The Ruination of Essie Sparks (Wild Western Rogues Series, Book 2) (22 page)

He sent a quick look back at her, flashing those silvery eyes in her direction. "I'll wait back in Coulson for her to bring me a change of clothes. Something that will help me... blend in."

Cade 'Black Thorn' Newcastle would never blend in anywhere, no matter how hard he tried.

"And then?" she prodded.

"I told you. I'm going to look for Little Wolf. We've settled all that."

"In your mind," she muttered.

"What was that?"

"Nothing. But I suppose you think Mitchell Laddner will just call a truce. Let the matter slide? Has it not occurred to you that he and his cohort are probably in Magic City by now, as well? Possibly waiting for us to show up?"

"The last thing he'll expect is for me to head to town with you. They're probably doubling back to the school by now."

That sounded like wishful thinking, but it was useless to argue with him. After all, he would do what he would do, and she would do what she had to do.

Cade's horse tossed its head suddenly and stuttered to a stop. Her horse whinnied, too, and backed up with a jerky motion. Cade threw his arm out in a gesture meant to protect her, but from what, she could not see. And then she heard it.

The bloodcurdling roar of a bear.

Not twenty feet away, crossing the path, stood a huge golden-colored bear that stood as tall as Cade on his horse, with two cubs beside her. Her gaze was locked on Cade and Náhkohe as she lumbered forward on two legs.

"Run—" Cade whispered, pulling his rifle from the boot of his saddle. "Go back up the trail!" As he spoke, he backed his horse up. But the bear opened its mouth in a fearful yawp that could certainly engulf a man's entire head.

"Cade!" Essie gasped as her horse reared and she flew off its back.

Chapter 13

She landed with a hard thwack on the trail, sprawled on her back. Pain shot through her head. Stars swam in front of her eyes and her lungs didn't seem to be working. Distantly, she could hear the fading sound of her horse's hoofbeats as it ran away, and she lifted her head to see the bear lowering to its four legs to make a run at them.
Oh, no. No, no, no!
Cade roared at the bear and waved his arms like a madman. For a moment, the bear seemed confused. Or angry. No time to decide which.

"Give me your hand!" Cade shouted, without taking his eyes off the beast. Náhkohe's eyes rolled white and he tossed his head in fear, dancing in place and fighting Cade's direction.

Get up! Get up!
But catching her breath enough to stand seemed ridiculously hard. She rolled onto her side and pushed herself onto her elbows.

"Essie! Now!" He shouldered his rifle and put a bullet in the ground at the bear's feet. That seemed to startle her and the bear jumped back. Her two cubs hustled away into the forest behind her. But furious, the mother bear did not back down. She roared again, a sound so deafening it made Essie's ears ring.

Lumbering forward, the animal pawed at the air in Cade's direction with deadly threat. This close, Essie could smell the rank, musty odor of the animal's breath and every meal that had left its golden-colored coat brown with blood.

Gasping, she pushed herself to her feet as Cade fired another warning shot at the bear. Closer, this time, so a piece of bark flew up at the animal's face. Cade backed a terrified Náhkohe up beside Essie, then reached down and yanked her up behind him. She clapped her arms around him as the mother bear lowered to all fours and stomped the ground with her two front paws.

With his gun still aimed at her, he shouted something at the bear in Cheyenne. The animal roared fiercely one last time, then—impossibly—she turned and ran after her cubs into the woods, disappearing from sight.

For minutes, still shouldering his gun, Cade watched the woods, waiting for the bears to circle back. But it seemed they had gone. The whole thing couldn't have lasted more than thirty seconds, but it had felt like an eternity.

It wasn't until he reined Náhkohe back down the trail that she felt her lungs unlock enough to actually take in a deep breath. She couldn't stop shaking. "I thought... I thought we were dead."

"And well we could have been." Without much encouragement needed, the horse broke into a nervous lope downhill.

"What about my horse?" she asked over Cade's shoulder. "The little traitor..."

Cade rested a hand on the one she had wrapped around him to calm her. Oh, and she was so grateful for that touch.

"He'll find his way back to the camp, I hope. We'll just have to manage with one."

The rush of fear that had poured through her for the last few minutes now left her feeling weak and shaken. "If Náhkohe had balked, too, we'd both be dead now."

"They're gone now. They won't be back."

The horse's flanks were wet with sweat and quivering every bit as much as she was. She smoothed one hand on Náhkohe's muscled backside. "Good horse. Good boy."

"You all right?" Cade asked. "You took a good fall."

"I think so. My pride is wounded, but the rest of me will be all right." But her head still ached and her back felt like that bear had stepped on her.

He didn't reply, but he squeezed her hand and they rode in silence for a few minutes at an easy lope. The trail widened through stands of pine and aspen that crowded the slope on either side of the deer track. Below them, a meadow appeared and sprawled beneath a cerulean blue sky. When they reached the meadow, Cade slowed Náhkohe to a walk so he could snatch some tall grass as they walked by.

Now that the whole thing was over, it hardly seemed real now. But they had just come as close to death as at any other time on this crazy journey so far.

"Most would have shot her where she stood. But you didn't. Why?"

"She and her cubs belong here. We are the intruders."

True. Until the bear eats you.

"When you spoke to her... in Cheyenne... what did you say?"

"I told her I did not want to kill her, or leave her cubs orphans. I asked her to go and leave us alone. That today was not a good day to die."

"But she could have killed you.
Us,
actually."

"But she did not."

A nervous sound escaped her. "Well, the children at the school told me that long ago, their people could talk to animals."

"Some of the old medicine men still can," he said, pulling the water skin from his saddle to offer it to her. "I am not one of them. My words to that mother bear were more of a... prayer than a request."

"A prayer?"

He shrugged. "Not the same kind as yours."

"
Mine
?" She reached for the locket at her throat. "I haven't said a prayer since my son died. I don't much see the point."

He half turned to look at her. "I didn't mean to—" he began, but she shook her head as she took the skin from him and pulled out the stopper.

"It's all right," she said. "It doesn't matter. But I am quite glad you guessed right about that bear. It could have gone badly."

"There is no place more dangerous to be than between a mother grizzly and her cubs. She was torn between protecting them by attacking us or running. She chose to run."

That, she understood. She would have done anything to save her son. Anything. But there was nothing she could do. And run, she had. All the way to Montana, to meet Cade Newcastle in a most unlikely way.

She drank from the skin and handed it back to him, watching as he did the same. Her eyes fell to his throat, how it moved as he swallowed. How the water spilled over his lips and trickled down his jaw. Some dark impulse had her wishing she could follow the track of that water with her tongue and—

She turned sharply away, horrified at the direction of her thoughts. Imagine, her, wanting to do something like that. It was unseemly. Indecent, even. Perhaps it was their brush with death that made her think such things.

He pulled one sleeve across his mouth and looked back at her. And when she met his gaze she was surprised to find him watching her with a look so stark he couldn't disguise the heat behind it.

"We'd best hurry," she said softly. "If we're to make it by dark."

His jaw tightened. With a nod and without another word, he nudged Náhkohe on down the mountain.

* * *

By late afternoon, the rain had started again and as they rode they shivered under the blanket Walks Along had given them. There was a chill of late summer in the air. Cade could feel her tremble behind him, though she did not complain. He was anxious to make town by nightfall, but he could tell she was at the very end of her tether for strength and he knew he had to do something to get her warm before going on.

Up ahead, he saw what looked like smoke rising through the trees. But it wasn't smoke. He knew this place. It was sacred for the Cheyenne. He remembered it from when he was a boy. He veered off the trail and headed toward it. If she noticed, she said nothing. She had her face buried against his back and the blanket covering her face.

Some small voice warned him that he was simply avoiding the inevitable. That once they reached the bottom of the mountain, things would be at an end between them and he would never see her again. And he knew that was right. But he dreaded it. How strange that he should come to care about this woman in so short a time.

No,
care
was the wrong word. He'd cared for women before—women like White Deer, back at Red Moon's camp, who had never made any secret about her feelings for him. But White Deer wasn't for him and he'd never felt for her what he did for Essie Sparks. Not even—especially not—Delilah had come close, though at the time, he'd thought he loved her. That had been some twisted lust on his part. And the bad judgment of youth.

No, what he felt for Essie couldn't be put into words exactly. Wouldn't be defined by anything as simple as lust. Though he did lust after her. He'd lost count of the times he'd turned away from her so she wouldn't see the evidence of that hunger that cut through him when she was near.

No, it wasn't simple lust, but some emotion he had never felt before. When he'd kissed her back in camp, he'd nearly lost control. When he'd felt her return his kiss, slide her tongue against his with a hunger that shocked him, he'd longed for nothing more than to carry her back to the tepee and make her his for once and for all. Brand her with his seed and forbid her to ever take another lover.

But for both their sakes, he hadn't. He wouldn't. He'd vowed that to himself. Not only because choosing a white woman—much less
this
white woman—was impossible. But allowing her to choose him was even worse. Yet, every step they took closer to town meant a step closer to losing her for good.

It took only a few minutes to reach the hot spring tucked into a nest of rocks overlooking the valley. One of the few that had a reliable temperature, this hot spring was a favorite amongst the Cheyenne and was often used, in the old days, for those with winter in their bones. It had always seemed to him that nature itself had carved this hot spring there to be used on a day exactly like this one. The water here smelled faintly of sulfur and was crystal clear, with curls of steam rolling across the surface.

"What is that?" Essie asked when she lifted her head to see why they'd stopped.

"That is your salvation." He slid off the horse and helped her down. In the rain, they walked to the edge of the spring, with Essie staring like a child at the steaming water. "It's a hot spring. And it will warm you to your bones. Take off your clothes."

She jerked a look at him, shocked.

"I will wait for you over there," he assured her, gesturing to the rocks behind them. He started to turn but she grabbed his arm.

"You would have me go in alone?"

"Are you afraid?"

"What if I were?"

"I think you're not afraid of much, Essie Sparks."

She blinked at the water, listening to the rain patter the glassy surface. The pool was barely twenty feet across and ten feet wide and not deep enough to drown in. Below the surface, benches of rock sat haphazardly along the edges beneath the clear water. "I'm afraid I'll never see you again after tonight."

He said nothing, but he supposed the set of his jaw encompassed all the conflict he was feeling about that very same thing.