The Ruination of Essie Sparks (Wild Western Rogues Series, Book 2) (15 page)

She flung herself as far away from him in the shallow cave as she could, furious with him for nearly throwing her off a mile-high cliff, only to stuff her into a shallow limestone cave just below the rim. Then he'd practically hogtied her with his arms to silence her. But that wasn't the worst. The worst was hearing what Mitchell Laddner had said about her, when he thought she was already dead.

She growled a sound of pure anger and frustration as she slid down against the far wall, glaring at Cade. Cold shivered through her. She'd never felt so alone in all her life.

"Don't say I didn't warn you about them," he said under his breath, eyeing her with what looked suspiciously like sympathy.

"Fine. You were right. Is that what you wanted to hear?"

He shrugged and tilted his head tiredly against the back wall of the shallow cave. Their escapade had clearly drained whatever remained of his reserves. He was still breathing hard from their jump.

She stared gloomily out across the valley, knowing that before sunrise, the men would be scouring the ground below for their bodies and coming up empty-handed. What then? Would they come back for them? Find them huddled here? Kill them both properly? She couldn't wrap her mind around it. "But why would he want to kill
me
? I've done nothing to deserve—"

"You're tainted now. Ruined. No doubt out of your mind."

"But you... you haven't—"

He sent her a serious look. "They wouldn't be wrong if you'd been taken by some Crow hunting party up here, or by the Flatheads, or even some renegade faction of the Northern Cheyenne. There's no love for whites now. Or ever, to be honest. It would have gone very badly for you."

She stared out over the lavender-colored sky at the valley. "I'd be past worrying about those two, is that what you're saying?"

"Or worse. The Northern Cheyenne have not taken a prisoner for many years now. Not since I've been with them. But I've heard stories."

"So have I. But you've been kind to me. Kinder than I expected."

That brought his head around to her. "It's my fault you are in this mess now."

Essie shrugged. "My life was a mess before you took me. A terrible mess." She turned to look at Cade. The sunset slanted across his finely carved face, painting him with a deceptively healthy color. In truth, he looked terrible.

The long days of riding, the loss of blood and the pain had taken their toll. She hated that she could despise him and care about him at the same time. That being clamped against him as intimately as any woman could be clamped against a stranger felt oddly safer than the alternative. And, yes, he'd ruined her life. But in some odd way, she realized that no one—not her late husband or her father, who had died years after her mother, who had died when Essie was young, or certainly, the men sent to rescue her—had ever protected her the way Cade had.

The cave smelled of the Montana wind that constantly scoured it. It harbored dead grass and skeletal remains of small creatures who'd been trapped here. She shoved one away from her with a dry stick.

"This place," she said, staring at her surroundings. "How did you know it was here?"

"It's a buffalo jump. When the herds were plenty, the People drove them to their deaths over the jump for winter stores. For food and everything else. I came on a hunt when I was thirteen. My cousin, Wind On The Water, was chosen to play decoy, leading the buffalo to the edge covered in a buffalo hide." Cade stared out ahead, watching the clouds move in a flat line across the sky as the sun sank lower. "I remembered this cave. From above, it's nearly invisible. He jumped down here at the last moment... and... over the buffalo went."

She made a face. "How gruesome."

He shrugged. "Once, the buffalo jump meant life to the People. Now... this place just means death."

Now the buffalo are gone and so, for the most part, are the People
.

"We can't stay here," she said. "They'll be back when they don't find us down there. They'll realize—" She stared at him, suddenly understanding. "But you knew that, didn't you? Before we even jumped. What was your plan?"

He lifted his hands, palms up. "I didn't have a plan. I was trying to save us."

But he hadn't. Not really. He'd merely postponed the inevitable. "We have to go. Now. While they're heading down there."

"Do you remember how we came?" he asked her.

"I—yes. Maybe."

"Good. Then you must find your way back."

"What do you mean I—" She gaped at him. "Oh, no. Y-you must be... joking."

"You're a clever girl. Try to stay just off the path in case they come back that way looking for you. Cover your trail as much as you can, the way I did."

He might as well ask her to juggle pigs! "It's... it's two days back! Through the mountains. With... with bears and—"

He held out his rifle to her and slid his deerskin ammunition pouch off over his head. "Take these. I won't be needing them."

She didn't take them, but stared at him as if he'd somehow lost his mind. "What do you mean?"

The look he gave her was stark. "We both know I'll never be able to walk out on this leg. You'll have a chance without me."

Her eyes widened. "This is your plan? To wait here for them to kill you? No!"

He sighed. "I won't argue with you."

"And I—I won't leave you here for...
them
."

His eyes focused on her with effort. "You'll get away from me. It's what you wanted all along, isn't it? What do you care what happens to me?"

"I... I care," she blurted, before she could stop herself. "I mean... I have no wish to see you dead."

He tilted his head back against the stone and half grinned, something she'd almost never seen him do before. His grin dazzled her and made her want to cry at the same time.

"You care?"

She shook her head. "Yes.
Yes.
But don't make me say it again."

"All right." He stared down at the rifle in his hands, as if without it he would be lost.

"Come on, then," she told him.

He closed his eyes. "It was one thing to ride. I cannot run on this leg. Take the gun."

"No."

"Take it!"

"
No
!"

He shoved the rifle toward her again. "Go,
Mo'onahe
, while you still can
.
They will not be long."

"I am not going anywhere without y—"

"Go!" He shouted at her, then he sat up and forced the gun into her hands. He clapped his fingers over hers, around the barrel of his rifle. "I am sorry I took you. It was
ó'oht
. A mistake. Now go! Run. And don't look back."

Tears sprang to her eyes. She couldn't help it. He was sacrificing himself for her. How could she just leave him here to die? His skin was dry and hot against hers. His leg must be getting infected. He was right. He could never walk out. She wasn't altogether certain she could either.

She took the gun. "Fine. We have the advantage here. When they come back...
if
they come back... I'll shoot them before they can—"

"Don't be stupid. There are two of them. You could never kill them before they killed you. Both of us." He pulled his knife from its sheath and brandished it at her. "I won't ask again."

"You wouldn't—"

He bared his teeth and slapped the blade against his own throat. His eyes were fevered and bright and he wasn't thinking clearly. She felt tears leak from hers.
He might. He just might
.

"Don't!" she cried. "All right, all right! I'll go! But promise me you won't do anything. Promise me, unless they come, you won't do anything. I will find someone to come back and help you. I will not leave you here. I swear to you."

"Goodbye, Essie Sparks."

She stared at him for a long beat, until he lowered the knife and leaned his head back against the stone.

What she did next surprised even her. She leaned close to him and wrapped her arm around him. Pressing her face against his shoulder, she said, "Don't give up. Promise me."

She felt his hand spread against her back tentatively at first, then harder, as if he didn't want to let her go.

Lifting her head, she met his eyes. His silvery gray eyes that seemed too bright somehow. Full of need. They searched her eyes and then fell to her mouth. Impulsively, perhaps, and without asking her permission, he kissed her. A quick meeting of their lips that could hardly be misconstrued as anything but a goodbye. And truth be told, she could have resisted that kiss. She could have pulled out of his reach. But she didn't.

And when he broke the kiss, his fevered eyes searched hers for a long moment until she gave him a barely discernible shake of her head before he pulled her back to him and kissed her the way a man should kiss a woman.

His lips were warm, too warm, but unexpectedly soft. He threaded his fingers into the hair at her nape and pulled her closer still. Dipping his tongue into her mouth, he shocked her. Inflamed her. Nathan had never breached the seam of her lips—not once—or made
want
curl in her belly.

She filled her lungs with Cade's scent for perhaps the last time. She couldn't think straight now. Not when his mouth tasted as sweet as the fresh wind that buffeted them there in the cave, and his arms circled around her as if she belonged to him.

She didn't. She couldn't. But in this moment, she wanted to.

Somehow, she'd hoped to change his mind about staying behind, but she could tell this kiss was not acquiescence. It was farewell. And it broke her heart.

When she ended the kiss, she blinked and looked away, breathing hard, listening to the thud of her heart in her ears. "Promise me," she repeated, but her voice was small now.

He pushed her away from him with a shake of his head. "Go."

Slinging the rifle and ammunition across her back, she turned and climbed out of the cave and out onto the dark, windswept cliff.

* * *

The man with a braid of long gray hair and simple, sack-like, dark clothes leaned over Little Wolf, poking him with a stick and shouting something in a language he didn't understand. He blinked up at the bent old man through the smoky haze that circled the tent like a cloud, but his head felt muddled and thick from the sweet, awful smell. And in his mind, he could still hear the laughter of the two hunters who'd taken him as they counted the gold coins the old man had paid them for him. That had been hours ago, after they'd reached Magic City.

It was night outside. The raucous sound of the nearby saloons drifted to him. The moon shone through the flaps in the tent. His ankles were chained together by heavy manacles, and his hands, still bound, were tied above his head to a stout beam that supported the tent. Those men who'd stolen Lalo had left him here, sold him like a stockyard steer. He kicked at the chains on his ankles but only succeeded in rubbing his skin raw.

The old man brandished a knife in his direction with some sort of threat before slicing through the rope that bound him to the pole. Pain shot through the boy's shoulders as he lowered his arms.

He'd had seen men like this one they'd called Chen Lee before when he'd come here to Magic City with the supply wagon. These men mostly worked in nearby mines and on the railroad, or could sometimes be seen pulling carts full of laundry through the muddy streets, with their long braid trailing down their backs. They came from some faraway place, across the sea and far from the mountains of his people.

Chen Lee poked at him again, harder this time, and yelled again. He sat up, glared at the old man and captured the stick in his hand. For the briefest of moments, he played tug-of-war with him before the old man's slippered foot snapped around, catching him in the jaw and knocking him nearly senseless. Pain streaked across his face and he blocked the next blow with his still-tied hands. A stream of angry words spewed from Chen Lee's wrinkled old mouth, not a word of which he understood.

Sprawled there on the dirt floor of the tent, anger roiled up in his throat. Anger at his own foolishness for getting caught by those two men and at being sold for a handful of coin to this one. Anger at his powerlessness to stop any of it. All his foolish plans, gone to smoke.

The stick came down hard against his shoulders again and he cried out. He could feel the stinging welts rise on the skin of his back. Oh, if he had a knife, he would kill this old man, then steal that long gray braid of his. Then he would track those other two and kill them, too. But slower. Much slower.

In Wages, he'd spent long nights pondering the slow, painful murder of Sergeant Laddner. How the sharp edge of his knife would find the tender skin of his scalp; the look on the man's face as he stole his life from him. Thirteen summers had taught him to hate the white man, but now he understood that the People, who his grandfather had taught him were the center of the world, had enemies everywhere. No one could be trusted.

Risking a look up, he caught sight of a girl standing just behind the old man. She looked not much older than thirteen summers herself. Long, silky black hair, skin the golden, pearly color of a mussel shell he once plucked out of the river. Except for the dark bruise beneath her left eye, she was sort of beautiful. Her swanlike neck made her look proud beside the bent old man, and the look on her face, as she watched the man beating him, was half curiosity, half warning.