Desert Dreams (19 page)

"I am what you see before you, Miss Cameron, nothing
more, nothing less." He rolled over onto his back, spreading his long,
lean body across the blanket, pulling his hat down over his face with a shrug.
"While you're working things out, I'm going to take a nap."

She watched as he settled, unable to keep from asking
quietly, "What do
you
want the gold for,
Mr. Montalvo?"

"I'll think of something," he said, without looking
at her. "Get some rest. We'll be starting again in an hour."

***

They'd been watching
the
smoke
all afternoon, a thin gray ribbon that curled its way upward toward the
cloudless sky. After days of traveling across the bleak, monotonous terrain,
any variation would have drawn their attention, but there was something particularly
ominous about this vision.

A feeling of dread sent gooseflesh over Anne's body, and
though she tried with all her might to ignore it, her gaze returned time and
again to that silent harbinger.

They were heading straight for it.

She might have been able to ignore her own reaction, if not
for the fact that
Rafe's
mood seemed to mirror hers
so closely. He had been tense and silent for the last hour.

"What do you think it is?" she asked.

"No way of knowing." He kept looking toward the
horizon.

She drew her horse up alongside his and only then noticed the
thin sheen of perspiration on his face, the tautness of the muscle in his jaw.
His apparent anxiety only served to amplify hers.

"Maybe it's just smoke from a chimney."

"Maybe."

He didn't have to say anything else. The way he spoke the
word left little doubt what he thought. Her imagination filled in the rest. She
tried to stop her mind from conjuring one grizzly scenario after another, but
it was no use.

They followed the trail of smoke for another hour before the
smoldering ruins of a covered wagon came into view. Half a dozen buzzards
circled overhead, their cries shrill and eerie in the still desert air.

Anne swallowed against the bile that rose in her throat. A
tremor started in her arms and spread down her torso to her legs as a feeling
of unreality, of detachment, overwhelmed her.

"Stay here with the horses while I look around,"
Rafe told her in a shaky voice.

She was glad for once to do as he said. She had no desire to
go any closer. She'd seen death before: her father had practically died in her
arms, and there had been the Union soldiers in Baton Rouge who died of yellow
fever faster than graves could be dug for them. But she'd never witnessed
random violence against innocent people.

As Rafe studied the scene before them, his chest heaving with
the force of his ragged breath, Anne noticed that he was trembling, which only
heightened her own sense of dread.  He seemed to have completely lost the
iron control he usually exercised over his body and his emotions. And when he
finally turned to her, she had the unnerving feeling that he wasn't seeing her
at all.

As he walked toward the wagon, she had to fight the urge to
call him back. He seemed so incredibly fragile suddenly. A part of her wanted
to simply ride away. If there were people here, they were dead. There was
nothing they could do for them.

But if they did that, they would be no better than the
butchers who had killed them. Whoever they were, they had to be buried. It would
be barbaric to leave them out in the open.

She started when he took out his pistol and fired a shot into
the air. In response, two more buzzards squawked loudly and took flight nearby.

Anne wiped beads of perspiration from her face with her
sleeve. A huge black carrion bird dove toward the earth, swooping down so close
over her head that she ducked involuntarily. Her horse snorted and sidestepped
and she held on for dear life until he settled.

It swooped down as if it would land close by, but it rose again
toward the sky, then made a wide turn, and dove toward the same spot again,
landing this time, drawing her attention to something she hadn't seen before.

With her heart in her throat, she dismounted quickly and
stumbled forward, sobbing, barely able to see through her tears.

She was looking at a body. Rafe hadn't seen it yet because
the ground was slightly lower here and the brush was taller.

It was a woman. She was naked. There was blood. She'd been
scalped.

She trembled all over, hot and cold at the same time, certain
she would either faint or become deathly ill. She did neither. With a deep,
ragged breath, she ran headlong back toward her horse.

At that instant, Rafe reached her. He caught her and eased
her down to the ground as she gave in to the nausea that finally overwhelmed
her.

He held her gently, caressing her hair, speaking soothingly
with words she didn't understand. The nausea subsided and she began to cry,
clinging to him and the comfort he offered. His arms tightened around her, and
he rocked her to and fro as if she were a child.

"They... they raped her," she murmured. "They
scalped her."

"I know," he whispered against her hair. He held
her for a moment until the trembling stopped, then asked softly, "Do you
think you can stand up?"

She could only nod.

Rafe stood, pulling her gently to her feet, then supported
her as they walked back toward her horse.

He pulled her bedroll from the saddle and spread it under a
scruffy cottonwood tree.

"Stay here," he told her. "You can stand or
get on the horse, but just wait here for me. I'll be a little while. I've got
to bury them."

"How many?"

"Two. Can't figure why they would be out here in the
middle of nowhere alone."

"No children?" She didn't think she could bear it
if there were children.

Rafe shook his head without a word and went to perform his
grizzly task.

She turned away, unable to watch without feeling the bile
rise in her throat again. She hated this desolate, savage land. More than
anything, she wanted to go home, back to the river. At least there she knew how
to survive. She understood the rules. Here there were no rules, no laws except
survival of the fittest, enforced by violence.

***

           
It was still daylight when they finally rode away from the burning wagon. Without
a shovel, there was no way Rafe could bury the bodies, so he devised a funeral
pyre with the ruined wagon. He tried to position Anne downwind while he set the
fire and made sure it caught, but the foul stench of decay filled the air.

They traveled another hour before he could no longer smell
the fire. He found the most defensible spot possible to set up camp. Trees
along another dry riverbed provided some cover. 

Their dinner that night was cold jerky. A fire was just too
much of a risk with his enemies so close by.

It didn't matter to him, and he had the feeling it could have
been dirt and leaves for all Annie knew or cared.

She sat trancelike as he prepared her bedroll for sleep. He
glanced at her from time to time to make sure she was all right, but of course
she wasn't.

Over and over again, she was reliving in her mind the moment
when she'd discovered the woman's body. He could see it in her blank eyes. He
could feel it in her silence. It was always like that the first time. Nothing
would ever be the same for her again.

He moved to stand over her, holding out a hand. When she
didn't respond, he prodded gently. "It's time for bed. You need some
rest."

She looked up at him, and his heart wrenched as he waited for
her to return mentally from wherever she'd been. He had to admire the way she
regained her composure. Annie Cameron was made of strong stuff. She was a
survivor.

The thought sprang unbidden to his mind that Christina could
never have held up under everything Annie had been through in the past few
days. But then, Christina shouldn't have had to. If not for him, she
wouldn't
have had to.

It was one of the things that had haunted him for the past
five years. Christina had been with the
comancheros
for three days and nights before he
found her. He shuddered even now, thinking of all the things she had been
forced to endure at their hands.

He returned to the present to find Annie reaching toward him.
He wrapped his big hand around her small one and pulled her to her feet,
supporting her as they walked to her bedroll, where he laid her down and tucked
her in.

"Good night," he murmured, wishing there was
something he could do to ease her horror. "Things will look different in
the morning."

"Please." She grabbed him by the arm as he made to
rise, halting him. Desperation made her voice tremble. She gazed up at him
pleadingly, her face contorted as she struggled not to cry.

"Please lie down with me. Hold me.
I...
I
don't think I can sleep by-by myself."

He hesitated, torn between the need to keep watch over the
camp and the desire to comfort her. The pleading expressing in her eyes made
the choice for him. He would stay by her until she fell asleep, then start his
vigilance. What choice did he have?

She held the bedroll open for him. He removed his gun belt
and placed it on the ground within easy reach before lying down on the edge,
careful to keep his dusty boots out of the bedding.

It was a mistake. He knew he would regret it, even as he
slipped into the bedroll beside her, wrapping his arms around her soft,
yielding body, holding her tightly against him. He tried to ignore the sweet
curves that burned through his resolve. He wanted to comfort her, to hold her
and feel nothing but a detached kind of compassion, but his body quickened
despite his best efforts.

She shuddered once, then went still.

He tried to clear his mind, but it was useless. From the
first moment he had spotted the smoke on the horizon, the memories had surfaced
with sickening clarity. It had been too much like the other time.

This raid too had been the work of
comancheros
.
All the signs were there. Their horses had been shod, unlike Indian ponies. The
wagon had been picked clean, except for trinkets that would have appealed to an
Indian but that a
comanchero
would have recognized as worthless. They had scalped the woman but not the man.
Long pale hair would bring a higher price than the man's short pate.

He hadn't said aloud what he'd thought when Annie had asked
about children: that if there were children, their fate would be worse than
that of their parents.

Children would be taken south of the border. The girls would
go to brothels, and possibly the boys as well, or they might be sold to the
silver mines as slaves.

Rafe's
hand moved over
Annie's soft, tangled hair, and he shivered slightly. That woman they had found
today could have been Annie.

It was sweet torture, lying so close beside her, their bodies
pressed together. She lay still now, her head resting on his shoulder, and her
steady, rhythmic breathing told him that she had fallen asleep. He kissed her
gently on the forehead and closed his eyes, struggling against memory and
desire.

Somewhere in the distance, a coyote wailed, its lonely cry
filling the still, silent night. He drifted into a shallow, troubled sleep.

He couldn't move. The heat of the sun seared his flesh
and shrank the thin rawhide straps around his wrists and ankles. He was naked
from head to foot and as helpless as a newborn babe. He tried to open his eyes,
but the sun's glare blinded him.

He welcomed death, yearned for it.

A soft, brief breeze and a shadow fell over his face
and was gone. Something sharp pierced his chest. He forced his eyes open and
gazed into the face of death.

Rafe cried out, the sound echoing across the plains. He sat
up with a jerk, grabbing his gun belt from the ground where he'd left it. It
took him a moment to realize it was the dream that had waked him. There was no
immediate danger.

"What is it?" she asked,
her voice still thick with sleep.

He couldn't speak. He sat beside her in the darkness, running
a hand through his hair, cursing himself for drifting off to sleep. He tried
not to think about what could have happened, focusing on stilling the pounding
of his heart. She touched his shoulder, and he jerked away, leaping to his
feet.

"I… I want to help," she murmured.

He twisted his lips in a bitter smile. "Help? You can't
help me. What are you going to tell me, that it was just a dream and that
everything will be all right in the morning?"

Her gaze dropped to his hands. He was massaging his wrists,
though he wasn't even aware of it until he noticed her stare, and then he
stopped.