Deep Trouble (9 page)

“She’s gone!” Lurene stared, shook her head and stared, started down the ladder, stopped, climbed back up, and stared some more. Because she couldn’t stop herself, she climbed the rest of the way into the cave and ran her hands all around the walls. There was no back door into the heart of the mountain. No secret tunnel. No big rock with Shannon hiding behind it. No sign that a giant bald eagle had landed and carried her off. No amount of staring would make a woman appear in this small space.

“She can’t be gone.” Cutter shouted at her as if yelling would make a woman who wasn’t there suddenly become visible. “Are you sure that was the right cave?”

There were three of these high-up caves, and their group had searched each of them in turn with Miss It’s-Not-about-Gold-It’s-About-Education Dysart. Lurene knew she had the right cave, but she wanted to deny it, too.

Lurene’s eyes fastened on blood, dried black on the stone floor. Shannon had only bled in one cave.

Shaking her head, trying to make her jumbled thoughts come into order, finally, Lurene forced herself to climb back down the ladder. “I saw blood, Lobo.” The ladder shrieked like a tormented soul. Lurene carefully stepped down each rung. The ones that were there anyway—about every third rung was missing. When she reached the narrow ledge the ladder was resting on, she heaved a sigh of relief, then got mad and turned to Cutter.

“How could she have gotten down from there?” Cutter was the only one who’d come up this far with her.

These ledges were just looking for a good reason to crumble away. Lurene glared at Cutter to get him moving. “Go on up if you want to hunt around, but the cave is about ten feet square. I’m sure I didn’t miss a woman lying up there.”

Cutter glared at that worthless excuse for a ladder, obviously almost crazed to check for himself. “Where could she have gone?”

Lurene looked at the ledge they were standing on. It was more gone than there. But was it worse than it had been earlier? More broken away? Hard to tell.

“She must have…” Lurene shrugged as she looked at the ledge and the one below and the one below that, ending in the hard stone of the canyon floor. “Jumped?”

Lurene and Cutter exchanged a doubtful look.

“What’s going on, Lurene?” Ginger and the Lloyd brothers had stayed down. There was no use in them all coming up.

“Just a minute!” Lurene wanted to hurt someone, and right now Ginger seemed like a good choice. Good thing the woman was beyond her reach.

“Okay, she’s gone.” Cutter’s voice was at least gratifying. He believed she wasn’t so stupid he had to risk his life to check on the woman himself. “Impossible as it sounds, she got down somehow.”

“You’re the one with the bright idea to leave her here.” Lurene glared at him.

“Yep, I know. We shoulda put a bullet in her. I won’t make that mistake again.”

“A’course if she had a bullet in her, she wouldn’t be able to tell us where she hid that map, would she? So we’d be even more out of luck than we are now.”

“I know how to read a trail. If she got down without dying, then she had to get out of this canyon.” Cutter looked at the other high caves. “No way to get from one to the other. No sense climbing up there.”

Cutter’s eyes practically burned through stone they were so fiery hot with rage. “The only way is down. On a lower level, like this one, there are other caves she could hide in, rocks on the canyon floor she could be hiding behind. Let’s go find her.”

Cutter and Lurene took the time to look in every cave on that level. Then Cutter, still furious, stepped aside to let Lurene pass him and descend using the precarious handholds. It wasn’t the first time Lurene had to force herself to turn her back on him.

They painstakingly checked the caves on the other levels. As they searched, the others were snarling and snapping at her and Cutter.

Once on the ground, she strode to the others. “She’s not there.” Lurene saw no reason to break it to them gently.

“Not there?” Ginger roared and glared up at the cave. “She has to be there.”

“Are you sure there isn’t a back corner of the cave?” Darrel gazed up at the cliff as if ready to climb the rocks and check himself.

“We were all in it a couple days ago. We were hunting for
hidden gold.”
Lurene was annoyed with herself for answering. “I think we all checked pretty carefully.” Let the idiot go up there if he doubted her ability to see with her own two eyes. “You know there wasn’t a back room in that place.”

She was particularly aware of Randy’s sharp eyes as he looked up. He made no comment. Immediately he began scanning the ground.

Lurene joined him. “She’d never have survived a fall.”

Randy looked up again. “Apparently she did.”

And Lurene felt as stupid as Ginger and Darrel were, which made her mad.

“Everyone quit moving. You’re wrecking any sign she left.” Cutter was like a wolf trying to catch a scent.

“A little late for that.” Randy stopped moving but continued to scour the ground with his eyes, then looked back overhead. “Somehow she…” He fell silent, thinking.

For some reason, it made Lurene nervous when Randy was thinking. She wanted to join the pack of angry wolves snarling when she should be sniffing around.

“If she jumped—” Randy kept his eyes on the cliff side with its four levels.

“She’d be dead,” Ginger cut him off.

“If.” Randy began again. “She.” His voice became more forceful. “Jumped.” He glared at Ginger until she closed her mouth. “She could have landed on the ledge. Slid down on her belly and caught the ledge somehow. That’s what I’d have done if I was desperate. If it was live or die. That’s what anyone would have done, though I’m surprised she got desperate as fast as she did. Most people would be a day working up the nerve, sitting around caterwauling and hoping for a miracle.”

“So she’s a woman of action,” Cutter said. “I never figured her for one. She seemed like the type to curl up and die. I shouldn’t have left her alive.”

“Except we need her alive because we need the map,” Lurene reminded them all. “So it’s a good thing she’s alive. If she hid it, cached it somewhere, then picked it up and headed out with it.”

“Where?” Randy wasn’t asking a stupid question; he was thinking out loud.”

Cutter jabbed a beefy finger at the ground, back in the direction they’d just ridden in. “Those aren’t our tracks.”

Lurene was no tracker, so she couldn’t begin to tell one horse from another. But she knew Cutter was good.

“One horse came in and rode back out. Hard to tell on the rocky ground, but it looks to me like a rider carrying a heavier load leaving than coming.”

“Someone found her.” Lurene remembered the screaming and shooting. Good chance that anyone within ten miles would have heard it and come to check. “This is Navajo country.”

“Pony’s shod.” Cutter shook his head. “That don’t always mean nuthin’. Navajos are purely tame Indians these days. They’ll sometimes shoe a horse or buy or steal a horse with shoes.”

Lurene looked back at the gap they’d ridden through. “Let’s see which way she went.” Then Lurene had a notion that cheered her considerably.

“What?” Randy asked. He was watching her mighty close to have seen that she’d had a comforting thought.

“We were worried about finding the map, figuring she hid it somewhere.”

“Yep, so what?” Ginger headed for her horse. Never a thought in her head.

“Well, it’d’ve been hard to get her to talk. We hoped she’d tell us what we wanted to know in return for us taking her down out of that cave, but she’d’ve known we meant her to die. It might’ve been hard to get the truth out of her.”

“Sure.” Cutter was watching Lurene now, too.

“But now she’ll have taken it from wherever she stashed it and have it back where it’s easy for us to find. We don’t have to worry about getting her to talk.”

“And that means”—Randy smirked—”we don’t have to be overly careful about how we treat her when we find her.”

“Except for the kidnapping.” Lurene rubbed her hand over her mouth as she pondered. “We need her alive for that.”

“Why?” Ginger asked. “You know we have to kill her after what we done to her. The law’ll be on us if we let her live.”

“We’ve just got to convince the folks that’ll pay for her that she’s alive. If we send them a—” A smiled bloomed on Lurene’s face.

“What?” Randy asked.

Lurene almost liked the kid. He was showing her a little respect.

“One of her maps. We’ll prove we have her by sending a messenger with one of the maps and a note telling them to leave the money somewhere if they ever want to see her alive again. We’ll have to think it out, figure a place for them to drop the money that we can get to it and get away.”

“Why wouldn’t they just think we’d stolen the maps from her?” Ginger shook her wild red hair. “I wouldn’t pay on such flimsy evidence.”

But Ginger wouldn’t pay ransom to save anyone but herself. So Lurene wasn’t so sure she was right. “For now, I think we need to catch her, take her alive. Make her write a note in her own hand. That oughta prove we have her.”

“We can take her, get that map away from her, and drag her along on this treasure hunt. We might find what she’s looking for. But whether we do or not, we’ll have her to get the money out of John Jacob Astor.” Cutter smiled. “I heard someone call him the richest man in America. And I’ve heard it’s a big family. All of ‘em are rich. The way I see it, we’ve got something the Astor family wants. I like the sound of that.”

Ginger laughed with cold pleasure.

Lurene couldn’t help laughing right along.

S
hannon stepped out of the Kinlichees’ hogan on her wedding day, not one bit the joyful, blushing bride. Rather, she felt like a coyote with her leg in a trap, and she was gnawing everywhere she could think of, but she still wasn’t getting loose.

Kai Kinlichee had insisted on a bath for Shannon, and she’d even gotten her hair washed and a comb through it, which after the last few days was no small job. Though the day was waning, her hair still dried quickly in the Arizona heat.

She was wearing one of Kai’s pretty dresses, white with beautifully stitched decorations around the neck and hem using all the colors in the rainbow. Part Mexican, part Navajo, all beautiful. Shannon felt nearly human now that she’d bathed the last of the blood out of her hair and shed her filthy, tattered gingham blouse and sweat-stained riding skirt. Mrs. Kinlichee had even washed those clothes out—after Shannon had discreetly removed the contents of her hidden pocket of course.

Kai Kinlichee was even determined to remove the worst of the bloodstains and mend the rips. She was a very sweet lady with a spine of pure iron when it came to having this wedding.

All clean and sweet smelling, fed and given plenty of water to drink, Shannon now had the energy to stop this madness.

Gabe walked over to her as soon as she stepped outside. He was cleaned up, too. And ready to escort her.

To the wedding.

Their
wedding.

Her wedding.

To a man she’d known for two days.

They probably had thirty seconds to think of a way out.

“We can just refuse, point-blank refuse to get married.” Gabe sounded so reasonable, but this wasn’t a situation that called for a lot of reason. It seemed better to think in terms of desperation.

Shannon caught him by the wrist and took all her need to strangle someone out on his arm. “I already tried that if you’ll remember.”

“Yes, I remember.” Gabe narrowed his eyes at her. “You’re the one, I believe, who said ‘nothing much’ happened. Nothing
much?
Which means a little something. Nice work. Just the very thing to reassure the parson.”

“Well, did you want me to lie to a man of the cloth?”

“No, but you could have kept your mouth shut.”

Shannon narrowed her eyes at Gabe. He didn’t seem all that upset about the wedding, honestly.

“And you’re the one who said we slept together.” He jabbed a finger at her chest.

“I did not.”

“Oh yes, you did. And then,” Gabe-the-Calm went on, “you tried to hire Doba to come along on the trip you planned to take with me—the two of us—traveling
on
together, completely destroying the story I told about me finding you and returning you to civilization. It sounded like we’d been on the trail together for days.”

“We had been.”

“Like we were on a journey we’d planned long in advance, and the only trouble we had on the trail was losing some of our hired hands. It sounded like I was accompanying you on your treasure hunt from the beginning.”

“I never said that.”

“Well, you offered Doba a job right smack-dab in front of Parson Ford.”

She went back to throttling his arm. “I said that before I realized the man is a fanatic.”

“I don’t think that’s fair. He’s a man of God. Besides, I think the parson would have let us off if Hosteen What’s-His-Name—”

“Tsosi.” Shannon wished she could forget the man’s name. And his wife Hozho. Cranky people, the Tsosis.

“The way they see it, they found two unmarried people virtually living together right under their noses.”

“Living together?” Shannon gasped. “That’s only true if the whole state of Arizona counts as a house.”

“I guess the parson counts it.” Gabe shrugged. He remained oddly calm, which gave Shannon pause.

“But we can’t get married.” Shannon wanted to throw herself into Gabe’s strong arms and demand he think of a way to prevent… being thrown into his strong arms.

“Shannon, I’ve thought long and hard about this.”

“It’s been less than an hour.”

“And I’ve decided we
should
get married.”

“What?” Shannon let go of his arm and grabbed the collar of his shirt. She was going to strangle something more fragile this time.

“I’ve reached an age where I need to take a wife. I’d like to go along on this adventure with you, but it really isn’t a good idea to proceed without being married.”

“Why not?”

“Why do you think?” He sounded upset for the first time.

“I have no idea.”

Gabe made a little growling noise in his chest. “I’ll show you why not.”

He tore her hands off his collar and pulled them around his neck. Then he slid his arms around her waist, yanked her against him, and swooped down to kiss her.

Far too much time passed before Gabe straightened away from her, smiled, then once again leaned down and stole another kiss, just plain stole it like it was her treasure map all over again—and he was a whole band of outlaws.

“That’s why.” He spoke against her lips, and a very warm shiver raced up and down her backbone. “I’ve been wanting to do that all day.”

“You have done it.”

“Not nearly as often as I wanted to. And that definitely counts as improper. And by the way, the whole idea of improper is when men and women spend long stretches together alone, the woman with her arms wrapped tight around the man’s waist—well, a man can get real improper thoughts in his head. And I might as well admit it. I did.”

“You did?” Shannon didn’t mean to whisper, but her voice wasn’t working quite right.

“Oh yes, I did.”

“I did, too.”

Gabe kissed her again. “So now I think it’s right. I think you’re the prettiest woman I’ve ever seen, and I like holding you in my arms, and my ma was always after me to pick a woman and settle down. She thought it was the way life was meant to be. So, I’ve decided to marry you.”

“We don’t know each other, Gabe.” Shannon meant to yell that. Instead, she just sounded like she was begging him to talk her into it. Which… maybe… she was.

“Well, we can spend the next fifty years fixing that. Let’s go. And since I’m drifting anyway, we’ll drift along hunting for your treasure. When we give up on that—”

“You mean when we find it.”

“Okay.” Gabe smiled and slid one finger across her chin dimple, then cupped her face with his hand. “I own a ranch in Wyoming. We’ll go up there and live, run some cattle, raise us a herd of brown-eyed babies. What do you say, huh?” He slid his arm back around her waist and kissed her again.

Shannon didn’t say yes. But then she was very busy kissing Gabe, which many very reasonable men could take to mean yes.

The kiss ended when Gabe butted his head into hers.

“Ouch.” Gabe looked over Shannon’s shoulder just as Parson Ford slapped him again. It was no friendly pat on the back.

“Enough of this. Now, my foolish children, we will have the wedding.”

Gabe turned and looked into her eyes until it seemed as if he’d entered her mind and maybe her heart. “Yes, Shannon, it’s time for the wedding. Let’s go. Then we’ll have us a wedding night, and tomorrow we’ll go on our way, wherever you want. Isn’t that your wish?”

Getting butted in the head served to clear Shannon’s thinking a bit, and she remembered something very important. “Uh, I think I’d better tell you all something before we proceed with the wedding.”

“What’s that?” Gabe looked at her, really cheerful, the big dope.

“It changes nothing.” The parson looked as if he could pour brimstone on her head with a single burning look. And was eager to prove it.

“It really does change things. And I’ll admit I’ve been a bit… distracted.”

“Distracted by the attentions of Mr. Lasley?” Kai Kinlichee came up beside her and smiled like this was the romance of the century.

Shannon supposed there was some truth in her being distracted by Gabe. But it wasn’t the
biggest
truth. “No, distracted by having my life threatened and being left stranded in the wilderness, almost falling off a cliff and being hung from a noose.”

“What?” Doba asked. The man seemed interested in hearing a good story.

“Time for talk later,” Parson Ford interrupted.

“Who hung you?” Kai asked.

Shannon jabbed a thumb at Gabe, and Kai frowned. “And still you want to marry him?”

“The thing I need to tell you is I’m engaged to be married.” Shannon swallowed and forced herself, in the pursuit of honesty, to add, “Nearly.”

Poor Bucky. She’d forgotten.

“Yes, I’m well aware of that,” Parson Ford said. “Though it’s a short engagement—around an hour long—you are definitely engaged.”

The parson pulled a small Bible out of his large pocket, and it as good as fell open to the place the man wanted. Or so Shannon assumed because the parson didn’t flip a single page. How many marriages had the man forced on people in his life?

“No, not to Gabe. I’m actually promised to someone. Back in St. Louis. I really can’t wed anyone else. Bucky is expecting me to come home and marry him.”

“Bucky is destined to be disappointed.” The parson ran his finger down the page and looked ready to commence.

“Engaged?” Gabe’s goofy good cheer melted like ice in the Arizona desert. “You’re engaged to another man? Then why did you kiss me?”

And that was a truly fair question. Shannon turned to face Gabe. He deserved an explanation certainly, the truth. Just because Bucky had completely slipped her mind until this moment didn’t mean he wasn’t her intended.

For one thing, it was the only way her mother would ever welcome her back to St. Louis. “We are… are…
promised
to each other. Not engaged.”

“Then it doesn’t signify.” The parson went back to looking for his place on the page. “Engaged wouldn’t signify either, after you’ve spent the night with this man.”

“It signifies to me.” Gabe frowned, glanced at her lips—which seemed somewhat swollen from his kiss—then frowned even more.

“Yes, it definitely is important, and the truth is, Gabe, I
have
made promises to another man.” She looked at his stern and clearly disappointed face and almost wished she’d never mentioned Bucky. But her childhood friend deserved better than that. And Shannon
had
planned on marrying him. Someday.

When she’d broken her father’s code. And followed her father’s map. And found her father’s gold. And restored her father’s good name. And maybe written a book about her adventures, dedicated to her father. And led an expedition to the golden city to do the research her father had planned.

But after
that
, she’d definitely expected to marry Buckstone Chatillon Shaw. In fact, she’d been looking forward to it, after a fashion. Bucky was a nice man, after all. True, she’d never kissed him, unlike Gabe. “So, you can see it would be a betrayal of a previously made promise to marry someone else. I can’t do it.”

“You can and will.” Parson Ford glared at her.

She wasn’t an obedient woman by nature. Being the only child of two older parents had given her unusual freedom growing up. No doubt that freedom is what had led her into the wilderness, left her stranded in a mountaintop cave, and led to this moment when it seemed like a good idea to marry a stranger. She decided then and there that her own babies were going to follow a lot of strict rules. “I can’t and won’t.”

Hosteen Tsosi and his dependably cranky wife, Hozho, came up beside the parson. “We cannot allow a woman of low character to stay here with us. Think of the bad influence to our children. If there is no wedding, she must be cast out of the village.”

Shannon looked past the old codger and saw sheep being herded up to a watering hole across the lush green valley. Several children ran behind them, and one young woman who did not count as a child, who seemed to have eyes for Gabe.

Shannon had a wild need to marry Gabe quickly. Which she stifled.

“Your reputation is in ruins if you don’t go forward with this marriage.” Parson Ford looked at Doba.

“Shannon,” Gabe’s voice drew Shannon’s gaze away from their surroundings.

“I’m sorry, Gabe. I never should have…” Shannon glanced at the parson and Doba. Kai and the Tsosis.

Hosteen made the parson look all soft and sweet by comparison.

Shannon decided not to mention all the things she shouldn’t have done with Gabe.

“So, you’re really going to marry some other man?” Gabe sounded hurt. And he had a right to be hurt. She had certainly not acted the part of an engaged woman.

“I can’t marry you when he’s waiting for me, Gabe. It wouldn’t be honorable.”

Gabe’s eyes narrowed, and Shannon suspected he didn’t think her kissing him was all that honorable. Then his expression hardened, and all the hurt was gone. Which most likely meant all his softer feelings for her were gone, too.

Gabe stepped a good solid pace away from Shannon then reached for her arm and turned her to face Parson Ford. “Let me say one thing to you, Parson.”

“Nothing changes what must be done.” The parson certainly had a way with words.

“Understand this.” Gabe jabbed a finger right at the parson’s nose. “Shannon Dysart is an honorable woman, and I am an honorable man. No sin passed between us in the hours we spent together. And that time together could
not
have been avoided. I found her in dire straits in the desert. Yesterday afternoon, when I found her, she was in no condition to travel for long hours over a hard trail. We will not apologize for being together or allow you to call our time together sin.”