17

Jeff huddled next to the fire as dawn came slowly. Very slowly. The fourth morning. But last night had been the worst. He’d felt surrounded by the night, enveloped by it, haunted by the continued calls of the wolves.

He thought he’d seen a pair of eyes staring at him at one point, and he’d fired his rifle twice in panic. He’d barely restrained himself from taking more shots, and now he had only two left. There had been a rustle in the bushes, and then stillness. His horse had neighed and pawed the ground frantically, and Jeff had brought Seth closer to the fire and rubbed his neck until the trembling stopped.

But his own trembling hadn’t stopped, not at any time during the long dark hours.

He watched the first morning glow widen and spread across the sky in pinks and golds, wishing he could take pleasure in it. But he was tired and hungry. The fire was almost out, and he didn’t try to keep it going any longer. But he did lean against a tree trunk and close his eyes, wondering whether he dared sleep now, or whether he should try looking for the trail again. Just a few minutes sleep. No more, and he would start looking again. Just a few minutes. He felt his head nodding, and even his hunger started to fade under his immense exhaustion.

Jeff wasn’t sure how long he’d slept when something awakened him. He just felt heavy all over. His head hurt, his stomach ached from emptiness. He tried to shake the shadows from his mind, tried to figure out what had awakened him.

And then he heard the cry of his horse, its frantic thrashing against the rope that tethered him to a tree. In one sudden lunge, he broke free, rearing up, his front hoofs pounding against the hard, rocky terrain. Jeff reached out to grab the rope, but then had to duck to avoid the horse’s hoofs as it reared once more, then turned and fled through the trees.

He heard something, or sensed it. His back stiffened and he grabbed the rifle, just as there was a movement above him, the smell of animal, and he saw the large cougar perched above him on a rocky ledge, its eyes fastened unwinkingly on him.

Jeff swung the rifle up, trying to take aim. Two shells left. The large cat was in a crouch, obviously ready to spring, and Jeff fired. The cat roared in fury and sprang. Jeff tried to twist out of the way, but he felt the full weight of the cat on him and everything went black.

Wade was tired but he wasn’t going to rest. Neither was Manchez. They had traveled fast during the afternoon, then slower during the night hours, moving down toward the main trail from the San Juan mountains to Black Canyon. They had stopped only to rest the horses, using what little moonlight there was to pick carefully through the woods. Manchez had always been able to see at night, a talent Wade had envied.

Just past daybreak, they heard the insistent call of an owl, and Wade knew one of the warriors had found a trail. He and Manchez quickened their pace, soon meeting Cavera, a cousin of Manchez’s. Cavera had found a piece of cotton cloth and picked up horse tracks. The three of them followed the trail as it led upward. Before long, those tracks had crisscrossed, and crossed again. The rider had been traveling in circles. They found the remnants of a fire, then a cartridge.

Suddenly there was a thrashing sound from the left and a horse burst from between trees, a rope trailing behind it. Wade spurred his horse in that direction and saw the boy just as he fired at the large cat. He couldn’t reach his rifle tucked in the saddle scabbard fast enough with his wounded arm, but Manchez’s hands quickly aimed the rifle he’d been carrying and fired just as the cat leapt from its ledge.

The horses were going crazy with the cat smell, but the two Utes had no trouble controlling them. Wade was riding one of his own Indian-bred ponies since it was more surefooted than Jeff’s, and it danced nervously as Wade slipped off and hurried over to where the cat and Jeff lay in a deadly embrace. Wade took his pistol from his belt with his left hand, but the animal was still, dead, one of its paws resting on Jeff’s chest, its claws stained now with blood draining from the boy.

The two Utes were next to him, pushing the animal off Jeff, kneeling next to him. Wade knelt on the other side, leaning down to place his ear next to the boy’s mouth, then his chest. Jeff was still breathing, but he was bleeding profusely and there was a large jagged scratch in his side. His head had obviously hit the ground, knocking him out.

Hampered by his bad arm, Wade moved aside and watched as one of the Utes cut a piece of cloth from Jeff’s shirt and pressed it against the wound to stop the bleeding. Wade felt so damned helpless as he knelt beside the boy, his hand touching the now pale face. The freckles stood out more than ever. This was his fault. He’d allowed himself to care, allowed the boy to care, and he’d once more been the instrument of disaster. If Jeff died …

“We take him back to camp,” Manchez said. “Shavna will care for him.”

Wade hesitated. He knew only too well how Mary Jo felt about Indians, but he also remembered she had said the only doctor in the area was none too competent. He knew that Shavna often tended to the ill, that she filled in when the medicine man wasn’t along. And he wasn’t now, which was just as well. Sickness and its cures for the Utes were related to spiritualism and religion. Sometimes the medicine man or shaman went into long trances or would press the top of his own head against the sick spot on the patient’s body, then ceremoniously spit from his mouth to the source of the sickness. Their herbs and poultices, though, were usually very effective.

And Mary Jo herself was good at healing. Wade was alive because of her.

Manchez waited for his reply, and Wade nodded. The wound was deep but Wade didn’t think it was fatal. Blood poisoning, though, could be. And Wade trusted his Indian friends more than a drunken white doctor.

Because of Wade’s bad arm, Manchez lifted the boy and handed him carefully to Cavera, who cradled him in his arms. Wade mounted his horse as Manchez gracefully leapt on the back of his, and they headed toward the mountain valley.

Mary Jo had spent a tense day in the Ute camp, despite Shavna’s efforts to distract and comfort her. She was invited to join the women in tanning several deerskin hides, and she did so because she had to do something or go crazy, just as she used to wash floors over and over again when her husband had been late from an assignment.

Despite those moments of shared motherhood with Shavna, she felt awkward and out of place among these women dressed in deerskin dresses. Her skirt and blouse were hot and dirty but she couldn’t force herself to wear the dress with its short skirt that would reveal most of her legs. Not here, not among … people she didn’t know. She tried to erase the word “savages” from her mind. She held on to Shavna’s kindnesses, to the fact that these Indians were looking for her son, that they were so obviously Wade’s friends. “Brother,” he’d said.

But it was hard not to want to slide away, to close her ears to the melodic language she didn’t understand, to close her eyes to the differences she didn’t want to fear but did. So she kept her hands busy, using a large bone scraper to rub the flesh and hair from the skin, as she watched others work the skins in various other stages. One woman was stretching a drying skin by placing one end between her feet and continually pulling over and over again. Others were tending small fires, smoking hides propped over them.

While the other women worked, one of them tended to the children laughing and playing with sticks and balls covered in hide. It was the children who made her relax, who gave her a feeling of normalcy. She’d always wanted more children, and it had been a matter of sorrow that there had been no more after Jeff.

Her hands kept moving, but she felt herself smiling at one of the children, a little girl of three or so, who followed one of the older boys who was running. She fell on her bottom and chuckled, her face full of pure joy at being young and free. The other women nodded and smiled, and suddenly there weren’t any differences anymore, none that mattered.

If only she knew that Jeff was safe—

Just then the camp dogs started to bark, and the children stopped playing. The camp suddenly became still, except for the woman pulling the hide, and the two tending the fires. Everyone else turned toward the opening in the mountain that led to the valley, and Mary Jo knew the men were returning. Mary Jo stiffened, her fear returning. What if they hadn’t found Jeff, or what if they had, and he was—

But she couldn’t think of that. She would know. Somehow she would know that her heart was gone.

She saw Wade first. He was riding as easily as the others, but he had a saddle, and his height and lighter hair made him stand out. And then she saw the others. Four of them, one of them holding something, another leading an old chestnut horse. Her chest seemed to burst with pain, with raw anguish, but then the riders were almost upon them, and Wade had slid off his horse and taken two quick steps toward her. “He’s alive, Mary Jo,” he said. “Hurt some, but alive.”

Her gaze went immediately to the Ute lowering her son to another man. Mary Jo recognized Manchez, and she saw the gentleness in the way he took her son and moved toward Shavna’s tepee. She followed, frantic to see some sign of life, kneeling next to her son as soon as he was laid down on the ground. She saw the blood-soaked cloth first and looked up toward Wade, who had also entered the small, compact space.

“Cougar,” he said. “Manchez shot him just as he sprang on Jeff. If he hadn’t …”

Mary Jo looked up at the Ute. “Thank you,” she said brokenly. “Thank you for my son.”

He gave her a nod and left, while Mary Jo unwrapped the cloth from the wound, wincing at the raw meanness of it. Shavna had entered and kneeled on the other side. Jeff was so still, his face pale. She put her palm to his face, willing her strength into him, willing life into him. She looked up at Wade, looking for reassurance.

But he was looking intently at Jeff, his face expressionless.

Mary Jo looked back at her son. Her hand hadn’t left his face. “Jeff?” Then louder, “Jeff.”

Shavna looked up at Wade and said something Mary Jo didn’t understand.

“She said it’s better he sleeps while she tends his wound.”

“I’ll tend him,” Mary Jo said, more sharply than she intended.

The Indian woman looked up at Wade questioningly.

Wade reached over with his good hand and touched Mary Jo’s arm. “Come with me,” he said gently.

She shook her head stubbornly.

“You want him to die?”

She looked at his face. The gentleness was gone, and a hardness had taken its place. “I can’t leave him,” she said.

“Do you have medicines with you?”

She didn’t. She didn’t have anything but her heart.

“The Utes are good at healing. They have herbs and poultices that work. I’ve seen it. But they won’t do it with you questioning everything. Come with me, just for a few moments. He’ll be all right, I swear it.”

Mary Jo looked at Shavna, saw the compassion in her face, the desire to help. She reached up and took Wade’s hand, letting him pull her up. She looked back at Jeff for a moment, reluctant, so reluctant to leave. She looked again at Wade. He nodded.

She had trusted him again, had sought him out, and he had found Jeff for her. She had no choice but to trust him again. But it went against everything she knew, everything she believed. She leaned against him, feeling his strength, his confidence, letting it seep into her. His arm went around her. “He’ll be all right,” he whispered. “A scar, no more.”

She looked up into the green eyes, so deep and intense. And she believed. She believed he could move the moon if he tried. She let him lead her outside, into the sun.

“Thank you for finding him.”

“It was Cavera who found the trail, Manchez who killed the cougar. I … couldn’t reach my gun in time.” Agony slid across his face.

“They wouldn’t have done those things if it weren’t for you.”

“And Jeff wouldn’t be in there, cut by that cougar, if it weren’t for me,” he said bitterly. “Every person I touch is … hurt.” Mary Jo knew he started to say something else, perhaps “dead,” and a shudder ran through her.

“No,” she said.

He looked away from her.

“I need you now.” Her voice was little more than a whisper.

“They’ll take good care of him.”

“I know,” she said.

“No doubts?” he asked, bitterness still in his voice. “No fear they might scalp him instead of heal him?”

“No.”

He spun around and faced her. “You were damn sure they might a few days ago.”

Shame coursed through Mary Jo, shame and chagrin. She knew now what he’d tried to tell her, and she’d refused to hear. Shavna was no different than she. She loved her children as Mary Jo did, loved her husband as Mary Jo had, had taken a stranger, one obviously suspicious, to her heart because of a friend and a shared love of children.

“I was sure of a lot of things a few days ago, a few weeks ago. Now I’m not sure of anything,” Mary Jo said.

His lips quirked slightly in a half smile that disappeared almost immediately, replaced by the despair that had enveloped him seconds ago. She touched his good arm. “It wasn’t your fault. None of this was.”

“He was following me. He thought … godammit, he thought I needed help. And I do. I always will with this arm. I couldn’t shoot that cougar, I couldn’t even carry Jeff. I’m no damn good for anything except—”

“Except …?”

“You don’t know anything about me, Mrs. Williams,” he said in a hoarse voice. “You think you do, but you don’t. Everyone I’ve ever cared for has died, everyone who has ever cared for me. It’s like a damn shadow that follows me wherever I go.”

“Jeff isn’t going to die. You said so.”

“Only because of a miracle,” he said flatly. “Only because Manchez was there. Jeff came too damn close. That’s twice now, both times because of me. There won’t be a third time.”

It was as if a cold wind blew through Mary Jo. In just a few weeks, he had become so important to her, to Jeff. While part of her realized he wouldn’t stay, she’d never really admitted it to herself. Until now. His eyes were cold, like the death he’d spoken of. His jaw was set, the lines in his face more pronounced, like ridges in a mountain, unyielding and stubborn.

“You’ll take us home?”

“Tom Berry can do that better than I.”

“And the horses you mentioned? He can’t drive them back with Rachel. Besides, he doesn’t like me.”

“He wouldn’t have brought you here if he didn’t like you,” Wade replied, although the set of his chin eased some, perhaps at the thought of Rachel the mule driving the horses.

“He doesn’t like children,” she continued to argue.

“Jeff’s no longer a child. It took a man to survive out here for four days.” There was approval in his voice. “If it hadn’t been for that cougar …”

“He cares for you a great deal.”

Wade turned away. “I don’t want him to care about me,” he said in that hoarse voice that Mary Jo now recognized as emotion he wouldn’t, or couldn’t, express in any other way. It was meant to be harsh, a warning, but it had the opposite effect. Mary Jo heard the need in it, the raw desperation in the denial.

She started to say something, but then Shavna poked her head from the tent, and gestured to her. She turned and hurried inside, kneeling once more next to Jeff.

His eyes were trying to open, and his thin body jerked with pain as he moved. There was a poultice, something that looked like moss, on the wound, but she also saw tiny little stitches at its edge. She placed a hand on his uninjured shoulder. “It’s all right, Jeff. You’re safe. You’re all right now.”

Jeff looked frantically around, noting first the tepee and then finally Shavna, who was also kneeling next to him. “This is Shavna,” Mary Jo said. “Wade’s friend. She’s been taking care of you.”

“Shavna,” he whispered and tried to smile, a terribly lopsided smile that was half grimace. Mary Jo felt her heart jerk around inside.

“I’m … sorry,” he said, his gaze returning to her. “It was … dumb leaving, but—” He stopped.

“But what?” she asked gently.

“I thought … maybe if I could help Wade, he would …” His voice trailed off again.

“Stay?” she asked.

He nodded miserably. “I … just showed how much trouble I was.”

She put her hand to his cheek. “It’s all right, Jeff. I don’t think he cares about that now that you’re all …” She hesitated, unable to finish the sentence. After a moment, she started again. “How do you feel?”

He tried to smile again, but his heart obviously wasn’t in it. “Not so good. My head hurts, and I—” He looked down at his chest, then up at Shavna. He tried to move, but he fell back down with a groan.

His eyes seemed to cloud. “A big cat … a cougar. I saw it come at me.”

Mary Jo took his hand, clasping it tight. “Shavna’s husband killed it just as it came down on you. Your head hit the ground, knocking you unconscious.”

His gaze searched behind her. “Wade?”

“He’s outside. He helped bring you back.”

“I knew he would,” Jeff said. “I knew he would find me. Can I see him?”

“Not now,” she said. “I think you should get some rest.”

“Is he angry?”

“No,” she said gently. “He’s grateful you’re alive, just like I am.”

“I didn’t mean to worry you.” His face flushed as he realized the foolishness of his words.

“Just promise you won’t ever do anything like that again,” Mary Jo said.

He moved slightly, and pain flashed across his face. Shavna leaned down and held a cup to his lips. He took a sip and shook his head, but the Indian woman pressed it against his lips again, and Mary Jo nodded at him to drink. Wincing at the taste, he did.

Manchez had been sitting cross-legged in the back of the tepee. “He will sleep now,” he said. He and his wife exchanged looks, and Mary Jo saw the affection dart between them. And love. She suddenly felt envy.

She looked down at Jeff. His hand was still clenched in hers, but his eyes were already closing. His breathing was regular, his color not quite as pale as when he was brought in. Gratitude welled up inside her. She gently unraveled her hand from Jeff’s and both of hers took Shavna’s. “Thank you,” she said, hoping she understood.

Shavna gave her a shy smile and nodded, her hands briefly tightening around Mary Jo’s before letting go.

Cavara, the Ute who had found Jeff, insisted that Wade and Mary Jo use his tepee that night.

After they had taken the evening meal—fresh antelope meat and dried cake made, Wade said, from the root of the yampa plant, and piñon nuts—Wade asked Mary Jo to take a walk with him. Jeff was still sleeping peacefully.

It was a beautiful night, soft and gentle with streaks like rivers of peach and pale gold stretching across the sky. The wind was low, and the temperature unusually warm for these mountains. Children’s laughter echoed across the rich green grass, the sound enriched by the soft call of night birds; the evening air smelled of smoke and roasted meat. The world seemed at peace here in a valley cradled like a gem between snow-covered peaks.

“It’s so beautiful here,” Mary Jo said after several moments of silence.

“The Utes have lived here for hundreds of years,” he said, his voice full of regret and sadness. “Their shining mountains.”

“The name fits them,” Mary Jo said. “They are shining.”

He swung around on her. “It’s not fair. They’re being taken away, piece by piece, and soon they will have nothing. They’re being forced to move to some piece of arid ground like all the other tribes, forced to give up everything meaningful to them.”

Mary Jo didn’t know what to say. Until now, she’d approved of efforts to move the “savages” away from whites. Today, she’d learned just a little about the harmony between these people and the land.

“There’s nothing on God’s earth anyone can do,” Wade said. “One incident, one hothead, and they’ll be shipped away, just like the Apaches have been, the Cherokees, the Creeks, the Sioux.”

“That’s why you wanted me to get your gear.”

He nodded.

“You can’t help at all? You can’t go to the governor or—”

“Hell, I can’t help anyone. If I tried to protest and anyone discovered who I really am—” He stopped, aware that he was about to say something he’d regret.

She had stopped. “Who are you, Wade? It won’t make any difference to me.”

He laughed bitterly. “Believe me, you don’t want to know. Isn’t a cripple who killed three men enough to scare the hell out of you?”

The darkness was back in him. For a few moments, he’d seemed almost relaxed, comfortable with these people and his surroundings, but now those terrible shadows were once more shrouding him, pulling him away from her again.

“No,” she said softly. “You’ll never scare me.”

“I will, lady. Give me the chance, and I will.” He walked on, not waiting to see whether she was following him. She almost had to run to keep pace with him.

He stopped again in the shadows of a tree. The moon was up now, fragile and luminous. “Cavera has given his home to us tonight,” he said. “They will be insulted if we don’t use it.”

She didn’t understand at first, then slowly comprehended. They were expected to stay together in a tepee. And Wade didn’t like it at all, but he didn’t see any way out.

“Why?”

“They think you’re my woman. That’s why they went after Jeff. It would hurt them deeply if my woman didn’t, wouldn’t, share their hospitality.”

“But you were married to Manchez’s sister.”

“Utes are very practical. They mourn as we do, but they believe in family, in the need for children. They would want me to find a new woman.”

His woman. Wade’s woman. A shiver ran down her back. A shiver and something else, something warm and thick and sensuous, like molasses flowing through her body. She hadn’t ever wanted to be someone’s woman again. She hadn’t wanted the pain that went with it, the dependence, the waiting, the hurting.

But she wanted him. She wanted to bring a smile to his lips, to hear him chuckle. She wanted to feel the tenderness of his hands, the excitement of his body, the joy of his mating. She wanted all that, and she wanted more. She wanted to dissolve his ghosts, the bleakness she so often saw in him.

“What will they do?” she said finally.

“Cavera’s not married. He’ll sleep outside tonight. Shavna will continue to care for Jeff. She’s the healer.”

Mary Jo hesitated.

“He will be well taken care of.”

“I know, but—”

“They will be hurt if you don’t trust them.” He said it reluctantly, and she knew he didn’t welcome the prospect of spending the night alone with her. But then he had made it clear he didn’t want any further involvement.

She thought about lying next to him. Heaven and hell. Could she do it without touching him? Without him touching her? After that afternoon several days ago, which now seemed so far away, her body ached for him. “What about you? What do you want?”

“It doesn’t matter what I want,” he said curtly. “I don’t want to offend Manchez. If you can bear it, for one night, I promise not to touch you. I had no right before. It was a mistake.”

She swallowed hard. He didn’t want her. She nodded miserably.

“I’m sorry, Mary Jo,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry you found me. I’m sorry I’ve brought you so much trouble. I’m not going to make it worse.” He turned then and walked away, making it clear, very clear, that he wanted to be alone.

She watched him move through the trees until he disappeared into the shadows. Alone. Wounded in so many ways. Yet proud. Always so proud. Too proud to share the hurts and the pain and the loneliness.

Mary Jo felt ice touch her heart. Sometimes he reminded her of a wild and graceful animal. One with courage and heart and endurance. There was something she remembered being told about animals like that. They usually went off someplace alone to die. He seemed to be preparing to do that, if not literally, then in all the important ways. His soul was dying, and she didn’t know what to do about it.