Under Apache Skies

by Madeline Baker

  “We don’t know anything for certain right now,” Martha Flynn said, “except that Pa’s missing. The rest of you might as well go back to bed.”

  Murmuring among themselves, the cowhands who had been dismissed moved away, some going into the cookhouse for coffee, the others going back to the bunkhouse.

  Ridge figured none of them would get much sleep. Aside from the fact that the boss was missing, it would be dawn in less than an hour.

  Martha Flynn looked at the four men standing nearby. “Smitty, why don’t you go saddle the horses. Oh, and saddle one for Dani.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  The other three men followed Smitty into the barn, leaving Ridge to wonder who Danny was. Her husband? A brother, perhaps? He rubbed his hand over his jaw. If she had male kin, why was she out here giving orders?

  Martha Flynn looked up as Ridge Longtree drew closer. She glanced at the gun strapped to his thigh, her expression thoughtful.

  “Trouble brewin’?” he asked.

  “My father’s horse came in without him. There’s blood on the saddle.” She glanced at his gun again.

  “And you’re wondering if I did it?”

  “Did you?”

  “You probably wouldn’t believe me if I said no. I’ll be riding out first thing in the morning.” He turned to walk away when her voice stopped him.

  “Hey, Longtree, are you any good with that iron?”

  Ridge swung around to face her. He regarded her for a moment, as if considering her reason for asking, and then shrugged. “I generally hit what I aim at.”

  “How would you like to work for me?”

  “Doing what?” he asked, though he already had a pretty good idea.

  “Whatever needs to be done.”

  “I thought you had me pegged as your old man’s killer.”

  “I never said that.”

  Removing his hat, Ridge ran a hand through his hair, wondering if he wanted to get tangled up in Martha Flynn’s troubles. She was a tall woman, with a passable figure and pretty features. Her hair, what he could see of it beneath her hat, was the reddish brown of autumn leaves. Her eyes were dark brown—hard, serious eyes that looked at him head-on and knew him for what he was. But there was a vulnerability there, too.

  “Well?” Martha asked.

  Ridge was about to accept her offer when the sound of hurrying footsteps caught his ear. Turning his head, he saw a girl running toward them. Tall and lithe, she ran with the effortless grace of a doe, her long blonde braid flying behind her. As she drew closer, he saw that she wasn’t a girl at all, but a young woman, probably no more than seventeen or eighteen, and pretty enough to take a man’s breath away.

  Cheeks flushed, she stopped beside the other woman. “I’m ready.”

  Martha Flynn nodded. “Just a minute, Dani. What do you say, Mr. Longtree?”

  “Sure, I can do whatever needs doing.” He glanced at Dani. Definitely not Marty Flynn’s brother.

  “Good,” the Flynn woman said, extending her hand. “You’re hired.”

  Ridge shook her hand. She had a firm, no-nonsense grip.

  “Mr. Longtree, this is my sister, Danielle.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Miss Flynn.”

  “Please,” she said with a shy smile, “call me Dani.”

  He nodded.

  “Are you really a gunfighter?” Dani asked. “Like Wild Bill Hickok?”

  “Not exactly,” Ridge replied dryly. “Hickok is dead.”

  “Was he killed in a gunfight?” she asked, her eyes alight with morbid interest.

  “No. He was shot in the back while playing cards in a saloon over in Deadwood.”

  “Who…?”

  “As fascinating as this is, we don’t have time for these questions now, Dani,” Martha interjected. “Longtree, why don’t you saddle up and come with us?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Moments later, Ridge rode out of the yard behind the two women, the disgruntled foreman, and the cowhand called Smitty.

  When she reached the road, Martha Flynn turned south. Since no one seemed to be searching the ground for tracks, Ridge figured she knew where she was going.

  They rode for a mile or two with no one saying much of anything. The rising sun chased the night from the sky. Ridge spent a few minutes admiring the sunrise, then turned his attention to the two women. They might be sisters, but they were as different as spring and autumn. As far as he could tell from what little he had seen and heard, being kin was the only thing they had in common. The young one, with her curly blonde hair and green eyes, was easily the prettier of the two. The older one looked tough enough to chew lead and spit bullets; the younger one looked as warm and soft as one of the feather beds in Sally Moffet’s house of ill repute.

  He grinned inwardly. He had always liked autumn’s colorful leaves more than spring’s green, and feather beds made him sneeze.

  They had gone close to five miles when the foreman reined his horse to a halt. The others drew rein behind him. Ridge stopped behind the others. “What is it, Scanlan?” Martha Flynn asked. The foreman gestured at the trail. “That there looks like a print from your dad’s mare.”

  Martha Flynn leaned forward, her eyes narrowed as she looked where Scanlan indicated. And then she nodded. “I think you’re right.”

  Dismounting, Ridge squatted on his heels and studied the ground for several minutes. Dropping his horse’s reins, he walked ahead a few yards, studying the ground as he went, and then he turned and walked back toward the others.

  He looked up at the foreman. “Do you recognize the tracks of the second horse?”

  Scanlan shook his head. “No.”

  Ridge grunted softly. The second horse had a tendency to drag its left hind foot. It left a distinctive trail. Find the horse and he’d most likely find the killer.

  “The way I see it, Flynn was on his way home when a second rider came up beside him back there a ways. They rode side by side for a while, which leads me to believe Flynn knew the other man. They stopped here.”

  He frowned, his gaze moving over the ground again. The second man had dismounted. There was a pile of horse droppings near the side of the road. A little farther on there was a stretch of ground that looked like something heavy had been dragged across it. A body, perhaps? Looking closer, he saw a few reddish-brown stains that could only be blood.

  Ridge picked up a handful of manure and sifted it through his fingers.

  The signs were clear. Two men had stopped here. Only one had ridden away. The texture and color of the droppings indicated that Flynn’s horse had waited where its rider had fallen for several hours before going home.

  Ridge followed the bloodstains into the patchy grass that grew alongside the road. He could hear what sounded like a river ahead, and he kept walking, paying little attention to the others who were coming up behind him.

  He found the body near the edge of the river. A thick cloud of blowflies took to the air as he approached.

  The man was dead; there was no doubt of that. He had been shot in the back at close range and had somehow managed to drag himself to the river before he died. A search of the man’s body turned up nothing but a ring of keys, a half-empty sack of Bull Durham, and papers for the makings.

  The two women were off their horses now, running up to the man’s body. The young one, Dani, threw herself down beside the body, sobbing, “Daddy, Daddy.”

  “Was your old man carrying any cash on him?” Ridge asked. “Anything of value?”

  “He always carried a hundred dollars cash money,” Martha Flynn replied. “And the pocket watch that Nettie gave him as a wedding present.”

  Ridge gained his feet. “Then I’d say he’s been robbed.”

  Martha Flynn looked at him suspiciously for a moment, then nodded.

  “You want to search me?” Ridge asked, his voice like cold steel.

  Martha Flynn shook her head. She glanced at her sister and then looked back at Ridge, her expression im
placable, her eyes as hard as flint.

  “I think you know what needs doing.”

  Dani sat huddled in her father’s favorite chair, a blanket draped across her legs. “I can’t believe you hired that dreadful man.”

  “He’s a blessing in disguise, if you ask me. He couldn’t have shown up at a better time.”

  “He’s a hired gun, isn’t he?”

  Marty blew out a sigh. “He is now.”

  “He looks like an Indian.”

  Marty shrugged. “So what?”

  “So, we don’t know anything about him.”

  “He can use his gun. I know that.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Dani, all you have to do is look at him.”

  “How do you know that he isn’t working for Claunch? For all you know, Longtree could have killed Daddy and taken his money and his watch.”

  Marty shook her head. She didn’t know how to explain it, but she knew in the deepest part of her being that, whatever else Ridge Longtree might be, he wasn’t the kind of man who would shoot another in the back and steal his belongings.

  “I don’t like it, Marty,” Dani said, hearing the tremor in her voice and hating it. “And I don’t like him. He scares me.”

  “Everything scares you.”

  Dani looked away. She couldn’t deny it. She was afraid of crowds. She was afraid of guns. She was afraid of the dark. She was afraid of being left alone… Her throat grew tight and tears burned her eyes. First her mother had left her, and now her father was gone, killed in cold blood.

  Scanlan and Johnson had taken Pa’s body into town. Tomorrow she would go with Marty to make arrangements for the funeral and speak to the sheriff. When that was done, she was going to insist that Marty send a wire to their mother to let Nettie know what had happened. She wondered if her mother would come home now.

  Rising, she gathered the blanket around her shoulders and went out on the porch. She stood there a moment, then made her way to the corral that held her father’s horse.

  Sunny whinnied softly at her approach. Trotting up to the fence, the mare pushed her nose against Dani’s chest.

  Blinking back her tears, Dani scratched the mare’s ears. “You’re going to miss him, too, aren’t you, girl?” she murmured.

  The faint glow of a cigarette caught her eye. Glancing to the left, she saw the new man standing in the shadows watching her. He was a big man, with broad shoulders, a narrow waist, and slim hips.

  He took a last puff on his cigarette, then dropped it in the dirt and ground it out with the toe of his boot. Before she quite realized what he intended, he was moving toward her. Every instinct she possessed screamed at her to turn and run away, but she stood frozen to the spot, watching him walk toward her, his long legs quickly covering the ground between them.

  “Evenin’.”

  She took a step back and clutched the blanket tighter, as if a flimsy piece of cloth would protect her. “Hello.”

  “I’m sorry about your old man.”

  “Thank you.”

  Ridge shoved his hands in his pants pockets. He wasn’t used to making small talk with ladies. He hadn’t spent much time with decent women lately, and the women he did spend time with weren’t much interested in conversation. They weren’t as young and innocent as this one, either. He wasn’t sure why he had felt the need to see her up close, or why, seeing the tears in her eyes, he wanted to pull her into his arms. It was obvious she was on the verge of crying again, and just as obvious that she was scared to death of him.

  She bowed her head, probably to hide the tears filling her eyes.

  Muttering an oath, Ridge closed the distance between them and put his arms around her. She went stiff as a board the minute he touched her, and then, with a sob that went straight to his heart, she sagged against him and bawled like a baby.

  He had been a long time without a woman, and his body reacted instinctively. For a moment, he almost forgot that she was grieving for her father and that she was a damn sight too young for him and as innocent as a newborn babe. With a shake of his head he reminded himself that he was supposed to be offering her a shoulder to cry on and nothing more. And then he kissed her.

  “Danielle Marie Flynn, what the hell is going on out here?”

  At the sound of her sister’s voice, Dani jerked out of his arms and backed away from him. “Nothing, Marty. I…he…we…”

  “There was nothing going on,” Ridge said. “She was crying for her old man and…” He shrugged. “She needed someone to comfort her and I was here.”

  “Is that what you were doing?” Martha asked. “Comforting her?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  Martha Flynn’s gaze burned into him for a long moment, the warning plain in her frosty brown eyes. Keep your hands off of my sister. He heard the words as clearly as if she had shouted them.

  Martha Flynn picked up the blanket that had fallen from Dani’s shoulders, then took her sister by the hand. “Let’s go.”

  Ridge watched the two of them walk toward the house. Marty and Dani. He grinned wryly, thinking that the boyish name Marty suited the older one far better than the staid name of Martha. But that was neither here nor there. If he was as smart as he thought he was, he would get on his horse and light out right now.

  His gaze rested on the surprisingly enticing sway of Martha Flynn’s hips. And then he grinned.

  Sometimes, he just wasn’t very smart.

  Chapter Three

  The rapid tattoo of rain falling on the roof of the bunkhouse woke Ridge early the following morning. He listened for a moment, then swore softly. He had intended to ride out this morning and take a second look at the tracks where the body had been found. A look out the window told him riding out now would most likely be a waste of time. Whatever tracks he might have found had probably been washed out by the rain.

  Rising, he grabbed his hat and followed the smell of coffee to the cookhouse. There were only two cowhands inside, and they were heading out as Ridge went in, which suited him fine.

  He poured himself a cup of coffee from the big pot sitting on the potbellied stove, then sat down on a bench at one of the long wooden tables. The coffee was black and strong enough to float a horseshoe, which was just the way he liked it. He sipped it appreciatively while he stared out the window at the rain. But it wasn’t the dark sky or the rain he saw, but the face of the prickly-tempered Martha Flynn. He didn’t know what there was about her that intrigued him so, but he’d been awake a good part of the night trying to figure it out.

  With a shake of his head, he drained his cup and stood to get a refill. Maybe he’d just been too long without a woman, he thought sourly. Maybe at this point any woman would look good to him, but even as the thought crossed his mind, he shook his head. If that were true, it would be Dani Flynn keeping him awake nights—Dani with her huge green eyes, long golden hair, and innocent, untapped sensuality. She was a visual feast guaranteed to keep any red-blooded male on edge. Instead, it was Martha Flynn he found so appealing. There was something in her eyes that called to him, something that spoke of a soul-deep hurt.

  Muttering an oath, he took a drink from his cup and swore again as the hot bitter brew burned his tongue. Damn! He’d better keep his mind on why he was here and stop getting himself tied up in knots over some woman who looked at him as if he were going to drag her little sister into the woods and eat her alive.

  Ridge laughed out loud, the sound echoing off the cookhouse walls. Damn, if that wasn’t a mighty tempting thought.

  Emptying his cup, he left the cookhouse and ran toward the barn. Opening one of the big double doors, he stepped inside. The scent of hay and horses and the pungent odor of manure filled his nostrils as he moved deeper into the barn. His horse occupied a stall about midway down the aisle. The stallion poked its head over the door and whinnied softly at his approach.

  “Hi, fella.” Resting one hip against the edge of the stall, Ridge scratched the horse’s ears.
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  He glanced around the barn. It was pleasant in there, listening to the rain on the roof and the sound of horses munching hay. He was about to leave when what sounded like a sob caught his attention.

  Curious, he walked to the end of the aisle, then paused, listening. He had decided he was hearing things when it came again. Turning right, he followed the sound to the last stall in the back of the barn.

  Peering over the side, he saw Marty Flynn sitting on a pile of hay, her hand covering her mouth. She looked up, her eyes widening when she saw him standing there. Last night she had looked as hard and unyielding as iron. This morning, with her hair falling in thick auburn waves around her shoulders and her cheeks damp with tears, she looked years younger. And every bit as vulnerable as her little sister.

  “What are you doing in here?” he asked, though he had a pretty good idea.

  She glared up at him. “Go away.” She sniffed.

  Instead, he walked around to the open stall door, removed his kerchief, and handed it to her. “Blow your nose.”

  Her eyes narrowed but she blew her nose, then stuffed his kerchief in the pocket of her trousers. “I’ll wash it for you.”

  “Appreciate it.”

  “Now go away.”

  “Too late. What are you doing out here, anyway? Afraid to let your sister see you crying?”

  He’d hit the nail on the head that time. Scrambling to her feet, she glared up at him again. “I’m not paying you to lollygag around the barn.”

  “Got someone you want me to kill?” he drawled. “Besides myself?”

  Her lips twitched in what might have been a smile. “Not at the moment.”

  A tear trickled down her cheek.

  Almost without conscious thought, Ridge wiped it away with the pad of his thumb. Her skin was warm and smooth.

  She stared at him like a doe cornered by a timber wolf when he took a step toward her, her eyes wide and afraid. “What are you doing?”

  Muttering, “Beats the hell out of me,” he pulled her into his arms and kissed her.

  At first she stood unmoving in his arms, her hands braced against his shoulders in an effort to push him away, and then, suddenly, her arms fell to her sides and she was kissing him back.