Cherished (29 page)

Then he grinned and came forward, grasping
her by the shoulders. “The man who gave me this”—and he pointed to
the gash on his cheek—“admitted to me that he was the witness with
Rivers when he died, the one who swore it was Wade Montgomery who
did the shooting. He also slipped his own special concoction in my
drink and beat the hell out of me afterward, all on orders from
either Line McCray or Knife Jackson. Some witness. His testimony
was all part of the setup. For some reason, McCray wants to pin
Rivers’ murder on your brothers, along with whatever else he can
find—and get the Montgomery gang out of the picture. When we track
them down, we can find out why.”

“I remember something else,” Juliana said,
her heart hammering against her ribs with painful thuds as she
stood before him, so close she could feel the heat and tension
rippling through his body. Kissing close, she realized, conscious
of his firm hands on her shoulders holding her lightly, of his eyes
searching hers, not as if she were a piece of outlaw scum, but as
someone who counted, someone to listen to and consider.

“Knife ... and the others.” She moistened her
lips with her tongue, trying to keep her mind running in a straight
path. “They asked me about you—and about someplace called ... Fire
Mesa.”

In the absolute silence that followed, she
could hear his breathing, shallow and harsh. From outside came the
sound of wind blowing through trees, of birds singing faintly in
the distance. Was it a cactus wren? Or a grouse? She saw the
tension bite through the powerful muscles in his neck, saw the
narrowing of eyes that suddenly looked like chips of sapphire ice.
This mattered. She didn’t know why, but it mattered. Maybe more
than anything else.

“What did they ask you?” His voice was
deliberately casual, but it didn’t fool her for a moment.

“If you planned to make a bid for Fire Mesa.”
Juliana stared up at him. “What is Fire Mesa?”

For answer, he gripped her arm suddenly and
led her to the door. Then they were outside the cabin and Juliana
caught her breath. She stared through widened eyes at the stunning
rose-kissed beauty of a world so radiant, it tore her breath
away.

“This,” Cole said, still holding her arm, “is
Fire Mesa.”

From the tiny window facing south she had
glimpsed mountains, but she had not guessed at anything like this.
For who could imagine paradise? The cabin before which they stood
was an insignificant twig cupped at the foot of a great red rock
mountain so immense it seemed to touch the clouds. Steep gray-and
red-hued canyons wound their way to the north, and to the distant
south and east stretched a breathtaking panorama of golden green
mountains so majestic, so like spires in a king’s jeweled crown,
they took her breath away. Nearer, luscious valleys dipped and
wound their way around buttes and mesas, which climbed gradually
into soft purple and gray foothills that rolled gracefully away.
And far below the rocky mesa on which the cabin was perched, a
glint of silver shimmered in the dusk. A river, racing, jumping.
Flashing like quicksilver through the cottonwoods below. Juliana,
turning slowly in a circle to see every angle of the spectacular
view, saw great lonely rocks in the distance, shimmering lavender
in the sunset, spruce and fir and pine high above, gilded by the
last dying rays of the sun. The mossy-green foothills were alive
with wildflowers, and wild goats roamed through the north canyon
walls. It filled her with awe, this wild, splendid land of distant
purple sagebrush, of towering ponderosa pine that rose and dipped
in a zigzag line as far as the eye could see.

Fire Mesa.

The name suited it well. The rocks, the
buttes, were all the marvelous colors of fire, ruby and amber and
gold. The land itself seemed to catch the light, to glow with
spectacular beauty so powerful and overwhelming, it was almost
dizzying to behold.

“This,” Cole added, watching the wonder on
Juliana’s face as she studied the horizon from each glorious
direction, “is the southernmost tip of Fire Mesa. There’s a whole
lot more.”

“How did you ever find this place?” she
whispered. “I feel ... as if we are all alone in the entire
world.”

“We are. This particular spot is known to
only a handful of human beings. No one can see this gorge from the
trails over the mountains. There’s a secret route in, and another
one, even more hidden, out on the other side, closer to Flagstaff.
Fire Mesa has countless canyons like this one. The horses live
here.”

“Horses?”

“You’re looking at wild horse country.
Mustangs. Hundreds of ‘em. Maybe thousands ...” His voice trailed
off. “This is some of the most beautiful, bloodstained country in
the world. I loved it here when I was a boy—and then for years I
hated it. I haven’t been back to this spot for twenty years. But
it’s still the same.” He tore his gaze from the vista of rocks and
spruce, and let his glance rest on her for a moment.

“You’re safe here.” He was matter-of-fact.
“McCray’s men would have to search for months to find this
particular cabin.”

She wanted to ask him the connection between
him and this place; there could be no doubt that there was some
deep, significant connection. In his lean face she detected the
pride of ownership, a pride that had nothing to do with vanity or
boasting, but was instead something keen and fine and inborn that
stemmed from his heart and soul. Yet, lurking in his eyes, behind
the obvious appreciation for the unspeakable beauty of this
paradise, was pain. What had happened here? What was it about Fire
Mesa that brought that haggard look to a face so young and
handsome?

“Thank you for bringing me here. It’s lovely
... and if you say it’s safe, I believe you. But ... you say you
were here as a boy. Did your family live here? Why did you
leave?”

Sunset glowed like a candle flame about them.
Incandescent lavender light shimmered on the mountains, the dying
sun drenched the treetops with gold. A deer darted across the river
far below, and in the cottonwoods that stood like sentinels behind
the cabin, Juliana heard the song of birds. But she saw nothing
except Cole Rawdon’s face, the scar vivid in the fleeting light, as
he answered her, his voice oddly drained of emotion.

“My family lived here. My grandfather owned
Fire Mesa—thirty thousand acres of Arizona treasure, he called
it—he passed it on to my father. They caught wild horses, broke
them, sold them ... it was a good, free life, a fine life for a boy
growing up. My sister, Caitlin, could ride like the wind. She
sensed where the horses would run. It was in her blood, I reckon.
She and I would sit at Grandfather’s knee at night when the coyotes
would howl in the darkness and lightning raced across the sky, and
he would tell us legends about the king of the mustangs.”

Juliana remembered the wood carving she’d
found in his pack the night he’d first tracked her down. The
horse’s head, every detail carved in wood, magnificent in every
line and angle. That carving had captured a sense of strength,
pride, and wildness in the animal, and could only have been
lovingly wrought.

“But my grandfather died when I was six, and
my father took over Fire Mesa. He used to ride to town nights—he
loved saloons even more than horses. And he loved to play faro—and
poker—a lot more than he should. One night, my father hit a losing
streak. But he couldn’t stop, he kept thinking his luck would
change. It didn’t. He lost everything, all his money, his pocket
watch, ring—and he was ashamed to come home. So ... he put up the
deed for Fire Mesa as collateral and gambled some more—and
lost.”

His eyes became flat, cold. Juliana shivered
as she stared up at him. Night was creeping in, bringing a rich
amethyst darkness to the beauty all around them. But Cole saw none
of it; he was seeing the past, a time of pain, of loss and sorrow
...

“But that wasn’t enough for him. He was
frantic to get Fire Mesa back. So he rode three hours to the next
town —and started gambling some more. Again, he put up the deed for
Fire Mesa—though he had already turned it over to Joseph Wells.
Again, he lost.” Cole’s mouth twisted. “But this time, he couldn’t
pay up. There was no deed to give over. There was nothing left.
He’d already forfeited Fire Mesa.”

As he paused, sucking in a deep, painful
breath, Juliana felt the stirrings of fear inside her. Bleak, chill
air touched her shoulders, her neck. Cole’s face was ashen in the
gloom of falling night.

“What happened?” she whispered, sensing all
the while that it was something she did not want to know. But she
had to know. Maybe it would help her to understand him. Maybe it
would help her to fathom some of the dark, secret side of this most
self-reliant, solitary man.

“What happened was that the next morning a
rancher from the next county named Barnabas Slocum rode up to our
front door, along with some of his hands, and demanded the deed my
father had promised him. Fire Mesa was a prime piece of land,
pretty well known in these parts. Slocum had had his eye on the
place for years.

“My father had come home drunk just after
dawn and was sleeping it off when Slocum arrived. My mother
answered the door. My mother was a pretty woman.”

His voice broke, but only for a second. He
went on, in a tone so low and deadly it sent shivers down Juliana’s
spine. “My mother didn’t know anything about what had happened that
night. Until Slocum started shouting for the deed. Then my father
told her, and he told Slocum that he couldn’t pay his debt—that
another man already owned the deed to Fire Mesa. Slocum got angry.
Angrier than I’ve ever seen any human being. You don’t want to know
what happened after that.”

She didn’t. Heaven help her, she didn’t. But
she had to know. Something haunted and agonized in his eyes told
her that whatever it was, it had been horrible, more horrible than
she could imagine. And he had been how old at the time? Seven?
Eight?

“What did Slocum do?”

At the hushed, fearful tone in her whisper,
Cole looked at her, studying the small, bruised face illuminated by
the night’s first stars. He hesitated, then spoke again, all in a
rush.

“He killed my parents and sister. Raped my
mother and Caitlin first. Forced my father to watch. Then he and
his men killed them, each of them, one by one. I was the last, held
down the entire time, a stupid, fighting, screaming kid, useless
... but I saw, I heard. When they had choked the life out of
Caitlin and left her naked in the dust beside the well, Slocum had
his men beat me to within an inch of my life. They left me for dead
at the bottom of a ravine half a mile from the house. First, they
dragged me there behind Slocum’s horse.”

“No. Oh, no, no, no.” She wept. Her hands
covered her face while tears soaked through her fingers, and her
shoulders shook with the savagery and horror of it. What he had
described was unspeakable. She couldn’t imagine such brutality—and
a picture of him as a child enduring what he had just so
dispassionately described burned in her mind and her heart.
Something broke inside her. She reached blindly for him then, not
thinking at all, merely needing to touch him with gentle hands, as
if to soothe away every hurt, even those that could never be
soothed, and before she knew it she was swept into a hard
embrace.

“It’s all right.” His mouth was against her
hair. “No need for you to cry—it was twenty years ago. Twenty long
years,” he said, wondering at her response, stroking her hair, her
soft, elegant nape as she wept in his arms.

“I shouldn’t have told you.”

“I ... want to hear the rest. What ...
happened after that?”

“Juliana ...”

“You started the story—please, you must
finish it for me,” she urged in a low, desperate tone.

He took a deep breath. “Slocum made it look
like the Apache had done the killing. He and his men must have paid
witnesses to place them somewhere else that morning. No one
believed me. A kid of eight, broken, battered, half loco with rage
and grief. A judge passing through town sent me east, to an
orphanage in Iowa. I lived there for the next eight years of my
life. And that’s the end of the story.”

An orphanage. At least she had had Aunt
Katharine and Uncle Edward. And the hope of being with Wade and
Tommy again. He had had nothing. No one.

“And Slocum?” She hesitated. “You never saw
him again?”

“What do you think?”

Her heart began to hammer at the lethal look
in his eyes. “You found him?”

“I found him.” Cole’s lips tightened as he
stared out at the falling darkness, scented with sage. “Eight years
I had to wait, but I found him. I made sure he’d never rape or kill
anyone ever again.”

“So you killed him.”

He didn’t deny it.

She shook her head, dazed. She couldn’t blame
him, but ... it frightened her. Yes, he had witnessed and suffered
from terrible violence as a young child. And yes, he had confronted
violence later, choosing a profession that required it. He had come
away from his ordeal toughened in a way she could never understand.
How different they were. What had happened to her own parents had
given her a dread of blood and brutality that made her abhor any
act of savagery. He dealt with such acts every day. She could not
condemn him, but for just a moment she was afraid of him. Afraid of
the darkness that might lurk in his soul, of the need to strike out
at every enemy, every opponent, with a killing lust. But then she
looked at him again, looked deep into that strong, toughened face,
and knew in her heart that his soul was not tainted. His eyes might
grow cold and hard, but there had never been a glint of cruelty in
them. He derived no pleasure from killing. His actions might be
deadly at times, brutal, it seemed to her, but this was a brutal
land filled with brutal men. He survived. He walked tall. He knew
his own power and used it not to bully the vulnerable, as Lucius
Dane and Knife Jackson did, but to cut down the savage men who
would attack anyone of lesser strength.