Judith E French (14 page)

“The pistol. Toss it.”

White hot fury boiled in his gut. “Damn you—”

She fired a second time, sending gravel flying from a spot beside his left boot. “No more warnings, Ash. Next time, I shoot you. I’ll start with your knee.”

Still cursing, he flung the pistol into the water.

“Good. You follow it. Take off your boots and wade into the water.”

“You’d better kill me. I’ll hunt you down for this,” he swore.

“Move.” She picked up his rifle.

War-et growled and moved to Tamsin’s feet.

Ash’s chest felt constricted; his breathing came in deep shuddering gasps. His skin stretched taut across his temple, and his head pounded. It took every ounce of his will to keep from rushing her, ripping that Colt out of her hands, and strangling her. How could he have been so damned stupid?

The cold water rose to his waist, shocking him, making his thinking clear and precise.

“I’m sorry,” she called as she swung up into Shiloh’s saddle. “I really like you, Ash Morgan. I just don’t like you enough to die for.”

Tamsin struggled all day, often having to dismount and lead the horses through rockfalls and tangles of thick-growth pine. Again and again, she found the way impassable and had to retreat to try another pass through the mountains. By dusk, she was utterly lost, not certain that she’d traveled more than a few miles from where she’d left Ash and the mountain lion.

She hadn’t been able to lose the black dog. At first, she’d tried to chase the animal away. But War-et hadn’t obeyed; he’d just kept following. Now that the light was fading, however, she was glad of his company.

Hungry, muscles aching, Tamsin crouched in the shelter of an overhanging rock face. Her two horses she unsaddled and turned loose to graze, but she didn’t let Shiloh off his rope for fear that he would wander away.

She’d quenched her thirst and filled her canteen from a spring in the canyon wall two hours earlier. Now she wished that she’d made camp there. She had nothing left to eat but dry venison and nothing with which to wash it down.

“A fine fix,” she muttered to War-et as she fed him pieces of her supper. He whined and crept closer to her.

Even her campfire was a pitiful effort. She’d dragged a rotting log into the front of the shallow cave and started a small fire beside it. The wood was too damp to burn
without smoking, and she’d waited too long to gather additional fuel.

“It’s going to be a long night,” she said wearily.

Guilt over what she’d done to Ash had ridden beside her all day, pricking her conscience and making her wonder if she shouldn’t have done what he wanted and gone back to be tried by a court of law.

California and a new life far from a Tennessee torn by war and bad memories seemed an impossible goal. A single tear trickled down her left cheek.

Then something damp and scratchy brushed Tamsin’s hand. She looked down to see War-et’s homely face. “You stupid dog,” she whispered. “You’re as lost as I am.” But she stroked his ragged head and made no protest when he wiggled into her lap.

“You’ve probably got fleas.” The dog licked her chin and wagged his curly tail enthusiastically. “One vermin bite and you’re out on your ear,” she warned as she hugged him close.

Tamsin’s eyelids grew heavy. The flickering flame was hypnotizing, and she felt herself nodding off.

Her dreams were a shadowy turmoil of nightmare and memories as she relived Ash Morgan’s kisses and the surreal terror of the stalking cougar. Sweat poured from her body. War-et’s warning bark became a puma’s snarl. Tamsin broke free of Ash and tried to run, but her feet seemed frozen to the ground. When she looked back, Ash’s features had hardened to a grotesque mask.

“No!” Tamsin’s eyes widened. Suddenly the figure looming just beyond the fire wasn’t Ash’s but the form of a painted Indian.

The brave shrieked a war cry and leaped over the burning log brandishing a spiked club. Still dazed, Tamsin raised her pistol and fired point-blank. The warrior fell back into the flames as Tamsin scrambled to her feet.

The stench of burning cloth and hair filled her nostrils as she fled toward the spot where she’d left Shiloh tied.

The horse was gone.

Heart in her throat, she dashed headlong into the woods, heedless of the branches striking her head and the vines tangling her legs. She’d not gone twenty feet when another howling Indian crashed through the undergrowth and blocked her way.

Tamsin stopped in her tracks as a dark shadow raced past her and lunged at the brave nearly hidden in the trees. She couldn’t see well enough to tell man from dog, but she could hear the thud that changed War-et’s snarls to agonized whimpers.

Sickened, Tamsin ran back toward the fire, nearly colliding with Dancer’s charging fury. The stallion’s shoulder struck her a glancing blow as he pounded past with teeth bared and ears laid flat against his head. She spun through the air and landed in a tangle of brush as the squealing stallion reared and lashed out with his front legs.

The Indian’s war hoop shattered as iron-shod hooves crushed flesh and bone. For the space of a dozen heartbeats the only sound Tamsin heard was Dancer’s enraged snorting.

Shaking, still clutching her pistol, she tried to rise. But before she could disentangle herself from the clinging vines, a sinewy arm clamped around her throat and an overpowering stench of bear grease filled her head.

Choking, half-mad with fear, Tamsin swung the Colt, striking her assailant. She heard him grunt with pain and felt the pressure on her throat ease. Gasping for air, she twisted away. A heavy blow knocked her to her knees, and she twisted onto her back.

The Indian flung himself on top of her, and she dragged the gun up and pulled the trigger. Pushing free of his thrashing body, Tamsin crawled away.

Without warning, another warrior seized her by the hair and yanked her head back. He spat a jumble of angry words that she couldn’t understand, but she needed no translation. The cold steel of a knife blade pressing against her throat spoke volumes.

She tried to raise her pistol to shoot him, but powerful fingers clamped around her wrists, twisting until the weapon dropped from her hand. In shock, she closed her eyes and tried to pray as she prepared herself for the death thrust.

Seconds passed like hours. She could feel wet, sticky drops oozing down her neck and his hot breath on her face. The sound of the brave’s harsh breathing rasped in her ears.

Inhaling deeply, she looked into the ocher-streaked face above hers. Fierce eyes, ringed with circles of paint, stared back at her. She caught a glimpse of a naked chest and bands of copper around the arm that held the knife to her throat.

“You die!” Venom radiated in the soft, almost lyrical English.

Shards of terror pierced Tamsin’s breast. “White. You’re white,” she whispered hoarsely.

“No speak!” The blade wavered. She felt a sharp sting but not the piercing agony that she expected.

Another man shouted to her captor. He answered, then slowly released his grip on her hair and removed the knife.

Teeth chattering, Tamsin rolled to a sitting position and drew searching fingers over her lacerated throat. When she glanced down at her hand, it was smeared with blood. Her breath came in strangled gasps, and she trembled as intense cold seeped through her bones.

The white Indian with the ringed eyes kicked her. “Get up!”

She staggered to her feet.

Four braves, one with torch in hand, moved from the shadows. Two carried a broken body and laid it beside the dead man at the campfire. A huge warrior with a shaved head and human finger bones thrust through his earlobes crouched over a third fallen figure. The injured man, obviously badly hurt, moaned softly.

Tamsin drew a ragged breath and looked back at the white savage who’d threatened her with the knife. His grotesquely painted face twisted with hate as he laughed and raised the knife again.

“No.” Tears sprang to her eyes, and she threw up an arm to protect her face. “Please! Don’t kill me!”

The giant with the bones through his ears shouted something to Ringed Eyes. Then he pointed to the injured warrior, raised the butt of his musket, and made a smashing gesture.

Tamsin didn’t need words to understand the warrior’s meaning. He was urging the white Indian to kill her.

“You attacked me,” she said hoarsely. “I was only defending myself.”

“Prisoner no talk!” her captor ordered as he slid his knife back into his belt sheath. “You talk, you die.”

Her stomach lurched as she smelled the mingled stench of blood, rancid fat, and sweat on his near-naked body. He wore nothing but a strip of beaded leather around his loins and moccasins on his feet. Every inch of his pale skin was smeared with red and yellow dots of paint.

“You can’t blame me for what happened,” she argued.

He grasped her throat and forced her head back, then brought his face so close to hers that she could feel the heat of his flesh. “No talk!” he repeated.

Tamsin swallowed her protests and stared him full in the eyes.

He released her and laughed. “White-skin woman brave.” His sweating face shone in the flickering firelight. “Die good.” He seized her wrists and bound them tightly with a leather cord.

Another man led Shiloh forward, and her assailant grabbed her by the waist and heaved her up into the saddle. The brave who held the horse’s reins, a short, stocky man with bowed legs, tied her ankles beneath Shiloh’s belly.

“Where are you taking me?” Tamsin dared. Hope was beginning to blossom within her. If they hadn’t killed her yet, maybe they didn’t intend to.

Ringed Eyes glared at her. “You know place white men call Sand Creek?”

Tamsin nodded.

“Many Cheyenne die there. Children, old woman, old man. Many die.”

“I know,” she said. “That was wrong. Evil. But I didn’t—”

“You white!” he accused.

“You’re white yourself!”

His face flushed purple beneath the paint. “Not white! Father white. Buffalo Horn great dog soldier!”

“Dog soldier? I don’t understand,” she said. “Are you Cheyenne? Are these men Cheyenne?”

“Cheyenne?” He struck his chest with his fist as he had done before. “White man call us that name. We are the People.”

“Please. What is your name?” Tamsin moistened her dry lips. “I am Tamsin MacGreggor. I’ve never done anything to hurt you.”

“You are the enemy.” He hawked up a gob of phlegm and spat on the ground. “You think Buffalo Horn let you live when his mother die in Black Kettle’s camp? When his sister, big with child, used like whore and butchered
by white soldiers? You not live, white woman. You die slow. Die as Buffalo Horn’s sister die. But you with hair like fire—you die in fire.”

A mile to the east, Ash lay on his back and watched the stars reel across the sky. He’d chosen not to build a fire, despite the faint roars of the cougar he’d heard since dusk. At noon, he’d traded his worn-out boots for the Arapaho moccasins of a scalped miner he’d discovered in a gully.

There’d been nothing he could do for the man or his two companions. All lay dead, two slain with bullets, one clubbed with a heavy object. As far as he could tell, Tamsin had ridden within two hundred yards of the massacre and never seen the bodies.

The war party was Cheyenne. They were mounted and moving fast. Smoke from a trapper’s cabin had drawn them off to the south. Otherwise, Tamsin would have ridden right into the hostiles.

He’d noticed the smoke at once, more than a chimney would release and less than a forest fire. Ash didn’t need to cover the four miles through rough country to know that the cabin had been burned. There was no way of telling whether or not the owner had escaped alive. Hell, he couldn’t even spare the time to bury the three miners. If he was going to find Tamsin, he had to get to her soon.

The dead men had owned several mules and at least one shod horse. One mule had been shot and butchered by the war party, one led off with the horse. It had been a stroke of luck to find the remaining animal wandering in a draw. Ash had ridden that animal hard until it was too dark to see.

Chasing Tamsin MacGreggor down in the teeth of a Cheyenne raiding party wasn’t in his job specifications. The reward he’d get for bringing her in wasn’t worth getting
staked out on an anthill or being skinned alive. But Tamsin’s second escape had changed everything between them. Catching her was no longer simply his duty. Bringing her back to trial in Sweetwater had become personal.

“You’ve not seen the last of me,” he swore as he wiggled farther back into the dirt hollow he’d dug for himself in the ridge. He hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep since he’d first laid eyes on her.

And now he was about to risk everything to save her from a worse end than hanging. That is, he’d try to save her … if she wasn’t already dead.

If there was one thing that attracted Cheyenne warriors more than whites trespassing on their lands, it was fine horseflesh. Ash figured most dog soldiers would give fingers off their right hand to own animals like Tamsin was riding.

“A man with the least bit of common sense would turn back, tell the sheriff and the judge the MacGreggor woman was dead, and collect his pay,” he muttered.

He’d have been in far better shape to tackle a war party of hostiles with his rifle in hand and a good mount under him. Naturally, Tamsin had taken both with her, leaving him with nothing but a dead man’s pistol, his belt knife, and an aging mule.

“I’ll kill her myself.”

He pulled his hat low over his eyes to shut out the moonlight, but sleep wouldn’t come. Sweat trickled down the back of his neck every time he heard a branch creak or a mouse rustle in the leaves. Expecting two hundred pounds of puma in his face at any moment didn’t help a man relax.

“When I get back to Sweetwater, the first thing I’ll do is rent the whole damn fancy house, have a hot bath, and sleep for two days.”

He’d had to halt when it got too dark to read Tamsin’s trail, although God knows a child could follow it in daylight. He hadn’t stopped to eat. He’d chewed dry venison on the move. Tomorrow, he might be down to eating roots. Shooting anything or lighting a fire to cook would be suicide. A gunshot or a campfire would bring every hostile for miles.