Desert Dreams (10 page)

Reason won over anger. Anne did not withdraw her hand when he
reached for it.

"Are you always this grumpy in the morning?" he
asked as he enfolded her hand in his large calloused ones.

"What do you expect? I've lost everything—my clothes, my
money, everything I own! And I feel like I've been run over by a freight
wagon!"

She couldn't tell if he was listening to her. He seemed
intent on her hand, and then he released it and returned to his horse. He took
something from a pouch he had tied around the saddle pommel. When he reached
her, she could see it was some kind of plant and he was tearing it in pieces.

"What is that?" she asked suspiciously.

He didn't answer, just put the plant pieces in the spilled
coffee cup, then poured a small amount of hot coffee into the cup and stirred and
mashed it with a clean spoon.

She didn't want to give him back her hand, but he didn't ask.
He simply took it.

"What is it?" she repeated.

"Hold still."

He pulled her hand closer to examine it, and she stopped
struggling. Her skin was warm, her hand trembling so badly she knew he could
hardly see the burn.

Except when he'd caught her when she'd almost fainted back in
San Antonio, she had never been this close to him before, close enough to feel
the heat of his breath on her wrist, close enough to hear the rich tone of his
voice. Her breath turned shallow.

"Hold still," he commanded again.

"I...
I can't."
She hated the way her voice shook and hated him for the way he smiled at her,
as if he knew better than she did why she couldn't still the tremors that assaulted
her.

He dug his fingers into the cup and smoothed the paste he'd
made on her wound. He repeated the process, and she surrendered to the feel of
his calloused hands on hers.

"Your hands are cut pretty bad."

She wasn't listening. Her gaze was riveted on the white scars
that encircled both his wrists like bands. They must have been there for quite
some time, judging by their appearance, and she wondered, with a sick feeling
in the pit of her stomach, how he had gotten them. What could have caused such
wounds? She wanted to ask but couldn't find her voice.

"What the hell are you doing in Texas?" he asked.

His voice was hoarse in her ear, and soft, almost caressing.
It was a quality she had never heard in a man's voice before, and she found
herself explaining in spite of her resolve not to tell this stranger anything.

"My father died." She pulled her hand away because
she couldn't stand the contact any longer. "I had an aunt in Ubiquitous.
She died too, before she received my letter telling her I was coming."

Why had she told him that? She had all but admitted she was
alone in the world, alone and defenseless—except for the gun hidden in the
pocket of her skirt. But even that had done her precious little good since
she'd arrived in Texas.

Rafe Montalvo didn't say anything, but his eyes seemed
softer. In fact, his whole countenance seemed less formidable, or maybe she
just saw what she wanted to see. Then he dug in the cup for more of the salve
and touched it to her cheek.

Startled, she jerked her head back, and the softness in his
features vanished. The cold, hard stranger returned in an instant. He handed
her the cup.

"
Gumweed
. I got it for your
sunburn. I've never made a poultice with coffee before, but it should work to
soothe some of the pain and might keep your skin from peeling too bad."

With that, he turned away and started breaking camp. She
watched with a twinge of regret as he took the coffeepot to the nearby pond and
washed it out before rolling it and the tin dishes into his bedroll. He had
surprised her, touching her like that, and she had pulled away instinctively.
Had her actions somehow hurt or angered him? He was so closed up, it was
impossible to read him.

When he finished retying his saddlebags, he turned to look at
her. "You need to... take care of anything before we get started?"

Rafe stumbled over the words, and she found it unaccountably
funny that a man who killed for a living and had done God only knew what else
could be so flustered talking about bodily functions.

"Yes," she admitted.

He nodded toward a clump of bushes to her right. "Behind
those bushes is a good place."

"I couldn't!" she said, mortified by the
very
thought.

"You'll have to," he said with a half-smile.
"There's no outhouse here, no chamber pot. Unless you want me to hold—"

"No!" She gave him her best scowl. He was trying to
embarrass her, and she'd be damned if she'd let him see that he had succeeded.

She turned and stepped behind the bushes indignantly. It was
all Rafe could do not to laugh. Once she was out of sight, he let himself think
about what she’d revealed. Father dead, aunt dead. She was alone, alone in a
hostile, unforgiving place. He was her only chance for survival. He knew it
even if she didn’t.

He packed his meager possessions into the saddlebag and tied
it to the saddle.

What the hell was he going to do with her? He could make her
tell him where the gold was hidden instead of taking her with him as she
insisted. But he couldn’t just leave her in the middle of nowhere.

His horse snorted and stepped to the left as he swung up into
the saddle.

First things first. He had no idea if his poultice would help
the cuts on her hands. He had to get her to a doctor, which meant getting her
to Hondo. Maybe he’d leave her there. He didn’t care about the gold. She could
have all of it, but she’d never believe him if he offered a deal like that.

She stepped back into the camp and stopped about twenty feet
from him, and he reached a hand toward her.

"Give me your good hand."

She crossed her arms over her chest and stared up at him, her
jaw set in that stubborn expression he was already beginning to dread.

"Isn't there another way?" Fear showed clearly in
her eyes and trembled through her voice.

"Not unless you want to walk."

She glanced around as if searching for some means of
transportation. "The wagon?"

"What about it?" He tried to keep the anger from
his voice. He could understand her reluctance to be close to him, but there
simply was no choice.

"You could put the wheel back on. Then your horse
could—"

"You've seen that wheel. The spokes are broken. Even if
I could put it back on, my horse is no draft animal. And even if he were, the
horses you started out with took off in the harnesses, remember? Now give me
your hand. We're wasting time."

"I can't."

Anger and disgust mounted within him. Did she loathe him so
much? Didn't she know he was trying to save her life? Or would she die rather
than accept help from the likes of him?

"I'm not going to bite you."
And I'll try not to
contaminate you
, he added to himself. "If you don't give me your hand,
I'll climb down and pick you up and throw you over the back of this
horse."

"Stomach down, like a corpse?" she challenged.

He smiled at her nerve. "Are you this disagreeable with
everyone or have you saved it all for me? I'm trying to help you."

He waited, his hand outstretched. She glared up at him, her
shoulders squared, her lips drawn in a taut line. He found himself in a
stare-down with this prickly, plucky woman, a contest she was destined to lose.

As he predicted, she looked away first. What he didn't expect
was the change in her expression when she looked up at him again. She bit her
lower lip. She was struggling to keep her chin from trembling.

Anger coursed through him, anger and regret. She must think
he was some kind of animal. And what else was she supposed to think? The first
time she'd seen him, he'd ridden into town with a dead body. But, dammit, he'd
saved her from those men in San Antonio, and he'd saved her life yesterday.
That should count for something.

"I... the truth is I've never ridden a horse," she
admitted. "They frighten me."

The tension drained from his body as he realized that the
terror in her eyes was directed at his horse and not at him.

He grinned slightly at her confession, gazing down at her
with new understanding. "All you have to do is give me your hand and put
your left foot in the stirrup. I'll pull you up behind and you can hold on to
me. We'll take it slow."

She seemed to be lost in indecision as she studied the massive
chestnut.

"You can't walk the rest of the way to Hondo," he
told her. "We're only a little better than halfway there."

A sigh escaped her, her shoulders slumped, and she stepped
forward timidly.

"Left foot in the stirrup," he directed, holding
the prancing gelding as still as he could. She lifted her foot toward the
stirrup. "Trust me."

"The last man who said that to me killed my
father," she said, as she placed her small hand in his.

He nearly lost his hold at that unexpected confidence. He
didn't want to wonder at its meaning. He didn't want to know anything about
her, not even her name.

As her foot touched the stirrup, he tightened his grip on her
hand, pulling her up quickly. In an instant, he noticed her boots. They were badly
worn boy's boots. Again he kept his questions to himself. The less he knew, the
better.

He heard her gasp as her body hung suspended in the air for
an instant before her right leg came down on the other side of the horse and
she settled behind him. She wrapped her arms around his waist as if holding on
for dear life. Her body trembled against his. Her soft breasts pressed against
his back, eliciting an immediate response from his body.

He straightened uncomfortably in the saddle, clearing his
throat. "You don't have to hold on so tightly. We're going to take it slow
and easy, remember?"

The death grip on his torso eased, and he was able to breathe
again, even though her nearness still disturbed him. But her grip tightened
once again as the gelding started forward. And once again her feminine curves
burned into his flesh through his shirt and the familiar tightening in his
groin sent a shudder through his body.

"I thought all southern ladies learned to ride before
they learned to walk."

"I never had a reason to learn," she replied,
loosening her grip once again as the horse settled into a sedate walk.

"Well, you do now." He clucked to his horse and it
responded by quickening its pace. The woman behind him gasped and tightened her
grip, and he resigned himself to a thoroughly uncomfortable few hours of
travel.

Chapter 6

A sheen of perspiration covered the
girl’s face as Rafe steered his horse into Hondo. He held the sleeping
woman in front of
him, her head resting against his chest. At some point during the ride, he'd
realized she was too tired to hold on, so he had stopped and rearranged them.
She'd roused long enough to protest, then fallen back to sleep almost
immediately.

Noise and activity assaulted him on all sides. He tried to
see through it, to hear through it, to gauge any potential threat. It was how
he survived. But this chaos and his own fatigue made it impossible and set him
on edge.

He pulled back on the reins, stopping his horse just in time
to avoid running over a boy who darted in front of him from between two freight
wagons overburdened with cotton. The boy never even saw him as he wove his way
across the congested street and disappeared into the crowd on the opposite
sidewalk.

The girl in his arms moaned, drawing his attention. Her lips
were parched by the relentless sun, even though he’d stopped repeatedly along
the way, forcing her to drink water in small amounts and applying what was left
of the salve he’d made that morning to her cracked skin. He had rehydrated her
body. But she was weak and feverish, and he worried that she might not recover.

If she died, the secret of the gold would die with her, and
so would his best chance of luring El
Alacran
out in
the open, of controlling when and where he would be, of getting the upper hand.

He swallowed the lump in his throat, the lump that reminded
him he cared more about her than he wanted to. It wasn’t just about the gold
anymore. He cared what happened to this fragile spitfire of a woman whose name
he didn't even know. He didn't want to wonder about her or worry about her or
compare her to Christina, whose only mistake had been that she had married the
wrong man.

Rafe’s
horse
sidestepped and snorted nervously at the sound of gunfire close by. The hackles
on the back of
Rafe’s
neck stood on edge, and he
realized how vulnerable he was. With the girl in his arms, he couldn’t even go
for his gun.

Hondo had been a sleepy little town on the way to nowhere
until the war when the blockade had diverted the only foreign trade enjoyed by
the Confederacy. Now the narrow streets bulged to the point of bursting with
traffic they were never designed to carry.

The Rio Grande couldn't be blockaded by the Union. With the
sympathies of the government in the northern provinces of Mexico squarely
behind the Confederacy, trade flourished. One consequence was the sudden growth
of many small towns that, like Hondo, just happened to lie along what had
become known as the cotton road. Another consequence was lawlessness.

Even if not for the general unruliness and sporadic gunfire,
the absence of descent women on the street in the middle of the day told him
the law in Hondo wasn’t adequate to keep the peace.

They were no safer here than they were on the trail, but the
one thing this town had that he needed was a doctor-or so he hoped. He studied
the signs outside the buildings. At the end of the street, he found one that
read
Clarence S
tone, M.D.

His burden stirred as he dismounted, and he steadied her with
a hand to her waist while he assessed the situation. Standing at the foot of a
long flight of wooden stairs, he studied the arrow that pointed up. Painted on
the arrow was the word
"DOC".

"Shit," he muttered. "Why can't anything be
easy?"

Laughter and tinny piano music reached his ears from the
saloon across the street. This place would be even more chaotic after dark. At
least she’d be safer above it all. He couldn't say the same for himself. He'd
have to check things out. The last thing he needed was a surprise encounter
with his past.

It was going to be a long night.

With a sigh, he moved the hand that had been holding the
woman in the saddle and she slid off into his arms without waking. Not a good
sign. Nothing seemed to rouse her.

She was still alive, still somewhat responsive. They’d made
it this far. Surely the doctor would know what to do to help her.

With a deep breath, he started the long climb to the top of
the stairs. Why the hell would a doctor open an office at the top of a long,
narrow flight of rickety stairs? Hauling an undernourished woman to the top was
hard enough. It would take two or three grown men to get a wounded or sick man
up there.

He reached the landing at the top panting and covered in sweat.
He pounded on the door with his booted foot since both of his hands were
occupied.

A short man with white whiskers and round wire-rimmed glasses
came to the door almost immediately, gazing at him with curious intelligence.

"What have we here?" he asked in a gruff voice.

"Let me in, doc, she's dehydrated and feverish."

The doctor held the door open wide to allow Rafe to enter.

"Through here," the doctor said, walking past him
again and opening a door at the other end of the room. "Put her on that
bed."

Rafe did as he was told, laying her gently on the narrow cot.
Rolling up the sleeves of his starched white shirt, the doctor moved to a basin
of water, and washed his hands thoroughly, then turned to look at Rafe as he
dried them. "Who is she?"

"My wife." It came out without hesitation, just as
it had in San Antonio.

"Well, loosen her clothes so she can breathe."

"Right." He pushed aside a twinge of guilt and
worked at the fastenings of her shirtwaist. She moaned low in her throat but
didn't open her eyes.

"Sunburned pretty
bad
."
The doctor spoke from behind him. When Rafe turned to look at the older man, he
saw accusation and a bit of anger in the sharp blue eyes. "How'd you let
that happen?"

He'd anticipated that question and had a ready answer.
"We're newly-weds. We ran away. Her daddy didn't like me, so we eloped. We
were supposed to meet up on the road between Ubiquitous and Hondo, but she got
lost. There was an accident. I was lucky I found her."

The doctor eyed him for a moment, running a hand over his
whiskers as if digesting what Rafe had said. "So when did you get married,
before the accident or after?"

The question was so inane it was clear the old man was
challenging him. Those sharp eyes came with a sharp mind. He didn’t believe
Rafe’s
lame story one bit.

The woman on the bed moaned again, and he used that as an
excuse not to answer the question. "Doc, she's real bad.”

"Hmmm," was all the doctor said. He ran a hand over
his chin, studying the patient. "What's her name?"

"Huh?" Rafe pretended not to hear the question as
his mind grappled for a name, any name.

"Her name. You're married to her, you must know her
name."

"Christina."

"Well, Miss Christina," the doctor said as he
turned back to the bed, "let's see if we can fix you up."

"Should I…" He gestured toward an interior door he
assumed led into a waiting room, desperate to get out of the room, to get away
from the girl who lay so still and vulnerable on the white sheets.

The doctor shrugged, his attention completely focused on his
patient. “Do what you like, the doctor said finally, “but don’t stray far. I
may need to ask some questions and she’ll want to see you when she wakes up.”

No she won’t. He was the last person she would want to see,
but at least she’d admitted she needed him. She’d asked him for help. He
wouldn’t betray her. He had no reason to, but she didn’t know that.

Rafe slipped from the examining room into the small waiting
room. It was clean and rustic like the room where he’d just left. Four
straight-backed chairs lined the center of the room, providing little comfort
for loved ones.

Loved ones and opportunists who took advantage of a girl’s
vulnerability for his own purposes.

He wasn’t aware he’d been pacing until he stopped and stared
out the window, gazing down at the activity on the street. The rest of the
world was going on as usual. His gaze followed the dusty street to the edge of
town, and he found himself wishing he could just ride away and never look back.

She had something he needed. If not for that, he'd be gone by
now.

Just a couple more days. Just a couple days and he'd be able
to leave her behind in a safe place, well, as safe as any place in Texas these
days. She'd be a fool not to tell him about the gold after all she'd been
through trying to get it on her own. He'd make a deal with her – tell him where
the gold was and he'd bring it back to her. But he was realistic enough to know
she'd never believe he wasn't interested in a fortune. He'd have to convince
her somehow.

The door to the examination room opened. The doctor stepped
through with a grim, serious expression on his face that made
Rafe's
heart falter for an instant.

"How is she?" Rafe asked.

"She's pretty dehydrated. Probably has sun poisoning,
but she'll recover. She's young and strong."

"Can I see her?" It seemed like the right question
to ask.

"I gave her some laudanum. She's sleeping now."

Rafe ran a hand through his hair with a sigh, relieved he
didn’t have to see her again right now and unwilling to explore why.

"Thanks, doc. I need to leave her here for a while. I've
got to see to my horse and try to find a place to stay the night."

"Won't be easy. Bunch of rowdies burned the hotel down.
There
ain't
nowhere else to stay in town. You
planning on being here long, you and your—wife?"

"I've got a job waiting for me in Eagle Pass." When
had he stopped being surprised by his talent for lying?

"Well, you can stay here until she's fit to
travel." He gestured toward an overstuffed chair in the corner. “That
chair’s not too uncomfortable. Or you can make a bed for yourself on the
floor.”

"Thanks, I appreciate it. I'll be glad to pay whatever
you think's fair."

The doctor made no reply, just snorted and turned back into
the room where
his wife
slept.

*****

It was easy enough to find Jose late that afternoon. He was
in the saloon, the kind of place they'd visited frequently during their long
association. Like everything else in this overgrown town, it had the look of
impermanence, the look of something that had been thrown up overnight to meet the
sudden demand thrust on it. It was nothing more than a large tent, windowless,
stifling, filled with the too-sweet odor of cheap perfume and the even more
offensive stenches it was meant to disguise.

It was barely noon, but already several poker games were in
progress at tables scattered throughout the tent. Whiskey flowed and scantily
clad women hovered over the tables, waiting to see who the big winners would
be.

"
Amigo
," the Mexican called with a broad
smile. "Sit. Tequila?" He offered a bottle, but Rafe turned up his
nose.

"Isn't it a little early for that?"

Jose laughed, setting the bottle back on the table. "It
is never too early for tequila,
amigo
. But tell me, what have you been
up to since I last saw you?"

Rafe lowered his tall, weary frame into a char. He'd tried
all day to decide how much to tell Jose. Jose could be ruthless when money was
involved. Their goals drove them in the same direction, but they were after two
completely different things. And neither of them would give up their goal. Rafe
was the only one willing to die for what he wanted, while Jose was more than
capable of killing for a million dollars in gold-even Rafe, even his own
mother, if he had a mother.

"Well, she knows where the gold is, but she's not
sharing. She won't tell me, but she says she'll show me where it is."

Jose studied him intently for a few moments before throwing
up an arm in dismissal. "Not a problem,
amigo
. It should be easy to
convince her to talk. Use some of that
gringo
charm of yours."

Rafe snorted. "I ran out of that a long time ago."

Jose leaned toward him with a conspiratorial wink. "Then
do whatever you need to do.
Dios!
"

"I just don't seem to have much stomach for torturing
women."

"Of course not,
amigo.
" Jose smiled, light glinting
off a gold capped tooth. "You would not have to torture her. It would take
very little, a twist of the arm maybe, and she would tell you whatever you want
to know. I only hope you are not becoming distracted."

Jose narrowed his eyes and leaned forward. "Must I
remind you of all that El
Alacran
has done to you?
Have you forgotten how close to death you were the day I found you in the
desert where El
Alacran
left you? Do you remember how
the buzzards circled overhead? Do you remember the one that landed on your
chest and—"