by Tess LeSue
* * *
• • •
TWO DAYS LATER, they ran into more of the Hunters. They came upon them while the group had stopped to fill their canteens by a spring. It was a big group. Cactus Joe was there, and so were a few of the other more famous varmints. Ava was surprised to see Becky and Lord Whatsit were among their number. She dismounted, leaving the Apache tied up on Freckles, and went to greet them.
“Ava!” Becky lit up at the sight of her. “Thank God!” She flung herself at Ava and hugged her until Ava thought her ribs might crack. Even though she barely knew the girl, she was moved. It looked like there was someone in the world who cared what happened to her.
“We thought Kennedy Voss had kidnapped you!” Becky exclaimed.
“He did.”
Becky looked horrified. “Did he . . . ?” Her eyes were as wide as saucers.
“He tied me up with ropes every night,” Ava told her, knowing it would only make her eyes get wider. They went from saucers to dinner plates. Ava laughed. “Don’t worry. He didn’t touch me. Not in that way. He’s ghastly, but at this point, he’s more interested in the Hunt than in his old habits.”
“If he harmed you, I would be more than happy to shoot him for you,” Lord Whatsit interjected. He was looking rumpled and dusty and was no longer clean-shaven. But he was his same old haughty self.
“Thank you, Your Majesty,” Ava said. “That’s very kind.”
“She looks well enough, Jussy. I don’t think you’ll need to shoot anyone yet.”
Jussy? Ava looked back and forth between them. What was going on here?
“Did you hear Pete Hamble caught Deathrider?” Becky said excitedly. “He’s about a day ahead of us. We might catch up to him before he reaches San Francisco.”
“I thought Ortiz had Deathrider.”
“So did we. But now . . . who knows?” Becky shrugged.
“Well, lookit here. If it ain’t the King of England and the bar girl.” Voss was cheerful as he ambled over. “Joe was just telling me San Francisco is going to be lousy with Deathriders.” He grinned. “But I told him ours was the only true one. Ain’t that right, Miss Archer?” He winked at her.
Oh hell. Becky actually knew Deathrider, Ava remembered. She’d take one look at the Apache and know he was a fake. Ava met Becky’s gaze and gave her a pleading look. She could only hope the girl would get the message and play along.
“That’s right,” Ava said carefully. “Ours is the real Deathrider, no doubt about it.”
Becky lit up, and Lord Whatsit craned to see, curious as hell.
Cactus Joe looked dubious. “Well, let’s take a look at him, then.”
Ava managed to step close to Becky as Voss hauled Nathaniel down from Freckles so everyone could get a look at him. “Becky,” she hissed into the girl’s ear, “whatever happens, don’t let on that you know who the real one is . . . please.” She had a horrid fear that if Becky called out their lie in public that Voss would shoot the Apache on the spot. He kept the Apache alive only because he was useful.
She needn’t have worried; the girl played along beautifully. A little too beautifully, Ava realized later.
“You’ve got the wrong man,” Cactus Joe said in disgust. “This one’s a disgrace. He don’t look capable of shooting up a molehill, let alone a mining town.”
“Are you calling Miss Archer a liar?” Lord Whatsit roared.
Ava noted the way Becky put her hand on Lord Whatsit’s arm to calm him.
“Let’s look at the evidence, shall we?” Lord Whatsit pulled something from his pocket. Ava winced when she saw that it was one of her books.
She stepped closer to the Apache and put a hand on his back so he’d know she was there.
“It’s definitely him,” he heard one of the Hunters whispering. “Look how she hovers. She don’t want anyone stealing him out from under her.”
She felt the Apache take a deep breath. The poor man. She gave him a pat.
“Here we are, a description of the villain,” Lord Whatsit announced. “‘The ice-eyed killer of the plains came out of the darkness like a shadow brought to life, large but lithe, like a hunting cat; he prowled the camp while the Fullers slept, looking for easy prey. His hair was drawn back, and he wore the single eagle feather, but no war paint. This was no act of war. This was kidnapping, pure and simple. The Plague of the West had taken a liking to the girl, and he meant to have her.’”
Ava felt the Apache thrumming with tension. She kept up the patting. That always seemed to help. She heard him mutter under his breath in his own language.
“You know,” Lord Whatsit mused, putting the book down, “now that you think about it, there isn’t much description.” He flipped through the book. “That’s about as much detail of him as I can find.”
“Of course there’s description,” Voss said scornfully, snatching the book off his lordship. He squinted at the pages, his lips moving as he read. It was clearly difficult for him. “It says he looks like a cat.”
“Your Indian looks nothing like a cat,” Cactus Joe said in disgust.
“It doesn’t mean he literally looks like a cat.” Ava couldn’t help but weigh in. Because honestly.
“It says he’s large,” one of the Hunters Ava didn’t know said helpfully.
“And he is large.” Voss pointed at the Apache with the book.
“It also says lithe,” Lord Whatsit said, his lips pursing in disappointment as he took in the Apache’s battered state, which was less visible in the peasant clothes, but still obvious enough to make him seem a sorry figure. “And this man is clearly not.”
“You can’t judge him on the way he looks now,” Ava said defensively. “He may well have been lithe before his misfortunes.” Because her poor Apache had been through a lot. More than a normal man could probably have survived.
“He hasn’t got an eagle feather in his hair.”
“He didn’t have anything when I found him,” Ava said hotly. “He was completely naked.”
“What are you doing?” the Apache hissed at her, turning his head and keeping his voice low.
Whoops. She wasn’t supposed to convince them too hard that he was Deathrider. Or she’d get him killed.
“What the hell would the Plague of the West be doing out here naked?” Cactus Joe was utterly unconvinced. “She’s tricking you, Voss. It’s Hamble who has the real one. Mark my words.”
“It’s the eyes that will tell us,” Lord Whatsit interrupted. “The ice-eyed killer of the plains. It’s his eyes that make him stand out.” He considered the Apache’s blindfold. “Why is he wearing that?”
“Don’t touch him,” Ava snapped when Lord Whatsit stepped forward. “You leave that blindfold alone.”
“Why?” Lord Whatsit looked suspicious. “Surely you want to convince us this is the Plague of the West.”
“We got no interest in convincing you,” Voss said. He was grinning from ear to ear. He was a man who liked to find himself in the middle of a good conflict. “You keep your hands off my Indian.”
“My Indian.” Ava scowled at him.
Voss laughed. “She caught him, and I caught her. So as I see it, he’s my Indian now.” He pulled the Apache away from Ava and led him back to Freckles. “How far ahead is Hamble? Close enough to catch?”
“We’re coming with you,” Becky blurted.
“It’s definitely him,” Ava heard someone telling Cactus Joe as she ran after Voss and the Apache. “Look at her. She don’t want to let the Indian go without a fight. Why would she do that if it weren’t him?”
Good question. Ava slapped Voss’s hands away from the Apache and helped him onto Freckles herself. Why wasn’t she letting him go without a fight?
Because they were friends.
She’d picked up a blind and battered stranger in the desert, and over the course of their time toget
her, they’d become friends. It didn’t make sense, but it was true. And she wasn’t about to abandon her friend to these vultures.
20
EVEN WHEN SHE didn’t know who he was, she caused him unholy misery. The woman was a danger to herself and others.
Deathrider sighed as he felt her settle behind him in the saddle. Because even with the fact that she kept endangering his life, she still wasn’t what he expected. He’d been expecting . . . well, a female Voss, he supposed. A woman without conscience, devoid of sympathy, shallow of character and mercenary of spirit. But what he found was something else entirely.
Ava Archer was all too human.
She was painfully softhearted, more than she cared to admit, prone to taking care of others even when she wasn’t aware that she was doing it. It grated on her, but she did it. She always made sure Dog was fed and that the horse was watered, and she’d worked like hell to keep Deathrider alive, even though he was a complete stranger. Not just a complete stranger, but a possible threat to her. She was a terrible cook. She talked constantly. She patted him all the time—because she seemed to think he needed comforting. When she talked about her past, he could hear the sad, lonely, angry girl she’d been.
It was disconcerting, to say the least, to realize that she wasn’t a monster.
Annoying too.
After spending so much time with her, literally in her arms, he didn’t feel animosity toward her. Not as much as he should have, anyway. She was frustrating as all hell, but he didn’t hate her. He wished he did. It would make what was ahead much easier.
And now she was patting him again.
“Stop that,” he said shortly.
She didn’t. “You keep sighing. You need to trust me. I’ll get you out of this.”
He doubted it. She only seemed to get him in deeper. But at least they were getting closer to Micah, who was clearly the “Deathrider” Pete Hamble was dragging to San Francisco. According to Voss and the other Hunters, Hamble was less than a day ahead of them now. The plan was to accost him in the morning. And then to compare Hamble’s “Deathrider” with Voss’s “Deathrider.” Deathrider assumed they’d be ripping his blindfold off in the course of the comparison, and then things would get very interesting indeed.
He tried to relax as they rode—it wasn’t easy, surrounded by all these men who were out to kill him—but he needed to gather his strength for the ordeal ahead. The first step would be to rescue Micah. The second would be to rescue himself.
At least his vision was almost back. Very gradually the blurriness had faded, and the detail had crept back into the world. If he kept the blindfold high on his nose, he could peer out beneath the lower hem; he could see only his hands and the horse’s shoulders, and the blur of the ground below, but at least he could see. That boded well for his escape.
“We need to find a way to get some bullets,” Ava Archer told him. She was still patting him; it was driving him insane. As was the heat of her against his back and the feel of her against his ass and legs. She was strong. He couldn’t wait to see what she looked like . . .
“Becky will probably give me some if I ask . . .”
Deathrider let her plan aloud without interjecting. It kept her busy. That and the patting, which was doing distracting things to his body. She’d slipped from actual patting into rubbing circles on his chest. It was supposed to be calming but in actual fact it was sexy as hell. Tantalizing. Especially the way her fingertips were less than half an inch from his left nipple, and there was the constant threat of her rubbing over it. He’d always had sensitive nipples. When her hand grazed them, he just about came off the horse with the shocking pleasure of it.
If his hands hadn’t been roped up, he would have stopped her.
Probably.
“Nathaniel?” Her breath was warm against his neck when she spoke.
“What?”
“Do you think you can see enough now to shoot? If you took the blindfold off? I know you can only see shadows, but would that be enough? Because—I’m going to come clean with you—I’m a terrible shot.”
Wait a minute. He’d been so drugged by the feel of her hand rubbing at him, he hadn’t really been listening to a word she’d said. Now his brain caught up. “Hold on. What? What do you mean, you need to find a way to get bullets? Are you telling me you don’t have any bullets?”
“Not a one. But, like I said, I’m sure Becky won’t mind giving me some.”
“Wait. Are you telling me you haven’t had any bullets this whole time? Or did Voss take them away from you?”
“Both,” she admitted. “He took them away from me when he kidnapped me in Mariposa, and I haven’t had any since.”
“In Mariposa? You mean, before you found me in the Apacheria?”
“Yes.” She’d gone from rubbing to patting again. Quite vigorously. She’d picked up on his mood and was frantically trying to calm him. It wasn’t working.
“Are you telling me that you’ve been threatening people with an empty gun?” He felt light-headed at the horror of it. The damn woman could have gotten herself killed.
“Of course. Even an empty gun is better than no gun. Not that it worked. Voss got me anyway. I didn’t even have the empty gun on me when he caught us this time. I was naked, remember?”
He tried not to remember. He needed to stay on topic and not get caught up in those thoughts again.
“You’re completely insane.” He was beginning to get a picture of the woman who’d ruined his life. She cannonballed through life, on her own mad trajectory, smashing through walls and blowing up other people’s lives. But that wasn’t her aim. She was just a destructive force. “You need to learn about consequences,” he told her. “You can’t go around threatening people without having the ability to back up your threats. You’ll get yourself killed.”
“I haven’t yet,” she said cheerfully.
“No, you just get other people killed.”
“I do not. Name one.”
“Deathrider.”
That silenced her. He felt her hands claw into him. He’d hit a nerve with that name. He frowned. It wasn’t quite the reaction he was expecting.
She let out a shaky breath. “You don’t think he’s dead, do you?”
Definitely not the reaction he was expecting.
“I think Ortiz probably has the real one.” She was off talking again. “Voss thinks so anyway. I’m not so sure. Pete Hamble might have him too.”
“He doesn’t,” Deathrider said shortly.
“He might.”
“He doesn’t.”
“He might.” She gave him a gentle slap on the chest. “You have a nasty habit of disagreeing with me.”
“Only when you’re wrong.”
“I think the money will keep Deathrider alive,” she said, and he heard the worry in her voice. “The extra money. LeFoy’s offering a bonus if he’s brought in alive, and I think that will probably save his life.”
For how long? Deathrider wondered. The aim might be to get him to San Francisco alive, but what, then? A public lynching?
“I thought you wanted him dead.” Talking about this was stirring up the old toxic feelings. Maybe he could hate her after all.
“No.”
“I thought you said he was just like Voss? A killer.”
“Stop talking now.” She’d turned sour on him in the blink of an eye. That was interesting. She even pulled her hands away and deprived him of pats. Her hands settled stiffly on his sides instead, motionless.
“No.” He wasn’t about to stop talking now, not when they were getting to the interesting stuff. “How is he different from Voss?”
He could practically hear her thinking as she struggled to answer him. “I don’t know,” she admitted finally. “He just is.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“
He saved my life,” she blurted.
“What?” He knew for a fact that wasn’t true. He’d never met her before in his life. He heard a weird sound. “Are you crying?”
“No,” she said fiercely. She thumped him on the shoulder. “Shut up.”
“What do you mean, Deathrider saved your life?”
There was a tortured silence. He waited it out. She was a talker; she wouldn’t be able to keep the words bottled up for long.
And he was right. She didn’t.
“I told you I ran away from home,” she said. “I didn’t want to be some man’s toy. His glorified bed servant.”
She certainly had a way with words. They conjured up some images. But the bitterness in her voice made him imagine it from her point of view, and it left a sick feeling in his stomach and a bad taste in his mouth.
“I didn’t want to spend my life pleasing older men, never being allowed to show how I really felt or speak my mind.”
That surely would have been impossible for her.
“I didn’t want to get tossed aside every few years and each time have to get a slightly poorer man to keep me. To work harder because I was losing my looks, to be more guarded and less myself. I didn’t want to have to hand my body over to someone else and to pretend I wasn’t feeling disgusted and violated.”
“And writing about Deathrider saved you from this?” He followed the trajectory of her story straight to the point.
“When I ran away, I got a job writing for a periodical. They wanted stories of the frontier. But my stories didn’t sell very well . . .”
“Until you wrote about the Plague of the West . . . ?” he guessed.
“He was the first. I wrote a serial for a ladies’ journal, and it sold so well, it was reserialized in a national paper and then collected into a book. That was when I managed to make enough money to live on. And because of it, I got to keep writing, about all kinds of people. If it hadn’t been for Deathrider, I might have starved to death . . .”
“Or got another job,” he said dryly.
“Doing what?”
“Doing one of the jobs regular people do.”
