Desert Rogue (16 page)

“Oh, all right, come on,” he grumbled, holding his cover aside.

“I tried, Jed,” she whispered in apology as she lay down.

“Just shut up and go to sleep,” he muttered, his voice indicating just how ornery he felt while he draped both their blankets over them.

To his surprise, Vicky soon complied, the slow rhythmic rise and fall of her chest attesting to her fatigue.

If that doesn't just beat all, Jed thought as he fought to get comfortable. Here she was sleeping like some angel, when her presence was the demon that damned him to restlessness.

* * *

The next day followed the pattern of the one before until it was time to avoid the most brutal rays of the desert sun. The group had stopped and Victoria was busy with her mare when suddenly Jed appeared from nowhere, his hand shooting out to thrust her behind him.

Hot and cross, Victoria was about to demand what she had done to deserve such treatment when Ali drew her attention to approaching strangers, four men leading a small string of camels.

Though Jed remained outwardly calm and blasé, Victoria noticed he took the precaution of moving his hand to the pistol stuck into the waistband of his trousers.

“Bedouins?” Victoria asked, taking comfort for the first time during daylight in Jed's nearness. The ominous strength he projected would surely be enough to dissuade anyone from trying to do them harm.

“No, these are village boys, I reckon,” Jed said in response, his voice low. “From the look of them, I'd say they are dervishes, probably
Sammaniyeh,
a fairly new sect, and some of them can be downright fanatical. They've very little love for outsiders, folks like you and me. So no matter what happens, Vicky, you damn well better stay quietly in the background. And if I tell you to do something, I want you to jump. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, Jed,” she responded submissively. Her willingness to cooperate made him feel better, as did the rifle Ali had retrieved. Its stock rested in the sand, the barrel lying along the Egyptian's leg with deceptive casualness. While his injury would make shooting damn nigh impossible, the dervishes wouldn't know that, Jed thought with grim satisfaction as he watched them draw closer.

“Naharak said,”
the smallest of the men called in greeting. Thy day be happy.

“Naharak said wemubarak,”
Jed replied. He was all polite charm, but his fingers remained clutched around the pistol's handle, even though the travelers remained on their camels.

“What brings you out in the middle of the desert?” one of the men asked in his native tongue.

Having no idea of what was being said, Victoria felt an uneasy chill creep up her spine, despite Jed's brash smile and the sure, unwavering quality of his voice as he answered, the strange-sounding words rippling forth from his mouth with apparent ease.

“Why, I'm just scouting out a route for a new caravan master,” Jed replied languidly, his fluency in their language impressing the Arabs as much as the firearms he and Ali possessed. But their notice was soon drawn elsewhere. Once their eyes lit on Victoria, they stared like a bunch of hungry buzzards, so that Jed had to fight to ignore the itch of the pistol butt beneath his palm.

For her part, encountering such unsavory characters in the middle of the desert, under any circumstances, would have filled Victoria with apprehension. But with the memory of her recent abduction, terror threatened to run rampant when she attracted the strangers' attention. It was only Jed's presence that allowed her to hope everything would be all right.

“You are off the main route,” the leader of the group commented, his eyes impudently caressing Victoria. “Could it be you are lost?”

“No. Let's just say my boss doesn't want his merchandise disappearing somewhere along the more traveled paths crisscrossing the desert. He desires a private route, if you know what I mean.”

“A slaver?” the leader asked. His eyes glittered with possibility as he rode closer to openly inspect Victoria.

“The merchandise he wishes to transport is of a more explosive sort,” Jed replied with an enigmatic shrug of his shoulders meant to turn the dervishes' thoughts away from Victoria.

“Ah, guns! Yes?” the youngest of the group burst out. “I have heard of such trafficking taking place.”

“Mostly he deals in ammunition,” Jed informed him. “That's a mighty big powder magazine they've built down in Khartoum. He knows they'll need something to fill it with.”

“According to the new prophet, the guns and powder housed there will be much needed, and very soon.”

“That's what I've been told,” Jed replied, grateful for all poker had taught him about bluffing. “Now I'm sure you boys don't want to detain me too long. The sooner I've finished my job, the sooner your prophet will get what he wants.”

“But I see no rifles or ammunition,” a more skeptical member of the quartet challenged.

“I told you, I'm just scouting the route,” Jed said quietly, his attitude daring the dervishes to call him a liar.

“And the woman?” asked the man to whom the others answered. His silk-laden voice was salacious, though his words were not.

“She's
mine,
” Jed stated flatly. To emphasize that point, he pulled Victoria forward and threw his arm over her shoulder, casually allowing his hand to fall near her breast, so that it brushed against her in a most possessive manner.

“As you say,” the disappointed stranger murmured, put off by the fierce look of ownership the American wore.

“But perhaps you would consider a swap for the horses,” Jed offered. “They're worth more than the woman, anyway.”

“True, yet that would leave you without transport,” another of the dervishes said quietly as he considered the possibility of killing the two men and taking both the woman and the horses.

“Not when you trade me three of those camels,” Jed informed him, calmly withdrawing his pistol and cocking its hammer, pretending to study the mechanism.

Though not a verbal warning, Jed's actions told the strangers they had best beware. Ali's fierce glower made it plainer still.

“Three horses for a like number of camels?” the leader of the Arabs asked, his lip curled into a mocking smile. “You are not much of a trader.”

“Oh, I know the horses are more valuable,” Jed said with a cavalier nod of his head. “But at the moment, I find the camels would better suit my purposes. We have a lot of desert to cross before we return to Cairo.”

“You work with the Mahdi's contact in Cairo?” the youngest and least cautious of the men asked in surprise before the admonishing glares of his fellows caused him to fall abashedly silent.

“All you have to know about me is that I trade horses for camels. I assume we have a deal,” Jed stated, his eyes sliding meaningfully along the barrel of his gun.

“So be it,” the chief dervish pronounced. “It is done.”

“Good,” Jed replied as a slow, lazy grin made his white teeth glisten. “Ali, make certain our saddlebags, bedrolls and provisions don't disappear.”

When Ali moved away from their small group, a curious Victoria began to turn in the direction he had taken. But the additional pressure of Jed's arm across her shoulders kept her docilely in place.

“Smile, sugar,” she heard Jed hiss when she started at seeing her mare and the other horses suddenly being led forward. The look in his eyes told her she dare not make a fuss, but damn the man, couldn't he give her some indication of what was happening? He knew she didn't understand Arabic.

“I'll take those, too,” Jed announced when two of the dervishes began to remove the saddles, richly adorned with velvet and silver, from the riderless camels.

“Our bargain mentioned nothing about that!” the leader protested, his already-wizened face twisting in determination.

“That could be, but they don't really belong to you,” Jed drawled. “Three riderless camels rigged out like that suggests to me that you have either lost three comrades, or more likely, that you set upon the original owners and killed them. That's no concern of mine,” the American continued, holding up a hand to signal the dervishes to silence when they all began to talk at once. “But I'm a fair man. I didn't say anything about the water skins the horses will need in order to get to the next oasis, either. The water skins for the saddles...and the bridles.”

Though Victoria had no idea what Jed had said to set the Arabs muttering discontentedly, she nevertheless breathed a sigh of relief when she saw the leader nod in assent. She couldn't wait until the strangers departed so that she could find out what had taken place,
and
move out from beneath Jed's impudent hand!

“You are shrewder than I thought,” the leader said at last.

“Meaner and faster, too,” Jed added with studied nonchalance as he twirled his pistol with lightning speed once around his finger as though it were a six-shooter.

“You will have what you desire,” the other man replied tersely. Then he ordered the camels brought forward ready to ride.

“That's always been my aim,” Jed said with a chortle that died away when his gaze came to rest once more on the woman he held beside him. She was one thing he wanted. But damn it all, she was also the one thing he couldn't have.

Jed's abruptly ended laughter meant nothing to Victoria, who watched as three sets of reins were exchanged for three others. Horror held her enthralled every bit as much as the relentless restraint of Jed's arm when she began to suspect what had just taken place. He wasn't really going to ask her to ride such a beast, was he?

Soon it became all too apparent that was exactly what Jed intended. She silently swore that once the dervishes left, he'd learn he had acquired not only the camels, but a hellcat as well.

“Khattar khairak,”
Jed called as the Arabs left. May your goods be increased.

Turning to regard him with a stony countenance, the leader offered no polite reply. Instead, he and his men began to move swiftly across the burnished sands.

The instant the strangers were well under way, Victoria twisted out from beneath Jed's hold, batting away the hand that had thrilled as much as annoyed her, keeping her where he had wanted her.

“Why did you give away our horses?” she demanded furiously, choosing to deal with that topic first so he would have no inkling as to the devastating impact of his accidental caresses.

“I traded them, not gave them away. And you're lucky that's all I bartered,” Jed growled, wanting to irk the blond virago by telling her how much he had been tempted to rid himself of her, as well. But the lie stuck in his throat, unable to pass his lips.

“And what is that supposed to mean?” Victoria asked, placing herself in front of Jed when he tried to sidestep her.

“Nothing, Miss Victoria,” Ali interjected, attempting to forestall more trouble. “There was no insult intended. In fact, to keep you safe, Jed told the dervishes you were his woman.”

“Did you have to do that?” Victoria asked, her cheeks aglow with anger too long denied. And did she have to wish it were so? she thought in self-rebuke.

“I did if you wanted to stay with us rather than ride off with them,” Jed retorted. Didn't the woman have any idea of the sacrifice he had just made, letting her get close to him, pretending she was truly his to protect, all this when he wanted nothing so much as to forget her very existence? “You can thank me later,” he commented acidly.

“The only thing I'll thank you for is to keep your hands off me in the future,” Victoria answered.

But her indignation made no impression on Jed, who calmly placed his hands around her waist. Picking her up, he carried her over to one of the camels, ignoring her flailing hands and kicking feet.

“I surely would love to finish this friendly conversation, Vicky,” he said, his voice edged with grimness, “but it will have to wait. Right now I want to get us the hell out of here before those fellows decide to double back. Ali, help me get our stuff stowed on those critters pronto.”

“Pronto,” the Egyptian echoed with determination, never having heard the word before but knowing just what it meant.

“Urkud!”
Jed sternly issued his command to the smallest of the beasts. The camel quickly lay down as it had been ordered.

“Hold on tightly, Vicky,” Jed suggested with amusement, dumping Victoria unceremoniously onto the saddle.

“Kam,”
he shouted, and the beast obediently began to rise. In an ungainly motion, it unfolded its forelegs first, so that Victoria screeched unashamedly when she pitched backward, afraid she would tumble over the animal's hindquarters to the ground. But before she could do so, the camel gained its back feet, as well, and the apprehensive Englishwoman found herself sitting altogether too high above the ground to suit her tastes.

First a horse, then a camel. Who knew what the wild American would expect her to ride next? Victoria fumed, until an unbidden answer arose half formed in her mind, causing her to blush furiously and lapse into uncharacteristic silence.

Taking the saddlebags from Ali, Jed did not question his good fortune when Vicky suddenly fell quiet. He was too intent on slinging the supplies across the neck of the camel he had chosen as his.

“Rah!”
he called, settling himself. Go. And the travelers set out under the sun's punishing rays without further delay.

* * *

Jed drove the little band later than usual that night, wanting to put as great a distance as possible between them and the dervishes. It was not that he really expected the Arabs to be so foolish as to try anything; still, his natural instincts cautioned him to err on the side of safety.

Besides, there was another, more disturbing, reason that made him wish to keep Vicky and Ali in their saddles well past the hour when darkness had fallen.