by Thea Devine
She angled away from the stream now, ducking down low so that her presence would not be obvious. But she felt the same sensation as she had when she had dived into the stream—that her wild inky hair, damning black stockings, and white skin made her eminently conspicuous, and the only sensible thing to do was to get down as low as possible and crawl.
And she did, thanking Providence that the ground near the stream was spongy and rock and bush strewn, and that the bushes had leafed out enough to provide a
modicum of protection for her if she should need to conceal herself.
Slowly, she inched her way toward the ribald noise of the men until straight ahead of her, spread out on some boulders, she could see their clothing: rinsed-out shirts, tough dirty denims, boots, socks, gunbelts, hats. A fresher-looking shirt hanging from a protruding branch . . . Her cobalt eyes lit on it and she began moving toward it, turning backward every few seconds to make sure someone wasn't coming.
The tree from which it hung was directly in line with the path from the stream, with no bushes or rocks in the way. It meant she had to somehow get around the far side of the tree before she could make a grab for the shirt. Her desperation gave her the patience and the strength to keep down on the ground rather than bolting for the tree, and very slowly she crept around the rocks and bushes nearby and over to the broad base of the tree.
Only then did she stand up, bracing herself against the rough bark, and her hand reached around the breadth of the tree trunk, outstretched, ready to snatch at the material.
And she heard the men. Her heart accelerated; she pulled frantically, and it came away with a sharp little tearing sound.
She tossed it over her shoulders to the shout of "Hey, lady" behind her, as one of the hands ran after her and caught an enticing glimpse of her bare back and buttocks and her long, flashing black-clad legs as she raced away.
Her mouth was dry, and she was totally out of breath before she felt she could stop. The silence behind her told her no one was following her, but still she couldn't quite be sure until she had gotten a long way from the stream. At that point, she collapsed onto the ground to catch her
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breath and button the damned shirt, which was miles too big on her.
She heard the reassuring lowing of the cattle behind her; she wasn't hopelessly lost at least, but she wasn't close to camp either.
It was the one moment in her life she wanted to see Deuce more than anything else in the world.
But the silence around her was eerie, complete, punctuated by the buzzing of insects and the faint cattle call. And her only course was to start back that way.
She took another deep breath and stood up. The shirt was ridiculously long; it fell almost to her knees, and it was so wide that it hung from her body as if she were skeletal. She could not have chosen a more effective cover-up if she had created it herself. Moreover, it was thick cotton chambray, wrinkled but protective. She resolutely rolled up the sleeves and turned in the opposite direction, toward the faint bawl of the cattle.
And she walked. She knew the soles of the stockings were rent and torn full of holes from the undergrowth; she could even feel little twigs poking her, but she didn't care. Damn that Jake; damn her ideas, damn everything! What had happened made her night with Deuce recede far into the background, almost like something she had dreamed. Maybe she had; maybe she had imagined that things were possible with him and that everything he had said was true, but when she would finally wake up, she would find it was all a daydream. . . .
Someone was following her. . . .
She pulled up tensely. Someone was behind her, quiet as an Indian . . . Jake! Terror seized her. How had he known her whereabouts? God, he was clever; he must have an innate scent to track his prey, she thought wildly. No water to dive into here. Very few trees and rocks, which told her the grazing pasture was not far away. Maybe she could dive under the cattle to protect herself.
She was getting crazy now; she had to think.
Slowly she moved backward, her bolt-blue gaze striking off any likely spot where he could be hiding.
Backward and backward again. In a moment she would veer right, toward a thicket of bushes that would afford her some protection.
She counted mentally to herself, shifting her body ever so slightly to make the turn and gear herself to run.
"Kalida!"
Whose voice?
She froze. Terror made her immobile, unable to think. Her heart pounded unbearably hard, as if it could beat its way right out of her chest. She had no coherent thoughts except that Jake might have his gun and use it on her now.
She saw him before she heard his voice again, and she instantly recognized the bend of his body, the particular ramrod posture, the set of his muscular shoulders, the walk.
He walked toward her across the field, and she waited, possessed by a different kind of terror: Oh God, what was Deuce thinking as he strode closer and closer, but still too far away for her to read his expression.
And then it didn't matter. She bolted into his arms and he held her so reassuringly close that it didn't matter.
"Are you all right?" His voice in her ear was expressionless except for a faint tremor beneath his words.
She nodded, and his fingers dug into her tangled night-black curls and lifted her face to his.
"Did he hurt you?" Again that flat concealing tone. Only his eyes were alive, burning charcoal, boring into hers.
"No."
But did her navy-darkened eyes flicker as she answered that question so emphatically? Was there something deep within them that spoke of her withholding something? He
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couldn't tell for sure. He couldn't tell, and he could hardly bring himself to ask his next question.
"Deuce—" She was wary of the absence of emotion in his voice. His fingers tightened, tugging at her hair. The emotion was there, raging below the surface. She wanted to reassure him, and she hardly knew how to begin.
"Did he . . . touch you?" The words were out, with nothing in his voice to betray him. Nothing.
She denied it instantly. "I promise you, Deuce, he never touched me." She searched his coal-dark gaze and could not tell what he thought, what he believed.
"Kalida . . ." He pulled her tightly against him again, his hand still wrapped in her hair, flexing against the shape of her head, fraught with the things he had left unsaid.
Her body shook as she buried her head against his taut muscular shoulder. His arm around her was like iron. And she needed that secure feeling around her just at that moment. She needed him.
"I could have killed him," Deuce said suddenly. "I could have flat out murdered him." And this time, the chilling emotion was in his voice.
"I am not riding chuck," Kalida said adamantly as she surveyed the ruins of her shirt, impatiently balled it up, and threw it into the pile of Bruno's kitchen garbage.
"I don't see as how you have any choice," Deuce said practically, nodding at Bruno. "You are hardly dressed for a tough four-hour drive on the trail."
Kalida sipped from the hot, strong thick cup of coffee that Bruno had fixed up for her from the dregs of the morning coffee pot. God, it warmed her all the way down to her toes, which were now encased in her battered boots and tucked under her sorely wrinkled skirt.
Deuce was right, she thought, but that didn't mean they
couldn't devise some temporary solution. Look at how nice that shy towheaded Joe Slim had been about her keeping his shirt. Surely someone else had a spare pair of . . .
She voiced the thought before it was even completed in her mind.
It made him laugh. He didn't laugh easily, she had learned, but when he did, the most enchanting lines appeared around his eyes and down his cheeks. "Not likely," he said, still amused by the thought of Kalida's slender, strong legs encased in some hulking male's under-drawers. "Good thought, though. Inventive. See you later, though. You can help Bruno pack
up." He flashed a funny grin at her. "Woman's work, Kalida."
"I know about it," she said dryly, watching him lope off. He grabbed a hat and a rope, disappeared into the remuda, and reappeared several minutes later mounted. He waved and was gone.
"Miss Kalida . . ." There was Bruno. "Now you miss it, but that's a lot of head of cows out there, and you can't go haring off after them like you used to. It ain't right. You shouldn't even be here. And Mr. Deuce wasting all that time checking out where you had got to. And now Jake gone." He shook his head. "It ain't right. Come help me. Things'll get better once we're on the trail."
Unwillingly she set her mind to the pack up. She washed the dishes and the pots from the morning meal and loaded them into their niches on the back of the chuck. She wrapped the leftover food into airtight packages and stored them in the wagon bed. She helped Bruno dismantle his tent, and they rolled that up and tossed it in the wagon.
And then there was nothing to do but wait until the strays had been rounded up and they were ready to roll.
But Kalida's mind wasn't on that. All the time since she had returned with Deuce, she had been envisioning the
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scene between him and Jake Danton. He could have killed him, he said. He felt that violent. But how had he confronted Jake? What had Jake told him? He hadn't forced her to go; he had only used a situation that had come to hand as expediently as possible. She certainly could be said to bear some of the blame. Deuce might well consider that he had cautioned her strongly enough about Jake the afternoon they had gone to her old homestead. And stupidly she disregarded it.
Oh God, what had happened between them? He must have trailed her from camp to the bathing place, but of course no one would have seen them.
And then he would have tracked them further upstream, which made sense; she would have done it herself had Bruno given her the information that she had left camp with Jake. And knowing Jake, as Deuce obviously did. But he must have found Jake long after she had gone.
She couldn't begin to imagine the scene—or the words that must have passed between them. Enough so that Jake was sufficiently defeated and had left. Left for where? With what? They had walked; his horse was still in camp.
Damn and damn. She had caused all this. She had no business being upset about it. But she was.
She walked to the edge of the pasture where two of the men were guarding the herd, riding around it in concentric circles, trying to contain the milling mass of flesh that sensed somehow it was going to be moving soon. Their sole job was to prevent a stampede, and they—and Ka-lida—knew from experience that the slightest sound or movement could set it off. It was one reason she kept well back into the trees; she had seen it happen. She was smart enough, she thought ruefully, about that.
If only she had some underclothing, she could be out there riding and not thinking about Jake Danton and his lascivious eyes. Or what the confrontation between him
and Deuce had been like. Or her own blame for what had happened. If she had only dressed properly yesterday . . . But she hadn't the slightest notion she was going to wind up sharing Deuce's bedroll that night. And she had spent the morning on horseback, dressed as she was, and it had been no hardship. But that had been only an hour or so. Four hours plus was another matter altogether. She considered that thought carefully. She needed those under-drawers.
She turned slowly and carefully back to the camp, frustrated that everything had been packed up. Even a spare pair of trousers would have filled the purpose, she thought. She wondered if there were a pair someplace.
Bruno was the only one in camp, the only one who would know. He kept the laundry bag. It was, in fact, jammed into the wagon bed with the remains of the food and Bruno's bedroll. She didn't even think about whether she was going to ask him. He was busy, his back turned to her, doing some sewing or something.
He was a better homebody, she thought ruefully, than she was. She hoisted herself onto the spokes of the wagon wheel and began rummaging through the packages and bags. And finally, in a eoarse flour bag near the gate, she found what she was looking for—a pair of dusty wrinkled denims that might have even been Deuce's. She whipped them out, closed the bag carefully, and ran for dear life to the little bit of privacy she might find behind the fully loaded bed wagon.
The pants were terrifying long. When she rolled them up, the cuffs were so thick she could not jam them into her boots. She had to cinch the waistband with a piece of rope she appropriated from around one of the bedrolls. The impromptu belt and bagginess of the pants bulked out her skirt to a conspicuous degree, but she didn't care.
She would be ready to ride when Deuce returned.
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How could he have held out any longer? he wondered as he slowly trailed behind the herd on the left side, and Kalida matched his pace on the right. She was born to ride the range, he thought. Born for loving. Born for . . . me. Damned stubborn and determined. Bossy. Dangerous. He could think of a thousand adjectives to describe her, including goddamned unthinking. Check that to beef-witted. Hell. He wasn't going to think about that goddamned bastard and Kalida together. It was enough she had gotten away from him unscathed.
At least she said that. He slanted a coal-hard gaze at her mounted figure several hundred yards away. How devious was she? he wondered. Would she try to protect him? Or—another insidious notion occurred to him — herself?
The son of a bitch had had her at gunpoint; he had forced her to strip for him. It was inconceivable he wanted nothing else from her.
And when he imagined Jake Danton touching her . . .
He had no idea what he had said to Jake. He remembered tackling him and beating the hell out of him. He vaguely recalled all the filth that Jake had spewed at him, reviling Kalida, calling her names, telling him that she was nothing he thought she was, that he didn't know the kind of woman she was and Jake couldn't wait for him to discover the truth. He wanted to be there when Deuce finally understood everything about Kalida.
He didn't even try telling Jake he knew all about Kalida, more than Jake could ever perceive about her or dream about her. Everything. He had studied her for years, wanted her for years. Loved her for years.
Believed her. If she had said nothing more had happened, nothing had happened, despite Jake's insinuations to the contrary.
But Jake had threatened her with a gun. . . .
If he had put his hands on her . . .
If he had felt the softness of her skin . . .
If Kalida had wanted it, as Jake had intimated . . .
If Kalida were being evasive about what had really gone on between them . . .
If . . .
He studied her erect body from across the dusty trail. If he would ever know the truth ... He felt right then like grabbing her and beating it out of her. No, not beating it out of her. He felt like branding her body as his all over again. Imprinting himself on her, in her, invading the deepest recesses of her mind and soul so that she would know she belonged only with him.
He couldn't let the likes of a piece of filth like Jake Danton destroy her. If he ever returned to Sweetland, he would kill him, pure and simple. And enjoy it. And then his memory of his hour with Kalida would be dust.
Only he would remember it.
And Kalida.
If it had happened as Jake had said.
And Kalida were lying.
He wondered if he would ever really know.
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Chapter Fifteen
He had never seen her as determinedly exhilarated as she was on the long, interminable dusty trip back to Sweetland. The herd poured into Morgan field about five hours later, and Eakins, Joe Slim, and Bruno volunteered to turn them out so the others could pull in for the afternoon.
Deuce looked at Kalida for a moment, sitting rigidly on her mount, her face flushed, her hat dangling now by its strap down her back, her midnight hair in wet curly tendril
s all around her face, her eyes blazing cobalt, and he felt a distinct ambivalence about her. Damn it, Jake's dirty work was having its effect, even with him gone, Deuce thought angrily, but he couldn't stifle the words he spoke: "I'll nighthawk."
"Aw, hell, Deuce, you don't need to do that," Joe Slim protested, running a sweaty hand through his straw-colored hair. "I'll take the,shift."
"I will," Deuce said, daring his range hand to argue with him. He felt feisty, spoiling for a fight, desperate maybe to hit out at somebody because of Jake Danton's searingly suggestive innuendos.
"I'll relieve you later," Joe said resignedly. He knew that look. You didn't oppose Deuce when he had that look on
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his face. He motioned to Eakins and Bruno, and they turned back to the pasture. The others rode off, leaving Deuce alone with Kalida, and Barney to tend to the chuck. He followed behind them slowly as they made their way back to Sweetland.
It was mid-afternoon by then. Ardelle was seated on the porch almost as if she were waiting for them. She was waiting for them, and what appeared to be her calm repose turned into incendiary anger as Deuce and Kalida approached.
She tore out of her rocking chair like a bullet and met them at the porch steps. "You fired Jake Danton?" It wasn't really even a question; it was pure untenable outrage.
Deuce dismounted and tossed his hat up onto the porch before he answered. "I did. How do you know?"
Ardelle sputtered for a moment, and then calmed down enough to say, "He came back for his gear. He came by here to tell me. Why, for God's sake?"
"If you know he's gone, you must know why," Deuce said calmly as he tethered his horse with finely defined precise movements, which were the only thing that kept him from walking away from Ardelle at that moment.
