by Tess LeSue
She tried again with Dog, but Dog also knew who was boss—and, again, it wasn’t Ava. He prowled into the campsite and dropped his mouthful next to the fire. Then he sat down and fixed her with an expectant look.
“What have you got there?” she asked, inching closer. It was a dead animal. A rabbit. Oh my, the blessed dog had brought them dinner. She lit up, even though it meant she’d have to skin the thing, which was one of her least favorite jobs in the world. “Good dog!” she exclaimed, taking a step forward. Dog leapt up at her movement, and she froze. He was enormous, and she was conscious that if he chose to her attack her, she would be helpless. But he merely wagged his tail and then dashed off again into the night.
She’d barely started skinning the rabbit when he came bounding back. He dropped a groundhog at her side, barked and ran off again. Before she’d managed to get the first animal ready for the cook fire, he’d made a nice little pile at her side, adding a quail and a couple of small birds.
“That’s enough,” she laughed, when he dropped another quail on the pile, his tail thumping madly. He looked ridiculously pleased with himself. “Enough! We’ll never eat it all!” She cut off a hunk of the raw rabbit and tossed it to him. He barked and snapped it up. “Shame you can’t pluck those birds for me.” Plucking birds was almost worse than skinning rabbits. Almost.
As she sat working, Dog crept close beside her. He rested his head on his paws and watched the food, and she could have sworn his eyes gleamed with anticipation. Ava wasn’t the best cook in the world, but even she could roast up some small game over a cook fire. She might have burned it, but it sure tasted good after so many days of hardtack. She gave Dog the groundhog and two of the birds, and he ate with glee.
“Father should have told me the way to a dog’s heart was through its stomach,” she said wryly as she passed him on the way to the travois. He seemed to grin at her.
She tried to rouse the Apache to eat. He managed a couple of mouthfuls and then pushed the food away, shaking his head. He was looking peaky again.
“Suit yourself,” she said. She smoothed his hair off his poor face. “More for me, then.”
So when morning came, and the town had gone back to being a bluish smudge on the horizon, and when she had a resurgent fear that it was just a mirage, she knew it wasn’t hunger causing her to hallucinate. She’d eaten enough to feed a small army. Not just last night but also again this morning, when she and Dog had split the leftovers.
Could sore feet cause hallucinations? Because she’d never known feet could hurt this much. She was desperate to stop walking. It wasn’t outside the bounds of possibility that she’d conjured up a town to get her out of walking any farther. Trust her to conjure one that looked so desolate. She couldn’t have pictured one with a lake and a bunch of trees? Maybe whitewashed buildings and a nice, big, fancy hotel?
No, she fantasized about a skeleton of a town on the edge of nowhere. . . .
It made her feel better about herself when she realized that it wasn’t a fantasy. It was an actual place, one that grew steadily clearer and more solid, the closer they came. It wasn’t so much a town as a handful of bleached adobe buildings, but it looked like paradise after the past few days. As they came dragging in, a woman emerged from the central building, shading her eyes with her hand to get a good look at them. She was a big woman, with enormous round cheeks and a delicate rosebud mouth.
Ava was painfully aware of her bedraggled appearance and the fact that she was coated in dried mud. She straightened her waistcoat as they approached the woman, brushing a thick crust of mud from the edge. “Good morning,” she said brightly.
“Where did you all drag in from?” the woman asked in Spanish as soon as they’d scraped to a halt in front of her.
“Hell,” Ava replied, also in Spanish. “Hot, endless, deserty hell.” She wasn’t an elegant speaker of the language, but she could make do. She noticed a couple of men had crept out of adjoining buildings to get a look at the curious arrivals.
“What happened to your friend?” the woman asked.
“What didn’t happen to him? He’s been beaten and blinded and burned, and then he got sick with fever.”
“If he’s got fever, we don’t want him.”
Ava’s stomach sank. She had been hoping to leave the Apache here. Because she had things to do. Namely, catching up with Ortiz before anything too final happened to the Plague of the West.
“His fever broke two days ago,” Ava told the woman reassuringly. “He’s definitely over the worst of it.”
The woman gave the Apache a dubious look. It didn’t help that he looked a complete mess.
Ava sighed. This was going to take some work. She wasn’t likely to convince the woman immediately. She’d have to get the Apache fixed up first. Hopefully she could clean him up and have him looking decent by the tomorrow. . . . “Could we stay in your stable for a day or so? We need to get our strength back.”
“He looks like he needs more than strength.”
“He does,” Ava agreed, cheerfully enough. “He looks a fright. But he’s a scrappy one. Nothing’s killed him yet. And, as I said, the fever broke a couple of days ago. He’s over the worst of it and on the mend.”
The woman nodded. “The barn is over there.” And that was about all they heard from her. She wasn’t a talker. Neither were the two men. Other than the three of them, the town seemed to consist of an old woman with no teeth, a milk cow, three goats and a bunch of dusty-looking chickens who’d gathered around the well, scratching in the dirt.
Before she did anything else, Ava went to the well to fill their canteens with fresh water. If there was one thing she’d learned in all of this, it was to always keep stocked with water. She took a drink while she was there, and also made the Apache take a mouthful, and led the animals to the trough at the base of the well. For the rest of her life, she imagined she’d take a drink whenever she had the opportunity. Because thirst was a raw hell she never wanted to experience again.
They entered the barn to find it was blessedly cool. Ava figured if she couldn’t have a luxury hotel, this would do just fine. She gazed longingly at the hay. It would do in place of a feather bed, and she couldn’t wait to avail herself of it. Once she’d taken care of the Apache and the animals anyway . . . Ugh. This was why she avoided responsibility like the plague. It was just endless work. She unhooked Freckles from the travois, which promptly fell to the ground in bits, as it did every night, bumping the Apache against the ground.
“I thought you fixed that thing,” he said, as he said every time.
“I did. And I’ll fix it again tomorrow,” she said tartly. Then she caught herself. No, she wouldn’t. Because she wasn’t planning on ever fixing the travois again. She was going to leave the travois—and the Apache and his dog—well behind her when she rode out of this place. She had to catch up to Ortiz and Deathrider, and she couldn’t afford to be wasting time here with a sick Apache. Although she was so far behind now, what were the chances Deathrider was still alive?
No. He had to be. She refused to believe anything else.
“You need someone who’s not white to show you how to make a proper travois,” the Apache said in his raspy way as he blindly tried to extricate himself from the jumbled branches that made up her rustic travois.
“You’re making a lot of assumptions,” she sniffed. “How do you even know that I’m white? You can’t see me.”
“Intuition,” he said dryly. “Cleopatra.” He was trying to stand but not having much luck.
She took his big hands in hers and hauled him to his feet. He was definitely well enough to leave behind. Look at him. Yesterday he wouldn’t have been able to stand; today he was on his own two feet. Shaking like a baby foal but standing nevertheless. She helped him steady himself. “I’m going to lead you over to the hay. You can lie there while I get Freckles sorted.”
&nbs
p; “I want to stay on my feet for a bit,” he rasped. “The longer I’m on my back, the weaker I’ll be.”
He couldn’t be serious? The man looked like he was going to keel over sideways at any moment. “You’re too sick.”
“Just stay there, in case I need support.” He stepped away from her grip and sought his balance. He wobbled a bit and went quite pale, but he managed it.
“Here.” She reached out and grabbed his arms. “Walk.” She led him to a post and put his hands on it. “Hold on to this. I’ve got things to do. I can’t be propping you up.”
She left him there and went to unsaddle Freckles and give her a brush down. She kept a wary eye on the Apache as she worked. “Don’t you go falling and whacking your head on that post. I’m sick of nursing you.”
He was doing some very distracting movements, lifting one arm, then the other, then one leg, then the other. Was he exercising? Every time he moved a chain of muscles rippled down his body.
She needed to find him some clothes.
Luckily he wore himself out pretty quickly, or she’d never have finished her chores. She kept finding herself staring at him, wondering what he’d look like unswollen and unbruised. Pretty damn fine, she imagined.
But maybe not. Maybe he had beady little eyes.
Would it matter, with a body like that?
Jesus wept. Listen to her. What did she care? She wasn’t in the market for a man, muscled or not. Why not? It’s been a long time . . . She snorted. Her brain had clearly been cooked if she was thinking about a warrior-lawyer-Apache as a romantic prospect.
Not romance . . . just . . .
Shut up. Clearly she wasn’t just cooked; she was fried. He was a complete stranger. A possible rapist, probable lawyer, and certain disaster. He was also practically bedridden. Any feelings she was having about him were merely caused by the forced intimacy of almost dying together. It was a reaction resulting from nervous exhaustion and . . . well, more nervous exhaustion. The threat of almost dying made a person aware of their body, that was all. It made water sweeter, food richer, the air fresher and perhaps caused a body to be prone to some animal feelings of lustiness. That was all. It was just the body’s way of exclaiming that it was still alive.
Even if the only man her body had to focus on had a face like a cauliflower and a way of wily talking like a lawyer . . .
It wasn’t his face that was causing her heart to trip though. . . .
“That’s enough,” she snapped at him when he stretched his arms over his head, showing off a long torso with clearly defined stomach muscles. The tattoos pulled tight over his hard-packed physique, and the badly fashioned loincloth he’d made from her petticoat slid down his hips, revealing sharp hip bones and the shadow of dark hair.
“Neither of us is up for this,” she grumbled, escorting him roughly from the center of the barn toward the hay. “You were dying of fever not twenty-four hours ago. Have some decency and act sick.”
He didn’t protest. He merely let her make him a bed of hay. He relaxed into it, and she realized that things weren’t much better now than when he was stretching. His muscled thighs were spread as he tucked his left foot under his right leg, and oh my, they were quite some thighs. Long lines of muscle, shining rosewood skin, with white scars gleaming amid the hair. How did you even get muscles that defined?
Ava backed away. Maybe she’d caught fever too. It might explain why she was having such mad thoughts. Who cared about his thighs? Or his stomach, which was hard as rock . . . or his dusky nipples, which were circled by the wing tips of the giant bird tattooed across his chest . . .
Hell. It was hot in here. She splashed herself with some of the cold water from the canteen. Maybe it wasn’t fever; maybe it was heatstroke. . . . Definitely heatstroke. Or maybe both.
The village woman was kind enough to interrupt at that point to deliver some beans and tortillas. Dusk was falling, and a lush violet sky was heavy beyond the open barn doors.
“Leave them open tonight,” the woman told her as she put two plates of food down for them. “It will give you air. It’s very hot.”
“Yes,” Ava agreed fervently. “It is. Hot. Very, very hot.” She handed a plate of beans to the Apache. He couldn’t see what he was doing of course. “Food,” she told him shortly, pushing the plate against his hand until he opened it and took clumsy possession of his dinner.
The woman was giving a bucketful of oats to Freckles. Then she ducked back outside, returning a few minutes later with a pail of water, a washbowl, a washcloth and a hunk of soap. “Anything more and you have to pay,” she said over her shoulder as she left them to it.
“Wait,” Ava protested, darting after her. “I need to ask you something . . .”
The woman paused in the yard in front of the barn. Ava joined her, trying to look as ingratiating as possible. “Thank you for the food and the soap . . .” Jesus wept. How was she going to raise the topic of leaving the Apache here . . . ?
The woman gave her a suspicious look. Ava smiled weakly.
“Uh . . . I don’t suppose you have any clothes he could wear?” she asked in her childish Spanish, chickening out at the last minute from saying what she really meant. Tomorrow she would ask if the Apache could stay. First, she’d better clean him up and dress him and make him look less like a man on a wanted poster and more like a man this woman would want to keep.
The woman stared at her, then gave a sharp nod and walked off.
“Not much of a talker, is she?” Ava said to Dog, who’d joined her outside the barn. “I guess if you choose to live out here, you like your own company.”
The door to the house closed behind the woman with a brisk bang.
“Maybe she just doesn’t want to talk to us,” the Apache called from inside the barn.
“That shows plain poor taste,” she retorted. “Eat your beans and stop eavesdropping on other people’s conversations.”
“I thought you were talking to me.”
“Well, I wasn’t. I was talking to your dog.” She braved giving Dog a scratch on the back of the neck. He looked up at her, his tongue lolling out of the side of his mouth.
Ava returned to the barn. The lantern the woman had hung on one of the poles cast a soft golden light. Night drew in around them, making it feel like they were in a magic circle of light.
Ugh. Listen to her. She was falling into romantic nonsense now. That was what a toxic combination of sunstroke and fever would do to you.
Ava considered the Apache as he ate. It looked like he had his appetite back. That was a good sign. The better he was, the easier it would be to leave him.
Dog trotted over and waited patiently next to the Apache, ready to catch any falling food. The Apache gave his dog a scratch, and Dog’s tail thumped against the hard-packed earth floor of the barn. It was reassuring to see he was kind to animals. It made it less likely he was a villain. Maybe.
Well, villain or not, if he could stomach food again, then he could stomach the news she had for him. She cleared her throat. “I’ll be heading out in the morning,” she told him, picking up her plate and keeping her gaze fixed firmly on her beans. Not that he could see her. He was blind.
While she’d been outside with the woman, he’d gone and bandaged his swollen eyes with a strip of petticoat; it covered up the worst of the swelling and gave her some idea of what he’d look like when the swelling went down. He had a very square jaw, with hollows under his cheekbones, and long lips in the shape of an archer’s bow. When had the swelling around his lips gone down? Jesus wept, he had a pretty mouth.
Oh God, the quicker she got out of here, the better.
“Tomorrow I’ll be heading out without you,” she clarified. “I said I’d get you to people, and I got you to people.” She risked a glance. He didn’t argue—yet. He was too busy fumbling with his food.
She sighed. “H
ere, I’ll help you.” She moved to sit beside him. The hay sank underneath her until she was cocooned with him in a scratchy nest. Their thighs were touching, and hell if it didn’t seem even hotter than ever in this damn stuffy barn. She took the plate and spoon off him. “Lucky we didn’t put you in any clothes already, or they’d be covered in stains.” She flicked a bean off his chest. That had been a mistake. Best not to touch him . . .
She shoved a spoonful of beans into his mouth.
It was honestly hard to read his expression, between the swelling and the bandaged eyes, but she had the distinct impression that he wasn’t pleased with being fed like a child.
“You should count yourself lucky there is someone to feed you,” she said tartly, even though he hadn’t complained, “or you’d have starved to death long ago.”
“There won’t be anyone to feed me tomorrow, though, will there? If you abandon me here.”
She scowled and shoved another spoonful of beans in his mouth. “You’re not my responsibility, Apache. I got you to people like I said I would. And that’s that.”
He radiated disapproval. Jesus wept, he was just like her mother. She was the master of using silence to make Ava feel two inches tall.
She kept the Apache’s mouth full of beans so he couldn’t keep heaping on the guilt. While she was feeding him, the village woman returned with a stack of clothing.
“There’s something there for you too,” the woman said, looking over Ava’s muddy clothing. “He’s not the only one who needs new clothes.” She paused before she left. “You tie that dog up before you sleep,” she said sternly. “I don’t want him eating my chickens.”
Remembering the pile of animals Dog had caught, Ava thought that was probably wise.
“Buenas noches,” the woman said. “I’ll bring you more tortillas in the morning before you go.”
