Before Nantez had taken her captive, she had not noticed someone’s skin scent. Oh, if someone wore too much toilet water, her sense of smell might be offended.
But life with Nantez had made her very much aware of scents. After a while she could identify different ones in the dark. Nantez’s skin repelled her. He bathed as often as his two squaws, but it had a definite and distinctive odor.
She nestled her face deeper into the alcove created by Gordon’s muscled neck and shoulder and inhaled even more deeply. His scent was an aphrodisiac. Incredibly, she felt the first stirrings of desire.
Oh, so many years had passed since Reginald first carried her to their marriage bed. Her sexual excitement had soon been doused. There was no meeting of their hearts or even their minds. Only of their flesh. Within a month or so, their lovemaking had become perfunctory and impersonal. He had seemed to be striving only to get her with child, and she strove only to get her uxorial duty over with.
Gordon lowered her to the bank again. Reluctantly, oh so reluctantly, she released her arms. He hunkered his big frame next to her legs and lifted her injured ankle. “You know, Mattie, your son doesn’t trust me.”
She knew he talked to take her mind off the chill of the mountain creek. She diverted her gasp into a “why?”
He looked over his shoulder at her. His pale brown eyes twinkled. “Because he’s watching us. From behind that clump of underbrush off to the left behind you.” She was tempted to glance behind her but didn’t. “In some ways Albert’s a typical white boy. And then in other ways . . . .”
“Where did the name Albert come from?”
“Me great-grandfather. A wily old man. He was chief of clan Chisholm in the Forty-Five Rising, and he sent one son to fight for the Jacobites and one for the Hanoverians. That way old Albert ensured that the family would not suffer as they had done after the Fifteen Rising. No matter the outcome, someone would be on the winning side and forfeiture of land and wealth would be averted.”
“A true Scotsman, your great-grandfather was. You might try reminding your son that he also carries Scots blood.”
“He prefers to remember his Indian blood. Still refers to himself by his Indian name even. Baishan. It means knife in the Apache language.”
“Knife. Are my suspicions right—his name comes from Nantez’s free use of the knife?”
“Aye. I so named me son so as to remind me how much I hated his father. I thought I would hate me bairn, being Nantez’s seed and all, but after he was born there was no way I could.”
“You are an incredible person, Mattie McAlister.”
She smiled. “Aye that I am. And I imagine ye find me a bit strange, too.”
“Aye, that I do,” he said, gently mocking her Scottish accent.
A sliver of a moon had risen, and by its wan light she peered at his face. “I tell ye straight now, Gordon Halpern. ’Tis drawn to ye, I am. For all your bizarre dress and your effete eastern ways. There’s no denying it.”
The hand cupping her foot stiffened ever so slightly. “I am married, Mattie.”
“Ye don’t have to remind me. A part of me wants to throw your fifteen hundred dollars in your face and go back to Fort Lowell. Why should I help ye get back what can only hurt me?”
He took her foot from the water and began to lightly stroke the chilled flesh with his big hands. Without looking up at her, he said, “Mattie, if I . . . if I shouldn’t get Diana back from Nantez, I’d still . . . . ”
He didn’t finish the sentence. Nor did he have to. She understood. “You’d still not be interested in me as a woman. Is that it?”
Now he looked at her. “I admire you, I find you extremely interesting, but I . . . I am not attracted to you.”
“Glaikit!”
“What?”
She drew her foot away from his grasp. “Glaikit. Idiot. Fool.” With the majesty of good Queen Victoria, she pulled herself erect. “Do ye not see that ye fell for a . . . a . . . doppelganger?”
“A what?” He was staring at her as if she really perplexed him.
“A doppelganger. Your wife is a ghostly image of a real person. Ye are missing the real thing, glaikit! ” She swung away and began to stalk back toward the camp. Hobble was more like it. Her ankle hurt terribly, but she wasn’t going to ask for his assistance.
Of course, it had to happen then. Of all times, with him still staring after her. Her ankle collapsed beneath her weight. As she stumbled, she gave a small cry.
At once, he was springing up, sprinting the few steps’ distance, catching her, even as she fell forward. Somehow, he rolled the two of them so that he was under her, his body serving as a cushion for her own. Dazed, she lay atop him. “’Tis a grand thing ye—”
“Mattie, by damn, if you aren’t the stubbornest, most headstrong creature I’ve ever—”
“That’s all I’ll ever be to ye, isn’t it, Halpern? A creature!”
Startled by her vehemence, he stared up at her, his mouth open. “You know what I meant, Mattie.” His voice was low, as if trying to connect with her with his tone, if not his words. God’s blood, it was like the way a horse breaker talks to a wild horse! She drew back her fist and slammed downward.
Her action was so unexpected that he didn’t have time to dodge the blow. His head jerked to one side with the impact. His hand came up to his jaw. “You have a wicked punch there.”
“I know what ye meant, all right. I also know that I wouldn’t have ye even ye were served to me on a platter like flambéed pheasant. A man who’s as foolish as ye, who doesn’t know real quality when it’s beneath his nose, isn’t worth my time.”
He laughed, and she vibrated atop him with the rumble in his chest. “Does that mean you are reneging on our deal to find my wife?”
She braced her hands on his broad chest and pushed herself to a sitting position astride him. “Of course not. With my half of the three grand, Albert and I are going to Scotland to live.”
“Scotland, is it!” He reared upright, so that he was face to face with her.
A very erotic position, she thought, what with her knees braced beneath his armpits.
“You have high hopes of locating a lost title there and becoming a grand lady?”
“I was a grand lady. Here.”
“Then act like it, Mattie.” He hefted her off him and drew her up to stand before him. “I’ll help remind you if you can’t remember. For one thing, ladies don’t cuss.”
Her hands balled, and she was sorely tempted to punch him again. “On such foundations of quicksand are opinions like yours built. Bastard! Goodnight to ye. And sonofabitch, also!”
This time, when she stalked away, she meant to keep walking on her own even if she had to hop on one foot. His beastly laughter, she ignored.
§ CHAPTER TEN §
Mattie’s left moccasin required immediate attention. All Apaches, men and women, knew how to make moccasins, since it was necessary to repair or replace the footgear often while on a raid. Consequently, each warrior always carried an awl and some sinew thread.
Mattie, likewise, practiced the habit. As she sat stitching the leather by early morning’s light, Halpern painted her. “Ye make me nervous, staring at me like that.”
Over the top of his sketch pad, which was braced on one knee, he frowned at her. “Don’t talk. You disturb me.”
“’Tis the whole problem, Halpern. If I were commonplace, I wouldn’t disturb ye. As it is, I stir your creativity.”
“Commonplace, no. Colorful, yes. Now tilt your head slightly. Yeah, like that, so the sun slants across your right cheek.”
“The same could be said about yourself. Colorful. I’d wager, though, that your Diana isn’t colorful. Beautiful, mayhap. But colorful, no. The two qualities aren’t compatible. Beauty is boring. It conforms to the standards of the times. Conformity is commonplace.”
“For someone who has such a low opinion of beauty, you are certainly loquacious.”
“True beauty has its own fire.” She tied
a knot in the thread. “Whereas stylishness, often confused as beauty, is mere conformity.”
“Will you shut up?”
“There, I’m finished,” she said, holding aloft her repaired moccasin.
“Well, I’m not. Hold still.”
“Ye’d do well to paint the West, Halpern. Nowhere else are there such sunrises and sunsets, such richness of color. The West has an unbounded opulence of sunshine that—”
Bingham strode into the clearing. “Did ye find any game?” she asked him.
“Plenty of game. Turkey, deer, javelina. Some wild horses even.”
The way his hand rubbed his rifle stock as he talked, she could tell he was agitated. His next sentence confirmed her suspicions.
“I’ve scouted as far as the bottom of the mountain. Found a dozen or so wickiups that look abandoned. As if the owners had to leave in a hurry. Came upon a cabin still trailing blue plumes of wood smoke. Empty, too.”
Albert was whittling on a mulberry sapling for a bow he was making. He glanced up quickly. The sun, just peaking the mountain ridge, caught the gleam of hope in the boy’s eyes. The same gleam of hope reflected in the adult eyes of Gordon.
Mattie dashed that hope. “The wickiups could belong to any band. The abandoned camp could be as old as year or so.”
“And the cabin?”
She didn’t have an answer.
“It’s a start,” Gordon said, putting away his pad and charcoal. “Let’s follow the trail.”
Bingham went down to the river to wash the cook pans. Gordon had already strapped his saddlebags on his bay and had returned to roll his blankets.
She began to get her own things together, squatting on an ankle still swollen, despite the heated blanket Gordon had wrapped it in. At the sound of hooves, she looked up, just in time to see Albert, riding bareback, trot her spotted pony from camp. “Albert!”
He kneed Pepper into a gallop.
“He’s headed for his father!” she cried. There was no time to think. She was the one closest to the horses. She dashed to the nearest mount, even as pain exploded in her ankle and shot up through her leg. She swung up astride the gelding and dug her heels into its flanks.
Pepper was already far ahead. It easily scaled the rocky banks of a low bluff. This was country in which the pony was at home.
The gelding could win hands down in a long stretch. These short bursts of convoluted clearings, devious ravines, and treacherous rock-strewn hills made up for a landscape as alien as the moon’s to the gelding.
The figures of Albert and Pepper were diminishing. Her only chance was to use the Winchester sheathed in the saddle scabbard. It was a terrible decision to have to make. She drew out the rifle, took aim, and pressed her thumb down on the hammer.
The shot was deafening and the rifle recoil jarred her shoulder. And jarred her heart with its ghastly effect.
The pony tumbled. Albert somersaulted. His body landed in a grotesque heap.
Dias muire, what if he had broken his neck? If God listened to mere mortals, then surely that Divine Power heard her heart’s cry. A pathetic petition. I know I am unworthy. That I could have done better, but . . . oh, please let him live!
At a speed that would break her own neck and that of her mount’s, she galloped toward the two prone forms. She reached Albert first. Before she could bound from the saddle, he was already struggling to push himself upright to a sitting position.
The pain in her ankle was secondary to the relief in finding him alive. She grabbed him to her and began rocking back and forth. “Me bairn. Achh, me wee one.” He stared past her at the lifeless horse. Her cherished Indian pony. “Mother . . . Pepper
She felt the tears in her throat. She cupped her son’s face, making him look at her. “Understand me now. I will not give ye up.”
In silence, they returned to camp with Albert riding postilion.
Why did everything have to be so complicated?
She only wanted to heal and be healed. To love and be loved. Yet she had destroyed one of the very things she loved.
Gordon took the reins from her, and she fell into his arms. “Me ankle.” It was throbbing so badly she felt sick to her stomach and dizzy. She feared she might pass out from the pain.
“This time you may have indeed broken it in the bargain.”
“No.” Even breathing was difficult. “I don’t think so.”
Back in the cold water it was for her ankle, at which point Gordon pronounced the bone sound enough. “No breaks,” he said, examining it. Her flesh was pink and goose bumped.
“I say we bind it,” Bingham muttered. He knelt on the other side of her.
Albert, in charge of the horses, watched. His eyes, large and anxious, said what he couldn’t say: how awful he felt to have brought all this on.
“Bingham’s right,” Mattie said. “My chemise will have to do for binding strips.”
The two men glanced at each other, then rose to wander away discreetly. Even Albert, a big boy now, led the horses beyond the concealment of the eight foot canebrake.
She pulled off her shirtwaist and, still sitting, tugged her chemise up out of her skirt band and over her head. Once she had rebuttoned her shirtwaist, she began tearing her chemise. Being as threadbare as it was, the muslin gave way easily.
“Here, let me,” Gordon said, rejoining her. He hunkered down next to her and began to bind her ankle. His profile looked stern. From that angle, his Roman nose didn’t appear so obviously broken. Strength of purpose was etched in his prominent chin.
Then he surprised her by withdrawing something from his jacket pocket—her jar of glycerin and rose water. Gently picking up her good foot, he began rubbing a glob of the unguent into its bottom.
“Where did ye get that?”
“Off the saddlebags strapped to your pony,” he replied, his attention fully focused on her foot.
She was embarrassed. Her feet weren’t pretty, not with all their calluses and cracks and scars. “Not the feet of a lady, are they now?” she said.
“Depends on how you define a lady.” His gaze was steady.
She closed her eyes, hiding herself behind her lids. His fingers stroked her arch with firm, steady pressure that was at the same time light. She sighed. Tension eased from her. “Dias muire, but that feels grand.”
It felt more than grand. It felt wonderfully erotic. She couldn’t let herself feel that way about him, much less think that way.
Her eyes snapped open. He had switched feet, and his thumb was gently exploring a spot near the ball of her injured one. On most people that spot was soft, but hers was bony. “Deep scar here,” he commented.
“Nantez’s work. Or rather one of his squaws’. At his instruction.”
At once, his thumb ceased its exploration. The horror in his eyes was like a slap across her face.
She felt defiled. Like a leper. She jerked her foot from his grasp, then winced again at the sudden pain. “We’d best be going. The day is getting late.”
When at last they rode out, the trail Bingham had found turned out to be too old and too rough to follow.
She finally gave up when the terrain ceded the remnants of its earth to solid rock and they stood on the brink of grand canyons. “This is where Nantez roams,” she told Gordon.
In awe, all four of them stared out at the purple haze with mouths open at the sight of canyon after canyon looming in front them.
Somehow, somewhere in those almost inaccessible recesses of the Sierra Madres, she and Bingham were supposed to locate Nantez.
There was nowhere to go but down the precipitous walls of the gorge. At its bottom, a rapid river coursed, a tributary of the Yaqui. From that far above, its areas of white water looked like lazy swishing foam.
They checked their cinch straps. As an extra precaution, Mattie secured her own mount’s strap through the ring of girth with an extra jerk. One by one, the expedition’s horses fell into line and picked out a path of sorts that obviously hadn’t been u
sed recently. It zigzagged down the steep mountain.
Behind her, hooves dislodged small rocks that went tumbling out of sight; their pinging sounds likewise diminished into the quiet void. The loosened rocks were a danger to those ahead on the trail.
She missed Pepper. The pony would have handled the dangerous terrain even better than Bingham’s stout mule or the pack mule. As it was, the dun mare belonging to the Mexican soldier shied nervously with every step.
She glanced back and saw Albert’s face. For all his expression of bravado, his little hands clung tightly to the saddle horn of the other Mexican’s big iron gray.
The descent down trails carved into impossible slopes took half a day. There was no doubt in Mattie’s mind that a lot of mules had been lost by slipping over the sheer precipices. Despite the awesome view of chimney-like peaks and porphyritic pillars, taut nerves made her back and thighs and fingers ache even more than her ankle.
They halted for a midday meal on the narrow plain banking the river. Briery buckthorn made for less than ideal picnic conditions.
Gordon swallowed a bite of hardtack and asked her, “What do you think? Anything look recognizable?” She stretched a cigarette paper between fingers and sprinkled tobacco flakes onto it. “Halpern, look around ye. Do ye see anything that isn’t rock or water? It all looks the same.”
Bingham knelt on one knee beside the rushing water to fill his canteen. “Our main worry is to find a crossing. Or we go back up the way we came.”
Locating a safe crossing took two hours. The other side had a shallow landing that forced a virtually vertical climb up the canyon’s striated wall. It was a tiring day, especially for the horses.
When Mattie thought about the succession of canyons beyond this one, she contemplated pulling out of her agreement with Gordon. Yet her nature was such that she would see the venture through. She had to.
Besides, why not enjoy the opportunity to spend as much time as she could with Gordon? He was the one man who had the power both to awaken her dormant passions and to break her heart, if she weren’t careful.
Eventually, they neared the summit. Where the trail ran parallel to the ridge, her mount began balking at proceeding ahead. She held her breath, as if that small act would lessen the chances of soaring out onto a gulf of thin air.
Tame the Wildest Heart Page 12
