River to Cross, A (5 page)

Softly he let loose a cussword. He looked over at Fred. “Her wrists were tied too tight for too long.”

“You stay put,” Fred said. “You’ve done most of the work with her. I’ll take her dress off.”

“No, you won’t.” Jake jumped to his feet and hurried off toward the bush.

Fred snickered. “She’s getting to him.”

“And he doesn’t even know it,” Gus said.

“I figured something was going on after she bit him and all he did was carry her like a little queen to her horse.” Fred laughed. “Anybody else would be dead by now.”

Elizabeth closed her eyes
in a long, slow blink when a tall man with curly blond hair appeared from behind the creosote bush. For a moment she had a sense of tilting reality, of time running backward, of something half remembered. It was as if she were looking at Carl again.

His own gaze was jumping all over her face as if he felt it, too.

“Let’s get started on those buttons,” Jake said.

Elizabeth stared up at him, and for a minute it was hard to breathe.

Last night it had been so dark and his face so black and scary, nothing about him had registered. In the early morning light and the confusion of getting off the horses, she still hadn’t noticed him much. All those dark faces looked the same to her. With Jake, because he was closest to her, she’d received only a fleeting impression of cheekbones, a face full of angles and shadows, and a mouth that could’ve been carved in stone, all hidden under a layer of soot.

Now, however, he’d managed to get all the soot and disguise washed off. The faint scent of soap and male sweat assaulted her. He was bigger than Carl, but their hair and eyebrows were the same pale blond.

Like Lieutenant Carl Evans, Jake Nelson was a towhead, his hair just as light and thick and touching the back of his collar. But there the resemblance stopped. He looked to be in his late twenties, older than Carl, inches taller and pounds heavier, and his eyes were gray, not brown, like Carl’s.

For some reason he looked harder than Carl. Two very different men. Yet every time she looked at him, she had a strange sense of having walked this way before.

She lowered her eyes, unsettled by a tug of attraction to this big slow-talking man. The wrong man.

Elizabeth stiffened her shoulders, reached into the back of her mind, and switched the memories off. After three years, she was getting pretty good at that, at turning off what she didn’t want to remember.

She glanced at Jake uneasily.
He’s a Texas Ranger
.

Carl had called Rangers—criticized them, really—as being shock troops. Their initial response to an Indian attack was overwhelming firepower delivered at full gallop. Speed, surprise, violence—an “annihilation charge,” they called it.

And she bit him.

She didn’t know whether to burst out laughing or get up and run.

Firmly she cleared the huskiness from her voice. “Where are you from, Captain?”

“Up near Oklahoma, little town called Burkburnett.”

His cheeks puffed the
b
’s, his words leaning lazily on each other. Typical Texas twang, she thought.

She straightened her shoulders and wrestled the corners of her mouth into a smile.

Be nice. Talk to the man.

She held her hands out and waggled her fingers. “They’re like sticks. They don’t bend right.” She swallowed and looked up. “I’m sorry to ask you. I know you don’t want to do this.”

His hand closed around her wrist and led her into the sunlight streaming through the branches, where he could see the green dress better. Frowning, he pinched a tiny button in his fingers and gave a soft snort through his nose.

“No wonder you can’t unbutton them. They’re like baby teeth!” He pinched and pulled. A piece of green thread and a white button dangled from his fingers.

He rubbed his nose back and forth. “Looks like I broke it.”

Lips pursed, Elizabeth looked down at her front and the fifteen other tiny buttons that went down to her waist. “This isn’t going to work, Captain. We’ll be here all day. Your fingers are like sausages.”

“Thanks for the compliment, but if we want to stay alive, we haven’t got all day. So stand still and stop your yapping.” He stooped on the balls of his feet in front of her, his eyes narrowed, intense, looking almost silver in the light.

Evidently this determined man did exactly what he put his mind to. And if she didn’t like it, too bad.

In ten minutes he had her unbuttoned and holding her arms up while he lifted the green silk dress over her head. Then he removed the two petticoats. Finally, heat sliding down her neck, she stood before him, bare-armed, in her chemise and pantaloons.

She was uncomfortable and embarrassed and angry at herself for being either. She looked up at him helplessly and started to giggle. “I am mortified. Don’t you say a word. Not one word, you hear?”

He smiled. “I’ve seen ladies in pantaloons before.”

“Oh, of course. You’re married?”

“No.”

“Sorry, Captain, I shouldn’t have asked.”

“My name’s Jake.” He glanced up at her. “How long have you been married?”

“I’m a widow. My husband was Carl Evans, a lieutenant in the Seventh Cavalry. He was killed in a Comanche raid three years ago.” She looked away.

“I surely am sorry to hear that.” His face was serious, his voice gentle. “I assumed you were married when I saw the ring.”

“Wearing it eliminates a lot of questions, especially when traveling alone. A wedding ring keeps unwanted contacts away. Most men leave a married woman alone.”

He held open the brown denim pants and a soft red flannel shirt he’d brought her from Fort Bliss.

“Come on, Lizzy, let’s put your britches on.” He cocked his head at her. “Anyone ever call you that?”

“No,” she said, and burst out laughing. She stepped into the trousers and shrugged on the shirt, watching while he pulled the waistband out and stuffed the shirttail in all around.

Soon she was dressed, her feet laced into riding boots two sizes too big. Quickly she pulled her hair back, braided it into a loose pigtail, and he stuffed it up under a cowboy hat.

“Thank you,” she said. “Though you won’t admit it, underneath all that gruff officer persona, I suspect you’re rather sweet.”

He gave a short bark of a laugh. “Lady, I’ve been called a lot of things by a lot of women, but
sweet
sure wasn’t one of them.”

He tweaked her Stetson. “Come on, pretty boy, let’s ride.”

Half an hour later, they were back on the Chihuahuan desert. She recognized it now, miles and miles of parched land, a dry desert basin lying between mountain ranges. The rhythmic thud of horses’ hooves still kicked up clouds of red dirt, but high overhead on the rimrock, something new had been added. Noisy green parrots swept from tree to tree, scolding them. Ponds appeared here and there in the landscape, and butterflies were everywhere.

The horses clattered across a plank bridge over a creek and followed a twisty back trail through the trees. Twice they saw small settlements in the distance and detoured well out past them.

Before they’d left the little spring, Jake had tied her to the saddle so she couldn’t fall out when they rode fast. Like now.

He looked over. “Watch me and do what I do.” He kicked his horse into a canter.

Elizabeth imitated him. Lightly she slapped the reins and kicked her horse, startled when the animal broke into a sedate little rolling gallop. She threw a triumphant look at Jake and grinned. He looked as surprised as she was and pleased at what she’d done.

“Starting to get the hang of this, are you?” he said.

“And about time, you’re thinking.”

“Not at all. You catch on fast.”

She wasn’t so sure.

These three men, sitting relaxed and loose in their saddles, could ride for days. She tightened her knees into the horse and felt the tension ease across her shoulders. She had to admit, riding in trousers made far more sense than riding in a dress.

In late afternoon he pointed out their objective—a line of mountain peaks shimmering in the heat way off in the distance but slowly, slowly coming closer. She didn’t much like the idea of going back up into mountains, but Jake insisted it was better than sleeping out in the rain. This section of Chihuahua’s Sierra Madre, he said, was honeycombed with caves.

He knew of a cavern deep inside one of the mountains where they could keep dry, have a cook fire, and get a good night’s sleep.

“We’re all tired,” he said.

That sounded wonderful, especially since it had started to rain an hour before and, by now, she was soaked. She looked up at the lead-colored sky and wiped the wetness off her cheek. “I didn’t know it ever rained in a desert.”

“Depends when and where it is. It’s the August monsoon season, and the high Texas and Mexican deserts see rain every year about this time.”

Fred smiled over at her. “Rain is good. If anyone tries to follow us tonight, they’re out of luck. Rain like this wipes out horse tracks.”

As the sun began to set, they cut out of the desert and onto a rocky trail that wound up the mountainside. Trees, sparse at first, grew thicker as they climbed, and then they crowded in so close that she could reach out and touch them. She raised her eyes overhead. Here and there, small patches of daylight filtered through the canopy of leaves. They climbed higher. When Jake pointed out a shiny cliffside and said it was the entrance to the cave, she shook her head.

“I see nothing but wet rock,” she said.

“Good. If you can’t see it, neither will the Mexicans.”

Night in the Sierra Madre drew in swiftly. As soon as the sun slipped behind the mountain peaks, cold shadows swept down the slopes and blanketed the valleys in rainy darkness.

Hidden by thick bushes, a large black opening appeared in the rock. Hunched low over their horses, they entered single-file. A few feet away from the entrance, darkness fell like a curtain behind them. Not a trace of light got through.

The men dismounted and unloaded the big mule of the supplies they’d taken from the Mexicans. Each came back with a lantern, which they lit quickly. They needed plenty of light to lead the horses and mule well back into the cave.

There, the animals would be protected from the rain and any horse odors would be contained inside.

“Only an Indian can track at night,” Jake said. “An Indian scout can smell horse manure a mile away. We’re taking no chances.”

Once off her horse, Elizabeth stood in the circle of lantern light, surprised at how large the cavern was. The ceiling—if there was one—disappeared into blackness overhead. Hesitating, she reached a hand out to the smooth stone wall. It was damp and cold. Air currents stirred above, a whisper of wind from the entrance. From somewhere came the sound of dripping water.

“This place is creepy,” she said.

Fred went out to find firewood and kindling to start a cook fire. He found a pile of damp mesquite blown back under a ledge by the wind and partially protected from the rain. “Once we get a fire going, it’ll dry out just fine.”

The Rangers had stripped the Mexicans’ food supplies and now had flour, sugar, coffee—things they’d done without on their rush down from Texas.

Supper that night was quail that Gus and Fred had shot earlier in the afternoon. They roasted the little birds on a primitive spit over the fragrant mesquite. Elizabeth was astounded by how much these men knew about cooking. Beans and hot biscuits rounded out their dinner.

Smiling, she sat with her quail in her lap, fingers flying, picking every shred of meat off the tiny bones. “I hadn’t realized how hungry I was. What a relief to eat with people who aren’t planning to kill you.”

Afterward, she warmed herself near the smoldering embers of the fire. “When will we get back to Texas? Day after tomorrow?”