He smiled faintly as he looked at her.
“You sound like you’re disappointed,” he said. “I thought you were immune to my charms.”
“Damn you, Matt Jensen,” she said as anger sparked in her eyes. “Don’t you make fun of me. Don’t you—Oh, the hell with it.”
She came up on her toes, threw her arms around his neck, and pulled his head down so she could kiss him.
After a long moment, she took her lips away from his and murmured, “Guess I’m not as immune as I thought I was.” She buried her face against his chest. “Do you really have to go?”
“I do,” he said quietly.
“Then I won’t try to hold you.” She sighed. “It’s not like I don’t have plenty to do, running the stage station and the saloon until Seamus is back on his feet. But if you’re ever back in this part of the country . . .”
“I’ll stop and see you,” Matt promised.
“You’d better,” she said, and then she kissed him again.
It was a promise he might not be able to keep, Matt thought as he rode away a short time later. Any time he got together with Smoke and Preacher, the air was always thick with flying lead. When the Indian Ring was involved, it was even worse.
Matt was well aware of that, but there was a little smile on his face anyway as he heeled his horse into a faster pace.
BOOK FOUR
Chapter 24
As Preacher had promised, he, Standing Rock, and fifteen Assiniboine warriors left the village of Two Bears’s people early the next morning after the raid, riding out in the same direction the attackers had taken the previous night when they fled.
It wasn’t hard to pick up the trail. That many men couldn’t move as fast as they had been moving without leaving plenty of sign.
Following them might not continue to be that easy, however, and Preacher knew it. Once the men put some distance between themselves and the village, they might slow down and start being more careful about covering their tracks.
That was when the real challenge would begin.
Standing Rock was still in an agitated state. Preacher supposed he couldn’t blame the man. Standing Rock’s wife and son had been kidnapped, after all. Naturally, he was upset.
That could cause a problem, though, once they caught up to the raiders. As they rode along, with Preacher and Standing Rock in the lead, the mountain man commented, “You know, an old friend of mine named Audie used to quote all the time from books he’d read. One time he come out with a sayin’ that makes a lot of sense: ‘Revenge is a dish best served cold.’”
“What does that mean?” Standing Rock asked with his habitual scowl.
“It means that I know your blood’s all heated up right now because you’re mad as hell at those jaspers who stole your wife and boy. But when we catch up to ’em . . . and we will catch up to ’em, believe you me . . . it’ll be better if you can cool off a mite. You’ll think straighter and stay alive longer if you ain’t burnin’ up with rage.”
“The men who took Wildflower and Little Hawk will all die! They will scream and beg for an end to their agony!”
“See, that’s what I mean,” Preacher said. “We both want the same thing, but we got to be smart in the way we go about it. If we just go chargin’ in with all guns a-blazin’, that’s liable to be bad for us. More important, it might put the gal and the little boy in even more danger. You think on that while we’re trailin’ those varmints. That’s all I’m askin’ you to do, Standin’ Rock.”
For a long moment, the warrior didn’t make any reply. Then he said, “I will think on it. But when the time comes for vengeance, do not try to stop me from claiming it, Preacher. This is my warning to you.”
Preacher didn’t say anything. He didn’t know if he had gotten through to Standing Rock. All they could do now was to keep following the kidnappers’ trail....
And hope that Standing Rock wouldn’t do anything so loco that it got them all killed.
Randall kept the bunch moving fast all night, except for brief stops to rest the horses. In the morning, he called a longer halt so that they could brew some coffee and eat some jerky and biscuits. While his men were taking care of those chores, he rode to the top of a nearby ridge and dismounted to look back over the way they had come.
They were pretty high, and he could see for miles from up here. Staying in the shade of a tree so the sun wouldn’t reflect off the lens, he took a telescope from his saddlebags and opened it. With the precision of the former military man that he was, he scanned the countryside below him, searching for any signs of pursuit. He moved the telescope slowly and carefully, covering the grid that he laid out in his mind.
He didn’t spot any riders, even in the haze along the far distant horizon. Satisfied that no one was in sight, he closed the telescope and replaced it in his saddlebags.
But just because he couldn’t see anyone, he thought, that didn’t mean they weren’t back there. He was confident that the Indians would come after them. He didn’t know how many of the warriors he and his men had killed, but if any of the savages were left alive, they would be coming.
It didn’t really matter. Randall didn’t think anybody could catch them before they made it to Hammerhead, and once they reached the Colonel’s town, it wouldn’t matter anymore. The Colonel’s house there was as good as a fortress.
He rode back down to the place where he had left the others. Before riding to the top of the ridge he had told Dwyer to keep an eye on Wildflower and the baby. When he saw Dwyer hunkered on his heels next to a small fire, pouring coffee from a battered pot into a tin cup, anger welled up inside Randall.
“Where the hell are the woman and the kid?” he demanded as he strode up to Dwyer. He suppressed the urge to kick the careless son of a bitch in the head.
Dwyer was smart enough to know that Randall was mad. He said quickly, “Take it easy, boss. They’re right over there. I’ve had my eye on ’em the whole time.”
He nodded toward the little creek where some of the men were watering their horses. When Randall looked in that direction he saw Wildflower sitting on a rock in the shade of an aspen, a short distance away from the other men. She had Little Hawk cradled against her. Something went through Randall when he realized that the baby was at Wildflower’s breast, feeding.
“The kid was hungry,” Dwyer went on. “She asked if she could have a little privacy to take care of him, and I didn’t figure it would hurt nothin’. I told her to stay close and warned her that I’d be watchin’ her the whole time. She didn’t try to get away or anything like that, Randall.”
“She could have,” Randall snapped.
“If she did, she wouldn’t have made it fifty feet before I caught up with her.”
Randall knew Dwyer was right, but that didn’t really lessen his anger. Something about the woman put him on edge. He didn’t like the feeling.
“Should I have told her not to do it?” Dwyer asked.
“No, that’s all right,” Randall forced himself to say with a shake of his head. He supposed Dwyer’s decision was reasonable enough. He was just mad because Wildflower had gotten under his skin.
He left Dwyer at the fire and walked toward Wildflower and Little Hawk. She glanced up and saw him coming, but she didn’t stop nursing the little boy, nor did she try to cover up the smooth, reddish-brown breast on which the baby fed. Little Hawk worked enthusiastically at her nipple.
“You’d better not be thinking about trying to run away,” Randall warned as he came up to her.
“The only thing I am thinking about is feeding my son,” she said coldly. She wasn’t looking at him now. She stared off into the distance across the creek instead.
“Well . . . the next time you need to do that, ask me about it instead.” Randall knew his words sounded awkward, and that knowledge irritated him.
“You were not here, and Little Hawk was hungry.”
“I’m not arguing with you, I’m telling you,” Randall snapped. “Are you about done there?”
“Little Hawk will decide when he is finished.”
“We need to get moving again pretty soon, you know.”
She didn’t say anything. Her features were serene and composed, and maddeningly beautiful. Randall turned away from her with a muttered curse.
“Did you see my husband when you looked behind us?” she asked his back. “He will come, and when he finds you, he will kill you.”
“Nobody was back there.”
“He will come,” Wildflower said with supreme confidence.
“If he does, then he’ll be the one to die,” Randall said harshly. He stalked off without looking back.
If things had worked out differently in his life, he thought, he might have stood and watched his own wife nursing their child and been filled with love for both of them.
But they weren’t different, and such a thing would never be.
And the regret that went through him at that moment was truly painful . . . until he tamped it down and covered it up with hate.
Wildflower glanced toward Randall as he walked off, but carefully so that no one could tell she was watching him. She had been listening carefully ever since she was captured, even when it appeared she was too stunned to know what was going on around her. But, even so, all she knew was his name and the fact that he worked for someone he called the Colonel.
That and the fact that there was grief buried somewhere deep inside him. She had seen a flash of it in his eyes as he turned away. Perhaps she could make use of that, she thought as she looked down at her son’s head while he continued to suckle.
She had never been as stunned and full of despair as she appeared to be. There was too much anger in her for that.
But if these white men believed that she had given up hope, there was a chance they might not watch her as closely. At the first opportunity, she intended to get away from them and take her son with her. They might be many miles away from her village when the time came, but that didn’t matter. She would walk for weeks or even months if she had to in order to get back home. Whatever it took for the two of them to return to Standing Rock and the rest of their people, she would do.
Little Hawk lifted his head from her breast. He looked sleepy and content now. She pulled her buckskin dress closed as she cradled him against her. She stroked his midnight-black hair and hummed softly as he snuggled into her warmth.
Protecting her son was more important than anything else, more important even than her freedom. She would kill anyone who threatened to harm Little Hawk, kill them with her bare hands, if necessary.
“All right, let’s get mounted up!” Randall called. “Put that fire out, Dwyer.” He turned and came closer to her again. “Let’s go.”
Wildflower stood up, keeping Little Hawk cradled in her arms. She walked toward the men, eyes downcast as usual. Let them think she was cowed. The time would come when they learned the truth.
“Let me give you a hand there, ma’am,” the one called Dwyer said as he came up to her. “I can hold the baby while you mount up.”
She didn’t like Dwyer any more than she liked any of her other captors. He had a narrow, wolflike face, and he was friends with the one called Page, whose cold, ruthless eyes reminded her of those of a snake. But Dwyer had at least tried to treat her kindly at times. He might look at her with lust, but at least his gaze didn’t have rage mingled with it, as Randall’s did.
“Thank you,” she said softly. She started to hand Little Hawk to the man, hating to let go of her son and yet knowing that it wouldn’t hurt to make Dwyer believe she trusted him, at least a little.
Before she could do that, Randall came up and took Little Hawk out of her arms. She forced herself not to fight. It wouldn’t have done any good, anyway, against someone as big and brutal as Randall.
“Get on my horse,” he told her. “I’ll hand you the kid.”
Wildflower climbed onto Randall’s mount, conscious of the way her dress rode up and exposed her bare legs. She ignored the shame she felt as the men’s eyes followed her. Randall lifted Little Hawk, and she took him and held him tight against her. He was fussing a little now because he wanted to sleep and people kept moving him around and disturbing him.
“It is all right, little one,” Wildflower murmured to him in their language. “It is all right. Sleep now.”
Randall swung up behind her, slipped his left arm around her waist, and lifted the reins in his right hand. He heeled his horse into motion and led the way as the men rode away from this temporary camp.
Wildflower tried to reach out with her heart and feel Standing Rock behind them, coming after them to free her and their son. It was a futile effort. She couldn’t sense him. Did too much distance separate them, she wondered....
Or had he been killed in the fighting when Randall and the others attacked her father’s village?
She tried not to think about that, but she couldn’t banish the grim possibility from her mind.
If that was true, then it was one more reason the man called Randall had to die.
Chapter 25
Preacher and Standing Rock kept the rescue party moving fast over the next few days, but they made frustratingly little progress. As Preacher had expected, the men they were following began to take more pains to cover their tracks. Even with his skill as a tracker, sometimes he lost the trail and had to spend long hours looking for it before picking it up again. In some instances, without Dog’s keen sense of smell to guide them, they might not have been able to find the way they needed to go.
The men they were following were professionals, Preacher mused as he rode along. And professionals wouldn’t have attacked Two Bears’s village and carried off Wildflower and Little Hawk unless they were paid to do so. That brought up the interesting question of who would have hired those killers to do such a thing.
Preacher intended to get an answer to that question before this was all over.
Several days into the chase, Preacher ranged ahead of the rest of the group. He had spotted a fairly large hill up ahead, and he thought that if he climbed to the top of it, he might be able to spot their quarry.
With Dog loping along beside him, Preacher sent Horse up the slope until it got too steep for the stallion. At that point, Preacher dismounted and went ahead on foot. He was breathing a little hard by the time he reached the crest.
He tipped his hat back and let a cool breeze wash over his leathery face. From here, as he gazed northwest, he could see miles and miles of mountains, hills, and valleys. It was a spectacularly beautiful expanse large enough to hide an army in, and he was looking for a couple of dozen men on horseback. The odds against spotting them seemed to be impossibly high.
Preacher had the eyes of an eagle, though . . . and the patience of a buzzard. He stood there with his gaze searching the landscape, motionless except for the slow turning of his head. He knew that movement caught the eye quicker than anything else, so that was what he watched for.
He saw birds darting from tree to tree. He saw a moose lift its antlered head high. He saw a bear lumber across a grassy park in search of a rotten log full of tasty bugs. He saw more birds soaring suddenly into the sky. . . .
His gaze dropped sharply, backtracking the birds’ flight. At first he couldn’t see anything except the rocky face of a cliff, perhaps three miles away across a valley.
Then the old mountain man grunted softly as he detected movement against the backdrop of that cliff. It was too far away for him to make out any details, but he could judge the speed of whatever was moving over there. It matched the pace of a group of men riding along on horseback.
“Got you,” Preacher whispered. Beside him, Dog let out a little whine as if he understood.
Preacher stood there watching until the distant riders disappeared from view. He knew it was possible the men he had seen weren’t the ones they were looking for. But this region was pretty rugged and not that well-populated, so his instincts told him those were the kidnappers. It was good knowin
g that they were still on the move, that they hadn’t reached their destination and forted up.
Preacher went back down the hill to where he had left Horse. He mounted up and hurried to rejoin the Assiniboine warriors. As he trotted up to Standing Rock and reined in, he said, “I saw ’em.”
Standing Rock leaned forward excitedly and asked, “Are you sure? You are certain it was the men who took Wildflower and Little Hawk? How far ahead of us are they?”
“About three miles, I reckon,” Preacher replied. “And no, I ain’t sure. I wasn’t close enough to make ’em out. But the bunch was the right size and headed in the same direction as the ones we been followin’, so I’m confident it was them.”
“We must hurry—”
Preacher lifted a hand to stop Standing Rock before the warrior could kick his pony into a run.
“Hold on, hold on,” the mountain man said. “We could run these hosses right into the ground, and we still wouldn’t catch up to ’em by nightfall. We still got to be patient.”
“Patient!” Standing Rock repeated with obvious disgust. “Would you be patient, Preacher, if it was your woman those animals had carried off?”
Preacher’s eyes narrowed as he said, “There was a time when your wife’s ma was captured by a bunch of evil varmints. She might’ve been my woman, if things had worked out a mite different. Before that, there was a gal called Jenny . . .” Preacher shook his head as he forced those thoughts far back in his memory. “Never you mind,” he rasped. “I know how you’re feelin’ right now, son. You can trust me on that.”
It was obvious from Standing Rock’s glare that he wanted to argue some more, but with a visible effort he forced himself to nod and said, “We will be patient . . . for now. But soon my patience will run out, Preacher, and then blood will be answered with blood.”
“And I’ll be right there with you doin’ the answerin’,” Preacher said.
Wildflower’s frustration had grown stronger during the days that passed, as no opportunity for escape presented itself for her to seize. But her determination to get away from these men grew stronger as well.
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