by Tess LeSue
“I’m going to haul you toward a bush that’s uphill on the right,” she told him as she returned.
He was as still as death. She put her hand over his heart. Still alive. But maybe only barely.
“You ready?” she asked sharply.
“Yes,” he said, his voice slow and thick.
She grabbed the Apache under his armpits and started to drag. She saw his swollen face twist in pain, but he didn’t protest. God, he weighed a ton. She put her back into it. It was like carrying an anvil up a hill. He made a deep groove in the sandy soil. And then, just when she thought she might break her back, she got him there.
“Can you move at all?” she asked. “Get yourself comfortable. It’s shady.”
He curled himself into a miserable ball under the bush, his back to her. Now that it was light, she could see his bruises had darkened even further, into enormous black and purple splotches. And his sunburn was blistering something awful. He’d really been through the wringer.
“I’m just going to fill the canteens, and then I’ll be back,” she told him.
She crawled out of the bush to find that Freckles had finished her nap and was once again face-first in the water, drinking like she was a camel and needed to fill her hump.
“Here,” Ava said tiredly, “let me get that saddle off you.”
Freckles didn’t stop drinking as Ava uncinched the saddlebags and then the saddle. She left the reins on and roped the horse loosely to a nearby bush, giving her enough lead to move between the creek and her sleeping spot. Then she filled the canteens.
By the time she was done with the chores, the sun was blazing, casting fat shadows over the parched earth. She didn’t care about Kennedy Voss, the rest of the horrid Hunters, murderous raiding Apaches or even getting bit by scorpions (which she’d always been afraid of). She just wanted to sleep.
She crawled under the shade offered by her gown and the scrappy bush, and joined the Apache on the blanket. It was already hot under there, made worse by the baking heat radiating off his fevered body. Ava flopped down beside him, feeling like pitching a fit. She just wanted to sleep. But here he was all sick. Damn having a conscience. Why couldn’t she be a heartless monster like Kennedy Voss?
Feeling like she was made of lead, she ripped another strip off the petticoat and soaked it; then she rolled it up and rested it against the back of the Apache’s neck. He moaned.
“Feels good, huh?” She leaned over him. Oh Lord, his face. It was a total mess. She took the damp cloth off his neck and set to work cleaning him up. Gently, she wiped his eyes clear of the crusty buildup. They were still swollen shut, but they didn’t look as bad as they had the day before. “You sure must put people off,” she observed as she ran the damp cloth over his sunburn, “if you make them want to beat you up this bad and rub nettles in your eyes.” He shivered at the feel of the moist cloth. “I put people off too.” She sighed and refreshed the cloth with fresh water, before placing it on his neck again. “I always have. My mother finds me too brassy, and my father . . . well, the less said about that, the better.” She pulled a face.
The Apache took up most of the space under the bush, even when he was curled into a ball. He was a tall one, all right. She was tall herself, but he made her feel downright dainty next to his length. Ava struggled to find a comfortable position next to him. The only way she could find that didn’t involve a great big branch in her side, or a face full of twigs, was pressed close to the Apache’s hot, sweaty back. Her nose was just about squashed against those great knots of muscle.
“You really need a bath,” she told him. Then a thought occurred to her, and she dipped her head to smell under her arms. She wrinkled her nose. “Or it might be me.”
He stirred.
“I’ll bathe tomorrow,” she assured him. As she closed her eyes, she heard the jangle of the horse’s bit, the soothing sound of running water and the steady tide of the Apache’s breath.
14
AVA SLEPT MOST of the day. A few times she half-surfaced, but the somnolent warmth of the sun on the makeshift canopy over the branches and the rhythm of the Apache’s breathing lulled her back to sleep. She was too exhausted to struggle; she just sank down into slow-moving dreams. She dreamed she was walking around the edge of a vast freshwater lake, climbing slick gray rocks, wading through carpets of emerald grass but never quite able to reach the shore—or the water. Eventually she sat on a hill, looking down at the wind riffling the surface of the vast lake. Gazing at it, she felt a welling sense of peace. A warm summer rain began to fall, and all she had to do to slake her thirst was tilt her head skyward and open her mouth.
When she finally woke, the world seemed sharper edged, brighter, zinging with color. She hadn’t realized how much exhaustion had dulled her senses. And her mood . . .
Now she felt positively buoyant with hope. Of course she’d get out of this situation. She’d survived worse than this. With full canteens, they’d get to Mexico easily.
Canteens. The thought made her reach for one. She took a deep draft. Then another. Then another. Until she’d completely drained it. It tasted like a crisp winter morning. God. How had she never realized that water was so wonderful?
Now that her thirst was slaked, and her exhaustion extinguished, she felt near indestructible. She was still hungry though. She could probably stomach that salty jerky in her saddlebags now. Especially if she soaked it in the creek to soften it up first.
In the late-afternoon light, the creek bed looked positively pretty. Buttery shafts of light slanted across the water and gilded the olive green leaves of the scrappy bushes. In the daylight, Ava could see that the water itself was the color of red mud; it was like a slow-moving mudslide. But even that looked almost pretty in the brassy light.
Hell, even Freckles looked better. The horse had lost her depressed air and was standing midstream, letting the creek wash around her legs. Her ears were swiveling merrily, and she was bright eyed and perky looking. She’d also worked her rope free from the bush Ava had tied her to. Best remedy that quick smart.
When she saw Ava, the horse gave a zesty whicker. Ava only just managed to get hold of the rope before the frolicsome animal pranced away.
“No, you don’t. I got no plans to walk to Mexico.” Ava tied the rope more securely this time, around the trunk of a thin-leafed tree. She double-checked her knots. Freckles gave a philosophical whicker and then headed straight back into the stream. Ava made sure she had enough rope to move about. She wasn’t going to deprive Freckles of a paddle in the cool water after everything they’d been through.
“That looks like a good idea,” Ava observed as she watched the horse enjoy the water. “Let me just get the Apache a drink, and then I’ll join you. It’s a perfect day for a swim.” She found herself whistling as she filled the mug and headed back to rouse the Apache. They weren’t out of the woods by any means, but she sure felt they would be. Eventually.
Only the Apache couldn’t be roused in order to drink. He was shiny and red and searing hot to the touch.
“You men sure know how to milk an illness,” she scolded, giving him a shake. He didn’t even moan. He was as listless as hell again. It gave Ava an awfully bad feeling.
“Freckles,” Ava said frantically as she crawled back out of the bushes, “what do I do? He looks terrible.” Goddamn it! She knew she should have left him to fend for himself. Now she was responsible. And she hated being responsible for people. She’d spent her entire life avoiding being responsible for people.
“What do I do?” she wailed again.
Freckles huffed but didn’t move from the water.
“I should cool him down, shouldn’t I?”
According to her nanny, fevers could cook your brain. I knew a girl once who got so fevered that steam came out of her ears; she was never the same again after that, Nanny said every time Ava had so much as sniffled
. A sneeze led to confinement in bed when Ava was growing up, as did headaches, nosebleeds, coughs, shivers and pretty much everything else.
It probably wasn’t true about the steam coming out of the girl’s ears; her nanny had been prone to exaggerating. And she was a hypochondriac to boot. According to Nanny, everything could kill you or maim you or cause irreparable harm to your system.
But she might have been right about fevers. How was Ava to know? She wasn’t a doctor.
So maybe she should cool him down to prevent him from steaming and cooking. . . . But how in the hell was she going to do that? It had to be more than one hundred degrees today.
Ava looked down at the mug of water. It was a start. She mopped at his face with the damp cloth. And even poured some water on his head. It didn’t blunt his fever in the least. And the mug was so pitifully small that she could barely bathe his face with the contents of it, and he needed cooling down quicker than she could carry water back and forth. What she needed was a bucket. Or a bathtub.
He needed submerging. . . .
“You owe me,” she told the Apache grimly as she grabbed him under the arms and started hauling him to the stream. “You owe me for the ride; you owe me for the clothing, even if it was just a petticoat; you owe me for the water; and now you owe me for saving your brains from steaming.” She took a moment’s rest and gulped in deep breaths. Lord, he was heavy. It was like dragging a dead horse. Or a buffalo. “You also owe me for dragging your heavy ass all over the desert. Between last night and today, I think I’ve hurt my back.” Not just her back. Her everything. He was a dead weight. “You had better not be actually dead,” she huffed, dragging him over the bumpy banks toward the ruddy waters. “I didn’t put in all this effort for you to die now. You have to live forever, just to show some damn appreciation.” Once they were close to the water, she paused to gather her strength. The next bit was going to hurt. The banks didn’t look steep until you had to negotiate them carrying an Apache who weighed roughly the same as a bull buffalo.
She didn’t bother stripping the petticoat from his hips; she figured wetting it would keep him cool later. She hopped on one foot as she struggled to get one of her boots off, and then the other. The rest of her could take a dousing, but these boots were too important to her survival to risk them. Once she had her boots off, she resumed pulling the buffalo of an Apache down the banks.
“I have no idea how I’m going to get you back up again,” Ava admitted. The stream was shallow and flowing fast; it had clearly been higher and was receding, because half the streambed was just a glug of mud. She fell headlong into it as the Apache tumbled down the ragged edge of the bank and onto the muddy flat below, bowling her over in the process.
The river mud squelched between her fingers and up her nose, a thick red clay that tasted weirdly chalky. The only positive thing about the whole situation was how cool the mud felt against her skin. She’d been sweating something fierce, and now she was in a chilled cocoon. She struggled upright, groaning at the sight of her only clothes. She looked like she’d been carved of mud. “Now I’ll have to wash them.”
Freckles whickered. Ava threw a spatter of mud at her. “Don’t you go laughing, or I’ll make you do it.”
The horse didn’t look remorseful in the slightest.
“This is your fault, Apache.” Ava slopped on her knees back to the Apache, who had barely registered their fall. His swollen face was covered in great whacks of red mud, and his body was slick with it.
“Mud: another thing I can add to the tally of misery you’ve brought me.”
He was struggling to lift his head. Ava slid her hand under the nape of his neck to support him; her touch was gentle. “Hush, Apache. Don’t struggle. We’re just going to take a dip in the water to get your fever down.”
His lips opened, but he couldn’t seem to speak. Ava stroked his head until he calmed. He was as hot as a furnace. Jesus wept. She hoped he didn’t have some nasty disease. Because by now she probably had it too.
Not much she could do about it now, she supposed.
“My nanny might have been right,” she muttered as she considered how to get him safely into the water without drowning them both. “And not just about brain steaming. She said I’d meet a bad end, and I just might have met it. But who knew a bad end would be so heavy?”
At least the mud was slippery, so she could drag him more easily. She managed to launch him into the shallow, rapid-running water and sit herself in the thick mud. She kept him between her legs, with his head on her collarbone and her arms clasped tight around his chest so the water couldn’t tug him away. She had to dig her heels in deep, but the mud was accommodating and wrapped itself around her, anchoring her. She half-wondered if she’d be able to drag herself out of it again, it held on to her so tightly.
After a few moments, she’d caught her breath, and when she realized he wasn’t about to be yanked out of her arms and drowned, she managed to relax a little. He was completely limp. Freckles ambled over to them, stretching out her rope to its full capacity, and snorted.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Ava told her. It was comforting to talk to the animal like she was a person. Ava felt in need of comfort. She usually had ironclad nerves, but these past few weeks had done her in. “He’s not going to die,” she told the horse firmly.
Somehow over the past blurry hours, it had become vitally important that the Apache survive. Maybe it was because his death would be a dark omen for her own future.
She’d only just regained her spirits, and she didn’t want them sinking again. Despair was a precursor to death, and she’d be damned if she was going to die such a small and miserable death. If she had to die, she’d rather go out in a blaze of glory.
“Look at all his scars,” she instructed the horse, craning her neck to take another look at the Apache’s old battle scars. “He’s survived worse than a fever. This man looks like he’s survived several wars. Nothing as petty as a fever will kill him. I’m certain of it.” She hugged the Apache tighter as the creek pulled at him.
Freckles whickered and lowered her head to nudge Ava’s arm.
“I know,” Ava sighed. “I did say he could be a rapist and a murderer. And maybe he is. But maybe he’s also not. I mean, look at me. I’m not what I seem.”
The horse snorted.
“Fine. I am what I seem. But only until you get to know me well. I’m not all thorns. My mother always said I had a tender heart.” She paused. “Actually, that wasn’t my mother. That was the nanny. Mother said I was determined to do things the hard way.” She shrugged. “But Nanny liked me well enough. The first one anyway. The second one said I was demon hell spawn and took away my spider collection. And let’s not even talk about the third nanny, who took up with my father and just about ruined Mother’s life.”
Why was she thinking about her mother again? She hadn’t seen her or thought of her in years. She wrote the obligatory letter home now and then but never left a forwarding address to receive return mail, so she hadn’t heard back. For all she knew, Mother was dead by now.
Except she wasn’t. Ava knew for a fact she wasn’t. Her mother wouldn’t die until she saw Ava again so she could scold her daughter until her ears bled. You ruined everything. That was the old refrain. And if her mother ever did die, she’d probably come back from the dead to haunt Ava, because she’d have no intention of resting until Ava was locked into some loveless match with a man just like her father. Yvonne had spent her life as a rich man’s mistress, and she thought her daughter should do the same. And it didn’t matter how many arguments they had; she was unshakable in her belief.
“It’s a good life,” her mother had told her a million times, usually as she soaked her hands in lemon water to keep them soft and white, or rouged her cheeks to keep them looking bright and young, or put cucumbers on her puffy eyes to get rid of the signs of tears after Ava’s father had neg
lected her yet again for a younger woman.
Good life, my ass, Ava thought sourly, bracing against the tide of water rushing over her as she held tight to the Apache. It was a terrible way to live, surrendering all your power to a man who could toss you aside at any moment. Sure, she got an income—but only as long as she pleased him. And who wanted to please a man all the time? Sometimes you just wanted to tell them to go to hell.
At least a wife had some law on her side—not much, admittedly, but some, certainly more than a mistress had. A mistress couldn’t even be publicly acknowledged; she was kept in the shadows, in the margins, on the edges of a respectable life. It was like a whole secret society, one that Ava had grown up in. Her father and his friends had their wives and public lives, but they also had their mistresses and private fun. There were separate dinners and dances and whole social calendars for the kept women of men as wealthy as Ava’s father. As a kid, Ava had taken it all in her stride. Her father came in and out of her life, in a perfumed cloud of cigar smoke and brandy. Usually he came at night, and she associated him with lamplight and the hastily eaten chocolates that he slipped her when the nanny wasn’t watching. He and Mother existed in a golden bubble of their own, all flickering candlelight and hushed voices, giggles and whispers. When Ava was very young, she’d spy on them, feeling a warmth deep inside at the sight of them together. At their happiness. At the way they curled around each other, at the way her mother’s eyes shone when she looked at him, at the way Mother could always make Father smile. When her parents were together, Ava felt safe and happy and whole.
But then, when she was twelve, she had learned that her father wasn’t hers. Not to keep. He flitted in and out like a moth, arriving once the candles were lit, disappearing into the shadows once day broke. And it turned out that not all fathers were like hers. Most fathers stayed. That became clearer to her as she aged. And the reason her father never stayed was because he wasn’t hers, not really. He didn’t belong to her or to her mother. Because, Ava learned (thanks to a spiteful school friend), her father had another family. His real family.
