Stormwalker

by Dallas Schulze

  The beast stopped in front of her, and some instinct made her hold out her hand, even while her mind screamed that she might as well hold out a ham sandwich. There was a moment when she felt the damp warmth of the dog's breath on her fingers, and then he turned and lay down next to her, facing the fire.

  Sara pulled her hand back and tucked it under her other arm, though the chill she felt had little to do with the cold air. She turned her head to look at the animal, wondering if she was expected to pet him. But there was a limit to her courage and she decided to leave well enough alone.

  Cody stepped silently into the firelight, taking in the picture they made, the huge dog and the slender woman. His brows rose. It wasn't often that Dog accepted a human into his small circle of acquaintances.

  Sara looked up, her smile slightly shaky. "Is his name really Dog?"

  Cody set the load of firewood down within reach of where he'd unroll his sleeping bag.

  "That's right."

  "Dog?" She laughed. "Well, it has a certain appealing honesty to it."

  Her laugh sent a shiver through him, and Cody found himself smiling.

  "Spot didn't seem quite right." „

  Sara blinked. He'd actually addressed a friendly remark toward her. In fact, she didn't think it would be going too far to say that there'd been a hint of humor in the words.

  "I would have thought Horse might have worked." She wanted to encourage this fragile rapport.

  "He wasn't quite that large when he was a puppy." He fed a few sticks of wood into the fire.

  Sara shivered, drawing a bit closer to the fire. From under his lashes, Cody watched her. The firelight danced over the smooth perfection of her skin, casting enticing shadows and highlights. She glanced up at the mountains and shivered.

  "It must be a lot colder up there." It didn't take a mind reader to know where her thoughts lay.

  Compassion stirred in him. She was thinking about the boy, wondering what he was doing, if he was cold or injured. There was nothing he could say to reassure her. He wanted to put his arms around her and ease the frightened look on her face. He wanted to tell her everything was going to be all right. But he couldn't do that.

  He reached into his pack and pulled out a silver flask. He lifted it questioningly. "Cognac? It helps to take the chill out of the air."

  She shook her head and then watched as he poured himself a fingerful, sipping it slowly. More contrasts. Sitting beside a campfire in the wilds of the Rocky , Mountains with a man who looked like someone from a page out of history—and he was drinking cognac. It should be rotgut whiskey.

  "Tomorrow night I'll set up the tent, but tonight we'll sleep without it."

  Twenty minutes later she snuggled deep into the warmth of the sleeping bag Cody had brought for her. Across the fire Cody lay quietly, and she wondered if he'd already fallen asleep. Along the side of her that faced away from the fire, Dog had stretched himself out, providing her with a warm bulwark against the chill night.

  It was very quiet. Only the crackling of the fire and the almost-silent murmur of the stream broke the absolute stillness in the little valley. The soft hoot of an owl seemed an appropriate lullaby. Not too far away, a coyote howled mournfully, his cry echoing off the mountains. Sara shivered. The sound drew an atavistic response from her, as if a race memory drawn from prehistory told her that the predator's howl could mean death.

  Opening her eyes, she stared up at the sky. There were so many stars, more than could be counted in a hundred lifetimes. She'd lived so long in Los Angeles that she'd forgotten the night sky could look like this. No smog, no city lights to dim the glory. Just a blanket of sparkling lights.

  The coyote howled again and she clenched her teeth. Where was Cullen? Could he hear that lonesome sound? Was he safe?

  "The Comanche looked on the coyote as a brother."

  Cody's voice was quiet, husky. He didn't seem to expect a response from her and Sara didn't offer one.

  "He was called the Trickster. There are many legends about him. Every tribe had stories of the coyote's cleverness. The Zuni believed that he stole the sun and the moon from the Kachinas. They were kept in a box and he helped the eagle steal the box, but then he could not resist the urge to peak into the box and the sun and moon escaped."

  His voice was low, almost singsong, and Sara found her eyes drifting shut. Along her side, Dog shifted and moaned in his sleep. The fire cast dancing shadows across her eyelids.

  "And there are stories of how he placed the stars in the sky. So many stories, it's impossible to know them all."'

  Cody paused, listening to her quiet breathing. He didn't have to see her to know that she slept. He could hear it in the shallow rhythm of her breaths. He shifted restlessly inside the sleeping bag. He should go to sleep, but in sleep lay dreams.

  He was no longer sure which he feared most, dreams of the crash or dreams of ever-changing eyes. He stared up at the mountains' dark shapes against the star-bright sky. Was the boy up there, alive and struggling to survive, or was Cody leading Sara toward a scene of death and destruction?

  He shook his head. Whatever was up there, he had no choice but to take this trip: Fate, or the gods, or whatever deity, chose to interest itself in his life. It was no longer a matter of choosing to look for the crash site. It was something he had to do.

  ❧

  The Survivor

  Cullen placed the last stone and stood back to look at his handiwork. Crude but functional. A huge arrow pointed in the direction he would take in the morning. Anyone who found the crash would know that there had been a survivor, and this would tell them where he had headed.

  He turned and limped back to the shelter of the demolished aircraft, lowering himself clumsily onto his sleeping bag. The light was fading fast and he worked quickly, crumbling bits of bark into the ashes of the day's fire and blowing on it until they caught. He added twigs and bigger pieces of bark until the little fire began to crackle, and then he carefully set a few small branches in the flames. He had matches, but he didn't know how long they might have to last and he was conserving them along with everything else he had.

  He and Bill had been on their way back from a camping trip and their supplies were low. Enough to get him on his way, but he was going to have to supplement his food with what he could find in the wild.

  Five days since the crash. He set a pot to heat over the fire and searched for a bag of dried soup. His injured knee had gone past the point of pain and had settled into a dull throbbing that beat in time to his pulse. If he was lucky, he might not lose full use of the joint. But then his luck had been a little dicey lately.

  He dumped the soup mix into the steaming water and set a lid over the top of it to let it steep. He'd realized today that he wasn't going to be able to wait calmly by the wreckage until someone found it. It had snowed again yesterday. It wouldn't be too long before the snow deepened and winter set in with a vengeance.

  He couldn't stay here much longer. He cocked his head as a coyote's howl echoed eerily across the mountain. Unconsciously, his hand went to the pistol strapped to his side. A coyote would probably prefer to avoid a man if possible, but he wasn't in any position to outrun anything. With his leg the way it was, he would be fair game for any predator.

  He picked up a spoon and lifted the steaming pan of soup to begin his supper. Tomorrow morning, he would start walking down the mountain. With a compass and a map and some common sense, he should be able to make it. If his leg would hold up. And that was a big if.

  Chapter 5

  When Sara woke the next morning, she found that the only thing worse than riding a horse all day was waking up the next morning. Every muscle in her body protested vociferously when she tried to move. With an effort she managed to sit uprightTsure that the creaking of her bones could be heard for miles around.

  Cody was not in sight, for which she was thankful. At least there were no witnesses to her painful struggle to get out of her sleeping bag. The horses grazed peac
efully not far from the stream, but there was no sign of her guide. Sara didn't care where he was. All she cared about was that she had sOme privacy. She didn't want to think about how ridiculous she must look on her hands and knees, with her rear end thrust into the air as she pushed herself upright.

  Once she was more-or-less vertical, she was almost brought down again when her feet tangled in her sleeping bag. She groaned as she stumbled free of its entangling folds, jarring muscles she hadn't even known she had. She was dying. That was all there was to it. No one could possibly be in this much pain and survive.

  There was a battered tin coffeepot on the rocks that surrounded the remains of last night's fire, and she looked at it longingly, wondering if she would end up falling headfirst into the ashes if she tried to bend over. With a sigh, she decided not to try it until her muscles had loosened up a bit. A walk seemed to be just the prescription. Wherever Cody had gone, she wanted to be ready to greet him when he returned. She didn't want him to see her hobbling around like the Hunchback of Notre Dame. That would just serve to confirm all the objections he had had to taking her along on this trip.

  She looked at her boots, set neatly beside her sleeping bag, and then she looked at a small outcropping of rock that thrust up in the middle of the narrow valley. Between the two lay an expanse of slightly browned grass. Would the world come to an end if she walked that far barefoot? She bit her lip. The thought of struggling into her boots was not appealing. She was wearing heavy socks, which should be enough to protect her feet from any stray pebbles.

  She stepped out gingerly, her walk a far cry from her normally graceful stride. At first it was all she could do to keep from moaning aloud at the pain in her legs. She was sure that there must be black-and-blue marks all over her aching body, and she was glad she'd slept in her clothes so that she didn't actually have to look at the bruises.

  She'd taken only a few shuffling steps when she glimpsed a movement out of the corner of her eye. Immediately, she straightened her back and turned with what she hoped was a casual air. She wasn't going to let Cody see how badly she was hurting. It might, give him an excuse to try and send her back to his ranch. The stiffness left her spine when she saw Dog loping toward her.

  "Good morning." She held out her palm in greeting, and this time he deigned to sniff it. "Where's our friendly guide, huh?" She glanced around but there was still no sign of Cody. "I don't think he's very far away. I'm a little surprised he didn't want to get started before daylight."

  Dog didn't have an answer to any of this. In fact, he didn't seem to have any real interest in the question of where Cody was, but Sara decided that was probably because he already knew where the man had gone. She shook her head. She didn't care where Cody was, just as long as he wasn't watching her first fumbling footsteps.

  The walk to the rocks took longer than she'd expected, but by the time she got there, her legs seemed to be functioning less stiffly. She'd even managed to touch her knees once. Of course, she'd been aiming for her toes, but she'd settle for whatever she could get. Dog paced alongside her, seemingly unconcerned with her erratic progress. He listened to her muttered curses and prayers without comment.

  Once at her goal, Sara stopped and twisted her body, gently coaxing more and more of her muscles back to life. The early morning sunshine was clean and pure and she found herself breathing deeply, almost tasting the air. The sunshine spilled over her, warming her, filling her with hope, and she stretched her arms upward as if to embrace its light.

  When the world looked this clean and beautiful, it was impossible to believe that anything could be seriously wrong. For just this moment, she knew that Cullen and Bill were all right; Cody would find the plane and get them all down out of the mountains safely. She arched her back, smiling at everything and nothing.

  She looked at the huge animal who sat patiently next to her. "You know, we really should work on a new name for you. Dog just doesn't have any real ring to it. You need something imposing to match your stature. What do you think of Caesar? Tsar? King is too common. What we need is something with real punch."

  Dog hadn't expressed his opinion of any of her suggestions by so much as a twitch of an ear. He might not even have been aware of her presence for all the attention he seemed to be paying her. Sara didn't care. She wanted to hang on to this moment just a little while longer. In a minute she'd go back to the fire and pour herself a cup of coffee and eat whatever it was that Cody had planned for breakfast, and then she'd have to face getting back up on a horse and the reality of their search. But for just a moment more, she was going to pretend that the world was as perfect as it looked.

  "How about Wapiti? That's an elk, and you're certainly close enough in size. Or we could go for Rhino. Now there's a name with impact. You like that?"

  Dog had risen to his feet, the first reaction she'd seen. But it wasn't in response to her facetious suggestions for changing his name. Sara's smile faded as she took in his tense stance. A low growl rumbled up out of his throat, the first sound she'd heard him make. It was echoed by a lighter but far more ominous sound.

  Sara felt as if her heart had stopped beating. Her entire body seemed frozen, and it was only with an effort that she forced her head to turn ever so slowly until she could look at the rocky outcropping.

  Dog growled again, and again he was echoed by a dry, rusty-sounding rattle. She didn't really have to see the source of that sound. Coiled up not two feet from her legs, its triangular head weaving slightly, was a diamondback rattlesnake. Now the question was, just how far could he strike?

  ❧

  Cody rose to his feet with easy grace. On the nylon fishing line in his hand, two trout gleamed wetly in the early morning sun. If he'd been traveling alone, he would have been on the trail an hour ago. But he wasn't traveling alone and, for all her determination, he knew that Sara couldn't travel at the pace he could. He laid " the trout in a shallow basket and then turned to face the morning sun.

  He closed his eyes, letting the warm rays beat down on his face, driving away the chill of a nearly sleepless night. No, not sleepless. He'd slept, but he'd dreamed, too. And he'd awakened from those dreams more tired than before he'd slept. Always the mass of twisted metal. Sometimes there were bodies lying nearby, but he knew that those were the other crashes, the people he'd been too late to help.

  He turned slightly, his nostrils flaring as if he could smell the trail they were following. He was being drawn to this crash strongly, as if he were tied to it with a piece of leather thong that was gradually shrinking, pulling him closer whether he willed it or not. The pull was so strong he had to believe it was because this time he wouldn't be too late—he had to believe that.

  And always in the dreams were Sara's eyes—sometimes the blue of a mountain sky, sometimes the purple of a columbine. He felt as if he could fall into those eyes and drown in the promise they seemed to hold out.

  He shook his head and opened his eyes. There was a danger in seeing too much in the dreams. Naturally, she would be in the dreams. She was the driving force behind this trip, which was the only reason she haunted him.

  It had nothing to do with the silky length of her dark lashes, or with the way her hair seemed to be made of sunshine. The satin of her skin had no bearing on the matter, and the gentle curves of her body didn't make him long to feel that softness against his own much-harder frame. They had a business arrangement, nothing more.

  He couldn't afford to believe anything else. If he started building fantasies around her, he was doomed to disappoint. They were worlds apart, in more ways than one. The only tie between them was the aircraft that lay somewhere above.

  He bent to pick up the fish but stiffened before his hand touched the basket. The feeling of danger was so sharp it was almost a pain in his head. His fingers went to the knife that lay sheathed against his calf. With the haft in his palm, he spun around, blade up, ready to face whatever threatened. But there was nothing, just the quiet waters of the stream.

&
nbsp; The feeling of danger persisted, and without conscious thought he slid the knife back into its sheath and began to run. The soft suede soles of his moccasins were silent on the grass. The closer he got to the camp, the more urgent the feeling of danger became. He'd left Dog with Sara. There wasn't much that could threaten her that he couldn't scare off. Besides, most wild animals would avoid the scent of man if given a chance.

  He jumped, tucking his feet up under his body, taking a boulder in a leap that had all the grace of a deer.

  He swung around a bend in the stream and there was Sara.

  She was standing in front of a rock outcropping, Dog at her side. Cody skidded to a halt next to the remains of last night's fire, stopping only long enough to grab his rifle. He didn't have to hear the dusty rattle to know what held the woman and the dog frozen.

  Sara felt as if she had turned to stone. Every bone in her body was rigid, every muscle frozen into place. She couldn't even move her eyes away from that flattened triangle of a head and the two tiny eyes that seemed to watch her with so much malevolence. Beside her, Dog was utterly still, only the occasional growl that rumbled out of his throat told her he hadn't turned to marble.

  What would it feel like to have those fangs sink into her flesh? Did rattlesnake bites kill? Hadn't she heard somewhere that very few people died from snakebites in the United States? Maybe she was about to become one of those statistics.

  Stop it, she ordered herself. Even if he strikes, he may not be able to reach this far. He may miss. Surely they miss once in a while. Where would he hit if he did strike? He was on a level with her calves. Why hadn't she taken the time to put on her boots this morning? Surely the snake's fangs wouldn't be able to penetrate that wonderful, sturdy leather. If only she'd put on her boots. Wishing wouldn't make it so.

  How long could she stand here? What if she passed out? Was a snake going to know the difference between an attack and a faint? She could feel beads of sweat breaking out between her shoulder blades. Despite the warmth of the sun, she was cold and clammy.