He frowned as if he didn’t understand.
“Send them away,” she whispered.
Ward could feel a pulse come alive in his temple. He wanted her, but he also realized that even though she had been virginal, she was still Younger’s woman and, being woman, capable of more treachery than Younger could ever imagine. And even if he could trust her, he knew she wouldn’t be safe if Younger caught up to them. With a dozen men shooting at him, no one would be safe. He shook his head. “No.”
Leslie knew she was insane, but something was driving her. Something primitive and totally unmanageable. She leaned down quickly, before she could change her mind again, and touched her lips to his, part of her dazed by what she was doing and part of her exulted by the quiver that went through his lean, rock-hard frame.
Taken by surprise, his tawny eyebrows crowded his piercing blue eyes, but she wasn’t frightened now. She turned her head slightly so their noses would not act as barriers and pressed a shy, tentative kiss on his bottom lip. He searched her eyes, frowning his lack of understanding at her and then he turned and motioned the man away. He lifted her out of the saddle, and she slid into his arms.
His lips claimed hers, and he groaned as if this were the last thing in the world he wanted, but his lips were clinging to hers, warm and demanding. His hands pulled her tight against him, and she could feel the hardness of his thighs against her own.
The Mexican family scampered into the wagon. Her arms lifted to twine around his neck, and she felt him lift her and carry her inside. The small hut smelled of beans. The bed he laid her on was a mattress of corn husks covered by ticking.
Silken lashes darkened her cheeks. Her lips were parted, expectant. He brushed his lips against them and then against the smile lines on her soft face. She tasted of alkali dust and made small mewling sounds against his ear. He kissed her awkwardly at first and then hungrily, glad her usually stormy green eyes were closed. When he could force himself to let her go, he backed away from her and began to undress himself. She unbuttoned the row of buttons on her tattered riding gown and then sat up, shrugging out of the gown, exposing the whiteness of her small breasts. She looked so tender and trusting as she looked up at him. Moving into her arms, he had the awful feeling that she was different for him. Most girls were little more to him than a flash of white skin, an open mouth…
He was right. Their lovemaking was tender-fierce, hungry, a wild mating that left them both exhausted.
She couldn’t tell if she had been asleep or not. The room was dark. A coyote yipped into the night. He was stirring. His hand found hers, and she lay there quietly, content until he raised up on one elbow and brushed the hair away from her face. He lowered his head, and his lips nipped at hers, then moved on to brush against her eyes, cheeks, ears, and throat. She would have believed herself incapable of response so soon after that starburst of sensation, but she was wrong. He kissed her until she was flushed and shaking, until she was so engrossed in her own body’s response that she barely noticed when his lips slipped down to her breasts and then her belly. His mouth was there, dragging a shuddering, in-drawn breath through her, burning her blood into steam to scald and plunder her before she could move to stop him. With diabolical skill he brought her all the way up, and when her body was convulsing with shock waves of ecstasy he buried himself deep inside her to bring them both soaring upward again, clinging together as if the whole world would drop away and leave them, and then, unbelievably, it did. At the moment of heart-stop, the world fell away. She would have screamed if his mouth hadn’t stifled her cries.
“Oh, oh, oh, I never knew, I never knew…” she whispered, gasping.
“So now you know,” he whispered, brushing black curls off the sweet oval that glowed with luster even in the almost dark room.
He was still on top of her, their limbs still meshed, warm, sweat-sheened together, his hands still tangled in the silky black mass of her hair. He groaned and buried his face in the warmth at her throat, then pushed himself away from her.
He stood up. “Where are you going?”
“You don’t need to know that,” he said, pulling on his pants. “I’ll be back, but if something should go wrong, follow the wagon tracks into town. We’re near Flagstaff. You could make yourself useful. Cook those rabbits. I’ll be back in time to help you eat them.”
Chapter Eighteen
Leslie woke up slowly, disoriented, blinking at the rough adobe ceiling. She frowned, remembering that he hadn’t come back to help her eat the rabbit she had cooked.
“Unnn.” That sound, like a grunt of pain, had come from the room on the other side of the canvas.
“Cantrell?” she called out.
A soft curse was her only answer. She scampered off the bed and dressed herself as quickly as she could, her heart pounding with sudden fear. Running her fingers through her hopelessly tangled hair, she brushed aside the canvas over the door opening. Cantrell was seated in a chair with his back against the wall. Relief flooded her. “What are you doing?” she demanded, moving so she could see his face.
“I was hoping you would sleep awhile,” he said, ignoring her question.
“Oh, my…” she gasped. He was frowning down at his left shoulder, trying to poke into torn flesh with a sharp knife. Bloody skin, bruised and burned around the edges, gaped. His shirt and pants were soaked in blood.
“What happened?” she demanded.
He hadn’t looked at her yet. Now he lowered the knife and sighed as if he had finally found something he couldn’t do. His eyes were momentarily desolate. He searched her face and sighed again. “Don’t be scared. It’s not as bad as it looks.”
“How did it happen?”
“I failed,” he said simply.
“Are they close?”
“Close enough, I guess.”
She felt sick, but she was determined not to fall apart. “What are you trying to do?”
“Get a bullet out.”
“I’ll do it.”
He looked at her skeptically. She took the knife from him and considered it. To her, probing inside his shoulder with something that sharp was insanity. It almost guaranteed that more damage would be done. She went to the pan on the basin, washed her hands with the stinging lye soap she found there, and then returned to his side.
“You ready?” she asked.
Her creamy white skin had paled at least two shades, but she looked game, so he nodded. She had to force herself to touch the gaping red tissue, to push her finger into the warm ooze that had been his shoulder. Her stomach lurched, turning inside out. She groped in warm flesh, fighting the faintness that threatened her. Cantrell had set his teeth against the pain, but beads of sweat popped out on his forehead, and all traces of his tan were gone. She was about ready to give up when she felt something sharp and jagged. She had to force two fingers into the wound to pry the flattened bullet out of there. At last, shaking, she withdrew; the bullet dripped blood as she dropped it on the table and collapsed into a chair.
He expelled a loud breath. “Jesus!” he groaned.
“Getting shot is dumb,” she said to cover her own anxiety.
“I know,” he said ruefully. He glanced at his wound and sighed. “We need to clean this thing,” he said slowly, as if dreading the thought of it. “Get that bottle of whiskey out of my saddlebags.”
Leslie complied. He nodded in encouragement and she uncapped the bottle. “You ready?”
His blue eyes were bleak and weary from so much pain. He dragged in a breath. “Maybe I’d better lie down.”
He walked unassisted to the bed. Panting with the effort, he lay back and nodded at her, and she lowered the bottle. At the last second he turned his head away. She slowly poured the fiery liquid all over his shoulder, using her fingers to open the burnt edges of the wound. Cantrell dragged air into his suddenly convulsing lungs through tightly gritted teeth, his body stiffening, arching, and then at the very last, when the breath escaped out of him in a low, anguished
moan, he fainted.
“Oh, God!” Leslie groaned. She threw her arms around him, sobbing. His skin was dry and hot. In panic, she searched his wrist for a pulse, found one, faint and thready, and sighed. At least he wasn’t dead. And momentarily he was not in pain. But what would they do now?
Her mind refused to function. His head was turned away from her. His profile and the graceful column of his sturdy neck tempted her. She used her gown to wipe the beaded perspiration off his face, then lay down beside him and pressed her face against his. He looked so helpless. She reached out to smooth the hair off his forehead and ended by pressing her lips there. His skin had a salt, manly smell that was like a narcotic to her senses. She held him blindly, from some need that she couldn’t name, until she felt him stir, then she slowly moved away.
He opened his eyes, tentatively, as if he feared consciousness might produce more pain. “We have to go,” he said. The look in his eyes, still pain-weary but determined, told her it would do no good to argue.
Chapter Nineteen
“Where are we going now?” Leslie asked, watching him carefully. He had mounted easily, but his face looked gray and he hadn’t moved since he got into the saddle.
Ward barely heard her words. Black fog, swirling dizzyingly in his head, threatened to engulf him. Don’t move, he cautioned himself. Take deep, even breaths. All that blood will grow back—in time. Unfortunately, he didn’t have much time. Younger had gotten reinforcements from somewhere. They could not all be Powers men. Maybe a local posse? Had Powers or some local sheriff wired ahead? Be plenty of men who wouldn’t mind collecting a reward, maybe two of them, if Powers was as mad as the Texas and Pacific Railroad.
The ground under his horse came slowly into focus, and he kicked the big black gently, very gently.
Leslie watched him warily. He had lost a lot of blood, and he swayed a dozen times, but he stubbornly refused to fall.
Much later, they topped a rise and saw a narrow dirt road winding around the mountainside. The air felt cool and crisp, even at midday. They must be fairly high up in the mountains. The smell was crisp and resiny.
The sky overhead was filled with roiling, tempestuous clouds, so low they were almost within reach—threatening to unleash their pent-up fury in the heat and passion of a summer thunderstorm. Mists swirled over their heads, augmenting the tension within her. She was torn between fear and anger at him for beginning something that could only end in death for him and possibly for her as well. The angry, lowering clouds, the threat of pursuit, the heavy, charged atmosphere, all combined to frazzle her usually steady nerves.
Ward swayed, fighting spiraling waves of nausea and weakness that had combined with an abominable frailty that threatened to overwhelm him. The hills and valleys before him surged sickeningly. It was an effort to speak. “Okay, this is where we part company.”
“Here?” She looked around, puzzled. “I don’t see any Indians.”
“Flagstaff is around that bend. You’ll be safe there.”
She looked where he pointed, frowning, her smooth forehead rutted with worry. “But what about you?”
He had turned his horse to leave her. He had no energy to fight her, but he forced himself to sit straight in the saddle. “I’m going to cheat you out of your revenge. You can’t have everything, little one,” he said huskily.
“What about the Indians?”
“They’ll just have to suffer.”
“Where will you go?” she asked, strangely unwilling to let him ride away.
“Friends,” he lied, nodding in another direction. “They’ll take care of me.” His face was gray, damp, set in determination. His clothes were dirty, bloodstained, torn. He kicked his horse gently, as if he didn’t dare jar anything, and she felt a strange ache in her chest. Without thinking, she turned her horse, leaving the trail to follow him.
He stopped. “What are you doing?”
“I’m going with you!”
“No…” He frowned fiercely.
“You can’t stop me—you’re too weak. Besides, I’m not through being a hostage. You’re supposed to trade me for your freedom. I read books, you know. I know how it is done…”
“Christ!”
“Cantrell, look!” she cried in sudden alarm.
A party of riders came into sight from the direction of Flagstaff, saw the two of them less than two hundred yards from the trail, and urged their mounts into a run, beginning to fire.
Cantrell spurred his horse and Leslie did likewise, following him down what looked like a natural trail around the mountain. They flew through a dark corridor of pines with the low-hanging branches slapping at them. They came out of the dense foliage and were on another trail, this one more clearly defined. Without slowing his horse, Ward searched the hollows and crests, looking for a way to evade their pursuers even though he knew it was only a matter of time. The horses, especially his, were used up.
Ward saw another knot of riders and recognized Younger at their head. Pursuit behind him and in front of him. He had one split-second to regret he hadn’t traded horses with the girl, and then reached for his rifle, urging the black forward at even greater speed. He heard the girl scream his name, but his mind was already focused on what he was going to do. He wrapped the reins around the pommel, lifted the rifle into position, and began to fire into the knot of riders, scattering them.
Leslie couldn’t believe her eyes. Cantrell had gone crazy! He looked like one of the wild bandits in a Salvator Rosa painting. His hat had fallen back on his shoulders, his blond hair gleamed in the sunlight, and he was riding straight into the arms of at least a dozen firing men. Bullets spanged up dirt and rocks all around him. Men were falling, horses rearing and screaming, and then a bullet caught Cantrell’s big black in the chest and both horse and rider went down.
Fear that had held her stunned and immobile now sent her flying forward. She didn’t see anything except that lean sprawled form. Someone shot at her and she heard someone else yell, “You fool! That’s Leslie!”
She would have thrown herself on the ground beside Cantrell if someone hadn’t caught her arm and jerked her aside. Horses milled everywhere and dust blinded her.
“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” That was Dallas Younger’s voice, snarling at her. She turned, jerking her arm out of his steely grip.
“He’s hurt!” she said without thinking.
“Damn right he’s hurt! If he ain’t dead, he’s gonna be a lot more hurt before I get through with him!”
“No!” she shouted, springing at Younger, her eyes glazed with fury, her nails curved into talons.
Like an enormous grizzly, Younger shoved Leslie aside, flinging her into the dirt with a look of rage and mistrust that reminded her finally which side she was supposed to be on.
“Get that bastard on his feet!” Younger bellowed. Two men pulled Cantrell’s limp form up, holding him by the arms, and Leslie had to bite back the urge to tell them again that they were hurting him. While they were dragging Cantrell toward a furious Younger, the other group of riders who had been pursuing them joined the melee, jerking their horses to a halt just a few feet from where Leslie was struggling to her feet.
“Who’s in charge here?” Their leader, a tall, barrel-chested man with a silver badge catching the light, dismounted stiffly and stepped forward. He had a rumbling, sonorous boom of a voice.
“Who the hell wants to know?” Younger demanded.
“My name is Geronimo Nieves, Sheriff of Coconino County. I have a warrant for this man’s arrest.”
Geronimo Nieves had the most battered-looking face Leslie had ever seen. He had two scars, one slashing diagonally across his right cheek and another dividing his chin. His face was darkly tanned except for those two white slashes flashing like lightning on a dark night. His ears were gnarled, and his nose looked permanently flattened.
“Won’t be necessary, Sheriff,” Younger said, ignoring the outstretched hand. “We’ll be taking care of him ours
elves.”
Younger dismissed Nieves with a wave of his hand and walked over to where Cantrell hung limply between the two men. He jerked Cantrell’s head back and watched it fall forward lifelessly.
“The bastard still alive?”
“Barely.”
“Get him awake! I want him to enjoy every goddamned minute of this!” he snarled.
A third man took a canteen off a horse, and they leaned him back and poured the water on his face while Leslie struggled not to scream at them. Her heart was beating furiously.
“This bastard killed eleven of my men,” she heard Younger telling Nieves.
“Maybe more,” Bass Wimer, a big man with a dull simian look, said, pointing to two who lay sprawled in the dirt and two more who sat nursing their wounds and groaning.
“You know why he done it?” Nieves asked, glancing from Cantrell’s slumped form to Younger’s furious face.
“Crazy, that’s all,” Younger growled. “Kidnapped my woman, and when we followed, he sneaked back and surprised us.”
Leslie was watching Cantrell with fear and foreboding. They handled him roughly, pouring water on his head and slapping him, and only despair over the reality of their situation kept her from rushing forward. He groaned finally, and his eyes blinked open, fever bright and unfocused. They stood him up, one on each side, holding him with his arms twisted back, and she groaned.
“Well, well, well, so you’ve decided to join us.” Younger sneered. “How are y’all feeling now, Cantrell? How’s it feel to know you’re the one about to die, bastard?”
Younger stepped closer to his prisoner and sent his fist crashing into Cantrell’s face. “You’re going to be real sorry you didn’t kill me back there,” he said. He hit him again, causing a gash to open up along his cheekbone, and this time Leslie cried out shamefully, begging him to stop, not even realizing she had until Younger turned on her, letting his eyes rake over her like she had no clothes on. He came to her side and dragged her away from the tree she had sagged against.
The Lady and the Outlaw Page 13
