Ring stood and nodded at Sandy and Rowdy. The three made their way toward the saloon doors. The sheriff caught up with them, giving orders as he shoved ahead and out into the street.
“Ed, Mitchell, go find Frank. We’re riding out to the Olssen farm. Get anybody else who’ll come along. I don’t like the sound of this.”
“We’ll come,” Ring said quickly. “Me and one of my men.”
The sheriff nodded curtly. “You got horses?” “Sure do.”
“Then come along. And thank you.” “Wait!” Carrie shoved her way to the sheriff’s side. “I’m going with you.”
Ring and the sheriff exchanged glances over the top of her head.
“Carrie, I don’t think—” “They’re my parents.”
“Your horse is done, Carrie, and we’re wasting time.” The sheriff turned abruptly away.
“Mister!” Carrie whirled on Ring. “Please. I have to go with you. You can’t leave me behind.”
Ring opened his mouth to protest, but Carrie was too quick.
“You said there were two of you. Please let me have one of your horses. Please.”
The sheriff and two others were already mounted. Ring made up his mind. And hoped he wouldn’t regret it.
“Sandy, give her your horse.”
“Ring! I—”
“Just do it.”
Scant minutes later the riders left the town behind in a fading cloud of dust. Ring rode easily, almost lazily, reins loosely gripped in one hand. He watched the girl from the corner of one eye.
Although her features were deeply etched with lines of fear, she was a pretty little thing, with a pretty little figure, despite the camouflage of men’s clothing. She could ride, too, he noted with appreciation. But he felt bad for her. The scenario she had described did not bode well for a positive outcome.
Ring’s apprehension deepened as they approached the homestead. Four horses stood in a corral, heads down, tails swishing. There was not another sign of life. No one came to the door to inquire about the din of approaching riders. They dismounted in front of the house.
The sheriff drew his gun and approached the porch cautiously. Ring hung back, his eye on the girl. He watched what little color remained in her face drain away when the sheriff called out and no one replied. The sheriff, the others behind him, entered the front door. Ring moved to the girl’s side.
Too soon the sheriff emerged, shaking his head. He took his hat off when he approached Carrie. But it was Ring she turned to.
Her expression was stricken, her fingers curled into the frozen imitation of talons. Ring took her gently by the shoulders.
“Carrie,” he said, using her name for the first time, personalizing the moment for all time, taking her pain and tragedy as his burden. “This man, the stranger … do you remember at all what he looked like?”
She nodded mutely. Then she raised a finger to the side of her head and ran it down her cheek. “He had a scar,” she breathed. “A scar …”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
IT SEEMED AS IF HER FORMER LIFE, HER CHILDHOOD, was very, very far away. Her family, everyone she loved, were encased in a bubble that floated above her like a tag-along dream. The desert she had grown up in was like someone else’s distant memory; she remembered the description of it as though the details had been related to her. She saw it in her mind’s eye, but had lost the feel of it.
What was real was the creak of saddle leather day after day after day, forested mountain slopes and the trails in between. The bearskin beneath her in the cool of the night, the feel of buckskin against her flesh, and the summer sun beating on her shoulders through the increasingly long days. The blaze of hatred that seared her soul driving her onward, ever onward … and the man who rode at her side.
As if able to sense the least movement of her body, including the slightest shift of her eyes, Bane’s gaze met hers at the instant she glanced his way. Though his lips did not relay it, there was a smile for her in his soul. It was enough, and she was content.
The day wore on toward evening, and Bane finally called a halt to camp for the night. He had found a patch of relatively flat ground on a low ridge in the foothills of a building mountain range with a protective stand of trees. The vantage point was good; no one could approach without being seen and heard. It was a position they found increasingly important to maintain.
Blaze worked at Bane’s side, as she did at every campsite, until it was time to light the fire. They didn’t always have one. Some nights they chewed on jerky and took turns keeping watch in the darkness. The men they hunted, successfully, learned to fear them, and they were hunted in turn.
Watching Bane arrange the fuel within the ring of stones, Blaze lowered herself to the ground and leaned back against her saddle, inhaling the pleasant fragrance of the new leather. Idly, she ran a finger over the back of the cantle, following the elaborate tooling that scrolled a fanciful design. She heard Bane chuckle softly.
“You like your new saddle,” he said, squatting to light the fire.
“Very much. But I really didn’t need a new saddle.”
“No. The old one was good. Well worn and comfortable.” Bane blew on the small flicker in the heart of the tinder. It caught and a flame licked upward.
“But we have to spend all that money on something, don’t we?” Blaze grinned.
Bane sank back onto his haunches and pulled his pack over to him. “New skillet,” he announced, and slid it onto the fire. “Beans, coffee, flour, sugar, bacon, cornmeal, salt, and lard.”
Blaze’s eyes widened and she sat upright. “When did you get all that?”
“When you were looking at that saddle.” With fluid grace he rose and crossed to the pile he had made of his own saddle, colorful saddle blanket, bedroll, and brand-new rifle sheath. He pulled out the gun and rested it against his shoulder. “I’ll be back by full dark. You know how to make cornbread?”
“Do you know how to shoot?”
His expression never changed. It didn’t have to. When he disappeared over the crest of the ridge, Blaze threw a small handful of lard into the hot skillet. As it popped and sizzled, she was suddenly pulled away from the moment, the present, back to a time she had thought she would never experience again.
Blaze stood beside her mother and the smooth river rock heating over the cook fire. Laughing at something her daughter had said to her, she threw a bit of fat on the rock. While it crackled and spit, Louisa watched her expertly form the tortilla, throwing it up and catching it again on the back of her fists until it was the perfect shape …
A single tear falling on her forearm brought Blaze sharply back to reality. She shook her head and longed for the moment she experienced earlier in the day, the moment she had felt the blissful disconnection. When only the anger had mattered, not the pain.
It returned to her by the time Bane came striding over the ridge crest, rifle on one shoulder, a brace of squirrels swung over the other. He sniffed her cornbread appreciatively and set to work skinning the fruits of his hunt. In no time at all they were spitted, salted, and roasting over the fire. The relative peace remained until she sucked the last of her dinner from her fingertips.
Bane threw his bones into the fire and swiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He looked across the fire at Blaze.
“We will not take another man as we did the last ones.”
The statement took her so completely by surprise she wasn’t sure at first what Bane was talking about. Her lips parted with an unformed, unasked question as her eyebrows made twin question marks. Then it hit her.
“Bane, it … it worked out fine. We caught them. We got the bounty.”
Bane didn’t reply at once. A muscle jumped at his jawline. His eyes unfocused, as if he looked at something far away. Then, suddenly, he returned his attention to her.
“Listen to me. We will not tempt a man, or fate, again that way.”
Blaze caught her bottom lip in her teeth, understanding Bane. And remembering.
There were three of them, men wanted for a series of stagecoach robberies. They had even raped a female passenger and cold-bloodedly murdered her husband. She and Bane had seen the wanted poster in northern Colorado and had spoken with the sheriff in a nearby town. The men had a hiding place in the mountains, they learned. A good one. No one had been able to track them down. No one, until Bane and Blaze rode into the foothills.
It had been so easy, a tactic she employed the very first time she had earned a bounty. The only difference was she had Bane to back her up this time.
They had easily disguised themselves as an itinerant brave and his sullen squaw. It wasn’t long before they were set upon. Blaze smiled grimly to herself.
She had wanted to go alone into the hills. It was safer, she thought, to have Bane shadow her and take down the bandits when they accosted her. But he had been adamant.
“We ride together. Or not at all.”
She knew him well. She knew the hard core of him, the part as hard as the heart of the ironwood tree. She had acquiesced silently.
And so they rode from the little northern Colorado town, dying as the mines it fed played out, on horses rented from the livery stable. Their own mounts would have given them away immediately.
Four days they wandered, seemingly aimlessly, through the rugged, dry foothills. They hunted to feed themselves. By night Blaze hunkered by the fire, playing the downtrodden squaw, cooking and cleaning up their meager leavings. It would have rankled but for the fact they knew they were watched. They had thrown out the bait, and the scent had drifted to their quarry.
On the fifth day, Blaze was saddle weary. Not from action, but inaction. All day they plodded, small spurts of dust rising from beneath their horses’ hooves. Only the creak of harness leather competed with the occasional cry of a circling hawk. Blaze wondered if perhaps the men had moved on, that the feeling of being watched was purely a figment of her imagination.
And then they heard the click of shod hooves against rocks, and the tumbling of stones down a slope, and the grunt of men jarred in their saddles. No attempt at stealth was made at all. One moment they were alone; the next they faced three riders.
The men, unshaven apparently for weeks, greasy hair hanging to their shoulders beneath sweat-stained hats, grinned wickedly. One licked his lips lasciviously.
“Hand over the squaw, Injun,” the skinniest, and dirtiest, of the trio commanded. “Hand ’er over an’ we might let y’live.”
They were already reaching for their sidearms.
A bad feeling clenched the pit of her belly. It was what she’d feared.
Blaze saw the tension in Bane, saw his back muscles bunch, saw the twitch in his forearm. The bad guys saw nothing.
And had nothing to fear. Not yet, anyway. She knew Bane would let the scene play out, waiting for his moment to strike.
But she didn’t like it. They needn’t have simply walked into the lion’s jaws. Why did Bane have to force it? Why did he have to put them in the position where violence was ultimately the only solution?
As soon as she asked the silent question, she knew. From beneath lowered lashes, almost lazily, as if fate had already treated her so badly she had nothing left to fear, Blaze studied the men.
They were not only filthy, their eyes were flat and vacant. There was nothing in them, nothing left, no hope, charity, dreams. They were dead. All that remained was the manner of their deaths. They were like the others, the ones who had taken her life away. She had seen the same look in their eyes, too.
Earlier in the day she had felt the pain again. But only for a little while. The painful moments were fewer, less frequent. Someday, perhaps, they would be gone forever. Replaced by … this.
It surged in her powerfully, as she knew it moved through Bane. She understood, knew why he wanted it to bring it to this point, this culmination. Knew why he did not fear for her as long as he was with her.
He was invincible with the power of it running in his blood. As she was.
“Hey. Hey, you.” The one on the left gestured with his gun. “Move over there. Move away from that squaw.”
Bane straightened slowly in the saddle.
“An’ while yer at it,” he added, “how ’bout handin’ over that rifle? What’s a no count Injun like you doin’ with a nice piece like ’at anyhows?”
The three laughed as if they had just heard a very funny joke. Bane slowly drew the rifle from its sheath and handed it to the man on the nearest horse. Blaze resisted the impulse to draw in her breath sharply.
“’At’s more like it.” The man briefly admired the rifle, holding it up in one hand. Then he tossed it to the rider next to him. “Now move away from that squaw, like I said ’afore.” His voice turned into a snarl.
Bane obligingly, and with the outward appearance of fear, moved his mount to the side.
“Now get over here, squaw.”
As tightly drawn as a bowstring, Blaze put her heels to her horse’s sides.
“Wait.”
All four paused for a second, attention returned to Bane.
“Get down, woman,” he growled at Blaze. “The horse is mine.”
A tense silence followed. Then one of the men snorted with laughter.
It was the moment she had waited for, the one she knew Bane would create. Obediently, she swung her right leg behind her, over the back of her saddle. She knew all eyes were on her. Knew Bane reached for the pistol slipped into the back of his boot.
Two of the men were dead by the time she had both feet on the ground. Stunned by the sound of the gunfire, the third man gaped, momentarily frozen. He didn’t even register Blaze’s hand moving to the waistband of her buckskins. He, too, was dead an instant later.
Blaze found herself smiling inwardly as she stared into the dwindling flames of their campfire. It was neither a smile of happiness, nor contentment, but satisfaction maybe. Yes. Satisfaction. The men had been wanted dead or alive. They were better off dead. The world was better off. As it was better off without all the others they had brought in.
The faint crackling of the dying fire was the only sound in the cool, still darkness. Earlier an owl had hooted, and there was a rustling nearby in the forest undergrowth, but all was still as a half moon crept above the treetops. Blaze gazed over at Bane, and realized he had been watching her.
“Your thoughts have been far away,” he commented quietly.
“Not so far.”
“You were remembering.”
“Yes.” Blaze nodded. She watched a now-familiar, barely perceptible line form between his dark brows. It was the only part of his expression that changed. She awaited his next words.
“As I said, we will not do it that way again. I don’t like using you as … bait.”
“And as I said before,” Blaze countered gently, “it worked out fine. Just like it did the other times.”
Bane’s light eyes seemed to gray, as if with smoke. “Those times are over, Blaze. I will not risk your safety in that way again.”
“But, Bane,” Blaze said, spine straightening with her jolt of surprise. “You’re always with me. You—”
“Yes, I am always with you.” Bane abruptly uncurled from his reclining position against his saddle and rose. “And I wish you always to be with me,” he continued enigmatically.
Blaze felt her jaw drop, powerless to move the muscles to snap it shut again. She tried to speak, but was unable. She stared at Bane’s back as he walked away from the fire. The tension in his shoulders and the stiffness of his stride told her as clearly as words he had something else to say. Heart pounding, she watched him turn back in her direction.
“Sleep, Blaze. We rise before dawn tomorrow.”
Her only reply was an arch of her brows. It was the only response she could muster. And then it hit her.
“You know something you haven’t told me,” Blaze stated flatly.
He remained immobile and silent for a long moment. He blinked slowly, and Blaze watched h
is jaw work as he visibly tried to control himself.
“I have heard a rumor,” he said at last. He had not wanted to tell her. Not yet. But he had not wanted to say the other thing either, the thing that constantly threatened to betray him. His need for her. His want.
“There are some very bad men, north of here,” Bane continued. “Near Fort Laramie. The evil they do … reminds me …”
The flush of warmth that had recently raced through her veins turned to icy water. “Bane …”
But he had already disappeared into the darkness.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
ALTHOUGH RING WAS ANXIOUS TO REACH HIS DEStination, he liked the comfort of Duchess’s easy jog. Besides, he didn’t want to use her up. Carrie might want to go for a ride with him. Ring looked back at the horse on the lead rope.
He sure hoped it would make her happy. She’d had precious little to smile about lately. Especially when he told her the news he was bringing. Frowning, he pulled his hat lower on his forehead. Funny, how important that seemingly small thing had become to him recently—Carrie’s smile.
Forgetting the decision he’d made mere seconds ago, Ring kicked his mare into a slow lope as if he might run away from the disturbingly uneasy thought. It wasn’t long before the modest homestead came into sight, a spiral of dust rising from one of the circular corrals.
Ring whoa-ed Duchess, and she stopped suddenly. Halting less abruptly, the horse on the lead drew even with the bay mare, then dropped his head to nibble at the sparse grass. Ring took his hat off and slapped it against his thigh.
It would be nice to surprise her, he thought. Might make the smile just that much wider. Besides, he had her horse so well trained it would be kinda fun to show it off.
Ring swung down off of Duchess and let his reins fall straight down. Like all his best mounts, she was trained to “ground tie.” He led the second horse a few strides away and dropped the lead rope.
Immediately, the gelding lowered his head and cocked a rear leg in an attitude of relaxation. He was almost as good as tied to a fence post. Ring stroked his neck, patted him on his well-rounded rump, and turned back to his mare.
Blaze of Lightning Roar of Thunder Page 15
