Eyes to the trail
, she warned herself as she scrambled ever upward. If she looked back for a moment, she would twist an ankle, tumble down, and he would fall upon her like a ravening wolf on a lame foal.
Something snarled, not unlike the wolf that rampaged through her imagination
. The steps behind her faltered.
“Take that, you goddamn cur!” the man roared
.
A deep thunk was followed almost instantly by what Anna recognized as Notion’s cries of pain
. High-pitched yelps that went on and on, bringing tears to Anna’s eyes. And then the crying ceased abruptly, amid the heavy sounds of hard blows on flesh and bone.
Santa Maria
, the brute was killing her dog! She whirled around, fury overriding panic, and grabbed the nearest thing that she could hurl. By sheer chance, it was a stout chunk of ironwood, as heavy as its namesake.
“Why don’t
you
take that, you murdering beast!” Anna’s aim was true; the outlaw shouted as the rock-like wood thudded off his elbow. To her immense relief, the dim figure of the dog slunk away into the shadows.
The man pulled his gun once more, and Anna realized she had squandered the costly moments Notion’s attack had bought her
. The outlaw was going to shoot her down now, because she’d turned around. But the hammer of his pistol clacked on an empty chamber, and she realized he hadn’t yet reloaded from his earlier attempts. As he paused to remedy the problem, she raced uphill once more.
Like a cornered bobcat, she climbed higher, despite the certain knowledge that there was no way to come down past him
. Instinct drove her upward, even compelling her to climb the nearly sheer face of the cliff. The cliff where she had fallen earlier and knocked herself unconscious. The cliff where a single bullet could send her hurtling to her death.
More nails tore, and injured muscles strained as she heaved her body upward, wondering all the while if she would feel the pain or hear the gunshot first
. A cry, more animal than Notion’s, rose in her throat, a choked sound too primitive for words. All thought fell away from her body’s desperate struggle. She felt separated from herself, as if she were witnessing the action from a distant window.
She reached the outcrop’s top, then peered down over a large rock perched on the cliff’s lip to see if her pursuer followed
. A puff of dust erupted beside her face, a bullet striking stone. The sharp crack of the gunfire failed to penetrate her mind’s haze, but still her body acted. She pulled herself back up, then stared at the rock’s base. Scooting back, she braced her back against an even larger boulder. With both feet planted against the smaller rock, she pushed, struggling to make it wobble, tip it over.
Pain finally penetrated: the bruised strain at her right hip, the old pull at her right knee
. Ignoring it, she continued pressing hard with her boot soles, until the rock at last tumbled over the cliff’s edge.
For several minutes, she sat trembling, not daring to move lest the small sounds of her shifting cover others from below
. She’d heard no scream, no noises save the heavy cracks of rock on rock. Nothing at all to make her think her boulder had struck its mark. Yet neither did she hear the heavy huffing of a winded man climbing near the cliff’s edge. At long last, her mind worked well enough to press her hand into service. She took up a fist-sized stone, thinking to smash it into his head when its dark silhouette rose on her horizon.
If she could force herself to move so close to him
. If she could somehow manage to do more than just recoil. Once more, terror and exhaustion leeched away her strength. She felt herself eroding, as if she were a tiny island crumbling into an angry river. An island formed of sand.
She almost wished that he would hurry, so she wouldn’t have to fear his coming anymore
. She almost wished she had the courage to leap headfirst from the outcrop’s other side, where the fall was closer to a hundred feet than twenty, where afterwards, she’d need never fear again.
But he didn’t hurry, didn’t come at all, and she hadn’t fought so hard to save her life to fling it away into the canyon
. Could she have killed him with the boulder? Could she at least have knocked him down?
Fatigue settled deep into her bones
.
Dios mio
, she had never been so tired. She thought of crawling to the cliff’s edge on her belly, of peering down into a pitch-black void. Trembling took her, like a drunkard’s palsied shakes. If she leaned over the edge, would he see her? Would her shape show black against the star-filled sky? She could picture his hand, shooting up over the edge to grab her, his vicious face snarling just a hair’s breadth from her own. The bottom seemed to drop out of her belly, and she folded her arms around her knees, too numbed by fear to move.
* * *
Quinn never would have found the draw without that second round of shots. That second set which must have meant that Anna had lived beyond the first ones — otherwise, why would anyone keep shooting? That second set that might have killed her, despite the distance he had covered, the desperation in each stride.
The echoes of the gunshots led him close enough to discern two more horses’ muttered greetings, close enough to hear their restless, shifting hooves
. The reports, higher in elevation, convinced him it was safe to investigate more closely, to hunt for anything that might help him save Anna.
Even in the moonlight, he recognized his mare, Titania, standing beside a bareback bay
. He spared her only a quick glance as he dragged down the pack the roan horse he had stolen carried behind its saddle. He rummaged through loose bullets, spilled tobacco, and a reeking wad of cloth he took to be a spare shirt. Another packet held a few strips of dried meat and the crumbling remnants of what might be Johnnycake. Nothing here that he could use.
Turning his attention to Titania, he ignored the bedroll and dug through the nearest saddlebag
. His fingers quickly identified the familiar star shape of his badge. After tucking it into his pocket, Quinn continued his search.
His own spare cinch for the saddle remained, along with a sweat-stiffened old bandana and a coil of rope
. As expected, his money was long gone, but another absence troubled him far more. The Bowie knife he’d carried for so many years was missing. He swore in frustration. Couldn’t those thieving bastards have left a single weapon? Even a knife would have been better than charging uphill completely unarmed.
Stepping around the mare, he tried the other saddlebag
. He threw back the flap and dug his hand in, then pulled it out as if he’d grasped a fistful of hot coals. A few hairs from the object caught between his fingers, and it fell into a patch of moonlight on the rocky soil.
Titania stamped and fidgeted as if she shared Quinn’s horror
. Unwilling to believe what he feared he had found, Quinn stared at the black mass — and knew for certain he
had
touched a scalp. A child’s scalp, judging from the size and the fineness of the hair. Perhaps the same one that had caused him to be shot.
“Sweet Jesus,” he said softly, and he removed the saddlebags that once had been his own
. A cursory inspection showed the one he’d reached into was stuffed with varied hair. All human, and not all of it Indian, by the variety of color and texture.
With a grunt, he threw the leather saddlebags into the brush
. He could have, maybe should have kept them, but he didn’t think that he could touch them after finding Hamby’s grisly souvenirs.
A flash of Anna’s wheat gold hair shot through his mind like summer lightning
. He’d be damned if he let that hair, her beautiful blond hair end up stuffed in some outlaw’s saddlebag like some sort of profane trophy.
Turning away from both the horses, he rushed uphill to face her attacker
. He was scared — more scared than he had ever been before. Yet his lack of a weapon had no more power to stop him than the fading illumination of the setting, silver moon.
CHAPTER NINE
Thirst began to penetrate the thick cocoon of Anna’s fear. Thirst and the long span of darkness and the near-silence of the cold spring night. Because of her parched mouth, she strained to listen even harder.
From somewhere far away, she heard a faint, faint howl, and then another
. Coyotes, she decided, singing lamentations for their prey. Nearby, atop the rocky outcrop, something rustled in the sparse grasses. Mice, perhaps, out nibbling on the tender new shoots, hoping nighttime’s dearth of snakes would offset the possibility of owls.
She tried not to think about her dented canteen, tangled in the branches of the manzanita far below, tried not to remember the cool, sweet water it contained
. But thoughts of that moisture stole into her consciousness until she no longer could ignore them. Sooner or later she must climb down and go back to look for the canteen.
Below her, the night breathed through the treetops, its exhalations scented by the mountains and the spring
. So very, very quiet for such a deadly night. The canyon had been sleeping for such a long, long time. Did that mean her pursuer was dead or gone away?
If she were only cold, she could bear to wait until first light to find out
. If she were only frightened, she would outlast the darkness, in spite of the knowledge that her attacker might well bring back others to help him hunt her down. But her exertion and the dryness made all her layers feel like the papery skin of onions, or of chaff about to lift off in the canyon breeze.
She must find out if her enemy remained here, waiting stealthy as a cougar for its prey to forget the danger, so it could pounce and kill
. Her fingertips and wrist throbbed as she began to crawl toward the cliff’s edge. Her injured hip and bad knee added their protests. Ignoring the pain, Anna whispered a prayer for courage, then forced herself to continue.
Below her, at the base, something large disturbed the brush, then sent a small rock clattering against another.
Though her heart was pounding wildly, she did not shrink back. “It’s just Notion, frightening you again,” she whispered.
But it wasn’t, for the dark shape moving below her stood upright, then walked into the outcrop’s shadowed lee
. Where she could not clearly see it. Where it might be climbing even now!
Anna swallowed back a scream and groped desperately around her
. There had to be something, anything, she might use to protect herself. Scraping at the rocky surface, she dislodged a number of stones, the biggest one no larger than her fist. Grabbing it, she raised her arm and listened for a sound to guide her aim. She might only have one chance at this. She needed it to count.
A sound floated up toward her, a softly whispered, “Anna?”
Even though she recognized the voice, she barely caught herself in time to keep from hurling down the rock.
A wave of relief flooded over her, washing her with weakness
. For several long, long moments, she could not speak to answer.
“Anna?” Quinn tried again, tentative yet hopeful.
“You came back for me . . .” she whispered, then raised her voice enough so he would hear. “Ryan. You came back.”
She couldn’t be sure if he heard her, for her attention was diverted to a second tall, dark shape
. Emerging from the deepest shadow, it staggered forward, far too close to the place where she had heard Quinn’s voice. Anna screamed a warning.
As if in answer, the dark shape launched itself toward Quinn with a blood-freezing, almost inhuman cry
. Before Anna knew what she was doing, she had hurled the rock in the direction of the screech.
The sounds of fighting followed, the thuds and grunts and curses
. Despite terror and her injuries, Anna found herself scrabbling down the rock face as quickly as she could.
Only when she reached the bottom could she see what was happening
. Her attacker was now slashing wildly at Quinn with a long and wicked knife. The outlaw lurched drunkenly, as if he were injured. Not far from his left foot, the thin light of the setting moon gleamed coldly from a pistol. Had he somehow dropped it, or had Quinn knocked it from his hand? It scarcely mattered. All that mattered now was getting to it before his flashing blade struck flesh or he managed to retrieve it.
Perhaps the outlaw didn’t see the gun, for he lunged toward Quinn with the knife
. Quinn ducked beneath his swinging arm and came up in a blur of motion.
Anna meant to grab the pistol, meant to bring it up and stop this, but it was as if a solid wall rose up before her
. She’d lost sight of the flashing blade, but she could almost hear it slicing through the air, could almost feel it gouging flesh.
Her flesh . . . just as Hamby’s knife had six years ago.
She couldn’t see this outlaw’s weapon, but she
did
see Ned Hamby’s. She remembered it — every inch of it — as it plunged into her belly.
Sing somethin’ pretty, Annie Faith. Sing for us, you stinkin’ bitch!
Her knees buckled unexpectedly, and she fell, her right hand just a few feet from the man’s forgotten gun. All she saw above her was the dark blur of the two men’s struggle. She recognized Quinn’s cry of pain and felt something hot and liquid spatter her face.
Quinn’s blood.
Without conscious decision, her hand shot forward, grasped the gun. She raised it, shaking like a flame fanned by the wind, forced herself to pull back the pistol’s heavy hammer.
But she was too late
. Too late, for at that very instant, both men tripped over her and went sprawling. Anna twisted her body away from their kicks and tried to extricate herself.
By the time she succeeded, the fight was over
. In the darkness, she saw one man raise himself to an awkward sitting position over the still body of the other.
She would have given all that she had left for a single ray of sunlight so she could see which man had lived.
* * *
Though hours had passed, Lucy lay awake, her nude body cool and exposed atop the covers
. She couldn’t bring herself to rouse
him
, to risk waking the man who slept beneath the quilt, snoring animal contentment. From the wreckage of her dignity, she’d gleaned a fragile calm, but somehow she felt as if she mustn’t move, lest it would crack and fall away. Like the thin blue of a robin’s eggshell, it would expose the naked hatchling that writhed beneath the surface. Better that façade of perfection than the desperate clamoring within.
She wanted so much to go home
.
Please stop. You’re not a child anymore.
She needed to see the brick buildings lining Main Street, to feel the soft, green grass beneath her slippers, to hear the gentle strains of chamber music played at a dinner party
.
That life is lost to you. You’ve no choice but to fashion a new life from what is left.
She told that to herself, as firmly as Miss Rathbone ever would have
. Yet Lucy would have killed to once more pass by David on her way inside the house, to feel the way his fingertips “accidentally” grazed her thigh.
“Deepest apologies, Miss Worthington.” His voice was never sorry
.
“One might well apologize,” she’d told him, as her gaze latched boldly onto his, “if one’s aim is so far off.”
Oh, what a shameless coquette she’d been then, and what a naïve little fool! Why couldn’t she turn back the months and tell Miss Rathbone just how bold the coachman’s assistant had been growing? Why couldn’t she hint to her father that she’d love to play the hostess for him when he returned to Washington? Why couldn’t she —
Useless. Nothing could be more useless than weeping over what had gone before.
Except she wasn’t weeping
. She was far too Worthington for that.
She turned her chin just enough to glimpse the dim form of Ward Cameron
. Gorge rose in her throat as she thought of what he’d done. True, he hadn’t beaten her, even after the grievous sin that she’d confessed. But she almost wished he had, for she could have stood against a beating, could have thrown her chin out in defiance, could have skewered him with righteous anger for all time.
What he had done to her had been worse.
He’d utterly ignored her stoic surrender, ignored the stillness of her body, the disengagement of her soul as if those were considerations unworthy of his notice. Instead, he’d behaved as though she were some thing provided for his amusement. He’d plunged into her with as little consideration as a milkmaid churning butter. When she cried out and jerked with the pain of his sudden intrusion, he had laughed deep in his throat.
“I knew you’d like it, Lucy
. I knew you wanted me. You might have been born a Worthington, but you’re just a little slut at heart.”
Lucy covered her face with both hands, hating Ward Cameron with an intensity beyond anything she’d ever felt before
. And when the loathing bled into her shame and grief for all she’d lost, then and only then did Lucy finally give way to quiet sobs.
* * *
Without understanding where the knowledge came from, Quinn somehow
felt
the tautness of Anna’s body, the swirling confusion in her mind. Perhaps it was only the barrel of the pistol shaking in the moonlight, aimed despite its quaver at the center of his chest. Or perhaps the knowledge was coded into the death rattle of the man who lay limp at his feet, his own knife jutting from his throat. Maybe instead it was something in the canyon itself that warned that if he moved too quickly or spoke too abruptly, her tension would explode into a single, fatal shot.
So he kept his voice soft, as soft as if he were coaxing his mare to allow him to remove a painful stone out of her hoof
. As soft as when he was a child, confessing boyish sins to Father Donnelly, back before he’d had too many sins to share.
“Anna . . . Anna, it’s all right.”
“Quinn!” The pistol clattered to the rocky soil, and she launched herself into his arms.
But he paid scant attention to the sound
. How could he, when she crushed her body close against his, so close that she might have been trying to press her way into him? He felt the length of her, from her knees up to her twining arms, and his body drank in every inch of contact like a tree’s roots in a shower after months of drought. She trembled like a heavy rain on pine boughs, and her voice, too, shook.
“I thought — I thought you were him — I didn’t know — I almost — almost pulled the trig—”
He silenced her with his lips, his mouth, with his own quivering hands, which stroked her hair, her back, which dropped to glide along her sides, then skim her slender waist and the slight flare of her hips. In his relief, he turned loose all the years of hating as if they were a host of penned, wild doves. But like doves, they wheeled about and fluttered back to roost in a flurry of white wings that beat a single question:
What are you doing with this woman?
This
woman?
Yet still, his mouth consumed hers, his hands stroked her voraciously
. He remembered what she’d said to him,
Ryan. You came back
. Remembered how the hoof beats thrummed him misery when he thought that he would be too late to save her. Remembered the pain-bright realization that he loved her, that some ember of his love had long glowed hot beneath the thick white ash of all that happened. And he knew he couldn’t let her go, couldn’t let her fade back into this canyon, like an echo, dwindling . . . dimming. Like an echo of her old songs, fading out.
Still, he pulled away from her, for he wanted to try to see her in the darkness
. He needed to look into the face he thought he’d lost.
“Did he hurt you?” Quinn asked quickly.
“Not him — I hurt myself. Fell climbing down this cliff the last time, but I’ll be all right. I’ll be all right now. But yo
u
There was blood. Did he cut you?”
Quinn felt bruised, not cut
. He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
She squeezed his hand tightly, held it, and then asked, “What made you come back?”
“I ran into the Cortéz family, leaving with everything they could haul out on one horse. Señora Cortéz told me Hamby’s men had made them tell where you were —”
“—
Dios mio!
Were they injured? Little Juan —”
“The boy
? No. Not injured, but badly frightened, all of them. They gave me their horse to find you.”
“Their only horse . . .”
She leaned back into his arms, and her breath warmed his ear. Warmed it and sent little sparks of pleasure dancing down his spine. Sparks that ignited fires within him that only she could quench.
“We’ll take the gelding back to them,” he offered, “and get as far from here as possible.”
Her body, so pliant just moments before, went rigid in an instant. “No. No, we can’t leave those
bandidos
here.”