so sure she had meant it when she said she loved him. A part of him still believed it.
Fool. To hell with her.
Yeah. Sure.
He nursed his anger, fed it all week. Nothing helped. The string of mustangs he’d been breaking, wild and woolly though they were, hadn’t been enough of a challenge to calm him. Nothing was. He wanted to break something, all right, but had forced himself not to take his frustrations out on the horses.
Driving the cattle to San Carlos would take four days. A day or two there, then two for the ride home. The way Matt figured, the crew should be home any day.
Question was, would Serena be with them?
Bayliss Matheson, registered agent for the San Carlos Agenc
y of the White Mountain Apache Indian Reservation, watched Travis Colton and his half-breed daughter ride in to the agency from along the river, where they’d bedded down their herd the night before.
Look at that girl. Shameful the way she wore a man’s britches under her skirt and rode astride like that. But then, that was a half-breed for you. Damn redskins had no sense of what was right and wrong.
Matheson didn’t have time for the girl or her meddling old man. He was grateful that fire-eating twin brother of hers wasn’t around, though. All hell was about to break loose—all hell, and Geronimo, if something wasn’t done. Pace Colton would have only compounded the problems.
And the agent knew, sure as spit, that if Geronimo broke out, the army was gonna blame him, Bayliss Matheson. Just like they’d blamed him for that set-to up on Cibecue Creek last month. All he’d done was warn the fort of a possible uprising. Far as he was concerned, any time redskins got together and talked about killing white folks, that was uprising enough for him.
Could he help it if Carr and those damn misfit troopers of his had ridden down on an unarmed old man? And what difference did it make, would somebody please tell him, if one less Apache walked the earth? This one had been stirring up trouble. They were all better off without him.
Now more trouble was coming. Matheson could feel it. More troops coming in. Rumors about arresting Geronimo and some of the more outspoken Apaches.
Now, Bayliss didn’t have what he’d call a real affection for Apaches, but after the fiasco the last time Colonel Carr took his men right into their camp, he’d thought maybe the army would back off a bit. Instead, more troops were lining up by the day. They were either going to have to make their damned arrests or ease back, give the Apaches a chance to calm down.
Otherwise, as he’d been thinking for days, all hell was going to break loose. And who would the army blame? Matheson, of course. He spat at the lizard crawling along the base of the water trough and missed.
Both times he was up to his ass in trouble, and he had to stop and deal with Thorn-in-the-Side Colton.
Both times.
Matheson paused in the process of scratching his side whiskers.
It was true. Seemed like any time there was serious trouble involving the Chiricahua, members of the Colton clan had been nearby. Could they be stirring the pot more than he knew? Would they come along now and help Geronimo escape?
Not if Bayliss Matheson had any say.
Daniella tucked the last of the older Sanchez children into bed and made her way to the front room. Alone, finally.
With the fire burning low, she plumped a throw pillow on the horsehair sofa, straightened the braided rug on the bare plank floor, then lowered herself to the rocker and heaved a sigh. After nearly three weeks, Rosa was ready to take care of things on her own. Daniella could leave for home tomorrow.
She worried about what had been happening while she was gone. Were Travis and Pace still hounding Matt? Was Serena still walking around looking like a wounded fawn?
If things hadn’t improved by the time Daniella got home, she didn’t know what she was going to do. It wasn’t like Matt to take such treatment from anyone, even his father. What had happened to him those three years he’d been gone? Although he’d never been a troublemaker—on the contrary, Matt had grown to be one of the finest men Daniella had ever known—he’d never hesitated to stand up for himself before.
And Serena! Daniella wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake her until her teeth rattled. What in heaven’s name was wrong with that girl? Serena had never been the docile type. She thought her own thoughts and went her own way. Why the devil hadn’t she told her father and Pace to drop dead?
Unless, of course, Serena was having second thoughts about her feelings for Matt.
That was why Daniella had spent so much time biting her own tongue those past weeks before leaving to help Rosa. If Matt and Serena weren’t sure enough of their feelings to stand up for themselves and take what they wanted, family be damned, then Daniella did not want to interfere.
With another weary sigh, she dropped her head against the back of the rocker and stared blindly across the room. She was exhausted. How Rosa had managed before the baby came, Daniella could only guess. How she would manage now, with a baby to care for in addition to the other children, was beyond Daniella’s imagination. She herself had always had plenty of household help, and a husband who loved and cared for her.
And where was Jesus Sanchez? Off looking for land in California, of all things.
Daniella wouldn’t blame Rosa one bit if she met him at the door with a loaded shotgun when he finally decided to come home.
The lamp on the mantle seemed brighter than usual. Daniella knew she should get up and turn down the flame. The idea of moving even an inch, much less across the room, made her groan. What she should do was turn out the flame and go to bed.
In a minute. She would get up and turn in in a minute. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been so tired. But then, those six Sanchez children, seven counting the baby, were more than a handful.
The flame in the lamp flickered, drawing her gaze.
Oh God, it was happening again. She tried to look away, but couldn’t. Another vision. She hated them. They terrified her. Never had they shown her anything good or pleasant. Only trouble. Always trouble.
This time was no different. Her hands turned to ice as Travis’s face formed before her eyes. Oh, my God.
To Serena, it was like child’s play. In fact, she had learned it, this game of slipping undetected from shadow to shadow, as a child. Cochise and both his sons, Tahza and Naiche, had taught Pace and her at an early age how to move secretly, like a spirit in the night, how to become invisible on the open desert in broad daylight.
She hadn’t needed the skills in years, and was a little rusty, but they hadn’t deserted her. Then, too, she wasn’t trying to sneak past Apaches, either. That made the game ridiculously easy.
Despite the seriousness of the situation, Serena grinned smugly, careful to keep her lips covering her teeth, her eyes downcast, so nothing white would show in the dark. She could have moved an entire army of blind four-year-olds past the lazy, inept guards Matheson had posted around the agency.
She slipped up beside the guardhouse and crouched in the shadows, waiting, her gaze lowered. Ten feet away stood the only guard at this end of the compound.
At the far end of the row of buildings a match flared, lighting Jorge’s face and drawing the guard’s attention. Carlos, purposely reeking of whiskey, staggered toward Jorge and the guard as planned.
Serena slid silently around the corner to the solid door with iron bars covering the window. She whispered low, “Daddy?”
“What the devil are you doing here?” he answered, his voice just as low. “I thought I told you to get home.”
“I couldn’t just ride out and leave you in jail,” she hissed. “I sent Benito home. Here. I brought you some things.”
Furious over her father’s arrest, Serena had watched the guardhouse all day and noted no one had brought him so much as a cup of water. She had not been allowed near him. Now she passed him two small pouches, one of food, the other of water.
“Thanks,” he said. “As long as you’re here, tell me what’s happening. Any trouble?”
“Plenty. Sometime within the next half hour, the San Carlos Agency is going to be shy a few hundred Apaches.”
“Damn. So much for Matheson’s theory about averting trouble by keeping me away. A few hundred? Geronimo?”
“And Naiche, Juh, Chato.”
“Women and children?”
“Nearly half. What should I do, Dad? Do you want me to break you out of here?”
Travis gripped the bars between them. “No! Don’t even think it. I want you to go home. Right now. Don’t wait for daylight. Just go.”
Serena pursed her lips. She had no intention of going home and leaving her father locked up like a common criminal. Matheson ha
d no authority to jail a civilian. Neither did the army. Serena would kick and scream and cause a ruckus like this territory had never seen. She’d have citizens and politicians, even the governor, in such an uproar they’d have to let her father go. Damn that Matheson. He would pay, the bastard.
But she didn’t say any of this to her father. To him, she was still a little girl to be protected from trouble, not a woman capable of dealing with it. “What about the cattle?”
Travis swore under his breath.
Serena smiled. Did he think she’d be shocked if he said a dirty word loud enough for her to hear?
“The cattle stay. Take two or three men to see you home. Leave the others with the herd. I’ll deal with it when I get out of this cell.”
“Leave the herd? And let Matheson and the army get their hands on it? You know good and well The People will never see so much as a mouthful of beef once that happens.”
“They will,” Travis insisted. “Especially now. Matheson knows this is illegal. I’ll have him and the army over a barrel. The People will have full bellies this winter, Rena, I promise.”
Maybe, she thought. If anyone could do it, her father could. But that didn’t help the ones who left tonight. They were The People, too. And Triple C cattle were meant for them as well as the ones who stayed on the reservation.
A plan, bold and probably foolhardy, formed in her mind.
“What are you thinking?” Travis demanded.
“Nothing,” she said quickly. “I better go. Carlos and Jorge can’t keep the guards distracted forever. You’ll hear from me tomorrow. And Daddy? I love you.”
“I love you, too, Princess. Get out of here. Go home.”
“Tomorrow,” she repeated.
If he chose to interpret her final word as agreement to his wishes rather than a repetition of her earlier promise to get word to him tomorrow, well, they could straighten it out later.
Matt knew trouble when he saw it. When Dani and Benito thundered in from opposite directions on lathered horses, spouting something about breakouts and Geronimo, Travis, jail, and Serena, Matt’s stomach clenched.
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