Colorado Dawn

by Kaki Warner

  “You’ll never get those wagons through Kenosha Pass,” Zucker told Ash as he tied his limping horse to an alder and began to unsaddle.

  Declan, trailed by the dog, had ridden on into the trees, where he had untied the deer from behind his saddle and was now hanging it from a branch so he could skin it before cutting it up. The ladies looked pointedly the other way.

  The fellow Zucker had brought with him—­who he had introduced as his youngest brother, Silas—­stood on the other side of Zucker, watching them with the quick, darting glances of a kicked dog. Ash smiled to reassure him, but the lad—­it was hard to tell his age—­looked quickly down at the ground, his thin shoulders hunched as if to deflect a blow.

  “Damn landslide,” Zucker went on. “Already cost me two days.”

  Ash frowned when he saw the blond man toss the saddle to the ground. It was as poor a saddle as the beast that wore it, but Ash hated to see any equipment—­or animals—­treated with such neglect.

  “Be a month before they clear it. You, Si. You going to unsaddle or stand there drooling all day?”

  Ash hunkered beside the horse’s injured leg. “What happened to your mount?” he asked, running his hand down the left front cannon bone.

  No blood. No heat. Yet the leg was swollen double between the pastern and hoof.

  “Hell if I know. Just started limping. Si, bring your saddle here by mine. And untie those saddlebags first.”

  Ash’s fingers found what he had suspected. An old horse trader’s trick; tie a tail hair tight around the pastern, circulation slows, and before long you have a limping horse with a swollen leg. He just couldn’t understand why a man would do such a thing to his own mount. Snapping the hair with his thumbnail, he pulled it free, then stood and held it up so that the knot showed. “Now how do you suppose this happened?”

  A craven look came over Zucker’s face, then he whirled, his fist shooting out to slam into the side of his brother’s head. “Damnit, Si!”

  The boy cried out, the saddle flying.

  The horse shied, his big body slamming into Ash.

  “Ho, now!” Ash shoved back, trying to keep his boots clear of the stomping hooves. When the frightened animal calmed, Ash whipped toward Zucker. “What the bluidy hell was that?”

  On the other side of the nervous horse, Silas cowered beneath his brother’s kicks. “I swear I didn’t do it, Cl—­”

  “Shut up! I mean it, Si! Not another word!” Zucker turned back to Ash, his mismatched eyes crackling with a fury he was barely able to contain. “Sorry. Quite a prankster, that one.” He put on a look of concern. “Horse didn’t kick you, did it?”

  Ignoring him, Ash went to the boy and extended a hand.

  The lad cringed.

  “It’s all right. Dinna worry. Take my hand, lad.”

  Reluctantly, the young man did.

  Ash pulled him to his feet, dusted him off, and pulled a twig from his tangled hair. The lad smelled like a hog wallow; Ash doubted he’d had a bath in weeks. Resting a hand on a thin shoulder, he turned the boy toward the women gathered around the campfire. “See that lady with the dark red hair?”

  Ash saw Maddie watching, her hands twisting nervously at her waist. He smiled and waved. “She’s verra nice, so she is. Go on over to her and she’ll tend you, maybe give you something to eat.”

  Si looked up at him, his pale blue eyes wet with tears. “She will?”

  “Aye. She will. I swear it.” He gave the shoulder a gentle nudge. “Off you go then, lad.”

  As the boy walked away, Ash turned back to Zucker. He tried to keep his tone calm and reasonable, but ’twas hard. “Dinna do that again.”

  Fury crackled in Zucker’s eyes again. “You got no call to ­interfere—­”

  Ash hit him across the face.

  Zucker staggered back, fingers pressed to his bleeding mouth. “Wh-­what the hell?”

  “See how it feels?” Ash closed the distance between them. “You’re a coward to strike a simple­minded lad. Dinna do it again.”

  “I can hit him any time I—­”

  Ash hit him again, then grabbed him by the throat. “No. You canna.”

  Zucker clawed at his arm and tried to pull himself free, but Ash tightened his grip. “You willna hit the lad again. Do you understand?” From the corner of his eye, he saw Zucker reach down to his gun belt.

  He smiled. “Oh, please do,” he whispered into Zucker’s ear as he pressed the thumbnail of his free hand at the corner of the blue gray eye with the odd brown flecks. “So I can pop out this eye for the ravens.”

  Zucker froze. He made a gagging noise.

  Ash loosened his grip just enough to allow the man to breathe easier. “You willna hurt the lad again. Swear it.” He punctuated the order by pushing his thumb a little deeper into the eye socket.

  “Jesus. I-­I won’t. I swear.”

  Ash took his hand away from Zucker’s throat. “As a show of faith, you’ll be giving me this.” He slipped Zucker’s pistol from the holster on his hip. “And that rifle in the scabbard on your saddle. I’ll return both to you when you leave. Assuming you’re still alive.” He smiled.

  Zucker dinna smile back. Instead, his gaze flicked past Ash’s shoulder, and a different kind of fear showed in his mismatched eyes.

  Ash dinna have to turn to see what had caused it. “That would be Tricks, I’m guessing. Fiercely protective. Deadly, so he is, especially if provoked. But you’ll not be doing that, will you?”

  “Christ.”

  “Good. Then you should get along fine. If not…​well, we won’t think about that. Come, Tricks. Let’s see how that deer is coming along. I ken how you love fresh, warm meat.” Resting an arm across Zucker’s shoulders, Ash steered him away from the campsite and into the trees. “And meanwhile, Mr. Zucker, you’ll be telling me why you were so rude to my wife last week. You upset her, so you did. And that upsets me.”

  Maddie watched her husband escort Mr. Zucker away from camp and breathed a sigh of relief. Glancing over Silas Zucker’s head as he sat beside the fire, she gave Edwina and Lucinda a nod of satisfaction.

  They had all seen the scoundrel strike his slow-­witted brother. But before they could rush to the boy’s defense, Ash had stepped in. His big body had blocked Zucker from their view, but whatever he had said to the weasel seemed to have had the desired effect.

  “You’re the lady who makes the pictures?” a tentative voice asked.

  Looking down into the gentle gaze of Silas Zucker, Maddie wondered at the unforgivable cruelty of his brother. The boy’s face showed evidence of other beatings, some long since healed into thin white scars, others so recent the bruises still showed.

  “I am.”

  “She takes wonderful pictures,” Edwina added cheerily. “Doesn’t she, Lucinda?”

  “She certainly does. Perhaps after we get you cleaned up, Silas, you might want to see some. Would you like that?”

  He smiled and nodded.

  A sweet smile, except for the broken teeth and the neglect of those that remained. This poor boy—­even though he might be more than half-­grown, he still seemed a boy to Maddie—­sorely needed tending. A bath, a trim, a brush for those poor teeth. He’d been dreadfully neglected.

  Lucinda rose. “Is that box of photographs in your wagon, Maddie?”

  “Yes. Under the bed.” Then an idea came to her and Maddie motioned for Lucinda to wait. “Would you like me to take a picture of you, too?” she asked Silas.

  He blinked up at her, wariness in his eyes. “Will it hurt?”

  “Not at all.”

  “My brother might not like it.”

  “Then we won’t tell him.”

  “Well…​okay, then. If you’re sure it won’t hurt.” His hopeful, trusting smile almost broke her heart.

  Lucinda brought the box of photographs for Silas while Maddie collected her camera equipment. As the boy carefully studied the images, his expression of wonder almost brought tears to Maddie’s eye
s.

  She worked quickly, setting up her camera in the waning light, hoping to get at least one photograph of Silas before it became too dark to expose the negative plate. As she made last-­minute adjustments to the lens, Tricks came up. But instead of the near hysteria that most strangers exhibited when seeing the ferocious-­looking beast for the first time, Silas just smiled and reached out to touch the wolfhound’s bushy eyebrows. Tricks rewarded him with a wet kiss, which made the boy laugh in delight.

  Inspired, Maddie repositioned her camera back a few feet so she could center both the boy and the dog in the focusing screen. Satisfied with the framing, she instructed Silas to put his arm around Tricks and sit very still. Even Tricks cooperated.

  After sliding in the sensitized plate, she pulled the drape over her head, removed the lens cover, and counted aloud to eleven, hoping that would be enough time to imprint the image on the plate in the fading light.

  “All done,” she said, replacing the lens cap. “That didn’t hurt at all, did it?”

  “What’s your dog’s name?”

  “Tricks.” Leaving him in the care of Luce and Edwina, she wrapped the entire camera in the dark drape and went into the unlit wagon to transfer the negative on the plate onto a piece of albumenized paper.

  When she came back out with the photograph in her hand a few minutes later, Ash was walking up with an armload of firewood. Declan and Zucker were still working on the deer carcass. As Ash dumped the wood next to the fire ring, Maddie knelt beside Silas.

  “Here’s a picture of you and your friend, Tricks.” She held it out. When he hesitated, as if expecting a trap, she put it into his hand. “Take it. It’s yours.”

  “Mine? Forever?”

  “Forever.”

  He studied it, careful not to smear it with his dirty hands. “It’s me,” he said in a wondering voice. “And Tricks.”

  The look of joy that crossed his poor battered face as he studied his own image made Maddie realize in a way she never had before how powerful a simple photograph could be.

  Tears filled her eyes. Never had she been more proud of her talent, or more grateful for the gift of it, than she felt at that moment. To cover a sudden swell of emotion, she abruptly rose, almost stumbling into Ash, who was standing behind her.

  She turned to apologize, then saw the way he was looking at her. In his face was a mixture of so many emotions she could scarcely separate one from the other. Pride. Love. Desire. Yet beneath it all was that undeniable trace of regret that she had glimpsed so often over the last days.

  Her throat tightened. Unable to speak, she reached up and pressed her palm against his cheek, wanting to assure him that everything was fine, that she had no second thoughts, and when the time came, whether that was in a month or a dozen years, she would still choose him over her photography.

  And she prayed with her whole heart that that was true.

  Dinner was a tense affair. The venison steaks were tasty, as were the roasted potatoes and canned beans flavored with onion and bacon, but seeing the furtive glances Silas sent his brother—­as if he expected to have his food snatched away at any moment or a fist to come flying at his face—­rather dampened Ash’s appetite.

  As soon as the meal ended, Zucker rose. Thanking them tersely for the meal, he motioned Silas to come with him and walked to the far side of the clearing. There, they set up camp, which consisted of starting a small fire in a ring of stones, clearing the area around it of rocks and twigs, then spreading their bedrolls directly on the ground.

  Taking Tricks with them, the ladies went to the creek, leaving Ash and Declan sitting at the fire. After they’d washed and tended their needs, the ladies gave their good nights and retired to their separate sleeping quarters.

  Silence settled across the clearing. The moon rose and the animals, including the two horses belonging to the Zuckers, moved slowly in dappled shadows cast by moonlight shining through tall firs and hemlocks and alders, munching grass already withered by the first frost.

  Tricks sat between Ash and Brodie, head up, ears pricked. Even a nightjar calling from the brush dinna draw his attention away from the small campfire across the clearing. Ash leaned forward to drop a limb on the fire, then sat back and waited for the smoke to clear.

  “He lamed his own horse,” he said to Brodie in a voice that wouldn’t carry. He went on to explain about the tail hair tied around the animal’s pastern, and the swelling it had caused. “It’s only temporary,” he added. “The beast will be sound by morning, but the question is why?”

  “As an excuse to join up with us? Maybe hitch a ride in one of the wagons?”

  “Perhaps.” But why?

  Ash tried to recall all that Maddie had told him after her meeting with Zucker in the lobby of the hotel. Zucker thought she’d taken that photograph of his missing brother somewhere in the mountains around Breckenridge. He had wanted her to take the more northerly, left-­handed fork into Denver, which went through the Blue River area, thinking she might see something along the way to jog her memory. Which wouldn’t happen if she took the right fork through Kenosha Pass—­the road they were on now. But if he convinced them this road was blocked, they would have to turn back and take the other route—­the one he had wanted Maddie to take in the first place.

  “He wants to make certain we go through Blue River,” he told Brodie. He went on to explain his reasoning. “That’s what this is about. He thinks Maddie will recognize where she took that photograph, and that will lead him to his brother.”

  “So it’s Maddie he’s after.”

  Ash felt the cold, deadly resolve that had carried him into many a battle move through his chest. His hands itched to feel the saber in his grip. “He treads dangerous ground if he even comes near my wife.”

  “He must really want to find his brother,” Declan mused. “I wonder why?”

  “Or find something his brother has.” Ash lowered his voice even more. “You saw the photograph—­the pickax and sluice. Miner’s tools. Perhaps his brother hit ore, and Zucker is trying to find it.”

  Brodie looked over at the smoking fire across the way. “Could be.” He looked up into the sky. “There’s a full moon tonight.”

  “Aye. If he moves, we’ll see him. If not, Tricks will.” He ruffled the wolfhound’s rough coat. “The lad will know what to do, so he will.”

  “Jesus.” Brodie looked down at the dog between them. “He’s never killed anyone has he?”

  Ash smiled. “Not yet. But I’m sure he would enjoy the practice.”

  “Jesus.”

  That night, Ash slept as lightly as he ever had on a field of battle. Twice he left Maddie’s side to sit outside, well out of the fire’s light so he wouldn’t make an easy target.

  He loved the night. It stripped away everything—­sound and motion and substance—­until all that was left was a vast, looming stillness that hung in the air like a hushed breath. It awakened his mind and sharpened his senses. It made him intensely aware that he was the intruder into this dark world, but if he curbed his impatience and cleared his mind, it would slowly reveal itself in furtive rustlings, a bird’s startled cry, the silent fall of a star across the dome of the sky.

  It was a whole other world, the night. Elemental and primitive and beautiful in its simplicity. His years as a forward rider with the Rifles had taught him how to use the darkness to his advantage—­how to move silently through it, blending into the shadows until he reached his quarry, then strike before his enemy even knew he was there. The night was like one of Maddie’s negative plates. Skewed, flat, and colorless. Beneath the stars and the pockmarked moon, even blood ran black.

  And tonight, as Ash sat studying the two men snoring beside their dying campfire, he contemplated shedding some. Because of Maddie. And his fear for her. And his fear for himself if he had to live a life without her.

  But the pull to her side was stronger than his need to kill a man he wasn’t yet sure was his enemy. So after a while, he rose and w
ent back to his wife.

  · · ·

  Maddie awoke to the low drone of male voices. Ash was gone, all his blankets piled on top of her. She snuggled into them, smelled his scent in the rough fabric, and woodsmoke, and that lingering mustiness of coarse wool.

  She smiled, remembering how he had wrapped his arms around her in the night and she had yelped and tried to roll away, startled by the coldness of his skin. But he had chuckled and pulled her back against his chest, and soon his hands had warmed on her awakening body and he was moving into her from behind and she was stifling her cries against the blanket so the others wouldn’t hear.

  That rogue. Tonight would be her turn.

  Smiling at the prospect, she tossed the blankets aside, sat up, and lifted the flap of the tent.

  Ash and Declan stood over the campfire, holding steaming mugs in their hands. Behind them, a thin coating of frost shimmered on the bowed roof of her wagon, and although a thin curl of smoke rose from the stovepipe, she saw no sign of Lucinda. She looked around but didn’t see Edwina, either, or any sign of the Zucker brothers.

  After digging through the blankets for the chemise Ash had removed from her in the night, she slipped it over her head, then pulled a skirt, a blouse, and a pair of long woolen stockings from her valise. She quickly dressed, finger-­combed the worst of the tangles from her hair, tied it back with a ribbon, then stepped through the flap.

  It was a glorious day. A perfect day for photography. She drew in a great breath of cold air and stretched the kinks from her back, then realized she had drawn the attention of the two men beside the fire.

  Declan quickly looked away.

  Ash didn’t, his gaze sweeping over her in a possessive, hungry way that made something deep inside her pulse with memory.

  She walked toward him, thinking some day she would photograph him as she saw him now, his hair silvered by sunlight, his eyes hot with desire, his tall form radiating male power.

  But without the clothing, of course.

  “What are you grinning about, lass?” he asked as she approached.

  Ignoring that, she waved toward the cold fire on the other side of the clearing. “The Zuckers are gone?”