The Lady and the Outlaw

by Joyce Brandon

  Leslie lapsed into silence. Her head ached with a determined throb; pain laced through her temples as the flying hooves hit the ground. They were riding fast, over what looked like level ground. She had wanted to escape, but not this way. Where was he taking her? Into the desert?

  Now, huddled tensely in his arms, shivering from the chill bite of cold autumn winds, memory, like an unwelcome visitor, was slowly returning. She recalled the two men who had been with her before, the strident shout, “Halt! Don’t move!” the men grasping for their guns, the volley of gunshots rolling one on another, the screaming horses. She felt revulsion, nausea, and then anger and turned on him abruptly, almost unseating herself.

  “You killed those two men!” she hissed.

  “Somebody had to,” he replied harshly.

  Rage, fed by her terror, spewed up from the depths of her and blinded Leslie to everything except the urge to strike out. “Let me down!” Her fists pummeled his face and chest. “Let me go! You killer! Dirty animal killer!”

  Her furious twisting and flailing almost unseated them both before Ward could get her under control. He jerked the horse to a halt and dismounted, dragging her off unceremoniously. “You damned little bitch!” He slapped her once to get her attention, then pinned her on the hard ground while she screamed in terror as the horse’s hooves stamped just inches from her head. She struggled frantically against him, expecting anything, but his rough hand only held her still while he slipped a noose over her neck and adjusted the knot.

  “What are you doing to me? You beast! I hate you! Do you hear me? Kill me! Go ahead! Filthy killer!” But there was a tremor of fear in her voice.

  “You want to ride alone, you can ride alone,” he said softly, his voice as calm and unaffected as if he were telling her it was dinnertime. “The other end of this rope is going to be tied to my saddle. You either keep up or you break your pretty little neck, you hear?” He lifted her onto the horse, astride a western saddle, handling her easily in spite of her struggles. Then he mounted a horse she didn’t recall seeing or hearing before.

  She learned that night what terror was. He was traveling fast, and she lived in constant fear that he would deliberately jerk her off just so she would break her neck, or that her horse or his would stumble. She had visions of dying slowly of a broken neck while those clumsy black birds Younger had called buzzards circled overhead. Or falling off her mount to be dragged to death.

  She prayed that Dallas Younger would follow, and remembered her uncle’s words: “You could do a lot worse than a man like Younger.” And as furious as she was, she realized that Younger, with his slow Texas drawl and masculine arrogance, would come after her…

  “Look out!” Cantrell yelled. “Duck!”

  Leslie heard the urgent warning just in time. She ducked and her horse barely skimmed under the branch of a dead tree that had loomed up out of the blackness. Her heart leaped into her throat, pounding wildly, but the danger was past. She slowly settled back down, and, trembling, she hung on to that damned torturing horse, cursing the pain in her side and the crashing agony inside her skull. She continued to hang on until the savage pain was permanently lodged in her side, fear became commonplace, and hope had turned to resignation.

  For lack of anything better to do she watched the moon rise, arc overhead, and set. Still that maniac kept up the same killing pace. If obstinance hadn’t been a family trait handed down from mother to daughter for generations, she would have thrown herself to the ground and broken her own neck. Death couldn’t possibly be this bad.

  She had been on the very brink of death when she was fifteen, and it had been nothing compared to this! She had contracted a mysterious fever and had lain with her arms crossed over her chest, her body swaddled in warm blankets, sipping only water for days, and the only thought she had ever had was that she wouldn’t mind dying—she just wanted it over with! She had no patience for whimpering, not even her own. She had been able to hear people talking about her. She had known what they said and how concerned they were, but it was as if she had watched from some lofty vantage point, not as a participant but as a not-too-concerned spectator, grateful for the distance she had managed to put between herself and that feeble alien shell.

  Now she hurt all over, and there was no escape. She had never been so truly afraid before, and she resented this fact almost as much as she hated the cause of her misery.

  They rode all night. When the sun was just beginning to spread warm light in the eastern sky, he finally “whoaed” his horse and raised his hand in a signal for her to stop.

  They were in a canyon with sheer, soaring walls that looked gray in the first pink flush of dawn. The canyon, rough, immense, almost as broad as a valley, looked like a continuation of the high desert. The floor and halfway up the walls were covered by creosote, sage, and rocks that looked like they had been shoved up through the hard granite floor.

  No one would ever find her. She was at the mercy of a madman, and she was so tired that she barely cared. He would probably kill her and leave her for the buzzards, but she didn’t feel upset—she was numb.

  He dismounted and came to her side to help her down. She had no strength to resist, but when he reached for her, she kicked him in the side. “Don’t touch me!”

  He grimaced and stepped back, his eyes cold.

  “Those men didn’t do anything to you! You killed them in cold blood! For nothing!”

  “Not exactly for nothing,” he said calmly, moving away to loosen his saddle cinch. “I needed a body to tack a note on so Younger would know where to come looking for you.”

  Her eyes opened wider in horror and disbelief. “You needed something to pin a note on, so you killed two men? Animal!” That one word was filled with such revulsion and hatred that Ward almost flinched under the searing contempt in her narrowed green eyes.

  “Get down,” he ordered curtly. There was a veiled threat in his controlled husky-quiet voice that scared her more than violence would have. She could feel her face draining of color. There was something infinitely terrifying in his cold blue eyes, as if he didn’t care which way it went. He could kill her as easily as he had those men. Younger would still follow him, whether she was dead or alive.

  “All right! Just don’t touch me!” she said fiercely. She practically threw herself out of the saddle. She was in pain, and her anger, which was always formidable, was in full bloom. Unfortunately, her legs, which had been cramped and chilled for hours—she wasn’t dressed for riding in the cold of an Arizona night—collapsed, and she fell headlong into the dirt.

  “You’re doing real fine,” he drawled. “The cave is that direction.” He started off with the other end of her rope in his hands, leading her and the horses, and she had to scramble to her feet and follow him before he dragged her or the horses stepped on her. She fell and hurt her knee and would have cried if he hadn’t been there; as it was, she just glared with hatred at his damned back and stumbled ahead.

  The sheer walls of the canyon were smooth, flesh-colored granite that looked like they had been carved by a glacier’s passage. The cave, once she came to it, was much bigger inside than it looked from the outside. Leslie could imagine spiders, bats, and hairy black animals from the smells, but she was too weary to move, much less run. She leaned against the wall of the cave, dusty and panting from the exertion of climbing the hill from the canyon floor, her mouth dry and aching with thirst, but she wouldn’t ask this madman for anything, even if she died right there.

  He led them deep inside the mountain, paused, looked back, and then began to unsaddle their mounts. He spread the blankets on the floor of the cave, ignoring her, and she bored her hatred into his broad back, torn between refusing to lie on his blankets and refusing to let him intimidate her.

  His tasks done for the moment, Ward poured water into a tin pan for each horse, then took a long drink out of the canteen and passed it to the girl. She looked like she might fling it back in his face, but common sense and thirst prev
ailed. She drank painfully and gave it back, watching him warily the whole time.

  “What are you going to do with me?” she finally asked, her eyes staring stubbornly at the ground, refusing to meet his.

  Ward stopped what he was doing long enough to really look at her. She was dressed in a formal riding habit that was probably all the rage in Boston for trotting sedately around the quad at the height of the social season. Now it hung in filthy tatters around her ankles where cactus and mesquite had torn the skirt in passing. Her face was coated with dust, but even dirty and disheveled, she retained a quality of ladylike refinement and beauty that both impressed and unnerved him.

  He recalled what he had told Younger, but he realized that he was no longer capable of either violating her himself or allowing anyone else to do it. He didn’t want to take his revenge on her personally, but he would not be turned from his purpose. He needed her as bait for Younger and those bastards who had slaughtered Mama Mendoza, Isabel, Pedro, and Grandpapa.

  He couldn’t name them without recalling the horror they must have endured before they died, and it was this memory that hardened his purpose and made his words harsher than they might have been.

  “Nothing you can’t handle,” he said gruffly. He regretted his words as soon as they left his lips. It was suddenly very easy to see what was on her mind. He glanced from her terrified face to the blankets he had spread out on the floor of the cave. The thought of having to cope with a hysterical, screaming woman chilled his blood. He was too exhausted to be thinking very lucidly himself. He hadn’t slept more than an hour at a time in days. He decided to ignore everything except the basics. He rummaged in his saddlebags until he found some beef jerky. “Here,” he said, putting the coarse stick into her hand to distract her. “Eat this.”

  She took it tentatively and touched her tongue and lips to it. The smell seemed pleasant. She tried to bite into it. “Ow!” she grumped.

  “Suck it. It’ll last longer that way. So will your teeth.”

  Once she grew accustomed to it, the flavor melted into her mouth and was incredibly delicious, but the saltiness only reminded her how thirsty she was. She knelt on the hard earth to relieve her shaking legs. “Can I have some water?”

  He passed her the canteen again and then lay down on the blankets, leaving a place beside him, which jarred her frazzled nerves. She watched with mounting uneasiness as her kidnapper arranged another blanket into a roll to serve as his pillow. “You’d better take advantage of this opportunity to sleep,” he said, lying back.

  Leslie refused to move from where she was even though she felt like an animal kneeling in the dirt with a rope around her neck. Sunlight was spreading into the cave, widening the wedge of brightness, so she knew that even though they were far back in the cave, they would be able to see clearly until after sunset. She shivered. The cave was chilled now and would probably stay cool enough throughout the day so that sleep would be possible. She desperately wanted to sleep, but she was not able to willingly lie down next to any man on a blanket with no chaperone within a hundred miles.

  Ward sighed and stood up. He took her by the shoulders. She started to struggle against him, but he was far too strong for her. She heard herself moan in fear, and it was such a pitiful, wounded-creature sound that she clamped her teeth together.

  “I don’t have time for your foolishness. Now lie down. I don’t give a damn whether you sleep or not, but if you know what’s good for you, you’ll lie real still so I can sleep.” He measured out enough rope so she could lie down and then he tied the other end of the rope around his lean waist. His eyes closed and Leslie could see the tension slowly relaxing. In moments he was asleep. He had prudently placed his guns off to one side of the blankets so she couldn’t reach them without waking him.

  The cave was lit by reflected sunlight, so that its mouth, far above where they were, was bright and glaring. Down here the light was soft and muted. Too dim for painting, but she could study her captor at will. His broad chest rose and fell with his deep breathing.

  She recognized him with a start. This was the cowboy who had tried to save her from falling during the parade, the same cowboy she had taunted from the hotel window. Knowing that, she was not so terrified by him, unless he was one of those mad-dog killers she had read about; but looking at him, at the lean, square-jawed handsomeness of his face and the tawny wheat-colored hair that had attracted her to him in that crowd, she could not believe he was a mad-dog killer. But why had he kidnapped her? Why had he killed those men?

  He turned over onto his side, away from her, and Leslie sighed and lay down beside him. She was too exhausted to worry about all that now. She closed her eyes and huddled tiredly on her sliver of the blanket, careful not to touch him, until she slipped into a dreamless sleep that was like floating on the surface of a warm lake.

  It seemed like only seconds had passed when she felt rough hands shake her awake. The cave, when she opened her eyes, was dark as a potful of black paint. She could see nothing, not even a dim outline, and she couldn’t remember where she was or whom she was with.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “No, please, leave me alone,” she groaned. “Let me sleep…”

  “You’d better eat something. Last chance you’ll have.”

  “Oh, no, please.”

  “Sit up. It’s almost dawn. We’re moving out.” She struggled fitfully against his hard hands, turning to face the sound of his voice. Now he was a dark shape against the lightening cave. His strong hands lifted her into a sitting position, not unkindly, but any movement at all wrenched a groan from her. Every muscle felt torn. “All those hours in the saddle took a little of the starch out of you anyway,” he said, and she thought she could hear amusement in his voice.

  In the end, she ate the biscuits and jerky and sipped the water and was grateful for what she was able to choke down, because when they finished eating, they rode until the sun came up and then all that day with only a few stops to rest the horses. She felt like a squaw or a dog with the rope around her neck and a dead man’s hat on her head. She was in pain, all over, and had given up hope of rescue. She had ridden the paths surrounding Wellesley. All the young ladies in her set rode, and she had imagined herself a good rider, but no more. Trying to keep up with a man who rode like an extension of his horse, effortlessly, hour after hour, never tiring, who didn’t seem to need food or water, and barely noticed her, except when she slowed him down, was a nightmare…

  Riding over dunes covered with blue sage, beneath sandstone cliffs that dwarfed the occasional gnarled trees, Leslie stole furtive glances at her captor when she could do so without being obvious. He was tall, with a lean, muscular form that explained why he was able to handle her so effortlessly. He had broad, tapering shoulders, narrow hips, and long legs that he used to control his horse. Awake, his lean, square jaw looked manly and resolute. He was clean-shaven in a land where every man wore either a beard or a handlebar mustache. He hadn’t shaved today, but his beard stubble was so fair that it didn’t darken his cheeks. He had eyes the same shade of blue as the noonday sky, a light azure that picked up the light and reflected it. He rarely spoke to her, but his eyes, which were by some miracle of birth highly expressive, telegraphed his moods. When she provoked him, his brows crowded his eyes, narrowing them into slits and cooling the vibrant color. When he was amused, she could see the merriment shimmering in the blue depths. When he lifted his hat to wipe his perspiring brow, his hair was the color of pale straw with steaks of silver that glinted in the sunlight. Its fairness contrasted handsomely with the burnt teak of his skin. Leslie gnashed her teeth, despising him all the more. If he were maimed and gnarled, his actions might have been excusable on the grounds that a lonely outcast deserved to avenge himself on a heartless, disregarding world, but this man had no such excuse for behaving as he did.

  They rode interminably. Several times he dismounted to chip at the granite with a small axe. What was he doing? Certainly not marking a trail?
She finally decided that whatever he was doing must have a meaning beyond her experience.

  Anger and curiosity slowly turned to apathy under the relentless glare of the sun. It wasn’t until they stopped for the night beside a wide shallow stream that wound its silent way through a rugged rock-strewn canyon that she found strength to speak. “I know you,” she said, her voice hardly more than a hoarse whisper.

  He merely glanced at her, lifting an expressive eyebrow as he tied her rope to the trunk of a slender tree. Leslie went on, “You’re the one who caught my horse—during the parade.”

  Ward’s hand instinctively moved up to rub the back of his head. “I won’t do that again,” he promised.

  “Younger hit you,” Leslie said hastily. “I tried to stop him. Is that why you’re doing this?”

  “No.” Ward shook his head. “I have another matter to settle with Younger.”

  “What are you going to do with me?” she asked.

  “Sell you to the Indians if you don’t behave,” he growled. Ignoring her gasp of outrage, he turned to his saddlebags. He took out a jar and tied the big stallion securely, then gentled him by rubbing his cheek against the horse’s flank to distract the animal while his hands gently worked a gooey salve into a wound on the horse’s flank. It occurred to Leslie, who knew a little about horses, that her captor was practically tying himself into a knot to accommodate his horse and spare the animal pain.

  “I saw you climb in that wagon with that Mexican girl, too,” she said, guardedly.

  Ward turned to face her, smiling suddenly, as if the memory of that particular event pleased him. “Oh, yes, Maria,” he said. “We have a date to meet each other next year.”

  “To do the same thing, no doubt,” Leslie ventured, with her voice reflecting more than she meant it to.

  “I hope not,” Ward replied ruefully. Leslie lapsed into puzzled silence then, but she continued to watch her captor as he moved around their campsite. “What’s your name?”