by P. A. Bechko
“If you’ve gotten that out of your system I can tell you, I rode in with both of them, and I aim to ride out with what I rode in with. You stay here. I’ll get ’em.”
Amanda nodded then crouched down in the darkest shadows to wait. For some reason it never crossed her mind that he might be thinking of abandoning her. A few minutes later, she heard the soft, rhythmic clip-clopping of horses at a walk and stepped out of the shadows to meet him the rich, earthy animal scent curling out to her nostrils.
“Let’s go,” Jake’s voice caressed the darkness, “I’ll give you a leg up.”
He didn’t wait for her consent, he just tossed her into the saddle as if it were the most natural place in the world for her to be. Now, with sooty, grimy skirts bunched beneath her legs and buttocks, she decided, was not the time to tell him she had ridden a horse only twice before in her life, both times side-saddle. The first time she had been terrified, and the second time, thrown.
“Here.”
He handed the reins up and the horse beneath her began walking even as Jake vaulted into his saddle. Jake led the way, at a walk, out of town toward freedom.
Once clear of Phoenix, Hollander put his horse to an all-out run. Amanda’s pony followed suit, more of its own accord being used to pacing Jake’s mount, than because of any urgings on her part. Her jaws snapped together, teeth catching her tongue and she tasted blood. From that instant on it was a hell-for-leather ride into the blackness of the night and all Amanda could do was hold on to the saddle horn with fingers curled and locked into place. To be left behind meant recapture. That meant death. Holding Jake Hollander back meant the same thing, but for both of them. The facts of Amanda’s new life were abundantly clear. There could be no turning back to the old.
Chapter 4
Jake, in the lead, set a killing pace until the first glimmer of morning brightened the eastern sky. Amanda could only assume the mountains thrusting up out of the desert before them were their final destination. Not a word had passed between them since they had left the dark alley behind. In tight-lipped silence Amanda had borne the grueling pace. Now, already tired and sore, expecting it to go get much worse, she was attempting to school her mind to numbness when, abruptly, Jake pulled his horse to a halt, then turned in the saddle to look behind them. Amanda turned with him then gasped at the knife-like pain that burned down the back of each thigh at the movement. She could see nothing, not so much as a smudge of dust on the distant horizon.
“We better walk the horses a spell,” Jake said swinging down.
Stepping around his horse to give Amanda a hand, he noticed her hesitation.
“We have to give the animals a breather.” He frowned a little, misinterpreting her hesitation for reluctance to climb down rather than the inability to do so.
Amanda grit her teeth, barely able to stifle a groan, and unhooked her right foot from the stirrup. She almost had to lie down across the horse’s sweat-soaked neck to allow her leg to swing over the back of the saddle, and slid to the ground.
Weak and aching, her knees rebelled at the sudden change in position, refusing to straighten completely, nearly buckling beneath her slight weight. A raw, burning sensation plagued the inside of each thigh while her ankles kinked, threatening to topple her into the dust.
Jake instinctively put out a steadying hand when she staggered against him.
“You all right?” he asked sharply, his tone more short than concerned.
Well, why shouldn’t he be short? She hardly knew him. Didn’t know him at all in fact. He undoubtedly could make better time without her. What would it take, she wondered, for him to abandon her out here in this sun-baked wilderness.
“I’m fine,” Amanda lied. “Just a little stiff.”
She gathered herself again and took a couple of uneven steps to loosen the knots in her joints, then smiled wanly at Jake. She wasn’t going to admit her total unfamiliarity with a horse. For now she would watch carefully and do whatever Jake Hollander did. Watch, imitate, and distract him, hoping he would not become too aware of what a burden she truly was.
“Best we get moving.”
Jake broke into a brisk walk, his appaloosa striding in fluid motion alongside him, the reins drooping between them. Amanda jumped to catch up and walk beside him, her borrowed sorrel just as amenable to walking as his companion. Only a few strides revealed new problems to the city girl as she staggered and stumbled along in her town shoes. She doubted it could be comfortable for Jake, striding along, tiny puffs of dust rising from beneath his underslung boot heels, but she’d be willing to trade on an instant’s notice.
“What are those mountains up ahead?”
“Superstitions,” Jake bit out the answer. “If we’re lucky we’ll be getting into their foothills before nightfall.”
Amanda blinked at his last statement. The rocky crags seemed closer than that. An hour’s walk, maybe two. It was only coming onto dawn. Oh God, did he mean they were going to continue on at this pace until then?
Small rocks rolled beneath her feet, and her skirts were conspiring to trip her at every step, as the hem quickly shredded. At least, she reflected, the morning sun, warm against her skin, chased the night’s chill from her bones.
“Are we stopping there?” Amanda tried to mask the hopeful inflection of her voice.
Jake nodded and kept walking, long legs carrying him right over most of the dips, swells and loose rock that slowed Amanda.
“I know a few places where we can find water and hide out long enough to figure out what to do next.”
He gave her a weak smile. “We can rest then. Probably have time to get so bored I can tell you some of the stories about lost gold mines and ghosts that the Superstitions have spawned.”
Amanda stomped, tripped and careened along in his wake, praying for stronger ankles. She stared at the rocky, forbidding mountains heaving themselves off the desert floor ahead in naked cliffs that appeared impossible to penetrate. She felt ever more vulnerable and dependent on Jake Hollander, a total stranger whose only background she’d heard from his own lips.
“What about Indians?”
“Might be a few renegades around,” Jake admitted with a shrug. “But most of the Apache keep their distance. They think it’s a land of evil spirits.”
“That’s encouraging.”
“We’ll make out.”
Jake was well aware Amanda was not having an easy time of it. Her garb was far from suitable to this terrain, but that aside, she was as green as they get. Under different circumstances he would have been easier on her, even coddled her some, but now was not the time.
To her credit, she had more spunk than he had figured her for in the beginning. She had to learn and learn fast to survive.
Jake Hollander had always been a direct man, a man of forceful action when needed; a man of positive thoughts and firm decision. He had ram-rodded trail drives through what many had considered to be hell and survived, bringing his crew, for the most part, through with him. He regretted the loss of Kid Keller whenever his thoughts wandered back to the kid’s death, but times were tough and the country wild. Sometimes there was just no dodging it when death came calling.
He had been a trapper, and another time, a scout. He had fought the Indians and lived with them. He’d married an Indian woman and had a son with her. Both had been lost in a great flood along the Mississippi, and grieving, he had pulled his freight and headed further west. His experience was broad, but this wasn’t something he could face head-on with mule-headed stubbornness and raw courage. They had the devil by the tail, and there did not seem to be any turning loose. So, what was he going to do with Miss Amanda Cleary?
The practical side of his nature was already warning him it would be wisest for him to be rid of the woman as soon as he could shake her with a clear conscience. Strangely, he was oddly hesitant to do so. Posters would be out on both of them damn quick, and since they’d already been convicted, few would care if it was dead or alive. Bounty hunters would be t
railing them.
Yep, no doubt about it, they should both run like hell and not look back. It was a big country. Plenty of room to change your name, change your look and fade into the background. It made lots of sense until he cared to think about his boss, Eli Sanders, and all the money he’d lost as a result of that damned back robbery. Eli was bound to lose everything. Worse, Eli would be told Jake was the thief. He wouldn’t want to believe it, but when they sold his ranch out from under him and he never heard from Jake again, he’d have to be a saint not to believe the worst.
If that wasn’t enough, there was the small matter of those yahoos getting away with it all. Still, getting himself, and possibly Amanda, hung for nothing, didn’t make sense either.
He glanced at her stumbling, unquestioningly along just behind him. Damned if her disheveled appearance didn’t make her look prettier than when he had first seen her in the bank. Nonetheless, she was exhausted and they still had a way to go. Her long skirts tripped her and her shoes were not suited for hiking, or riding. Part of the solution was in the saddlebags slung behind her saddle. Amanda’s horse, having belonged to the Kid, was still packed with his belongings. The kid had been tall and slim with a narrow waist and shoulders strong enough to work alongside the men, but not yet heavily muscled from the labor. His clothes would do for her. Boots in there too though they’d be too large for her.
He was about to open his mouth, tell her to take what she could use and change when he spotted the plume of dust in the distance behind them. There wasn’t time for it now. They had to hit those mountains well ahead of any posse, and disappear up the winding canyons.
“Mount up,” Jake commanded shortly, “and let’s get moving.”
Quick to obey, Amanda swung stiffly back into the saddle. She couldn’t decide which was worse, riding, hour after hour, or stumbling over rocks and cactus, but the internal debate did much to take her mind from the grueling hours of hard travel.
She spotted the thin spiral of dust curling up behind them. There was only one thing it could be. The thought of a posse bearing down on them made her move a little faster than her protesting muscles would have liked to allow.
Jake led the way at a brisk walk. Tight-lipped, Amanda fought the folds of her skirts, trying to arrange the material between her sore, raw legs and the saddle leather to cushion her abused flesh while she sat the horse counter-point to the sorrel’s gait. She was amazed to feel that, at least for the moment, her other aches had faded.
Jake urged his sturdy appaloosa into a gallop. Amanda followed suit, the easy roll much more tolerable than the sharp, bouncing trot the horses favored for long stretches.
The mountains loomed larger before them as they pressed further into the day, the sun becoming a much less beloved presence. Pinnacles, knobs, and domes of bare rock, thrust into the sky, breaking the monotony of a rough stubble of scrub brush and occasional stunted trees. Though tired, stiff, sore, and thirsty, Amanda, in an inexplicable way, felt at home. A new sense of freedom sprang from God knew where, welcoming the life of the trail. What lay ahead, she couldn’t begin to anticipate, but she knew instinctively that it was here that she would eventually free herself from the helplessness that had plagued her most of her life.
When they stopped again the mountains loomed nearer, appearing now to Amanda like some unscalable battlements. She drew her mount up alongside Jake.
“There’s a way through that?”
“Yep. But we’re gonna have to do some riding first. If we don’t throw that posse off, they’ll follow us right up the trail.”
“There’s a trail . . .”
Amanda fell silent. The two of them didn’t dismount, but just let the horses blow while they stood hip-shot on a stone and cactus-littered hillside. She reached into the saddlebag behind her for the remnants of their previous night’s meal. There were several biscuits, a couple of chunks of steak and some shriveled potatoes. She opened the napkin and offered it to Jake. He accepted the cold meat and a biscuit with an encouraging grin, but his eyes never ceased their movement.
Between them they gulped the bits of food down very quickly and Jake passed her a canteen that sloshed ominously with its lack of water. She took a couple of small sips, letting the warm, tinny-tasting water trickle down her cotton-dry throat, then, still parched, Amanda passed the canteen back to Jake.
He couldn’t help it, he eyed her closely as she sipped the barest amount from the canteen. The way she sat a horse made him doubt she’d been on one more than once or twice before in her life. Nonetheless, she didn’t complain despite the fact the going was rough, the pace brutal, even for an experienced hand. She had only sipped at the neck of the canteen, and when she handed it back he knew she was still thirsty. He was the same. Amanda, Jake decided, had the instincts of a trail rider though she lacked experience. He had an uneasy feeling that she was about to get all her lessons in a condensed package—with him as the appointed tutor.
“You doing all right?” Jake asked her, his voice roughed by the dryness of his throat.
“No. But I’m doing better than I would be doing at the end of a hangman’s rope.”
“You’ve got grit, lady, I’ll give you that. We’re have to push it some now. I’m going to back-track, cover our trail and then head for the hard rock. Hang on, we’ve got a ways to go yet.”
He touched his heels to his horse and moved out swiftly. He was keeping a close eye on the horses and they weren’t faltering at the grueling pace Jake set. He tried not to glance back at Amanda with much frequency as the miles rolled out behind them, but his ears were always attuned to the sound of the beat of her horse’s hoofs, the rhythmic cadence always there. He couldn’t look because he couldn’t slow down. That could well be the doom of them both. The desert had its own set of rules. A man or woman had to learn to live by them from the moment he or she set foot on it, or join the bleaching bones of the ancestors that already littered the sands.
When they pulled up again to give the animals a breather, Jake gave serious consideration to their back trail.
“It’s harder to see the dust. Are they losing ground?” Amanda asked.
“I used a few tricks. If we can keep this up and slow them down we’ll make it to the mountains well ahead of them. Once we hit the Superstitions we’ll be able to travel without leaving much of a trail. Few days from now the wind will have erased everything.”
The steep slopes loomed directly before them and Jake looked squarely at Amanda for the first time in a couple of hours. She was a vision, her dusky green eyes solemn, her black hair shimmering, twisted by the wind, but the only thing Jake was aware of was her skin. Fair and smooth, her face and hands were seared by sunburn.
“Dang it! Why didn’t you say something?”
Amanda blinked, startled by his outburst.
“About what?”
“You’re frying like ham on a griddle.”
Amanda didn’t appreciate the comparison.
“Well,” she shot back, “what could you have done about it if I had?”
She was angered by his short temper, but even more, she wanted to climb down, sit down on the hard-packed earth and bawl. She would yield to neither impulse, and wasn’t quite aware of the sunburn as yet. The warmth of it was only a secondary echoing pulse to that of the sun overhead. Every joint burned and grated. Every muscle ached, and now this.
Jake gave her a sour look, jumped down from his horse, drew a knife from a saddle sheath and chopped at the petrified earth. Big chunks were reduced smaller and smaller beneath the silver blade flashing in the dazzling sunlight.
Amanda was torn between misery and curiosity.
“What’s that for?”
The small clods were pulverized nearly to dust.
“Hold out your hands,” Jake commanded and slid the knife back in the saddle sheath.
Amanda did as he said without thinking—not a good habit to get into she reprimanded herself. He immediately filled her hands with the gritty dust,
then lifted the canteen from his saddle horn, uncorked it and poured a few drops of the precious liquid into the bowl of her hands.
“Mix that up and spread it on your face. It’ll help that burn you’ve already got and keep it from getting worse.”
A repugnant look drew the corners of Amanda’s lips down as she worked the mass into mud, then, tentatively, smeared it on her face. Initially the mud felt good against her skin, cool and soothing despite its grittiness. Then, when it almost instantly dried, it formed a tight mask that made her cheeks feel like they were going to crack. She slapped the remainder on the backs of her hands, rubbed her soiled palms on her skirts and gathered the reins once again.
“Let’s get moving,” Jake swung gracefully back into the saddle.
They headed into the mountains. Then, hours of daylight still before them, almost as if they had crossed over a barrier, they were cutting into the foothills, canyons twisting off into the distance. There was an eerie feel to the mountains that made the hairs at the nape of her neck rise. Logic told her that the forbidding feeling had no roots in sound reasoning. Still, it persisted.
“Where the devil are we?” she asked, her voice, though muted, harsh against the quiet of the canyon.
“Peralta Canyon.”
Jake answered her question abruptly. The name meant nothing to her, but Amanda took in her surroundings, cataloging oddly shaped cactus and boulders. The creek bed, dry and brittle beneath their horses’ hoofs, creaked and crunched in their passage. A sycamore, a willow, and some huge cottonwoods lined the banks, roots clutching at the stone and sinking beneath the riverbed for the moisture that lay there.
Amanda couldn’t shake the crazy feeling that there were hidden eyes following their progress down the canyon, waiting.
The horses were again at a steady walk and Jake lifted his hat to resettle it over his shock of startlingly blonde hair.
“You hear about the Dutchman and his mine?
Amanda nodded.
“Quite a story huh?”
“I thought it was sad.” She shivered. “Do you think he’s still here, somewhere, watching, guarding his mine?”
