The knowing came to him. He tried to deny it, but when he cut right to escape the men at the side canyon, more riders poured out of the trees ahead, cutting him off. Just as he’d known they would.
“Shit.” They were being herded like sheep to the slaughter. The only avenue open was across the canyon floor, and true to his silent prediction, more riders appeared and forced him into a small box canyon. A small, blind box canyon.
Pace urged the buckskin faster and raced the length of the rocky trap toward the group of barn-sized boulders on the rise at the far end.
When he saw the narrow gravel trail sloping up the back wall, he breathed a prayer of thanks. Not a blind trap after all. The lower portion of the escape route was shielded by juniper and boulders. The last fifty yards before the trail disappeared over the top and out onto the mesa was exposed, but if they were very, very lucky, and very, very fast, they might just make it.
He kicked the buckskin again, demanding all the animal had, and the buckskin gave it. Chunks of dirt and gravel flew from beneath the horse’s hooves as he stretched his neck, flattened his ears, and ran like his tail was on fire.
“They’re right behind us,” Jo cried.
Ahead, a three-foot-wide crevice split the ground, cutting diagonally across the small canyon. There was no way around it. “Hang on, Jo!” Pace leaned forward and braced himself for the jump.
The buckskin took the leap without a blink, but the opposite side was slick rock covered with a thin layer of sand. The horse skidded and went down on his forelegs.
Joanna cried out and dug her fingers into Pace’s stomach. One-handed, because he still held his rifle in the other, Pace hauled up on the reins with all his might. The muscles in his arm and shoulder bunched, hardened, screamed with pain, but finally, slowly, the buckskin struggled to his feet, shook off the fall, and hit his stride in less than a dozen yards.
But the pause had been enough to let the pursuers gain on them. When the horse scrambled up the rise at the far end and headed for the trail up the back wall, a hail of bullets whizzed past and pinged against the surrounding rocks.
They weren’t going to make it. It was too far. Too damn far! Alone, Pace wouldn’t have hesitated. He would have taken his chances and bet the devil himself that he could make it. But to expose Jo that way, to have her shielding his back with her body while bullets flew…
Another round of fire from four rifles peppered the area. Joanna flinched and cried out. She’s hit! Joanna!
Cursing, seeing their chance slip away, Pace jerked hard left on the reins and raced away from the escape route and toward the dubious cover of the boulders scattered along the rise. He could not take that trail with Jo shielding his back. She would be killed long before they reached the bend. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind.
The scattered boulders surrounded three sides of a lightning-struck piñon, providing protection from all sides but the rear. With apologies to the horse for bruising his mouth yet again, Pace hauled on the reins until the buckskin skidded to a halt on his haunches beside the dead tree.
Pace threw himself from the saddle and turned to check on Jo.
“I’m all right,” she managed breathlessly. “It’s only a scratch.”
Pace would have argued, but he could she was right. A bullet had torn through her upper sleeve and left a small burn mark where it had slid across her skin without breaking it. “Thank God,” he muttered.
He left her there and scrambled to a notch between two boulders, swinging his rifle up to fire. There was no need to fire. What he saw before him chilled his blood like nothing he’d ever known. A hundred yards away, strung out across the width of the canyon with less than thirty feet between them, more than a dozen hard-eyed Mexican cutthroats sat their mounts. Behind them, riding slowly through the canyon entrance like a king crossing the drawbridge into his own castle, came El Carnicero himself, Don Rodrigo Francisco Alfredo Martinez Juerta.
What were they waiting for? All the bastards had to do was rush the rocks.
Joanna!
“I’m here,” came her breathless whisper as she scrambled up to join him on the rocky ledge where he stood. “Oh my God.”
“That’ll do for starters,” Pace said grimly. “If you know any more prayers, you better get at them, Firefly. I’ve been in some tight spots before, but—”
The look in her eyes cut off his words. The pain in those green depths took his breath away.
“We’re going to die, aren’t we?” she whispered.
“No,” he protested harshly. He didn’t know by what miracle he could prevent both of them from being killed right there in those godforsaken rocks, but there had to be a way. There had to be!
Pace squeezed his eyes shut to block out the sight of his own mortality in her eyes. The first thing he saw when he opened his eyes was that tantalizing trail to freedom just beyond their reach.
From out in the small canyon, a deep voice boomed. “Send out the girl, half-breed, and we let you go free!”
Joanna stiffened and clutched Pace’s arm. “Juerta!”
“¡Uno momento, por favor!” Pace called back. “Give us a minute! We’re talking it over!”
The deep voice laughed. “Diez minutos, half-breed! She not out here in ten minutes, we come and get her, and you die!”
It seemed impossible that Joanna’s face could turn even more pale, but at Juerta’s words, it did. Pace had to look away again, for the pain and despair in her eyes numbed his mind, and he needed to think. Think, dammit!
He stared at the exposed trail until his eyes burned, until his chest hurt…until the answer came to him.
He could have wished for something better, but this was all they had. There was no other choice.
His decision made, a deadly calmness settled through him, and he looked up at the clear blue sky.
Yes, he thought with an odd sense of detachment, it is a good day to die.
“The trail up the back wall leads to a pine-studded mesa,” he told Joanna. “The mesa ends in a sheer drop. You’ll have to ride—”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“—ten miles south to get down into the next valley. Are you listening?”
With eyes wary, face ashen, Joanna nodded.
“Once you’re off the mesa you’ll have to jump a deep crevice, but you can do it if you do it right where you come down. Don’t ride north before jumping—the crevice gets too wide the farther north you ride. Then you’ll have to cross a river, and there’s a town, Basaranca. Stay away from the town. On the far side of the valley, just southwest of the town, you’ll see a narrow strip of lava coming down out of the mountains. Beside it is a scree slope. It’s hard going, but the buckskin can make it. Guards will meet you at the top.”
“Guards? What guards?”
“Apaches, guarding the trail to Pa-Gotzin-Kay. You’ll find help there. They can get you home.”
“You’re talking like you aren’t planning on being with me. If you think I’m leaving you here—”
“Listen to me!” He nearly shouted, grabbing her arms, forcing her to look at him. “There’s no other way. Get on the horse, and when you hear my signal, ride like hell up that trail and don’t look back.”
“And leave you here? Pace—”
“One of us has got to stay here and lay down cover fire, or we’ll both die in this miserable hole in the rocks.”
“We can wait until dark.”
“Maybe you didn’t get a good enough look on the other side of these boulders, or maybe you weren’t listening to that bastard. He’s not going to wait until dark. I’ll be damned good and surprised if he waits the ten minutes he gave us. They could rush us any minute, and then it will be too late.”
“I’m staying, Pace. Two guns will double our chances.”
Pace squeezed her arms again. “You can’t stay.”
“I can’t leave,” she said quietly.
Pace closed his eyes. It was time for the truth, the truth tha
t had washed over him yesterday when he’d spilled his seed into her fertile depths.
“Joanna.”
Joanna shivered. He almost never called her that.
“Do you understand about the knowing? My gift?”
“That you know things? Yes, but—”
“When the knowing comes to me, it is never wrong. Do you understand that?”
“I understand it, Pace. What are you trying to tell me?”
“You have to leave this place, Firefly, you have to escape, because yesterday…” Pace’s voice broke. He placed a trembling hand over her abdomen and looked deeply into her eyes. “Yesterday, on a bed of straw in a deserted barn, I gave you my son.”
Chapter Eleven
Joanna sat in the saddle and watched Pace shorten the stirrups to accommodate her. There was a fly on Pace’s shoulder. It braced itself on back legs and rubbed its two front legs together. Joanna wondered if Pace could feel those little fly feet on his skin.
So much skin. He had stripped himself of everything he wouldn’t need—pants, shirt, boots. Her mind didn’t seem to want to work, and she couldn’t seem to make herself care. There was nothing inside her now, nothing but soul-deep agony, and an unborn child she would die—or even worse, live—to protect.
She would live. Pace would die. She read the knowledge in his eyes and felt it rise up into her throat. He was sacrificing himself to give her and their unborn son the chance to escape. Was she supposed to care if she lived or died? Was she?
In the back of her mind, a voice screamed at her, telling her that she had to care, had to live, or Pace’s sacrifice would be for nothing. But the voice sounded muffled.
She reached out to brush the fly from his bronze shoulder, but her arm felt as though it weighed a hundred pounds. Her heart weighed even more.
When Pace straightened and looked at her, her sluggish brain began to function, and the pain inside her threatened to erupt from her throat in a wild scream of torment.
He was going to fight the old way. Joanna had heard the stories, and now she saw them being put into practice. He wore his knee-high moccasins, a loin cloth, a gun belt holding his holster and knife, and the small leather medicine bag that hung from his neck by a narrow rawhide thong. He had even removed his wrist bands and the bandanna he usually wore to keep his long hair out of his face.
The old stories told of warriors facing impossible odds who stripped down to nearly nothing, so nothing would get in their way. Their long, loose hair was used as an invitation. In close combat, an opponent could grab hair that hung long and loose. An Apache who believed he had nothing to lose would use it as a taunt, daring the enemy to try to get close enough to grab it.
Sometimes, with nothing left to lose, the warrior fought so hard and so ferociously that he won free and escaped.
Joanna prayed that this would be one of those times, but the look in Pace’s eyes gave her little hope.
“Keep your gun in your hand going up the trail,” Pace told her grimly. “They might have a man up on the mesa. Don’t let him get a shot at you.”
Joanna swallowed and nodded. If she could hold herself together long enough, if she could make Pace believe he didn’t have to worry about her, maybe he would be able to concentrate that much harder, be that small bit quicker, enough to make the difference between life and death.
Please, God, protect him.
Pace slipped his medicine pouch off over his head and put it on Jo.
“No!” she protested.
“Yes!” He held her hands to keep her from pulling it off. “I don’t need it, Jo. I live, or I die, with or without this.”
“Then keep it,” she begged. She did not know what was in the pouch, she only knew that from her earliest memory, it had never been from around his neck. The thought of him without it terrified her.
“You must wear it,” he told her. “This will tell everyone who matters that we are one flesh, one spirit. When they see this around your neck, they will know that everything I have is yours.”
“Pace…”
Pace clenched his jaw. The ache in her voice and the raw torment in her eyes threatened to destroy him, but there was more that must be said. He placed his hand on her flat, firm stomach. “Tell my son…” Emotion clogged his throat, and he had to stop and swallow.
Joanna cried out in protest and covered his hand with both of hers as if to hold him there and never let him go.
He began again. “Tell our son the story of how fast, how hard, his father fell in love with his mother. Tell him…how very much I love you both. More than the breath that gives me life, more than life itself. Tell him…”
“I will tell your son of his father.” Joanna’s voice was strong at first, then faltered. “I will sing to him of his father’s love, his father’s courage, his father’s…Oh God, Pace! I can’t do this!”
“You can. You must! For me and for our son, you must. He is my only chance to live, and you are his. Do this, Joanna. Live!” Pace grabbed her by the back of her neck and dragged her head down to his. He kissed her fiercely, pouring everything he had, everything he was, into her, while his mind screamed that time was running out.
He tore his mouth from hers and stepped back out of her reach. “Wait for my signal, then ride like the devil himself is after you, because if I can’t hold them off, he might very well be. If there’s any way—” He stopped and shook his head. He could not give her false hope. He dared not.
“Any way to what?” she cried.
Her despair weakened him. “If there’s any way I can follow you after dark, I will.”
As Joanna filled her eyes with him for the last time before turning the horse toward the trail to await his signal, her heart cracked wide and her vision blurred. “I love you, Pace Colton. I love you!”
Pace’s own vision was none too clear as he drank in the sight of her for the final time. God, she was so beautiful with her pale skin and green eyes and that glorious tumble of hair. He’d been right when he’d realized she was his destiny. He was destined to die for her. If his death meant her safety and that of their son…so be it.
“I love you too, Joanna Colton. Go with God, Firefly.”
He turned abruptly away, unable to bear the look in her eyes a moment longer. He scrambled back up to the ledge upon which he had stood earlier. One last time, he turned to face her.
She blew him a kiss.
From somewhere deep inside of him came the knowing. He was doing the right thing, the only thing. Because of this, she would be safe. She would live to bring his son into the world. She would live to raise his son to manhood. The knowledge in his heart was sure and certain. And the knowledge was never wrong.
Peace came to him then. He looked up at the sky and thought again, Yes, it is a good day to die.
With one final look, he gave Joanna a nod and a smile, then signaled her to go. He waited until she was nearly out in the open, then turned to meet his fate.
Behind him he heard the buckskin’s hooves as the horse picked up speed. Pace counted, one, two, three. Letting out a shrill Apache war cry, he leaped to the top of the boulder and opened fire. The men below had no cover. Nothing stood between Pace and them but another dead pinyon. So stunned were they that Pace picked off three—the ones in the best position to go after Jo—before any of the others managed to return his fire.
From the canyon entrance, where Pace had last seen Juerta, came a deep cry of rage. Then the men returned Pace’s fire with a vengeance.
Their first three shots missed, but the fourth staggered him as the bullet ripped through his right shoulder. He kept firing.
Instinct told him to duck to avoid getting cut to pieces by the hail of bullets aimed at him. Discipline, grim determination, and a prayer for strength kept him standing. Where he stood on the boulder, he blocked any clear shot at Joanna as she thundered up the exposed part of the trail at his back. If he dove for cover there would be nothing between her and Juerta’s men but bullets.
&n
bsp; One rider tried to make it around the rocks toward the back trail. He died before he hit the ground.
A burning pain exploded in Pace’s side as a second bullet ripped through him.
How long? Had she had time to make it? Was she safe? Would she stay safe, or would they catch her after killing him?
Prayers mingled with curses as he struggled to return fire and remain standing. Sweat poured into his eyes, blinding him.
From below came the voice of El Carnicero again. “You’re a dead man, half-breed!”
Pace laughed grimly. “Fuck you!” he shouted back as he fired. His aim was off. He only grazed the bastard.
Something tugged on Pace’s leg. He took a second to glance down, and cursed at the blood gushing from a hole in his thigh. He got off two more shots before the leg went numb and refused to hold him. As if floating on a cloud, he fell backward off the boulder. The ground rushed up and struck him in the back, knocking his breath away.
Oddly, he was still conscious. In the eerie silence that followed, an eagle cried. Pace closed his eyes as sudden waves of burning pain engulfed him.
Another shot rang out, this one from a pistol. From up on the mesa.
Joanna!
He waited, praying to every deity, every saint, by every name he knew. He prayed to the Christian God and to the Apache Yúúsń, who he knew to be one and the same. But why take chances? What if the Apaches were the only ones to know His real name? He prayed to Jesus, to Child of the Water, to Killer of Enemies. He called on Holy Mary, the Mother of God, and on White Painted Woman. Help her! cried his soul as agony devoured his flesh. Save her!
And then, above the quiet whisper of wind through the dead branches of the juniper, above the thunder of blood pounding in his ears, he heard a woman’s voice call out a shrill Apache cry of victory.
Joanna! Thank God, thank God!
When Pace opened his eyes, at least five firearms of various vintages were aimed straight at his heart.
She’d killed her second man. Maybe later the reality would sink in and she would be sickened, but there was no time now to think about anything but escape. Her victory cry was meant to reassure Pace that she was still safe. Joanna prayed that he had heard.
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