Texas Lily (40 page)

And getting madder. The arguments behind them were growing more vociferous. Houston hadn't slept in weeks. Why he had chosen this morning to sleep was beyond anyone's comprehension. Travis had whispered "opium" at one point, but exhaustion was as good an explanation as any.

A wave of relief passed through the ragged troops in the woods when Houston woke, but the angry murmurs grew louder when he did nothing. Guns were cleaned and polished. The twin cannon were readied. The men practically had their targets picked out, but no call to arms came.

When the enemy camp settled completely to a lazy siesta, the flat plain glistened in the spring sun, with only the call of birds to intrude upon the silence. Cade felt it coming. He had wondered if Houston wasn't waiting for reinforcements from the American army across the river, but his men weren't prepared to wait much longer. A rustle of elation passed under the magnolia leaves and through the pine forest as Houston's decision reached the front lines. The word came to march.

Cade rode out in the first vanguard, pulling one of the cannon through the open field, an enviable target for anyone watching. No one watched. Amazed at the incredible stupidity of an army without pickets or scouts, Cade released the cannon when ordered within two hundred yards of the breastworks and prepared to ride. The main part of Houston’s army was more than halfway across the plain before the first shots were fired.

Later, after he heard of the atrocities committed by Houston's army in the name of revenge, Cade was glad that he had been one of the first to fall. Even an enemy scared out of its pants and with weapons too crude to aim straight couldn't miss a target as large as himself. But as he was falling, Cade didn't feel grateful. He knew only sorrow that he would never know the cries of his newborn child or the warmth of Lily's arms again. He hoped Lily would find the kind of man she deserved. He didn't want her to suffer any more than she already had.

The initial blossoming of pain exploded as the army poured around him. Screams split the air, but they weren't his. Cade had learned silence at an early age, and he practiced it now, while the world erupted in violence around him. Blood poured from the wound in his shoulder, and he knew he would soon lose consciousness. He tried to pull himself up, but the fall had done something to his leg. He fell down again, and the bright day faded to an odd twilight, as if the sun had gone behind a cloud.

Curses filled his ears, closer than the screams and shouts and gunfire. Fighting the pain prevented Cade from concentrating on anything else. Someone was unburying him from the stack of corpses, but it was almost too late. A body could hold only so much blood. If he could fully believe in the pearly gates of the priests or the spirits of his father, he might welcome death, but all Cade could think of was Lily.

It was odd that he had spent twenty years of his life simply surviving, only to spend his dying minutes dreaming of a woman who hated him. Closing his eyes, Cade felt the warmth of her body close to his. She didn't hate him completely. Her body was too warm and alive to his touch to hate him entirely. Had there been time...

"Damn you, you Indian bastard! You're not leaving me to tell Lily of your death. You're going to get up and walk out of here if it's the last thing I do."

But it wasn't likely to be. The battle had surged onward, into the Mexican camp and beyond, driving the enemy backward into the swamps and rivers amid screams of desperation and the bellows of alligators. The grassy field was empty except for the fallen.

Travis reached for his saddlebag and his spare shirt. He knew how to stop the bleeding. He didn't know how to bring back the dead.

* * *

Weeks later, Cade sat in a dark, one-room cabin, his mending shoulder aching like hell as he glared at his savior with ferocity. "What do you mean, she isn't there? Why wouldn't she be there? The damfool messenger just got lost and is too stupid to admit it." But in the back of his mind, Cade knew why Lily wouldn't be at the hacienda: because it was his home and not hers.

Undaunted, Travis took a sip of water from the dipper he had carried in for his patient. If Cade wouldn’t drink it, he wasn't too proud to drink it himself. Feeling the liquid slide down his parched throat, he gave a gasp of pleasure before answering Cade's cross accusations.

The implacable Indian had turned out to be one hell of a cantankerous patient.

Besides, the moment gave him time to organize his words. Travis knew that as soon as Cade had the whole truth, the obstinate Indian would be out of bed and heading for his horse. Travis couldn't think of any way of preventing it short of lying, and he couldn't lie about something as serious as this. His own inclination was to run for his horse, but his chances would be better with a little planning and an experienced guide.

If the guide was too ill to move, he would have to wait. "The fool messenger found the hacienda, no mistake." Travis laid down the dipper and waited for Cade to shut up and pay attention.

Cade glared at him and waited.

"Ricardo is there."

Cade began shoving off the quilt covering his legs. He wore nothing under it, but that didn't deter him.

Travis watched idly as Cade tried to stand and stumbled against the wall. The fall from the horse had damaged something in his knee. The swelling was going down, but he hadn't walked on it in weeks. It wouldn’t support all that weight easily.

"The 'damfool messenger' didn't trust Ricardo, so he hung around and asked questions."

Disregarding Travis's sarcasm, Cade straightened and reached for the saddlebags on the table. He had to lean on the table to open them, but he succeeded in tugging out his denims. When Travis didn't continue, Cade threw him a killing look.

Travis shrugged. "There are no women or children there. No one knows where they went. Your grandfather is supposedly ill and confined to his room."

Cade finally spoke. "Supposedly?"

"Ricardo has had a lawyer camped at his door, not a priest or a doctor." Travis turned around and walked back outside to the well.

He didn't want to hear Cade's fury. He wasn't ready yet for whatever Cade would decide. Travis had been on his own since he was fifteen. Lily and their son and Juanita were as close as he had ever come to family since then. Even the little brat, Serena, had carved a place in his heart.

He wasn't made like Cade. He longed for the warmth of human emotion. He even missed that old rascal Ephraim. He didn't care about the damned land or the cattle or whatever else it was that drove men to fight. Travis required Juanita's shy adoration, Roy's admiring phrases, Lily's rare laughter. Ricardo could have the damned hacienda. Travis wanted the women and children.

He was afraid Cade wouldn't think the same. These past weeks had made it obvious that Cade had a single-minded fascination with the Spanish family and the hacienda he had been denied all these years. When he was coherent, he had spoken of the changes he would make, the plans he had for that mesquite-studded acreage. When he was fevered, he had cursed Ricardo, cursed every obstacle that had ever stood in his way, and sworn oaths that made Travis shiver. Behind that stoic facade lay a lifetime of hate and longing. He didn't want to think about the decision that Cade had to make now. Lily and her small farm had only been an afterthought in that lifetime.

When he returned to the cabin, Cade was dressed and checking his rifle. He looked up and asked, "Are you ready to go?"

The man could barely walk. He had recovered from fever scarcely a week ago. His shoulder wouldn't hold together under the tug of a rein. And he was prepared to ride out without a moment's notice.

Travis grinned. "Whenever you are."

They had never formally entered the army and didn't formally discharge themselves now. The wounded Texans Travis had been treating were almost all on their way home. The slaughter that had left over six hundred Mexicans dying in the fields and bayous had killed only nine of the Texans. Most of Travis's patients were Mexican prisoners, and there was little else he could do for them.

Cade was the one he worried about. His shoulder shattered from the first explosion of the Mexican cannon, Cade had lost enormous amounts of blood before Travis had found him. He had a long way to go before he regained his strength. Travis watched warily as the big man rode uncomfortably in his saddle, driving himself as he always did. How in hell would he keep Cade alive long enough to find Lily?

And the others. Travis tried not to think about the others. Lily was strong. If anyone could survive, it would be she. But the others... He wouldn't apply names to his concerns, but wounded dark eyes watched him from behind every tree, screaming their hurt and need. He knew all about hurt and need. He knew nothing at all about solving them.

So he followed Cade, forcing the other man to rest when the May sun got too hot for comfort, feeding him meat as often as they could find it, bandaging and rebandaging his wound when it began to bleed. Cade was Travis's only hope of finding the family he had come to think of as his own. He would do whatever it took to keep the damned Indian alive.

It wasn't an easy task. Cade pushed himself like a man possessed. They rode through the darkness until he was nearly falling off his horse. Too exhausted to hunt when they stopped for the night, he had to be forced to eat what little Travis could put together. After a night crossing of a spring-cold river, Cade crawled to his horse when Travis refused to help him get up. Cursing, Travis hauled him into the saddle and tied him there so they could ride on.

It was with great relief that Travis recognized the road they followed. True, the road ultimately ended in San Antonio, but it had to pass by the little homestead where they had all come together. If Lily had gone anywhere of her own accord, it would have been to her own home.

Cade seemed to have the same thought. His pace quickened as they approached the town. He rode through without stopping. He was slumped over the gelding's neck and holding on with his last strength as he galloped toward the sunset and the little farm snuggled between the pines and the prairies.

He even refused to give up when the charred ruins of the house came in sight and no flicker of light showed from its remaining windows. Travis leapt down and stood ready as Cade nearly fell from the saddle in his desperation to reach the cabin. The house was silent and dark. No childish laughter winged through the windows. No scents of baking bread drifted from the kitchen. A steer stood munching at weeds in the garden Lily had so carefully cultivated the year before. No one came out to greet them.

They should have known what to expect after seeing the broken wreckage of the red peddler's wagon, but they entered the dogtrot and began throwing open doors anyway. The charred main cabin, like the wagon, had been ransacked of what few viable goods had remained. Even the sodden baby clothes had disappeared, and every lamp, candlestick, and mug had been removed from the shelves. The heavy, damaged dining table remained, its polished wood warped with the rains and cold.

Cade stood still in the doorway to the bedroom that had been the source of the only happiness he could remember. The mattress had been gutted by someone looking for hidden wealth. The bed frame and washstand had been used for firewood. The porcelain washbowl and pitcher with their colorful roses and greenery lay shattered on the floor. And Lily's elegant windows had been blasted by a shotgun.

Cade was a proud man, and a strong one. Nothing in all his life had ever brought him to his knees, but he was on the verge now. Clinging to the door frame, Cade held himself upright by sheer force of will. Lily's cries of passion still haunted these walls. He could almost hear the sound of a flute as he clung to the wood. He had wanted to give her music and happiness. He had wanted to lay the world at her feet. He had wanted...

He had wanted.

And this was the result. Everything she had, destroyed. It was a poor return for everything she had given him in those few short months. Cade closed the door and walked away.

Lily carried his life with her. He knew it as the soul knows the stars are out of reach. If Lily lived, he would survive. If she did not, he was a walking ghost. He could not return to being the man he had once been. He could not live alone again.

He started for his horse, ignoring Travis's vehement protests.

Chapter 32

Travis cursed again as the damned Indian set out across the fields like a man possessed. Nothing he had said or done could convince Cade to remain here for the night and start out in the morning. Travis had half a mind to let the madman go ahead without him and follow the trail of blood come dawn to pick up the remains. If he did, it would be just his luck that Cade would somehow manage to leave him behind, just when they had come to the part of the search where Travis could not begin to look for himself. A handful of women and children could disappear into these vast open spaces and never be seen again.