Nan Ryan (17 page)

“
Excuse me, Captain,
” the princess called out, “I think it’s time we stop to rest.”

“When I want your opinion, I’ll ask for it,” Virgil said over his shoulder. “Until I do, keep it to yourself.”

Her face flushing beet red, she said irritably, “You know, I hate to say this, but—”

“Then don’t,” he cut her off.

Irritation turned to anger. She shouted at the top of her lungs, “You are the meanest man I have ever had the misfortune of meeting!”

“That’s me,” replied Virgil, unruffled “I’m one
muy malo hombre.
”

It was nearing noon.

The entire morning, beginning with the early dawn scuffle, had gone much the same way. The princess, unable and unwilling to change the habits of a lifetime, attempted, at every turn, to boss the taciturn Texas Ranger around.

Big mistake.

Virgil Black was not accustomed to any woman supposing she could tell him what to do. And he sure didn’t cotton to it. Few people got under his skin, but this overbearing female he was transporting to a Texas jail was beginning to annoy the hell out of him.

“
Herr Kapitan
,” she tried again after a few minutes, her voice soft and modulated, “I realize I’m getting on your nerves, but I—”

“I have no nerves,” he said, concluding the conversation.

The princess sighed, genuinely bewildered by his indifference. She was beginning to realize that—for the first time in her life—she didn’t have the upper hand here.

He did.

Damn him.

Just her dismal luck to be apprehended by the only lawman on earth who would not listen to reason and could not be easily distracted. Not even by her. Captain Virgil Black was, it was becoming crystal clear, totally single-minded in his resolve to deliver her to the El Paso County jail. Never mind that he had the wrong woman! She had given up on setting him straight. What was the use of wasting any more breath in futile attempts to convince this big, dark, sullen Texas Ranger that she was
not
the thief he thought her to be.

For several minutes, the princess said nothing more to Virgil. But she made sour faces at his back and she silently vowed that he would pay dearly for the misery he had dealt her.

The mounted pair had spent the sunny June morning descending down out of the rugged high country. Following the rail bed, they had made sure, slow, steady progress. They had wound their way down twisting, treacherous mountain trails, rapidly losing altitude.

Squinting his eyes now under his pulled down hat brim, Virgil studied the perilous terrain cautiously. Keenly alert, he tirelessly searched ahead for spots of risky footing or unexpected drop-offs or impassable places along the plummeting switchback trail.

It wasn’t just perilous topography that had his rapt attention. He was careful to check every jutting cliff, every narrow shoot-off canyon, every towering, thick branched tree and scrubby brush for lurking danger of another kind. Renegade Apache and armed outlaws were a far bigger concern to Virgil Black than the hazards of the coiling, curving path.

A seasoned veteran of Texas’s foremost peacekeeping force, Virgil had trained himself to be constantly on the lookout for even the smallest signs of trouble. Nobody was better at noticing fresh hoof-prints, even in rocky regions. Or spotting the remnants of a campfire someone had tried to conceal. Or at picking up clues from nothing more than a broken tree branch or a dislodged boulder.

Detecting no evidence of intruders, Virgil reined the surefooted stallion onto a narrow stretch of railroad right-of-way and out onto a wooden trestle high above a rocky ravine. He was still leading the dappled gray mare.

To this, at least, the princess had no objection. She didn’t really want to take over the reins until they had lost most of the altitude. The rough, uneven ground they’d covered so far had dropped so quickly in spots she had a bad case of the jitters. Her anxiety escalated when she saw that they were heading onto a high wooden railroad trestle. When, nearing the trestle’s center, the Ranger abruptly drew rein, halting the stallion and the mare on a dime, the princess was at first puzzled. Then she saw his reason for stopping, and she shuddered involuntarily.

This trestle, like the one just three miles out of Cloudcroft, had been blown up. A portion of the wooden structure—directly before them at the trestle’s center—was missing.

“What shall we do?” she asked, looking about, seeing no way out of their predicament.

Virgil turned in the saddle, fixed her with those riveting blue eyes, and said calmly, “Jump it.”

“Jump it?” she repeated, incredulous, and her well-arched eyebrows immediately knitted. Staring at him, she shook her head forcefully. “You’re teasing me, of course. That’s it, isn’t it? A tasteless prank. You’ve a warped sense of humor, Captain Black! You obviously take perverse pleasure in frightening the daylights out of me.”

“I’ve got to hand it to you, Queenie,” Virgil said with bland innocence. “You’ve figured me out, all right. Yes, indeedy. Fact is I’ve been really hoping that the Apaches had blown this trestle up so I could give you a real good scare.” His jaw flexed then, and pinning her with icy-blue eyes, he added, “Never in my thirty-four years have I met a more self-absorbed human being. Jesus, you think the entire world revolves around your beautiful ass.”

The princess gasped, horrified by his crude language. “Why you crass bastard! You can’t …”

“I can,” he calmly interrupted, “anything I like.” She started to speak, he stopped her with a raised hand. “Listen to me, Red. This is not some game we’re playing here and I’m not trying to frighten you. There is absolutely nothing here to be afraid of. Nothing. The segment of trestle that’s missing is no more than ten to twelve feet. The horses can easily jump it.”

“Noooo,” she murmured, her rounded eyes quickly narrowing. “I will not do it! There must be another route.”

“Sure, there is,” he told her. “Look below. We can swim the horses across. But we’ll have to be very careful. The water’s moving pretty fast.”

The princess hazarded a glance at the boiling, rushing water far below. Tree limbs and debris, swept into the surging stream, flashed by in the swelling, splashing torrent.

“We would drown,” she declared, her voice shrill.

“A possibility,” he agreed. “So we are going to jump.”

“Oh, dear God.” She breathed shallowly and her face paled.

Virgil took pity on her. “You can ride over with me on Noche.”

Comforted a little by the prospect, she asked, “What about the mare?”

“She’ll follow the stallion across. Don’t worry about her making it.” He pushed back his hat brim with a forefinger. “What do you say?”

She nodded but stayed where she was, too scared to move.

Virgil exhaled heavily and swung down off the black. In three long strides he was to her and plucking her out of the saddle. When he set her on her feet and released her, the nervous princess didn’t move away from him. She stood as close as she could while he looped the mare’s reins around the saddle horn and tied them.

Virgil patted the mare’s sleek neck and murmured soothingly into her pricked ear, “You can do it, girl. Noche will lead the way. All you have to do is follow him.” The mare whinnied and tossed her head.

Virgil turned abruptly and found the princess practically standing on top of him. Frowning, he took her hand in his and led her to the stallion. She was puzzled when he dropped her hand and mounted the black first. But when he leaned down, reached for her, and drew her up behind him, she understood. She might be a hindrance if she were seated in front of him.

The princess started to put her arms around him, but stopped herself. Instead, she gripped the saddle’s cantle and pressed her denim-clad knees close to the stallion’s belly, hoping she could hang on when the big beast leaped the chasm.

Virgil reined the big black around in a slow, tight semicircle and walked him off the trestle. The mare followed docilely on the stallion’s heels. When they reached the place where the railbed widened just before the wooden trestle commenced, Virgil again reined the stallion around.

Over his shoulder, he softly inquired, “Ready, Red?”

She swallowed anxiously and said, “Promise I won’t fall to my death!”

“Promise,” he said. Then, “But you better put your arms around me and hold on tight.”

She gave no reply but hurriedly wrapped her arms around him, clasping her hands together over his hard waist. She felt him shift in the saddle as he touched his big-roweled spurs lightly to the black’s powerful flanks. Then her head snapped back from the swift motion as the stallion went from standing stock-still to a thundering gallop, rushing headlong onto the wooden trestle. The gray mare raced after him.

The princess flattened herself as close to the Ranger’s back as she could, closed her eyes tightly, and pressed her cheek against Virgil’s muscular shoulder. Her heart drumming in tempo with the stallion’s clattering hoofbeats, she offered up a quick, brief prayer to the Almighty.

Get me through this and I’ll be a saint for the rest of my days!

In a matter of seconds she felt the powerful black’s hooves leave the wooden trestle as he leaped into the air. It seemed to her that they hung suspended over the abyss for a tortuously long time before she finally felt the welcome jarring of her body against the black’s rump and the Ranger’s back as the stallion landed loudly on wood. The mare’s hooves struck seconds later.

Virgil immediately reined the stallion down and said over his shoulder, “You can open your eyes now, we’re on the other side of the trestle.”

“My eyes are not closed!” she said indignantly, wondering why he had to constantly be such an insulting know-it-all.

“My mistake,” he said, his tone of voice indicating he knew better.

Princess Marlena, gritting her teeth, swiftly withdrew her arms from around him. “I want to get down now,” she told him haughtily.

“As you wish,” Virgil said, turned halfway around in the saddle, crooked a long arm around her waist, lifted her as easily as if she were a small child, and deposited her on the trestle.

She stood there looking up at him, waiting for him to dismount and put her on the mare’s back. He stayed in the saddle, fished in his shirt pocket for a cigarette, stuck it between his lips, and lit it. Then took his own sweet time drawing the smoke deep down into his lungs and leisurely releasing it.

Virgil blew a perfect smoke ring and said, “Any possibility you can mount the mare all by yourself?”

The minute he said it, he was half-sorry.

She stood directly below, looking suddenly small and vulnerable. Her emerald eyes were the questioning eyes of a child, and faint traces of terror were still clearly written on her pale, lovely face. The jump over the ravine, while not actually dangerous, had genuinely frightened her. She was, he realized, still badly unnerved.

Squinting at her, Virgil felt his chest suddenly tighten. A twinge of guilt, the kind to which he was a stranger, momentarily plagued him.

Maybe he had been too hard on her. He had, he realized, treated her with scant civility. He wondered why, but had no answer. Seized with remorse, he purposely softened his expression, climbed down out of the saddle to stand facing her, and said almost apologetically, “Can I give you a hand?”

But his tranquil tone and kind offer came too late. Tired of his insults and insensitivity, the princess stiffened her backbone, lifted her royal chin, and said, “You can’t give me anything!” She took a step backward, spun on her heel, and stalked away, saying, “Nor can you
take
anything from me, Captain Black!”

19

Princess Marlena managed
, after a couple of failed attempts, to mount the mare on her own. When she was securely in the saddle, she tossed Virgil an I-don’t-need-you look and began untying the reins from the saddle horn.

“No, you don’t.” In the blink of an eye he was beside her, easily wresting the reins away from her. “Like it or not, you are my responsibility, and I aim to deliver you unharmed to the authorities.”

“You’ll never get me to El Paso!” she told him hotly. Virgil didn’t bother to refute the statement. Disappointed by his lack of reaction, she said with scathing authority, “I am warning you—”