Hostage Heart

by Lindsay McKenna

  When darkness fell, Lark found herself well into the desert. As long as the wind didn’t blow too hard, the sand retained the hoofprints. Proud of Matt’s ability to track, Lark contented herself with making a small camp. She hobbled her horse and shot a jackrabbit with her bow and arrow. After digging a hole in which to build the fire so it would not be seen, Lark skinned and placed the rabbit on a skewer. The food in her saddlebags was emergency rations only. All Apaches were taught to eat off the land and to conserve the food they carried. There might come a place or time during the trip when there was no food available, and the rations would save her life. Lark went in search of cactus, a source of liquid and food for her horse.

  Night had almost completely fallen, and cicadas and crickets were chirping and singing. Lark located a small barrel cactus. The long, heavy spines had hooked ends. With her bowie knife, she deftly peeled away the protective covering of spines, then sliced up the cactus and carried huge chunks of the plant back to camp. Four Winds nickered, her ears pricked forward with interest. Lark carved out the pulpy interior and gave the mare her fill. Wanting to conserve her two canteens of water, she sucked on the astringent and bitter liquid of the cactus.

  As she sought refuge from the chill of the encroaching night, Lark wrapped herself up in her wool saddle blanket. The cottonwood saddle became her pillow, and she slept lightly.

  Matt squinted against the overhead sun. Shimmering waves of heat, reminding him of curtains blowing gently in the breeze, surrounded him. Under his guidance the hardy mustang pushed on at a steady trot. For the second day in a row, there had been little wind. That was good, because the tracks of the three horses were still clear. Judging from them, he guessed Ga’n and Shanks were at least half a day ahead of him. He wiped the sweat from his mouth with the back of his hand.

  A rider appeared in the distance like a dancing mirage—an Apache on a spotted chestnut and white mustang. Frowning, Matt drew his Colt. Was it Ga’n? Was it a trap? Had Ga’n joined up with the Yavapai, whose territory this was?

  His fear turned to surprise, then fury. It was Lark! She was sitting on her mustang at the base of a small, sandy hill peppered with yucca, waiting for him. Placing the loop back on the Colt .45, Matt reined his horse to a stop a few feet away from her.

  “What the hell are you doing out here?”

  “Waiting for you.” Lark held his angry gray gaze. Motioning to his horse, she said, “He’s thirsty. Have you cut open a cactus and given him water yet?”

  Disgruntled, and realizing Lark had a much better knowledge of the terrain than he did, Matt smarted. “Not yet. You disobeyed me, Lark.”

  Her jaw went rigid, her eyes flashing with fire. “That is my horse that was stolen! I have every right to track him down!”

  Yanking his mount next to hers, Matt reached out and grabbed her shoulder. “I ought to shake that fool head off your shoulders.” His voice rose a notch, vibrating with irritation. “There isn’t a woman alive who can go up against two thieves like Ga’n and Shanks.” He glanced at the bow and arrow she carried. “Those weapons are child’s toys against them.”

  Lark jerked away from him. “Stop shouting at me! If I can track and find you without your knowledge, don’t you think I can find Ga’n and Shanks the same way? Arrows are silent. Guns will give away our position.” Her nostrils flared with indignation. “You might as well get used to me being with you on this hunt. I’m not leaving, Matt Kincaid!”

  Matt stared at her proud, tense form. She sat straight in the saddle, a warrior now, not just a woman. “I don’t give a damn what you say, Lark, you’re a woman. You don’t have a man’s strength—”

  “I don’t need a man’s muscle!” she flared. “Apaches use their brains and skill instead. You may not realize it, but many Apache wives ride with their husbands into battle. They are equally dangerous and courageous. My mother was a chief, and I have her blood in me. To stay at home and let someone else try to get back my horse would bring shame on her and me. I won’t do that.” Dismounting, Lark drew her knife and went over to another barrel cactus, quickly slicing it open. When Matt dismounted and joined her, she prepared herself for his anger. Her hands shook as she gave the black mustang one handful after another of the pulp. Matt towered over her, his hands on his hips, anger radiating from him like the rays from Holos.

  “I knew you’d need my help,” she began defensively, risking a look into his dark face.

  “I ought to—”

  She lifted her chin defiantly. “What? Paddle me like a child?”

  He took off his hat and scratched his damp scalp. “You’re too old to paddle.” Despite her Apache garb, she was beautiful in Matt’s eyes. Settling the hat back on his head, his eyes shaded by the brim, he muttered, “Feed the damned horse and then let’s get going.” He jabbed a finger toward her. “The minute you can’t keep up, I swear I’ll hogtie you, ride to the nearest town, and make you stay there until this business is taken care of. Understand?”

  She fed the last of the pulp to the mustang and wiped her hands on her trousers, then rose, holding Matt’s intense gaze. Pride in her ability would not allow her to cower at his demands and threats. “I can outride or outwalk any pindah,” she said. “Apaches are known for their stamina and endurance. I’ll keep up with you.”

  Matt wasn’t ready to relent. “It will only take once, Lark. Just once.”

  Relieved that he wasn’t going to send her back to the ranch, Lark nodded. The noonday heat was stifling; the clothes they wore stuck damply to their skin.

  Lark took up another subject, hoping to deflect his anger into something more constructive. “I’m worried about Kentucky.”

  “Why?”

  She motioned for him to follow her to the hoofprints visible in the sand and crouched down next to them. “He’s tiring badly,” she said, showing how his hoofprints were distorted in the sand. “I don’t think he’s eating cactus to stay alive. Horses that aren’t raised on it usually won’t eat it. I found where Ga’n and Shanks spent the night and there were a number of uneaten pieces of cactus pulp lying around. I think Ga’n tried to get Kentucky to eat it for liquid, but he refused.”

  Matt knelt opposite her. “If Kentucky doesn’t get water soon, he may die.”

  “Either that or they’ll slow down and we can catch up with them.”

  “They didn’t travel last night. That’s good.”

  “Ga’n’s afraid of the darkness,” Lark said.

  He held her gaze. “Are you?”

  “My Apache side is.”

  A crooked smile softened his set features. “Maybe it’s time to switch to your white side so we can travel at night and catch up with them.”

  She knew he was correct and reluctantly nodded. “I’ll try.”

  Matt rose, helping her to her feet. Squeezing her work-worn hand, he murmured, “I’ll keep you safe, Lark,” but inside, abject fear ate at him. Could he keep her safe? She was so unlike most women, unafraid to face danger. Mounting, he watched her leap with graceful ease into the simply made cottonwood saddle. With the quiver filled with arrows on her back, the cedar bow in her left hand, she looked like an Apache warrior.

  They kept up a steady walk-trot during the rest of the afternoon. Near evening, Lark stood up in the stirrups and pointed excitedly at a gnarled mesquite tree.

  “Water!” she cried, and pushed her mustang into a fast trot.

  To Matt, it was impossible to believe that water existed anywhere on this arid land dotted with cactus, mesquite and yucca plants. He watched Lark slip from the saddle and move beneath the sparse shade provided by the forty-foot-high mesquite, kneeling down beneath it. Dismounting, he saw her digging rapidly, the darkened sand flying beneath her hands.

  “Look,” she told him excitedly, recognizing Kentucky’s distinctive hoofprint nearby. “They’ve watered the horses here.” She pointed to the churned-up sand around where she was digging. “His prints are everywhere around this hole. Kentucky must have gotten a drink.
He’ll be good for another day, at least.”

  Matt looked around the immediate area. Lark was right. The animals had been eager to get to the small source of water. He scratched his head. “How did you spot water?”

  Lark made a pleased sound as the hole she had dug at least two feet deep beneath the roots of the mesquite began to fill slowly with water. “This mesquite is larger than the rest, which means it has found a way to trap water and keep it longer than most of the others.”” Twisting a look up at Matt, she motioned for him to join her. “Come, drink your fill.”

  The water was brackish and gritty, but it was water, just as Lark had promised. Matt drank only two cupped handfuls before motioning for her to drink as well. Their thirst slaked, they brought over their eager mounts, one at a time, and allowed them to sip noisily from the hole.

  Matt noticed the salmon-colored dusk and gold-tinted clouds high above them. They weren’t rain clouds, but they signaled the possibility of wind. The prints would be hard to follow if the wind picked up and erased them.

  Matt watched as Lark patted her favorite mare and checked the girth on the saddle. There was an economy to her motions, almost a delicacy. She was achingly feminine, and he found himself wanting her more powerfully than ever. Perhaps it was the constant danger that spurred his hunger to claim her as his own. Each minute was precious to him, because in the next he might lose her to a bullet or an arrow.

  “Let’s rest here and eat,” he told her.

  Surprised, Lark nodded and smiled. There was a pale pink wash to the bone-colored desert now; the land lay flushed and radiant. “It’s good to let the horses rest after that big drink of water. Are you hungry?”

  Matt nodded and began to strip the saddle off his gelding. “Yes.” The word came out clipped and hard. He was still upset with her.

  Lark shared her Apache food with Matt for dinner—ash cakes made of juniper ashes, cornmeal, salt, and in this case a bit of animal fat and pinyon nuts, to give it a nutty flavor.

  “The Apache can live on one ash cake for many days,” she said, watching Matt slowly chew.

  “They aren’t very appetizing,” he muttered.

  His face was deeply shadowed, emphasizing the chiseled strength of his features. A wellspring of warmth made her heart swell with such fierce love that Lark thought she might die of the unexpected feelings rushing through her. Despite Matt’s anger over her appearance, she was glad to be with him.

  He glanced over at her. He was still simmering with irritation, but there was no sense holding on to his anger, he decided. He loved her too damned much to do it.

  He filled the canteens, set them near their saddles, and sat down close to where Lark was crouched. “Ga’n is moving in a southeasterly direction, away from the Hassayampa River,” he said. “I don’t think he wants to risk being seen by the Yavapai, who have many rancherias along that stretch of water.”

  Lark agreed. The Yavapai were the enemy of the Apache. “He’ll avoid them at all costs.”

  “So you think he’ll stick to open desert, avoiding all white and Yavapai trails?” Matt guessed.

  Lark nodded. “Ga’n runs a greater risk of being discovered by the Yavapai than by the cavalry or a wagon train.”

  Matt frowned, mulling over the possibilities in his head. “Where do you think he’s heading?”

  “I would think he’d want the safety of Apache territory.”

  “That means San Carlos or the White Mountain region?”

  “Yes.”

  It would be dark in about three hours. With a grimace Matt finished off the last ash cake; they tasted terrible. “I want to travel tonight,” he said, knowing Lark would balk.

  Her heart pounded, but she knew Matt would send her back if she refused to ride with him. “All right. We’ll take an hour’s rest and then saddle up.”

  Chapter 15

  The moon had risen near midnight. Lark tried to concentrate on using the silvery light to follow the hoofprints. Anxiety stalked the edges of her mind. Ny-Oden had filled her head full of stories about ghosts that walked the land at night. She feared seeing an owl, knowing it was a dire warning of danger.

  Near two in the morning, Matt called a halt. Wearily Lark slid off Four Winds, giving the sturdy mustang mare a well-deserved pat. The animals were thirsty and hungry. She spent another half hour finding and cutting up barrel cactus pulp for them, her senses constantly on guard, an uneasy feeling hovering around her.

  When she made her way back to their camp beneath the shelter of a small mesquite tree, she saw worry etched in Matt’s exhausted features. Sinking down beside him on a blanket, she sat tensely, listening to the night sounds. Not far away, she heard the ominous hoot of an owl.

  “Lark? What’s wrong?”

  “An owl. It’s a warning,” she said softly, trying to penetrate the deep gloom of the night.

  Matt stared up at her, holding the Winchester rifle across her lap. “Did you hear a movement?” Maybe they were closer to Ga’n and Shanks than he’d originally thought.

  “No.” Lark gnawed her lower lip. “Owls are a warning by the spirit people, Matt. They come to you only if there is danger nearby.”

  He slid an arm around her tense shoulders. “What kind of warning?”

  “I don’t know,” she admitted, trembling. Her fingers tightened around the rifle. “One of us should keep watch while the other sleeps.”

  “Good idea.”

  “I’ll take first watch. I’m too frightened to sleep.”

  He kissed her cheek, inhaling her musky fragrance. “Okay. Wake me in two hours?”

  “Yes.”

  Matt jerked awake. Had it been a noise that had shaken him out of sleep? A nightmare? He sat up, searching for and finding Lark standing three hundred feet away where the first threads of a gray dawn were visible, silhouetting her tall, willowy figure. He was about to speak to her when she suddenly crouched. What the hell?

  Automatically his hand went for the gun at his side. He heard a sound. Was it some kind of animal? Just as he got into a kneeling position, Lark turned in one graceful motion and sprinted toward him.

  Her eyes were wide, her breath harsh. Relief washed through her when she saw that Matt was awake with his gun drawn. She knelt beside him.

  “Yavapai!” she exclaimed, pumping a round into the chamber.

  Matt gripped her arm. “How many?”

  “Five. It’s a war party. They’re half a mile away, coming west on foot, toward us.”

  “Take it easy,” he soothed. “Let’s saddle up and ride hard. I don’t want to confront them. If we fire these rifles, we’re liable to attract Shanks’s attention. We can’t risk it.”

  Lark was more than willing to evade the war party. In no time, they had saddled the mustangs. As she leaped into the saddle, Lark could see them more clearly, gray ghosts coming out of the darkness. Sinking her booted heels into Four Winds, she leaned low on the mustang so as not to be a possible target.

  Matt gestured for Lark to ride well ahead of him. He didn’t want her to be endangered by a stray bullet in case they were discovered. The mustangs wove in and around sagebrush, yucca and cactus, galloping and trotting for almost an hour before slowing down. To the east, the sky had turned a glorious shade of pink and red, flooding the surrounding land with vibrant color. Matt rode up alongside Lark.

  “All right?”

  She nodded. “I was so afraid. I kept hearing sounds out there in the night. I thought it was ghosts.”

  He gripped her hand and squeezed it hard. “No, flesh-and-blood men, honey. You did a good job.”

  Weariness tugged at Lark. She hadn’t slept in twenty-four hours and another long, hot day stretched ahead of them. Riding in a large circle around the Yavapai warriors, they finally picked up Kentucky’s trail once again.

  Holos was beating down, sapping Lark of what little strength she had left. For the last six hours, they had pushed on without rest.

  “Look,” Matt said, pointing to the left.
“If I don’t miss my guess, that’s the Agua Fria River.”

  Lark shaded her eyes. There, in the shimmering waves of heat, she saw what looked like a small river. Her mouth was dry, and she longed to wash the grit and sweat from her skin. “I wonder if Shanks and Ga’n are there.”

  “Could be,” Matt agreed. He studied her intently for a moment. “If they aren’t, let’s rest awhile there. We can get washed up and you can sleep.”

  Praying that the river was free of Yavapai rancherias, Lark gave Matt a brave smile. She had endured the torturous ride just as she had promised him.

  “Most women couldn’t have gone half the distance you have,” he admitted, riding close to her, their legs occasionally touching.

  Lark rallied beneath his praise. Very soon, the shimmering heat waves disappeared and she gazed hungrily at the green mesquite that lined either shore. A number of birds, among them woodpeckers that made their homes in the saguaro cactus, flitted nearby. Matt rode ahead, his rifle resting across his thighs.

  When Lark arrived at the sandy bank scattered with lamb’s quarter, curly dock, and sedge grasses, Matt lifted her from the saddle. “Go get a bath and then sleep,” he told her. “I’ll take care of the horses.”

  Grateful, Lark turned and embraced him briefly. “Thank you.”

  The river was little more than a shallow stream, barely knee-deep. Seeing no evidence of human beings, Lark quickly stripped off her clothes, knelt in the cooling water, and scrubbed her skin with a handful of grass she had retrieved from the bank. As the cooling liquid sluiced across her hot, sweaty body, she uttered a soft moan of relief. Next she rinsed her hair free of grit and sand.

  Matt had spread out a blanket beneath a towering mesquite. He divided his attention between watching Lark bathe and staying alert for unwelcomed visitors. Lark was like a sleek golden cougar, the water gleaming off her tall, proud figure. Her hair, heavy with water, was plastered like a second skin against her young, uptilted breasts and long back. He smiled, thinking how beautiful she truly was. Her flesh was a dusky gold, and he vividly remembered touching her, kissing her. The look of utter enjoyment on her face made him ache; the soft smile at the corners of her lips enticed him.