He shrugged noncommittally. “It’s just a shame for a youngun as pretty as you to go around dressed like a man. You’re a woman, Stevie. It’s time you started behaving like one. Time you settled down and took a husband.”
“I’m not a woman. Not to the people in town. I’m a savage.”
“Here now!” He closed the distance between them. “You know I don’t allow talk like that in this house. As for being a savage, you’re only half Comanche. But it wouldn’t matter if you were full blood. You’re a beautiful young woman, and if you dressed like a female and gave the men in town half a chance, you’d have more men buzzin’ around here than you could shake a stick at.”
Stevie had heard it all before. She was in no mood to hear it again. “Don’t we have enough problems without you harping on what I wear? And who wants to attract men who think the only good Indian is a dead Indian? Not me, I can tell you! Besides, it’s not like I just started dressing this way, Pa. I haven’t worn girls’ clothes since I was ten years old. And I don’t intend to start wearing them anytime soon. So do us both a favor and let it lay.”
The last time Stevie had worn a dress was to her mother’s funeral. Delicate, beautiful Swan had died giving birth to a stillborn baby boy ten years ago. She could have been saved, but the town doctor refused to tend an Indian.
The memory of her mother’s last few hours caused her throat to burn. Watching Swan suffer an agonizing, senseless death, holding her hand as the life’s blood ebbed from her body, made an irrevocable impression on Stevie. In one fell swoop it robbed her of her childhood and her desire to be female.
So now, at twenty, on the threshold of womanhood, she dressed like a man, hoping to make herself invisible to the opposite sex. It had worked until her body started changing. Unconsciously, she crossed her arms over her chest, hiding her budding breasts. Unbidden, she remembered the gunslick’s hands on her. Her cheeks flamed. Feet planted, she forced herself to drop her arms at her sides.
“And I don’t want a husband,” she emphasized in case her daddy hadn’t been listening the first time. With short, jerky movements, she tucked her gloves in the pocket of her breeches and dropped her gaze to the tip of one scuffed boot.
Sandy touched her cheek. “But, honey, I’ll not always be around to protect you.”
“Don’t say that.”
“It’s true.”
“Well, I’ll just have to take care of myself, ’cause I’m not gonna get married. Ever.” She paused, then blinked her eyes, fighting tears. Her voice was soft, unsure when she continued. “Who would have me, Pa? What white man would want a half-breed for the mother of his children?” Shaking her head wryly, she finished, “And I just can’t see marrying a Comanche. With my sharp tongue,, he’d scalp me on our honeymoon. And as much as it hurts to admit, I have to agree with the townspeople. Most Indians are savages. The men anyway.”
Stevie had been a tender child of four when she overheard her first account of a Comanche raid. The tale was so horrible, bloody, and vicious that she had never gotten over it. Women raped, their babies’ brains bashed out, men murdered and scalped, their tongues cut out. She’d had nightmares for weeks afterward; still did at times. She shuddered involuntarily.
Her mother had tried to explain why the People attacked the White Eyes. But the concept of a dying nation protecting its ancestral home had been far too sophisticated for Stevie to comprehend.
So she carried the shame of her Indian blood in her heart. Plagued with insecurity, she was a lonely girl in a woman’s body, a woman without a people, a woman who felt she didn’t belong to anyone—except her pa and little Winter. That would have to be enough.
Flashing her father a disarming grin to cover her emotion, she continued. “Fact is, men are a pack of trouble. You’re proof of that.”
Sandy smiled sadly. He knew what was going through his daughter’s mind. “Sometimes, Stephanie Kay, I think I should’ve sent you east to live with my sister, where you could learn how to be a proper lady.”
Stevie paled. “You couldn’t do that to me and you know it. You needed around the ranch. And now that Jeff’s gone—”
The look of pain in her father’s eyes halted her in mid-sentence. Like Stevie, Sandy was still grieving. It was evident in every line etched in his weather-beaten face.
Jeff had been missing for two months. His horse had returned to the ranch, blood staining the expertly tooled saddle his pa had given him for his twenty-first birthday. Adobe Wells’s sheriff had searched halfheartedly before giving Jeff up for dead. Sandy said the lawman had abandoned the search because he was stupid and cowardly—not much more than a kid himself. Stevie thought it was because Jeff was part Comanche.
She was certain that the man who killed Jeff was in the judge’s employ. Silently, she had vowed to discover the truth about her brother and avenge his death, if it took her the rest of her life. She just had to find a way around her pa and his propensity to smother her with fatherly concern.
She averted her gaze, knowing it wouldn’t do for Sandy to see the fire of vengeance burning in her eyes. He’d lock her in her room for sure, or worse, send her east to live with her oh-so-proper aunt.
Purposefully, she approached the window, pushing aside the fluttering curtains. A glossy blue bird perched on the cottonwood, warbling an airy tune. Stevie stared at it with unseeing eyes.
“Who else would take care of things around here if you managed to marry me off or send me to live with Aunt Avesta? Now that all the hands are gone.”
Sandy crossed the room, placing his hands on Stevie’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, kitten. I won’t send you away.” Sandy didn’t want Stevie to leave the Rocking J any more than she wanted to go. But he feared for her safety. Damn Elias Colt Jack to hell!
Looking out the window over his daughter’s shoulder, Sandy conquered impotent rage and allowed himself a moment’s reflection, remembering what life was like when he, Jeff, and Stevie worked side by side, reigning like kindly lords over the little kingdom his ancestors had carved out of the wilderness, when the ranch was alive with the sounds of men, horses, and cattle.
He sighed heavily. Would it ever be that way again? Not if Judge Jack had his way, a still, small voice answered. The judge’s determination to own the Rocking J knew no bounds. At first he had tried to buy the place, but when Sandy refused to sell, the real trouble began. Stock disappeared; wells were poisoned, outbuildings burned to the ground.
The theft and vandalism had taken a financial toll. Except for a small nest egg in the bank that Sandy had put aside as Stevie’s dowry, he was as broke as the Ten Commandments.
Dowries were fanciful, he knew, but he was determined that Stevie have one. For once in her life, she was going to be like those hoity-toity debutantes his sister was always writing about, the ones who took something into their marriages besides the clothes on their back. Short of starvation, he wouldn’t touch that money.
But starvation wasn’t their greatest threat; being cast out of their home was. When it appeared things couldn’t get any worse, the judge sent the sheriff out with an injunction informing Sandy that he didn’t hold clear title to his ranch.
Enraged, he tore the paper into shreds and tossed it in the sheriff’s face. They were given three months to vacate the premises, and now their time had come to an end.
Stevie watched her father out of the corner of her eye. She ached at the hopelessness she saw on his face. Leaning back against his chest, her heart mirrored his anguish.
Her own sense of hopelessness angered her. But no matter how brave she appeared to the rest of the world, there were times when she feared she was little more than a scared child. A child who not only needed her pa, but her mother—the gentle creature who had been taken from her before she could teach Stevie how to live in a world divided by prejudice, a world torn apart by the likes of Judge Elias Colt Jack.
“Have you given any more thought to taking a room at Pilar’s?” Sandy spoke softly, broaching another sensitive subject.<
br />
Stevie whirled about. “And leave you here? No sir!”
With trembling hands she unfastened her gun belt, signaling the end of the discussion. She passed the weapon to Sandy.
He placed it on the rack inside the door, then retrieved her rifle. He sniffed the barrel. “Stephanie Kay, this long gun has been fired.”
Stevie refused to meet Sandy’s probing gaze. Thinking of the handsome gunman, his devastating kiss, and the feel of being held in his strong arms, her heart accelerated and her mouth grew dry. “I stumbled across a snake.”
Her father didn’t believe a word of it. “Stevie?” He invited her to try again.
She pecked him on the cheek, put the rifle away, then headed for the kitchen. “I’d love to stand around and jaw with you, Pa, but I’ve gotta fix supper.”
“Halt!”
Stevie paused in mid-stride, surprise sculpting her lovely face. “Yes, sir?”
Sandy had sounded so dictatorial. It was a tone he rarely used with Stevie since she usually had him wrapped comfortably around her little finger. He grinned at the shock on her face. “Whenever you offer to cook, I get nervous.”
She relaxed. “Pepper’s gout is giving him trouble.”
Sandy snorted; Stevie’s excuse didn’t hold water. They both knew that Pepper had complained of gout since God was a child. Gout, or a myriad of other ailments, not surprising since the old codger was born back when the earth was still cooling. “What are you trying to hide?” he probed.
“Nothing. I’m hungry and I don’t feel like listening to Pepper grumble. And I sure don’t feel like eating your cooking.” She tried to look affronted, with a measure of innocence thrown in. “He managed to fix son-of-a-bitch stew. All I gotta do is cook the sourdoughs.”
Sandy shrugged. “Okay. Far be it from me to stem your domestic urges. They come so rarely.”
She narrowed her eyes, warning him that he was treading on dangerous ground again.
“Don’t frown, kitten. It’ll wrinkle that beautiful face.”
“You’re hopeless.” The love she felt for him was evident in her soft reproof.
“I’m taking a ride out to the cave.” Sandy buckled on his gun. “I won’t be long.”
Stevie’s smile disappeared. She rushed to the door, grabbing her father by the arm. “Wait. I’ll come with you.”
“You’ve gotta fix supper, remember?” he teased good-naturedly. Stevie started to argue, but her father was having none of it. He stroked her cheek, the tip of his callused finger rasping against the satiny texture of her skin. “I’ll be right back, hon. You’re such a worrywart.”
“I come by it honest.”
“Daddies are entitled to worry.” He patted her hand where it lay on his arm, then pushed through the screen door. “Try not to burn the biscuits,” he called over his shoulder.
Stevie leaned a slender shoulder against the doorjamb and watched her father until he topped the brow of the hill and disappeared from sight. She turned back toward the kitchen, smiling faintly. “Try not to burn the biscuits, my fanny.”
She had taken no more than two steps, when she heard a gun shot ring out. The second blast was drowned out by her scream.
As he rode toward Adobe Wells, Heath allowed his thoughts to wander idly. Now that the stimulating hellion was absent, fatigue claimed him again, stronger than before. Frankly, he’d found the girl exhausting in a pleasant way.
In his mind’s eye he pictured the land before him with buffalo freely roaming the plains, much as they had before the great shaggy beasts had been slaughtered by profiteers for the gold their coats would bring on the northeastern market. But tragically, the buffalo wasn’t the only species in danger of extinction in the American West. Indians were killed for sport in this untamed land, just like the animals upon which they depended for their existence.
The thought of shooting human beings for no reason at all save the accident of their birth made Heath’s blood run cold. He tightened his grip on the reins and stiffened in the saddle, lifting his eyes toward the horizon.
The haunting beauty of the Plains Indians’ ancestral home soothed him. He could almost feel their spirit surrounding him; he was humbled by the sensation.
When the Justice Department had approached Jay and him about being special agents to see that justice was dispensed in the West, they assured them there would be equal justice for all, Indian and white. That was the only reason the twosome had accepted the job.
But the assurance was a lie. Despite the intervention of men like Jay’s brother-in-law, Chase Tarleton, the Comanches had been rounded up and herded onto a reservation in Oklahoma. Just like Chase’s Cherokee family had been herded up and marched from Georgia to the wilds of Oklahoma Territory, along the infamous Trail of Tears.
Heath had an appreciation of the Indian that went beyond lip service. He truly ached for their dismal plight. But optimistic by nature, he pushed the painful thoughts aside and considered the black-eyed beauty with hair the color of a palomino, the brazen angel he’d met on Mustang Mesa.
Granted, she was beautiful. She gave rise to feelings that weren’t totally physical in nature, however. He was inexplicably drawn to her.
And there was something familiar about her, as if he had known her before. During their few moments together—despite the combative nature of the encounter—he hadn’t felt as if they were meeting for the first time. It was more like they were becoming reacquainted, worse, that he had been searching for her all his life. It was almost enough to make a skeptical man believe in fate. Almost.
He felt unaccountably restless, inordinately lonely, ever since he’d visited his family in New York. His two brothers, Chap and Rad, were happily married. Their older sister, Emily, was widowed. His youngest sister, Ann, remained unwed, though at last account she was engaged. So that left him as the only Turner progeny who had never experienced true love, the only sibling who had never pledged himself exclusively to another.
He would never admit it aloud, but there were times lately when he wanted someone special to love so badly, his gut ached. Not just someone to share his body with, but someone to entrust with his heart, his hopes, his dreams, his future.
A man could easily find physical release. All he had to do was locate the nearest honkytonk, drop a few coins, and lie between the plump thighs of the woman of his choice. But these biological encounters—as he and Jay labeled them—often left him more frustrated than satisfied.
But the angel of Mustang Mesa’s shy, inexperienced response to his kiss held more satisfaction than a promised night of debauchery with the highest paid whore the Wild West had to offer.
As the vision of her face grew more vivid, his strange yearning for her expanded. Just as quickly it vanished, snatched by a gun shot splitting the heavy afternoon air. The shot came from beyond the next rise. Heath kicked his horse into a gallop as another shot rang out.
His heart pounded against his ribs. Surely his feisty shootist was not firing at another unwary passerby. Worse yet, was someone firing at her?
He palmed his gun and thundered over the hill. Relief and dread filled him in equal measures when he saw that the victim was not the girl but a tired-looking old man, lying unconscious beside a mesquite bush, all alone, his head cradled in a spreading pool of his own blood.
Heath cast a quick glance around. The man’s assailant was nowhere in sight. He pulled rein and slid out of the saddle before Warrior had fully stopped. Still holding his gun, he approached the injured man.
Stevie shrieked as she topped the rise, “Get away from him, you rotten bastard.” Falling down at her father’s side, she pulled his head into her lap. He was unnaturally pale, frighteningly still.
“Oh, Pa,” she cried softly, holding him, rocking him. There was so much blood. She wondered if anyone could lose so much blood and live.
“Why?” She raised stricken eyes to Heath. “Why did you have to shoot him? Why couldn’t you just leave us alone? Why can’t you all just le
ave us alone?”
The strain of the past several months and the thought of losing her pa overwhelmed her. She buried her face in Sandy’s hair and clutched him protectively to her chest. If she lost him, she and Winter, her child, would have no one left, no one at all.
Heath cursed beneath his breath, disturbed by the girl’s distress. She looked so helpless, kneeling at his feet. Somehow he knew that moments of weakness were few and far between for this girl. He hated seeing her beaten, subdued. Idiot that he was, he would rather have her taking shots at him.
“Pia, mother.” A shrill voice drew Heath’s attention. Riding up to them, his face taut with fear, an Indian child slid from a painted pony. “Grandfather Sandy, he is dead?” Winter asked in Comanche.
“No,” Heath answered for Stevie. “But if we don’t get him to a doctor, he soon will be.”
In her distress, Stevie failed to notice that Heath understood Comanche. She raised tear-filled eyes to him. “Are you sure he’s not dead?”
He nodded. “Just stunned.”
Stevie closed her eyes, whispering a prayer of thanksgiving to her father’s Christian God and to the Great Spirit of the Comanches. She tilted her chin up and wiped her eyes on her shirtsleeve.
Heath chose to ignore the accusation in their moist depths. “Do you have a wagon?” he asked quietly.
“Yes, sir,” Winter offered.
Heath took the six-year-old child’s measure. He looked quite capable, and he could certainly ride a horse well. “Good. Go get it, son.” As an afterthought he added, “Is there someone to help you with the harness?”
“Pepper will help,” Winter said, looking to Stevie for instruction. When she gave him leave, he jumped on his horse and made for the ranch.
Hesitantly, Heath knelt on the grass, reaching forward to check Sandy’s head wound. Stevie scooted backward, attempting to pull her father away from Heath.
“Let me check him, dammit,” Heath ordered, perturbed by her mistrust. Fighting for composure, he balled his fists and rested them on bent thighs. “I just want to make sure the bleeding has stopped.”
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