Apache-Colton Series

by Janis Reams Hudson

  He reached for the door and pulled it open just as someone pushed from the other side. Lettie Masters was nearly jerked off her feet as she followed the unexpected movement of the door.

  Spence bit back a groan. He didn’t have time for Lettie Masters…except Lettie lived with Harriett and Ben.

  “Doctor Colton,” she said with a gasp as she spread a hand over her chest. “You startled me.”

  “Have you seen LaRisa?”

  “Is my granddaughter here?”

  They spoke at the same time. Then Spence spoke again. “Janey? No, she’s not. Why would she be here? Is something wrong?” he asked despite his urgency to find LaRisa.

  Mrs. Masters frowned. “She…Janey wanted to come visit your…wife. I…told her no. I thought that was the end of the matter, only to find out when I went to call her to breakfast that she was gone. Harriett’s been out looking for her for more than an hour. I was sure I’d find them both here.”

  “Janey ran away?”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Harriett stood at the end of her street and stared at LaRisa with frightened eyes. “She’s never done anything like this before,” she wailed.

  “We’ll find her,” LaRisa soothed.

  “But how? We’ve checked with all her friends, and she isn’t with any of them. What if something’s happened to her? What if she wandered around and ended up on the wrong street and some drunk—”

  “Harriett, don’t. You’re not doing Janey any good imagining the worst.” Although LaRisa, too, could easily imagine a young girl coming to grief in a town known more for its outlaws than its upstanding citizens.

  It didn’t help any that LaRisa felt partly responsible. Janey and her grandmother had argued about her. Janey had wanted to visit “Missus Spence” today, and her grandmother had adamantly refused permission.

  Why permission for such a thing should come from her grandmother rather than her mother, LaRisa didn’t know and refused to ask. It was enough to know the argument had been about her. She felt partly responsible for Janey’s disappearance and vowed to help Harriett find her daughter.

  “Okay,” LaRisa said. “She’s not with any of her friends. Where else might she have gone?”

  Harriett’s fingers twisted in the folds of her skirt. “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

  “Think, Harriett. She surely doesn’t always play with her friends. Surely sometimes she plays alone.”

  “At home, yes.”

  “All right, then, when she plays with her friends, where do they play?”

  “At someone’s house,” she wailed, “but we’ve already checked all the houses where she could be.”

  “What about that time she hurt herself? You said she fell on some rocks. Was that at someone’s house?”

  Harriett looked startled. “No! She and…I don’t remember who she was with—one of the boys from down the street. They…she wouldn’t go there again. She’s been forbidden to cross the gully.”

  “What gully? Where? Couldn’t she have gone there if she were angry with her grandmother?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, let’s look anyway.”

  “You’re right. We’ve looked everywhere else. It’s past the edge of town. There’s a cliff of sorts, with a pile of boulders at the base of it, about a quarter-mile past the gully.”

  LaRisa peered at the sky. Black clouds hung low and ominous. “Let’s hurry.”

  Harriett touched LaRisa’s arm. “I can’t thank you enough for helping me look.”

  “You don’t need to thank me at all.”

  “But I do. And I know you probably have things to do. I can go to the cliff alone.”

  “Nonsense. Of course I’m going with you. I feel partly responsible, Harriett. I want to help. Now let’s go. We’re wasting time.”

  Harriett nodded, and they started off toward the edge of town, only a few blocks from Mac’s office.

  “When I get my hands on the little devil,” Harriett muttered, “I’m going to wring her neck for scaring me this way.”

  LaRisa smiled despite her worry. As selfish as it seemed, it was a relief to worry about someone else, rather than herself. “No you’re not. You’re going to hug her and make sure she’s safe and take her home. Then you’re going to wring her neck.”

  The gully cut across the desert about a hundred yards beyond the last house at the edge of town. It was nearly fifteen feet deep, maybe twenty across, with steep, crumbling sides, and a few boulders scattered along its bone-dry bottom. A well-worn path, testimony to the number of children who came out here to play, led right to the edge, then continued on the other side.

  Remaining upright while skidding down into the ravine required a certain amount of balance. Climbing up and out the other side while wearing a skirt was tricky, but they managed.

  Gasping for breath over her exertions, Harriett grumbled again, “I’m going to wring her neck. Then I’m going to go after Mother.”

  Thunder rumbled overhead, as if in answer.

  LaRisa shook the dust from her skirt, then undid the effort by wiping her palms down it and leaving dirty streaks. A raindrop hit her in the eye. With a nervous glance at the sky, she followed Harriett toward a small cliff in the distance, where a tumble of boulders of all sizes marked its base.

  She could instantly see the allure of the place from a child’s eyes. With imagination, the boulders could become mountains, houses, anything. To white children, she imagined the rocks could become an impregnable fort. She could also see how easy it would be for a child to come home with a few cuts and scrapes, or worse. Like the deep cut Janey had sustained that had required sutures.

  A few more scattered raindrops splattered against the parched ground. making tiny craters in the dust.

  “Janey!” Harriett called as they neared the boulders. “Janey, are you here?”

  A small head popped up from a crevice in the rocks. “Mommy?” The little girl’s eyes widened. “Missus Spence?”

  “Hello, Janey,” LaRisa called.

  Another boom of thunder echoed across the desert.

  “Sweetheart, come down out of there! We need to get home before it storms!”

  Janey’s head disappeared. Rocks scraped and shifted. Small footsteps slapped the ground. “Am I in trouble?” she asked as she cleared the rocks.

  A mile or more away, lightning cracked and lit the sky. The three females flinched.

  “Not yet, sweetheart.” Harriett took Janey’s hand. “We’ll talk about it when we get home. Let’s hurry.”

  They rushed now, the three of them. A gust of wind brought the sting of grit and the smell of rain. Halfway to the gully, lightning cracked again and thunder shook the ground.

  LaRisa took Janey’s free hand, and the three of them ran. At the edge of the gully they slid to a stop and stared.

  “It must have been raining up in the hills,” LaRisa yelled into the wind that threatened to push them over the edge. At least two feet of muddy, roiling water filled the bottom of the gully, rushing in a dangerous torrent. “Can we get around somewhere?”

  Harriett’s eyes were wide. She shook her head. “That way,” she cried as she pointed in the direction the water rushed, “is the Santa Cruz River. We’d never get across there.”

  “What about upstream?”

  Harriett shook her head again and bit her lip. “I don’t know, but I think the ravine runs this deep for miles toward the mountains.”

  “Then we’ll have to cross here.” But even as LaRisa spoke, she realized the water had risen several inches as they’d stood there. “Let’s go before it gets any deeper.”

  Still holding hands three abreast, they started carefully down the side of the gully. The roar of the water as it raced toward the river was thunderous. They were nearly at its edge when Harriett called out.

  “I don’t suppose now is a good time to mention that I can’t swim.”

  Alarm bells were going off inside Spence’s head as he and Letti
e Masters—an unlikely duo in his mind—combed the neighborhood for LaRisa, Harriett, and Janey. LaRisa was with one of the other two, Spence was sure. But something was wrong. He felt it in his bones. And it scared him.

  A woman sweeping her small front porch said LaRisa and Harriett had come by earlier looking for Janey.

  That answered the question of who LaRisa was with.

  Spence and Mrs. Masters followed the path the two women had taken.

  “Sure, they were here just a little bit ago. Took off down that way.”

  “They were headed over to the next street when they left here.”

  “Last I saw, they were makin’ for the edge of town.”

  “Those rocks,” Mrs. Masters said fiercely. “Janey wasn’t at any of her friends’, so she must have gone back out where she had her accident. She knows she’s not supposed to go there.”

  “What rocks?” Spence demanded. He didn’t like the look of those clouds any longer. They were boiling now, dropping lower and lower, and the wind was gusting.

  “I know the way,” Mrs. Master told him. “Let’s go. I’m going to tan that little girl’s hind end when I get my hands on her. Imagine, running away like a truant.”

  Spence followed as she led the way down a side street toward the edge of town. There was nothing out there that he could remember except desert. With every step, his unease grew. Something more than the threatening storm urged him to hurry. LaRisa needed him.

  Because Harriett was apprehensive about not being able to swim, LaRisa carried Janey. The water was icy cold and numbed her legs. The force of its rush was strong and startling, tugging on her skirt and threatening to drag her down. It took concentration and great care to stay upright. They were halfway across the rushing torrent, now up to their thighs, when Harriett lost her footing. With a terror-filled shriek, she went down.

  “Harriett!”

  “Mommy!”

  The force of the water carried her downstream several yards before she was able to latch on to a rock near the far edge. “I’m all right,” she called breathlessly. “I’m okay.” Soaked, she gathered herself to try to make it back to LaRisa and Janey.

  She would never make it, LaRisa thought. The water was too fast, and rising. Harriett would have to battle the full force of it to get back upstream to them.

  “No!” LaRisa yelled. “Climb out and meet us! I’ll hand Janey up to you!”

  It was a good plan. It almost worked.

  Harriett, drenched and shaking violently, clawed her way up the embankment to the top.

  By bracing herself against the rushing water and taking one careful step at a time, LaRisa managed to make it to the far side of the gully. Janey was pale and shaking, and nearly strangling LaRisa with a tight hold around her neck.

  The rush of the water had forced LaRisa slightly downstream. She was now faced with a wall of crumbling dirt that rose almost perpendicular before her.

  Harriett threw herself down on the ground and reached to help, but the distance was too great.

  LaRisa braced her knees against the embankment and grasped Janey around the thighs. The water was up to LaRisa’s waist and still rising. If anything, it seemed to be rushing harder, faster toward the release promised by the river a mile downstream.

  She lifted Janey as high as she could. “Reach for your mother, Janey! Reach!”

  Janey stretched her arms up. Harriett stretched her arms down. LaRisa shoved Janey upward with all her might. Mother and daughter’s fingers brushed, then slipped apart. LaRisa placed a hand on Janey’s rear. With a fierce grunt of effort, her right arm burning from the strain, she shoved again.

  This time Harriett grabbed her daughter’s hands and held on. Janey instinctively used her feet to help. LaRisa pushed on the girl’s legs, then feet, until Janey was up and over the edge.

  Crying, mother and daughter hugged each other.

  LaRisa would have collapsed in relief, but it was all she could do to keep her feet beneath her to prevent herself from going under and being washed away.

  For the first time, LaRisa realized that the rushing water carried small rocks crashing against her legs. Her skirt hung like a lead weight, trying to drag her downstream. She reached for the dirt wall just as the clouds opened above her. One second she was more or less dry from the waist up, the next, she was drenched. Rain came down in a solid mass, as though someone were pouring a bucket of water on an anthill.

  Harriett screamed her name. LaRisa didn’t have enough breath to scream. She scrambled for purchase along the wall, but now instead of crumbling dirt, there was nothing but slick mud beneath her hands. She dug her fingers in as hard as she could and pulled herself up a few inches, then a few inches more.

  Above her, Harriett lay with her arms stretched down. “Hurry!” she cried.

  LaRisa caught a new sound, and a shudder of fear ripped through her. A loud, low roar, like thunder, but not thunder. Beneath her, even through the pounding of the rampaging water, she felt the ground tremble. She turned her head toward the sound and gasped. A wall of water raced toward her.

  “Hurry! Grab my hand,” Harriett screamed.

  Fear propelled LaRisa. With one final lunge, she reached for Harriett’s outstretched hands. She brushed Harriett’s fingers, but couldn’t quite grasp them.

  The wave of water slammed into her like a solid, moving wall of brick. Something hit her shoulder hard, spinning her around. Pain exploded. The water sucked her down and dragged her along the bottom.

  Harriett screamed as LaRisa disappeared from sight. She grabbed Janey by the shoulders and shook her. “Run! Run for help, Janey! Run to town and find help!”

  Janey’s eyes were wide with terror. Her lips trembled as rain pounded on her unprotected head. But the urgency in her mother’s voice sent her flying along the path, through the rain and mud toward town.

  The rain was so heavy, she didn’t see the dark forms coming toward her until she ran into one. She fell to the ground and screamed.

  Spence’s heart stopped at the impact against his legs. “Janey!”

  “Doctor Spence! Oh, Doctor Spence, you gotta come quick! We lost Missus Spence in the water!”

  Spence felt his insides freeze. Lost her in the water? Ignoring Mrs. Masters, who was trying to get around him to Janey, Spence pulled the girl to her feet. She was muddy and shaken and plainly terrified. “Show me, Janey. Show me where.”

  LaRisa fought to hold in a scream as the water closed over her head. If she screamed, she would drown. She felt patches of skin tear away as the graveled bottom of the ravine grabbed at her. She couldn’t panic. Couldn’t afford to. She had to reach the surface. Her arms and legs fought uselessly. Her lungs burned. Her mind threatened to go blank.

  She managed to get one foot beneath her, but the water caught her again and dragged her down. Then, as suddenly as she’d been swept under, the raging torrent spat her free. Her head broke the surface, and she gasped, but only part of what she took in was air. The rest was water. Her lungs protested.

  Something—a large submerged rock—hit her in the leg and sent her slamming into a large boulder. LaRisa clung to it with all her might. She could breathe. Thank God, she could breathe.

  But she couldn’t move! Her foot was caught! The water reached the middle of her rib cage and was still rising, and her foot was trapped!

  LaRisa tugged with all her might, ignoring the tearing pain in her foot, but to no avail. Her foot was pressed against the embankment, caught between the boulder upon which she leaned, and another huge rock that had been slammed into place by the force of the water.

  She couldn’t hold back the panic. Harriett was much too far away to reach. Even if she hadn’t been, LaRisa wasn’t going anywhere. Not with her foot trapped.

  The rain let up, but she held no hope that the water would recede anytime soon. Not soon enough for her, she thought with terror. Upstream, water still rushed from the mountains and foothills, racing downhill toward the river. And LaRisa was in t
he way.

  The thought of drowning made her lungs contract, as if they were already filled with muddy brown water. Dear God, to not be able to breathe! To draw in air and find only water! To suffocate!

  She tried pulling her foot again. The pain was excruciating, but she pulled anyway. To no avail.

  “LaRisa!” Harriett screamed from above her. “Grab my hand!”

  “I can’t!” And in so saying, LaRisa felt a strange numbness settle over her. She couldn’t seem to move, and couldn’t seem to care. Calm now, she couldn’t feel the cold any longer, couldn’t feel the pain in her shoulder where something had hit her or in her foot trapped by the rocks. “My foot is stuck.” She couldn’t feel much of anything.

  Then feeling returned, but only on the inside, and it was tormenting. Spence! her mind screamed. Oh, God, she would never see Spence again. She would die here in this ravine. The water covered her breasts now, breasts that Spence had touched, had kissed. He’d set her on fire just by looking at her breasts. She would never know that feeling again. Would never know the taste of him, the warmth of his arms around her in the dark, the brightness of his smile, the light in his eyes.

  Spence.

  She’d been a fool to fight her feelings for him. She should have reveled in his attention while she’d had the chance. Maybe then she wouldn’t now be looking back with regret.

  Her last words to him pierced her with sorrow. You’ve left me with nothing.

  Maybe, just now, waiting for the water to overtake her, she had nothing, but she understood as she never had before that that was not Spence’s doing. He hadn’t stolen her dream. He hadn’t stripped her of it piece by piece as she had been telling herself. He had not destroyed the warrior in her mind.

  He was the warrior! Her warrior! She saw it so plainly, now that it was too late. He was strong and brave and had treated her with honor and respect even when she hadn’t deserved it. His loving was as fierce as it was tender, as tenacious as his fighting. He had protected her and provided for her and rescued her. He had fought with her when she needed to fight, and he’d held her when she needed to cry.