The Drifter's Bride

by Tatiana March

  ‘I can be pretty persuasive,’ Carl told her.

  ‘Don’t…’ She took a deep breath. He sat beside her, gun at his hip, stubble darkening his jaw. He looked like a man in a wanted poster. ‘Don’t cause more friction,’ Jade warned him. ‘If you frighten people into buying, they’ll stop as soon as you’re gone.’

  He sent her a teasing smile. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll be nice.’

  His light tone sent a flurry of warmth over her. They had spent the previous day harvesting fruit together, and now they had eight crates in the buckboard. Carl had been more relaxed than she remembered ever seeing him. In the evening he had sat with Sam, talking and laughing, and at night he had made love to her again.

  Had he come back to give her a baby after all?

  How long would it be before he left again?

  She didn’t dare to ask, didn’t want to think beyond the here and now.

  Carl brought the buckboard to a halt outside the sheriff’s office to let her down. They had agreed she would keep her distance while he conducted business. Jade stood in the shade of the canopied walkway and watched as he pulled up outside the mercantile and went inside.

  ‘Miss Armstrong. I see you’ve regained your fashion sense.’

  Startled, she turned to see Sheriff Garth Weston lean against the doorframe, an open newspaper in his hands. A burly man in his late forties, he had been the sheriff of Mariposa County as long as Jade could remember. He made a show of studying her neat upsweep and cotton dress with amused gray eyes.

  ‘I…’ Not knowing how to respond, she offered him a weak smile.

  A ruckus outside the saloon made them whirl around. Two men were rolling in the dust. The sheriff shoved the newspaper he’d been reading into her hands and hurried out to break up the brawl. Jade skimmed the pages while she waited for Carl to emerge from the mercantile.

  Her eyes fell on a boxed advertisement placed by the stage line. They were looking for men. Drivers. Guards. The stage line did have jobs, and yet Carl had come back to her. She pressed a hand to her heart as a wild burst of joy leaped within her.

  The faint jingle of a bell down the street drew her attention. Carl clattered down the steps, hauled a box of peaches to his chest and carried it through the mercantile door. A few moments later, he came back for another. Jade exhaled a sigh of relief.

  ‘Jade Armstrong,’ a melodic voice called out, pulling her from her thoughts.

  ‘Victoria? Victoria Sinclair?’ She stared at the dark, willowy girl who walked up dressed in a peacock blue gown and twirling a matching parasol.

  ‘The one and only.’ The girl turned in a slow circle, raising one gloved hand to adjust the bonnet perched on top of her elegant upsweep. ‘So, what do you think?’ she asked, glancing back over her shoulder. ‘Did they make a lady out of me?’

  ‘You were always a lady,’ Jade replied. Victoria’s father, Andrew Sinclair, owned one of the biggest ranches in the county. Two years earlier, Victoria had gone away to an academy for young ladies in Boston. They’d been friends at school…but things might be different now.

  Jade took a deep breath. ‘I guess you haven’t heard—’

  Victoria’s blue eyes sparkled. ‘About the eagle feathers and buckskins, and going to live in a wickiup?’

  Blushing, Jade nodded.

  ‘Of course I have, even though I only arrived two days ago.’ Victoria closed her parasol and used it to give Jade a friendly swipe on the arm. ‘You rotten egg. Why didn’t you wait until I was back? I’d have come with you. Not to stay, of course,’ she added hastily. ‘It’s heaven to be home again, but I’d have joined you for a few days.’

  ‘Your father would have killed you.’

  Victoria huffed. ‘Never. I would have told him it’s an anthropological study. He couldn’t have argued back because he’d have been too embarrassed to admit he didn’t know the meaning of the word.’ Her mouth tilted into a playful smile. ‘I might only have been back two days, but my father is cursing every cent he spent on that fancy school. He says it’s turned me into an unbearable creature.’ Deepening her voice and pointing her parasol toward the sky, she stabbed the air and chanted, ‘Let women have the vote! End the oppression!’

  ‘You’ve become a suffragette?’

  ‘No, but pretending is one of the ways I’m paying my father back for banishing me for two years. I’d rather have gone to Yuma prison.’

  As they continued talking, Jade noticed people giving them curious glances. Hope rose inside her. Victoria was a rebel, but she was the daughter of an influential man. Perhaps with Victoria’s support, her campaign to make people accept her again had some slight chance of success.

  * * *

  Shirtless, his skin glistening with sweat, a bandanna tied around his tousled hair, Carl strode up the porch steps and paused by the open cabin door. He’d been building a lean-to shed behind the barn, planning to fill it with chopped firewood in preparation for the winter.

  Through the open doorway, he saw Jade sitting at the scarred pine table, her gaze locked on an open book. She shifted her attention from the book to her palm and made odd gestures with her hand, muttering strange words under her breath.

  ‘Capitate,’ she said. ‘Trapezium.’

  Puzzled, Carl listened.

  Jade kept her hand hovering over the tablecloth. ‘Middle phalanges,’ she said, and flexed her fingers. ‘Distal phalanges.’

  He scraped mud off his boots before stepping inside. ‘What are you doing?’

  She jerked up in the seat and gave a little cry. ‘You startled me.’ Lowering her voice, she glanced at the closed bedroom door. ‘Sam’s asleep. He’s been in a lot of pain.’

  Carl nodded and eased closer. ‘What are you doing? Apache magic?’

  ‘No.’ She fidgeted a little, looking uncertain. ‘You told Doc Mortensen that I wanted to be a medicine woman. He gave me a medical textbook. I’ve been studying the bones of the hand.’ She rattled out those strange words again, pointing at various parts of her palm.

  Carl went up to the water pail by the stove and filled a cup. He could feel Jade’s eyes following him. For the past three days, ever since he had come back, she’d been looking at him as if he were some kind of a hero who could fix everything that was wrong with the world. He wanted to point out that all he’d done was to shift a few crates of peaches, but somehow the words remained locked inside him.

  Behind him, Jade spoke in a quiet voice. ‘You know, I never really wanted to go and live with the Apache.’

  Carl froze. He didn’t turn around, but pretended to drink from the cup.

  ‘I was just missing Ma,’ Jade continued. ‘I went to visit her people to feel closer to her. After a while, I’d have missed Pa, and I’d have come back. I mean, Pa is alive and Ma is dead. And people who are alive matter more than people who are dead. Don’t they? And when we miss someone, that’s what we need to do—return to them. Don’t we?’

  Damn. There she was again, building dreams. A shiver ran over Carl as he considered her words. It almost sounded as if she knew more about his past than he had revealed. The past that would never give up its stranglehold on him. He needed to tell her everything. Make her understand that he could never be trusted to protect his loved ones, could never be the man she deserved. That he’d have to leave before he failed her.

  People like him were not born to live happy, fulfilled lives.

  He spun around and sank into a chair at the table. ‘Jade, there is something—’

  The thunder of an approaching rider cut him short. Someone dismounted with a thud. Footsteps clattered across the porch and a young woman dressed in snug canvas pants and a fringed leather coat burst in. Her hat toppled from her head to dangle on a string down her back, colliding with a dark, glossy braid as thick as a man’s wrist.

  ‘The husband, I presume. I’m Victoria Sinclair.’ She gave Carl a curt nod and turned her attention to Jade. ‘We have trouble. Indians took the Lindstrom girl—you know the Swedish
couple who farm out by Beaver Creek?” She continued without waiting for a response. ‘Sheriff Weston is gathering a posse. There’ll be bloodshed.’

  Jade jerked to her feet. ‘Indians? You mean my mother’s people?’ She gave a frantic shake of her head. ‘Can’t be. White Antelope’s band is peaceful. They avoid whites. They don’t do anything that might attract attention and force them onto a reservation.’

  ‘I saw them.’ Victoria Sinclair stepped forward, blue eyes flashing, her voice sharp with urgency. ‘I was out on the southern edge of the property checking for storm damage. I saw riders in the distance. Six horses. The men wore belted tunics or buckskins. Most of them had long black hair. They had children with them, riding double with the men. I saw the golden head of the Lindstrom girl. She’s five, small for her age.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean those men were Apache.’ Jade argued, although Carl could tell she was worried. ‘They could be Comancheros, or Yaquis from across the border.’

  Victoria’s mouth tightened. ‘The sheriff doesn’t think so. You have to find your mother’s people and tell them to surrender, give back the Lindstrom girl. That’s the only way to avoid a massacre.’

  ‘Dear God.’ Jade pressed her hand to her heart and whirled around, her face furrowed with fear. ‘Carl, you’ll have to look after Pa while I’m away.’

  With a clump and clatter, her father appeared in the doorway of the smaller bedroom, dragging his splinted leg behind him. ‘Go,’ he gasped, his face ashen. ‘I can manage.’

  Anger bristled inside Carl at the suggestion that he would let Jade ride out without him. Lowering his cup of water, he rose. ‘Your father will be fine alone. I’ll saddle the horses while you change out of your dress.’ He turned to Victoria Sinclair. ‘I want you to give Jade exact directions to where you saw the riders. Then I want you to go back to town and tell the sheriff I’m going after them. I’m a good tracker. I’ll find the girl and bring her back.’

  I’ll find the girl and bring her back.

  The words echoed in his mind as he stormed out. Out in the yard, he found his shirt on a fencepost and shoved his arms into the sleeves. He saddled the horses, strapped on his gun belt and pushed the rifle into the scabbard. The promises he had just made weighed heavy in his heart as he vaulted onto Grace and cantered beside Jade out of the valley.

  He had to save the girl.

  He had to succeed where he had failed before.

  * * *

  On a rocky clearing about two miles east of the orchard, Jade brought her mustang mare to a halt. Carl circled around her, surveying the flat landscape punctured by huge blocks of granite and sparse clusters of stunted trees.

  ‘It was here,’ she said, twisting in the saddle to face him. ‘Victoria said they passed between those two boulders and headed south.’ Jade raised her arm to point.

  Carl jumped down and crouched to study the ground. Steam rose from the muddy earth, filling the air with rotting smells. He spotted a fresh chip in a half-buried stone.

  ‘Shod horses,’ he called out to Jade. ‘Not likely to be Indians.’

  ‘Thank God.’ She paused. ‘I mean…it doesn’t help the Lindstrom girl, but…’ Her words trailed into silence.

  ‘The storm has washed off the trail.’ Carl moved along in a crouch, examining the gravel for further signs of riders. He found nothing—no hoof prints, no crushed leaves or broken twigs. Only ridged patterns in the sand, left by the runoff that had flooded the hard ground after the torrential rain the night before.

  Star’s hooves clattered as Jade whirled the mare around. ‘I think I know where they’ve gone. With the rain, the river’s running high. There is a good place to cross farther east of here. The sheriff won’t make it in time. Once the Comancheros are on the other side, they’ll vanish into Mexico. We’ll have to stop them before they get across.’

  They stared at each other, the same thought mirrored on their faces.

  Two rifles against six.

  They might be riding to their death, but they had to try.

  * * *

  Between the rocky banks, the river surged in powerful whirls that sent floating debris bobbing up and down. Carl snaked forward on his belly, using any small rise in the landscape to provide cover—a jutting boulder, a piece of driftwood, a mound of dirt. No advantage was too small as he made his way toward the enemy camped by the river’s edge.

  The last glimmer of daylight had faded an hour ago. Ahead of him he could see the flickering flames of a bonfire. Farther back, fiery dots punctured the darkness as some of the Comancheros pulled on their cigarettes.

  He couldn’t tell if the men were talking, if the children were crying, if the horses where nickering. The raging torrent of water drowned out all other sounds. He didn’t need to worry about the rasp of his body against the damp earth but he knew that a gunshot would shatter the steady roar of the river and raise alarm.

  They couldn’t afford to start shooting—not until he had killed at least two of the Comancheros. Only a few more yards now. The pair of burning dots rose and fell like fireflies as the two men guarding the horses lifted their cigarettes for another drag.

  Carl rose into a crouch. Slowly. Silently.

  Every muscle tensing, he wrapped his fingers around the handle of his knife and leaped forward. He grabbed his victim, slamming his left hand across the man’s mouth and yanking the man’s head back against his shoulder as his right hand slashed the serrated blade across the Comanchero’s stocky throat.

  Not pausing to lower the body to the ground, Carl jumped back and then forward. He dealt with the second man in the same fashion. Two muted thuds broke the silence, followed by a faint whirring sound, like the wings of a bird, as a wide-brimmed hat fell from the head of the second man and spun its way to the ground.

  Carl edged forward in the darkness. Two of the remaining men were sitting by the fire, passing a bottle between them. Yaquis. In the light, he could see their coarse, square features and the pale drape of their white cotton clothing. The dark fabric of his coat and denims gave him an advantage, allowing him to blend into the shadows.

  The last two men were stretched out on bedrolls farther back, but still within the glow of the fire. To the right of them he could see the huddled shapes of three children. From the awkward way they sat or reclined, he could tell their wrists were bound, and a rope around their necks tied them into a human chain.

  He eased toward the sleeping men, knife in his right hand, the Colt in his left. He froze, waited for a log in the fire to crackle loud enough to hide the click as he cocked the hammer. The nearest man let out a snuffle, not quite a snore, and Carl understood that up this close the roar of the river would no longer disguise his sounds.

  The man slept wrapped in a blanket, a hat covering his head, his back toward Carl. He was burly, with a layer of fat over his bones. Without being able to properly angle the blade between his ribs, Carl couldn’t rely on piercing his heart. He surged forth and plunged the knife in the thick neck instead, forcing the blade deeper as the man’s head snapped forward.

  His luck ran out. The gurgling sound made the fourth man jerk up into a half-seated position. His hand went to the rifle by his side. Carl lifted his Colt and fired. The sound tore through the night, a signal for Jade to run out to the captive children and cut them free. They had planned their strategy while watching the camp, waiting for darkness to fall.

  Behind him, the remaining pair of men bellowed in Spanish, their voices slurred and their tone confused. They were drunk. Carl yanked his knife free from the dead man’s sturdy neck, spun around and saw the two who had been on their feet leap toward him. He fired off a shot with the gun in his left hand, saw the taller man fall. A pain burst in his forearm. The Colt clattered to the ground. He felt a warm trail of blood trickling down his skin.

  One Yaqui left. Carl crouched, knife in his right hand, choices reeling in his mind. His revolver was lost somewhere in the darkness around his feet and his rifle dangled on his back.
Across the fire he saw the small, wiry man rush at him. No. Not at him. Toward his dead companion. In a flash Carl realized the man had no gun and was seeking to retrieve the one still clasped in his dead compatriot’s fingers.

  Leaping beside the fire, Carl picked up a burning branch and hurled it at the Yaqui. It hit the man in the back. Dark streaks of soot and yellow licks of flame smeared his white cotton tunic. Carl lurched forward, seized the bottle of whiskey from the ground and threw it at the man. The glass shattered on impact. The fire flared high as the alcohol spilled over his clothing. Screaming, the man crashed to the ground, rolling in the dirt to suffocate the flames.

  A shot rang in the darkness. Carl waited for the pain to slice through him. Nothing came, only the dull throbbing in his left arm and the fiery burn in his right palm. The man on the ground jerked and stopped rolling. Jade stepped into the circle of light and lowered her rifle. Behind her, Carl saw three children huddled together. One of them was a tiny girl with golden pigtails.

  ‘Did we get them all?’ Jade asked.

  He gritted his teeth against the pain. ‘Yes.’

  ‘They’re cold.’ She gestured at the children. ‘Can they sit by the fire?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She turned to the children and spoke a few words to them. They moved into the light, and Carl could tell two of them were Apache. They settled with no fuss, clustering about Jade as she tossed more wood into the fire. The little blonde girl circled around to him, dragging her feet in hesitant steps.

  ‘Are you the sheriff?’ she asked.

  Carl managed a ghost of a smile. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘My Pa says that if I ever get into trouble, I should find the sheriff.’

  ‘I’m almost as good.’ Ignoring the throb in his left arm from the bullet wound and the sting in his right palm from the burning branch, he reached out to curl his hands around the child and lifted her to perch on his hip.

  ‘You’re safe now,’ he told the little girl. ‘I’ll take you home.’

  As he spoke the words, emotion swelled in his heart—regret, but also release.