Slowly he straightened, feeling the breath of winter swirl beneath his thin blanket. He swayed a moment, then steadied. The wind-driven snow fascinated him. He stared at it, marveling that he could not feel the rocks he knew were gouging into his bare knees. He could not feel much of anything now.
A vision, he silently prayed. Would he be granted a vision before he died? His mother had only to look into the flames of a fire to be given the gift—or curse—of sight. He knew he had inherited a portion of her magic, yet not her sight. His magic was knowledge. Things he should have no way of knowing came to him as certainties. He had never questioned this gift of what The People called Power, but as he knelt within the scant shelter of the cave high in the Sierra Madres, he could have wished the knowledge of his own death was not so certain.
His mother’s face appeared before him, soft and beautiful, with eyes the pure brilliant blue of a summer sky. He had her eyes, but not the streak of white in her hair that marked her as Woman of Magic.
He saw his father next, then his brothers, sisters. One by one the faces of those he loved paraded through his mind as if in final farewell. Then another face, old and wrinkled beyond time, came to him. Dee-O-Det, the great shaman, smiled at him through the blinding snow. Not a sad or knowing smile of farewell, but that teasing smile he wore when he was keeping secrets.
“No need to keep secrets now, Old Man,” Pace told him. “I cannot give your game away this time.”
As Pace’s voice echoed through the cave above the whine of the winter wind, the old man’s face wavered, then faded. Pace reached out, futilely trying to hold on to the visage, but it slipped away. In his haste the blanket slipped from his grasp, leaving him completely exposed. His skin seemed to shrink in protest.
“Gáhé, Mountain spirit, leader of the Mountain Spirits, your body is holy. By means of it, give me warmth,” he prayed quietly. “Keep my body like yours, strong and whole, unfrozen. Alive.”
Through the blinding snow where the old man’s face had disappeared came a faint glow that grew brighter and larger as he stared. It neared, shifting and undulating into separate tongues of flame, gold, orange, red, but flames unlike any he had ever seen.
He frowned. Was this his vision, then? This strange fire that burned upside down and warmed his flesh, even though it was not real? He did not welcome this vision, for to dream of fire meant disaster was near. Yet the flames persisted before him, long and fluid, curling, leaping, receding, then leaping again, but always upside down, for the blaze seemed to be anchored in the air above him and the flames reached toward the ground.
Two fires, he saw, confused. The second one ordinary, appearing on the ground beneath the first. Their tongues of flame reached toward each other until they entwined in a strangely erotic kiss that filled him inexplicably with peace and warmth.
The warmth from the vision-fire seeped through his skin and muscles and warmed his bones…his very soul. At least, he thought as he sank onto his heels, he would not feel the cold now when it killed him.
Chapter One
Fort Sill, Indian Territory
August, 1896
The walls of the cell were three feet thick and solid stone. A man could pace the length, but he couldn’t go far, as the cell measured barely fifteen by eight. The only window was small and barred and a good twelve feet above the worn stone floor. The only sound, the quiet breathing of the lone occupant.
To the Chidikagu, whom the whites called Chiricahua Apaches, he was known as He Who Seeks the Fire. The name had been shortened years ago to Fire Seeker. Some who knew him claimed he should have been called Fire Eater. In the white world he was Pace Colton. Half white, half Apache, he walked in two worlds, found a small measure of comfort in both, yet belonged wholly in neither. Men and women alike claimed he was a hard man. They never knew what to expect from him—icy, emotionless calm, or his hot-headed temper.
Yesterday he’d given them his temper. It had landed him in the guardhouse. Again.
Hell of a place for a man to spend a hot August afternoon, he thought grimly, but he ought to be used to it by now. He’d spent plenty of time here in the past months. He hated it, hated being confined in any way. The walls had a way of closing in on him after a couple of hours, winding his nerves tighter and tighter like worn watch springs until they threatened to snap.
But for all that, these damn cells in the basement of the Fort Sill guardhouse were without a doubt the coolest place to spend a hot August afternoon. Must be well over a hundred out there, but in here it felt like it was barely seventy.
Cool or not, he had to ask himself what the hell he was doing getting arrested on an average of once or twice a month. He’d come to Fort Sill to help The People. The Chiricahua Apaches had been moved here to Indian Territory last year from the prison camp in Alabama. Things were better here, but after nine years, instead of the promised two, The People were still being held as prisoners of war. They had to deal constantly with white men, white men’s ways, white men’s language, a hundred things a day they had no way of understanding.
Pace had come to help, but deep inside he knew he was only making things worse. When he saw The People being lied to, cheated, mistreated by the Army and civilians alike, he lost his temper.
This time the Army was threatening to charge him with theft of government property.
He closed his eyes and saw again the maggot-infested beef The People had been expected to take yesterday. It was bad enough that they were forced to walk—some of them, miles—to the fort every single day, every man, woman, and child, to receive one single day’s rations.
They were allowed to have gardens, and did well with them. Last year the watermelon and cantaloupe crops had brought them extra cash; this year’s would too.
But the tribe could not live on watermelon and cantaloupe, nor solely on the other vegetables and fruits they grew, and hunting was strictly forbidden unless the men were accompanied by troopers. How it galled him to see once-fierce warriors forced to beg permission to hunt in order to feed their families.
Equally galling was the daily line-up for rations. Yesterday the beef had been rotten. Thin Old Woman had been the first in line. She hadn’t arrived first; she was slow, and lived far. But the others put her at the head of the line because they knew she would be all day getting home.
At least she didn’t have to make the walk every day. Pace had been supplementing her food by hunting for her. She had no family left. Others looked after her the best they could, but the others were not free to hunt at will as Pace was.
The old woman had more or less adopted him during the past year. From the deer he brought her, she dried meat, tanned hides, and had made him the fringed buckskins he now wore. They were hot, and no one really wore fringed buckskins any longer, but Pace wore his out of respect for her.
Seeing her being offered rotting beef yesterday had been more than he could stomach. Enraged, he had planted himself in front of her and had tossed the tainted meat to the ground. Then he’d gone to the commissary and taken a side of beef from the officers’ stores. He’d hauled it back to The People and started carving it up. Thin Old Woman received the first cut.
That was as far as he’d gotten before he’d been arrested, but he’d made his point. Thin Old Woman and the rest of The People had eaten good meat yesterday. Since Captain Scott had given in on that much, Pace figured they wouldn’t keep him locked up too long this time.
He slid to the floor and leaned back against the cool stone to wait. Twenty-four hours in the guardhouse was about the Army’s limit for the actual crime of pissing off a captain. Any time now they’d be letting him out.
The trouble with spending time in the guardhouse, aside from Pace’s innate hatred of being confined, was that it gave him too much time to think, and his thoughts were not pleasant. Nor were they new. They kept travelling the same old circle. He wanted to go home, yet he couldn’t. He wanted to stay with The People, yet he shouldn’t. Nothing new.
Alone was no way for a man to live. For an Apache it was virtually unheard of. The People lived in extended family groups that were close-knit in everything they did. They shared their dwellings, their food, their belongings, their very thoughts.
While Pace was not a full-blooded Chiricahua, the white half of him came from an equally close-knit family. The Triple C Ranch in Arizona Territory was home to all three of the existing generations of Coltons. Spence, Pace’s youngest brother, and LaRisa, Spence’s wife, lived only a couple of hours away in Tucson. Jessie, Pace’s youngest sister, and her husband Blake and their kids, lived a half-day south on their own ranch.
Hell, Pace thought with a tight smile, the Coltons were so damn close they even married each other.
It’s that kind of thinking that has you living half a continent away from your family.
All right, so Matt and Serena weren’t really brother and sister. So Matt was only Pace and Serena’s stepbrother. Serena and Matt shared no common blood, but they had been raised as brother and sister. To Pace, that relationship should have been sacred. Matt and Serena had had other ideas.
To give them credit, they had thought of each other as brother and sister until Matt’s first wife Angela had died. It was after that when Serena had realized her feelings for Matt had changed.
During the fourteen years since their marriage, Pace had constantly blamed Matt for taking advantage of Rena. Matt was ten years older and should have stayed the hell away from the nineteen-year-old virgin.
Looking back over the years, Pace had to wince at his own behavior. He’d done everything in his power to prevent his sister from marrying the man he considered his brother. He’d argued, schemed, accused, blamed, and once even traded punches with Matt like the damn fool hot-head he was.
As he sat in the cool damp cell in the basement of the guardhouse, he knew, as he’d always known but never admitted, that Matt had been innocent of any wrongdoing. Pace knew his sister better than he knew himself. Serena had gone after Matt like Sherman after Atlanta. Like Atlanta, Matt hadn’t stood a chance. He’d been a goner before he’d known what had happened.
For the first time in fourteen years, Pace was able to smile at the thought of Matt and Serena. He wanted to go home. He wanted to look them both in the eye, and, pride be damned, he wanted to apologize. He wanted his sister back, and whether Matt was her husband or not, Pace wanted his brother back, too.
Yet as strong as the lure of home was, Pace felt duty-bound to stay at Fort Sill. Who would look out for Thin Old Woman? Who would force the Army to furnish the food and supplies they had promised?
He was free to come and go, but he didn’t feel free. How could he allow himself to come and go as he pleased when the rest of the tribe could not? His very freedom made him feel guilty when the others were bound to this place so far from their homeland. He had left a time or two for short periods. Sometimes during the past nine years of the Chiricahua’s imprisonment he’d even stayed away for months. Every time, though, he’d suffered a hot, sick feeling deep in his gut, part fury, part pain, part humiliation, over what was being done to his people. Part guilt because it wasn’t being done to him.
He rubbed his hands across his face, wondering what to do. His presence at Fort Sill was not helping anyone. Thin Old Woman and the others would be fine without him. Was it fair to stay there to assuage his own guilt at not being a prisoner of war when all he seemed capable of doing was causing trouble?
Yet how could he go home when he and Matt could barely speak to each other?
The sound of boots scraping the stone floor outside his cell roused him from his thoughts.
“You still in there, Fire Eater?”
It was Peterson. Pace smiled slightly. “Nobody here by that name, Peter’s-gone.”
“No? Sumbitch. Damn ‘breed musta escaped.”
It was an old game between the two. They never had a kind word for each other, but oddly, Sergeant Jacob Peterson was one of the few white-eyes around who did not treat the Apaches with open contempt. For that alone, Pace almost liked the grayheaded old fart.
A key rattled in the lock on the cell door, and a moment later the iron-bound solid oak door swung open with a low creak.
“You’re bein’ sprung, Colton. Get your young ass outta my guardhouse.”
Chapter Two
Triple C Ranch
Arizona Territory
The silence of raw disbelief filled the parlor. All eyes, those of her younger brother and his wife, her parents, and her husband, turned to Serena. She met their gazes one by one until Matt erupted with a low growl.
“You did what?”
Serena raised an eyebrow. “I believe you heard me.”
“I heard you, all right.” Matt reached for the crutches propped against the end of the sofa. “I don’t believe you. Tell me you lied.”
Serena wasn’t about to have her husband clomp around the room on his crutches, blustering and blowing steam, rubbing blisters under his arms. Not until she had her say. In two steps she had left her chair and whisked the crutches out of his reach. “You know I don’t lie.”
Matt glared first at the crutches that were now out of his reach, then at his wife. “Tell me you did not sign my name to that telegram.”
Serena propped the crutches against the wall beside the door, far out of his reach, then turned toward him. With her arms crossed over her chest, she pursed her lips and waited.
“How could you do something so stupid?” Matt roared. “Pace hates my guts. He’ll never go after Jo if he thinks I’m the one asking. Goddammit, you know that. This is Joanna’s life you’re playing with.”
“I’m not playing with anything,” Serena shot back. “I’m killing two birds with one stone. It wouldn’t matter if Satan himself signed that telegram, Pace would die for Jo and you know it.”
Matt grumbled, but gave her the point. “Then why bother putting my name on it?”
“Because when he brings her home I don’t want him leaving again. His place is here, with his family. If he thinks you asked for his help, maybe he’ll be able to swallow some of that monumental pride of his and the two of you can patch things up.”
“Fat chance in hell he’d go along with that after all this time,” Matt muttered. “I’m not so sure it’s pride so much as that damned stubbornness of his.”
“Oh, well.” Serena rolled her eyes. “Lord knows Pace is the only one in this family with that attribute. That mule would have made less of an impact if he’d kicked you in the head instead of the shin.”
Matt glared at her. “You know I didn’t start this. I’m not the one who—”
“I know, I know,” she offered in a suddenly soothing tone. “But you said yourself that when you left him in Indian Territory last year, things were better between the two of you. Your asking for his help will add to that. You know he’ll find Jo.”
“Do you?” Matt stared deep into her eyes, all anger gone, replaced by a father’s anxiety for a daughter gone missing. “Do you know he’ll find her?”
Serena understood what he was asking, and it wasn’t something she could lie about, not even to ease his mind. He was asking about her special link with Pace. He was asking…She shook her head and smiled sadly. “Knowing is Pace’s gift, not mine.”
Matt slumped against the sofa, realizing the question had been useless. He felt the fight drain out through his fingertips. Rena had been right when she’d said Pace would do anything for Joanna. He let his eyes drift shut. Goddamn, he was scared.
At forty-five Matt Colton was no stranger to fear. He’d survived capture by the Apaches—and later, their acceptance, which for a time had been nearly as terrifying, he thought wryly. He’d lived through being mauled by a bear. He’d sweated in fear while Angela had birthed Joanna. He’d buried one wife and gone through the terrifying experience of having to let go and fall in love again. Then the terror of childbirth again, twice, when Serena gave him two sons.
He’d stared down the barrel o
f a madman’s gun. He’d faced bloodthirsty banditos, a crazed longhorn and a thousand other trials designed to cut a man’s life short. But he had never been so terrified or felt so helpless as when he’d learned a few hours ago that his daughter had disappeared somewhere in Mexico.
“Damn this leg,” he swore fiercely as he glared at the splint holding the broken bone in place. “I can’t just sit here and do nothing. It’s almost healed. I can put weight—”
Spence, his brother the doctor, interrupted. “If you walk or ride before that leg is healed, I’ll break your other leg.”
“Damn you, Spence, this is Jo we’re talking about.”
“I know that! And you know, if you’ll just admit it, that Pace will find her and bring her home. That leg needs at least another week, preferably two.”
“I can’t just sit here and do nothing,” Matt repeated, his fists clenched.
“You can, and you will,” Serena told him.
The look she shot him had him biting back the rest of his words. Matt couldn’t sit a horse because of his broken leg, yet someone had to go to Mexico and find out why Joanna seemed to have dropped off the face of the earth. Pace was the best choice. If he didn’t go, someone else would insist on going. Someone like Matt’s father.
Matt watched his dad as the elder Colton sat grinding his teeth in frustration at having to admit to himself that a man his age had no business taking on the task that needed to be done. Travis Colton wasn’t a man to sit back and let others do his work for him, and Joanna was his oldest grandchild. He would go after her himself, except these days, Daniella rarely let him out of her sight. He probably knew that if he went, Matt’s stepmother would go with him, and she had no more business searching for Jo than did Travis.
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