“So you’ve been meeting him since then?”
“Whenever we can. Wherever we can.”
Cricket was trying to digest the enormity of what Sloan had admitted about her relationship with Antonio Guerrero. But it was a lot to swallow in such a short time, and she was pretty much choking on it. “I suppose you must care a lot about this man.”
“I love him, Cricket. I want to have his children.”
Cricket swallowed over the lump in her throat. “Has he asked you to marry him?”
Sloan looked uncertain. “I’m sure he will. He hasn’t said anything yet, but that’s only because his family isn’t going to be any happier about our being together than Rip will be. I’m afraid they have their own prejudices against Anglos to overcome. And then, they may have heard stories about us. . . .”
Cricket knew the kinds of stories that had circulated about “Rip’s girls.” It would take an open-minded person to look behind those stories to the truth. Sure “Rip’s girls” were different, but anybody who looked twice would see they were special. Cricket knew that whatever Sloan strived to be, she could be. And there was no doubt in her mind that Sloan could meet or exceed any standards Señor Guerrero set for his younger son’s wife.
“Are you going to see Tonio at the Guerrero’s fandango ?” she asked Sloan.
“I don’t know. We have to be very careful not to be seen together until we can figure out a way to get Rip and Juan Carlos’s approval. If Tonio sends word where we can meet privately, I’ll go to him.”
Cricket shook her head in disbelief at Sloan’s plans for a clandestine meeting with the man she loved and who supposedly loved her. If he loved her so much, why were they sneaking around behind both fathers’ backs?
“Will you introduce me to Tonio?”
Sloan’s face was a picture of indecision. “I don’t think that would be a good idea, Cricket.”
“Why not?”
“He . . . we . . . I promised I wouldn’t say anything to anyone about our relationship. If I introduce you to him he’ll know I’ve broken that promise.”
“But I’m your sister. You always tell me everything.”
Sloan shook her head. “Not everything, Cricket. I haven’t always told you everything.”
“What? What haven’t you told me?”
Sloans lips thinned to a firm line of intransigence.
“Never mind,” Cricket snapped. “Keep your secrets. I don’t care.” Cricket threw the covers off and grabbed her rumpled buckskin trousers from the floor, yanking them on.
Cricket was shaking, seething with hurt. It wasn’t only Sloan’s deception. Everything seemed so mixed-up lately. First Rip suggesting he’d find her a husband, when she thought he understood why she was never getting married. Then the Ranger showing up, treating her like a woman, arousing her curiosity about kissing and touching and leaving it unsatisfied. Finally, Sloan confessing she was in love, and that she’d kept that—and other as yet undisclosed secrets—from Cricket.
Cricket yanked her shirt down over her head as she stepped through the bedroom door.
“Where are you going, Cricket?”
Cricket turned back to Sloan. “That’s none of your business. I don’t have to tell you everything, either.”
Sloan flinched. “What do you want me to tell Rip?”
“I don’t care what you tell him. Make something up. You must have been doing that for a while, anyway.”
“Cricket—”
Sloan stared at the empty doorway for a moment before she rubbed her callused palm across her sweat-bedaubed forehead. It was all getting so complicated. She would have to talk with Tonio at the fandango. She couldn’t go on lying to her family. It wasn’t what she would have chosen to do in the first place, but Tonio had convinced her of the necessity for it. She loved him so much she would have done anything he asked—lied, stolen, cheated. She smiled bitterly. She, who would have taken a beating from Rip before bending to his will, had been ready to do anything Tonio asked in the name of love. But exactly how far was she willing to go?
Sloan slumped back on Cricket’s bed and crossed her arms over her eyes. God help her. She just didn’t know.
Miles away that same question was being pondered, because it appeared from all the available evidence that Sloan Stewart was helping Antonio Guerrero plot the overthrow of the Republic of Texas.
“I don’t know, Luke,” Creed said. “It’s hard to believe Sloan Stewart is the courier for Antonio’s letters to the Mexican government. Are you sure it was her?”
“I’m not the only one who saw her carry the messages,” the youthful Texas Ranger replied.
“But why? Why would she do it? Her father’s the richest planter in the Republic. He’d told me she’ll inherit Three Oaks when he dies. What does she have to gain if the Mexicans regain control of Texas? It doesn’t make sense.”
“For that matter, it doesn’t make sense for Antonio, either,” Luke said. “Unless his father is involved, as well. There’s a lot of money to be made selling land in Texas— and collecting taxes, too, for that matter. And Juan Carlos has the manpower to back him up. He’s probably got more vaqueros working that cattle empire of his than we’ve got Texas Rangers to patrol the border.”
Creed rubbed the back of his neck to ease the tension there. “You may be closer to the truth than you know. Rip suggested this morning that Juan Carlos may not be happy with his decision to side with the Texans against the Mexicans in thirty-six. Seems he’s had some problems with Anglos grabbing at what’s his. At least it looks like the information Captain Hays got from that informant was on the mark. There’s something going on here, and I intend to get to the bottom of it. I just can’t picture Sloan Stewart working with Antonio Guerrero.”
“Heaven help Sloan if she is a part of that band of traitors,” Luke said. “The planters around here aren’t likely to be sympathetic just because she’s a woman. Too many of them lost friends and relatives to Mexican musketballs and bloody bayonets during the war.”
Creed knew Luke spoke the truth. Last year, when the Rangers had discovered the Mexican government’s plan to invade Texas from the south with a large army while the Cherokee Indians kept the Texans busy with brush fights to the north, the citizens of Texas had demanded and gotten swift and sure retaliation against the Cherokees. But President Mirabeau Lamar was taking no more chances. Ranger Captain Jack Hays had orders to investigate any suspicious activities that might be connected to another Mexican plan to invade Texas. And so Jarrett Creed had been assigned to follow Sloan Stewart and discover the truth of the accusations against her.
Creed didn’t want to think Sloan was guilty, but the evidence against her was damning. Captain Hays trusted him to find out the truth, and Creed hadn’t failed on a mission yet. It was all the more reason he had no business getting involved with Creighton Stewart. What would she think of him when he arrested her sister for treason?
“Thinking about the girl again?” Luke asked.
“Hmmm?”
“That frown on your face . . . I thought maybe you were thinking about the girl again.”
Creed snorted. Still thinking about the girl would be more accurate, but he didn’t care to admit that to the young man who sat on the ground across from him. Luke had a way of knowing exactly what a person was thinking. While that perception was part of what made the young man such a good Texas Ranger, it was disconcerting for Creed to be on the receiving end of it.
“She got under your skin, huh?”
“I never said that,” Creed protested.
“You didn’t have to. It shows.”
Creed swore under his breath. “I suppose you could have handled the situation better.”
“Not better. Different.”
“How different?”
“I’d have bedded her when I had the chance. Then I wouldn’t have had to wonder.”
“Wonder what?”
“What I was missing,” Luke said with a grin.
> Creed chuckled despite his irritation. “According to my sources, you haven’t missed anything wearing a skirt in San Antonio.”
Luke shrugged. It was the gesture of a much older, almost world-weary man. “I like women. They like me. Why not please each other?”
Creed started to argue but shut his mouth. In all the time they’d spent together over the past year Creed had learned little more about Luke Summers than the information Captain Hays had given him the day he’d assigned Luke to Creed’s command.
“He looks too young to be a Ranger,” Creed had protested that first morning when he’d seen Luke up close through the window of Hays’s office.
“He’s lived his share of life,” Hays had responded. “He’s a dead shot with a Paterson. He can ride any horse you stand under him. And he uses a rope like a third arm. Never saw a woman he didn’t love or a woman who didn’t love him. Never heard of him gettin’ riled, either, ’cept for once, oh, ’bout a year ago.”
“What happened?”
“Man called him a bastard. Called his ma a two-bit whore.”
“Was it true?”
“Don’t know. He shot the sonofabitch dead.”
Luke had proved the truth of every kind word Jack Hays had said about him that day. Creed had never seen Luke riled. But then, he’d never heard the dead man’s accusations repeated, either. The young man had proved his merit as a Ranger, and Creed had been willing to let Luke keep his secrets to himself. Creed brought his attention back to the business at hand.
“Who’s our contact in the rebel camp?” he asked the young Ranger.
“Teddy Perkins made friends with some of Antonio’s vaqueros. Haven’t seen him for two days, so I guess he’s gone with them to their hideaway. I’m sure once he can get some word to us where they are, he’ll let us know. Are you going to the Guerreros’ fandango?”
“I’ve been invited. Guess I will.”
“Maybe you can catch Sloan Stewart and Antonio Guerrero together. I’d give a lot to know whether the whole Guerrero family’s involved,” Luke said.
“Teddy should be some help finding that out. You hang around at the rendezvous and wait for him to show up. I’ve got someone else I’m going to talk with who may be able to give us some information.”
“You planning to meet with that half-breed?”
Creed tensed at the harshness in Luke’s voice. Luke hadn’t even pretended to understand how Creed could swear a Ranger oath to protect the citizens of the Republic from the threat of Comanche attacks and still have one of the fierce savages for a friend.
“Whatever else he is, Long Quiet is my friend,” he said, to make his position plain to Luke. “Remember that when you pin a label on him.”
“He lives as a Comanche, doesn’t he?” Luke persisted. “He makes his home amongst those Red Devils, doesn’t he?”
“Yes, he does.”
“And you trust him not to lift your hair?”
“I’d trust him with my life. He’ll be working with us some, so I suggest if you have any problems with that, you air them now.”
Luke raked his hand through his shoulder-length hair. “The Comanches killed my ma.”
Creed frowned. “I’m sorry, Luke.”
“No need to be sorry. After I thought about it a while, I figured they did me a favor.”
“What?”
“If they hadn’t killed her, I’d have had to do it myself.”
“You want to explain that?”
“No. I sure as hell don’t. Go on and see your Comanche friend, Creed. If you trust Long Quiet, I’ll work with him. Don’t worry about me.”
Creed didn’t press the young Ranger. He knew too many men like Luke, with problems that wore on them like hair shirts. As he mounted his horse and rode away from the troubled young man, Creed was reminded of his own painful past. The Texas frontier wasn’t kind. It wasn’t even merciful. If you survived, it was because you didn’t make mistakes. You kept your gun handy. You never rode far from water. You treated your horse like family. And you didn’t trust strangers.
Luke was right to be careful of Long Quiet. The “half-breed” was a dangerous man. Creed ought to know. He and Long Quiet had taken enough scalps together to decorate two Comanche war shields.
Chapter 6
CREED ARRIVED AT THE SPOT WHERE HE’D agreed to meet Long Quiet at dusk. He searched the faces of the Comanche warriors huddled around the campfire at the edge of the slow-moving stream, but didn’t find the one he sought.
“Your friend is not here, Wolf.”
The venomous voice sliced through the shadows, piercing Creed’s consciousness.
“We meet again, Tall Bear. It’s been a long time.” The Comanche words flowed easily from Creed. He waited to see whether Tall Bear still bore the animosity that had characterized their relationship. Their rivalry had begun long ago when he was a boy of eight and he and his mother had first arrived among the Penateka band of Comanches as captives.
From the beginning, Creed’s adoptive father, Crooked Trail, had left him to the mercy of the other Indian youths. Only one boy, Long Quiet, who understood what it meant to be preyed upon, had befriended him. Together, he and Long Quiet had stood against the others and defeated them.
Long Quiet wasn’t here tonight, but several of those they’d defeated were. Over the years Creed had spent among them, his peers had come to respect his prowess as a fierce warrior and a cunning horse thief and no longer challenged him. Only Tall Bear had never let his hatred of the white boy die. Creed conceded there was good reason for that.
Tall Bear remained squatted where he was and did not rise to greet the man who had been husband to Summer Wind, thinking I will do him no honor who stole from me the woman I loved and then abandoned her.
“Hihites. Sit, Wolf. Tell us why you have come among us,” one of the other Comanches said, attempting to allay the insult to Creed.
Creed returned the Comanche greeting and dropped cross-legged to the ground. The familiar, pungent odor of bear grease and buffalo wool embraced him, though the Indians did not. “I came seeking my friend, Long Quiet.”
“He has not returned from hunting,” Two Foxes said.
“Have the buffalo strayed that you must hunt so many suns from the land of the Penateka?” Creed asked.
“This land is best for what we are hunting,” Tall Bear replied.
“And what is that?”
“The scalp of the White-eyes.”
Creed hid his surprise at Tall Bear’s response.
“All Comanches must greet the treachery of the white man with lances and arrows,” Tall Bear continued as he rose.
“What treachery?” Creed demanded, leaping up to confront him.
Two Foxes felt the bristling tension between the two men and intervened to prevent one from attacking the other. “Muk-war-rah, the Spirit Talker, traveled to San Antonio de Béxar, to talk with the White-eyes, to bargain for the release of white captives in exchange for blankets and food. He went into the Council House of the White-eyes, along with twelve chiefs of the Comanche nation, but they were am-bushed, and all were killed. Then the White-eyes attacked the Comanche women and children camped nearby. Many are dead.”
Creed’s chest constricted until he could hardly breathe. He wondered who could have been so stupid as to order such an attack. “How many were killed?”
“Maybe thirty. Maybe forty.”
Creed never blinked an eye, but inwardly he cursed whatever idiot was responsible for the massacre. That number of dead Indians was more than enough to start a war between the white man and the Comanches, and certainly enough for the Comanches to seek white scalps for revenge. It was hard to believe a slaughter of that magnitude could occur right in the middle of San Antonio. “Has there been any reason given for the white man’s actions?”
“All within the Council House were killed. We have heard nothing.”
“Would it not be better to wait until an explanation can be made before attacking in
nocent white men?” Creed questioned.
Another of the Indians rose from beside the campfire and demanded, “What excuse will serve when the Comanche came to the White-eyes under a flag of truce?”
“What?”
Two more Comanches joined the first, so Creed was surrounded by a semicircle of angry Indians crying, “Pei-da tabeboh!” —“Death to the white man!”—a promise of the bloody justice they intended to extract from the deceitful White-eyes.
Tall Bear crossed his arms, his shoulder muscles rippling beneath buckskin as he did so. “I expected you to ask pardon for the soldiers who killed The People. Your white blood speaks loudly and drowns out the Comanche in you. But then, that has long been true. You made your choice when you left . . . us.”
Tall Bear couldn’t name Summer Wind aloud, but Creed knew it was their rivalry over the Indian maiden that had caused the greatest conflict between them. Creed had known Tall Bear loved Summer Wind and wanted her for his wife, so when he’d stolen enough ponies, he’d presented them to Summer Wind’s father and requested the maiden simply to thwart Tall Bear. He’d taken Summer Wind as his wife without loving her, but he’d discovered, to his surprise, that Summer Wind loved him, and in a very short time he’d returned that love.
Tall Bear had never forgiven Wolf for taking Summer Wind from under his nose. But no one else had condemned him. Among the Comanches only the strongest survived and took mates. Wolf had been the stealthier horse thief. He had earned the right to have Summer Wind.
The boy, Jarrett Creed, had thrived among the savage Comanches, all right. But the young man, Wolf, had never been truly happy living among The People, The True Human Beings, until he’d fallen in love with Summer Wind. She was the reason he’d stayed when he was free to go. It was only a quirk of fate, and fatherly love, he thought cynically, that had taken him away from Summer Wind and turned his life back to the path of the tabeboh , the white man.
He’d been among the Comanches for nine years, from his eighth to his seventeenth birthday, before Simon Creed found his son one day, quite by accident. Creed had made a habit of going off by himself to hunt, and Summer Wind sometimes accompanied him to dress the kill. Simon Creed had come upon them unexpectedly, and it was a miracle that neither killed the other before they recognized themselves as father and son.
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