The Drifter's Bride (7 page)

The last two men were stretched out on bedrolls farther back, but still within the glow of the fire. To the right of them he could see the huddled shapes of three children. From the awkward way they sat or reclined, he could tell their wrists were bound, and a rope around their necks tied them into a human chain.

He eased toward the sleeping men, knife in his right hand, the Colt in his left. He froze, waited for a log in the fire to crackle loud enough to hide the click as he cocked the hammer. The nearest man let out a snuffle, not quite a snore, and Carl understood that up this close the roar of the river would no longer disguise his sounds.

The man slept wrapped in a blanket, a hat covering his head, his back toward Carl. He was burly, with a layer of fat over his bones. Without being able to properly angle the blade between his ribs, Carl couldn’t rely on piercing his heart. He surged forth and plunged the knife in the thick neck instead, forcing the blade deeper as the man’s head snapped forward.

His luck ran out. The gurgling sound made the fourth man jerk up into a half-seated position. His hand went to the rifle by his side. Carl lifted his Colt and fired. The sound tore through the night, a signal for Jade to run out to the captive children and cut them free. They had planned their strategy while watching the camp, waiting for darkness to fall.

Behind him, the remaining pair of men bellowed in Spanish, their voices slurred and their tone confused. They were drunk. Carl yanked his knife free from the dead man’s sturdy neck, spun around and saw the two who had been on their feet leap toward him. He fired off a shot with the gun in his left hand, saw the taller man fall. A pain burst in his forearm. The Colt clattered to the ground. He felt a warm trail of blood trickling down his skin.

One Yaqui left. Carl crouched, knife in his right hand, choices reeling in his mind. His revolver was lost somewhere in the darkness around his feet and his rifle dangled on his back. Across the fire he saw the small, wiry man rush at him. No. Not at him. Toward his dead companion. In a flash Carl realized the man had no gun and was seeking to retrieve the one still clasped in his dead compatriot’s fingers.

Leaping beside the fire, Carl picked up a burning branch and hurled it at the Yaqui. It hit the man in the back. Dark streaks of soot and yellow licks of flame smeared his white cotton tunic. Carl lurched forward, seized the bottle of whiskey from the ground and threw it at the man. The glass shattered on impact. The fire flared high as the alcohol spilled over his clothing. Screaming, the man crashed to the ground, rolling in the dirt to suffocate the flames.

A shot rang in the darkness. Carl waited for the pain to slice through him. Nothing came, only the dull throbbing in his left arm and the fiery burn in his right palm. The man on the ground jerked and stopped rolling. Jade stepped into the circle of light and lowered her rifle. Behind her, Carl saw three children huddled together. One of them was a tiny girl with golden pigtails.

‘Did we get them all?’ Jade asked.

He gritted his teeth against the pain. ‘Yes.’

‘They’re cold.’ She gestured at the children. ‘Can they sit by the fire?’

‘Yes.’

She turned to the children and spoke a few words to them. They moved into the light, and Carl could tell two of them were Apache. They settled with no fuss, clustering about Jade as she tossed more wood into the fire. The little blonde girl circled around to him, dragging her feet in hesitant steps.

‘Are you the sheriff?’ she asked.

Carl managed a ghost of a smile. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘My Pa says that if I ever get into trouble, I should find the sheriff.’

‘I’m almost as good.’ Ignoring the throb in his left arm from the bullet wound and the sting in his right palm from the burning branch, he reached out to curl his hands around the child and lifted her to perch on his hip.

‘You’re safe now,’ he told the little girl. ‘I’ll take you home.’

As he spoke the words, emotion swelled in his heart—regret, but also release.

You are safe now
. The words he had longed to speak for fifteen years.

Jade bustled by the stove, stirring the pot of stew. It seemed strange that after last night’s adventure she had to concern herself with something as mundane as cooking. They had slept by the river with the recovered children. In the morning, the sheriff and his deputies had arrived. They had taken Jenny Lindstrom home. Carl had ridden with them to see Doc Mortensen about his wounds, while some of the deputies had accompanied Jade to take the Apache children back to the village from which they had been stolen.

She heard footsteps behind her and turned to see Carl walk in from the bedroom, brown hair tousled, left arm in a sling tied around his neck. Yawning, he raised his uninjured arm and rubbed his eyes with his knuckles.

‘You’re supposed to rest,’ she reminded him.

‘Not sleepy.’

He’d been like that ever since he rode back from town. Quiet. Contemplative. At first Jade thought it was the pain, but it was not pain she saw in his amber eyes now. It was a mix of emotions—confusion, hope, uncertainty, grief. She knew he was reaching into the past in his mind. A longing to console him filled her, but she didn’t dare to intrude on his privacy by revealing that she had rummaged through his saddlebags and found the newspaper clipping about those girls dying in the orphanage.

A buggy rattled to a stop outside. Before Jade had time to move the stew from the flames and rush out to the porch, the clicking of dainty boot heels echoed up the steps. A knock sounded on the open door, and the screen flung aside. A small, sparrowlike woman in her early thirties darted through, a folded newspaper tucked under her arm.

Jade recognized Hortensia Wilson, who had taken over as the editor of the
Gazette
last year. The visitor charged up to Carl who had settled into a seat at the table, his injured arm folded against his chest.

‘I came out to bring this to you myself, Mr. Ritter.’ Hortensia slammed the newspaper to Carl’s knee with the force most people would use to discipline an unruly child. ‘My article is very dramatic, if I may say so myself,’ she added with undisguised pride.

Jade saw Carl struggle to fold the page open with one hand and hurried over. ‘Let me see.’ She snatched up the newspaper and muttered her way through the article. ‘Mr. Carl Ritter…hero…single-handedly—’ Jade lowered the newspaper. ‘What about me?’ she complained. ‘I shot one of the Yaqui bandits, did I not?’

Hortensia cleared her throat. ‘Female heroes don’t sell newspapers in Arizona Territory. Scandals involving respectable citizens and saloon girls do.’

Jade resumed her reading. ‘Hero…saved three children from the clutches of a heinous swarm of bandits.’ She peeked over the edge of the newspaper. ‘Bless your heart, Miss Wilson,’ she told the dainty woman. ‘You’ve made the Apache children sound as important as Jenny Lindstrom. I’m in your debt for that.’

‘Can six bandits be called a swarm?’ Carl asked with a trace of amusement.

‘Anything more than five is a swarm,’ Hortensia Wilson claimed in a voice that brooked no argument. ‘And all children are important, whatever their race.’

‘A reward.’ The newspaper rustled as Jade lowered her hands. ‘The town is going to arrange a celebration to honor Carl.’

Miss Wilson beamed. ‘A belated wedding for you two, if you will.’

‘A wedding…’ Jade pressed her hand to her heart. Every fear of being excluded, every worry about their future, every doubt about fitting back in to the community, vanished like a morning mist evaporating into the strong Arizona sun.

Carl rose to his feet. ‘I’ll go and see how Sam is doing.’

Jade watched him walk across the room with slow, deliberate footsteps and then disappear into the bedroom where her father lay propped up with pillows. It seemed that even the echo of his boot heels on the timber was warning her not to think that life had suddenly become easy and uncomplicated.

The townspeople might have accepted her as one of their own.

A shiver ran over her as she understood what it meant.

It meant that Carl no longer had a reason to stay.

* * *

Carl didn’t venture out of Sam’s room until the high-strung newspaper editor had rattled off in her buggy. He’d seen Jade’s face light up when she read the article.
Hero
. They didn’t know what they were talking about. He’d only done what any man would do, but at least rescuing the Lindstrom girl had helped repair Jade’s rift with the people in town.

Now he could leave without worrying about her…

Leave. The thought made his chest hurt as if he’d been stabbed.
Just a spasm of pain from the gunshot wound,
he told himself. He made his way back to the table, where Jade sat with her nose buried in her medical book, and sank into a chair beside her.

He had to explain to her.

Make her understand.

‘How’s Pa?’ Jade asked. Her green eyes searched his face, full of hope, full of longing. Warmth seeped through Carl. He didn’t want to feel that warmth. Didn’t want to see the joy in her eyes, be responsible for keeping it there always.

He didn’t know how to be part of a family. Never had, and never would.

‘Sam’s well enough to beat me in poker,’ he grunted.

‘What stakes are you playing for?’

‘Time. I owe him three hundred and eighty-seven days.’

‘Oh?’ Her face lit up. ‘Then you’ll stay at least a year?’ Her hand fell to her flat belly. He could read her thoughts, as if they were stamped all over her features.
By which time I’ll be with child, and you’ll have to stay until the baby is born and then
…

‘I’ll ride out as soon as my arm’s healed,’ he told her.

‘Oh?’

Damn. Why did every emotion show on her face? Carl steeled himself against the anguish he could see. It was there in the sheen of tears that welled up in her eyes, in the soft trembling of her lips, in the troubled furrow that formed between her dark brows.

He leaned back against the chair. ‘Sheriff Weston had a couple of new wanted posters. One of the men has a bounty of $5,000 on his head. He’s wanted dead or alive.’

‘And I guess the stage line might be hiring again, too.’ Jade pressed her lips together and gave him a challenging look.

Carl felt color creep to his face. So she knew he’d lied. ‘They don’t have
suitable
jobs,’ he pointed out. ‘The pay’s too low.’

‘Couldn’t you—’

‘Jade, I can’t…’

Silence fell over the room.

Carl gritted his teeth. He inhaled a deep breath and let it out again. ‘We never had enough food in the orphanage. I got into a habit of sneaking into the kitchen at night to steal whatever scraps I could find. One night, I took four girls with me. Grace was the eldest. She and I were both twelve. We tried to look after the younger girls. We were caught stealing food. The man who ran the place locked us in an attic room that was used to dry laundry. He told us he’d leave us there without food or water until we learned not to steal from him.’

He closed his eyes against the memories, and then blinked them open again. ‘That night a fire broke out. One of the girls, Helene, was afraid of the dark. She may have lit a match while the rest of us slept. When I woke up, the clothes hanging from lines strung between the walls were ablaze. There was a small window up near the ceiling. The girls couldn’t reach it, even with me lifting them, but I managed to climb out.’

‘I told the girls I’d make my way down to the ground and come up the stairs to let them out. I slid down a gutter, broke a window to get back into the house and raced up the stairs. When I reached the room they were in, smoke billowed beneath the door. There was no key in the lock, and I didn’t have the strength to kick down the door. The man who ran the place was out drinking. Those four girls burned to death on the other side while I listened to their screams.’

‘It wasn’t your fault they died,’ Jade told him in a consoling murmur. ‘You tried to save them.’

‘That’s not what Abe Watts said—the man who ran the orphanage. He said I was responsible, and whipped me for causing him to lose valuable assets.’

‘You weren’t to blame.’

‘If I hadn’t taken them to the kitchen to steal food…if I’d known where the key was…if I’d been strong enough to kick down the door…’

‘Carl, don’t…’

‘That’s why I was so eager to rescue you when your father told me you’d been abducted. To make up for lives that were lost because I didn’t do enough.’

‘You did, Carl. You tried.’

‘I missed them.’ His eyes stung as he admitted to what he’d never admitted before. ‘I spent much of my time looking after them. Soothing their hurts, telling stories at night, trying to take beatings from Abe Watts so they would be spared.’

‘I know you missed them. I missed Ma when she died, and I’ll miss Pa when he is no longer here. We miss our families when we lose them, and those girls were your family.’

‘Family?’

‘Of course,’ Jade said softly. ‘You were like a brother to them. You loved them. They were your family.’

Family. Memories rushed through his mind—memories of stolen moments of laughter, of shared sorrows. Of a small hand tucked into his.

‘I…’ He shifted his shoulders. ‘I guess you’re right. They were my family.’

‘So, you know how to be part of a family.’ Jade reached out and touched the back of his hand. ‘That’s good. Because…I think we’ll have a child by next summer.’

The room closed in on him.

Without a word, Carl got up and stormed outside.

* * *

Jade.
His wife
. Sam.
His father-in-law
. A child.
His family
. Thoughts whirled in Carl’s head as he chopped firewood, awkwardly swinging the axe in his scarred right hand. With each blow, pain arrowed up his injured left arm. He relished the sensation. It felt as if for the first time in fifteen years his senses were sharp and focused, without a layer of numbness to dull the pain.

He missed them.
Grace, Moira, Johanna, Helene
. Their features formed in his mind as he whispered each name.

For years he’d clung to the sense of failure, the burden of shame for letting those girls die, but now he realized those feelings had masked a deeper grief. The loss of loved ones, the loneliness of forging a new life without them.

And that’s what he was planning to do again. This time by choice.

He was planning to leave his loved ones and forge a new life without them.

Carl slammed the axe into the cutting stump and hurried back into the house. He found Jade in their bedroom, preparing for bed. She was naked, standing on a square of oilcloth, her back toward him, clutching a dripping cloth in her hand. She slowly ran the cloth along one upraised arm and continued down her side, past the swell of her breast, to the narrow dip of her waist. Humming a soft tune, she paused to rinse the cloth in the bucket by her feet, then repeated the motion with her other arm, totally absorbed in the feminine task.

The sight of her engaged in such a personal act brought back the memories of watching her bathe by the river. All the wanting he’d suppressed then flooded back, twice as fierce now that he knew he loved her and would create a child with her.

‘I’ve never seen anything more beautiful,’ he told her softly.

The rag hit the floor with a thump. Jade released a startled cry and jerked around, folding her arms across her chest. ‘You scared me,’ she scolded. ‘I’ll never get used to how you can creep up without a sound.’ Slowly, unaware of the seductiveness of the gesture, she unfolded her arms, revealing her nakedness to his burning gaze.

‘I’m sorry I ran off like that,’ he told her. ‘I needed to think.’ He eased closer to pick up the cloth, rinsed it in the warm water and wrung it dry. ‘I’ll help you wash.’

The need to run his hands over her supple skin, to carry her to bed and bury himself in her heat, throbbed in every beat of his heart. But first he wanted everything open and honest between them. The last secrets revealed. The final vulnerabilities exposed.

She was watching him, her green eyes dark, a blush flaring all the way from her breasts to her hair pinned in a haphazard knot on her head. Her lips parted, and Carl could see her breasts rise and fall as her breathing grew rapid and shallow.

He spoke softly as he bathed her, running the cloth over her shoulders, down the curve of her spine, water soaking into the sleeves of his shirt. ‘I never realized up to now that I hadn’t allowed myself to grieve for those girls. I never thought that when I lost them I’d lost someone I loved. I only thought about my guilt and shame for failing to save them.’

The feelings Carl had fought to hide for weeks swelled now until they seemed to burst out of him. So many times he had wanted to say the words, but he had felt no right to speak them. Until now. He placed the edge of his hand beneath Jade’s chin, tipped her head back, held her gaze and said, ‘Did I ever tell you that I love you?’

‘No, you didn’t,’ she whispered.

‘Well, I do.’ He scattered tiny kisses on her brow, her nose, along the curve of her jaw. ‘I know you don’t need me to keep the farm, but I want to stay and make a life with you. To have you bear my children. To be a family. I love you, and I promise that I always will.’

‘Of course I want you to stay.’ She threw her arms around his neck, pressing her damp body against his. ‘But don’t forget that I’m a half Apache. People may accept me because I’m married to a hero, but the truth about my birth will always be there. There’ll be people who resent us for it, will resent our children for what they’ll be.’

I’m married to a hero
.

The words made his chest swell as he cradled her close. Every time he touched her desire surged inside him, but it was different now, stronger. The need went bone-deep, stunning him with its ferocity. Perhaps she was right. Perhaps he’d earned the right to be proud of what he’d done, to accept his past and be who he was, the best he could be.

Spinning their entwined bodies around so he faced the room and she faced the bed, he eased back a few short steps and sank to sit on the edge of the mattress. Tugging at Jade’s legs, he folded up her knees, arranging her to straddle him.