Trouble in Disguise: 5 (Eclipse Heat) (20 page)

“You’re an obstinate man and I’m a stubborn…” Miri paused, licking her swollen lips nervously. “I’m a stubborn woman. If we’re partnering until we’re dead, the way we fight that might not be so long from now. We both have strong ideas about which way to go.”

“You can lead,” he said immediately.

“Deacon, you think I don’t know I’m being cozened. You’d no more follow my lead than—”

“What’s your plan for getting back into the Pleasure Dome?” he interrupted her.

“Well, as to that…” Since she already had a good idea for getting back in and fetching the plates, she appreciated the fact that he knew her that well. She slid her arms around his neck and hugged him. “All right, until death do us part but make that a long time from now.”

They shared washing the dishes and tidying the kitchen before he led her to a big chair in the front room. He retrieved a blanket from a chest in the corner and sat, pulling her onto his lap. His heart thumped under her ear as she rested her head on his chest. Every beat seemed a promise of forever to her. She turned her cheek and pressed her lips there, over his heart.

“Yes.” Deacon sighed and closed his eyes, covering them with the blanket as they discussed finding the plates.

“We need to catch the head of the counterfeiting gang too.”

“That would fetch a pretty penny, I bet,” Miri murmured, half asleep.

“We’ve got seven kids to feed so you better hope it does,” Deacon muttered and settled her closer, wrapping her in his heat.

* * * * *

Deacon woke with a start as the soft thud of horse hooves in the ranch yard brought him from contented sleep. Even scrunched in the chair with Miri draped over his lap, he’d slept better than he had in years.

He shook his head, trying to clear the cobwebs from his brain before he rose to investigate.

“Kind of early for company, isn’t it?” Miri lifted her head, smiling sleepily up at him. It was Ketchum’s snarl that brought her to her feet. She crossed to the window as Deacon strapped on his gun belt and picked up his hat.

“Not Deacon. It’s you who has visitors,” Charlie Wolf corrected her as he appeared from the kitchen, walked to the front door, opened it and stepped onto the porch.

Charlie addressed the two Hawks Nest riders politely in Kiowa. Deacon didn’t have to understand the language to guess what was going on. Dan Hawks was one of the men. The other led a string of Indian ponies behind him.

Deacon wanted to grab Miri and keep her from walking through the door. Instead, he stepped aside and watched as she took her place next to Charlie Wolf. Deacon followed and stood on her other side.

“Dan says his ranch hand knows you. Little Eagle is offering these fine horses to us if we’ll talk you into being his squaw.”

Charlie hadn’t even finished speaking when Miri stepped off the porch and walked with purpose to inspect the ten horses.

“Mighty fine bloodstock he’s offering, cousin,” Charlie murmured in a dead serious tone.

Deacon watched as Miri lifted hooves, ran her hands down the horses’ withers and checked their teeth.

Then she walked to her would-be suitor and said something Deacon couldn’t understand. Charlie interpreted as she spoke.

“She says he’s brought her many fine horses. She’s honored that he thinks so highly of her but no thank you.”

Miri handed the end of the rope back to the man who looked at Charlie and spoke rapidly.

“Doesn’t want to accept her answer,” Charlie muttered.

“Tell him she’s my squaw,” Deacon said, anxious to get the man on his way.

Charlie delivered the message and Little Eagle asked Miri for confirmation. She looked at Deacon, then back at the Hawks Nest ranch hand and nodded.

In the blink of an eye, the man slid off his horse and stalked to where she stood. Deacon reached for his gun but Charlie grabbed his arm. “Watch.”

Little Eagle drew a line in the dusty ranch yard with the toe of his moccasin. Deacon had good reason to remember that kind of contest. Instead of letting her fight the brave, Deacon strode from the porch and faced the man across the line.

“Stand with Charlie,” he told her gruffly.

For once she gave him no argument. He mimicked Miri’s trick from the previous day. Little Eagle wasn’t expecting the move from a big, burly white man and Deacon sent him sprawling, then pinned his shoulders for good measure.

The Indian laughed unexpectedly as he climbed up and said her Indian name and then spoke in perfectly good English, “
Mahtaun Kheiye Tdaw Kxee
has chosen well. She is friend. Make certain you cherish her.”

He turned, leapt onto the back of his horse, took up the lead line to his ponies and he and Dan Hawks turned to ride from the ranch yard. Naomi came outside carrying her and Charlie’s son, Wolf. Charlie took the baby, ruffling the curls bouncing on the baby’s head. Before Deacon could ask for an interpretation of what he’d just heard, Charlie said, “Means Girl Warrior. The Kiowa valued her. She could have stayed with them.”

“Exactly,” Deacon said grimly. “But she didn’t. She just—”

“Kept moving,” Charlie finished for him. “I expect she had a reason.” He added, “If you’re going to mess in her life, you’d better be prepared for the outcome.” Grinning, he held up his son as if to illustrate his point.

They were all too relaxed, paying no heed to Ketchum’s low rumbled growl until a third rider, whooping and brandishing a feather-tipped war lance, raced his horse into the ranch lot. The wolf snarled and slavered, baring fangs and bristling in the middle of the yard. As the man completed a circle around him, the big wolf lunged and the Indian threw his spear, pinning Ketchum to the ground with the lance.

The Indian whirled, rearing his mount and whooping, celebrating his strike and calling an insult at them before he kicked his horse into a gallop again.

Above his head, Dan Hawks swung a bolo. The braided leather cord with a sack full of stones attached to the end sailed through the air and wrapped around the man’s throat, breaking his neck. He toppled to the ground as his horse galloped on without him.

“Deacon,” Miri yelled, paying no heed to anything but her wolf. Her face was blanched, her hands covered in red. “Help me.”

Ketchum’s blood spilled around the shaft but not at the rate it could if they removed the spear. The lance had knocked the beast on his side and gone through the thick part of his shoulder, coming out the other shoulder and burying itself into the dirt. He raised his head and whined, then licked Miri’s hand.

“Slide your hands under when I hold him up,” Deacon told her, grunting under the beast’s weight. The wolf snarled and showed his fangs.

“Hush now, buddy. Deacon’s helping.”

“You get the blade from the ground and we’ll cut off the knife end to let him lay flat when we move him.” Ketchum’s growl turned to a whine as Deacon lifted him.

Deacon cut the spear tip off on the one side of the wound and shortened the lance to no more than two inches on the entrance side.

“I’ve got to leave the shaft in. It’ll staunch the flow of blood.” They both knew that the wound would gush if he removed the lance before they got Ketchum to the doctor.

Grimly, Miri fashioned a bandage under the exit hole on Ketchum’s side, all the time whispering encouragement. “You rest easy, partner. I’ve got you. You’ll be good as new soon.”

Little Eagle hoisted the dead Indian onto one of his horses, packing the body to Hawks Nest ranch with them. They covered ground fast. It was bumpy traveling that fast but if they didn’t hurry, Ketchum would bleed out.

As it was, Deacon had no idea if they could save Miri’s wolf but if it was possible, he figured Dan Hawks’ resident medicine woman would be able to pull it off. She’d saved Deacon’s life though she’d told him on one of her visits that he was a rare patient, being two-footed and human.

Dan and Grady Hawks owned a big piece of land and since Deacon wasn’t certain where to look for the lady doctor’s shingle, it was a good thing Dan was riding with them. As they entered the edge of Hawks Nest land, the wind kicked up and he could feel the temperature drop. He pulled his coat from behind his saddle and rode next to Miri to slide it over her shoulders.

They didn’t follow the same trail they’d been on the day before. This time they climbed upward on a rough path through a thick pine forest. Deacon followed behind Miri who rode beside the travois. Dan Hawks drifted back to ride beside him.

“Little Eagle knew
Yuyutsu
.
He says the man feared your woman’s wolf. When I was gentling horses at Fort Stockton, he got in a fight with some soldiers. After they sent him away, he needed a place to work, so I hired him to ride fences for Hawks Nest.”

Dan shook his head, regret clouding his features. “I didn’t know the army used him as a dog beater.”

Deacon frowned. He’d not heard that term before. “A what?”

“The white man chooses this way to deal with my kind,” Dan murmured, his face settling into lines of contempt.

Since Dan’s skin was as pale as Deacon’s and his hair actually redder in color, it was interesting the way he spoke of the white world as something apart from him.

“The army paid
Yuyutsu
to train dogs to hate Indians. Cut a big stick, beat the pup every day until it grows big enough to associate the
stench
of our smell with the fear of the beating.” He shrugged. “Simple way to produce an Indian killer.
Yuyutsu
tried to train a wolf pup that way once, but the wolf got hold of him before it got loose.”

“Good to remember that the bad deeds a man commits have a way of coming around to bite him in the ass.” Deacon looked from the dead Indian to Ketchum on the travois. The wolf’s ribs moved ever so slightly, confirming that he still lived.

“Yep,” Dan agreed. Then he tilted his head back and looked at the sky, his nostrils flaring as if he was scenting the air. “Smell it? Going to snow.”

Deacon inhaled the heavy scent of pine and maybe something else. “Kind of early for snow,” he said.

“Not up here.” Dan nudged his horse with a heel and rode farther up the line.

Watching him, Deacon realized that the appaloosa Dan rode was without saddle or bridle. The horse trainer was guiding it with his knees and hands.

One moment the land tilted at a severe incline, the next moment, Deacon’s mount stepped up and onto a bare plateau. In the middle of the area sat a sizeable barn with a corral on either side. When they rode past, Deacon nodded at the building. “That the new birthing barn Sam’s mentioned?”

Dan’s grunt that could have been
yes
or
no
was his answer. Hawks led the way past the barn, his horse climbing the path pointing upward again.

“How the hell do you get up and down in winter?” Deacon shifted his weight in the stirrups to help his horse with the climb.

“We do.” That was the kind of answer Deacon expected from Dan Hawks.

The man was an enigma. Though he had the features of his white father, a Scot who’d come to Texas Territory in 1849, Dan had spent most of his life with the Kiowa, his mother’s people. Recently he’d moved back to Hawks Nest, partnering with Sam in the appaloosa business. Sam said breeding horses and the ranch were all Dan cared about.

Deacon thought about the doctor who’d patched him up after Beauregard saved his life. Grace had come to live here on Hawks Nest land and Dan suddenly had an urge to stay at home. Deacon didn’t have to be a Pinkerton to see that the two things converged. If he hadn’t been concerned with his own courting he’d have asked Hawks how went his.

Dan was an oddity who went unnoticed by whites, mostly because they only saw what they wanted to see—a pale-skinned man who wore his long red hair braided. In the past, he’d trained horses for the army and developed a reputation for turning out dependable mounts.

“It’s strange watching him. He doesn’t break ’em so much as out-stubborn ’em. He just sweet-talks them into giving up,” Sam had drawled when Deacon asked him about Dan Hawks’ purported uncanny ability with horses.

The horses crested a second ridge and came out in front of a chicken coop. Deacon’s mount snorted, prancing in fright as one of the hens flew in front of him. The horse pulling the travois shied sideways and the wolf whined, assuring Deacon that he was still alive. Miri beat them to the cabin and tied her pinto to a hitching post, walking back to the sled where Ketchum rode in misery.

“Bring the patient around to the side.” Dan slid off his mount and slapped it on the rump. The appaloosa nuzzled him then trotted toward the slope leading to the barn.

Deacon grabbed one side of the travois, unhooking the sled from the traces. Miri carried the other side as Dan led them to a newly constructed section of building, hugging tight against the old. It wasn’t fancy, but it was a nice-sized structure with plenty of windows for light.

“The doctor calls this her infirmary. She’s treated cows, sheep, even foals. I don’t think Dr. Souter has had a wolf to work on before.” Dan’s expression was grim as he led them through the door.

Wrapped in a voluminous apron, Grace Souter stood between a counter that held myriad medical devices and a long table that had hoists and pulleys above it.