Maverick gulped and recovered. “Yes, of course, I knew that. We planned to meet back at our camp to the west.”
Little Fox grinned evilly. “By my calculations, the thirty suns are almost gone. You won’t have to wait all those days to meet your brother clear to the west.”
Maverick’s heart pounded a warning but he only looked calmly at the other. “What are you trying to tell me?”
Little Fox leered at him, reaching up absently to finger the pearl combs in his hair. “Quanah should be riding into this canyon probably tomorrow,” he said, “and so you see, you won’t have to ride clear to the west.”
Quanah. Tomorrow. And when he arrived, Maverick and Cayenne would be unmasked as imposters. But Maverick only grunted in satisfaction, reaching for another piece of roasted meat. “That is very good news,” he lied. “I am happy to hear my beloved brother will soon arrive.”
The Indians danced before the flickering flames, the light throwing shadows across those eating around the great fire. The firelight glistened off the long, magnificent hair dangling from the lance stuck in the ground.
Wind Runner looked toward it. “I see, Little Fox, you have taken one of their women’s lives in payment for your sister’s.”
Little Fox shrugged, reaching up to touch the pearl combs glistening in his black braids. “She was only one of their whores going from that place called Wichita on a stagecoach to one of their other settlements.”
Molly. Oh, my God. Molly. Maverick sucked in a shuddering breath. No wonder the hair and the combs looked so familiar.
Maverick took another breath, fighting to keep from throwing himself at the other Comanche, wanting to throttle him with the rawhide thong he kept looped over his gun belt. His hands actually trembled as he held the roasted meat. For a moment, as he stared at the ebony hair hanging from the lance, he thought he might vomit and had to swallow hard to control the sour bile welling up in his throat.
How many times had he made love to good-natured Molly, tangled his fingers in those magnificent locks that now hung before the fire? He saw her face before him, heard her voice telling him how much she loved him. And he felt suddenly guilty that he had never loved her, had only used her as men were wont to do a saloon whore, enjoying the relief her body could give him. Molly. I’m sorry, Molly. So sorry. Forgive me.
Little Fox looked at him. “You tremble, Pecos. What is the matter?”
Cayenne. If he lost his temper and attacked the grinning Comanche as he longed to do, Cayenne would have to pay for it. Maverick shrugged and continued eating. “I am only sorry I could not be there with you on your raids to share the triumph.”
The other’s face saddened and he fingered the necklace. “It does not pay for my sister,” he said bitterly. “There are not enough deaths in the whole world to pay for what they did to her. I thought the revenge would make me feel better, but I feel empty, burned-out inside.”
By damn, when he completed his own revenge, he wouldn’t feel like that! No, he’d feel good! But Maverick only yawned and stretched. “It has been a long day and I am weary. Some of you may wish to dance and drink all night, but I think I will go to bed.”
Wind Runner laughed knowingly. “If I had a woman like that fire-haired one waiting in my blankets, I would go to bed, too! After all, if Quanah rides in tomorrow, you will have to give him your gift and tomorrow night you will be sleeping alone!”
The other men laughed and nudged each other knowingly.
Maverick laughed. “What you say is true. But after all, she is nothing but a woman. I will steal another somewhere along the way.” He stood up, looking down at the war leader sitting cross-legged on the ground. He had to fight a terrible urge to attack the man who wore Molly’s fine combs in his hair. “Tomorrow we must make plans for our next attack on the white settlements.”
Little Fox looked at the pistol he wore. “You have taken that from some dead Tejano?”
Maverick patted the gun arrogantly. “You think a live one would give it up?”
The warriors laughed uproariously.
Maverick turned away from the fire. “I learn to shoot it,” he said, “so that I can fight them on their own terms.”
Wind Runner grunted with satisfaction. “Quanah’s brother is a very brave warrior.”
Little Fox stared at Maverick a long moment. “I’m sure our leader will be happy to know his brother is alive and well.”
There was some hidden meaning there but Maverick decided not to show that he sensed it. “ ’Til tomorrow then,” he said, and stalked away from the fire to his tepee.
Cayenne ran into his arms when he went inside. “My stars! When you were gone so long, I got nervous! Do you think that fox-faced one recognized us?”
“I—I don’t know, Cee Cee.” Maverick kissed the tip of her nose absently, his mind on other things. He would not tell her that the game was up, that tomorrow Quanah would ride into the canyon and then everyone would know that Maverick was not the brother but instead a white impostor. Cayenne would be so frightened if she knew and he must protect her. “Nothing to worry about right now,” he lied. “Let’s get a little sleep.”
They snuggled up together in their blankets and he made very gentle love to her while the rhythmic beat of drums and dancing drowned out her soft whimpers of passion, her sighs of satisfaction as he took her, then held her close.
“Maverick, what are you thinking about? That was a close call today, wasn’t it?”
“Nothing. I’m thinking about nothing,” he lied, pulling her close against his chest so he could stroke her long hair. He thought about Molly, about Little Fox’s dead sister, about Quanah riding in tomorrow, about his pistol.
He had only a few hours to come up with a plan, and if it didn’t work, tomorrow night he’d be writhing and screaming over a slow fire, and a worse fate would await his darling. No, they’d never rape and torture her. If he couldn’t save her, he’d do her the same mercy he’d done Annie Laurie, even though it would haunt his nightmares for the short time he had left until the avenging warriors killed him by inches. He flinched, remembering that long-ago time before he had fled the Comanches ten long years ago. . . .
Ten long years ago, the boy called Eagle’s Flight had made a vow on Annie’s dying body, sealed in her still-warm blood—a vow to kill her white husband. He had thrown the bloody knife from him with an anguished cry just as one of his uncles entered the tepee.
“What is this?” the hatchet-faced brave had confronted him. “We were not yet through enjoying torturing her, hearing her cries. . . . .”
“Why have you done this terrible thing?” the boy screamed.
The other shrugged, yawning. “Because while you were gone hunting today, we captured a Tejano boy but this white bitch helped him escape before we could torture him. So she took his place!”
The boy called Eagle’s Flight had lost control then, screaming with pain and rage as he threw himself at the big Comanche and they fought.
It was an unequal fight. The big Comanche laughed with delight, circling the boy warily with his knife. “So at last it comes to this, white whelp of my dead brother! You are no Comanche; you are her blood through and through!”
“I am white!” the boy screamed as he rushed bare-handed at the other. “I am white like my mother! White like her ancestors! I spit on my Comanche blood!” And he had spat in the brave’s face, charging him bare-handed because his own bloody knife lay next to Annie’s body.
The brave swore white man’s curses that he had learned from white slaves as his knife jerked up with lightning speed, attempting to disembowel the boy.
Eagle’s Flight managed to dodge, getting in two hard blows that sent the Comanche stumbling backward across the thin, limp body of Annie Laurie.
The warrior went down with a curse. His head hit the handle of the boy’s knife, and he lay there groaning and semiconscious.
He would kill his uncle, torture him slowly! Outside, he heard Indians laughing drunkenly
, calling for the brave to bring the white woman out for more torture. Eagle’s Flight reached for a rawhide strip, catching the half-conscious man around the throat as the man recovered and fought him.
“I will trap your cursed spirit forever!” the boy vowed through clenched teeth, hanging onto the loop like a small badger finally sinking its sharp teeth into its tormentor. The Comanche tried to cry out but the boy’s rawhide thong cut off his words, along with his breath, as Eagle’s Flight throttled him.
His uncle struggled, trying to get his fingers under the thongs, terror widening his eyes so that the whites showed around the dark pupils as he fought the boy.
Eagle’s Flight laughed deep in his throat. A Comanche feared death by choking or hanging as no other because it would leave a man’s spirit trapped in his dead body forever. It was what Eagle’s Flight wanted. Even if it cost him his life, the half-breed boy would have his vengeance for the agony they had inflicted on his mother.
Finally, the man gasped and died. Now the boy suddenly came to his senses, realizing he must get away! “I—I did it for you, Mother,” he sobbed. “Oh, Mother! Mother . . .”
He went over, knelt by her still body, dipped his fingers in the cooling pool of blood she lay in, and touched the tips to his forehead. Then he put his hand on her thin form. “I swear by all that’s in me, I won’t rest until I kill them all, including that cursed white man who abandoned you, Mother! Yes, someday I’ll find him, too, and I’ll kill him slowest of all, as only one raised by the Comanche knows how! Nothing will stand in the way of this sacred vow; not money, not love, not even the loss of my own life will stop me from extracting the blood they owe me!”
He gathered up his knife and crept out of the tepee into the darkness, tears blinding his gray eyes that were so like hers. He must live to fight another day, he thought, knowing what would happen when the drunken braves found the dead warrior. He wished he could bury his mother with dignity before he fled but there was no way to accomplish this. And after all, Annie Laurie McBride was past all pain, past caring now.
He almost made it to the horse herd without running across another brave. But another of his uncles stood there in the darkness between him and the herd, swaying drunkenly on his feet as he urinated. Moving silent as a spirit of death, Eagle’s Flight looped the rawhide over the man’s head before the drunken brave knew what had happened.
“This is for Annie,” he whispered fiercely as he pulled both ends tight. The Comanche was strong and he fought for his life, but the boy’s anger gave him strength beyond his years. The man managed to make only one small cry, but it was enough. He squatted and watched his oldest uncle, Pine da poi, Whip Owner, look up from the circle of braves who laughed and shouted, passing a bottle of the white man’s whiskey around.
Swaying drunkenly on his feet, Whip Owner grasped his cruel quirt with one hand, the hilt of his knife in the other as he walked out toward the pony herd to investigate. The other braves around the fire yelled coarse comments about going out to answer the call of nature, and they went back to singing and dancing around the drums that pounded out a rhythmic beat, drowning out everything as they shouted.
But the anger of the boy made him move prematurely in the brush, springing out from his crouch, and Whip Owner caught him across the face with the cruel quirt, leaving a trail of stinging fire. “You white whelp!” he snarled. “I should have killed you long ago but I kept thinking I could turn you into a Comanche warrior!”
“Never!” the boy shouted, and he dove in recklessly. Pine da poi pulled his knife. Moonlight reflected on its blade through the trees as he brought his arm back, but Eagle’s Flight grabbed a stick and swung it hard, knocking the blade from the other’s hand. They both reached for it in a silent struggle while the drunken warriors beat their drums and sang loudly over in the clearing, oblivious to the life-and-death battle being waged in the shadows of the trees.
His uncle smiled triumphantly as his big hand closed over the knife hilt. The boy threw up his hand to ward off the deadly blow and the blade glanced off, cutting a crooked slash to the bone across his left cheek.
His face felt on fire! Pine da poi laughed and staggered toward him drunkenly. “You have felt a wolf’s sharp fangs,” he said. “Now I finish the kill!”
But the boy tripped him and the man fell, struggling to get to his feet.
Those precious seconds had meant the difference between life and death to him, Maverick remembered now, listening to the drums outside, looking down at the fiery-haired girl nestled in the protection of his shoulder. He had wanted to stop to kill his uncle that night, count coup, but he could not spare the time as he fled for his life.
For weeks, the Comanche boy had starved and hung around the outskirts of white settlements, afraid to approach anyone, afraid they would not give him time to explain before they raised the alarm and shot him down.
Maverick smiled now, remembering. He had been a half-starved stray when the Triple D cowboys had cornered him in the Durango pasture. The hungry boy had killed a yearling steer, had cooked part of it, and was in the process of gobbling the meat ravenously when the roundup crew rode up, led by Trace Durango. That day the half-breed Comanche boy had closed the door on his past forever. Eagle’s Flight had chosen his own new name, Maverick, and became a cowhand on the giant ranching empire.
A few weeks later, the Great Outbreak of 1864 had come to a climax. Because of Maverick’s heroism, old Don Durango had adopted him as his second son, giving him his own last name. Trace, an expert with a pistol, had taught the growing boy to handle a gun almost as well as he did himself. But as the years passed, Maverick never forgot his vow of vengeance. He tracked down a third Comanche uncle and killed him. And during the Great Outbreak, he had finally come face to face with his most hated uncle, Pine da poi.
Maverick lay looking up at the interior of Wind Runner’s tepee, thinking with satisfaction of his uncle’s scalp hanging from Dust Devil’s bridle. The stallion had been Pine da poi’s own horse.
Maverick started as he heard a soft footstep outside. “Yes, who is it?” he asked softly in Comanche.
Little Fox entered. “Ah, yes, Pecos, isn’t it?”
Maverick nodded, motioning the warrior to a place by the fire. There was something sly and cunning in the insane eyes. The girl moved restlessly in her sleep, and without thinking, he reached out to stroke her as a woman does a frightened child, catching himself in time.
He looked at the other man. “You know that already,” he said curtly. “What is it you want?”
Little Fox looked over at the sleeping girl. “Do you not know what I want?”
Maverick felt the hair raise on the back of his neck as he pretended careless indifference. “You know the fire-haired one is a gift for my brother. If the great Quanah does not desire her, perhaps he might trade her away for a rifle or a good pony.”
Little Fox fingered the beaded necklace he wore. “White buffalo hunters raped and killed my little sister. And I live for nothing now but revenge.”
Maverick nodded in understanding. Had he not lived the same way for ten years, thinking of nothing, thirsting for nothing but vengeance? Would his quest finally drive him as insane as this warrior appeared to be? “So? What do you ask of Pecos?”
Little Fox laughed. “Pecos? I do not know who you really are, half-breed, but Quanah himself told me he is the last of his family, that both his father and brother are dead!”
Maverick tensed, ready to attack the other man if he gave a sudden alarm, but Little Fox only smiled and gestured him back down. “I’ll let the great chief deal with you as an imposter tomorrow when he rides in or maybe I could be persuaded to help you escape.”
Maverick felt sweat gather under his armpits, on his face. “What do you demand for helping us escape?”
The brave ran his tongue along his lip, looking with lustful eyes toward the sleeping girl. “Not us, you.”
Maverick’s gaze followed the Indian’s hungry one, saw the w
ay the warrior looked at the beauty snuggled down in the blanket. He didn’t have to ask. He knew by the man’s expression how he lusted after the flame-haired girl. Little Fox might help Maverick escape, but his words and expression made it clear what the price would be. The girl. Maverick took a deep breath, considering what to do next as he tried to appear disinterested.
What to do now. His goal after all had been to track down Joe McBride, to kill him, and he had enough information now that he could find the Lazy M Ranch without the girl’s help. It would add to his revenge to be able to tell the rancher what had happened to Joe’s beloved daughter just before he killed McBride. Yes, it would be a fitting retribution; McBride’s darling Cayenne a slave of the Comanche, being raped and mistreated as Annie had been. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. . . .
Cayenne sighed and rolled over toward them in her sleep, exposing one of her beautiful breasts. Maverick had to grit his teeth to keep from slamming his fist in the Indian’s face at the way the crazed savage looked at her. She’s mine, he thought, she’s mine!
He tried to remember that he should want to see her raped and hurt. But all he could think of was that he’d die before he’d let another man touch her.
Cayenne’s eyes flickered open. Maverick saw the sudden fear in them as she looked at Little Fox, then she saw Maverick and smiled gently.
Little Fox chuckled. “The woman trusts you, cares for you,” he said in Comanche.
Maverick nodded, realizing suddenly that it was true. “She is only a woman,” he said in Comanche, pretending indifference, “and my slave. I think I will take your offer—my life in exchange for the woman.” With his eyes, he tried to tell Cayenne what was happening, that she must trust him in this.
Little Fox stood up, running his hand over his swelling manhood. “I thought you would accept. So I’ve left your horses saddled in the big herd at the end of the canyon.”
Maverick stood up too. “Why would you saddle two horses?”
Comanche Cowboy (The Durango Family) Page 33
