The stars glittered above two wearied riders who paused to make camp, high in the rocky hills above the stage road, long after the moon was high in the night sky. Rhys and Teddy did not bother with a fire. Having followed the tracks of the stolen stage until both of them were too tired to see the ground, they had finally stopped and taken refuge for the night beneath the hospitable shelter of an overhang in a small, shallow canyon.
“Since the rain held off, this spot will do us for the night,” Teddy said.
Rhys nodded and gladly pulled his horse to a stop.
Teddy dismounted and looked the place over. Given options, she preferred camping on higher ground, but the valley they were in was little more than a hollow and was the best place for the horses if she wanted them ready to ride in the morning. A small ribbon of a stream curled lazily between the hollow’s walls. Along its banks grew enough vegetation for the animals to get a good feeding.
As soon as the saddles and bridles were removed and hobbles put in place, the horses waded into the shallow stream and began drinking. Teddy and Rhys trudged upstream from the animals, to refill the canteens and to wash some of the dust and grit from their faces. With little aplomb they prepared a cold and sparse supper for themselves. Both were reflective. Rhys sensed that Teddy had too much on her mind to think of conversation. Later, when they shook out their bedrolls, Teddy spoke up and he learned one thing she had been thinking.
“Don’t get it in your head I want company under this blanket.” She had her gun in hand and twirled it around her finger several times.
Rhys yawned. “The only company I seek is sleep,” he assured her. “Your virtue is safe.” Never having considered himself soft, Rhys had not, admittedly, spent an entire day on a horse in several years. He ached in every muscle, and though it had crossed his mind he’d like to spread his blanket next to hers, he was willing to save the pleasure for a later time.
“Well, your vitals aren’t safe if you come crabbing over here.” Teddy was grateful the deepening darkness made it impossible for him to see that she was too tired to put up a fight with a feather. She watched as he eased down on his blankets and methodically pulled off his boots. When she was sure he was settled where he lay, she spread her blankets a few yards away and slowly slid between them. She placed her gun at arm’s reach. Halfheartedly she wished he would disregard her warning, for the weapon did not give the comfort she needed. A gun, though it might save her life, had no tenderness, no warmth, no ability to soothe away shock or sorrow. Rhys quietly watching the climbing moon, looked as if he could offer all she longed for, even make her forget she had no use for the kind of closeness a man and woman could have.
She bit down sharply on her lip and told herself that seeking solace with Rhys Delmar was one of the dumbest and most desperate thoughts she’d ever had. He was almost as much her enemy as the men who had attacked the stage. She had no idea why she had let him ride out with her. None at all.
As she looked up at the sky, she felt as if an enormous, heavy ocean of darkness was pressing down on her. She felt terribly alone and terribly confused about what she was doing out on the desert with Rhys Delmar.
She found it easy to blame him directly for most of the confusion. Being around him kept all her feelings so knotted up she couldn’t think straight. But that wasn’t so bad, maybe. She wasn’t sure she wanted to think straight. A clear head meant deliberating on Strong Bill’s death and the almost-sure demise of the Gamble Line as soon as word of the holdup reached Cabe Northrop.
Soul weary, saddle weary, Teddy rolled to one side so she wouldn’t have to look at Rhys or that endless, leaden sky. But a change of position only brought her to another avenue of worrisome thoughts. She kept picturing the people who had believed in her, Felicity, Rope, Strong Bill, Bullet, most everybody who had stayed on with the stage line after her father died. She had told them all she wouldn’t fail them. Worst of all she had believed what she said. She had been so sure she could finish the job her father had started.
Thinking, somberly, that nothing had gone right for her in a long time, Teddy drifted off. Sleep, however, offered no comfort. She tossed about so much that she had her blankets in a snarl. She moaned and mumbled so loudly that Rhys lay awake long after she had closed her eyes. He was ready to go to her should she cry out for him. If he’d thought his efforts would have been well received he’d have forgone the waiting and awakened her and tried to comfort her as best he could. But guessing what reaction he’d get if he did, he let her continue in unsettled sleep. He was hoping that even though she was restless and troubled, she would feel better by morning.
She missed the fireworks, the distant blaze of blue-white light splitting the sky. The brilliant spectacle lit the horizon for a full hour but occurred so far away Rhys could barely hear the rumble and crackle of the thunder and lightning. He judged the distance to be dozens of miles off, so it was with no concern for a dousing that he eventually fell asleep.
He was not so troubled as Teddy and slept soundly. Even so, he was awakened after only a few hours by a strange sound. His eyes blinked open to darkness confirming that his rest had been brief. The noise grew louder, humming like a gigantic swarm of bees descending on the valley, roaring like pent-up ocean waves. Lying still, listening a few moments more, he tried to define what he heard but found his sleep-sogged mind reluctant to cooperate.
What was it? Not wind. He’d never heard the wind sound that way. He’d never heard anything that sounded like the ever-nearing roar. Or felt the air quite so still. Or the earth quiver beneath him. One of the horses whinnied nervously. Rhys sat up and jerked on his boots.
“Teddy!” He ran to her and shook her awake. “Something is wrong!”
She came to, sputtering and cursing. “Bastard! Get your hands off—My God!” she cried and came flying to her feet. “Cut the horses loose! Then run! Run like hell! This place is about to be under water!”
Rhys sped toward the horses and cut them free. He saw one of the bays go racing down the canyon, the other found a climbable slope on the canyon wall and scrambled up. Teddy grabbed Rhys’s hand and ran after the climbing horse. Before they gained the top, an aquatic snare lassoed their legs and dragged them down the slope into the raging flood.
Teddy, screaming, pitched headlong into the torrent. Rhys jumped in after her, managed to maneuver his way to her and shield her from the rocks and limbs the water cast them into. As they were carried around a bend he fought the rising currents and ragged canyon wall, eventually shoving her toward a wind-twisted pine whose roots were locked in a rocky ledge.
She gasped for breath. Her eyes were wild with fear. She caught hold of a spindly bough and saved herself from being swept on. Rhys caught hold too, and would have been as safe as she had not his desperate hold on the pine branch been broken when the rushing of water hurled a piece of debris that hit him squarely in the back. Stunned, he fell into the brutal waters a second time and was carried off down the canyon.
He could hear Teddy scream, “Timmy! Timmy!” as he was swept around another bend in the canyon. Mon Dieu! She was thinking of her brother, thinking he was her brother. As the current latched onto him and carried him away, he got a last fleeting look at her agonized face and saw the absolute terror in her eyes.
He prayed he wouldn’t drown. She would need someone after this was over.
Thankfully the powerful wash of the flash flood tossed him near the edge of the canyon. Fighting to stay above water he grabbed for any stationary object clinging to the muddied banks. A hundred yards downstream from Teddy the sturdy root of a single tree offered him a lifeline. Knocked breathless by a hard slam into gnarled wood, he clung on with nothing but determination. A few seconds later, air again began filling his lungs, and he began the arduous climb to safety.
The distance to the flat ground above wasn’t far in feet. But the rocks were wet and slippery and his hands had been cut and bruised from grabbing at the craggy bank during his watery ride. Rhys snaked his way up, progressing only an inch at a time, knowing that a misstep could send him back into the deluge of water below. Only once did he look back. That was when a rattling crash came from where he had been moments before. His lifeline was gone by then, ripped from the wet canyon wall by the crushing impact of a small boulder.
When his feet were once more on firm, dry ground he thought of Teddy. Had she managed to get uphill or was she still clinging to the skinny tree branch where he had last seen her? Calling her name, he started to run, hoping she could hear him above the roar of the water.
She did hear him as he neared. His voice, welcome as a song, brought her momentarily out of the shock of reliving the horror she had experienced the day her brother had drowned. She was up to her shoulders in the rising water. Though her tree branch held fast, the tree itself was losing the battle with the water. When it broke loose she would be carried down the canyon with it.
Shouting to Rhys for help, she kicked against the current for a foothold but could not control her legs in the rushing water. She saw Rhys drop to the ground four feet above her, but at that very moment, the tree broke loose. Part of the upended trunk struck her shoulder, to end any chance she had of reaching out for Rhys’s help. In an explosive instant she was underwater, swept down deep, as Timmy had been. She would be beaten to pieces against the rocks before she drowned as her twin brother had done.
Teddy surfaced endless moments later and saw Rhys desperately reaching towards her. She shouted to him for help one last time. Then she was sucked down again, as water filled her open mouth and flooded into her lungs. Beneath the torrent, as she was twisted and spun about, she thought she saw Timmy’s boyish, terror-stricken face as it had been that last moment before he, too, had been carried under the black waters the day he had drowned.
Timmy. Timmy. She had relived the horror of his death a thousand times in her mind. Now she was following her brother to the same dreadful end, failing him too, failing everyone.
Pain stabbed into her as all at once her head seemed to have been wrenched from her neck. Beneath the dark water she opened her mouth to scream her rage. She had not thought dying would hurt so much.