Outlaw m-3

by Elizabeth Lowell

  “Wouldn’t it have been better to walk from the base camp?” Diana asked, bracing herself against the dashboard.

  “I was in a hurry.”

  “Why?” she asked, looking toward him as the truck bucked over the ridge and stopped abruptly.

  “That’s why.”

  The flat, predatory quality of Ten’s voice froze Diana’s breath. Slowly she followed his glance.

  A dirty Range Rover was parked among the rubble at the base of the cliff. Beyond the vehicle, lightweight aluminum ladders extended up the twenty feet of massive sandstone that separated the ruins from the rubble below.

  Ten reached over, unlocked the gun rack that hung over the rear window and chose the shotgun, leaving the rifle in place. He checked the shotgun’s load, racked a shell into the chamber, then got out of the truck and closed the door before he turned to look at Diana through the open window.

  “Stay here.”

  Thunder belled harshly, followed by a cannonade of rain sweeping in shining veils over the ground. Holding the shotgun muzzle down, Ten ignored the rain that quickly soaked through his clothing. There was a muffled shout from the ruins. He ignored that, too. The Range Rover was unlocked. He went through the vehicle quickly, finding and unloading a pistol and a rifle. A quick motion of his wrist sent bullets arcing out into the rain. The weapons he put way in the back of the Rover, next to a big carton. With one eye on the pothunters who were scrambling down the rain-slick ladders, Ten ripped open the box.

  It was filled with Anasazi pots, their bold geometries and corrugated finish unmistakable in the watery light. Bits of turquoise and shell gleamed in the bottom of one bowl. Ten lifted the carton out, set it on the ground and returned to the interior of the Rover. It stank of cigarette smoke and gasoline that was evaporating from a five-gallon container with a faulty seal.

  As the pothunters hit the bottom of the ladder and started running toward him, Ten opened the container and pushed it over inside the car. The stench of raw gas swirled up, overpowering.

  “Hey!” hollered the first man. “Get the hell out of there! That car’s private property!”

  The Rover was between Ten and the pothunters. When he stepped out around the rear of the Rover, the men could see the shotgun held with professional ease in Ten’s hands, muzzle slanted down, neither pointing toward nor away from the men.

  The first man slowed his reckless pace to a wary walk. He was in his mid-twenties and carried himself as though he had spent time in the military. He was big, hard-shouldered, used to intimidating people with his sheer size.

  “You’re trespassing on Rocking M land,” Ten said.

  “I didn’t see any signs.”

  The line of Ten’s mouth lifted in a sardonic curl. “Too bad. Get in your Rover and drive out of here.”

  The other two men caught up with the first just as he shouted, “You’ll be hearing from me, cowboy. You’re threatening private citizens. We were just traveling around in the back country and made a wrong turn somewhere. It could have happened to anyone-and that’s what I’ll tell the sheriff when I file a complaint!”

  “The only wrong turn you made was in thinking all you’d find out here were pots and a few grad students even younger than you.”

  “Think you’re a big man with that shotgun, don’t you?”

  “You sure didn’t learn much in the marines before they threw you out.”

  “How did you know I was…” The man’s voice faded even as angry color rose in his face. He jerked his head toward the Rover. The other two men reached for the door handles.

  Ten watched with an air of shuttered expectancy. He wasn’t disappointed. No sooner did the two men open the Rover’s doors than there were simultaneous shouts of outrage.

  “He poured gas all over the damn car!”

  “Milt, the pots are gone!”

  Then one of the men noticed the guns. He slammed the door and said in disgust, “Pack it in, Milt. He got to the guns.”

  Milt’s face flattened into mean lines as he measured the cowboy standing at ease in front of him.

  “You heard them,” Ten said. “Pack it in.” He raised his voice slightly and said to the other two men, “Get in the Rover and shut the doors.”

  The younger man colored with frustration and anger when his two companions obediently climbed into the Rover, slamming both doors hard behind them.

  “Those are my pots,” Milt said angrily. “If they’re not in the Rover when I leave, I’ll sue your smart ass for theft.”

  “Go home, kid. School’s out.”

  As Ten spoke, he casually broke open the shotgun and removed the shell from the firing chamber.

  Milt was as foolish as Ten had hoped. The younger man began weaving and feinting, his body held in the stance of someone who had been trained in unarmed combat.

  Ten closed the shotgun with a fast snap of his wrist and set the weapon on the Rover’s hood before he turned and walked toward the younger man. As though Ten’s calm approach unnerved Milt, he attacked. Ten deflected the charge with a deceptively casual motion of his shoulders that sent Milt staggering off balance over the slippery rubble. He went to his hands and knees, then scrambled to his feet and came after Ten again.

  One of the Rover’s doors opened just behind Ten. He spun around and lashed out with his booted foot, connecting with metal. There was a startled curse, a cry of pain and the sound of the door slamming closed beneath Ten’s foot. Before the echo could return from the stone walls, Ten had turned around again.

  Milt was more careful in his tactics this time, but the result was still the same. When he lunged for Ten, Milt got nothing but a handful of mud. It happened again, then a fourth time, and each time Milt ended up on his hands and knees.

  “Hurry up, kid,” Ten said, watching Milt push to his feet for the fifth time. “I’m getting tired of standing around in the rain waiting for you to get smart.”

  With an inarticulate cry of rage, Milt came to his feet, clawing beneath his windbreaker with his right hand, tearing a hunting knife free of its sheath. This time when Milt charged, Ten made a single swift movement that sent the other man head over heels to land hard and flat on his back, gasping for air. Ten’s boot descended on Milt’s right wrist. Bending over, Ten took the knife from Milt’s hand, tested the edge of the blade and made a disdainful sound.

  “You’d be lucky to cut butter with this, boy.”

  Milt’s glazed eyes focused on Ten, who was throwing the knife from hand to hand, flipping it end over end, testing the knife’s balance with the expertise of someone thoroughly accustomed to using a knife as weapon.

  “Other than the edge, it’s a nice knife,” Ten said after a few moments. “Really fine.”

  There was a brief blur of movement followed by the sound of steel grating through earth. Buried half the length of its blade, the knife gleamed only inches from Milt’s shocked face. Ten removed his boot from Milt’s wrist.

  “Pull the knife out and put it back in your belt.”

  Milt reached slowly for the knife. For an instant as his fingers closed around the hilt, he thought of throwing the knife at the smaller, rain-soaked man who had humiliated him with such offhanded ease.

  Watching with the clear-eyed patience of a predator, Ten waited to see how smart Milt was.

  Slowly, reluctantly, Milt returned the knife to its sheath.

  “You’re learning, kid. Too bad. I was looking forward to watching you eat that knife.” Ten bent down and dragged the younger man to his feet with a single powerful motion. “Now here’s something else for you to learn. I’ve been hearing things about a busted-out gyrene pothunter who gets his kicks slapping around teachers whose only crime is wanting to camp in a national park.”

  For the first time since the fight had started, Milt was close enough to see Ten’s eyes beneath the dripping brim of his cowboy hat. The younger man’s face paled visibly.

  “Hearing things like that makes me real impatient,” Ten said matter-o
f-factly. “When I get impatient, I get clumsy, and when I get clumsy, I break things. My friends are the same way, and I’ve got friends all over the Four Corners. So if you know any other pothunting cowards, pass the word. Starting now, my friends and I will be damned clumsy. Understand?” Slowly Milt nodded.

  Ten opened his hands and stepped back, his body both relaxed and perfectly balanced. “You’re going to start thinking about this, and drinking, and pretty soon you’ll be sure you can take me. So think on this. Next time you come after me, I’ll strip you, pin a diaper on you, and walk you through town wearing a pink bonnet. Know something else? You won’t have a mark on you, but you’ll be marching double time just the same.” Ten jerked his head toward the Rover. “Make sure I don’t hear about you again, kid. I purely despise bullies.”

  Milt backed away from Ten and reached for the Rover’s front door with more eagerness than grace. Ten watched. He was about to congratulate the two men in the Rover on their good sense in staying out of his way when he saw that the reason they had sidelined themselves wasn’t good sense.

  Diana had stepped down from the truck and was standing in the rain, sighting down a rifle she had braced across the hood of the truck.

  7

  With outward calm Diana watched the Range Rover slither and slide down the shale, retreating from September Canyon as quickly as the rain and rough terrain allowed.

  “You can put it away now. They won’t be back.”

  Ten’s voice made Diana realize that she was still crouched over the rifle, sighting down its blue-steel barrel, her hands holding the weapon too tightly. She forced herself to take a deep breath and stand upright.

  “May I?” Ten asked, holding out a hand for the rifle.

  Diana gave the rifle to him and said faintly, “It will need cleaning. The rain is very…wet.”

  Ten didn’t smile, simply nodded his head in agreement. “I’ll take care of it.”

  “Thank you. It’s been years since I cleaned a rifle. I’ve probably forgotten how.”

  “You sure didn’t forget how to use one,” Ten said as he checked the rifle over with a few swift movements. He noted approvingly that there was a round in the chamber. He removed the bullet and pocketed it. “Thanks.”

  Diana looked at him and blinked, trying to focus her thoughts.

  “For aiming the rifle at them rather than at me,” Ten explained, smiling slightly. “It’s nice to know you think I’m one of the good guys.”

  “I-they-you didn’t need me,” she said, rubbing her hands together.

  “Three against one? I needed all the help I could get.”

  Diana shook her head. “You could have made veal cutlets out of that pothunter before his friends could have taken a single step to stop you. Why didn’t you?”

  “Never did like veal cutlets,” Ten said matter-of-factly, opening the truck door. “Get in, honey. It’s wet out here.”

  “I’m serious,” she said, climbing up into the dry cab. “Why did you hold back? You certainly didn’t with Baker…did you?”

  Ten went around the truck and got in behind the wheel. He sensed Diana’s intent, watchful, rather wary eyes. Wondering if Diana were still afraid of him, Ten watched her from the corner of his eye as he began wiping down the rifle and shotgun. Despite the vague trembling of her hands and the paleness of her skin, he began to realize that she wasn’t afraid of him; she was simply caught in the backlash of the adrenaline storm that had come from her brush with pothunters.

  “Why?” Diana persisted, rubbing her arms as though she were cold.

  “Baker is a brute who only understands brute force,” Ten said finally. “If I had pulled my punches with him, he would have been back for more. That kid Milt was different. He’s a swaggering bully. A coward. So I showed him what a candy ass he really is when it comes to fighting. He’ll be a long time forgetting.”

  “Will he be back?”

  “Doubt it.” Ten turned around and locked the weapons back into the rack. “But if he does come back, he better pray Nevada isn’t on guard.”

  “Nevada?”

  “My kid brother. He would have gutted Milt and never looked back. Hard man, Nevada.”

  “And you aren’t?”

  Turning, looking at Diana over his shoulder, Ten smiled slowly. “Honey, haven’t you figured it out yet? I’m so tenderhearted a butterfly can walk roughshod all over me.”

  It was the second time in as many minutes that Ten had called Diana “honey.” She knew she should object to the implied intimacy. At the very least she shouldn’t encourage him by laughing at the ludicrous image of a butterfly stomping all over Ten’s muscular body. So she tried very hard not to laugh, failed, and finally gave into the need, knowing that it was a release for all the emotions seething just beneath her control.

  Ten listened, sensing the complex currents of Diana’s emotions. He reached for the door before he looked over at her and nodded once, as though agreeing with himself.

  “You’ll do, Diana Saxton. You’ll do just fine.”

  “For what?” she asked, startled.

  “For whatever you want. You’ve got guts, lady. You’d go to war over a carton of Anasazi artifacts. You stand up for what you believe in. That’s too damned rare these days.”

  Ten was out of the truck and closing the door behind him before Diana could put into words her first thought: she hadn’t stood in the rain with an unfamiliar rifle in her hands to save a few artifacts from pothunters. It had been Ten she was worried about, one man against three.

  / didn’t need to worry. Ten is a one-man army. Cash was right. Someone taught Ten to play hardball. wonder who, and where, and what it cost…

  The truck’s door opened. Ten set the closed carton of artifacts on the seat next to Diana, then swung into the cab with a lithe motion. His masculine grace fascinated her, as did the fact that his rain-soaked shirt cling to every ridge and swell of muscle, emphasizing the width of his shoulders and the strength of his back. If he had wanted to, he could have overpowered her with terrible ease, for he was far stronger than Steve had been; and in the end Steve had been too strong for her.

  Grimly Diana turned her thoughts away from a past that was beyond her ability to change or forget. She could only accept what had happened and renew her vow that she would never again put herself in a position where a man thought he had the right to take from her what she was unwilling to give.

  “Don’t worry,” Ten said.

  “What?” Diana gave him a startled look, wondering if he had read her mind.

  “The artifacts are fine. Milt was an amateur when it came to fighting, but he knew how to pack pots. Nothing was lost.”

  “Just the history.”

  His hand on the key, Ten turned to look at Diana, not understanding what she meant.

  “The real value of the artifacts for an archaeologist comes from seeing how they relate to each other in situ,” she explained. “Unless these artifacts were photographed where they were found, they don’t have much to tell us now.”

  “To a scholar, maybe. But to me, just seeing the artifacts, seeing their shapes and designs, knowing they were made by a people and a culture that lived and died and will never be born again…” Ten shrugged. “I’d go to war to save a piece of that. Hell, I have more than once.”

  Again, Ten had surprised Diana. She hadn’t expected a nonprofessional to understand the intellectual and emotional fascination of fragments from the past. His response threw her off balance, leaving her teetering between her ingrained fear of men and her equally deep desire to be close to the contradictory, complex man called Tennessee Blackthorn.

  Ten eased the big truck down the slippery shoulder of shale and headed back for the big overhang that served as a base camp for the dig. By the time they had unloaded their gear, set up sleeping bags at the opposite ends of the overhang’s broad base and changed into dry clothes behind the canvas privacy screen that had been erected for just such emergencies, the ra
in was becoming less a torrent.

  Neither Diana nor Ten noticed the improving weather at first. They had gravitated toward the shard-sorting area that the graduate students had set up. Numbered cartons held remnants of pottery that had been taken from specific areas of the site. The shards themselves were also numbered according to the place where they had been unearthed. Whoever had the time or the desire was invited to try piecing together the three-dimensional puzzles before they were removed to the old ranch house.

  Ten showed a marked flair for resurrecting whole artifacts from scattered, broken fragments. In fact, more than once Diana was astonished at the ease with which he reached into one carton, then another, and came out with interlocking shards. There was something uncanny about how pieces of history became whole in his hands. His concentration on the task made casual conversation unnecessary, which relieved Diana. Soon she was sorting shards, trying out pieces together, bending over Ten to reach into cartons, muttering phrases about gray ware with three black lines and an acute angle versus corrugated ware with a curve and a bite out of one side. Ten answered with similar phrases, handing her whatever he had that matched her description of missing shards.

  After the first half hour Diana forgot that she was alone with a man in an isolated canyon. She forgot to be afraid that something she might say or do would trigger in Ten the certainty that she wanted him sexually despite whatever objections she might make to his advances. For the first time in years she enjoyed the company of a man as a person, another adult with whom she could be at ease.

  When the rain finally stopped completely, Diana stood, stretched cramped leg muscles and went to the edge of the overhang to look out across the newly washed land. Although no ruins were visible from the overhang itself, excitement simmered suddenly in her blood. Hundreds of years ago the Anasazi had looked out on the same land, smelled the same scent of wet earth and pinon, seen the glittering beauty of sunlight captured in a billion drops of water clinging to needles and boughs and the sheer face of the cliff itself. For this instant she and the Anasazi were one.