Chapter 22

The cave was exactly where Cass remembered it, tucked halfway up a ragged hillside amidst a cluster of cedars and scrub pine. She dismounted at the foot of the trail that led to the cave and swung Meggie down. Hunter had clambered out of the saddle before she got back to help him. He seemed steady on his feet and more clearheaded than he'd been since morning.

"The cave's up there?" he asked, eyeing the climb.

"I discovered it a year or two ago when some of us came here to dig roots. There's grazing and a creek just off to the north. We can hole up here while I tend that wound."

She'd wanted to get at it for hours. The longer the bullet stayed in his leg, the greater the danger of fever and putrefaction. The high color in Hunter's face worried her. She stifled an urge to lay her palm across his forehead, sure he wouldn't let her near him until they got settled.

Doing that took the best part of an hour. By the time Hunter was stretched out on the bed of blankets Cass had made, she could smell the flat, hot scent of fever on him. As desperate as she was to tend his wound, she had to see to Meggie first.

"I need you to do a very important job for me, Meggie," Cass began, easing the child toward the mouth of the cave. "While I'm busy bandaging Hunter's leg, I want you to keep watch outside. Do you think you can do that?"

Meggie nodded, solemn and resolute.

"Then sit right here at the top of the path and let me know if anyone comes," Cass instructed carefully. "You can do that, can't you?"

"You're going to be able to fix Hunter, aren't you?"

"Of course I can fix him," Cass assured her, and hoped it was true.

"Hunter's nice. I like him. I don't want him going away like Mama did."

Cass's fears fluttered at the base of her throat. "I don't want him going away, either. Once I fix him, Hunter will be fine."

Meggie hesitated and then whispered, "I wish Hunter was with us all the time."

All the time. Cass couldn't think about "all the time." About what that meant. About what it might be like. She couldn't think about anything but how she must see to Hunter's hurts before her gumption deserted her.

"Are you going to be all right here, Meggie-girl?"

Meggie nodded, and Cass left her at the head of the trail.

Hunter was propped up on his elbows when she entered the cave.

"I've posted Meggie as a lookout while we do this," Cass told him as calmly as she could. Though her hands were slick and the blood was drumming in her ears, she took out her knife and sliced away both the blood-soaked bandages and the leg of Hunter's trousers. Beneath them the wound looked ragged and dark, the blood still oozing. She tried not to notice how Hunter sucked in his breath as she probed around the edges.

"That ball's deep and barely missed the bone," she told him.

"Then once you get the bullet out, you're going to have to cauterize the hole."

Cass squirmed at the prospect, but when she looked up into his face, she took care to meet his gaze head-on. "I know that," she said. "I can boil up some herbs that will help the pain."

She'd never seen such resolution in any man's face. "I want to keep my wits about me as long as I can."

Cass fanned the little fire she'd made and nestled the blade of Hunter's bowie knife into the bed of glowing coals. She put her own more delicate knife in a basin of water steaming over the fire. Crumbling white pine bark into a cup, she mixed up a gray, lumpy paste to use as a poultice, and boiled up catnip tea to fight his fever.

Cass had treated gunshot wounds before and loathed what she must do to him. She gritted her teeth and gently wiped away the steady seep of blood on Hunter's thigh.

"Just get on with it," he whispered.

Though her hands were steady, Cass's heart beat thick inside her as she took up her blade and began to explore the wound.

Hunter sucked in his breath and stiffened.

Trying to block out the signs of his pain, she followed the furrow downward with the point of the knife. She felt his muscles quiver as he tried to hold himself still, saw how the sweat beaded up on his face and rolled in rivulets down his throat. She hated that she was hurting him.

The ball was buried deep in the long, hard muscle of his thigh. As she worked it toward the surface, she fought to ignore the way Hunter's jaw hardened, how the air hissed in and out between his teeth. She tried to ignore the burn of sickness rising at the back of her throat.

At last she plucked the misshapen bit of lead from the open wound. She sat back on her heels, breathless and dizzy with relief. She sucked in huge, shaky lungsful of air as if she'd been running for her life.

Hunter's hair hung wet and lank along his jaw. A rim of white outlined his mouth.

Only when she bent to wipe his face with a damp cloth did Cass realize how badly her hands were trembling. "Are you all right?" she asked him.

His eyes met hers, hot as hell and twice as dark. "I want to get this over with."

With a shudder, Cass nodded.

Her already-tattered resolve frayed a little more as she plucked Hunter's knife from the fluttering flames. The blade glowed as if it were alive, pulsing and shimmering in the half-light. Before either of them could lose their courage, Cass pressed the tip of the red-hot blade into the heart of Hunter's open wound.

His body jerked taut beneath her hands. The acrid stench of charring flesh spiraled up to singe her nostrils. He ground out a curse between his teeth, collapsed back against the blankets, and lay still.

While Hunter was lost in oblivion, Cass finished her work. She spread the wound with the poultice she'd made and covered the paste with moistened strips of willow bark. She tied everything in place with the bandages, then washed and stowed away her herbs and tools.

When she was done, she sought the dark at the back of the cave, curled in upon herself, and wept silently into her hands.

* * *

"You said he was going to be all right," Meggie chided Cassie in a small, fretful voice. "You promised."

Cass turned from placing a dampened cloth on Hunter's brow. "Of course he'll be all right," she insisted. "He's only got a little fever."

In spite of the words of reassurance, Cass was worried. Hunter had been drifting in and out of a restless sleep for the best part of two days. She'd been changing the poultice of powdered pine bark every two hours. She'd been dosing him with fever tea, and his skin was still like fire beneath her hands.

Bending above him, she stroked his hair.

He tossed, muttered something under his breath, then opened his eyes. They were hazy and dark with confusion. "Cass?" he murmured. "Is this the cave?"

She dampened the cloth again and wiped his face. "Yes, Hunter, we're safe in the cave. Are you feeling any better?"

He pushed up on his elbows and blinked, as if he were trying to bring the world into focus around him. "I'm so thirsty—"

Gesturing for Meggie to fill the dipper with the fresh water they'd brought from the stream, Cass put the cup to Hunter's mouth. He drank deeply and dropped back onto the bed as if that simple effort had exhausted him.

"I've made some soup. You'll feel stronger if you eat a little."

She turned toward the pot she'd kept simmering all afternoon, but Hunter reached out and caught her wrist.

"Promise you won't leave here until I can go with you," he insisted, his big hand clamped tight around her arm. "Promise you won't go back to Fort Carr without me."

It was a conversation they'd been having by fits and starts for the last two days, and Cass had run out of ways to reassure him.

"Of course I'll wait," she answered him. "Of course I won't head out alone."

She made the promise knowing that if she went back, she couldn't let Hunter accompany her. If the army found him anywhere near Fort Carr, he would be arrested, tried, and hanged for Jessup's death. Cass simply couldn't risk that. But then, neither could she leave him here until she was sure he was out of danger.

She spooned thick buffalo broth into a tin cup for him to drink and dosed him with more fever tea when he was done. She sat beside him until he slept.

"Hunter is going to be all right, isn't he?" Meggie asked a few minutes later as Cass tucked her into the nook she'd chosen for her bed.

"Why don't you mention him in your prayers tonight," Cass suggested.

"Do you think God will listen if I pray for Hunter?"

"God hears everyone's prayers, Meggie," Cass assured her. Which God heard what prayers was something Cass had never been able to reconcile. Whether God chose to answer was something else entirely. He had never seen fit to answer hers. But if God answered anyone's prayers, Cass supposed it would be someone like Meggie, someone who deserved to have them answered.

Cass listened through Meggie's usual recitation. "And please make Hunter all better again," she added at the end.

Cassie smiled and kissed the child good night when she was done. "I love you, Meggie," she said. I love you every bit as much as if you were my own little girl.

Meggie snuggled with the battered doll Cass had given back to her. "I love you, too, Cassie," she whispered, and drifted off to sleep.

Cass sat staring down at Meggie, thinking how bleak life would be without her. She took such delight in her giggles, in the wide-eyed joy of her discoveries, in her sticky hands and spontaneous kisses. In parts of his daughter Drew could never see or appreciate or understand. He could never love Meggie the way Cassie loved her.

Yet how could she take Meggie from her father? As long as he lived, Drew would search for her.

Where would she go if she took Meggie and ran away? She'd have to find someplace where the war between the Indians and the whites couldn't reach, where Meggie could grow up untouched by the prejudices that had eaten away at her father. Where could the two of them live together, anonymous and safe?

Cass couldn't turn to Hunter, couldn't ask him to take the risks the two of them would face. Her vision blurred with tears at the thought of leaving him behind—Hunter who had known who she was the moment they looked into each other's eyes, Hunter who had come to feel like the other half of herself.

She looked across the fire to where he lay, tossing and mumbling in his sleep. The question of Meggie's future would wait. Hunter was the one who needed her now. She blinked back hot, useless tears and went to him.

Cass worked over him most of the night, bathing his burning body with water from the stream, wiping his face and corded throat, drizzling cool water across his collarbones and down his chest. She slid a wet cloth down his arms and moistened the pulse that beat in the hollow of his wrists. She bathed his belly and his legs. He was a strong man, brown and sculptured and beautiful, so beautiful that just touching him made her feel hollow and weak inside.

He was a man who defined himself in a way she had never experienced before. He was a warrior with a generous heart, a soldier with vast reserves of compassion and humanity. He was a friend who gave his friendship and his tenderness and his compassion with selfless ease. What they'd shared in these past months, in these past days, made her think of him as hers, even when such fancies were impossible. It made her wish for so much more than she could ever ask of him.

Hunter mumbled and tossed as she worked over him. Sometimes he slept. Sometimes he stared up at her with fever-bright eyes, seeing someone or something else. Sometimes he talked in French and Sioux and Arikara. Often he relived the moments they'd shared together, asking about the herbs she'd gathered, repeating advice about living among the whites, telling her she was beautiful.

Cass clutched those words against her heart. No man had spoken to her with such tenderness. No man had told her that she was beautiful, for all that she had longed to hear the words. No man had whispered how much he needed her...

Sometimes he mumbled, "Don't leave me." But the request came hard, as if the syllables had been torn from his throat, as if he hated needing to ask her to stay.

As if he knew she could not.

And though she soothed him with her assurances, quieted him with the brush of her hands, she feared leaving him was becoming inevitable.

His fever spiraled higher in the dark hours before dawn. Cass worked over him, cursing and praying and cajoling. She whispered his name, as if she could keep him with her by the sound of her voice. She battled for his life, as if she could hold him with the skill in her touch and the force of her will.

And then all at once he was better, cooler. Hunter's skin went damp, and his breathing came easier. He slept peacefully, dreamlessly, exhausted from having passed through the fire.

Wearily Cass pushed to her feet and gathered up the buffalo bladder they had been using to carry water. She paused as she stepped beyond the mouth of the cave. The moon was down, but a handful of stars were sprinkled across the wide expanse of graying sky. The breeze blew cool against her throat, ruffling the skirt of her buckskin dress and lifting the strands of her tumbled hair.

Cass raised her head and spoke to the world beyond her own. "Thank you," she whispered, and from around her in the rolling hills the wind hummed in answer.

* * *

Cass toiled up the path toward the cave, the buckskin sling across her shoulder heavy with firewood. Meggie ran on ahead, leaping from stone to stone, shouting with the pure exhilaration of the bright, crisp day. Cass laughed a little breathlessly, wanting to set aside her burden and follow Meggie, wanting to lie back in the grass and fill her eyes with the color of the sky. She needed the scope of it to nourish her, to help her dream her secret dreams, to fill her mind with possibilities.

Especially now when the threat to everything she loved was so tangible and real.

Meggie reached the head of the trail a dozen steps ahead of Cass. "Hunter," she crowed. "You're all well!"

He was settled on a rock at the mouth of the cave, pale and shaking and breathing heavily.

Cass brushed past him without saying a word. She clattered her load of branches onto the pile beside the fire, and stood there fighting down the urge to weep. How could she be anything but pleased that Hunter was better?

Yet his recovery meant that if she intended to take Meggie back to the fort, they had to leave—tomorrow or the next day, before Hunter was strong enough to follow them. Her time with the two most precious people in her world was running out.

"Cass?" Her name echoed hollowly around her, and she could hear the concern in Hunter's voice. "Cass?"

Damn him for sensing her mood, for seeing more than she wanted him to see. She dashed the moisture from her eyes and went outside. Only then did she notice the soap and fresh shirt piled up at his feet.

"Is there someplace I can bathe?" he asked. "I smell like fever."

She glanced at the trail to the creek and back at him. "It's a bit of a walk."

Hunter managed to limp as far as the little stream, and though Cass was tempted to stay and watch him bathe, she and Meggie went back to gather up blankets and food. Cass had relived gathering herbs that day at Caspar Mountain scores of times, and she yearned to store away a few more memories.

Once they'd eaten the sparse meal of pemmican and jerky, Cass lured Meggie into her lap where the child fell asleep almost instantly. Hunter stretched out on his back beside her, good leg bent and arms crooked behind his head. She could tell by the high, fresh color in his face that the outing had done him good. Still, she reached across to brush back a strand of that black, black hair and surreptitiously check for fever.

He smiled at her, a slow, contented smile that sank straight into her heart. She hastily looked away, afraid he would see the longing in her eyes.

"Have you ever thought," he began, almost as if he'd read her mind, "about keeping Meggie?"

Cass's head came up. She stared at him. "Of course I've thought about keeping her. But I have nowhere to go, no way to provide for her."

"What if I could take you somewhere safe?"

"Somewhere safe," she repeated. "And just where is that?"

"To Montana, to my land up in the mountains."

"Montana," Cass whispered, the word soft, melodious and seductive. Hunter had told her about Montana, about the cabin he meant to build, about the life he planned to make for himself.

"We could be happy there," he told her. "We could grow the things we need, cut a little timber, raise a few horses. We could take care of Meggie as if she were our own little girl."

The temptation that had been whispering in Cassie's ears became a shout. If she let Hunter do this, she could keep the little girl.

"You'd do all of that for another man's child?"

His deep blue gaze bore into her. "I would do it for you."

The words kindled a hot, sweet tenderness for this man who understood what she needed and was willing to sacrifice himself to make her happy. Cass had never dreamed she would find anyone willing to risk so much to make her whole.

"You could marry me," Hunter went on, his voice so low and persuasive that gooseflesh shimmied down her arms. "Meggie can be the child we can never have together, and I'd do my best to be her father."

Cass lost herself in the heat and conviction in his eyes. This man had fought for her and cared for her and watched over her. He had made love to her with a passion and a sweetness that thrilled her and left her mindless with pleasure. He was worthy of her trust, worthy of her love.

"There's a spot in a stand of pine at the top of the ridge," he told her, his face alight, "where we can build the cabin. You can see for miles from there, ridges of mountains running off to the west, forests bristling on every hand, the river shimmering in the valley miles below. And the sunsets you can see from there fairly set the sky ablaze. If we leave here by the middle of next week I can get our house built before the first of the blizzards come."

Hunter was sharing his dreams with her, trusting her with his hopes and his ambitions. Plans he might never have shared with anyone. It sounded so wonderful.

"But what about Drew?" she had to ask.

Hunter's eyes shone a little less brightly. "Not even Drew knows what became of Meggie back at the Indian village. She could still be a captive. She could be dead. She could have run off on her own."

"He'll keep on looking."

His wide mouth narrowed. She saw the condemnation in his face. "He never looked for you and Julia."

Which was why Drew would search for Meggie until the day he died.

"Cass," Hunter said, and she could hear the urgency in his tone, "you love that girl. You want to be her mother more than anything. I want to give you that. I want the three of us to be a family."

A family. Ever since she'd lost her parents and her sisters, she had been searching for a family, a place to belong.

"But Drew is Meggie's father," Cassie whispered. She could still see Drew's face, the way he'd looked back in the Indian camp. She could still hear the words he'd shouted to her over the din of battle.

"You're her mother," Hunter insisted softly. "The woman who birthed her could not love her more than you. Please, Cass, let me make a life for you and Meggie in Montana. Let me give you something that will make all of us happy."

When she didn't immediately answer, Hunter fell silent. He was giving her the chance to decide their future—hers and Meggie's—and his own. She held the power for joy or contentment or heartbreak in her hands, and she didn't know how to make the choice.

As she stared intently at the rushing stream, the exertions of the day caught up with Hunter. He drifted into an easy sleep. Cass watched over both him and Meggie. She stroked the child's pale hair, brushed the sweet, pink bow of her babyish mouth, felt the warmth and the trust of that small, warm body curled against her.

She stared down at Hunter, filling her eyes with his fierce beauty. She let her gaze trace over that wide, determined jaw, the blatantly sensual turn of his lips, the fringe of thick, black lashes. She had never known a man like this, a man of such gallantry and strength, of such tenderness and honesty. She wanted to marry him and live with him in peace far up on his mountaintop.

But how could she betray the man she'd seen in Drew during the battle at the Cheyenne village? She had looked up from where she knelt by Runs Like a Doe's body and seen an officer loom out of the smoke and dust. She'd seen the blur of his dark blue uniform, his horse wheeling and prancing beneath him, his saber glinting in the half-light. And then she realized it was Meggie's father.

Panic had sent her jolting to her feet. She'd swept Meggie behind her and gripped her gun, ready to protect herself and her child. But Drew hadn't tried to shoot her or ride her down. He hadn't made any move to take Meggie.

Instead, across the yards of smoky clearing, their eyes had held. She had steeled herself for the hatred in his, for the rage, for the zealot's fire. Instead those silver-gray eyes were filled with disillusionment. They were wide with horror at the carnage he'd unleashed on Standing Pine's village. They were dark with shame that in the midst of the fight he had lost control of his men.

In that moment Drew had known that the tenets that governed his life were wrong. Cass had sensed his confusion and his grief and instinctively reached out for him.

As if in answer he'd swung his sword arm in an arc above his head. His face contorted as he shouted and desperately gestured to the west. Over the rattle of rifle fire, the thud of hooves and moans of pain, Cass could just barely make out Drew's words.

"Run!" he'd shouted at her. "Run! Save Meggie! Save yourself!"

Then he had wheeled his mount and galloped back the way he'd come.

In that single act, Cass had seen there was hope for Drew. Meggie was that hope, Drew's last chance to redeem himself. How could Cassie deny salvation to the man she'd loved since childhood? How could she deny Drew his daughter?

Cass closed her eyes and let the hot, hopeless tears seep down her cheeks.

* * *

After she'd served their evening meal and put Meggie to bed, Cass made her way to where Hunter sat propped up on his bed of furs and blankets.

"How are you feeling?"

"Better. A little tired. How are you?"

"Fine," she lied. I feel as if my heart is breaking.

He frowned as if he'd caught a glimpse of the sadness in her eyes. "You aren't considering taking Meggie back to her father because you think you don't deserve her?" he asked softly. "You don't feel guilty about us being together because you're still Drew Reynolds's wife?"

Cass looked deep into his eyes, knowing it was so much simpler than that. "What Drew and I thought we had was over long ago," she told him. "I made him take me for his wife when he didn't really want me. In the end, he threw me away. What happened after that was only between the two of us."

Hunter drew her down onto the blankets and into his arms. She nuzzled into the solid strength of his shoulder. He stroked her hair. Cass breathed the scent of him, the warmth and wood smoke. She would never smell wood smoke again without thinking of him, without feeling the longing for him way down deep.

But she needed more than the scent of him tonight, more than mere companionship. She craved the brush of his hands against her skin, hungered for the dulcet seep of his passion. She wanted pleasure and joy and moments to cherish.

She raised her head and sought sweet solace in his mouth. He kissed her back, his lips brushing over the contours of hers, molding and clinging. That kiss swept into the next, warming, consoling, seeking, filling the aching need in her.

Cass slid her hand along the thick, corded column of his throat and felt the beat of his vitality beneath her palm. Curling his arm around her as the intensity of their kisses grew, Hunter eased both of them down onto the pallet of blankets. They lay length to length, their lips fused in slow, elegant kisses. His tongue sought hers, the taste and the textures and the tenderness merging between them.

"Oh, Cass," he murmured into her mouth. "I need you so."

The tight, hot pain of a silent sob rose inside her. She fought it down and turned her head so he could not read the emotions in her eyes. "I need you, too," she whispered back.

He tugged at the hem of the doeskin gown, and as the buttery soft leather fell away, he skimmed his big, callused hand along her shoulder. The roughness rasped against her, pointing up the delicious divergence between a man and woman, the difference between him and her. He curved his palm around her breast and she gasped with the pleasure spilling through her. He brushed her nipple with the pad of his thumb and took her mouth again.

As they kissed, she spread the panels of his shirt and slipped the ties that held his breechclout in place. She reveled in the expanse of his warm, taut flesh against her. He groaned as her hand swept down along his side and over the jut of his hip as she drew him against her.

They touched, his eyes holding hers as if he needed to watch the pleasure grow in her. He brushed his hand down her belly and pressed it between her legs. She stirred beneath him as he circled against her mound. The delight came thick and heavy and honey-sweet.

"You seem more womanly every time I make love to you," he whispered. "More lush and lovely."

He eased his fingers inside her with slow, languorous strokes that made her arch against him. She whispered his name. He swallowed the sound in a lingering kiss.

She stroked him, too, needing to see the same fierce wanting in those blue-black eyes, needing to merge their bodies and their souls. And when she saw that he was as consumed by desire as she, as lost to sweet sensation, Cass rolled above him and took him into herself.

Being one with him brought a kind of completion, a soul-deep satisfaction. It was the ultimate joining of two lost people who had found in each other the missing part of themselves.

"All I want, Cass," he whispered as his hands moved over her, sensual and worshipful, tender and enticing, "is to make you happy. All I want is to make our life together wonderful."

"Oh, Hunter," she murmured, the need to weep burning at the back of her throat. "That's all I want, too."

Cass watched his eyes as the two of them began to move together. She saw the heat of his desire and the strength of his joy, the love she had never in this life expected to find. She gave herself up to it, to him, to the splendor of this joining.

Knowing the decision she must make made the brush of their bodies and their mouths more poignant, edged with exquisite pain, filled with exquisite tenderness. As the chorus of delight swelled between them, she saw his pleasure flare like a hot blue flame. She consigned herself to the conflagration, rising with him like a shower of sparks from the heart of a white-hot blaze, drifting with him like wisps of smoke spiraling upward to be lost in the nebulous darkness of the sky.

Cass was clinging tight to Hunter when she came to herself again. She didn't want it to be over. Not the loving, not her time with Hunter and Meggie, not this small, brief swatch of happiness in a world of war and death and loneliness. But it was. And there was no help for what came next.

After a time, Cass dragged one of the blankets around her and went to the fire to boil up a special herbal tea.

"What's this?" Hunter asked when she brought him a cup of the brew.

"A tonic I prepared for you. Something to help you regain your strength more quickly."

"Do you think I need it?"

Cass nodded, unsmiling and adamant.

He took a sip and grimaced at the taste. "What's in it?"

"Vervain, some mountain mint, a bit of juniper..."

He swallowed it down, hissed between his teeth, and handed back the cup. "That's wretched stuff."

"I'm sorry," Cass said, and didn't dare look at him.

"Well, as long as it serves its purpose. Now come to bed."

Cass lay down beside him, nestled into the crook of his shoulder and waited. In didn't take long for Hunter's body to go lax or for his breathing to deepen. It was done now. She had prepared and made him drink the tea that would ensure he would sleep like the dead until well past midday.

"I'm sorry, Hunter," she whispered again. "I'm sorry I can't take what you've offered me. I'm sorry I've had to betray your trust. I'm sorry I haven't been able to tell you how much I love you. But I do."

Cass reached across to stroke his hair, to trace the rise of those chiseled cheekbones and the sensual curves of his mouth. "I love you. You are the only man who knows who and what I am and cares for me still. I love you, Hunter. I will love you forever."

With tears in her eyes, Cass curled into Hunter's warmth, into his strength, into the shelter only he had ever afforded her. And knew it was for the very last time.