Liz Ireland (8 page)

“Then why don’t you sit here and rest. I’ll bring you some water if you need it.”

“Uh, no…” She thought fast. “I just wanted to…well, you know.”

It was dark, but she knew even an oblique reference to a call of nature would bring a blush to his cheeks. He helped her to her feet. “Sure you’re okay?”

She nodded and began to walk away, slowly. Once she got moving, she found that her side really didn’t hurt much, as long as she stayed straight and upright. She headed for the hill she’d seen Will disappear over not long before, and looked around for him. Naturally, now that she was ready to come clean, the man was nowhere to be seen.

Maybe that was just as well. She would never in a million years tell Will that she was sweet on him, so she wasn’t quite sure what excuse she would give for leading him on about her relationship to Trip. She would have to think of something, of course—hopefully something plausible.

The crunching sound of grass nearby made her stop. “Will?” No answer came, and she felt her hair stand on end. Something definitely wasn’t right. Someone was out there, in the darkness.

“Will?” she repeated, her voice a feeble tremor.

The silence made her more nervous than the crunching had. She whirled to head back in the direction of camp when she heard Trip’s strangled cry.

“Paulie, run!”

She stopped again, unsure of what to do next. Panic shot through her. Someone had Trip—and probably Oat, too. Where was Will? With Trip’s shouts one direction and crunching footsteps in the other, her venues of escape were limited. And how could she leave the others when she wasn’t even sure which way to go for help? How could she leave Will?

Her only hope was that he was still out on his walk, safe. If she was careful, she might be able to find him. Deciding that she had to do something, she peered into the pitch blackness around her, took a deep breath, and ran swiftly away from the crunching sounds she’d heard. She bent slightly to make herself feel as if she were moving more stealthily, but the position caused a sharp pain to shoot up her side.

She straightened again, but felt an even greater pain as she smacked face-first into something hard, tall, and definitely human. She gasped in surprise, hoping this being she had bumped into was Will. But looking up into the expressionless face lit only slightly by the moon, she knew immediately that her luck had run out. This wasn’t Will. This was someone she’d never seen before at all—but she knew who he was as surely as if they had been acquainted for years.

This was Night Bird.

His parents had named him well. The gaze he levelled at her was as sharp and cold as a hawk or an owl’s—and in his cool line of vision, she felt just as small and defenseless as a rodent. The first feverish thought that went through her brain was that he looked young, maybe not much older than herself. He wore a loose shirt, a leather vest, and buckskin breeches. His raven-black shoulder-length hair hung down limp and straight. Somehow, she had expected such a notorious killer to look older. Lord knows, he couldn’t have possibly have looked meaner.

Her second feverish thought was to run like hell. She turned and ran only about three strides, however, before an ironlike hand grasped her shoulder. The force and suddenness of her stop nearly sent her reeling backwards again. Shocking pain shot up her side.

“Walk,” he instructed her, his voice as clear and insistent as a schoolmarm scolding a small child. “Not run.”

There was no way she
could
run, not with the renegade’s paw clamped down on her shoulder. Her mind raced frantically to decide on some course of action—how could she warn Will of the danger he was about to step into? What could she do?

She considered briefly doing as Trip had done and shouting out a warning. But if Will was safe, she didn’t want to alert Night Bird to there being another person in their party. Keeping silent, she stumbled ahead to their camp, praying she would find the others alive. Night Bird couldn’t be acting alone. Trip had yelled out his warning after she had heard someone nearby. That someone had to have been Night Bird.

Unless it had been Will…Through her fear, that small hope sparked and kindled. Will might still be out there somewhere, safe. And as long as he was alive and they were alive, he might be able to save them. He could go for help, or he could bust in on the camp and—

In a split second, her hope died. Night Bird pushed her forward into the light of the campfire that Trip had built, and Paulie saw what she thought then was about the grimmest sight she’d ever seen. Three bandits stood loitering about the edges of the light, the barrels of their guns glinting in the firelight. Their charges, with hands tied behind their backs and legs bound at the ankle and thrust straight ahead of them as they sat upright on the ground, were Oat, Trip, and Will.

Will’s gaze met hers. She could read the anguish and disappointment in his face so clearly she felt as if someone had stabbed her in the heart. She had let him down. She had been the only one free when she’d heard Trip’s warning
Maybe if she had taken another second and run the other way, she could have helped them all.

The thought made her angry. Angry at herself, and angry at the man behind her, who had outwitted them all, waiting for precisely the right time to ambush them. Oat, who looked surprisingly cool now when face-to-face with his dreaded nemesis, had been right after all. Night Bird had crept up on them silently, even with his three colleagues. She might have been impressed if she weren’t so mad.

But she was mad. Madder than hell. And suddenly, she knew she had to strike a blow for their ill-fated search party, no matter how insignificant it might seem. She turned and did something she never would have done if she’d been thinking clearly.

She glared at Night Bird, the most notorious renegade roaming the Southwestern United States, and with all her might, she kneed him, hard, in the groin.

W
ill gritted his teeth and glared at the bandits hovering around the fire. He and his friends had been tied up for hours. For the fifth time the three Mexicans were counting the money they had emptied out of their hostages’ pockets, while Night Bird stood a little apart, frowning at his men as if he were above actually caring how much they had stolen.

It wasn’t that Will minded having his money taken—although that was indignity enough. What really bothered him was this feeling of helplessness, and his knowledge that he had let the others down. He had thought he was the most adept of the four of them at survival, but while he had been out patroling, supposedly for the protection of the people he was leading, Night Bird had walked right into camp and taken them with no trouble. Now they were all in dire straits, and the only thing Will was certain of was that Night Bird would have to kill him first before he harmed one of his friends.

A glance at the others told him they were in various stages of panic, all except Oat. The old man just looked resigned. As well he probably should. So far there had been no sign of Mary Ann, which couldn’t be a good omen. Trip
appeared frozen in his panic, almost as if he hoped that if he didn’t move or make a sound his captors would forget that he was there. Though her face betrayed her nervousness, Paulie stared straight at her captors, studying their faces and trying to understand what they were saying. Only occasionally had she met Will’s eye, but those few moments caused him more anguish than he had felt in a lifetime.

He was frightened for her, and cursed the moment he had given in to her demands to come along with him. Now he not only had to worry about Mary Ann’s fate, he had to worry about Paulie, too. So far, none of the men had guessed that
“el niño”
was actually a girl, but there was no telling how long that would last, especially since several times he had caught Night Bird looking as curiously at Paulie as she looked at him. Of course, his pride probably still smarted from allowing himself to be kicked in his private parts by a captive. At the memory of the howl that the renegade had let out, Will was hard-pressed to hide a smile.

It was a dumb, foolhardy, incredibly brave thing to do. The bandit had been so furious, it was a wonder that Paulie was still alive. Once he’d recovered, Night Bird had pushed Paulie into camp and had her trussed up especially tight. And Will still worried that he would seek extra retribution from Paulie for her insulting act of defiance.

It was hard to believe that it was just this afternoon that they had been at Judge Bean’s, laughing and drinking. Or that just the night before that he had taken Paulie into his arms and kissed her—a kiss he couldn’t seem to forget, no matter how hard he tried, no matter what worries should have displaced his peculiar preoccupation with her soft lips. He had been thinking about her when he discovered the three Mexicans in camp, too. Actually he’d been brooding
over what a strange position he found himself in, being jealous of Trip Peabody.

Will had had plenty of reasons not to want Paulie to come along with him on this ride. But never in his life would he have thought that it would be because she might cause tension because she was of the fairer sex. He still couldn’t believe it. And yet, he knew in his gut that at that moment he would do anything to get her out of there, and if they ever did get free, to convince her to go home.

That would be no easy task. Paulie was ornery, but sometimes that stubborn streak could be used against her. For instance, if he could make her so mad that she wouldn’t want to be around him anymore…

As Will brooded over precisely how he was going to dispense with Paulie—if he ever had the luxury of that opportunity—Night Bird broke away from his men and walked toward her. Paulie’s eyes rounded as the renegade came closer. Will’s heart, which was already pounding a mile a minute, leapt to his throat.

Deciding the best course of action might be to divert the Indian’s attention, Will straightened. “Where is Mrs. Murphy?” he demanded.

Night Bird stopped, and tilted his head. The others, too, surprised by Will’s dictatorial tone, stopped counting their ill-gotten American greenbacks and turned to view the confrontation. Even Oat turned his head. Blessedly, Night Bird veered away from Paulie and came closer to Will. But not too close. Everything in his stiff stance said that he was a man who preferred to stand apart.

“I do not know your Mrs. Murphy,” Night Bird answered, his voice raspy and low.

Will, surprised that the man was actually talking to him at all, smirked. “Surely you don’t kidnap so many women that you’ve forgotten her already.”

The renegade’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “I do not know her.”

“You wouldn’t forget her. She was the only thing blond and beautiful in Possum Trot. Does that ring a bell?”

Night Bird rattled off something in Spanish to one of the Mexicans standing nearby.

The man nodded, looking around the circle curiously. “Ah,
la bonita,”
he said.

The pretty one.
A cold chill shot down Will’s spine. So they
had
seen her.

The Indian nodded, but said nothing.

“Where is she?”

Night Bird shrugged. “I do not know your Mrs. Murphy,” he repeated.

Will wasn’t buying the stone wall routine. “One of your partners seems to,” Will pointed out.

The Mexicans began rattling off Spanish so quickly that Will could understand nothing more than a repetition of the name
la bonita
and San Antonio.

“They know nothing,” the renegade said. “This woman was your sister?”

Was?
“No,” Will told him. “She is this man’s wife.” He pointed-to Oat.

Night Bird stared at Oat for a moment, uncomprehending. Apparently, his memory of Mary Ann didn’t square with the idea of her being the wife of an old whiskey trader. Oat, Trip, Paulie and Will exchanged edgy glances, wondering what could be going through their captor’s head.

After a minute more of his strange contemplation, the renegade turned his head and rattled off some more Spanish to his
compadres.
The group of three threw back their heads and laughed—and laughed and laughed and laughed.

“I don’t see what’s so funny!” Paulie cried.

Will frowned; if he hadn’t been trussed up like a chicken

he would have gone right over and throttled her. Here he was trying to divert the renegade’s attention, and she insisted on scolding him!

“Oat’s a good man,” she insisted belligerently, “better than a skunk like you.”

Night Bird turned. Despite the peals of mirth he had set off among his cohorts, his face was as blank, expressionless and cold as ever.
“La bonita
is better off now where she is.”

“Where is that?” Will asked, knowing the answer.

Dead.
Maybe it would have been better if Night Bird had kept denying seeing her at all. Having Night Bird tell them the truth about Mary Ann’s fate was going to panic the others for sure.

The renegade looked at him through clear eyes. “San Antonio.”

San Antonio?
Will looked at the Indian skeptically.

“La bonita
wanted to go to San Antonio.” Night Bird nodded toward one of his men. “Francisco was willing to take her.”

I’ll just bet!
Will thought heatedly, giving the man called Francisco another quick look. Despite a rather shabby appearance, he didn’t have the look about him of a man who would turn down the opportunity a damsel in distress presented. “So why didn’t she go with him?”

Night Bird’s lips set into a taciturn line. He said nothing, but jabbed a finger at his own chest.

“Because of you?” Will asked.

Night Bird nodded.

Paulie’s mouth dropped open in astonishment. “You mean she was willing to ride to San Antonio with a bunch of
banditos
but she decided not to when she discovered you with them?”

Night Bird nodded curtly. “But I want the white man’s money. I do not want his women.”

Paulie shot a glance at Will. “It’s just like I told you all along, Will. Mary Ann went to San Antonio.”

Will levelled a gaze on her with more than a share of doubtfulness in it. “If she made it there.”

Paulie thrust her chin forward stubbornly. “If she didn’t, I bet it was her own fault, not this fellow’s.” She nodded toward Night Bird.

“You’re talking about him as if you two were old friends.”

“Well, you have to admit what he says makes sense. Everybody said Mary Ann was scared of Night Bird on account of her hair.” She looked up at their captor, then asked, “Do you really prefer blond scalps to other kinds?”

Night Bird flinched at the blunt question. “I do not take the white man’s women or his hair.”

“You see?” Paulie told Will. “He just wants money, like he said.”

Trip’s gaze darted anxiously between the pair of them. “Maybe you two should have this discussion sometime later.”

Night Bird continued to stare at them blankly, though the Mexicans behind him remained perplexed that the four hostages could be infighting at such an insecure time in their perhaps soon-to-be prematurely short lives.

Will looked at Night Bird and demanded, “If you aren’t interested in anything but the white man’s money, what more do you want with us? You have every cent we had on us, you took our guns, and you’ve scattered our horses to the four winds. You might as well let us go.”

Paulie nodded vigorously. At least they still agreed on something, Will thought with the last ounce of humor left inside him.

“You had not much money. Lucky. Now I will not kill you.”

Paulie seemed to relax—something Will wasn’t about to do just yet. “I see,” he said. “You only turn murderer when the stakes are high.”

Night Bird looked at him with a blankness that either indicated disdain or a complete lack of comprehension.

“You have to admit, it’s a wise policy,” Paulie said. “Nobody’s going to care if a bunch of scrub-bums like us get a few dollars stolen. It’s not like the railroad payroll.”

As Will watched, Night Bird’s head snapped around, and immediately Paulie seemed to realize her mistake. This was no time to be reminding him of past triumphs. Her eyes as wide as two full moons, she stared back at the renegade helplessly, looking smaller and more vulnerable than Will could ever remember.

Night Bird took another step toward her. “I not want white man’s woman. But a smart boy…might be help.” He waved his hand toward his followers behind him. “You are smarter than these grown men. Brave, like the badger who battles the bear.”

Will wouldn’t have thought it possible, but Paulie’s eyes grew even wider as she looked in surprise at the Indian and took in his astonishing proposition. He himself had a hard time believing his ears—or knowing what he would do if Night Bird threw Paulie behind him on his saddle and rode into Mexico. The thought of learning that Mary Ann had escaped Night Bird only to have Paulie kidnapped instead was too terrible to contemplate.

But apparently, that troubling thought hadn’t even occurred to Paulie. Though she herself was facing the prospect of being carried off into oblivion as an unwilling recruit of a band of murderous thieves, her mind was focused on a completely separate issue.

Her eyes dark with rage, she raised her chin and glared at the Indian with all the venom her tiny body could contain. “I am
not
a boy, you ignorant galoot!” she yelled hotly.

So much anger and exasperation flooded through her that Paulie simply couldn’t hold it in any longer. When she had yelled at Night Bird, it was like a dam bursting after heavy rains.

Bad enough that they were on this fool’s mission, especially now that Night Bird confirmed that she had been right all along and that Mary Ann had just been running after that shady gambler fellow. Bad enough that she was
always
playing second fiddle to Mary Ann in Will’s mind. But now to have a sorry criminal announce to the world that he thought she was a boy, and spout off about how she reminded him of a badger…well that just took the cake!

She glared across the fire at Will, who was shaking his head and trying to mouth something at her. In response, she shook her head back at him—back at all of them. After a few seconds of vigorous head movement, her hat slipped off, allowing her long hair to spill down her back.

Night Bird took a surprised step backward, looking almost offended by her suddenly more feminine appearance.

“That’s right—I’m a girl, you numbskull!”

“Paulie…” Trip grumbled warningly.

But she had already thrown caution to the wind. How on earth was she supposed to win Will’s heart away from Mary Ann when everyone was always acting as if she were no different than a bowlegged cowpoke? “I guess you’d have to be about blind not to be able to tell a hen from a rooster!” she shouted. “And I didn’t appreciate that badger comment, either.”

Night Bird and his cohorts gathered around her curiously now, staring at her incredulously. The Indian fingered her
long hair but still looked skeptical. He muttered something to the man called Francisco, and suddenly Paulie found two men attempting to lift her to her feet by the armpits.

They didn’t get very far. After a split second, shooting pain in her side overwhelmed her and she let out a cry a banshee would have been proud to produce. She’d been so frightened, she’d forgotten about her damaged ribs entirely. Now the injury came back to her with the force of a redhot poker being jabbed into her side. The Mexicans were so startled by her howls that they dropped her back to the ground, which caused her to emit yet another piercing wail.

“What’re you trying to do?” she thundered, “cripple me?” She sat back on her rump and tried to ignore the sharp pain in her side.

Night Bird looked doubly startled now—first that she wasn’t a boy and second that a mere girl should be capable of making a noise to rouse his ancestors from the happy hunting grounds.

“What is your name?” he asked her.

Paulie tried to concentrate on the question, and whether she should answer it. She still wasn’t completely used to hearing the renegade speak English. Somehow before, when she’d envisioned him in her mind’s eye, she had him pegged for such a murdering thieving heathen that she hadn’t considered the possibility that he would actually be able to communicate with anyone. Heck, he could spit sentences out with more proficiency than old Oat.