Raven and the Cowboy: A Loveswept Historical Romance (8 page)

“It was the juice of the red berry. It takes away the pain and brings restful peace.”

“Where did you gain all this knowledge, Raven?”

“My mother’s people believed that I was—special. I was trained to heal.” She turned to face him. “Does that bother you?”

“After what has happened so far, I don’t know what to believe. I fall over a cliff and hit my head. The rain wakes me up and there you are, next to me. I don’t know where you came from or how either of us got there. Everything about you is an illusion. I think you and that horse must have flown here.”

“No. I’m very real. Actually, I rode the stage almost to Santa Fe before I left Raven Alexander behind and became an Indian.”

“Alexander? You have a real last name? That means you have a regular family somewhere.”

She didn’t answer.

“You have a saddlebag full of regular clothes and you’re dressed in buckskin riding alone through the mountains in search of a treasure? I don’t understand.”

Raven didn’t know how to explain. She closed her eyes and sighed. “I’m so tired.”

“I’m sorry, Raven. We were so concerned about Luce we haven’t looked after your wound. Do you have any more of that brew?”

“You mean the medicine water? Yes, a little.”

Holding up the dainty petticoat, Tucker gave her a look that said he liked the feel of the undergarment he was holding. She didn’t have to be told that he thought she was lying about her purpose.

“What are you going to do?” she asked, her face flaming. Her skin felt hot, as if his hands were touching her instead of the cotton fabric.

“I’m going to do unto you as you’ve done unto others.” He ripped a piece from the skirt and wet it. Next he removed the thong from her braid and let it twist free.

“You don’t have to unbraid my hair,” she protested.

“I know. I just want to see it loose.” He threaded his fingertips into the thick black hair and worked them up her scalp until he reached the place behind her ear where she’d hit her head.

“I’ll see to it.” She winced as he touched the wound.

“You need stitches, but damned if I can do it.”

“Please. Stop!”

“Quit sidling away from me. I’m just trying to clean it.” His fingers separated her hair strand by strand.

Beneath his touch, Raven began to respond to the feel of his fingers. Like hot sand against her skin, the man was absorbing her tension and replacing it with an awareness she couldn’t fight.

When he finally reached the wound, she was smoldering, drawn so tightly that she was ready to flare up like the crackling fire he’d built.

“Really, I’ll be fine.” Her throat was so dry that she could barely speak. She cast her eyes at the floor, afraid that if he could see them he’d recognize her confusion. Both of them knew that it wasn’t the wound that had coiled her senses to a knifelike edge, but his nearness. Whenever he came close to her, her heart raced and her knees felt like trembling leaves in a desert wind. The connection between them was intensifying, and it was more than just a spiritual joining. It was physical as well.

The big tawny man didn’t seem to be having an easy time of it either. She’d already determined that as strong and courageous as he was, he was a man who kept his personal feelings hidden deep inside. He was strung as taut as the skin pulled across the head of a drum, yet one fingertip caressed the curve of her cheek.

“Don’t. We—I have to see to Luce.” Her words told him to move away, but he had to be the one to move, for she felt as if all the resistance had drained from her body.

“Be still, Raven. Let me do this for you, please.”

Gently he cleaned the wound, surprised to see that it was already beginning to heal. “Whoever you are, you’re some remarkable woman. Don’t try to explain now. I’m willing to wait.”

“Thank you.” She had no answers now. The time wasn’t right. All she knew for sure was that the feeling between them was too strong. Drawing on every ounce of her strength, she reached up and removed his hand. Then, rising, she turned to him.

“Tucker Farrell, you are here for a reason, just as I am, just as Luce is. Luce has protected the treasure. I must find it and use it for my people. You’re the protector and for your help you will be rewarded. Until we reach our goal, we must avoid anything that might interfere. Now, go and see to the horses while I prepare food.”

“Food, yes. That’s one of the things I need,” he agreed, turning toward the door. But she knew that wasn’t the only hunger he felt, and she wondered how long she could maintain the barrier between them, the barrier that was collapsing with every touch.

The horses and the burro were bedded down. Tucker returned to the cabin to tell Raven he hadn’t found any food.

“It’s time for us to talk,” she said. “Let’s step outside.”

He followed her, glancing back at the man who was barely breathing. “Yeah, I guess it is.”

“I don’t believe that Luce will live.”

“Don’t suppose your spirits would give him a hand?” Tucker asked flippantly, his control being tested by the certainty of her knowledge.

“I think they may already have.”

Tucker glanced around the sharp gouge in the earth in which the cabin was hidden. It was as bleak and lifeless as the old man inside. How could anybody spend their life in such a place?

“I don’t know how he made it this far,” Tucker said.

“He had a mission, I think, and now that it is nearly over, he’s losing the breath of life. About your protecting me, I was wrong to ask it of you.”

“And I was probably wrong to agree. So, what now?
You go your way and I go mine? I don’t think so, Spirit Woman.”

“I had to do this, Tucker. All you had to do was bring me to Luce.”

“And if I leave you, you’re going after that treasure, aren’t you?”

“I must go.”

“Even if it means dying?”

“Even if it means dying.”

She was so proud, so regal, standing there beside a piece of gray rock in the sunshine. It wasn’t only that she stirred his blood, it was more. In some strange way, she was the promise of the tomorrow that he’d denied himself. She might die, but she wouldn’t give up. And she wouldn’t allow him to give up either.

“I’m probably the biggest kind of fool, but I can’t walk off and leave you. What else do I have to do, anyway? Besides, a piece of land in Oregon is worth a little gamble. What do we do now, you and me?”

“First, about last night,” she said shyly. “I mean, when I awoke, you were—you’d given me your coat.”

It wasn’t the coat that she was remembering, and he knew it. It was what had come before. Tucker reached for her hand and held it gently, his fingers moving idly back and forth across her wrist. He glanced down at the contrast of her soft skin against his.

She, too, was watching. He could see her breath catch in her throat as if she remembered his touching her. What in hell was he doing? Tucker let her go. He was looking for a treasure, not a woman ready to depend on his staying around.

“So I gave you my coat.” He strode up the trail. “I’d have done the same for Luce. We’ll be partners, that’s all. If we survive to find it, and I doubt that we will, I’ll go
to Oregon and you can go—wherever it is you plan to buy land.”

“Oregon,” she mused. “I’ve heard there is fine land in Oregon. But there is good land in Colorado also.”

“Oh no! Don’t get the idea that I intend to nursemaid an entire tribe of Indians.”

“I’m sorry, Tucker. Of course I don’t expect you to do that. I know it is dangerous, and I’ll understand if you choose to leave at any time. You’ve brought me to Luce, and that was all you were destined to do.”

“Why are you so sure that we were destined to do anything? If your grandfather was dying, he could have been hallucinating.”

“No, he saw the truth. But I saw you as well, in my dreams. Your animal spirit is that of the cougar.”

“What was I doing?”

“The raven was trapped. The cougar freed it from the rocks.”

Birds again. He didn’t want to think about that now. Every time he ran into an occurrence he couldn’t understand, she dragged out something mystical to confuse him even more. Tucker reminded himself that he was far too practical to believe in the spirit world. If he couldn’t touch it, taste it, or smell it, it didn’t exist.

For almost ten years, he’d managed to avoid responsibility, forming any close ties, any situation that would draw him into making a commitment. He’d taken a stand three times in his life, and not once had he come out on the winning side. The first—his service for the Confederacy—was purely patriotic; the second was his engagement to a woman who didn’t wait; and the third, a stint with the Federal Army as an Indian fighter, ended with the massacre at Sand Creek.

Since then he’d drifted, figuring one occupation was as good as another, so long as it didn’t involve killing the
innocent or righting somebody else’s wrongs. And he didn’t take orders from anybody.

Now he’d landed flat in the middle of a different kind of mess. He was stuck with a dying man being chased by bandits, and a woman who seemed to think that there was a treasure waiting to be found. A disaster in the making—any way he looked at it.

“Damn it, Raven. I don’t understand it, but I do know there’s no way you can go find this treasure without help. I’m in. Just remember when it’s over, I get my cut. In the meantime we’ve got to eat. What do you have in your pack?”

“Nothing eatable, I’m afraid,” she said, making her way back to the cabin. She picked up the twin leather pouches and spread them across the kitchen table. “Go on, open them.” She stood back.

It was time he found out something about what he was facing and the woman he was facing it with. Almost reluctantly he unbuckled one of the saddlebags and reached inside, pulling out the traveling dress and petticoat. Next came soft white undergarments that made Raven wince, then, finally, a nightdress. Tucker opened the other bag and found a faded daguerreotype of five women.

Tucker studied the smeared likeness of four light-skinned, fair-haired women and a young darker one. Raven. He held it out to her. “Looks like you do have a family somewhere.”

She took the likeness from him. “Sabrina,” she whispered, “Lauren, Mary, and Isabella and—” For a second, in her mind, she was at the top of a ridge, looking down at a snow-blown valley, watching her sisters standing around a freshly dug grave. There were men there too. “Papa,” she whispered.

“I didn’t see a man.” Tucker reclaimed the daguerreotype.

“He was killed in a mining accident. These are my sisters.”

Tucker gave Raven a long look, then glanced back at the picture. “Not a whole lot of family resemblance between you and the others.”

“We had different mothers.”

He plundered her cache again, bringing out a fringed leather carrying bag, painted with white, black, and yellow symbols.

“What is this?”

“It was my mother’s. It shows her family signs.”

Behind them, Luce sat up and began to speak in an agitated voice. “She is the one. She has come.

Raven rushed to the old man’s side. “Be still. You’ll start the bleeding again.”

“Aiee! The sign. It is here.”

“What sign, Luce?” Tucker walked toward the old man who was staring at the object in his hand. “You mean this?” He held out the painted leather square.

“Si.” He took Tucker’s hand and pulled him even closer. “You must promise me—promise me …”

Raven knelt beside the older man, putting her hand behind his neck to help support him. “Promise you what?”

“I must be buried at the base of the rock with the matching mark.”

Tucker looked from the leather pouch to Luce and back again. “I’ve already promised, old man. Where do I find the rock?”

“Follow the water. Wash me. Shave my head. Then the way will come clear. You must promise.” He fell back to the bed.

“Of course we will,” Raven reassured him. “Now you must rest while I prepare food to make you strong.”

But he’d used up the last of his strength and fallen into a raspy sleep.

Raven’s gaze caught Tucker’s and she shook her head. “I don’t know what he’s talking about.”

“Well, whatever this is sure set him off. And you don’t know what the painting means?”

“I wish I did. Grandfather only gave it to me a few days ago.” She studied the bag, fingering the beading, then held it to her bosom. Her mother’s signs, her ancestors’ totem, perhaps. The design was a combination of wavy lines, jagged triangular marks, a strange-looking sun, and a gold-and-black butterfly.

Nothing about the design spoke to Raven. She wished she could feel close to the woman who’d given her birth. But there was only a lonely emptiness inside.

By midafternoon a rabbit Tucker had killed was stewing in the pot, along with some wild onions and gnarled potatoes she’d found in the cabin. The old man was still sleeping, and Tucker had disappeared outside.

Raven looked around, satisfied that she’d done all she could for now. Finally she decided that she couldn’t eat or relax until she washed some of the last three days of trail dust from her body. Somewhere there would be water. Follow the water, Luce had said.

Checking Luce one last time, she stood in the door way looking out at the small clearing surrounding the cabin. Over the ridge and across the mountain to the east lay the Rio Grande and the bandits who’d followed Tucker. The cabin was in a sheltered area, protected by a scattering of red rock lined with streaks of white, like a frothy layer cake she’d seen at the hotel back in Denver.