The Drifter's Bride (6 page)

‘The stage line had no…suitable jobs.’ He skirted around the lie.

‘I’m glad.’ She picked up a cloth to protect her hand and lifted the lid on the coffee pot to peer inside. ‘There’s been so much happening here. Pa—’

‘Later.’ He hung his dripping hat on a peg by the door, tossed his saddlebags on the floor and crossed the room, leaving a trail of muddy footsteps in his wake. He reached around Jade, tugged the cloth from her hand and shoved the copper pot away from the heat. Curling one arm around her waist, he ushered her toward the bedroom.

Desire arrowed through him, so powerful his body trembled. By the bedside, he paused to peel away his wet coat, letting it fall to the floor. Boots, trousers and shirt followed, scattering on the hooked rug and bare boards.

Jade stood watching him, hesitation reflected on her features.

‘I need you,’ he said simply. ‘Right now.’

Naked, cold ripples rising on his damp skin, heavy arousal jutting up in his groin, he turned toward her. With impatient hands he stripped away her dress, snagging a button here, ripping a seam there.

‘Slow down,’ Jade scolded, too stunned to help or resist.

‘No.’

And then he had her bare. Her skin glowed in the lamplight that spilled in through the open door. Carl hesitated, surprised that Jade didn’t protest the lack of privacy. He considered going to kick the door shut, but he wanted to see her, and couldn’t bear the thought of releasing her long enough to fetch the lamp that burned in the living room.

He brushed aside concern over the possibility that Sam might get out of bed and peek into the room to see what was causing the unexpected sounds. In a single fluid motion, Carl braced one arm against the mattress, lowered Jade on the bed, and settled on top of her.

Her eyes were huge pools of green as she stared up at him. ‘I’ve missed you,’ she whispered. ‘Every night, I waited on the porch.’ Her slender legs rose to coil around his waist, as if warning him that she would hold on to him and not let him leave again.

Carl didn’t want to think about the future or the past, about promises kept or broken. Shaken by the strength of his craving for her, he abandoned all restraint and surged into her. Dark, consuming pleasure spiraled in his body and in his heart. He reached down and clasped her hips, tilting them, sliding deeper with each powerful thrust.

Jade met his fierce invasion with ferocity of her own. Their bodies grew slick with sweat. Her fingernails dug into her shoulders. A fiery sense of ownership burned within Carl, chasing away the night chill that had seeped into his bones during the long ride in the rain.

He could feel Jade arch beneath him and convulse in rhythmic waves of release that made her fling her head back against the pillows. Her frantic whimpers of pleasure drove him on, and he ground into her—deep, hard—and finally jetted into her, in a climax so forceful it seemed to tear him apart.

He pulled away from her, his breath coming in shallow gasps, his heart hammering against his ribs. A blind panic filled him at the ties that seemed to be snaring him. Home. The word swelled in his mind. Family. How could he contemplate something he had no experience of, something he did not even know how to dream about?

A small hand pressed against his heaving chest. ‘Carl?’

‘Jade.’ He rolled over to his side. She lay facing him, and in the lamplight he saw damp tracks of tears on her face. Guilt pierced the lingering waves of satisfaction that still rippled over him.

‘Jade, sweetheart, what is it? Did I hurt you?’

‘No.’ She drew a shuddering breath. ‘It’s just that I’m so happy you’re back. Oh, Carl, it’s been so hard.’ She pressed her face to his chest and spoke in a muffled voice, her tears trickling against his skin. ‘Pa fell off the ladder and broke his leg. He can’t go into town, and the merchants won’t deal with me.’

He placed his hand on her back and rubbed her skin in a soothing gesture. His Jade, his wife, always so strong, was weeping in his arms. It filled him with wonder, and something else—a new sense of purpose. ‘It’s all right,’ he told her. ‘I’ll take the fruit into town. The stores will deal with me.’

She craned back to look up at him. A plea shimmered in her eyes, but even amidst her tears she would not ask, would not make any demands of him. Carl dropped a kiss on her forehead and answered her unvoiced plea. ‘I’ll stay until the winter. I’ll help you harvest and sell the crops. By spring, Sam will be up on his feet.’

As they settled down to sleep, a new sense of contentment hummed in his veins. He struggled to understand the emotions that had caused him to turn down a job with the stage line and ride back to the orchard. Perhaps it had been a premonition. That must have been it. A guess that something had gone wrong. Damn shame about Sam and his leg. Carl grinned into the darkness as he mulled over the quirk of fate that had given him an excuse to stay.

Jade clutched the bench of the buckboard as they jolted toward town. ‘What if they don’t buy the fruit?’

‘I can be pretty persuasive,’ Carl told her.

‘Don’t…’ She took a deep breath. He sat beside her, gun at his hip, stubble darkening his jaw. He looked like a man in a wanted poster. ‘Don’t cause more friction,’ Jade warned him. ‘If you frighten people into buying, they’ll stop as soon as you’re gone.’

He sent her a teasing smile. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll be nice.’

His light tone sent a flurry of warmth over her. They had spent the previous day harvesting fruit together, and now they had eight crates in the buckboard. Carl had been more relaxed than she remembered ever seeing him. In the evening he had sat with Sam, talking and laughing, and at night he had made love to her again.

Had he come back to give her a baby after all?

How long would it be before he left again?

She didn’t dare to ask, didn’t want to think beyond the here and now.

Carl brought the buckboard to a halt outside the sheriff’s office to let her down. They had agreed she would keep her distance while he conducted business. Jade stood in the shade of the canopied walkway and watched as he pulled up outside the mercantile and went inside.

‘Miss Armstrong. I see you’ve regained your fashion sense.’

Startled, she turned to see Sheriff Garth Weston lean against the doorframe, an open newspaper in his hands. A burly man in his late forties, he had been the sheriff of Mariposa County as long as Jade could remember. He made a show of studying her neat upsweep and cotton dress with amused gray eyes.

‘I…’ Not knowing how to respond, she offered him a weak smile.

A ruckus outside the saloon made them whirl around. Two men were rolling in the dust. The sheriff shoved the newspaper he’d been reading into her hands and hurried out to break up the brawl. Jade skimmed the pages while she waited for Carl to emerge from the mercantile.

Her eyes fell on a boxed advertisement placed by the stage line. They were looking for men. Drivers. Guards. The stage line
did
have jobs, and yet Carl had come back to her. She pressed a hand to her heart as a wild burst of joy leaped within her.

The faint jingle of a bell down the street drew her attention. Carl clattered down the steps, hauled a box of peaches to his chest and carried it through the mercantile door. A few moments later, he came back for another. Jade exhaled a sigh of relief.

‘Jade Armstrong,’ a melodic voice called out, pulling her from her thoughts.

‘Victoria? Victoria Sinclair?’ She stared at the dark, willowy girl who walked up dressed in a peacock blue gown and twirling a matching parasol.

‘The one and only.’ The girl turned in a slow circle, raising one gloved hand to adjust the bonnet perched on top of her elegant upsweep. ‘So, what do you think?’ she asked, glancing back over her shoulder. ‘Did they make a lady out of me?’

‘You were always a lady,’ Jade replied. Victoria’s father, Andrew Sinclair, owned one of the biggest ranches in the county. Two years earlier, Victoria had gone away to an academy for young ladies in Boston. They’d been friends at school…but things might be different now.

Jade took a deep breath. ‘I guess you haven’t heard—’

Victoria’s blue eyes sparkled. ‘About the eagle feathers and buckskins, and going to live in a wickiup?’

Blushing, Jade nodded.

‘Of course I have, even though I only arrived two days ago.’ Victoria closed her parasol and used it to give Jade a friendly swipe on the arm. ‘You rotten egg. Why didn’t you wait until I was back? I’d have come with you. Not to stay, of course,’ she added hastily. ‘It’s heaven to be home again, but I’d have joined you for a few days.’

‘Your father would have killed you.’

Victoria huffed. ‘Never. I would have told him it’s an anthropological study. He couldn’t have argued back because he’d have been too embarrassed to admit he didn’t know the meaning of the word.’ Her mouth tilted into a playful smile. ‘I might only have been back two days, but my father is cursing every cent he spent on that fancy school. He says it’s turned me into an unbearable creature.’ Deepening her voice and pointing her parasol toward the sky, she stabbed the air and chanted, ‘Let women have the vote! End the oppression!’

‘You’ve become a suffragette?’

‘No, but pretending is one of the ways I’m paying my father back for banishing me for two years. I’d rather have gone to Yuma prison.’

As they continued talking, Jade noticed people giving them curious glances. Hope rose inside her. Victoria was a rebel, but she was the daughter of an influential man. Perhaps with Victoria’s support, her campaign to make people accept her again had some slight chance of success.

* * *

Shirtless, his skin glistening with sweat, a bandanna tied around his tousled hair, Carl strode up the porch steps and paused by the open cabin door. He’d been building a lean-to shed behind the barn, planning to fill it with chopped firewood in preparation for the winter.

Through the open doorway, he saw Jade sitting at the scarred pine table, her gaze locked on an open book. She shifted her attention from the book to her palm and made odd gestures with her hand, muttering strange words under her breath.

‘
Capitate
,’ she said. ‘
Trapezium
.’

Puzzled, Carl listened.

Jade kept her hand hovering over the tablecloth. ‘
Middle phalanges
,’ she said, and flexed her fingers. ‘
Distal phalanges
.’

He scraped mud off his boots before stepping inside. ‘What are you doing?’

She jerked up in the seat and gave a little cry. ‘You startled me.’ Lowering her voice, she glanced at the closed bedroom door. ‘Sam’s asleep. He’s been in a lot of pain.’

Carl nodded and eased closer. ‘What are you doing? Apache magic?’

‘No.’ She fidgeted a little, looking uncertain. ‘You told Doc Mortensen that I wanted to be a medicine woman. He gave me a medical textbook. I’ve been studying the bones of the hand.’ She rattled out those strange words again, pointing at various parts of her palm.

Carl went up to the water pail by the stove and filled a cup. He could feel Jade’s eyes following him. For the past three days, ever since he had come back, she’d been looking at him as if he were some kind of a hero who could fix everything that was wrong with the world. He wanted to point out that all he’d done was to shift a few crates of peaches, but somehow the words remained locked inside him.

Behind him, Jade spoke in a quiet voice. ‘You know, I never really wanted to go and live with the Apache.’

Carl froze. He didn’t turn around, but pretended to drink from the cup.

‘I was just missing Ma,’ Jade continued. ‘I went to visit her people to feel closer to her. After a while, I’d have missed Pa, and I’d have come back. I mean, Pa is alive and Ma is dead. And people who are alive matter more than people who are dead. Don’t they? And when we miss someone, that’s what we need to do—return to them. Don’t we?’

Damn. There she was again, building dreams. A shiver ran over Carl as he considered her words. It almost sounded as if she knew more about his past than he had revealed. The past that would never give up its stranglehold on him. He needed to tell her everything. Make her understand that he could never be trusted to protect his loved ones, could never be the man she deserved. That he’d have to leave before he failed her.

People like him were not born to live happy, fulfilled lives.

He spun around and sank into a chair at the table. ‘Jade, there is something—’

The thunder of an approaching rider cut him short. Someone dismounted with a thud. Footsteps clattered across the porch and a young woman dressed in snug canvas pants and a fringed leather coat burst in. Her hat toppled from her head to dangle on a string down her back, colliding with a dark, glossy braid as thick as a man’s wrist.

‘The husband, I presume. I’m Victoria Sinclair.’ She gave Carl a curt nod and turned her attention to Jade. ‘We have trouble. Indians took the Lindstrom girl—you know the Swedish couple who farm out by Beaver Creek?” She continued without waiting for a response. ‘Sheriff Weston is gathering a posse. There’ll be bloodshed.’

Jade jerked to her feet. ‘Indians? You mean my mother’s people?’ She gave a frantic shake of her head. ‘Can’t be. White Antelope’s band is peaceful. They avoid whites. They don’t do anything that might attract attention and force them onto a reservation.’

‘I saw them.’ Victoria Sinclair stepped forward, blue eyes flashing, her voice sharp with urgency. ‘I was out on the southern edge of the property checking for storm damage. I saw riders in the distance. Six horses. The men wore belted tunics or buckskins. Most of them had long black hair. They had children with them, riding double with the men. I saw the golden head of the Lindstrom girl. She’s five, small for her age.’

‘That doesn’t mean those men were Apache.’ Jade argued, although Carl could tell she was worried. ‘They could be Comancheros, or Yaquis from across the border.’

Victoria’s mouth tightened. ‘The sheriff doesn’t think so. You have to find your mother’s people and tell them to surrender, give back the Lindstrom girl. That’s the only way to avoid a massacre.’

‘Dear God.’ Jade pressed her hand to her heart and whirled around, her face furrowed with fear. ‘Carl, you’ll have to look after Pa while I’m away.’

With a clump and clatter, her father appeared in the doorway of the smaller bedroom, dragging his splinted leg behind him. ‘Go,’ he gasped, his face ashen. ‘I can manage.’

Anger bristled inside Carl at the suggestion that he would let Jade ride out without him. Lowering his cup of water, he rose. ‘Your father will be fine alone. I’ll saddle the horses while you change out of your dress.’ He turned to Victoria Sinclair. ‘I want you to give Jade exact directions to where you saw the riders. Then I want you to go back to town and tell the sheriff I’m going after them. I’m a good tracker. I’ll find the girl and bring her back.’

I’ll find the girl and bring her back
.

The words echoed in his mind as he stormed out. Out in the yard, he found his shirt on a fencepost and shoved his arms into the sleeves. He saddled the horses, strapped on his gun belt and pushed the rifle into the scabbard. The promises he had just made weighed heavy in his heart as he vaulted onto Grace and cantered beside Jade out of the valley.

He had to save the girl.

He had to succeed where he had failed before.

* * *

On a rocky clearing about two miles east of the orchard, Jade brought her mustang mare to a halt. Carl circled around her, surveying the flat landscape punctured by huge blocks of granite and sparse clusters of stunted trees.

‘It was here,’ she said, twisting in the saddle to face him. ‘Victoria said they passed between those two boulders and headed south.’ Jade raised her arm to point.

Carl jumped down and crouched to study the ground. Steam rose from the muddy earth, filling the air with rotting smells. He spotted a fresh chip in a half-buried stone.

‘Shod horses,’ he called out to Jade. ‘Not likely to be Indians.’

‘Thank God.’ She paused. ‘I mean…it doesn’t help the Lindstrom girl, but…’ Her words trailed into silence.

‘The storm has washed off the trail.’ Carl moved along in a crouch, examining the gravel for further signs of riders. He found nothing—no hoof prints, no crushed leaves or broken twigs. Only ridged patterns in the sand, left by the runoff that had flooded the hard ground after the torrential rain the night before.

Star’s hooves clattered as Jade whirled the mare around. ‘I think I know where they’ve gone. With the rain, the river’s running high. There is a good place to cross farther east of here. The sheriff won’t make it in time. Once the Comancheros are on the other side, they’ll vanish into Mexico. We’ll have to stop them before they get across.’

They stared at each other, the same thought mirrored on their faces.

Two rifles against six.

They might be riding to their death, but they had to try.

* * *

Between the rocky banks, the river surged in powerful whirls that sent floating debris bobbing up and down. Carl snaked forward on his belly, using any small rise in the landscape to provide cover—a jutting boulder, a piece of driftwood, a mound of dirt. No advantage was too small as he made his way toward the enemy camped by the river’s edge.

The last glimmer of daylight had faded an hour ago. Ahead of him he could see the flickering flames of a bonfire. Farther back, fiery dots punctured the darkness as some of the Comancheros pulled on their cigarettes.

He couldn’t tell if the men were talking, if the children were crying, if the horses where nickering. The raging torrent of water drowned out all other sounds. He didn’t need to worry about the rasp of his body against the damp earth but he knew that a gunshot would shatter the steady roar of the river and raise alarm.

They couldn’t afford to start shooting—not until he had killed at least two of the Comancheros. Only a few more yards now. The pair of burning dots rose and fell like fireflies as the two men guarding the horses lifted their cigarettes for another drag.

Carl rose into a crouch. Slowly. Silently.

Every muscle tensing, he wrapped his fingers around the handle of his knife and leaped forward. He grabbed his victim, slamming his left hand across the man’s mouth and yanking the man’s head back against his shoulder as his right hand slashed the serrated blade across the Comanchero’s stocky throat.

Not pausing to lower the body to the ground, Carl jumped back and then forward. He dealt with the second man in the same fashion. Two muted thuds broke the silence, followed by a faint whirring sound, like the wings of a bird, as a wide-brimmed hat fell from the head of the second man and spun its way to the ground.

Carl edged forward in the darkness. Two of the remaining men were sitting by the fire, passing a bottle between them. Yaquis. In the light, he could see their coarse, square features and the pale drape of their white cotton clothing. The dark fabric of his coat and denims gave him an advantage, allowing him to blend into the shadows.