.45-Caliber Firebrand (24 page)

Camilla regarded him sidelong and skeptically, sliding her mussed hair back from one side of her face.

“I'm not all that familiar with bears,” Cuno said, sagging back down against the wall beside the girl. “But I have a suspicion he's trying to lure us out. We best settle in here for a time, see if he moseys along.” He snapped a curse, biting his lower lip and resting an arm on his upraised knee. “I wish I had my Winchester!”

“You shouldn't have left it on your horse,” Camilla whispered.

Cuno gave her a wry glance, then swept his gaze back toward the low, oval opening letting in just enough gray daylight to fill the cave with shadows.

“We never should have stopped here,” Camilla continued in her admonishing whisper. “It was foolish with a bear around!”

“I thought he was up on the rim, holing up with all the other bears holing up this time of the year,” Cuno grunted, the tips of his ears warming with chagrin. “Besides, damnit, the horse needed a blow. He's not used to having two people on his back, and you're not exactly a little wisp, you know.”

The girl only snorted and raked her angry gaze from him to the cave entry. She extended her right leg and sucked a sharp breath through gritted teeth.

Cuno looked at her. “What's the matter?”

“Nothing,” she said, in a snit.

“Come on—what'd you do to your leg?”

“It's not my leg. It's my ankle. It's all right.”

Cuno slid out from the wall and lifted the hems of the girl's skirts above her ankle-high moccasin, then rolled up a cuff of the men's red longhandles she wore, as well. Camilla sucked a breath but made no move to stop him.

Cuno leaned down to inspect her ankle. It seemed to be swelling around the top of the beaded moccasin and turning the color of rifle bluing under her natural tan. “What'd you do?”

“What did
you
do? It twisted when you jerked my arm.”

“Oh, so this is my fault, too, huh?” Cuno chuckled without humor as he continued inspecting her ankle.

He moved her foot from side to side, and Camilla lunged forward from the cave wall. “
Mierda!
It hurts, damnit!”

“Shit. Now we're really fixed. You can't walk and we got no horse.”

Cuno jerked her longhandle cuff down, and then the hems of her skirts. He sagged back against the cave wall, running his hands up his face in frustration and dislodging his hat. It tumbled off his shoulder and landed crown down on the cave floor.

It wasn't just him and Camilla he was concerned about. This fix was Serenity and the children's fix, as well. Valuable time was ticking away and, meanwhile, Leaping Wolf's braves might be closing in on the wagons.

Cuno thought it over for a time.

“I reckon we wait till the bear leaves. Then I'll try to run down Renegade and bring him back here.”

Camilla leaned forward and down, turning her head up slightly to glance at the sky. “It is getting late. Only a few hours before the sun sets.”

“I know that,” Cuno said, unable to keep the frustration from his voice.

“I was just saying it,” the girl said sharply, leaning back against the wall and crossing her arms on her chest in disgust.

The bear went on bellowing and stomping around the canyon bottom. Cuno and Camilla settled into an uneasy wait, staring at the cave mouth and watching the sunlight angle steadily to the right as the afternoon drew toward early evening.

With his mind, Cuno tried to hold the light. He wanted to find Renegade—if the horse was anywhere within ten miles of here—and get back to the wagons before good night closed down over the mountains. Serenity was probably waiting for him at the stream at the base of the high saddle, or he might have come on south, expecting to run into Cuno and Camilla along the way.

He wouldn't make it this far before nightfall, however. He'd have to hole up somewhere north of here. If the bruin didn't find him, the Indians might. Serenity was tough as wang leather, but he wasn't as handy as he claimed he was with a rifle. He and the kids would be easy prey.

Cuno wished he hadn't listened to Camilla's idea about the shortcut. It wasn't her fault they'd run into the bear—they might have run into one the other way, as well—but sitting quietly like this, horseless and rifleless—the mind tended to imagine all the possibilities and chew on all the should/shouldn't haves.

About an hour before sunset, the grizzly fell silent, and Cuno decided to scout around and see if the beast was still nearby. If not, he'd head out after Renegade and hope to find the horse before good dark. He was halfway across the stream, however, when the bear—a dark, lumbering shape in the grass and black tree columns—came lumbering and rumbling up out of the pines.

Cuno cursed, scrambled back up the slope and into the cave.

“What happened?” Camilla asked.

Cuno winced at the cold stream water freshly soaking his deerhide breeches. “Best get comfortable. Looks like we're gonna be spending the night right here.”

22

“WHAT HAS MADE Leaping Wolf so killing angry?” Camilla asked later than night, when the mountain night had filled the cave with black ink.

She and Cuno had found a passageway to a wider cavern with a gap at the top for a smoke hole. The cavern was only about the size of a large wagon bed, but it was well protected from the outside. Cuno had gathered wood along the outside slope and built a fire in the middle of the cavern floor.

Now the umber flames sparkled in the girl's dark eyes as she regarded Cuno curiously, a strip of jerky in one hand, a cup of smoking coffee in the other.

Cuno set a small chunk of wood on the fire. Out of shame, Trent had probably never confessed the reason for the Indian attack to Mrs. Lassiter, who had lost her husband because of it, and then, probably, her own life. Of course, no one would have told the children or Camilla. Michelle still didn't know the reason, and there was no point in her knowing.

Camilla had a right to know, however. Cuno told her as he stared at the light of the flames dancing on the cracked stone wall on the other side of the fire.

The girl only nodded knowingly, fatefully, and ripped a chunk of jerky from the strip in her hands and chewed. She sat Indian style, her elbows on her knees, as she stared into the dancing flames.

After a time, Cuno dug another strip of jerky out of the pouch lying between them, and leaned back against the wall. “How long you worked for the Lassiters?”

“Almost a year.” She frowned as she studied the flames. “No, a year now.”

Since she offered nothing more, he threw politeness to the wind. “Where you from?”

She continued chewing as she stared into the fire as though mesmerized. She spoke softly, dreamily. “All over. I was born in the Arizona Territory.” She glanced at Cuno. “You?”

“Nebraska Territory. My parents were killed a few years back. My old man was a freighter, so I took up the trade. Didn't know what else to do.” Cuno chuckled around a mouthful of jerky. “Pays the bill if you can hold on to your wagons and your mules. And you don't get all your drivers shot.”

“It is better here,” Camilla said. “In Arizona, the Apaches make Leaping Wolf look tame.”

“What brought you here?”

“My father was a prospector.
Mejicano
. My mother was Lipan Apache. I was born in Agua Prieta, and my parents ran a goat farm. When my mother left and went back to her tribe, Papa gave up the farm and started prospecting for gold. He found little but rocks and dust and the carcasses of soldiers killed by Apaches. When I was ten he took me to Tucson and left me there on the doorstep of the Butterfield stage manager.”

Camilla extended her right leg, moving the injured foot around in a circle, wincing slightly as she stared at her beaded moccasin. “The manager was not a nice man, if you get my drift”—the girl snorted her distaste for the man—“so I took to the streets. I met a gambler—a nice enough gringo, as far as gringos go—and followed him to Laramie. He was shot there while using a privy behind a whorehouse by a man he'd cheated at stud.”

Camilla glanced at Cuno, her lips shaping a grim smile. “When his money started running out and they kicked me out of the hotel I was in, I started looking for work. That is when Mr. Lassiter came to town, looking for a girl to help with the children and chores on his ranch. It was a good job. The Lassiters were good folks.”

Cuno swallowed his last bit of jerky and washed it down with coffee, resting his elbow on his knee as he looked down at the girl staring up at him obliquely. “Where will you go after the fort?” he asked her.

“I will see to the children. Then . . .” Camilla shook her head. “We haven't even gotten to the fort yet. I think we will do well by getting out of this cave without becoming
el oso loco
's last big meal before he turns in for the winter.”

“Haven't heard him out there for a while. Could be he got sleepy, decided to bed down for the evening at least.”

As Cuno stared at the narrow passageway leading to the front of the cave and the opening, Camilla clamped her hand down on his thigh quickly and spoke with frightened urgency. “Do not go tonight. Don't leave me.”

Cuno turned to her, frowning. She must have thought he was considering going after his horse in the dark. “I'm not gonna . . .”

He let his voice trail off, felt himself falling into her wide brown eyes. He leaned toward her and ran the first two fingers of his right hand along the straight, firm line of her jaw, over the long, pale scar to her ear. Her eyes grew wider as he stared into them, and when he lowered his mouth to hers, her lips opened for him.

He pressed his lips to hers and wrapped his arms around her, drawing her taut against him, and he could feel her breasts heave beneath her clothes as they kissed hungrily. She groaned softly and ran her hands up his back and into his hair, holding his kiss and pressing her chest against his, as though she were afraid he'd let her go.

Her mouth was ripe and sweet-tasting, and her tongue darted in and out of his mouth, entangling with his, and he could feel his body warming from inside, his loins swelling. Suddenly, he pulled her away from him and jerked his tunic out of his pants. As he lifted the garment over his head, she went to work shucking out of her own clothes, both of them sitting across from each other in the low ceilinged cave, flushed and breathing hard with a furious, elemental desire.

Cuno tossed aside his gun belt and kicked out of his boots, wrestled his breeches and then his longhandles down his legs. He sat naked in the firelight, waiting for her to finish shucking out of her clothing. His pale body, rounded and strapped with hard muscles, his belly flat and ribbed as a washboard, his blond hair falling to his shoulders, was copper-colored in the dancing flames. His dong jutted, fully engorged, from between his heavy, hairless thighs.

His chest rose and fell as he watched Camilla, naked from the waist down, lift her camisole over her head and toss it away, her hair tumbling back down across her face and shoulders, her brown eyes peering out from behind the long, coarse, black strands. Her legs, angled before the fire, knees slightly bent, were long and smooth, the calves and thighs nicely muscled, her feet long and slender. A small, silver crucifix hung from a rawhide thong between her full, round, light brown breasts framed by her hair.

Cuno grabbed her by the shoulders and drew her to him. He kissed her again hungrily, and then she lowered her head to his crotch, licking and nuzzling his jutting, throbbing member, her hair dancing across his chest. She lay back on his bedroll, propping herself on her elbows, and spread her knees. She stared up at him smokily, expectantly, through her screening hair.

As her breasts rose and fell, nudging the silver crucifix from side to side, the brown nipples jutting, Cuno positioned himself before her spread legs, laid his hands against the sides of her face, and, pressing the hair back from her cheeks, felt her guide him into her hot, wet core.

“Oh,” she said as he drove in slowly, deeply, arching his back and neck and squeezing his eyes closed, savoring the moment. “Oh . . .
Cristo
!”

Later, they snuggled together inside the bedroll. Cuno had built up the fire from the pile he'd gathered from the slope. They didn't say anything, only nuzzled each other, caressed, and kissed in the dolor of a spent passion. The fire popped and crackled, occasionally hissing when sap hit the flames.

Cuno ran his hand slowly up her smooth thigh from her knee and across her belly. Then he lifted his hand to her face and ran the back of his index finger from her left ear to her chin. She took his hand in hers and ran his finger along the scar.

“Wanna know how I came by this?” she said, half shutting her eyes as she caressed the scar with his finger.

Cuno rested his chin on her shoulder. “Streets of Tucson? The gambler?”

“The gambler's wife. She was Coyotero.” Camilla spat the word like a bad chunk of meat. Her sudden smile took him aback, her lips spreading back from her fine, white teeth, firelight dancing in her exquisite eyes. “She'll never do
that
again!”

In his dreamy state, the bear and the Indians a thousand miles from his thoughts, it took Cuno a few seconds to comprehend her meaning. Then he chuckled as he ran his hand down her neck and into her cleavage, beside the leather thong and along the ripe curve of her breast to the nipple. “Remind me not to get on your bad side.”

“Sí.”
She chuckled and rolled toward him, cupping his balls in her hand. Instantly, he began coming alive again. “I will remind you!”