Native Wolf (37 page)

Finally night fell. The ranch was quiet. Claire waited till the help went to bed and then padded across the parlor and stole out of the house. Across the yard, she could see the barn door was slightly ajar.

She crept along the paddock fence, then eased the door open a few inches more, and slipped into the cool, shadowy barn.

“Chase?” she whispered, squinting into the dark.

One of the horses whickered softly and stamped a hoof.

“Chase, are you there?”

All she heard was the rustle of straw and the quiet jangle of harnesses.

Maybe she was early.

She moved farther into the barn, enjoying the peace and the sweet smell of hay. Feeling her way, she found the ladder leading up to the hayloft. A sly smile touched her lips. She wondered what it would be like to make love up there.

Then she heard the door close. She turned. “Chase?”

A match flared to life, blinding her for an instant before a kerosene lantern cast a pool of light on the straw-covered floor. Then her breath caught.

“Goodness, Claire!” Frank said with sarcastic surprise. “Were you expectin' someone else?”

Claire gulped. How could she have been so stupid? That damned letter hadn’t been signed. Frank must have written it after all. And she’d walked right into his trap.

Frank shook his head, half amused, half disappointed. “And here I was hopin' you’d changed your mind.”

Claire bit her lip. Frank was wearing his Sunday best, and he’d come in with a shotgun and a preacher.

“What are you doing, Frank?”

“Ever heard of a shotgun wedding, Claire?”

Claire blinked. He couldn’t be serious. Shotgun weddings were for men who got women pregnant, to persuade them to take responsibility for their offspring. In fact, Chase had told her all about the shotgun wedding the miners had arranged between his own parents.

Frank patted the stock of his shotgun. “Now I’m hopin' you’re not gonna make me use this. But I will if I have to.”

She glanced in disbelief at the preacher, who was busy thumbing through his Bible.

“Oh, he’s a real preacher,” Frank assured her, “but he’s just passin' through, so he’s not gonna concern himself too much about the letter of the law. As long as you’re of age and not my sister, he doesn’t much care, ain’t that right?”

The preacher nodded.

Claire’s mind was whirling. She was not going to marry Frank, come hell, high water, or the barrel of a shotgun. But until she could come up with a novel-worthy plan of escape, she’d have to try to reason with him.

“Frank, you know my father will never stand for this. When he finds out what you’ve—”

“Now, Claire, we both know he isn’t gonna give you his blessing to marry an Injun.”

Her mouth opened, but no words came out, because she knew he was right.

“And he sure as hell isn’t gonna let you whelp a half-breed’s bastard.”

He was right about that, too. She closed her mouth and clenched her jaw.

“In fact,” he said, “I’m pretty sure he’s gonna be glad I solved this problem… quietly.”

She couldn’t argue with that either. Her father would be grateful to have the whole business forgotten. Rage and frustration made her tremble.

“Now I know this isn’t the fairy tale wedding you had planned,” he said, “but, darn it, Claire, you’re the one who got yourself into this mess.”

She ground her teeth. She was damned well going to find a way out of it.

He gave her an irritating smile of pity. “Trust me. It’ll all be for the best. Think of it this way, Claire. Getting' married is like geldin' cattle. Sure, it smarts a bit, but the quicker you do it, the quicker it’ll be over.” He handed the lantern to the preacher and held out a hand toward Claire. “Shall we?”

Gelding cattle? Was that what he thought of marriage? Claire thought she’d like to geld
Frank
right about now. But she was completely defenseless. She didn’t have a gun. She couldn’t reach a pitchfork. She didn’t dare so much as throw a punch while Frank had that shotgun tucked under his arm.

Then she realized there might be a weapon she could use.

She returned his invitation with a cold stare…at first. Then, feigning resignation, she sighed, picked up her skirts, and trudged toward him, hanging her head.

“There, that ain't so bad, is it?” he said when she was standing beside him, overlooking the fact that she’d refused to take his arm. Then he frowned down at her bodice and, with a smirk of disapproval, withdrew her dime novel and tossed it onto the barn floor.

She gave a tiny gasp, but resisted the urge to smack him for his trespass. Instead, she meekly lowered her eyes to the kerosene lantern that dangled from the preacher’s fingers.

“Go ahead,” Frank told the preacher. “We’re ready.”

As Frank straightened his collar and the preacher fumbled open his Bible with his free hand, Claire took advantage of their moment of inattention. Lifting her skirt, she kicked out suddenly and forcefully with her boot, punting the lantern right out of the preacher’s grip.

The lamp sailed through the air, hit the wall, and shattered. Fire exploded through the broken glass. Kerosene splashed and spilled everywhere. Hungry flames erupted instantly to lap up the fuel as it spread over the dry straw scattered on the barn floor.

Frank grabbed her roughly by the arm. “Are you crazy?”

He tried stomping out the flames, but for every spark he subdued, two more took its place. Faster than Claire thought possible, the fire grew out of control, licking at the walls of the barn and gobbling up the pile of fodder beside the horse stalls.

The preacher wasted no time. He turned tail and ran out of the barn as if the fires of hell were coming for him.

Claire would have followed him, but Frank had a death grip on her, and he still had the shotgun in his other hand.

The horses smelled the smoke and started to panic. Their eyes rolled, and they began to squeal, tossing their heads and jerking at their harnesses.

“Shit!” Frank finally let go of her and prodded her forward with the barrel of the shotgun. “Help me untether the horses. We’ve got to get them out of here.”

There were eight horses. By the time they freed the last one, Claire’s eyes and throat were burning from the acrid smoke, and her face was beaded with sweat from the heat of the fire. Coughing, she staggered toward the door where the last horse had just made its escape.

But Frank stood there with the shotgun, blocking her exit. His face was lit up from beneath by the madly flickering flames. Still, that wasn’t what made him look like the devil. It was the queer, speculative expression in his eyes that, despite the intense heat, chilled her to the bone.

“You know, you’ve been nothin' but trouble, Claire, for me
and
your father. I was tryin' to make things easy—nice and neat. Keep the old man happy, marry his daughter, take over the ranch when he kicked the bucket. But you…”

Claire coughed and cast an uneasy glance around the barn, which was fast filling with smoke. Surely Frank could scold her outside. “Frank, we’ve got to get out of here.”

“Do we?”

She gulped. What the hell did that mean? “Yes! Right now. We have to alert the hands and fight the fire.” God, she hoped the men were already on their way. She didn’t like the strange light in Frank’s gaze. Mustering her courage, she ignored his gun and strode toward the doorway. “Come on, Frank. We have to get—”

The butt of the shotgun struck her hard in the temple. The dull thud reverberated against her skull. Her first feeling was shock. Then pain rushed in with deadly force, and she collapsed like a puppet with all its strings cut. Lying in the straw on her side, stunned and unable to move, she tried to speak. All that came out was a weak moan.

Frank hunkered down beside her with the shotgun across his knees, but she couldn’t even lift her eyes to look at his face.

“It didn’t have to be this way, Claire. You could have been a respectable rancher’s wife. But you’ve got a wild streak in you. And sometimes when an animal can’t be broken, it has to be put down. The way I see it, this ranch and me, we’re meant to be together. I figure your father’s gonna give her to me, Claire, whether you’re alive or not. In fact, now that I’ve been thinkin' it over, it might save me a whole lot of trouble, you bein' out of the way. I’ll tell Mr. Parker I did everything I could to save his little girl. The fire just got out of hand.” He sniffed. “You made your bed, Claire. Now you can lie—”

A rope seemed to drop out of the sky in that instant, encircling Frank. Claire blinked, unable to tell if what she saw was real or a figment of her rapidly fading brain. The last image she saw was the sole of Frank’s boot as he was jerked backward through the thickening smoke.

Chase had decided that Yoema must be taking her time getting to the spirit world.

He’d finally been able to steal a breath of fresh air—sauntering along the darkened streets of Paradise, inhaling the crisp scent of pine, peering up at the star-salted sky—when his grandmother suddenly intruded upon his thoughts. Just when he’d almost convinced himself that Claire wouldn’t want to see him, the bossy old woman barged into his brain, ordering him to go to the Parker Ranch at once.

He sighed, knowing he’d have to face Claire sooner or later and find out the truth, even if it broke his heart. He might as well get it over with. Besides, he got the feeling if he didn’t do what Yoema told him, the old woman would pester him all night long.

So he headed toward the ranch, following the same path he’d taken just over a week ago when he’d first met Claire. Had it only been that long? It seemed like he’d known her all his life.

As he turned the bend, a man came running toward him. Chase stopped, and the man scrambled to a halt, squeaking in surprise. Chase saw that he was a preacher. He had a white collar, and he was clinging to a Bible.

“You all right?” Chase asked.

“Yes…mm-hmm…fine,” the preacher said, clearly winded. By the way he was licking his lips and looking over his shoulder, Chase was pretty sure the preacher was breaking that commandment, Thou Shalt Not Lie.

But Chase let the man pass and hurried onward. A preacher fleeing in fear from the Parker Ranch couldn’t be a good thing.

Sure enough, by the time he bolted through the ranch gates, he could see a
bad
thing—an orange glow coming from inside the barn.

There was only one thing that caused that kind of light.

Fire.

He started loping down the drive.

It must have just started. The ranch hands were only beginning to emerge from their quarters. It looked like the horses had at least gotten out. Chase wondered if the fleeing preacher had something to do with the blaze. He’d heard of fire-and-brimstone sermons, but…

He frowned. Where was Claire? And where was her father?

Maybe they were asleep in the house. He hoped so. They’d be safe there. The ranch house sat a good distance from the barn.

Chase grabbed a bucket and was about to add his muscle to the firefighting efforts when Yoema’s spirit yelled sharply in his ear.

Help. She was calling for help.

Chase frowned. His gaze was drawn to the barn. Beyond the silhouettes of scurrying ranch hands and the horses milling in the drive, orange-tinted smoke puffed out through the barn doorway.

As if shoved forward by the hand of Yoema, Chase dropped the bucket and moved forward through the men and horses, toward the entrance of the barn.

Near the open door, a wave of heat blasted him, and he raised his hands in front of his face, blinking against the acrid smoke. Then, as he stood in the doorway, squinting through the haze, he could make out the figure of Frank. Frank was squatting with his shotgun across his lap, beside what appeared to be a body.

Chase thought Frank must be crazy. An inferno blazed around him, yet Frank sat there talking, as if he had all the time in the world.

Chase was about to shout at him to get out of the barn when he heard Frank say Claire's name.

Chase glanced at the body, at the fold of brown skirts, and he felt his blood turn to ice.