Renegade Bride (11 page)

The two men jumped as if they'd met the business end of a branding iron. Sam Bennett tossed his cards to the ground and lumbered to his feet. Two hundred and forty pounds and six feet, seven inches made him less agile than some, but gave him the distinct advantage over most men—except LaRousse. An unkempt beard covered the lower half of his face, concealing a mouthful of yellowed teeth.

With the blade of his Arkansas toothpick, Bennett sliced the rope that bound the crates and the two lowered the boxes to the ground and pried the tops open.

"Pierre—" Downing interrupted hesitantly. "I need—"

LaRousse shot a silencing look at Downing, then reached into the opened crate and lifted out a spanking new Spencer Repeater Rifle, U.S. Army issue. The walnut stock gleamed in the fading sunlight. His heartbeat quickened. There were at least twelve guns in each crate. Each of those precious weapons would bring a dear price from any of several tribes he traded with on a regular basis.

A low whistle came from the diminutive Poke, who rocked on the worn soles of his boots as he crouched beside the crates. "Holy perdition! Would'ja look at these? These here the repeaters I done heard tell of?"

Daniels smiled. "Pretty lot, aren't they?"

Entranced, the others gathered closer.

"Right out from under the Yanks' noses," Petey exclaimed in awe.

Pierre caressed the gun's smooth stock as if it were a newborn babe.
"Oui.
You 'ave done well, Daniels." He glanced admiringly at the rifle again.
"Le mitawa.
Thees one ees mine."

"Do we get one, too?" Petey asked.

Pierre leered at the youth. "Wiz gold,
mon ami,
you can buy anything." He turned and walked toward the fire.

"Hell, we gotta
buy
'em?" he grumbled to Downing, who'd moved beside him.

"Shut up, boy," Downing snapped, leaving Petey flushed and staring after him as he joined the two men at the fire.

Pierre squatted near the fire beside the woman and the Piegan, Running Fox. Pierre slid the cold walnut stock erotically against Raven's elkskin-covered breast and across her smooth brown cheek. It pleased him to see the look of fear creep into her black eyes. It made him feel stronger, invincible. As the gun did.

With the tip of his knife, he stabbed at a piece of rabbit that was cooking over the fire. The greasy morsel stopped halfway to his mouth and he looked at Downing. "Where ees my brother? 'E ees following behind?"

Downing felt his stomach shift into his throat and he swallowed hard. The scent of the rabbit made him suddenly nauseous and sweat broke out on his upper lip. "Étienne was killed," Downing mumbled. "He's dead, Pierre."

In the fraction of a second it took for those words to sink into Pierre's consciousness, Downing glimpsed a moment of something human in those eyes—a flicker of pain or disbelief or, possibly, grief.

It was quickly replaced by fury.

Before Downing could move, LaRousse was on him, flattening him to the ground with the razor-sharp edge of his knife blade—rabbit meat and all—pressed against his throat.

"Bâtard!
You lie!" he snarled, drawing a fine bead of blood from Downing's neck.

"No! Pierre, listen to me!" Downing pleaded in a choked voice. "I'm sorry, it's true, but I—I swear, there was nothin' I could do. We g-got there just as the steamer was dockin'. The levee was crawlin' with people. But we didn't see nobody who would recognize us.

"That bastard bounty caught us unawares. The sonofabitch was on Étienne before we could turn around. We both took off runnin', but I... I guess it was Étienne he wanted. I don't reckon he—he even saw me." He felt the pressure of the blade decrease only slightly. "Another b-bounty come right after. Maybe they was workin' together. I don't know.

"But I do know Étienne didn't have a spit's chance in hell. He drew on 'em, but the bounty shot him dead, right there in front of dozens of witnesses."

"He's quite right," Daniels confirmed from somewhere out of Downing's line of vision. "I saw the whole thing myself. Your brother didn't have a prayer in that mob. Downing and I wouldn't have stood a chance either if we'd interfered. Besides," he added pointedly, "if we'd been fool enough to get between them, they would have killed us both and you wouldn't have had these guns."

LaRousse's hand shook slightly as he pulled the knife away from Downing's neck and eased back onto his moccasined heels. His lip curled like that of a rogue dog who has been kicked once too often.
"Who?"
The word embodied a lifetime full of hate. "Who were zey?"

Downing drew his breath shakily. "The second one was that drunken
pissant,
Lydell Kraylor—that feller we run into down on the Big Horn last fall? Come outta nowheres, after that first fella called Étienne out. Kraylor shot him once. But he ain't the one who kilt him. I ain't never seen that one before."

"Saaa-aa!"
Pierre spat disgustedly, yanking the rabbit meat from the blade of his knife and flinging it at Downing. With a smack, the meat landed and slid greasily down his face. He dared not move to wipe it off.

"His name," Daniels interjected in a deep baritone, "was Devereaux."

Pierre felt the color leave his face. He swallowed heavily.
Devereaux?
It couldn't possibly be the same one. It was, after all, a common name. There must be dozens of men with that name in the Territory. Still..."Thees you are sure?" he asked, narrowing his eyes at the gunrunner.

"Why? You know him?"

LaRousse's face had reverted to stone, revealing nothing. "'Ow did 'ee look?"

"Tall, twenty-five to thirty, dark hair... wears some kind of a bone or shell choker at his throat."

The flare of LaRousse's nostrils was the only indication that he'd heard. "Eyes?" he demanded. "Did you see 'ees eyes?"

Daniels regarded LaRousse curiously for a moment. "I'm afraid I didn't get that close. They looked like any other man's eyes from where I stood."

Downing propped himself on one muddy elbow and spoke.

"I saw 'em, Pierre. They was a funny color—not blue... not exactly green. More like the color of one a' them turquoise stones."

LaRousse dragged the blade of his knife slowly against his buckskin leggings, leaving a smear of grease. "You saw zem and zen,
mon ami," he
asked Downing in a low voice, "zen, did you run like ze rabbit from my dead brother's body, or did you 'appen to see where 'ee went, thees bounty, Devereaux?"

Downing raked a hand defensively through his mousy brown hair as he sat up. "He followed a stage to Virginia City. He was talkin' to some woman who got on that stage, too. The ticket agent told me her name was Parsons. Mariah Parsons."

LaRousse stared unseeing at the ground for a long moment, then stood, casting his long shadow across Downing. "We leave at first light." With that, he turned and started to walk away.

"Hey, LaRousse—" Daniels inquired impatiently. "What about my guns?"

Without breaking stride, Pierre turned, and arrowed his bone-handled knife toward Daniels' chest. With a dull thunk, the weapon found its mark and the impact sent Reese stumbling backward with a mixture of surprise and horror on his face. He groaned, sinking to his knees, clutching at the hilt of the protruding weapon. A crimson stain seeped across his shirt and his rapidly numbing fingers groped futilely for the pistol at his hip.

"Mary, Mother of—" The rest was a strangled moan and he bent over the hilt like a man in prayer.

Petey, Poke, and Bennett stared, frozen in shock. Raven backed away from the fire to cringe by Running Fox. Downing's shaking hand went to his hip, waiting for LaRousse to turn on him as well.

But the half-breed ignored him and stared down at the fallen man. With his lip curled again in a parody of a smile, he grasped his knife and tipped the gun-runner the rest of the way backward with a well-placed shove of his foot. Reese sprawled helplessly, too weak to resist, while his life's blood ebbed out onto the ground. A gurgling sound punctuated the labored rise and fall of his chest.

"Your
guns?" Pierre repeated. "Now, Monsieur Reese, zey are
my
guns."

"Why?" Reese pleaded, clutching his chest. "I always dealt straight with you—"

LaRousse snatched up Reese's bloody shirtfront in his fists and yanked the man close to him. "Étienne was ze brother of my blood,
sacre Americaine!
And you think rifles would take 'ees place?" He spat in Reese's face and the spittle tricked down the dying man's cheek. "You are less zan nothing to me." With a shove, he released the gunrunner who slammed against the ground.

Daniel's face crumpled in pain. "I'll see you in... hell, LaRousse," he rasped.

Pierre LaRousse turned his back on the dying man and without a backward glance, stalked out of camp toward the high, isolated cliffs that limned the badlands. He would sing a death song for his brother, then he would find the man responsible and cut out his heart.

Chapter 6

The moisture from the damp cedar sizzled as the flames of the campfire licked it dry. Creed added several larger pieces of wood, then shoved another hunk of crystallized pine sap beneath the small pyre. The fuel roared to life, casting a crimson glow on the undersides of the aspen leaves surrounding the camp. Spires of pine forked into the midnight blue sky in inky silhouette, like giant sentinels.

Beyond these, he could hear the Sun River rushing against its banks as it flowed downstream. The water had kept them hemmed in on the north bank, its currents too treacherous and swollen to cross. Tomorrow, he thought. Surely tomorrow they would find a decent ford.

Through the flames he watched Mariah's delicately sculpted face, lit by the otherworldly light. She sat opposite him across the fire, wrapped in a blanket, eyes closed and head bobbing forward with exhaustion. The knife with which she'd been peeling a wild onion lay forgotten in the relaxed curl of her palm—the roasting pair of fat, planked trout at her feet and her earlier claims to hunger overridden by mindless fatigue.

He guessed they'd covered nearly fifteen miles today, far less than he would have covered on his own, far more than he should have pushed a tenderfoot like her. He'd suffered a pang or two of conscience over that, but he'd warned her, hadn't he?

Still, he would have felt less like a brute if she'd complained. But she hadn't. Not once. Not even when she'd nearly fallen from her horse when they'd made camp. She would have, too, if he hadn't caught her. Even then, she'd been too proud to ask for his help—too stubborn to tell him she was in pain and, until that moment, he'd been too angry with her to notice.

Unwillingly, his gaze roamed over her again as he remembered the feel of her trembling like a willow branch in his arms, the way his hands had nearly circled her small waist—

The slender stick in Creed's hands snapped in two. He stared at it a moment, surprised, then pitched it into the fire. He rose soundlessly, circled the fire and slipped the wild onion from her hand.

Her head came up with a jerk, her eyes wide, unfocused, and frightened. "Wha—?"

He tried for a reassuring smile, but it was a gesture he'd nearly forgotten how to give. The vulnerability in her eyes had him feeling suddenly and irrationally protective. It seeped through him with a suddenness that made his heart begin to thud in his chest.

Swallowing heavily, he pointed to the pallet of blankets unfurled in the bed of pine branches ten feet away from his own bedroll. "I... uh, made up a bed for you."

"Oh... I—" She blinked and her gaze returned to him. Her hand went up to tame the burnished curls that haloed her face. "Thank you. I could have done that. But... I guess I fell asleep."

Creed didn't answer, but wrapped his hand in a bandanna and lifted the cooked trout away from the fire. "Hungry?"

"Not very," she replied, but the tantalizing aroma of the food reached her and she rolled her eyes. "Well, maybe I am a little hungry after all. It smells wonderful." She glanced sheepishly up at him. "I—I'm sorry I fell asleep. I told you I was going to make supper. I thought you said you couldn't cook."

He raised one dark eyebrow. "If that were true, I would have starved years ago. You become self-sufficient when you live alone." He untied the damp leather thongs that held the fish in place against the short cooking-plank. He slid one of the two three-pound fish onto a dented blue-metal plate, added a spoon and hunk of the sour-dough bread Hattie Lochrie had sent along, then held it out to her.