Katherine O’Neal (32 page)

Her sparse tears mingled with the dust, and
soon she was losing consciousness, waiting with a shattered heart
to die.

* * *

She had to be dreaming, or dead. Saranda
thought she smelled the salve Flying Dove had used on burns and
scrapes—its odor of bear grease and some herbs she couldn’t name
was unmistakable. But what kind of tricks was her mind playing?

Then she felt gentle hands brushing her arms
and legs, massaging her skin with delicate pressure. Saranda
struggled to rouse herself, moving with difficulty. Everything
hurt, every muscle ached.
If I hurt this much, I must still be
alive,
she thought wildly.

With determination she forced her eyelids to
open, but she could see only shadows. She was in some kind of
enclosure—a tent? “Where—” she whispered, but her voice was barely
audible.

“You are safe,” a woman’s voice murmured.
“But you must rest.”

Saranda was grateful to hear the comforting
words. Her eyes were used to the darkness now, and she could see
the face of the Indian woman nursing her.

“Where is Mace? Is he alive?” Saranda’s voice
was stronger now, but still scratchy and harsh.

The woman touched her hand to Saranda’s lips.
“Sleep now,” she said. “You are badly burned, but you will
live.”

Then she rose to her feet and slipped from
the tepee without responding to the desperate questions of her
patient. Saranda felt tears welling up in her eyes. Mace must be
dead if they would tell her nothing. The tears slid down her cheeks
as she mourned her lost love. In moments she had fallen asleep.

* * *

Shakily, Saranda stood up and moved to the
opening in the tepee. Peering out, she saw that the sun had nearly
set. How long had she been here? And, oh God, what had become of
Mace?

She watched for long minutes as the Indian
camp bustled with activity. Suddenly her heart froze. Flying Dove
stood only yards away. She hadn’t perished in the storm, but
somehow had survived! Maybe she knew what had become of Mace...

She was dressed in a soft doeskin beaded
dress, her hair flowing free. She looked astonishingly beautiful
among her own kind. When she saw Saranda, she walked slowly toward
her and said, somewhat grudgingly, “I see you made it, Miss
Sherwin.”

Saranda’s mind struggled to grasp what she
was hearing. She felt hopelessly muddled. She couldn’t guess why
Flying Dove was alive, or how she’d come to be here. She had no
idea how she knew her real name.

Unless...

Unless Mace had told her.

“Where is he?” she breathed, afraid to voice
the question aloud, afraid to hope.

She saw the hesitation in the woman’s eyes,
as if she were deciding whether or not to reveal the truth. Then,
reluctantly, she answered, “Come with me.”

Flying Dove turned and walked away, like a
specter in some ghastly dream. Saranda put one foot in front of the
other, impelling herself to follow, not sure if the woman was
leading her to a man or a grave. It was too much to hope that he
was alive.

Such miracles didn’t happen to her.

At one of the tepees, the Indian woman pulled
back the flap and stepped aside. She stood, looking resentfully at
Saranda, who approached the opening the way she would a burrow of
snakes. Then she stopped, a heavy sick dread gripping her heart. He
was alive, surely. But what would she find? A mangled face, a
swollen, twisted form? A broken man without a voice—where once that
voice had been the key to his dominion?

A monster to replace a specimen of such
masculine power and beauty?

She’d never seen a man more beaten than he’d
been. How could he have survived?

“Take care not to upset him,” Flying Dove
said. She was behaving so strangely, Saranda knew she must assume
the worst. It was as if, by her very reluctance to reveal him,
Flying Dove was telling her it would have been better if she’d
never come.

On the threshold of reunion, Saranda lost her
nerve. She’d braved the wilderness alone. She’d slept on the hard
ground, ignoring nightcrawlers and wolves, turning her face from
the ravages of wind and sun and sand. She’d done without food and
water that she might find the man she loved.

But now, after so much searching, hoping,
praying, of denying her despair... now she was afraid to walk
inside and behold him.

She looked at Flying Dove. Her fear must have
shown in her eyes, for the half-breed gestured with a lift of her
chin for her to walk inside. Swallowing hard, clutching her
tattered skirts in sweaty hands, Saranda stepped through the flap
of buffalo skin.

He sat cross-legged before a cold fire pit,
wearing fringed buckskin leggings but no shirt. His chest, as
virile as she remembered, with that thick smattering of rich black
hair, bore scars, but appeared to her startled eyes to be nearly
healed. His left arm was wrapped tightly in a splint. But the body,
the face, all of him was as she remembered before the accident.
Except for the splint and the scar at his throat, she’d never guess
he’d been so terribly injured.

With him was an ancient Indian who, because
of his haughty glare at her intrusion, Saranda guessed was the
chief. A young maiden, very pretty with a flat brown face, was
kneeling beside Mace, giggling as she popped dried berries into his
mouth. Mace had been about to hand the chief a long smoking pipe
when Saranda stepped inside and he halted mid-motion.

“Saranda! My God, I thought you were
dead.”

She was so startled by the pleasant
atmosphere that anger—long denied for the necessity of
survival—bubbled to the surface. “Is this what you’ve been doing
while I was braving the wilds to find you? While I tortured myself
with visions of the horrors that had befallen you? While I prayed
you weren’t dead, then—thinking of the alternatives—hoped you were?
While I trudged through this Godforsaken desert without food or
water, just to see if you were alive? And all this time you were
holed up like some sort of bloody sultan, being pampered by fair
maids and—”

He’d risen, his head nearly touching the roof
of the tepee. He was walking toward her as she spoke, but the
closer he came, the farther away he seemed. He was so stunning, he
took her breath away. It was as if he were walking through a mist
toward her. She could see on his face his shock at seeing her, his
joy at knowing she was alive, his surprise at her attack. And then
he was standing before her, and she couldn’t tell if he was real.
In midsentence, she stopped her tirade and crumpled to his
feet.

* * *

She came to some time later to the smell of
herbs and bear grease again. Someone was rubbing something into her
hands, something soothing that took away the sting of the sun. She
opened her eyes to see Flying Dove reaching into a jar of salve.
When she saw Saranda’s gaze on her, she lowered her eyes and moved
away.

Then she saw Mace’s face. “They told me you
were dead,” he said in a voice that sounded different from the one
she’d remembered—more rasping, more whispery, and ultimately more
appealing. “If I’d known, I swear I’d have come for you—”

She raised burnt hands and ran them
wonderingly along the vast expanse of chest, feeling the warm
flesh, the taut muscles, the crisp mass of hair. With a finger, she
gently stroked the healed line at his throat. “You’re real,” she
whispered, still not believing it was true. “Oh, Mace, I thought
I’d killed you.”

With his good arm, he lifted her shoulders so
she was propelled toward him, her arms going by instinct about his
neck to hold him tightly against her. He felt so unbelievably good
in her arms, so warm, so
alive
. She still didn’t understand
it all. But she didn’t care. It was enough to hold him, to breathe
in his clean scent, to run her fingers through the hair at the back
of his neck and pull his head down to hers. She raised her lips and
met his with a cry, tasting his kiss with a wildness that was all
tangled up with gratitude and passion and disbelief.

“You’re all right?” she asked, still trying
to reassure herself this wasn’t a dream.

“I’m fine,” he murmured into her hair. “With
the exception of some scars and a dislocated shoulder, which is
nicely healed. The splint comes off in the morning. Their medicine
man has potent remedies. Had me fixed up in a remarkable amount of
time.”

“Then I owe him a great deal,” she said,
leaning back and once again tracing the scar on his throat. “You’re
a fortunate cur, I must say.”

“I didn’t think so till now. Try as he might,
the medicine man couldn’t heal the emptiness of my spirit when I
thought you were lost to me.”

“Yes, I could see how you were grieving when
I came in,” she retorted.

“What? Little Turtle? She’s the chief’s
daughter. I could hardly offend him, after he offered me
sanctuary—”

She was laughing. It felt so remarkable to
laugh, to look up and see his handsome face. He grinned then, and
she thought of Lance. The smile fell from her face. How, after all
she’d been through, could she still look at him and see his
brother? She shoved the thought aside.

“Why did you think I was dead? Don’t you
remember I was with you after the stampede?” she asked.

“I thought so, but I couldn’t recall. Flying
Dove said they sent braves out to look for you. She said you were
dead. I thought, in my delirium, that she’d been the one with
me.”

Saranda looked at Flying Dove, who was
kneeling close by. Apparently, they’d be allowed no privacy.
“Flying Dove, why didn’t you tell Mace?”

“I didn’t want to raise his hopes. You were
unconscious. What if you had died?”

She said it so harshly, Saranda thought
Flying Dove had been hoping she would.

“Perhaps we should count our blessings at
such a miracle,” Mace suggested in his new voice, with its
tantalizing aura of mystery.

Saranda looked from the Indian to her lover
and knew he was right. It didn’t matter that Flying Dove was hoping
to keep Mace for herself. It was in the past. Everything was behind
them. All the old goals, the old desires. Nothing mattered now but
that they were together. The rest would take care of itself.

For three days, Saranda rested and
recuperated while Mace continued to build up his strength with
acrobatic exercises that tested the limits of his body. She was
content to lie back and watch him, sipping the nasty herb
concoctions she was given to replenish her own energy and allowing
the magical salve to cool her skin and heal her burn. If there was
no privacy for more intimate reacquaintances, she told herself she
could wait. They had all the time in the world.

They spoke guardedly of loving, yet after the
initial overjoyed kiss, neither ever made another move. On the odd
occasion when she found herself alone with him, she’d look into his
eyes and want to go into his arms, but something would stop her,
some old demon that wouldn’t let loose its hold on her mind. In
spite of all they’d been through, in spite of their newly
discovered love, the emotional barriers were still in place.

It was a devastating discovery.

She tried her best to ignore it. Given time
and distance, she told herself, the barriers would drop away. They
felt awkward now because the relationship was newly defined. They
hadn’t yet erected signposts to help them along the way. Soon, she
thought... when they left this place where disaster had almost
robbed them of one another. When they could forget the pain of the
past.

But how, she agonized, after all this, could
they hesitate? What was it that kept them from unreservedly opening
themselves to one another, and giving freely of the love they’d
both felt for each other while they were apart? Strangely enough,
she’d felt closer to Mace when she’d been searching for him than
she did when he was by her side.

Then, on the third day, scouts came back with
alarming news. A posse was moving into Indian Territory, looking
for Saranda. Saranda’s heart froze. An idea had been forming in her
mind—a way of escaping from the past altogether. But she hesitated
to tell Mace, waiting for him to broach the subject, sensing that
he would disagree.

Mace came to her that night. “It seems we’ve
had a decision forced upon us,” he began. She could see his
hesitation, as if he hadn’t wanted to face this moment any more
than she.

“I want to go to Mexico,” she told him.
“We’ll find a place and live in peace. I’ve just found you again,
after believing I’d lost you. In all this time, I learned one
thing: that nothing is as important as us being together. I don’t
care about the past, McLeod, the paper, any of it. I just want to
be free to love you.” She didn’t mention Lance’s name. She didn’t
dare.

He took her hand in his and ran his thumb
along the back of it, seeking the physical closeness to bridge the
emotion gap that seemed to widen with each passing day. “I feel the
same. But if we run to Mexico, you’ll always have this cloud
hanging over you. The threat of someone around the corner wanting
to turn you in for the reward. It’s silly to be looking back over
our shoulders for the rest of our lives. Once we get back to New
York, I know I can clear your name.”

“I can’t risk losing you again.”

He looked into her eyes, and she felt herself
swallowed up in the dark depths. “We shall never be able to stay in
one place again. You only think so now. But sooner or later someone
will show up with an old wanted poster, and we’ll have to move on.
I know what I’m saying. Don’t forget, I can’t set foot in my
homeland ever again. I don’t want that for you, for us. Not when we
have it in our grasp to change things. If I ever imagined that we
could escape the past, this posse has shown me the folly of such
thinking. There’s too much money at stake. They’ll never give up
while we live.”