Spellbound Trilogy: The Wind Casts No Shadow, Heart of the Jaguar, Shadows in the Mirror

by Jeanne Rose

  "The world is changing, uncle. The old way of life is gone. You must think on how you can let go of what no longer is..." he said with more eloquence than normal for him, "...and how you can accept what is to be."

  The old man's voice was thunderous when he returned, "I am Geronimo. Until the White Eyes find a way to stop me, I will continue to move about like the wind. I will be free to roam and will stay less time than it takes to cast a shadow. I am not an animal to be caged on a piece of arid, inhospitable land. I am Apache."

  They clasped shoulders in affection and Chaco turned away from his uncle and mounted his buckskin.

  The reticent Juh spoke. "From a thin cloud of blue smoke seen across a chasm, thousands of soldiers in blue uniforms marched against us. Ussen sent me this vision to warn us that, despite our struggle, we will be defeated, perhaps all killed by the government of the White Eyes. With their strength in numbers and powerful weapons, the Bluecoats will eventually exterminate us."

  Chaco looked down on his uncle and saw the effect of those words in his grim visage. "I hope this vision is one that can be altered, then."

  "Even I am not powerful enough to accomplish this," Geronimo admitted ruefully. "I can only trick such a fate for a while."

  "Then make it a very long while, uncle," Chaco said.

  He took off, Frances following close behind. There would always be war and its casualties. Nothing he could do to stop it. He couldn't save an entire tribe. But with luck and persistence, he could find one scared girl who'd done nothing wrong but to have been born of a union not blessed by the white world; and he could see that the real murderer was punished for her evil deeds.

  FIGHTING EXHAUSTION, Frances wondered how long it took a person to get used to riding all day. If ever. Chaco appeared nearly as tired as she, and he'd practically been born on a horse. He was relentless. He never lost sight of Louisa's tracks, never stopped to rest more than a few minutes. They were on the ground now, several hours after taking leave of Geronimo and his band of warriors.

  Chaco trailed tracks on foot aways before saying, "I think Louisa and her friend are lost."

  "Why?"

  "Because they've looped back in nearly the same area twice now." He remounted and kept going. "Too bad the sun couldn't hold on a while longer. We'll have to make camp soon."

  Camp. She'd known it was possible, but she'd prayed it wouldn't happen. They rode until dusk began to settle over the high desert. The thought of sleeping out on the hard, cold ground, prey to things that crawled and slithered in the night, spooked her. If there were rattlers in the area, Frances was nearly certain one must know her name.

  Her only comfort came in the thought that Chaco would be nearby. She didn't want to imagine how near that could be...if only they could somehow make amends with one another. Though she didn't see what good a temporary truce would do in the long run. Some differences were impossible to gap to make a lasting relationship work. She certainly couldn't condone killing, and whether he would or no, that seemed to be his way of life.

  As they began stripping their horses of tack, she asked, "Are Geronimo and his band heading back south?"

  "He didn't say."

  "You didn't ask?"

  "I asked."

  "Do you think he's hiding something from you?"

  "Being evasive has kept him alive," Chaco said. "I think he's sticking around to look for the witch himself."

  Frances knew a moment's panic and almost dropped her mare's saddle on her foot. The heavy leather hit the sand with a resounding smack. "Louisa...what if he thinks she's the one?"

  Chaco shook his head and easily scooped up her saddle, moving it to an open area big enough to stretch out and build a fire. "Geronimo will know his enemy when he faces her. He won't hurt Louisa any more than he would hurt you."

  "Because he thinks I'm your woman."

  "Aren't you?"

  If Frances thought he would follow the provocative question with an assault – physical or emotional – she was wrong. Chaco turned his back on her and started setting up a fire ring.

  But the implication wouldn't go away.

  Was she Chaco's woman? Did she want to be? Yes. She admitted it. But given the differences in their temperaments, in their very code of ethics, was it possible?

  Slipping a hand into her pocket, she fingered the war charm Geronimo had given her. A man who had vision, who could see into the future, who could work magic had accepted her into his family. She'd sensed the old warrior's strength and pride. Not unlike Chaco's. Warriors engaged in combat, she told herself. Sometimes they took lives. An accepted fact, especially in the West.

  Only she didn't think she could accept it.

  She busied herself unrolling blankets into makeshift beds. "Chaco...about Martinez."

  His back stiffened. "What about him?"

  "What exactly happened?"

  Still on his haunches where he'd set rocks in a ring, he glanced over his shoulder. "Someone hired him to kill me. I killed him first."

  "He told you that?"

  "Not in so many words." He rose and began gathering small pieces of dried dead wood from the area. "But he made his intentions clear by his actions."

  "What if you were wrong?"

  "I wasn't."

  "Are you ever wrong?"

  He looked up from what he was doing. "Are you?"

  They were at an impasse.

  It wasn't until much later, after dark cradled the desert and a small fire licked the inky sky, and a pot of something savory warmed at the heart of the blaze that Chaco brought up the gunfight again.

  "Killing Martinez sickened me, Frankie." He sat barely a foot away from her on his bedroll. "I didn't know how much I could hate the smell of death until he was sprawled out in the dust."

  Her heart beat unevenly at Chaco's nearness, and the softness of his voice combined with the note of regret sent a thrill through her. "Are you telling me you wouldn't do it again?"

  "That'd be a fool's promise. A man can't know everything he might be up against in the future. Not even a man who sometimes has visions."

  She swallowed her disappointment that he refused to be more definite. "I just don't understand why one human being has to kill another."

  "That's the way of the world, the way it's always been."

  "Can't things change? Become civilized? People don't go around killing each other back East anymore."

  "You sure of that?" He removed the pot from the fire. "Maybe they just don't kill each other in public." And ladled the stew-like contents onto two metal plates.

  "Well, murderers are arrested and tried."

  "And hung? Think I should be at the end of a hangman's rope for protecting myself?" he asked, his voice soft yet edgy as he held out her supper.

  "I don't want to see you hang," she vowed with passion. "That's the point. Or part of it. I don't want to see any more people die, either. A shootout isn't exactly exciting and fun like dime novels make it out to be."

  "And I wouldn't kill anyone unless I had to."

  They ate in silence, though Frances couldn't keep her mind from the subject. Or from Chaco himself. If she loved the man, shouldn't she be able to accept him just as he was? A product of the rugged, as yet untamed West, he'd survived the best way he knew how. To his credit – or his mother's – he had a heart. And a conscience.

  Maybe promises were too much to expect. Maybe she was being too rigid in this instance and was the one who needed to change. To learn how to place her trust in what was inside of Chaco rather than fear the image he projected. She had to believe that he would do the right thing and hope that would be to avoid further bloodshed if at all possible.

  But was that enough for her?

  When they finished eating, they cleaned up, working side-by-side so close they invariably touched. Longing for more, Frances shivered.

  "Cold?"

  The air was cool against her suddenly heated skin. "A little."

  He reached over her, the back of his
arm brushing her breasts as he brought the blanket up around her shoulders. "Warmer?"

  Frances nodded. Staring at his hard features silhouetted by the fire, she felt heat coil deep within her. Her breathing slowed but blood rushed to her extremities.

  The silhouette shifted even closer, slowly, allowing her time to move away if she so desired. She stayed where she was, lips parting in anticipation of Chaco's kiss. Covering hers, his mouth was hot and demanding, his tongue seductive, drawing a moan from deep in her throat. Their differences instantly forgotten, Frances was left a woman to his man, and that's all she wanted.

  She touched him, at first hesitantly, and then when he deepened the kiss in response, more freely. Her palm smoothed the flat of his muscled stomach, longing for the heat of his skin that his shirt kept from her. He caught her hand and forced it downward until she was cupping the fullness straining his denim pants.

  Chaco groaned into her mouth, then pulled away, murmuring, "Ah, Frankie, what you do to me..."

  Then he sank his mouth into the soft flesh of her neck and sent a streak of gooseflesh down her spine. She unbuttoned his denims as he did the same to her split skirt. He was far more clever at this than she, and a moment later had her stripped from the waist down but for her boots while she'd barely uncovered him. To rid him of the denim pants, they'd first have to take off his boots.

  Stroking him into even greater hardness while considering the boot issue, she was startled when he pulled her over him and quickly sheathed himself inside her before she so much as had time to react. One roughened hand flashed up, over her belly and below her clothing – vest, shirt, camisole. Chaco thumbed a nipple until the flesh pebbled and hardened.

  His other hand sought their juncture. He was moving in and out slowly and without depth. A clever finger captured some of her essence and pulled it forward to moisten her sensitive nub. He did this over and over until she couldn't stop herself from moving against his hand. She raised her hips until he nearly slipped free...then plunged down hard to recapture his entire length. Each time she repeated the motion, she did so faster, harder, until she was breathing arduously with the exertion and excitement.

  Her tender flesh swelled around him and sweat trickled down her spine. Her entire existence came down to three pleasure points where his ingenious hands and pulsing maleness assaulted and filled her.

  Riding him hard – not unlike a horse, she realized – Frances threw back her head and sucked in long drafts of cool night air. Never had riding the sorrel pleasured her so intensely.

  Then pleasure turned to torment as every fiber of her being labored to reach the pinnacle. Chaco's fingers turned seductively cruel, edging her ever closer. Her mouth opened in a fevered gasp. Her neck muscles strained as a sound started deep within her, straining for release. Through fluttering lashes, she watched the stars shatter into thousands of sparkly pinpoints and her piercing cry echoed through the night.

  Chaco shot his hands to her waist, anchoring her in place while he swept up deep inside her, a strong surge of wet warmth pleasuring her even more.

  Then he urged her toward him. She fell against his chest and he wrangled her to the ground, his body and arms and legs tangling with hers until she didn't know where one of them ended and the other began. Panting, she was content to lie there staring up at him, nuzzling her cheek into the free strands of his loose hair. He kissed the planes of her face and rolled to his side, finally breaking their intimate connection.

  As passion subsided, Frances found humor in their situation. Her smothered laugh was met with a growl.

  "What's so funny?"

  "Us. We still have our boots on, not to mention other assorted garments."

  "Easy enough to fix."

  Within minutes, they were both naked and resting together on one bedroll, flesh against flesh.

  Holding her tight, he asked, perhaps too casually, "Still planning on going back East?"

  Frances remembered threatening to do so as soon as she had enough money...before this sense of belonging had grown inside her.

  "I don't quite figure what I'd do when I got there," she murmured, placing a soft kiss in the hollow of his throat.

  "Teach?"

  "I'd say that particular career is over for me."

  And not merely because she had no references. She couldn't see subjecting herself to such a restricted lifestyle again. She never wanted to relinquish the sense of freedom living in the West had offered her.

  "But you do miss civilization."

  "Sometimes."

  After the gunfight especially.

  But she kept that to herself, not wanting to allow the troubling topic to spoil their union. She would have to deal with the problem herself. Resolve it to her own satisfaction. Sometime. Only not now.

  "What about you, Chaco? Any plans for the future?"

  "Don Armando made me a new offer yesterday," he said, stroking her spine with a gentle hand.

  "What sort of offer?"

  "Land. He suggested he could spare a few hundred acres of his southeast range, about an hour's fast ride out of Santa Fe. There's water. And a small cabin."

  Though she tried, Frances couldn't tell whether or not he viewed the proposal favorably. "And what does he want in return?"

  "Me. He wants to me live on the land and either raise my own cattle or come to work for him. My choice. And in return, I would agree to spend time with him, to get to know him better."

  "Would that be so bad?"

  "My mother – "

  "Would probably want this for you."

  "He can't bribe me to be his son if I don't want to!"

  "Then don't let him. Just give him a chance."

  "So, you think I should do it. Give up my job at the Blue Sky and become a rancher."

  His hand continued to move along her spine, but the strokes were tense rather than sensual.

  "I think coming to terms with your past is more important than managing a casino." Frances would have given anything for her father to bend, to admit he wanted to heal the rift between them. And while she didn't want to give up seeing Chaco every day, neither would she be selfish. "Yes, I think you should do it, but for your sake, not his."

  Suspecting she hadn't responded as he'd hoped, for he seemed stiff and withdrawn, Frances curled a leg around his hip and nuzzled his throat. Chaco responded to her like a man who'd been starved for a woman's touch rather than one who'd so recently spent himself in her. If they were to be separated soon, then she wanted to take advantage of each moment they had together. She suspected every relationship between a man and a woman had its problems.

  They had more rough spots than most, and that wasn't counting the trouble a diablera could cause.

  DAYBREAK SAW THEM back on Louisa's trail. After a night of loving, Frances figured she should be relaxed, but a short sleep had brought with it another nightmare, as if her thinking about the skinwalker no matter how briefly had summoned the evil spirit.

  The day had dawned gray and cold, unusual for New Mexico whose skies were normally a vivid blue and temperature was typically a sight more pleasant. Frances only hoped the odd weather didn't portend added obstacles.

  It wasn't long before Chaco dashed that fear. Checking tracks on foot he said, "I think we're about to catch up to our runaway."

  "How can you tell?"

  "They rode straight into that canyon."

  "So?"

  "I know this country pretty well. And I don't know of another easy way out."

  Relief flowed through Frances. "Then we'll be back in Santa Fe before dark."

  "I expect so."

  The canyon was much larger than Frances might have guessed. The floor had every bit as much growth as the desert outside. She could imagine wandering into the area, then spending twice the time trying to find a way back out again.

  "Louisa!" she called a moment after passing through the entrance. "It's Frances!"

  Her words bounced around the canyon walls that rose practically straig
ht up to flat-topped mesas. She waited until they reached the area's heart before trying again. The striated reddish rock stared down on them blankly. No sign of life anywhere.

  "Are you sure they couldn't have left the way they came?" she asked Chaco.

  "No fresh tracks showing they did," he assured her. "They're here somewhere, all right."

  They kept riding and Frances noted openings in the rock face high above them. "Could those be caves?"

  "Living quarters of a people long gone," he said. "Anasazi."

  A more intense inspection revealed what looked like chiseled hand and footholds leading up to the openings. "If Louisa and her traveling companion took shelter in one of them," Frances asked, "where did they leave their horses?"

  A whinny answered the question. "Over there." Chaco pointed to a stand of juniper, through which she saw movement at the base of a cliff whose face was etched with toeholds leading to a sheltered opening.

  "Louisa!" Frances yelled, goosing her mare forward.

  Before she and Chaco reached the tethered horses, a faint, "Frances?" echoed in return. Then Louisa appeared in the opening above. "It is you!"

  Without hesitating, the girl scrambled down the wall, clinging precariously to the rockface. Heart pounding, fearing that with one misstep, Louisa could turn Belle's greatest fear into truth, Frances dismounted. She'd barely caught a glimpse of a blue uniform in the opening before Louisa threw herself into Frances's arms.

  "Are you all right?" she asked the girl, whose hair was tangled and clothes disheveled.

  "I am now that you're here. I was so stupid."

  Holding onto Louisa, Frances stared accusingly at the young officer who had reached the ground but kept his distance and looked decidedly uncomfortable. "Belle is worried sick about you, Louisa."

  "I thought Ma'd be glad to be rid of me."

  "Your mother loves you. She thought she lost you and that her life was over." Remembering Louisa had vowed she would never take off with some man like her mother had before her, she asked, "You didn't run away because of him, did you?"

  Shaking her head, Louisa freed herself but avoided looking at the golden-haired young officer who stood up straighter.