Apache-Colton Series

by Janis Reams Hudson

  It’ll never work, Pace!

  But when he drew close enough for their eyes to meet, they both knew it was her only chance.

  In her mind she heard the echo of her own childish voice. Faster! Faster, Uncle Pace!

  Hooves thundered, but her heartbeat was louder. Dust swirled, and she swore there was more in her mouth than in the air. She turned and ran slightly to one side of the oncoming horse. When Pace reached her, she leaped in the air, wrapped both her arms around his outstretched one and held on for her life. The momentum of the horse carried her into the air.

  Pace grunted and used every ounce of strength to swing her up behind him. His arm felt like it was being ripped from its socket. The sudden extra weight threw the buckskin off stride, but he got his feet back under himself quick enough. Pace had time for one fleeting thought as he gouged his spurs into the horse’s flanks. Damn, Jo, you’ve put on weight.

  The horse lunged forward and Pace gave a wild Apache cry of victory. Joanna echoed his cry and wrapped her arms tight around his waist. He had barely noticed that she wore a gunbelt across her chest like a bandoleer, but he noticed now, for the bullets in the belt gouged into his back. It took him a full second to realize what else he felt pressed against his back. Joanna hadn’t merely put on weight, she’d put on size and shape, too. No child, this, for those were a woman’s breasts pressed flush against him. Sometime while he wasn’t looking, Joanna had grown up.

  Behind them the first of the riders climbed out of the gully. A bullet struck the dirt several yards to the right and just ahead of the buckskin. The next shot, Pace knew, would be closer. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. He wished Jo was in front of him, dammit, out of the direct line of fire, rather than shielding his back. If anybody got off a lucky shot she would be the one hit.

  Pace knew he had no hope of outrunning the Mexicans, not with the buckskin carrying two riders. His only hope was to outsmart them. The riders surely knew their home territory well, while Pace had only his instincts to go on. He figured that made them even. He’d put his instincts up against another man’s knowledge any time. This was not his day to die.

  He wished he could be so certain about Joanna.

  He reined the buckskin to the right and took a trail leading up into the rocky foothills

  Pace would know when it was his time to die. There would be fire, and it would warm him on the inside, would give him peace. An upside down fire. When he saw it, he would know. But he would not see it this day. That, too, he knew.

  Shod hooves, the buckskin’s and the ones who followed, rang out against rock. Bullets pinged against the rock walls. Joanna flinched once and squeezed him tighter.

  “You all right?” he demanded.

  “Just get us out of here.” Something sounding like a cross between fear and pain tightened her voice.

  “Yes, ma’am. I’m working on it.”

  The trail narrowed and cut around a huge chunk of sandstone that had broken off from the cliff face above. Juniper and rough cedar sprang from crevices. The turn in the trail muffled the sounds of pursuit.

  His gaze sharp, Pace searched ahead for a place to hide. He needed rocky ground that would obscure tracks and lessen the dust his horse kicked up.

  The trail rose abruptly and forked, the left branch angling down a sandy path and disappearing around the bend. Pace took the rockier high path to the right. At the crest, they were silhouetted against the sky. A shout from behind meant the men had spotted them. Then Pace saw what he’d been praying for, a faint, narrow path through what looked like an impenetrable thicket of salt cedar and yucca. A path that looked like it led nowhere but to a dead end at a wall of solid rock.

  “Duck,” he warned Jo as he bent forward and urged the buckskin onto the path. The horse balked at first, but only for an instant, then he plunged through, trusting his rider to know where they were going.

  Beyond the wall of greenery, the trail hugged the rock wall for thirty feet before it cut back and joined the main trail. Halfway along the hidden path the wall split open. The cut wasn’t visible from the direction they were headed. Pace only found it by looking back over his shoulder. Even then it wasn’t obvious, as more growth covered the slice in the rock.

  The gap behind the growth was barely wide enough for the horse. With silent commands from hands, knees, and boots, Pace backed the gelding into the crevice. There was neither time nor room to dismount. Leaning forward, Pace stroked the horse between his ears to quiet him. The riders were close. Pace could hear them out on the original trail as they rode past, a mere fifty feet away. The clatter of hooves on rocky ground, small stones tumbling away. The snort of a horse. The grunt and curse of a man. The creak of a saddle.

  Gradually the noise faded. Pace held the horse quiet until the only sound left was that of heavy breathing, his, Joanna’s, and the horse’s.

  “Are they gone?” Joanna whispered.

  “For now,” he answered grimly as he stared out through the cedar. “But it won’t take them long to figure out we must have turned off somewhere.”

  “They’ll find this place.”

  The hint of dread and fear in her voice tightened his gut. “Yeah, but we’ll be long gone.” So saying, he nudged the horse from the crevice and guided him back out onto the original trail, where he turned back the way they’d come, away from the departing riders, letting the horse slowly pick his way down the gravel path.

  At the open spot that silhouetted them against the sky, Pace held his breath, but felt certain the men were still riding west and wouldn’t see them. Down into the scrub and rocks again he drew up just past the lower fork he’d passed earlier. Here he backed the horse down the sandy trail a dozen yards or more until he’d rounded the bend. If anyone noticed the tracks, it would look like a rider had come out of the path instead of having entered it. Unless the Mexicans had a damn good tracker with them, the trick should work. At the least, it would buy them some much needed time.

  Beyond the bend, the ground between the rock on one side and a sheer drop of eighty feet or more on the other was just wide enough for the horse to turn around. The trail the Mexicans had taken appeared to angle north. This trail wound its way west. They rode at a steady pace for an hour. Joanna’s strength ebbed by the minute. Pace clenched his teeth against the need to stop. He had to put more distance between them and the Mexicans.

  But God, he wanted to pull her around in front of him and cradle her in his arms, make sure she was really all right, hold her and protect her. Shake her until her damn teeth rattled for getting herself into such a fix.

  Concern and anger pulled at him from opposite sides, yet he gave in to neither. He had to keep his attention focused. At any point, this trail and the other could join again. He couldn’t afford that kind of surprise.

  Without speaking, he unstrapped his canteen and handed it over his shoulder to Jo. She drank sparingly then offered it back.

  “You can have more.”

  Silently she took another sip, then he took a couple of swallows and strapped the canteen back in place. “You okay?”

  Her arms tightened around his waist. “I don’t know where you came from or what you’re doing here, but I’ve never been so glad to see anyone in my life as I was you.”

  Pace gave a low grunt. “We’ll talk about it later. And you better have some good answers, girl, because I’ve damn sure got questions.”

  They rode on, following the twisting, turning trail through rocks and cactus and cedar, sometimes climbing, sometimes descending, always westward.

  She wasn’t holding him so tight now that the bullets from her gunbelt dug into him, but he could still feel the cushion of her breasts. He counted up in his mind and was shocked to realize that Jo had to be around twenty-two years old. He hadn’t seen her often in the past few years, but hell, that she’d grown up so much shouldn’t have come as such a surprise.

  By mid-morning Pace knew he had to stop. The horse was tired, and Joanna was barely ho
lding on. Ahead a few yards the trail skirted a thick clump of salt cedars and man-high scrub. For now, it was the best he could hope for. He guided the horse into the center of the scant cover and swung his leg over the horse’s ears to slide off. He stroked the animal’s neck once, then turned to Joanna.

  God, she was so pale. Her green eyes looked bruised and haunted by pain. “Jo?”

  “I’m all right.”

  She wasn’t, he knew, but there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it just then. After exchanging his boots for knee-high moccasins, he pulled the pistol from the holster that lay against Jo’s left hip and checked the load, then placed it in her hands. “Slide forward into the saddle and keep this ready. Don’t shoot unless you have to—sound carries in these rocks. If you hear anyone coming, ride out. I’ll catch up with you.”

  Green eyes widened. “Where are you going?”

  “I need to take a look around. I won’t be long.” He turned away quickly to keep himself from satisfying the sharp need to pull her into his arms. The need shook him.

  “Pace,” she called softly.

  Pace halted, but didn’t look back. If he looked back, he might go back, might let those haunted green eyes pull him in ways he didn’t want to be pulled. So he didn’t look back.

  “Be careful,” she told him.

  He acknowledged with a wave and scrambled up into the rocks for a better view.

  Joanna watched him leave and prayed he wouldn’t be gone long. His fringed buckskins blended in with the surrounding rock and dry brush. He seemed to disappear before her eyes. Wondering if her heart would ever slow down, she gripped the gun and felt it slip in the sweat slicking her palm.

  One minute stretched into two. The quiet threatened to unnerve her. She strained to listen for Juerta and his men, or a hint that Pace was near. There was nothing but the occasional call of a bird, a rustle in the brush as a small rodent scurried. Now and then a small rock clattered, threatening to unnerve her.

  The sun rose above the protection of the cedars and beat into her back, her shoulders, her scalp. Her head throbbed. Her legs cramped from not being able to move. Her feet ached. Her side screamed in pain.

  Where was Pace? How long had he been gone? She thought to worry that Juerta had caught him.

  At first the idea was laughable. In her mind, Pace was invincible. No lowlife bastard like Juerta could catch the likes of her stepmother’s brother.

  But a shiver overtook her as she admitted that no man was invincible, not even Pace. Hadn’t he been captured and thrown onto the prison train with Geronimo back in ‘86? Of course, that had been the result of trickery and deceit on the part of General Miles, but there was no more deceitful trickster on earth than Juerta.

  Then she laughed at her fears again. Pace was half Apache. General Miles wouldn’t have been able to put him on that prison train if Pace hadn’t willingly agreed to translate for the Army. Out here in this wild country, no one would catch Pace Colton unless he let them.

  Or unless he had a woman to slow him down.

  Lord, she was going to drive herself crazy. Where was he? The sun rose higher until it was directly overhead. He had to come soon, and when she feared she couldn’t sit upright in the saddle another minute without tumbling to the ground, he did. Silently, with no warning. One minute she was staring between the horse’s ears at a wall of cedar, the next, Pace was there, right there in front of her.

  His abrupt appearance startled a gasp from her. “Jesus, Pace.” She put a hand to her chest to keep her heart from pounding its way through her ribs. “You could give a girl some warning.”

  He stroked the horse’s neck. “You’re in worse shape than you look if you couldn’t hear me coming. I made more noise than a stag in rut. That pistol should have been aimed right between my eyes the instant you saw me.”

  “I’ll try to accommodate you next time,” she snapped.

  He narrowed his eyes and studied her. “And if you’re in worse shape than you look, you’re damn near dead. You look like hell.”

  “Flatterer. Get us out of here. I want off this horse.”

  His lips twitched. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Instead of having Joanna slide back onto the saddle skirt so he could remount, Pace took the reins and led the horse on foot. At the horse’s first step, it was all Joanna could do to stay in the saddle. She holstered her pistol and clung to the saddle horn with both hands, gritting her teeth against the grinding pain of limbs gone numb, the aches in her feet, and the hole in her hide.

  By the time they reached the cave Pace had located while he’d been out scouting, the afternoon sun was in their eyes. The mouth of the cave was obscured by huge boulders and salt cedar, the entrance so low that Joanna had to hug the horse’s neck to keep from bashing her head. Inside, the ceiling sloped upward, but soon the opening in the rock narrowed into a tunnel. It angled and turned, cutting off the light until Joanna could see nothing. Total, breath-stealing darkness pressed down on her with the weight of the hills above them.

  “Pace?” She shivered in the sudden coolness.

  “Shh. Hang on. We’ll have light in a minute.”

  A scraping sound—a match striking rock. The tiny flicker of light as the match flame steadied her. All it illuminated was Pace’s hand, but that was enough to ease the suffocating tightness in her lungs.

  When he’d found the cave earlier, Pace had prepared torches from dried grass, and had gathered twigs and deadwood for a fire, and as much of the scant grass in the area as he could for the horse. He lit one of the torches and led the buckskin down the long, winding tunnel to the center of a high-ceilinged cavern. In minutes he had a small fire going.

  “Okay,” he said softly, “you can—Jo?”

  She lay slumped over the horse’s neck, her arms hanging loosely toward the ground.

  Pace grasped her shoulder. “Jo!”

  With a low moan, she roused.

  Pace swore. “You scared the crap out of me. Come on.” He grasped her around the waist to lift her from the saddle.

  Joanna stiffened and cried out. Reflex had Pace jerking his hands away. That’s when he saw the blood.

  Chapter Four

  The air in the cave turned blue with curses. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me you’d been hit, goddammit?”

  Joanna sighed. “What could you have done about it?”

  He swore again. The wound was just above her waist on her right side, slightly to the back. After pulling the gunbelt off over her head, he placed his hands beneath her arms. “Hang on. This is going to hurt.”

  When he lifted her, she moaned and hissed in pain. “At least you don’t lie. It hurts like hell.”

  “Serves you right,” he said with uncharacteristic panic snaking through him as he carried her across the cave and sat her against the wall. “Stay put while I make a pallet.”

  “The ground feels good enough to me,” she mumbled, sliding down the wall sideways toward the sandy floor.

  Pace hissed another curse and hurried to lay out his bedroll. His fingers fumbled on the leather thongs that kept the blanket and ground sheet rolled tight. Hell, he’d faced certain death before with less panic, he thought with disgust. If she hadn’t bled to death by now, it wasn’t likely that she would in the next couple of minutes.

  Still, he hurried. The thought of his bright-eyed, flame-haired JoJo bleeding and in pain threatened to cripple him.

  Finally the leather came untied. He tossed out the bedroll next to the fire, then lifted Jo in his arms and laid her on her uninjured side on the blanket so that she faced the fire. As he laid her down, she sucked in her breath.

  She was a mess. Blood stained the side of her once-white blouse and halfway down the green serge of her skirt. Most of the blood was dried. She must have torn the wound open when she bent over the buckskin’s neck. Damn her, how could she not have told him she was hurt? How could he not have known?

  Kneeling behind her, he had half the buttons down her back undone be
fore Jo let out her breath. “What are you doing?”

  “I have to get your blouse off.”

  “You devil, you. I bet you say that to all the girls.”

  Pace ignored her and started to pull the blouse off. “Damn, it’s stuck.”

  Jo grunted. “I hope you don’t say that to all the girls.”

  He retrieved his canteen, uncapped it, and brought it to her lips. “Drink this and stop talking dirty. For your information, I don’t mess with girls. I prefer women.”

  After she took a sip, he dribbled water over the wound, where the fabric stuck to it.

  Jo hissed in a sharp breath.

  “Sorry, but I have to loosen your clothes. And yes, I say that to every woman I meet.”

  While waiting for the water to soak through to the wound, Pace loosened the fastening on her skirt and eased the tail of the blouse free. A moment later, the blouse pulled away from the wound with only a small tug. Jo winced and squeezed her eyes shut.

  Because the blouse opened down the back, Pace had to maneuver Jo’s right arm out of the sleeve to get at the buttons on the front of her snug-fitting camisole.

  Jo’s eyes flew open, wide and startled on his. “Pace!”

  “I can’t get to the wound.” He undid the first button. “What? No corset?” He opened the second button. There was nothing beneath the camisole but Jo. He tried not to touch her pale, soft-looking skin, but the edge of his little finger brushed against the swell of one breast.

  Damn, Jo, why did you have to go and grow up on me? “I didn’t think a female over the age of six was allowed out of bed without a corset,” he grumbled to cover the slight pause in his progress.

  Jo closed her eyes again and swallowed. “You try running for your life across the dessert while you’re all trussed up in bone so tight you can’t draw a decent breath.”

  With the last button freed, Pace drew the blanket up in front of her to cover her chest. Thankfully, the earlier soaking had loosened the camisole, as well, from the wound. He pulled the lace- and ribbon-trimmed cotton down and off her right arm. “If corsets are that bad, why do you females wear them at all?”