Apache-Colton Series

by Janis Reams Hudson

  “Not until he answers my question. I don’t trust him.”

  “You don’t have to trust him.” Daniella tugged on one set of reins to turn the horses onto the road heading east out of town. “But put the gun away. We can use him.”

  Use him. Yes. The way he had used them. Jessie put her gun away. But not her caution. She would watch every move he made. If he tried to force them to go back, she would shoot the son of a bitch right between his lying eyes.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “She’s not going alone,” Blake stated flatly.

  “Of course I am.” Jessie stepped from behind the thick screen of cedar and scrub that had concealed her while she changed from the stolen uniform into her skirt and blouse. “Believe it or not, I’ve been able to ride horseback without anyone to hold me upright in the saddle for quite a number of years.

  “Dammit, Jessie—”

  “Don’t ’dammit Jessie’ me.” With blazing eyes and flushed cheeks, she tried to step around him, but he kept blocking her path. “Get out of my way. I told you before, we don’t need you. I don’t need you, and I damn well don’t trust you.”

  Daniella and Serena shared an incredulous look. Jessie, swearing? Jessie never swore.

  He narrowed his eyes. “That’s too bad, because I’m going with you.”

  The argument had been going on since they had pulled into the clearing at sunup. They had been traveling only at night to keep out of sight as much as possible. They chose well-travelled roads so as not to leave tracks, but with the rising of the sun, they pulled off into as deep a cover as they could find.

  This time they were a half mile from the road, behind a low hill, less than a half-day shy of Fredricksburg. The route, so far off the trail to Arizona, would hopefully throw off any pursuit.

  Daniella had announced that they needed to get to a town and send a telegram to Travis, letting him know what had happened. Daniella and Serena, with streaks of white in their hair, would be entirely too recognizable. Once seen, they weren’t easily forgotten.

  Jessie, on the other hand, was different. As she had pointed out, there was nothing unusual to mark her appearance.

  Blake had snorted. Had she looked in a mirror lately? Who could look into those vivid gray eyes, see the way the sun glinted off her honey-gold hair, watch those tender lips form a teasing pout, and ever forget her? But he knew better than to say such a thing. She would have spit in his face. Had been all but doing just that since he’d caught up with them two nights ago on the outskirts of San Antonio.

  “I’ll just come along for the ride,” he told her now.

  Jessie saw the relieved look on her mother’s face and swallowed further protest. Her mother was, as were they all, too worried still about Pace to deal with any more stress just then. Pace had yet to regain consciousness. His breathing and pulse were regular and strong, and his color was almost normal. But he lay so still it was frightening.

  And his hair. Sometime during that first stormy night on the road, Pace’s once black hair had become threaded throughout with white.

  Daniella had cried.

  Serena had paled, then had grown calm. “It’s a sign, Mother. He’s going to live. He’s going to be fine.”

  Daniella did her best to hide her fear, but Jessie knew she spent most of her waking hours in silent prayer. Jessie couldn’t bring herself to add to her mother’s worries.

  She pushed past Blake. “Just don’t slow me down, Captain.”

  He didn’t, but he had to work at it. It was hard to keep his mind on the trail when Jessie rode only a few feet away. Maybe if she weren’t riding astride in a skirt, with half her legs hanging out bare for him to ogle, he would have been able to keep his eyes off her.

  Nah, he admitted. She could have been trussed up head to toe in a flour sack and he would have relished the sight of her. For all the good it did him. When she wasn’t practically spitting at him, she was looking through him as though he didn’t exist. And he’d damn sure had enough of it.

  “How long you gonna keep this up?” he asked.

  “Keep what up?”

  “My punishment, if that’s what it is.”

  “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Blake shook his head. “I wish I had your strength, Jessie.”

  His words startled her. “What are you talking about?”

  “I wish I could just forget the night we spent together, the way you obviously have. I guess I was only kidding myself to think it meant something to you.”

  Jessie sputtered with sheer fury. “Meant something to me?” She drew her horse to a stop. “I trusted you. I gave you everything I had. My innocence…my love. All you gave me was lies.”

  Blake reined in beside her. “When did I lie?”

  “You said your orders had nothing to do with Pace.”

  Blake frowned. “Okay, so when else?”

  “When else? That isn’t enough?”

  “No, dammit, it’s not. I’m sorry I lied, but I did it to protect you.”

  “You did it to keep me from trying to help Pace.”

  Blake clenched his jaw. “If I’d wanted to keep you from helping your brother I would have told General Stanley the three of you were going to break him out. If he’d even believed anything so preposterous, he would have laid a trap and had you and your mother and your sister arrested.”

  “Then what were you doing at the fort that night? I know as well as you do those orders you have don’t mean what they say. General Stanley was right, wasn’t he? You were supposed to see that Pace made it to prison with the others.” Jessie paused. “So why didn’t you?” she asked quietly.

  Blake shook his head again. “Might as well be hanged for a lion as a lamb.” He took a deep breath. “You’re right about what those orders meant. But I was using them only as an excuse to—”

  “To get close to Geronimo, so you could kill him.”

  “For an otherwise intelligent woman—”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means, I used my orders about Pace to stay close to you,” he bit out. “Geronimo was separate. And when I did go after him, I went first to free Pace.”

  “Sure you did. If Pace had been safe and snug in a cell instead of chained to that tree, you would have left him there to rot, and you know it.”

  “I don’t know anything of the kind, and neither do you. What the hell do you think I was doing with an extra horse and provisions for two?”

  Jessie felt a skip in her heartbeat. “The extra horse…was for Pace?”

  “That’s right. I was willing to risk a court martial, to go against the direct orders of a superior officer, to get him out.”

  “But…why?”

  “Don’t you know, Jessie?” He looked into her troubled gray eyes and saw that she didn’t. “Because he’s your brother, and you say he’s innocent and…because I’m in love with you.”

  His sweet, sweet words poured through Jessie like warm honey, a soothing balm to her wounded heart. But it was too late, she reminded herself.

  Or was it?

  She couldn’t think straight while meeting his dark, brooding gaze. How could any woman think straight under such circumstances? She tore her gaze from his and urged her mount forward.

  Blake watched her go. It hurt, the way she ignored his declaration. Hell, he’d never told a woman he loved her before. Never even thought of it. Now he knew why. It was like asking to be kicked in the teeth—only a fool would do it.

  He kicked his horse to catch up with her.

  “You went to the fort that night to kill Geronimo. Because he killed your mother?”

  “I had other excuses, but that was the reason.”

  “You had the perfect chance. Why didn’t you do it?”

  “I’m sure I’ll be asking myself that question the rest of my life.”

  They said nothing more to each other the rest of the way into town.

  Travis Colton bit back a cur
se and tugged at the stiff collar that choked him. The collar was only one of a myriad of things frustrating him this day. He didn’t belong here. Not in Washington, D.C., not in the White House, which he’d just left, and not in this elegant hotel. The lobby he strode across was so damned fancy it made him nervous.

  And the men he’d met with this afternoon—President Cleveland, Secretary of the Interior Lamar, and the Acting Secretary of War, R.C. Drum—well, all three of the jackasses had done nothing but jerk him around for weeks. Today he’d actually made progress, sort of. They had finally agreed to send the Apache prisoners on to Florida. This, after repeated reports of rumors of a massacre being planned at Fort Sam Houston.

  At least in Florida, Under Lieutenant Colonel Langdon, the prisoners would be safe. And Florida was a damn site better destination than what Cleveland had wanted. He’d wanted to send them back to Arizona and turn them over to civil authorities to stand trial. Travis had caustically remarked that they might as well hang them where they were and save the tax payers the money. The outcome would be the same. The outcome was always the same when the U.S. Government dealt with Indians: dead Indians.

  Cleveland had finally given in and ordered the Apaches be sent to Florida. One step forward.

  He had not given in to Travis’s demands that Pace be released. One step back.

  Damn that cold-blooded bastard.

  Travis stopped at the front desk. “Anything for me?”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Colton. A telegram came just a few minutes ago.”

  Travis lowered his gaze so no one could read the fierce hope that flared in his eyes. With the telegram gripped firmly in his suddenly damp hand, he went straight to his room on the fourth floor. His hands shook as he opened the message.

  Then his heart froze.

  “Daddy, stop. We took him, stop. Jessie, stop.”

  His wife and daughters had just broken his son out of prison.

  God help them all.

  While Blake rode beside the team in the darkness, on the lookout for trouble, the women took turns riding in the wagon bed with Pace. Last night had been Daniella’s turn. All night long she’d spoken softly to her son, stroking his face, begging him to wake up.

  Tonight it was Serena’s turn. For long hours she sat silently at Pace’s side. Blake had the oddest feeling she was trying to reach her brother with her mind.

  “Rena?” Jessie asked quietly when they stopped to rest the horses shortly after midnight.

  Serena merely shook her head.

  “You can’t…reach him?”

  Serena placed her hand over Pace’s heart. “He’s not…there.”

  Daniella moaned a wordless protest.

  “I don’t mean he’s dead, Mother,” Serena said quickly. “It’s like he’s…lost. Or…searching.” She shook her head, frustrated. “I don’t know. But he’ll be back,” she added fiercely. “He’ll be back.”

  When they urged the team forward again, Serena began to chant. Blake felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise. Her words were low and foreign. Primitive. Mysterious. Apache.

  But there was a magic in them that called to something deep inside Blake. And appalled him. It was only curiosity. He’d hated Apaches all his life, and now here he rode beside two he didn’t hate, and one was chanting. Sure, he was curious. Who wouldn’t be? Certainly nothing in the primitive utterings called to someplace deep inside him. Of course not. He’d only imagined the pull of the magic.

  He never even realized when he nudged his horse closer to the wagon, the chanting luring him in.

  Old man? Wake up, old man.

  On a high plateau deep in the Sierra Madres, the ancient shaman woke slowly. A voice, Dee-O-Det thought. A voice had called him from sleep. “Who speaks to me in the dark of night?”

  It’s me, Dee-O-Det, Fire Seeker.

  “What do you here, Son of Magic? Why do you speak to me on the wind of night?”

  I cannot find it. The way into yálátakuughazhi.

  Dee-O-Det found it not at all odd to hear the voice of one not there. He’d seen more than eighty-five winters in his life. Stranger things than a friendly voice had come to him on the wind. “Why seek you a place among the spirits of your ancestors?” he asked quietly. “It is not your time.”

  But the lightning…

  “Bah. You wake me from pleasant dreams of my long lost wife to speak of lightning? You have known all your life that it would come one day to mark you. Do not tell me the son of Woman of Magic fears the arrows from the Thunder People. They are puny things compared with your magic.”

  Old man, have you forgotten my boyhood vision?

  “No. Have you?”

  I saw fire. To dream of fire means to die young.

  “And do you feel young, Fire Seeker?”

  No, my shaman. I feel old.

  “There is your answer, then. Your vision of fire means something else. Your white blood has changed the meaning of the symbol. The fire you seek will not mean your death. Do not search for That Place Where the Cottonwoods Stand in Line. You cannot enter yet. There are things you must do. You must help our people. You must help those who do not know their own hearts, who do not know who they are.

  I don’t understand, old man.

  “You will, my son. Now go back. It is not your time.”

  You are certain?

  The old man cocked his head. “Your sister chants for you. Your mother weeps tears of magic. Do you hear them?”

  I…I don’t know.

  “Listen. They are calling to you, my son. Go with them and let an old man return to his dreams.”

  An hour before dawn, Rena gave up on chanting. “I don’t think he’s listening.”

  The despair in her voice nearly crushed Jessie. She had watched and listened to both of them, her mother and Rena, hour after hour, night after night, yet still Pace lay unconscious. Her nerves screamed in protest. He had to wake up soon. Her mother simply couldn’t take much more. Neither could Rena.

  Neither could Jessie.

  Neither could Blake. He was glad the chanting had stopped. Yet now he could feel new despair in the air.

  To Daniella, Pace was her firstborn child. Her pride and joy. For him she felt a mother’s deepest love. Blake wondered what it was like to be loved so unconditionally. He ached with the wondering.

  To Serena, Blake had come to learn that Pace was part of her soul. The two had apparently shared a bond so close and tight throughout their lives that they didn’t even need words to communicate. She felt a hole deep inside herself that only her twin brother could fill. Blake saw it in her eyes, heard it in her voice.

  The aching envy in him grew deeper.

  Now it was Jessie’s turn to sit with Pace. Listening to her night after night, Blake had come to learn that her relationship with Pace was different from her mother’s and sister’s. To her, Pace had always been a hero. She’d looked up to him, sought his advice, tagged along behind him. She worshipped him as only a younger sister could worship an older brother.

  Blake felt her pain and fear as if it were his own.

  And he felt his own brand of pain. That envy again. Only this time it wasn’t a man’s need for a family’s love.

  That need was there, to be sure. He couldn’t help but yearn, when he saw the closeness these women shared. Heard them speak with love and affection of every member of their tightly knit family. One of them—Pace—had needed them. And they’d come. From Chicago, from Washington, D.C., from Arizona. They’d come.

  They were like a close pride of fierce lions, helping, fighting for, protecting a valued member of the pride.

  What did it feel like, Blake wondered, to belong to something so solid?

  But when he saw Jessie tending her brother, it brought a different kind of pain, deeper than a man’s longing for mother or sister, stronger, more painful. It was a man’s need to be the center of a woman’s life. One particular woman.

  What he wouldn’t give to know that Jessie cared even half a
s much for him as she did any member of her family.

  With frustration born of fear, Jessie lashed out. “How much longer are you going to keep this up, damn you?”

  “Jessie!” Daniella cried from the wagon seat.

  Jessie ignored her. “Look at you,” she said to her unconscious brother. “Lying there like some great fallen tree. And not nearly as much use as one, either.”

  Shocked by Jessie’s behavior, Daniella let Serena slip the traces from her hands. Jessie, her calm, steadfast Jessie, never raised her voice. But then Jessie never swore, either. Until she met Blake Renard and had her emotions stirred beyond her control.

  That’s what this was with Pace, Daniella knew. A little girl’s hero had fallen, and she was scared and angry. Life had always been made to order for Jessie. She’d never known hardship or adversity, never lived under the threat of unusual danger.

  Now, because of whatever there was between her and Blake, and because of what had happened to Pace, Jessie was, for the first time in her eighteen years, having to deal with life, and things weren’t going her way.

  Jessie was finally learning to feel. Daniella just wished that pain wasn’t what she was learning.

  In the wagon bed, Jessie carried on with her harangue of Pace. “In case you haven’t figured it out, I’m mad at you, big brother. That big ol’ house hasn’t been the same since you left, you know. And there was no reason for you to leave. No real reason, anyway. And I’d sure as hell like to know what you did to General Miles this time to make him so mad. But what I really want is for you to—wake—up. You’re scaring me, and you’re scaring Rena. If that’s not bad enough, you’re scaring Mama, and I won’t have it, do you hear?”

  Jessie’s voice broke. She doubled up her fist and whacked the floor of the wagon. “Damn you, Pace Colton, wake up, I said, or so help me I’ll shove your ass right out on the road!”

  “Watch your language, little girl.”

  The voice was faint and rusty and deep, and oh, so dear. For a long moment Jessie feared she’d only imagined it. Then he moved. For the first time since the lightning struck, he actually moved on his own. Jessie scrambled to her knees. “Pace?”