«Here,» Caleb said, handing over his rifle to Wolfe. «Cartridges are in my jacket pocket. At this range, the gun pulls about a half-inch to the left. Willow and I might be in your line of fire for the first fifty feet. After that, I’m taking her up the ravine at the rear of camp. When we’re over the top, we’ll go to ground and wait for you to bring the horses to us.»
Wolfe nodded and began sighting over the rifle, getting the feel of the new weapon.
Caleb turned to Reno. «How quiet are you on a stalk?»
«He’s better than most and not as good as you,» Wolfe said before Reno could answer. «But then, neither am I, and I was raised among the Cheyenne.»
Caleb grunted. «Reno, you can stay up here with your rifle or you can come part of the way with me and we’ll find out how slick you really are with that six-gun.»
Reno smiled wolfishly. «I’ll be stepping on your heels every bit of the way.»
He was talking to himself. Caleb was already moving. Stalking human game took time, and they had damn little of that left before Slater came back into camp.
WILLOW looked out from behind her screen of hair, saw that the horses were still being walked, and went back to trying to get out of the ropes that bound her. Desperate to be free, yet worried about attracting attention from her guard, she jerked and yanked at the bonds under cover of her long hair. Pain raked up from her wrists. Fear helped her to ignore the hurt. She never wanted to see the cruel promise in Slater’s eyes again. TheComanchero Nine Fingers had made her feel unclean.
Slater horrified her.
Despite Willow’s efforts, the ropes felt no looser now than they had when she first began twisting her wrists until the skin was rubbed raw. Fighting the despair that threatened to overwhelm her, she jerked first one wrist, then the other, hoping if she made herself bleed, her wrists and hands would be slippery enough to evade the tight bonds.
A glance at the guard told Willow that he must have finished hacking at his fingernails. He was lying on his back, his mouth open, dead asleep.
Willow began yanking openly on her bonds, taking advantage of the guard’s midday nap.
«Don’t move, honey. I don’t want to cut you.»
For an instant, Willow thought she had gone mad and was hearing things. Then she felt her bonds giving way and had to bite back a cry of relief and joy.
«Ease your ankles around to the right,» Caleb said in a voice that was barely audible.
There was a soft rustling sound as Willow inched her feet around toward the back of the stump. For a moment she felt a sensation of pressure on her ankles, followed by a slight rocking motion. The rope at her ankles fell away.
«Back up slowly until you’re behind the stump. No! Don’t watch the camp. That’s my job. You watch what you’re doing.»
Willow scooted in slow motion until the stump was between her and the camp. Caleb was lying on his stomach, his body flat to the ground.
«Lie down real slow and crawl like a snake past me toward that little crease in the grass. See it?»
She nodded, lay down, and began wriggling along Caleb’s length. When her head drew even with his chest, he gave her more terse directions, his voice so low she wondered if she was really hearing the words at all.
«The crease leads to a gully that’s about a foot deep. Go left and keep snaking along uphill until you get to the rocks. Your brother is on the left, behind them. Whatever youdo, keepdown. Reno and Wolfe will have to shoot over us if we’re spotted.»
Willow wanted to ask questions, but a look at the bleak yellow clarity of Caleb’s eyes closed her throat. She ducked her head and pushed herself forward on her stomach, feeling as exposed as an egg on a fence rail. Each time she looked up to see how far she was from the gully, it seemed that she had made no progress at all. But if she started to go faster, Caleb’s hand clamped around her ankle, forcing her to go so slowly she wanted to scream with frustration and fear.
When Willow finally reached the gully, she discovered that it provided scant cover. Less than a foot deep, with wide, shallow, gently sloping sides, the gully was little better than grass when it came to hiding Willow and Caleb. The rocks he had mentioned were more than a hundred feet away. Willow put her cheek dose to the ground and pushed herself along with arms that were trembling from the strain of moving so slowly and so awkwardly.
They were fifty feet from the rocks when one of Slater’s men glanced over and discovered Willow was missing.
18
The shout of discovery was cut off in mid-cry when Wolfe opened up with Caleb’s rifle, raking the camp with bullets. Caleb threw himself over Willow, protecting her in the only way he could. Fifty feet up the ravine, Reno began firing his six-gun. The bullets came so rapidly it was hard to separate the sound of each shot. Other shots came from the camp, pistols and rifles all mixed together in an unholy barrage.
Flattened against the earth, frightened, barely able to breathe, Willow felt Caleb’s big body jerk and heard him curse. More shouts came, more gunfire, bullets whining and thudding into the ground nearby, but she could see nothing, for Caleb covered her completely.
Abruptly, Reno’s six-gun fell silent. The repeating rifle didn’t. It continued to lay down a withering hail of bullets.
«Run for it!» Reno shouted.
The words had barely registered on Willow when Caleb yanked her upright and half-carried, half-dragged her toward the rocks. Reno was crouched to one side of the shallow gully, slamming a second, fully loaded cylinder into his revolver. Willow and Caleb hurtled past Reno as the repeating rifle finally fell silent.
Immediately, Reno opened fire once more, giving Wolfe time to reload. This time the shots came more slowly as Reno coolly picked off men who were foolish enough to stick up their heads to see what was happening. The range was extreme for a handgun, but Reno was extremely good with the weapon.
«Up that ravine,» Caleb said curtly to Willow as he stood behind her and pointed her toward a dry watercourse that angled away from the ridge where Wolfe was. «When you reach the trees, go about a hundred feet, then get behind some cover and stay there until we catch up. Nowrun.»
Willow scrambled forward just as the repeating rifle began firing once more. Caleb waited to see if she would keep going as directed. To his surprise, she did. He turned and started giving terse orders to Reno.
«I’ll keep them down while you reload,» Caleb said, «but you damn well better be able to do it on the run.»
«You’re wounded,» Reno said without looking away from the camp. «I’ll stay.»
«It’s not my shooting arm. Get going.»
Reno spotted a man’s boot poking out from among the supplies in the camp. «All right. Get ready.»
While Caleb drew his six-gun, Reno sighted on the nearly hidden boot. He squeezed off his last shot, turned, and began shucking spent cases from his six-gun as he ran up the ravine after Willow.
Caleb had already chosen his target. As soon as Reno turned toward the ravine, Caleb opened fire. The bullet sent one of Slater’s men scrambling for a better hiding spot. From the far side of the camp, someone opened up on them with a rifle. The rapid barking of the shots told Caleb it was a repeating rifle. Bullets whined and sang off the rock just below him. Instantly, return fire came from Wolfe’s position, forcing the other rifleman to keep his head down.
Another rifle opened up. It, too, was a repeating rifle. Caleb squeezed off two more shots and counted the times the other rifles fired without pausing. Eight for one, nine for the other. They weren’t the same model or kind as his own rifle, which meant Slater’s men carried less in the magazine and were much slower to reload.
«Ready!» called Reno.
Caleb turned and ran as fast as he could up the ravine. He didn’t bother trying to reload while he went, for his left hand was slippery with blood. He passed Reno, went on another hundred feet, reloaded, and yelled at Reno to withdraw. Working together smoothly, both retreated into the cover of the trees.
Willow was nowhere in sight.
«Find her and get her over the rise,» Caleb said curtly to Reno. «It opens out on the other side. Wolfe will be able to bring the horses right to you.»
«What about you?»
«I’ll cover yourbacktrail until you get Willow over the rise. Now move!»
There was no time to waste arguing and Reno knew it. They had taken Slater by surprise. That advantage was rapidly evaporating. Slater’s repeating rifles weren’t as good as the one Wolfe was using, but there were two rifles against one. There were also ten men, minus the two guards and whatever Wolfe had done in the way of damage.
However Reno added it up, the advantage was on Slater’s side.
Reno turned and raced into the trees, calling softly to his sister. Willow stood up a hundred feet ahead of him. He ran to her and hustled her up the ravine much as Caleb had — half-dragging and half-carrying her. By the time they reached its head and climbed out into an area of mixed grass and trees, she was breathing as hard as she had going over the Great Divide. Reno was breathing almost as hard.
«Stand with your back to me and keep your eyes open,» Reno ordered.
Fighting for breath, Willow watched uneasily, her glance darting from shadow to shadow. Nothing was visible but clumps of aspen and patches of grass, the forerunners of the basin that lapped at the forested peaks. Gradually her breathing slowed. Time crawled while she strained to separate natural sounds from those that might be made by men sneaking up on her. In the distance she heard rifle fire, but no six-guns.
Finally a wolf’s harmonic cry floated up from behind Willow.
«Don’t shoot!» she said urgently. «It’s Caleb!»
«I never shoot at anything I can’t see,» Reno said calmly. «Come on in, Yuma man. Willy, watch the damned meadow!»
Hastily, she turned around and looked at the empty land, feeling her brother’s back like a wall behind her.
It’s just as well, Willow told herself unhappily. I don’t really want to see Caleb look at me with those cold yellow eyes and know that duty made him risk his life for me.
The thought of how exposed he had been coming into camp chilled her. She hadn’t even had time to thank him but that, too, was just as well. From the look in his eyes back at the valley, he didn’t want anything at all from her.
Let me know when you feel like being treated like my woman. Then I’ll let you know if I still feel like being your man.
«Anyone coming?» Reno asked.
«No,» Caleb and Willow said simultaneously.
«Good. How do you feel about blood, Willy? Does it make you faint?»
«Not since I turned thirteen.»
«Then switch places and go to work patching up your future husband while I watch the meadow.»
For an instant, Willow didn’t understand. When she did, she spun around and stared at Caleb, who was standing less than two feet away from her. The breath rushed out of her with a low sound as she saw blood spreading in a ragged, crimson sleeve down his left arm.
«Caleb, my God…» she said shakily.
«Don’t faint, southern lady. You’re no use to me passed out on the ground.»
The clipped words restored Willow’s control as nothing else could have. She stepped forward and looked at his arm, for it was preferable to the savage clarity of his eyes.
«Here,» Caleb said. He reached behind his back, where he had moved his knife sheath to make crawling easier. «You’ll need this.»
With a hand that trembled, Willow took the big knife. When she saw the blood on it, she looked up quickly at Caleb, wondering if he had another wound she couldn’t see.
«Not my blood,» Caleb said.
Willow drew a deep breath and said nothing.
«Disappointed?» he asked sardonically.
She flinched subtly, then took a firm grasp on the knife and put the tip of the blade beneath his cuff. «Hold still.»
«Don’t worry, southern lady. I’m not going to give you an excuse to cut me up any worse than I already am.»
The fabric gave way easily before the lethally sharp knife. Willow peeled the sleeve aside to reveal the wound high on Caleb’s arm. Her teeth sank into her lower lip as she saw the crimson stripe where a bullet had gouged a furrow across his bicep.
«Oh, Caleb,» she whispered. «I’m sorry.»
«You ought to be,» he said flatly. «You and your girlish notions about love damn near got us all killed.»
Willow looked at Caleb, then looked away quickly. His eyes were those of a bird of prey, intent and merciless. He had never looked more like what he was…dark angel of retribution.
Nothing had changed. Nothing would. Nothingcould. She had fallen in love with a man who knew only the cold balance of right and wrong, duty and necessity. But she had her own ideas of right and wrong, duty and necessity. None of them included forcing a man into marriage simply because her brother was appallingly quick with his six-gun.
«You aren’t the only one with a sense of duty,» Willow said. She turned to Caleb’s other arm and slipped the knife beneath the cuff. When she spoke, her voice was as raw as the sound of the cloth being ripped into strips with vicious jerks of her hands. «I couldn’t stand by and watch you being forced into marriage with me just because Matt happens to be so damned quick with his gun!»
«Forced into marriage because of your brother’s gun,» Caleb said coldly. «Nice to know you think I’m a coward as well as the kind of conscienceless seducer who would turn an innocent girl into a whore.»
«Seducer? Don’t be ridiculous,» Willow said, clipping each syllable as she wrapped Caleb’s wound with a gentleness that was at odds with her voice. «Before you ever kissed me, I wanted you until I couldn’t take a breath without wondering if the air had touched you first.»
Caleb’s body tightened as though he had been cut with a whip.
«I’m sorry,» Willow said quickly, thinking she had been too rough in bandaging his wound. «I didn’t mean to hurt you. As for being a coward,» she continued as she carefully tied the bandage in place, «anyone who has the nerve to crawl into Jed Slater’s camp in full daylight isn’t a coward. You’re simply too pragmatic to walk into certain death and too much a man to run away. That left marriage.» She stepped back from Caleb. «That should do it.»
«Does that mean you’re finished tearing strips?» Reno asked dryly, turning around, facing them. «If so, it’s time to — Slater!»
Before the cry left Reno’s lips, Caleb spun around and drew his gun in a single, fluid motion that was so quick the eye couldn’t truly follow it. Thunder erupted on Willow’s right and then on her left as first Caleb and then Reno emptied their guns into the two men who were sixty feet away, creeping from the ravine to the edge of the grass, seeking a dear shot between the trees.
The sheer speed of Caleb’s and Reno’s response surprised the Slater brothers. Their aim was shattered as they fired quickly on the way to seeking better cover. But there was no cover within reach. Caleb and Reno were as accurate as they were fast. Realizing it, Jed Slater turned and fired even as bullets cut him down.
It wasn’t the men he aimed at, but Willow.
A blinding pain burst in Willow’s head, driving her to her knees. Darkness spiraled down from the sky, whirling around her. She heard Caleb’s voice calling her name as she reached out to him, needing him as the solid center of a world that was spinning blackly around her. She felt the strength of his arms supporting her, but even his power couldn’t hold the unnatural night at bay.
Willow was still trying to say Caleb’s name when midnight condensed in a soundless rush, claiming her.
Caleb felt the sudden slackness of Willow’s body, saw the blood welling from beneath her bright hair, and called her name in a voice that tore at his throat.
There was no answer. He hadn’t expected one. With fingers that shook, he probed gently around the bloody wound. Then he cradled her against his body and grieved in the dry, wrenching silence of a man who had never permitt
ed himself to cry.
WHEN Wolfe rode into camp, the first thing he saw was Reno and Caleb sitting thirty feet away in the midst of sun-dappled shadows. Willow lay between the two men. Caleb flashed a quick look at Wolfe and the horses, then turned back to Willow as though afraid she would slip away unless he watched her every instant. Her hand lay between his. He stroked the smooth skin, trying to reassure both Willow and himself that she was still alive.
After a long look at his sister, Reno stood and walked to where Wolfe waited.
«I heard the gunfire. Was Willow hit?» Wolfe asked as he dismounted.
«Yes.»
«Bad?»
«We don’t know. Her pulse is strong and steady, but she’s unconscious.»
Wolfe’s dark eyes closed briefly. He turned and gave a brooding look to the girl who lay too quietly and the man who sat next to her, stroking her hand with a tenderness Wolfe wouldn’t have believed if he hadn’t seen it.
«What happened?» Wolfe said, turning away, feeling as though he had intruded on Caleb’s privacy.
«Slater and his kid brother came up the ravine after us. They were sixty feet away when I spotted them.» Reno’s voice was heavy and worn. «Willow was fixing Caleb’s arm. There was no time to get her out of the way. When Jed Slater knew he was finished, he shot her. May God damn his soul to Hell.»
«Amen.» Wolfe sighed. «What about Kid Coyote?»
«Dead.»
Reno looked past Wolfe to the horses he was leading. Ishmael was among them. His head was high and his walk was strong. Other than a coat dulled by dried lather, the horse looked no worse for his long run.
«Thanks for fetching the stud,» Reno said, his voice husky with all that had not been said. «He’s a particular favorite of hers.»
«No thanks needed. I would have killed every outlaw in the camp to get my hands on that red stallion,» Wolfe said calmly. He waited, but Reno didn’t say anything more about what they were facing with Willow’s wound. «Did she bleed too much? Is that why she’s unconscious?»
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