A Wolf in the Desert (17 page)

“Slavery?” There was horror on her face.

“Their livelihood and their pleasure. On this tour they've literally been taking orders.” His tone left little doubt of his loathing for those who not only thrived but relished in dealing in human flesh and misery.

“Where do these men and women come from?”

“Most are illegal aliens who've been enticed to cross the border with the assurance of a golden life in the land of promise. They'll come by truck in the dead of night, packed like sardines, jolted nearly to death over impassable trails, willing to suffer anything for the dream of better days. A roundup of human cattle.” He spat the words in growing disgust. “But not all are aliens. Some will be women who were unfortunate in the crossing of paths.”

“Women like me.”

“I'm afraid so.”

“White slavery.” She didn't expect an answer. She didn't need one. Thinking of the women of the camp, some she knew by sight, but not by name. Hard women, with a sense of permanence, and as tough as the men with whom they traveled. Only one didn't fit the pattern. Stricken eyes turned from the fire. “Will Callie be part of the herd?”

“If Snake decides he's tired of her, she will be.”

Hugging herself tightly, to contain the hopeless despair that knotted her stomach, Patience exclaimed bitterly, “Hasn't she been through enough?”

The sweet face, still fair with its scar, rose like a specter in her mind. What would the life that loomed in Callie's future do to her? How would that netherworld capitalize on her innocence and naiveté? Then, with a prescient understanding she knew. In a cruel, brutal world, helpless innocence would serve as spur for greater brutality and inventive cruelty.

“What can we do?” she whispered, the pain of her vision overwhelming. “Isn't there something?”

He brushed feathers from her shoulder to slip his hand beneath the fall of her banded hair. His fingers moved over taut tendons, soothing the soreness left by his crude performance in front of the Wolves. “I hoped you wouldn't have to know. But I promise, I'll do what I can for her.”

Patience whipped her head around, through narrowed eyes she studied his face. “That's what this is all about.” She was suddenly animated, the spark of excitement chasing bleak defeat from her face. “The masquerade, the names! All of it was aimed at bringing an end to their unsavory trade. You work with the police. The FBI. Someone.”

Taking his hand away, he turned to the dying fire to toss on another branch. Bark had begun to curl and sizzle before he spoke. “Leave it alone. The less you know, the better for you.”

“And for you.”

Indian turned abruptly from the fire. “I wasn't thinking of myself, I can handle what I must, if there's only myself to consider.”

“My blundering into the middle of your investigation has complicated everything for you.”

Very carefully avoiding any admission that there was an investigation or an organization of any sort, he settled back down beside her. “You didn't blunder into anything. You had some bad luck and were stranded.” He gathered her hand in his. “Bad luck turned worse when we found you.”

He used the inclusive “we,” but in spite of his refusal to acknowledge her speculations, she knew he was never one of them. “The worst of it is, they're suspicious of you now.”

With a small, humorless laugh, he shrugged away her concern. “The Wolves are suspicious of everything and everyone. With only themselves to judge by, its a natural part of their nature.”

“Don't make light of it. I'm not obtuse, I saw Snake and Hoke. Blue Doggie was quiet, but even he has his doubts. Before this is done, Custer might, as well.”

“I'm not making light of it. But it's simply something I must deal with.”

“Can you?” Curling her fingers tighter over his, she studied him again with a probing, laserlike gaze. “So long as I'm around, can you do what you need to do, as freely as you should?”

“You aren't responsible for Snake's attitude, or Hoke's. You can't be blamed for today.” His mouth pulled down in a grim line. “When this is resolved, you'll know exactly where the blame lies, and exactly which of us you should hate.”

Rising, his body unfolding effortlessly, he towered over her. He was silent, his expression forbidding. “I'll do everything I can for Callie. I'll do it for her, and for you. It's the least repayment I can offer for what I've done.” His expression softened. “Last night was not quite what one would call restful, maybe you should turn in. I won't disturb you, but I won't be far away.”

“You won't be sleeping in the lean-to?”

“I'll catch what sleep I need out here.”

Would he be keeping watch because Snake's threat was more serious than he wanted her to know? she wondered. Or did he regret their time in the canyon so quickly and so much he wanted to avoid further complications? She couldn't bring herself to ask, for fear the answer would be more painful than she could bear.

“You're right, I am a little tired.” Moving with deliberate speed she was on her feet before he could offer his usual chivalrous help. She was afraid that if he touched her she would make a fool of herself. Head down, she hurried to the lean-to.

“O'Hara?”

Her heart surged with hope as she turned back. “Yes?”

Indian hesitated, then he smiled. “Nothing, just good night.”

“Yes, of course, I forgot. Good night.” Ducking swiftly into the brush-covered shelter, she closed her eyes, waiting for disappointment to subside.

“I'm a fool,” she decided hours later as she lay sleepless and alone, listening to the sounds of a restless man prowling the camp. “I might as well admit it.” The musky scent of mule-ears wafted to her as she brushed a wilted blossom over her lips. “A fool as much out of my element as you are with your silly name.”

A fool in love.

A
nother day, another camp, the routine that had become the norm in this strange odyssey through the wilds. As she'd gradually oriented herself, Patience realized their path was more meandering and crisscrossing than direct, and far from purposeless. At first the Wolves seemed to have all the time in the world, spending a week in one campsite, two days in another, three in the next. Once each successful ride from camp merited days and nights of revelry.

In the last three days of miles and miles of arduous riding there had been three camps. And in an unnatural quiet a feverish excitement mounted at every turn. Even Indian was not unaffected. He'd grown more taciturn, more watchful, prowling their separate site, sleeping in catnaps and only lightly. By unspoken edict he was no longer privy to the nightly conferences held at Hoke's fire, but she saw that he was never far from the sight of it. Always positioning himself in such a way that he could interpret actions, and gestures, and, with luck, read lips.

The Wolves' trust in him had been fractured, if not broken. Biding time, they watched him, the final verdict undeclared. Patience had questioned why they bothered waiting when any one of them would maim or murder without compunction. When Snake or Blue Doggie would relish dealing most violently with Indian.

In the frenetic days of short camps in progressively rougher and unpredictable terrain, she saw how invaluable he was. Though the bikers had clearly traveled in this manner before, clearly performed the unholy service of meeting the supply and demand for human flesh, it was equally clear that once past town and village and metropolis, Arizona was new and unknown territory. Patience began to realize that it was more than gratitude for a life redeemed in a deadly barroom brawl that prompted Custer to bring Indian to the Wolves. Among them, no one was as at home in the desert and the high country, no one as adept at finding the best routes, the more passable trails.

With Indian at the point, no time was lost backtracking around unanticipated and suddenly looming gorges. No fording wild rivers with fickle currents and treacherous quicksands. No one was better at finding water along the barren stretches, the pass tucked among rocks and spires, the natural campsite. Keeping always out of the sight of civilization, but never far removed from it, he'd led without error.

Though still immeasurable, his value had been compromised by Patience and his concern for her. As with the stone that sealed the canyon, he would deal better with what he must alone and unhampered.

Pacing the small perimeter of their camp, she was aware as never before of the watchful eyes that marked her step. At every turn there was someone watching. Alice, Eva, Snake, and even Callie. Callie with her rapidly growing kitten hidden in a knapsack, and a look of constant fear for it adding to the distress of her mutilated face.

Everyone was on edge. The excitement of change was in the air, like a pervasive sickness it spread from one to another. Change, she suspected, that would most affect herself and Callie, and the man the Wolves knew as Indian.

“What can I do?” Patience mused as she stalked through her area of dusty scrub. She couldn't just stand by and do nothing. Yet, how could she help when Indian was determined to keep her ignorant of what he meant to do? In ignorance, how could she help Callie?

Frustrated, she kicked a stone from her path, and was pleased at the twinge she felt in her toe. That at least was real, something she thought she could focus on. Instead she found herself turning, seeking out Indian on the far side of the adjoining camp. And as she found him, dressed in familiar leather jeans and vest, as always with moccasins laced to his knees, she remembered the clamor of falling tin plates and another injury to her toe.

“Clumsy, silly, and beautiful in the end,” she murmured as her heart filled with love. He'd done so much for her at great risk to himself. She hadn't realized how great the risk until the canyon.

The canyon. That nameless place, ageless, yet lost in time, where she'd learned the meaning of love, and the course of her life had been altered forever. Watching as he bent over his motorcycle, it was Matthew's face she saw, Matthew's agile fingers setting right some minor problem. And she longed to set right the problems he faced as Indian.

“Perhaps if I weren't here.” The thought drifted from her lips and took root in her mind. Turning abruptly she scanned the hills and cliffs that surrounded them.

In this rougher, greener country grass grew thicker, in unexpected places. For even the least observant without brothers to teach them, there were messages to be read, clues to the secrets held by the land. From Tynan, the survivalist, a rancher in his soul, she'd learned to read the ground and its natural cover as a Gypsy read palms.

It was Tynan's deep voice ringing in her mind, reciting his careful teaching that focused her ranging thoughts.
From a crevice carved in barren rock springs a clutch of green, and the thirsty knows there will be water, perhaps a spring, or fall, perhaps a deep
teneja—
the natural water basin in the rock. When grass is sparse and the soil unprotected from ravaging winds and rains, the land is poor and shifting, and the hunter knows there will be little game.

Looking to the rising hills, Patience recalled the land beyond them, murmuring the most valuable lesson Tynan had taught her. “Where the grass is thick and rich, the land and life are bountiful, and there, in the bounty, will be man.”

Grass covered the hills rising above and beyond Patience now. If not lush, it was adequate, with messages of its own. The foliage on the west cliff was tall and ragged and undisturbed. On the east, close-cropped and uniform.

“Cattle,” she mused. “Maybe sheep.” It didn't matter which, either meant people, a ranch or farm. And help.

A farm would be better than a ranch, its range would be smaller, the dwelling nearer. In any case she didn't fool herself that the trek to either would be easy. But, thanks to the vagabond life of her family and their varied knowledge and specific expertise, she was no stranger to arduous travel and harsh terrain.

Not even Indian knew how well versed she was in these circumstances. Even he knew little more than her parents' and brothers' and her sister's names.

There was much he didn't know of Devlin, who could outride and outfight the best of the Wolves on his worst day. Or of Kieran, a jack-of-all-trades and skills, with a penchant for tackling any problem in a heartbeat, solving it logically and almost as quickly, and becoming master of it in the process. He didn't know that Valentina could take a horse where most men would fear to tread, and on the run, shoot a twig from a tree that few could even see.

But mostly he didn't know about Tynan. Ty to the family. A poetic Irishman down to his boots, with the handsome good looks of their father's Black Irish heritage. Yet in skills and temperament and countenance, were it not for dancing blue eyes and the curl in his black hair, he could have been brother to the Indian.

“But Ty is
my
brother,” she muttered absently as her feverish plan began to take shape. “And his favorite pupil, his baby sister.”

Shading her eyes beyond the brim of her hat, she scanned the skies, judging time and weather. The day was fair and young. The Wolves had risen early, with an important ride ahead of them. They would be gone soon, and only those chosen as her keepers would remain. Patience had already discovered that all were complacent and careless in their surveillance when the others were absent. Slipping away would be no problem. She could be well on her way before anyone knew she'd gone.

There was one thing that must be done. One consideration she owed Indian.

Going to her pack, she searched until she found a small notepad and pen grabbed up without thought in the hurried packing he'd allowed her for this captive journey. The note she scribbled was short and quick. An apology for what she was doing, an explanation, and a wish that without the complication of her presence he could do better and more freely what he'd come to the desert to do.

Reading back what she'd written, flat, inadequate words, little more than a jumble of letters floating on a sea of white, she wished for the power to make him understand that by leaving she was giving him freedom. “Freedom,” she muttered, crumpling the paper in her fist. “How can a captive give her captor freedom?”

Torn by indecision, feeling the weight of the danger of what she was planning, she stuffed the note in a pocket. Then, seized by a claustrophobic restlessness that defied the vastness of the land and endless sky, she paced again. An animal on an invisible tether. A lioness locked in a secret cage.

It was Callie's ululating cry that pulled Patience from the abyss of indecision. Spinning on booted heel, delaying what she was certain she would find, she searched for Callie. Callie, with long silver locks and eyes like cornflowers sprinkled with dew, her tear-streaked cheek pressed to the broken, lifeless body of her kitten.

The small distance between the camps didn't keep Patience from seeing how the tiny head dangled, nor the misshapen body that had once been plump and vital. A glance at the soiled and worn knapsack, lying on the ground, then at Snake glowering down at the heartbroken girl, told a ghastly story.

As if he hadn't done enough, and the pain etched on Callie's face weren't sufficiently pitiful, he reached for the kitten again. No one expected Callie's reaction, least of all Snake.

While Patience and even the camp were still frozen in shock by the untenable tableau, Callie's second scream ripped the still air. Time slowed and blurred to monstrous freeze-frame motion as she fought back, desperately, impotently, but fiercely defending the broken creature she loved. Snake's seething rage escalated, turned deadly. Patience sensed the malevolence pulsing through him in black, pitiless waves. Her eyes saw, her mind comprehended, but her body was too leaden with horror to move.

Only Indian moved. Only he was quick enough to stop Snake from tearing the kitten from the gentle hands that held it. Only he dared to stand between a man who'd become a raving maniac and a cowering woman who was only a child.

“Damn your soul,” he snarled as a lashing backhand knocked the callous Snake to the ground. Chest heaving, hands fisted, he was the savage Apache as he stood over the still, sprawled form while Callie stumbled to the only one she trusted. Listening to broken sobs muffled by Patience's embrace, he dragged Snake roughly to his feet. With a stare belied by the hush in his voice, he asked, “What more would you do to the child? Haven't you done enough?”

“Enough or not, it ain't your say.” Snake was sullen as he tried to shrug off Indian's hold. “She's mine, to do with. Keep her, or trade her, rid her of that pesky cat, or slap her silly, it's nobody's business.”

“It is now. I just made it mine.” Indian's grip threatened the fabric of Snake's shirt. “Hurt Callie, or anything that belongs to her again, and I'll kick you to death just as surely as you did her kitten.” Black eyes narrowed with promise. “The slower you die, the better I'll like it.”

When he shoved Snake away, no one in the silent camp mistook his words for idle threat. The truth was etched into the cold savagery of his face. But as he searched for Patience, his gaze colliding with hers over Callie's huddled form, she recognized a familiar sadness, a bitter impotence, lying beneath the glacial mask. Indian felt he'd failed Callie, and in some way, herself, in not protecting a cat. A foolish thought. Indian had failed no one, but how could she make him believe?

It will be easier for him when I'm gone.
The words rose unbidden from the deepest recesses of her mind, and she knew her decision had been made. Stroking Callie's hair as the girl cried out her grief, Patience's gaze never left Indian as she committed to memory this last moment. There were tears he couldn't see gathering in her own eyes, for her own grief, when he finally turned away.

* * *

The kitten was wrapped in an emerald blouse and flowers from the century plant sprinkled over her grave, and Callie summoned away by a calmer Snake, before Patience took the crumpled note from her pocket. Smoothing the wrinkles from it she read once again what she'd written. In retrospect it seemed even colder and more dispassionate, but could any words say what was in her heart? If she had the words, were they not better kept to herself?

The sounds of a revving engines warned the Wolves would soon be riding, and Indian would come to say goodbye. Scribbling her name, and then, impulsively adding a postscript, she folded the paper carefully and slipped it into the pocket of her shirt.

She was standing with her hand over her heart and the pocket that held the note, when Indian rolled his bike into camp.

“Time to go?” she asked as he dismounted and walked to her.

“Past time.” He stopped so close to her the scent of the soap he'd given her drifted through his lungs like sultry smoke, bearing memories of better times. He touched her face, cupping her cheek, brushing his thumb over the fullness of her lips. “What you did for Callie, and the kitten...” He lost the thread of what he meant to say, the need to hold her was too strong. But taking her in his arms would only be a beginning, and this was not the time for beginnings. With a shake of his head, putting longing and memories behind him, he continued. “The little ceremony, the funeral, Callie won't forget it.”

“I'm sorry about the blouse, I wanted something pretty for Callie's sake.”

“It doesn't matter. If it helped, I'm glad.”

“What will happen now? I didn't want her to go when Snake called for her. Yet, with what he's done to her, it frightened her more not to go.”

“An old habit. In her simple mind they're easiest, even when they hurt.”

“Callie shouldn't have to hurt.” She caught his hand, lacing her fingers through his. Her lips grazed the first evidence of a bruise beginning to discolor his knuckles. “No one should.”