Mustang Annie (15 page)

“So that's why he walks with a limp.”

“He was lucky he survived at all. Shortly after that, he hired on with Levi Durham.”

“And Savage let him go? Just like that?”

“I think they had an arrangement. Henry would never snitch and Savage wouldn't kill him.”

“Your grandfather didn't get off that easy, though.”

“No, he didn't. Ike was furious when he found out Granddad was rustling on his own. So he gave him a tip on some unmarked quarter horses, then waited for him to show up.”

Annie didn't think it was necessary to reveal the details. Corrigan was smart enough to figure them out on his own.

“Afterward, I had no choice but to stay with the gang. I pulled a few jobs for them, tried to figure out how to get off the paddlewheel. Then, they started . . .
looking
. . . at me.” Bile rose in Annie's throat, and she rubbed her arms to ward off the chill of those slimy brown eyes following her every move. “That's when I knew I had to get out.”

“But you didn't, did you?”

“Actually, I did.” Her gaze was drawn to the land behind them, to the forlorn cross invisible at this distance, but manifested in her heart. “For a while.”

“Who's buried in the grave, Annie?”

It was along time before Annie could speak over the lump in her throat. Then she looked him directly in the eye and gave him the only answer she could. “Me.”

Chapter 18

D
umbly, Brett watched her emotions suddenly close up and her vivid blue eyes lose their luster.

“I don't want to talk about this any more,” she stated, gathering herself together as efficiently as she collected her gear. “If you want to help me so damn bad, then help me track down that stallion so I can get paid.”

Brett remained crouched beside the water after Annie walked away.
I killed Mustang Annie four years ago.

He could almost believe Savage's claim, and he couldn't say which impulse was stronger—the urge to shake Annie to life, or pull her into his arms. She'd trusted him with this much, why not the rest? Why did she continue feeding the riddles surrounding her?

But Brett knew if he prodded and poked, she'd crawl so deep back inside herself she might never again come out.

Patience.

Patience.

In time, she'd tell him. Hopefully then he could figure a way to get her out of this mess.

Right now, it was all he could do to absorb the fact that Ike Savage lived a dual life, that his foreman once rustled horses for a living, and that the woman he was falling in love with lay in grave not five hundred yards away.

The realization slammed into Brett like a load of buckshot. “Oh, my God.” He brushed his hand across his head and closed his eyes. How had his feelings for her changed so drastically in such a short span of time? Why hadn't he seen it coming?

Shaking hands slipped into his shirt pocket and withdrew a cheroot. After a moment, he drew out a second one, approached Annie, who was looping her canteen over Chance's pommel, and handed her the smoke.

She cast a startled look at his face, then slowly reached for the cheroot, her long, slender fingers shaking as badly as his. He watched her as if he'd never seen her before. The plait of her braid had loosened. There was smudge of red dirt on her cheek, and circles under her eyes. Sweat and dust stained her shirt. And still she was so damned beautiful she took his breath away.

Gratitude sped across her face with the first pull. “God, I needed that.”

He closed his hand into a fist to keep from touching her cheek, her lips, her hair. “Annie. . . .”

Long, sweeping lashes lifted to reveal the question in her eyes.

Suddenly he didn't know what to say.
I love you? Stay with me? I won't let anything hurt you?

Brett swallowed. Words he'd uttered a hundreds times before into feminine ears in the throes of passion now seemed somehow cheap. He managed a weak smile. “Let's get going.”

 

The rest of the afternoon passed in somber silence as the horses picked their way up the trail and out of the canyon. The difference between below and above was so incredible that to Brett it felt as if they had stepped into another world. Blue skies and amber grasses stretched as far as the eye could see, with not a tree to relieve the banality, not a creek to gurgle in the distance. Just wind and grass and the two of them.

They paused near the ridge to rest the horses before beginning a search for the night's campsite. Brett could no more deny their effort at procrastination than Annie, though neither admitted to it.

While Annie dug oats out of their packs for the animals, Brett wandered to the edge of the canyon, pulled out his scope, and scanned the juniper shrouded floor. From here, he could see for miles in either direction. Peninsulas of rock jutted through the valley like dagger blades. The Prairie Dog Fork wound around the western wall like a satin ribbon. Caves created black blotches on a stratum face.

Brett spotted several deer bounding beneath a rock formation that resembled a lighthouse, a pair of hawks circling the cottonwood grove, and a pack of dogs drinking from a stream. But not a single, solitary horse.

He slid the scope to the left to scan the plains, on the off chance the stallion had escaped the canyon. Annie had mentioned the possibility.

A magnified view of firewheels and feather-topped grasses came into focus, then the flicking withers of the buckskin, then the gentle swell of buttocks tightly wrapped in denim. . . .

Dynamite couldn't have torn him from the sight of Annie's figure. Of its own accord, the scope made a slow sweep down her legs. The creases behind her knees gave way to smooth, tanned leather around her calves, then silver spurs attached to tooled leather boots. Up the scope went again, Brett's mind stripping her down to bare skin, his mouth going dry at the thought of those legs wrapped around him, his hands spanning her waist, cupping her breasts—

“What are you doing, Corrigan?”

Brett flicked the scope to the left and cursed under his breath. “Looking for the stallion.”

“All right. Let's get this over with.”

The sharpness in her tone made Brett's attention shoot back to Annie.

His mouth dropped.

She sat in the grass, her vest off, her hands working loose the straps of her spurs, her expression rigid.

“What are you doing?”

“A deal's a deal,” she said.

“Deal?”

“The wager. You won. I didn't tame the stallion in three days. I'm ready to pay off.”

Understanding unfolded, spreading through him like a bad meal, making his stomach roll and his face heat. “You think a quick roll in the grass is what I meant by ‘anything I want'?”

She froze in the process of pulling off her boot. “Isn't it?”

“Yes. No! Not like this. Not as some sort of . . . payment.” He spat the last word out, feeling the bile rise in his throat. At one time he'd have taken Annie any way he could get her, and damn the repercussions. But now, the realization that she'd give herself to him like this filled him with disgust—partly at himself for his careless disregard, partly at her for regarding making love with him as some sacrificial act to be endured.

“I won't lie to you and say that bedding you hasn't been on my mind every hour of every day since I met you. But if and when we ever are intimate, it won't be because you feel you ‘owe' me. It will be because you want it as badly as I do.”

The sight of her sitting astounded and bewildered branded itself in the back of his mind as he swung the scope back up to his eye.

A sudden speck in the distance arrested his heartbeat, and for a second, as the speck grew closer, Brett's breath caught.

The object neared. A horse?

Brett's heart started again, a slow pound in his rib cage, picking up speed as the speck thickened, elongated, becoming a line across the horizon.

No . . . not one horse.

Hundreds of them.

Heading this way.

“Oh, shit—Annie!” Brett tore across the distance between them. “Annie, we've got to get out of here.”

“What is it?”

“Stampede!”

“Let me see.” She reached for the scope he'd forgotten was still gripped in his hand.

“There's no time—they're heading right for us!”

Instead of following his lead and mounting her horse, she spun around and shaded her eyes with her hands. “Give me the telescope.”

“Damn it, Annie . . .”

“Give me the scope!”

He tossed it to her; she caught it in one hand and brought it to her eye. A second later, she gasped, “Oh, no, they're going to kill them.”

Then she leaped into the saddle and slapped the end of one rein against Chance's flank. But she didn't head away from the thundering herd.

She ran straight for it.

“Annie!” Brett bellowed. “What the hell are you doing!”

“Saving the mustangs!”

 

Annie rode like she'd never ridden before. Prairie wind sliced into her face, ripped through her hair, stung her eyes. Yet her thoughts remained focused on the mustangs—and the group of men she'd seen driving them toward the canyon, toward certain death. It was hard to believe that people could be so cruel as to destroy the horses in order to destroy the Indians, but then, she never had been able to understand the human race.

As if realizing that the fate of her brothers and sisters rested on her shoulders, Chance put all her heart into the run. Her legs stretched into full spread; her hooves tore up the grasses and wild rye.

The distance between them and the herd closed quickly. Annie kept her sights on the lead horses.

A shot exploded through the air without warning. Chance stumbled in surprise; instinct had Annie snapping into a tight curl, her head falling onto Chance's mane, her knees jerking upward against the mare's flanks.

Who were they shooting at? The horses? Or her?

Soon another shot rang out, followed by more that came perilously close to her head. Around her, horses screamed. The earth quaked.

Tasting the fear and desperation of the mustangs, Annie gave little thought to the danger to herself. She curled into as small a target as she could manage while keeping one eye on the herd, the other on the squad gunning for her.

Ahead stretched nothing but flat land, yet she knew the canyon was less than a mile off. She urged Chance to go faster and the mare closed in on the herd. When she reached the edge of the band, she uncoiled her rope and let it whir above her head. “Ha!” she cried in a guttural command. “Ha!”

Despite the chaos, the horses began to respond to the motion. The outermost beasts veered inward, away from the sheer cliff wall, forcing the others to follow them.

Annie continued running with the curve of the herd until they'd been safely turned back into the wide open spaces of the panhandle.

She sat atop a heaving Chance, her own breaths coming fast and labored, and watched the dust roll toward the setting sun. She wiped her brow with her sleeve, then guided Chance around, only to come face to face with over a dozen men wearing dark blue uniforms and identical expressions of displeasure. Firearms ranging from pistols to Sharps rifles were trained on her; some still smoked from the shots already fired.

A strange mix of peace and regret stole through her. Annie closed her eyes, and Koda's last words passed over her lips as they had several times in the past. “It's a good day to die.”

Just as she expected to feel the pierce of bullets, the ringing sound of spurs carried on the wind and wrapped around her heart.

She cracked open her eyes and saw Brett standing tall and proud between herself and the military. His eyes never wavered from them as he commanded, “Get on back now, Annie. Let me deal with this.”

Chapter 19

T
he lieutenant was a slender, rigid-spined man of obvious breeding despite having more whiskers than face, and what Brett could see of that had gone florid.

“I demand an explanation.”

Brett plugged his thumb into his belt band. “Funny, I was going to demand the same of you. I don't take kindly to having my wife shot at.” The possessive claim on Annie was a last-minute inspiration in the hopes it would call less attention to her than she'd already earned for herself.

“Then perhaps you should keep a tighter rein on her,” the lieutenant countered. “She had no business interfering in military matters.”

“You call slaughtering horses a military matter?”

The man shot arrow straight in his saddle and the side of his mouth curled in a sneer. “Those beasts are tools of destruction. Savages use them to raid and pillage. If we are ever to control them, we must not make any concessions in the scorched-earth policy.”

“Indians aren't the only ones who use them. Those were cavalry mounts, you fool!”

An angry buzz within the unit reminded him of the hornets Dogie had riled yet at this point, but Brett didn't much care if his lie caused the blue-coats to swarm. “If you want to wipe out the Comanche by killing mustangs, then fine, but it will be
you
explaining to your commander why he isn't receiving the mounts he commissioned us to catch and tame.”

That seemed to give the soldier a moment's doubt. The rest of his unit looked suddenly uncomfortable at the thought of paying for the lieutenant's mistake. “You expect me to believe that the two of you could catch five hundred wild horses?”

Brett recognized the sarcasm as a ploy to save face in front of his men. “I would hope you aren't that gullible. We've been waiting for them to migrate into the canyon. I've got an outfit of men waiting below to round them up for marking and breaking. Thanks to you, it'll be weeks before that band returns. How happy do you think it's going to make your captain when he finds out what you've done?”

The jerky movement of the lieutenant's head and a sudden sour odor of anxiety told Brett that he'd hit pay dirt. He jabbed his index finger in the air. “I've got an idea—perhaps we should go back and find out.” He turned to retrieve his horse, hoping like hell this gamble didn't blow up in his face.

“Halt!”

Masking a slow, satisfied smile, Brett pivoted on his soles, and lifted a brow.

“I see no need to further distress your wife by forcing her to journey to Fort Elliot.”

So the Captain
hadn't
given this unit orders to destroy the mustangs. Brett had to repress a rush of elation that he'd read the lieutenant so accurately.

“Be forewarned, should either of you obstruct future campaigns, I will not be so lenient.”

Yeah, Brett didn't expect he would. He couldn't say if this incident would be swept under the rug, or if the officers at Fort Elliot would even be made aware of it—but in any case, it had saved him and Annie from certain arrest, and the horses from slaughter.

The lieutenant finally motioned for his men to follow him, and Brett waited until they'd ridden completely out of sight before heading toward Annie. The two of them had some unfinished business to settle.

He expected to find her brushing Chance down after that frenetic ride. But the buckskin stood alone on the prairie, saddle still upon her back, reins dangling into the dirt.

“Corrigan.”

He swung to the right and noticed Annie sitting bow-headed and cross-legged in the grass.

“I need help.”

She lifted her face. The upbraiding he'd been about to deliver failed him at the sight of blood staining the front and left sleeve of Annie's shirt. “What the hell—”

“Don't fuss at me, just help me.”

Her lips barely moved. Her eyes drooped, her cheeks were pale and drawn tight across her bones, her left arm lay limp in her lap.

Dazed, Brett moved to her side. His hands hovered above her arm. “Where are you hurt? Arm? Shoulder?”

“Arm. One of those idiots actually hit something.”

Opening his pocket knife, Brett slit the sleeve from wrist to shoulder. Her choked whimper ripped through his heart. The pain in her blue eyes was nearly his undoing. Knowing the longer he took, the worse it would hurt, Brett peeled the fabric away from her skin. Fresh blood gushed from a small hole in the fleshy part of her upper arm. No exit hole, though. “It's still in there, Annie.”

“Have you ever taken a bullet out before?”

“Only out of a box.”

“Well, I reckon there's a first time for everything.”

“Annie, I don't . . . I've never—”

“It's got to come out, and you're all I've got.”

“I know, but . . .” Could he?

Then again, did he really have any choice? Sage Flat was at least thirty-five miles in the opposite direction. He couldn't leave the bullet in there and risk lead poisoning or infection.

Brett dragged his saddlebag close and dumped the contents on the ground. Socks, an extra pair of trousers and shirt, a box each of cheroots and ammunition, a silver flask and comb.

“I don't suppose you have any whiskey in that flask.”

“ 'Fraid not. I favor bourbon.”

“I should have guessed.”

He handed her the flask, then gave her another cheroot.

“If the boys could see me now,” she joked as he lit the end. “All I need is a deck of cards.”

“Sorry. Fresh out of those.”

Maybe he shouldn't encourage a woman in drinking and smoking but Annie was big enough to make her own decisions, and he'd never been able to understand why certain things were acceptable for men and not women.

Like the horses.

The lieutenant's comment had rubbed him almost as badly as when Rafe had given him such a hard time about hiring Annie in the first place. He could understand an objection over allowing a woman to put herself in a dangerous situation—he didn't much cotton to the idea, either. At the same time, what gave him or any man the right to deny a woman of Annie's talents a chance to use them?

He grabbed his shirt, and just as he brought his blade to cut it into strips, he felt Annie's hand close over his.

“Use my shirt. I've got two extra, and this one's already ruined.”

Instead of wasting time unfastening the two dozen tiny buttons down the front, Brett simply sliced the shoulder seams. “This is not how I pictured undressing you,” he grumbled as the fabric fell around her waist. He must have sunk to really depraved depths, for even her injury didn't stop him from reacting to the sight of the smooth swells pushing above the thin cotton camisole.

“I'm sure. The blood does put a slight damper on things.”

He shot a startled glance at her face. To his amazement, a teasing glint twinkled in her eyes. Trying to ignore her half-dressed state, Brett concentrated on tearing the shirt, while Annie made free with the liquor and smoke.

Once he had a pile of strips in his lap, he uncapped his canteen and poured a generous amount of water on her arm to flush the wound.

“This is pathetic,” she said tucking her chin to look at the seeping wound. “I can't even get shot right. Hell, I could probably walk in front of a Gatling gun and still come out alive.”

Brett stilled in horror. He didn't see a damn thing funny about the flippant remark. “Is that what you were trying to do? Kill yourself?”

She tipped the flask to her mouth. “It wouldn't be the first time.”

Never had words caused his stomach to plummet as the ones just spoken by Annie. Brett had no idea how to respond to an admission that seemed to mean so little to her, yet shook him to the core. Though the bourbon was undoubtedly beginning to kick in, in his experience, a person under the effects of liquor tended to speak truths they wouldn't normally speak. “Don't talk like that, Annie.”

“It's the truth. I should be dead a dozen times over but somehow I keep surviving. What's the point of living when you've got nothing to live for?”

With a calm that belied the tumult inside him, Brett said, “You don't really want your life to end, Annie. If you did, all you had to do was get caught stealing a horse or turn yourself in. You'd be hanged on the spot.”

“I'm too much of a coward.”

“Oh, Annie, you're the most courageous woman I've ever known.”

“Courageous? I'm not courageous; I'm a death sentence to everyone but myself.” She took another deep drink and laughed. “Maybe that's the punishment. To go on living when everyone else around you dies.”

He focused on stemming the flow of blood with a damp swatch, even as he felt her glazed, intoxicated eyes watching him from beneath her lashes.

“You know what I miss?” she asked, her voice slurring. “The simple things. Shaving cream wet on the brush. Clothes over the back of the chair. The sound of footsteps early in the morning.”

Brett swallowed roughly. She was talking of
him
—of her husband's presence in her life. He didn't want to hear it, yet he couldn't bring himself to tune her out.

The touch of her fingers on his cheek had him stilling. Brett had lost count of how many times a woman had touched him, yet not a one affected him as strongly as Annie did, making him feel as if he could move the world. The frightening truth of it was, he'd do it for her in an instant, if only she'd let him.

“And I miss the scent of man around me. On the sheets. On my pillow.” The pads of her fingers lightly traveled across his face. Beneath his eyes, down his jaw. “On my skin.”

His eyes shut. Oh, God. She was killing him.

“Most of all, I miss being loved.” Her finger tips came to rest upon his lips. “Well and truly. Wildly and tenderly.”

Brett's gut clenched. He could give that to her.
Wanted
to give that to her, more than he'd wanted anything in his life.

“God, I must be crazed to miss that after. . . .”

He knew the instant she became aware of her own words. Her fingers dropped from his mouth. The glaze left her eyes, to be replaced by that flat detachment he was coming to loathe.

“After what, Annie?”

She let her hand slowly fall to her lap, brought her shoulders back and her chin up, closing herself off from him as effectively as a door in the face. She gripped the liquor bottle tight and took a healthy swig. “Just get the damn bullet out.”

Her head began to swim, her vision began to waver, but no amount of liquor had ever been able to dull the constant ache that lived in her heart whenever her thoughts turned to that night.

Brett's touch was gentle. His knuckles brushed the side of her breast, sending a spark of electricity shooting down her arm. She looked at the top of his head, bent close to her arm. A breeze ruffled through the strands of his hair, making them wave like grasses browned by the sun.

The tip of his blade slid into the bullet hole and Annie sucked in a hiss. He yanked the knife out. His ragged breathing carried a hint of panic. “Damn it, Annie, I don't want to hurt you.”

The back of her throat felt raw. Her arm burned clear to the bone. “I won't feel a thing,” she lied.

She sensed his internal struggle as he sat back on his heels, his head bowed, his hands fisted at his sides, his grip as tight on the hilt of the knife as on his emotions.

She wondered what his men would think if they could see him now, Master of Everything and Everyone, kneeling in the dirt at a woman's feet.

Then he raised his head. Their gazes locked. In a gesture so tender it brought a lump to her throat, he pressed his fingertips to her cheek in silent apology.

It was the last thing Annie saw before the blade entered her arm, and the day went black.

 

With the open prairie embracing them in her lonesome arms, Brett sat against his saddle, Annie between his upraised knees, her head against his belly. Her hair spread across his middle and spilled down his side, and as he dragged the strands of moonlight and sunbeams between his fingers he marveled at the strength and courage packed into her slender body.

He knew how much it had cost her to ask him for anything, much less for help. If she hadn't passed out, he didn't think he could have removed the bullet. Seeing those blue eyes of hers so filled with pain had affected him like nothing ever before, and if he thought it might have done any good, he'd have pulled her into his arms the minute she'd first touched him.

Not that Annie would have allowed it. She didn't let anyone get that close to her. In fact, she'd be throwing a fit to beat all right now if she weren't passed out.

He didn't know what to make of that, either—the mixed signals she seemed to send him. One minute she was looking at him as if he was the last drop of water on an arid desert, the next, beating the bushes to get away from him when he got too close.

He knew it wasn't his imagination, or the delusion of a sex-starved lunatic. Nor did he think Annie was purposely leading him on. He wondered if she was even aware of it.

She was like a wild filly, at once fearless and fearful, taunting one second, making a hasty retreat the next. He sighed and continued to savor the feel of her in his arms, committing the sight and feel of her to memory, knowing he'd never get this chance again.

Imagine, her thinking she was a death sentence. Nothing could be further from the truth. Annie brought more life into everyone around her than any woman he'd ever known.

When the sounds of the night gave way to the deep stillness of pre-dawn, Annie began to stir. First her head turned on his stomach, then her lashes lifted, then her left hand came up to touch her shoulder. Each movement captivated and filled him with regret, for he knew that as soon as she realized she lay upon him, she'd pull away.

She did.