A Heart so Wild - Straton 1 Page 9

  “I’m going to ride out,” he said abruptly. When her eyes darted to his, alarmed, he added, “Don’t be long, or you’ll have trouble catching up.”

  He gathered up the coffeepot and his tin cup, kicked out the fire, and then rode off. Courtney sighed audibly with relief. Now she would have a few minutes of privacy to answer nature’s call.

  And then, quickly, came the realization that Chandos had known what her problem was. How utterly mortifying. Well, she was just going to have to squelch her delicate sensibilities and adjust to traveling with a man.

  She wasted no time, worried that she might not be able to catch up with Chandos. As soon as she could, she lit out after him.

  She needn’t have worried. He had put about a quarter mile between them, but no more. He sat facing west, and didn’t even bother to look back as she approached. When she pulled to a halt beside him, he glanced at her.

  He handed her a strip of jerky. “Gnaw on that. It ought to hold you until we stop at midday.”

  So he knew she was ravenous. Those two biscuits hadn’t satisfied her hunger, not when she hadn’t eaten since yesterday morning.

  “Thank you,” she said softly, keeping her eyes lowered.

  But Chandos made no move to ride on. He was staring at her. Finally she was forced to look up. She found those beautiful blue eyes as inscrutable as ever.

  “This is your last chance to turn back, lady. You know that, don’t you?”

  “I don’t want to turn back.”

  “Do you really know what you’re letting yourself in for? You won’t find anything even remotely civilized out there. And I told you, I’m no nursemaid. Don’t expect me to do anything for you that you can do for yourself.”

  She nodded slowly. “I will take care of myself. I ask only that you protect me if the need arises.” Then she added hesitantly, “You will do that, won’t you?”

  “As well as I can.”

  She sighed as he looked away from her to return the pack of dried jerky to his saddlebag. At least that was settled. Now if only he would stop acting as if she had forced him into this, they might get along. At least he could stop calling her “lady,” which sounded more like a derogatory remark than a title of respect.

  “I do have a name, Chandos,” she ventured. “It’s—”

  “I know what it is.” He cut her off, prodding his horse forward and into a canter.

  She stared after him, stung.

  Chapter 15

  COURTNEY saw the Indian for the first time just before they crossed the Arkansas River at midday. Chandos had ridden west toward the river that morning, following it south until he found a place shallow enough for crossing.

  Courtney was nearly blinded from staring so long at the river while it reflected the midday sun. In her condition, it was hard to focus on the shadows along the bank where trees and vegetation grew. So the movement she saw in the brush might have been anything, really. The man with the long black braids might have been an illusion.

  When she told Chandos she thought she’d seen an Indian on the other side of the river they were preparing to cross, he shrugged it off.

  “If it was, it was. Don’t worry about it.”

  Then he grabbed hold of her reins and old Nelly’s reins, dragging them all into the river. She forgot about the Indian then, worrying instead about staying in the saddle as freezing water lapped first at her feet, then at her thighs, and then at her hips. The skewbald mare bucked and dipped as it tried to keep its footing in the swift current.

  At long last, when they’d crossed the river and her mohair riding skirt and petticoat were stretched over a bush to dry and she had donned the unaccustomed pants, Courtney made friends with the little mare that had brought her safely across the river. Her mare and Chandos’s gelding, Surefoot, were called pintos. They were beautiful blue-eyed animals, nearly identical in markings except that Sure-foot was patched in black and white, while the mare was brown and white.

  Pintos, Courtney knew, were favorites of the Indians. Their endurance, their stamina for long-distance travel, was why, she supposed.

  Courtney had never owned her own horse before, except for Nelly, and she wanted to name the mare.

  She moved out from behind the bushes, where she’d been lingering with the horses as long as she could, putting off making an appearance in her pants.

  There had been no time to try them on at the store, and she’d simply looked them over and assumed they would fit. She’d been wrong. They didn’t fit at all. They were boys’ pants, not men’s pants, and if she hadn’t been starving, she’d have stayed behind the bushes.

  She saw Chandos down by the river’s edge, filling their canteens, but forgot him when their cooking lunch caught her eye. A stew bubbled in a skillet over the small driftwood fire. She found the spoon and bent over to stir it, the aroma making her mouth water.

  “Sonofabitch!”

  Courtney dropped the spoon with a cry of surprise. She straightened slowly, turning around to look at Chandos. He stood a few feet from her, the two canteens dangling from one hand while his other hand was spread across his forehead as if to ward off pain. But when he lowered his hand and his eyes locked with hers, Courtney knew he wasn’t in pain.

  “Chandos?”

  He didn’t answer. His gaze moved slowly to her pants, moving over the curves outlined so starkly by the skintight material. She knew they were too tight, but Chandos made her feel as if she were wearing nothing at all.

  Her face was burning. “You needn’t look like that. I didn’t want to buy them in the first place, but Mattie said you might want me to look like a man for disguise, so I did. How was I to know they wouldn’t fit well? I’m not exactly in the habit of buying men’s apparel, you know. And there was no time to try them on because you did only give me an hour to—”

  “Shut up, woman!” He cut her off. “I don’t give a goddamn why you’re wearing them, just get them off and put your skirt back on.”

  “But you told me to buy them!” Courtney protested in vexation.

  “Pants and shirt, I told you. That doesn’t mean… if you’ve got no more sense than to flaunt that tight little ass in front of me—”

  “How dare you—” she gasped.

  “Don’t try me, lady,” he growled. “Just get your skirt back on.”

  “It’s not dry yet.”

  “I don’t care if it’s sopping wet. Put it on— now!”

  “Fine!” She turned in a huff, adding angrily,

  “Don’t blame me if I catch cold and you have to—”

  Grabbing her shoulder, he swung her back around so swiftly that she fell into his arms. It must have surprised him as much as it did her, Courtney thought afterward, for why else would he grip her buttocks and then continue to hold on even after she’d steadied herself?

  Courtney had had enough of his high-handedness. “Well?” she demanded sharply. “I thought you wanted me to change?”

  His voice was low and husky, soothing, yet strangely disturbing. “You don’t understand at all, do you, cateyes?”

  Nervously, she asked, “Do—do you think you might let go of me now?”

  He didn’t, and for a split second his eyes were as confused as hers. She felt breathless all of a sudden.

  “In the future, lady,” he finally murmured, “I suggest you try as well as you can not to surprise me this way. You can wear your pants, since, as you pointed out, I insisted you bring them along. If I can’t control my… disapproval, well, that’s my difficulty, not yours.”

  She supposed that was an apology for his strange behavior. And she certainly would try not to surprise him again if it made him so irrational.

  “If you don’t mind then, I would rather eat first and let my skirt dry a bit more. Is that all right?”

  He nodded, and Courtney went to fetch the plates from the packhorse.

  About an hour after they moved on, still following reasonably close to the river, though far enough away to avoid the thick
foliage that grew along the banks, Courtney saw the Indian again. Was he the same one? How could she know? But she had no illusions this time that she was indeed seeing an Indian. He was astride a pinto very much like the one she was riding, just sitting there on the small hill, west of them, watching her and Chandos.

  She moved her mount close to Chandos. “Do you see him?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What does he want?”

  “Nothing from us.”

  “Then why is he there? Watching us?” she demanded.

  He finally turned and looked at her. “Settle down, lady. He’s not the last Indian you’re going to see in the next few weeks. Don’t worry about him.”

  “Don’t?”

  “Don’t,” he said firmly.

  Courtney clamped her mouth shut. God sakes, he was infuriating. But she wasn’t so nervous about the Indian, not as long as Chandos was unconcerned.

  Before long, they were well beyond the Indian, and she looked back to see that he hadn’t followed but was still sitting on that little hill.

  Still, as the afternoon wore on, Courtney began remembering all the Indian attacks she had ever heard or read about—including the one she’d been in. She supposed some attacks were the justifiable result of the massacre George Custer and his 7th Cavalry had perpetrated against a friendly band of Cheyennes. That massacre had happened later the same year she lost her father, and Custer had only recently, in fact, been acquitted for that massacre due to a lack of evidence.

  She sighed. The white men killed. Indians sought revenge. Then the white men sought revenge for that, and the Indians retaliated again—couldn’t it ever stop?

  It didn’t seem like it would, not anytime soon. And with Indian tribes spread from Mexico to the Canadian border, every place was affected.

  A year ago, ten wagons were set upon in northern Texas by a hundred and fifty Kiowas and Comanches. The wagons had been freighting grain from Weatherford to Fort Griffin, and although the wagonmaster managed to corral the wagons and offer resistance so that some of his men could get away, those who didn’t escape were all found dead and mutilated.

  The Kiowa chief Set-Tainte, better known as Satanta, was said to have led that attack. This colorful chief was easily identifiable because he often wore the plumed brass helmet and epauletted jacket of a U.S. army general.

  Courtney could remember Mattie laughing at the Indian chiefs display of humor following his raid against Fort Larned. After stealing most of the regimental herd, he actually sent a message to the commanding officer complaining of the inferior quality of the stolen horses and requesting that better mounts be available for his next visit!

  Courtney was sure that was one Indian she wouldn’t be meeting on the trail, for Satanta was now in the Texas State Penitentiary, though there was a rumor that he might be paroled. There were other notable, colorful chiefs, like the half-breed Quannah Parker, who had recently become leader of a band of Comanches. And there were other war parties, even from supposedly tamed reservation Indians.

  Yes, there was a very real danger in this journey. Could one man really protect her?

  She supposed they would just have to pray for safety and hope their horses were dependable. If she dwelled on the possibilities, she wouldn’t be able to go on. No, better to adopt Chandos’s attitude.

  She only hoped he was right to be so calm.

  Chapter 16

  CHANDOS waited until he was certain Courtney was asleep. Then he rose, grabbing only his boots and gun, and soundlessly moved away from their campsite. He walked in the direction away from the river. The night was dark, and all was in shadow.

  He didn’t go far before Leaping Wolf found him, falling into step beside Chandos. They walked on without words until they were far enough away that their voices wouldn’t carry on the wind.

  “Is she your woman?”

  Chandos stopped, staring ahead. His woman? That had a nice sound to it, really. But there had never been a woman he’d called his, or wanted to. There was never time for that. The only woman he returned to time and again was the passionate Calida Alvarez. But Calida belonged to many men.

  “No, she is not my woman,” he said at last.

  Leaping Wolf did not miss the sound of regret. “Why not?”

  There were many reasons, Chandos knew, but he gave only the obvious one. “She isn’t the kind to follow blindly—and I am not meant to quit what isn’t finished.”

  “But she is with you.”

  White teeth flashed in the black night as Chandos chuckled. “You are not usually so curious, my friend. Would you think me insane if I told you she is stronger than I, or rather, more persistent?”

  “What power does she wield?”

  “Tears—goddamn tears.”

  “Ah, I remember the power of tears very well.”

  Chandos knew Leaping Wolf was thinking of his dead wife. It never failed. In a word or a look, Leaping Wolf could bring it all back to Chandos in vivid detail.

  Although his path now led from the blood of those he had loved, Chandos tried to forget what had happened. Not so Leaping Wolf. The Comanche brave lived daily with the memory. It was his sustenance and his reason for living.

  The nightmare wouldn’t be over for either of them until the last of the fifteen butchers was finally dead. Only then would Chandos stop hearing screams in his sleep, stop seeing Leaping Wolf, his closest friend, tears streaming down his cheeks as he fell to the ground near his dead wife, staring blindly at his two-month-old son lying a few feet away. A tiny baby with its throat slit!

  Sometimes when the images haunted him, Chandos lost touch with his surroundings, and then he would cry inside himself again, as he had done the day he arrived home and found the nightmare. The tears wouldn’t flow freely for him as they had for Leaping Wolf, and as they had for his stepfather, who had covered his wife’s legs, stained with the blood of repeated rapes, and closed her eyes, those beautiful blue eyes filled with the pain and horror of her death. Woman of the Sky-Eyes Chandos’s mother was called.

  Maybe someday the tears would flow. Then he could stop hearing her screams. Perhaps then she could finally sleep in peace. But he didn’t think the image of White Wing would ever fade. His little half-sister, who he had adored and who had worshiped him. It was the butchery of that sweet, loving child that seared his soul—the broken arms, the teeth marks, the twisted, bloody body. The rape of his mother was not beyond understanding. She had been a beautiful woman. But the rape of White Wing was an abomination beyond imagining.

  Only two of the fifteen white men responsible for the horror were still alive. Leaping Wolf and the five braves who rode with Chandos had found and executed most of the killers within that first year. Chandos’s stepfather had gone after the two Cottle brothers and was later found dead by their bodies. It was only when the bastards had taken to hiding in towns where a small group of Indians couldn’t get to them that Chandos had cut his hair like a white man and strapped on his guns so that he could enter those towns and flush the men out.

  The cowboys known only as Tad and Carl had left town when they heard Chandos was looking for them. They ran right into Leaping Wolf’s arms. Later on, Cincinnati had faced Chandos, and Curly had, too. Both of them were dead.

  It was Wade Smith Chandos wanted most, Wade Smith who kept eluding him, just as Trask kept eluding him.

  John Handley had volunteered more information than the fat farmer had before he died, actually putting names to deeds. It was Trask who had killed Leaping Wolf’s young wife, and the Comanche would not rest until he was dead, just as Chandos couldn’t stop his quest until Smith was found. If Chandos couldn’t give Trask to Leaping Wolf, he would kill him himself, for his friend. But it was Wade Smith who had tortured White Wing before cutting her throat, so Chandos wanted Smith for himself.

  The Indian friends all rode together when they could. They had gone to Arizona together, where Chandos found Curly. They’d ridden through Texas more than once, following lead
s, and into New Mexico—even as far north as Nebraska. Chandos was one of them when they rode, but then he was Chandos again when he had to leave them behind at the approach of towns. They had come up with him from Texas this last time, and he would have returned with them if it hadn’t been for Courtney.

  “He was not in Newton,” Chandos said quietly.

  “And now?”

  “I have heard Smith is holed up in Paris, Texas.”

  There was the briefest pause.

  “And the woman?”

  “She is going to Texas, too.”

  “So. I do not think you will want our company on this crossing.”

  Chandos grinned. “I don’t think she would understand, no. She was skittish enough today when she saw you. I’ll have a hysterical woman to deal with if she sees the others.”

  “Then know we are near if you need us.”

  Leaping Wolf offered. And he slipped away as quietly as he had come.

  Chandos stood there for a long while looking up at the black night sky, feeling empty. He would feel that way until the last butcher was dead. Only then would his dead loved ones sleep and stop screaming in his dreams.

  Suddenly, chilled to the core of his being, he heard his name being screamed. This was no dream. Chandos felt a depth of fear he hadn’t felt since that terrible day when he’d arrived home at the camp.

  He ran, running like the wind until he reached her.

  “What’s wrong? What?”

  Courtney collapsed against him, clinging tightly to his bare chest.

  “I’m sorry,” she babbled, her face hidden against his shoulder. “I woke up and you weren’t there. I didn’t mean to scream—really I didn’t—but I thought you’d left me here. I—I was so frightened, Chandos. You wouldn’t really leave me, would you?”

  His hand had twisted in her hair, pulling her head back. He kissed her, hard. His lips, those lips she thought so very sensual, were moving on hers, and not softly, either. There was nothing soft about his kiss or the way he was holding her.

  After a moment something began mingling with her stunned confusion. That funny feeling again in the pit of her belly, that feeling she had felt before.