The Lover

by Genell Dellin

  “They’re more shaken up by all this trouble than you know,” he said. “Some of them believe a bad river crossing can jinx a whole drive. Believing that can make it happen.”

  He drove that truth into her with his hard gaze.

  “I’ve been fightin’ that superstition all day,” he said. “I’ll have to fight it for days to come. Help me here, Annie.”

  “I will,” she said, and somehow she had the feeling that she was promising more than he asked.

  “Don’t worry about money and debts,” he said. “Remember—right now it’s life and death.”

  “All right.”

  He did kiss her then—on the lips. A light kiss but long.

  All the panic vanished as the heat from him spread through her veins.

  The heat and the strength of him.

  “I’m the one who first agreed to cross at the bridge,” she said, when he pulled back. “I can’t stand it if I don’t make the decisions but now I’m scared to death I can’t make the right one.”

  “Hey,” he said, “it was me, too. I wasn’t gonna wait at the ford if I had to teach them damn longhorns to fly.”

  She smiled. It felt really good to relax inside herself.

  “I’ve got to stand guard,” he said. “Get some sleep. Tomorrow we’ll have a lot of decisions to make.”

  She nodded.

  Finally, his gaze released her. He turned away and started back to his horse and his mule.

  No. He couldn’t go. She couldn’t bear to let him go.

  “Was it Molly?” she asked. “That the drummer saw?”

  He chuckled. “It was. We’ll find her soon.” He turned to flash a grin at her over his shoulder. “There’s your chance for money, Annie girl,” he said, walking backward so he could look at her. “Win you a bundle with Molly.”

  “First I have to have something to bet,” she said.

  “I’ll stake you,” he said, and held up his hand to stop her when she opened her mouth to protest. “For ten percent of your take.”

  She laughed. “It’s a deal,” she said.

  Then she turned, lifted the flap, and ducked under it into her tent. If she didn’t get away from him she would run after him and throw herself into his arms.

  It was a miracle how much better she felt. It was incredible that the awful panic was gone.

  There never was a man who knew her the way he did.

  The next day, while she was helping Maynell peel some of the potatoes that Jasper the new mule had hauled in for breakfast, Susanna figured it out. She would think of this trail drive as a time out of time.

  Even if she did get attached to Eagle Jack, she would do it with the hard, cold truth firmly in mind. Once they reached Abilene and sold the cattle, that would be the end of their dalliance and she would be entirely on her own again.

  Eagle Jack was right: he wasn’t trying to take over her business, and she did have to have his help to make this drive, so she should be sensible. The sensible thing to do was to take pleasure where she found it, to make this a wonderful time that she’d remember forever, but not to let him into her heart.

  She didn’t even know what that was, actually, which would probably be a natural protection to keep her from falling in love with him. She didn’t know how to love anyone, for she’d known the minute she decided to marry Everett that she was doing it only to get away from Aunt Skeeter and Uncle Job and out into a home of her own.

  Little had she known the perils in that kind of thinking. It had been Everett’s home and not hers.

  What she must do with Eagle Jack was take and enjoy the fun and excitement he gave her—both of which were so rare in her life—and give only the same. The main thing she had to do was watch herself so that she didn’t fall back into her hateful old habit of always wanting to please the other person.

  All her life, from the minute of her birth, she’d been trying to persuade someone that her existence was a good thing. From her mother who deserted her at birth by dying, to the father who’d lit out for the hills soon after that, to the succession of resentful aunts and cousins who raised her, to Everett who used her instead of loving her, to the banker who’d dogged her for two years for the deed to her place, nobody ever wanted her to be wherever she was.

  Or to do whatever it was that she wanted to do.

  When the word came that Everett was dead, she had promised herself, “Never again.”

  Never again would she fall back into those ancient habits of trying to please. Never again would she depend on somebody else for her livelihood. Never again would she let anyone else control her.

  Eagle Jack Sixkiller wasn’t demanding any of those things and now that he’d gotten used to her being on the trail, he seemed perfectly happy for her to be there. He was different.

  He was a fun-loving sort, and the Good Lord knew she needed some fun.

  She would take his advice. She wouldn’t think about what the cattle would bring in Abilene or whether she could keep Brushy Creek. For the rest of this drive, she would concentrate on staying alive, she would take life one day at a time—it could as easily have been her instead of Tolly who’d drowned—and she would remember every single minute of every one of those days.

  And those nights.

  It took until the middle of the afternoon to cut their cattle out from Tolly’s, but when it was done, Eagle Jack pushed their herd north anyhow, just as he had when they left Brushy Creek. Now, as then, Susanna had mixed feelings about it.

  Not because driving part of the night would lessen the time she and Eagle Jack would have in the tent alone. No, it was because camp was already set up and it seemed a waste of effort to take it down and put it back up later the same day.

  She and Eagle Jack rode ahead to scout and found a way that was grassy, mostly open land with not too many trees. There had been so much rain that water for the cattle wouldn’t be a problem.

  At the end of the second day, they struck the Chisholm Trail again, miles north of the ford where so many herds were waiting to cross, and began making good progress toward Fort Worth. Their scouting ahead of the herd every day became as much a search for Molly as for a place to camp, because Eagle Jack made sure to talk to everybody headed back down the trail.

  Finally, when they were within a day’s drive of Fort Worth, he found someone who had seen Molly run.

  “I’ll never fergit it, neither,” the gap-toothed man said. “I personally lost ten dollars and I never woulda thought that mare coulda run fast enough to beat a lame mule to the feed trough.”

  “Where’d they run her?” Eagle Jack asked.

  But the old man was lost in the memory. He shook his head in wonder. “Like greased lightning,” he mused. “Never seen nothin’ like it.”

  “Was it in Fort Worth that you saw her? In town? Tell me now.”

  Susanna looked at Eagle Jack. He was so anxious she thought he might lean out of the saddle and grab the man to shake the information out of him.

  Evidently that thought also occurred to the man, for he spoke quickly. “If you wanta see for yerself, they’ll run her again tonight,” he said. “Not far on up the trail. There’s boys in that Slash Double D outfit refusin’ to believe their own eyes.”

  “The mare’s owners are traveling with the Slash Double D?” Eagle Jack asked.

  “Reckon not. That trail crew’s jist layin’ over one more day fer another race. They’s a race track down by the Deep Fork where they run.” He gestured to the northeast.

  Eagle Jack was already turning his horse. “Thanks, old-timer,” he said, “I know that track.”

  The man ambled his horse to the south, on down the trail.

  “Let’s run on over there and just see if she’s there yet,” Eagle Jack said to Susanna. “It’s not far.”

  “It’s great you know where it is,” she said, nodding her agreement.

  “I’ve used that track myself,” he said.

  They rode at a lope the whole way there, avoiding everyon
e they saw.

  “Somebody might notice my hair,” Eagle Jack explained. “Don’t want word to reach those worthless horse thieves that I’m anywhere around—not until I’ve set my eyes on Molly.”

  His voice vibrated with unbridled excitement. It made Susanna smile.

  “Once you set your eyes on her, what are you going to do?” she asked.

  “Oh,” he drawled, “I haven’t really thought about it.”

  Susanna grinned at him. “Don’t try to tell me that,” she said. “You’ve been in a fit about this horse ever since I met you.”

  “Depends on what kind of shape she’s in,” he said. “If she hasn’t lost weight and her haircoat looks good and her eyes are bright…” He grinned back.

  “What?”

  “For starters, I may just steal her back again.”

  They looked at each other for a moment, then burst out laughing.

  “Let’s do it!” Susanna cried. “It’d serve ’em right.”

  Eagle Jack nodded. “It would. They can go crazy looking for her, riding off in all directions, and then if they find out and challenge us, I’ll—”

  He stopped.

  “You’ll what?”

  He ignored that. “They may find out I have her but they won’t have the guts to come after me,” he said. “They’re horse thieves, pure and simple. That’s a hanging offense.”

  “They’ve been getting rich off her,” Susanna said. “Stealing her will hurt them worse than a hanging.”

  He pretended to study her. “You’re a hard woman, Susanna. I believe you’d like to see them suffer.”

  “I would,” she said. “I may have to look them up and mention the little mare they used to win with, every time.”

  He chuckled. “Remind me not to cross you,” he said. “I think you actually would torment them like that.”

  She laughed.

  His gaze held hers. She saw laughter there and something else—affection. It gave her a little thrill. Only Maynell ever looked at her that way. Very few people in her life had given her true affection.

  “Don’t ever underestimate me,” she said.

  “I won’t,” he assured her. “I’ll be on my guard.”

  About a mile farther on, he signaled for quiet and they slowed their horses to a soft, ground-eating trot.

  “It’s a track some farmer built,” he said. “He collects a few dollars from every racehorse owner who uses it.”

  “I hope the thieves have already paid their fee for tonight,” she said.

  Eagle Jack chuckled quietly. “Mean as a snake,” he said. “I’m surprised you shot that one.”

  She made a face at him.

  Then, suddenly, through a little grove of pecan trees, she saw the white rail fence and then the straight stretch of beaten earth.

  Eagle Jack gave a hand signal to stop the horses. When they had dismounted, he came close and spoke into Susanna’s ear. “Hold the horses,” he whispered. “Over there, under that low-hanging tree. Watch for me and keep them quiet.”

  He helped her get the horses arranged in the shadows, then he vanished.

  Susanna shifted her position to try to keep him in sight and she could see him drifting from tree trunk to tree trunk, silent as a falling leaf. But she heard the sound of hooves and then a man’s voice.

  Beyond Eagle Jack, on the other side of the fenced track, a tall man sat a tall gray horse. Beside him, there was a loafing shed in the shade, open to the south. At first, she didn’t notice the second man—he was near the fence to the track.

  “Let ’er be,” the mounted man said loudly. Then he dropped his voice and said something that might have been, “Quit foolin’ with her.”

  Or maybe it was, “I’m not foolin’ with you.”

  He moved his horse to the left and Susanna could see that the man by the fence had another horse—a small one with a scruffy mane and pricked ears, tied to a hitching rail on the far side of the white fence. Could this be her first glimpse of the famous Molly?

  The second man stooped over, raised her right forefoot, and began, apparently, to pick her hoof. He didn’t even look up when the other man spoke to him again.

  “I want you to time Prince,” the tall man shouted. “Right now!”

  He was holding out something in his hand, which must be a stopwatch.

  Still no response.

  Molly pinned her ears and stretched the rope she was tied with just enough to bite the hoof-picking man smartly on the bottom.

  The horseback one threw back his head and laughed. The other one dropped her hoof, slapped his hand over his wound, and headed away from the track, hobbling toward the trees on the far side of the track. Susanna glimpsed a tent farther on, back in the shadows. They must be living there at the track.

  The man on the gray horse followed the one on foot, saying something now and then, all of it unintelligible from this distance. Susanna looked through the pecan grove for Eagle Jack again, but he had disappeared.

  She glanced back at Molly, if Molly it was.

  The hitching rail, the green grass and blue sky met her eye. The shaggy little horse was gone.

  Susanna blinked.

  It was impossible. Not even a whole minute had passed since the horse had bitten the man.

  Had it? Maybe she’d lost her sense of time.

  But no. It hadn’t been very long because the gray horse had not yet reached the trees.

  She tried to take in what had happened. Instinctively, she wrapped her arms around the muzzles of the two horses she held.

  No sense letting them speak if they should see a new horse coming toward them through the trees. She concentrated on scanning the grove, both in and out of the shade, for a glimpse of Eagle Jack and Molly.

  Could he have Molly in hand? Could he have untied her that fast?

  “Let’s go,” he said, from behind her.

  She startled and bit her tongue to keep from crying out as she whirled to face him.

  Sure enough, he was leading the horse she’d seen tied to the fence. He was holding his other hand out for the reins of his saddled mount.

  Susanna handed them over and threw herself onto her own horse. Eagle Jack mounted quickly, too, holding Molly’s rope in his hand.

  “Susanna, meet Molly,” he said, as they turned to head out. “Molly, this is Susanna.”

  Molly was trotting between the two saddled horses. She glanced sideways at Eagle Jack and muttered deep in her throat.

  Eagle Jack chuckled. “She’s been trying to talk ever since she saw me,” he said, “but I couldn’t let her make any noise.”

  He kissed to his mount and all three horses fell into a long trot.

  “We have to pace ourselves now in case we have to run later,” he said. “The ground’s soft from the rain and I don’t have time to cover our tracks.”

  “I can’t believe they didn’t see you,” Susanna said. “That was a legendary exploit. It’ll live forever, wherever men sit around the fire and tell stories of horse thievery.”

  Eagle Jack smiled.

  “I really think you’re Comanche,” she said, “instead of Cherokee.”

  “The Comanche aren’t the only horsemen in the world,” he said.

  “And the Legend of Molly’s Rescue will prove it.”

  “It may be a legend that doesn’t yet have an ending,” he said.

  “Surely they wouldn’t come after you, since you’re the rightful owner.”

  “Ah, but they’d have to be right upon us to know who I am,” he said.

  It might have been a prophecy. The next minute, from somewhere behind them, the sound of a gunshot tore through the air.

  Chapter 15

  Eagle Jack looked back over his shoulder.

  “Folger’s still riding that buckskin, I see,” he said.

  He sounded as calm as if they were sitting on a porch somewhere watching people ride by.

  Susanna worked up her courage to look behind them, too. The tall gray horse wit
h the tall man riding was coming after them at a gallop, and the other man was bouncing along, bareback, on a shorter buckskin horse some distance behind the gray. As she watched, the tall man lifted his gun and fired at them again. She saw the flash from the muzzle.

  She faced forward, urging her horse to go faster, lifting Fred into his awkward lope as the sound of the shot reached them.

  Eagle Jack held his mount at a trot, with Molly right beside him.

  “I know we have to pace our horses,” she said, glancing at him as she started to draw ahead, “but we might get killed if we don’t run.”

  He grinned at her. “Naw. I’ve seen Oates shoot before. He’s not exactly what you’d call a marks-man.”

  “Anybody can get lucky once in a while.”

  “We’re out of range—he needs a rifle at this distance,” Eagle Jack said.

  She smooched to Fred again, anyway.

  “Come on,” she said, with a fierce look at Eagle Jack.

  “Slow down,” he said. He rode up beside her and caught hold of Fred’s bridle. “Listen, Susanna, trust me. We need to stay just about this distance in front of them.”

  She stared at him, then looked back at their pursuers. “Whatever for? What if he has a rifle and he just hasn’t used it yet?”

  “Then I’ll have to use mine,” he said. “But until then, let’s draw them farther away from the track and the farm. If they’re camping there, they may be friends with the farmer and I don’t want any interference when I deal with them.”

  Her heart slowed its rapidly accelerating beat. His calmness and confidence took away her fear of getting shot, or most of it, because he was in control of the situation, after all.

  However, a new fear, born of the coldly vengeful resolve in his voice, came to life in the pit of her stomach. He wanted no interference.

  What was he planning to do to those men?

  “Oates was wearing only the one gun,” he said, “and no saddlebag for extra ammunition. He’ll run out, pretty soon.”

  “Not if he sees that he’s doing no good because we’re out of range.”