Mustang Annie (18 page)

Chapter 22

B
rett stirred and reached for Annie with a contented smile, only to discover the space beside him empty. His eyes snapped open, and he rose up and propped his weight on his elbow.

Had he only dreamed that Annie had given herself to him? Dreamed he'd held her in his arms, felt her body melt into his, heard her cries of pleasure?

God, was he losing his mind?

When his eyes finally adjusted to the darkness, he released a breath of relief at the sight of her sitting beside the creek on a pile of rock, wearing nothing but his shirt. Her arms circled her up-drawn knees, and summer moonlight kissed her bare legs. Blonde hair cascaded down her back and one shoulder in silky fall.

“Annie?”

Slowly, she turned her head and met his gaze, and the emptiness in her eyes nearly brought Brett to his knees. There was something frightening about her lack of emotion—as if behind it lay an anguish too heavy to bear.

A sudden chill chased across his skin.

He wrapped the blanket around his waist and strode across to her. “What is it?”

She didn't answer. She simply turned her face away to look out into the canyon.

Brett followed the direction her gaze had turned. “Oh, my God . . . it's him!”

“Forget him, Brett.”

“What?” Her words surprised him as much as the flatness of her tone.

“
Forget
the stallion,” she repeated harshly. “I got your fillies back; be satisfied with that.”

“Wait a minute—that wasn't part of the deal.”

“Sleeping together wasn't part of the deal either, but that didn't stop you.”

Astounded, he watched her swing off the rock, grab her trousers and shove first one foot, then the other into the pant legs.

“This whole thing was a mistake.”

“Going after the stallion?” he asked with a false calm. “Or making love with me?”

She shot up to arrow-straightness. “You are the most conceited, arrogant—I didn't make love with you. I let you poke me because I felt sorry for you.”

Brett sucked in a hard breath. No words had ever pierced so deeply or stung so badly. Could the rapture she'd shown in his arms have been an act? Could she really feel nothing for him?

No, he wouldn't believe that. He couldn't believe that. What he and Annie had shared had gone beyond sexual gratification; he felt it down to his soul. There had been connection between them that surpassed mere physical needs, and he'd bet his fortune that she hadn't counted on it any more than he.

“That's it, isn't it?” he challenged with sudden understanding. “You're feeling guilty because you enjoyed being with me.”

“You don't know what the hell you're talking about.”

“Don't I? You're not the only one who lost someone, Annie. I lost my whole family.”

“I lost my soul!” She smacked her fist against her chest. “I lost myself!”

“But you're finding her again, aren't you? And that scares the hell out of you—that you might just want to go on living, that you want to feel alive again.”

Her eyes flaming, she began gathering her clothes from the rocks where they'd been laid out to dry earlier that day.

Brett clutched the blanket around his middle and followed her. “You learn to deal with it, Annie. Day by day, week by week. You go numb. You get angry. You hurt, you grieve, then you learn to let go.”

“I
am
dealing with it.”

“You're hiding from it—just like you hide from everything else that threatens to break through the shield you've built around yourself.”

“You bastard.” She raised her hand to slap him; he caught her wrist in a firm but gentle grip.

“How many men have you lain with since your husband died?”

The question—more of a challenge—hung in the air with the weight of a tombstone. He stared at her, daring her to answer, and she stared back, silently defying him with every breath left in her.

“There hasn't been anyone but me, isn't that right? Because I'm the only one who touched you here.” He pressed three fingers against her heart. “He might have been the first Annie, but I'll be the last. Wherever you go, whatever you do, I'll be right there with you.”

She slapped his hand away. “This is just another game to you, isn't it, Corrigan? Someday you're gonna learn that not everything is about winning and losing.”

“No, sometimes it's about the difference between living and dying.”

He looked at her with such profound sadness that it made her heart ache. Annie twisted away, wanting to deny the truth of his words, knowing she couldn't. Because he was so right.

She didn't want to die. She wanted to live.

She just didn't deserve to.

Warm hands closed around her shoulders, and she felt Brett's solid strength against her back.

“Grief is like the seasons, Annie.” His voice was soothing as a campfire at night and sunshine at dawn. “In the autumn, winds rip the trees bare to the branches. Winter cold sets in, freezing everything it touches. Then in the spring, the earth thaws, and grass begins to grow, and in the summer, the sun warms you from the outside in. There are calm days and stormy days, but it takes both the sun and the rain to make a rainbow.”

Annie's breath caught and her eyes went misty. “My husband used to say that.”

“He sounds like a smart fellow.”

“He was.” She swallowed the knot forming in her throat. “When we were together I felt . . . saved. Forgiven. As if I had every right to love and be loved as any other decent woman.”

“You do, Annie.”

Her eyes shut. “You wouldn't say that if you knew what I've done.”

“Why don't you let me decide that?”

Annie twisted around, and the compassion in Brett's eyes made her want to. After a moment's hesitation, she began to speak. “The first time I saw Sekoda, he was walking through a herd of mustangs right here in this canyon. I remember feeling both awed and envious that they trusted him enough to let him do that, but over the years, I also understood why. He and I became friends quickly. Over the next six years, that friendship deepened, and we became lovers. We met whenever we could, in spite of the fact that if anyone ever caught us together, one or both of us would die.

“After my grandfather hanged, I stayed with the gang for a while—I told you that. It was a huge mistake, because the looks I'd been getting from the men escalated into touches. It got so bad I started sleeping with a pistol under my pillow. I told Ike if it didn't stop, I'd leave, and he could get his own horses. Ike told me if I left, he'd make me regret it.

“I didn't believe him. I went to Sekoda and told him what was happening. He promised me the moon on a silver platter; I promised him I'd never steal another horse. He offered me a new life, and I took it. I was afraid he'd wind up being forced onto a reservation, so I convinced him to marry me and move into my granddad's house, because the gang didn't know anything about it. That was my mistake. Thirteen months later, Ike, along with a couple of his men and a couple of Comanche, came after the horses Sekoda and I had spent the last year rounding up.

“Koda . . .” She stopped to draw in a deep breath. “Koda tried to stop them and they hit him over the head. I dragged him into the house so he wouldn't get trampled. That's when Ike and one of the men burst in.” The whisper sent a chill climbing up Brett's spine.

Annie closed her eyes and folded her arms around her waist. “I tried to . . . get away from him. A lamp fell. I tried to hit him with it, but he was too strong, and too angry. Ike ripped my clothes, then forced my husband . . . to watch. I was afraid they'd kill Koda. I thought if I just let him do what he wanted to me, he'd get his revenge and leave us alone. But he didn't. When he finished with me, he slit Koda's throat, then set the house on fire.”

“Jesus. Why didn't you tell me this before?”

“It's not something I want to think about, much less talk about. If you want the truth, it feels like it happened to someone else. All I can really remember is the sight of his blood on my dress, and the smell of burning biscuits, and pounding the marker into his grave. I can't tell you details even if I wanted to. I can't even tell you where I spent the next year, because I don't remember and I didn't care. I couldn't go forward. I couldn't go back. It was better to not exist.”

Pieces of the puzzle started clicking into place: her reaction that night in the wagon, the titled cross on an abandoned plain, her constant rejection of his touch.

The thought of Ike Savage laying his filthy hands on Annie filled him with a cold, dangerous rage. Somehow, Brett vowed, he'd make the man pay. For he hadn't just taken Annie's body against her will and killed her man; he'd also stripped her of her self-worth.

Three cautious steps brought him to her. With one finger, he tilted her chin, and his heart bled for what she must have endured.

“We'll get through this, Annie. And there will come a time when you can think about it without wanting to cry, and talk about it without your heart ripping in half. It's just going to take time.”

“It been four years!”

“And it might be four more, or forty more. But you're not alone anymore, Annie.”

Her eyes brimmed with unshed tears; her chest heaved with the force of her silent sobs. “I . . . don't know . . . how to do this, Brett. My hu . . . husband was everything to me. The breath I took, the beat of my heart. He was patient and safe and gentle; you are daring and ambitious and wild—everything I used to be. If he'd lived, we'd still be together and be happy. But he's gone. And I'm older and alone . . . and if you hadn't come along with your . . .
damned
. . . proposition, I never would have known how alone. Or how afraid.”

“Of what?”

“Living again. Loving again.” She loosed a teary laugh. “Koda taught me everything I knew about horses, but he forgot to teach me how to live—or love—without him.”

He held her face in the palm of his hands. “I'll show you again, if you just give us a chance.”

She wanted to. It amazed her how badly.

In his eyes she saw a little boy who'd been forsaken by everyone he loved. She didn't know what she felt for him. Sometimes her emotions got so tangled up with what she'd felt for Sekoda that she couldn't tell where one man ended and the other began.

But she wanted Brett. And she wanted him to love her. When he looked at her like that, as if his every breath depended on her decision, her senses reeled and her defenses crumbled. And she wanted nothing more than to be his breath, his very heartbeat—and he hers.

God, how selfish of her. Her happiness cost people their lives. Her sadness incited their rage. Her fear drove them to reckless bravery.

Two wonderful men had already lost their lives on account of her. She'd not be responsible for a third.

Her heart broke as she removed his hands from her face. “Some chances aren't worth the cost to take.”

And before he could stop her, she grabbed her belongings, leaped onto Chance's bare back, and fled.

Brett ran after her, tripping over the blanket around his waist, paying no heed as it dropped in the dirt. Brush ripped through his soles and a stitch formed in his side.

Finally, his lungs screaming for air, he brought himself to a stop and bowed over, hands on his knees, eyes trained on the buckskin speck in the distance as he gasped for breath.

Damn it. Damn it. When was he ever going to learn to stop pushing her? Learn that when he sat back and let her come to him, she didn't run away?

Obviously not soon enough.

“Okay, Annie,” he panted. “You win. Go ahead and run away if you have to. I won't chase after you anymore.”

Chapter 23

F
ortune picked his way down a slim and treacherous trail as Brett followed the stallion with cold determination. When he reached bottom, he brought out his telescope. A gauzy image of Annie filled the lens. Grimly Brett brought the scope away, rubbed his eyes, then refocused. Annie's image disappeared as he'd known it would, for the sun had been playing tricks like this on him for days now.

Instead, a glossy blue-black coat and wild mane nearly hidden behind a peninsula of rocks below filled his sights.

“There you are, you damned devil.”

Brett tucked the scope into his saddlebag and unsnapped his lariat.

It's all in the wrist.

“Get out of my head, Annie.”

Three days had passed since she'd left him. Three days he'd spent searching for her, trying to track her down, knowing it was useless even as he did so. Annie had spent years eluding the law, and it had only been a fluke that he'd been able to track her down in the first place.

All he could hope was that when she was ready to pull herself out of the grave she'd buried herself in, she'd come back to him.

And if not, well, he still had a stallion to catch.

Lasso at the ready, he clucked his tongue, urging Fortune to a lope. He kept the stallion in his sights as he moved out of the tree line into open terrain. A flickering memory of wicked hooves pawing air, of Annie tumbling off his back, of Emilio being trampled and dragged in the dirt, flashed through Brett's mind.

Let him go, Brett.

Doubt slivered its way under his skin. Could he control the horse once he had him roped?

Brett rejected the advice now as he had then. If he couldn't catch the beast, it wouldn't be because he didn't try.

The stallion moved into a clear pathway and Brett let his lasso go slack for the final charge. Just as he started to circle the loop, the steed froze, ears point-high, nose extended, eyes trained straight ahead, sensing something amiss.

At first Brett thought he'd caught his scent. But then a flash of movement near the canyon wall captured Brett's attention. Two riders on barebacked ponies suddenly appeared and Brett's mouth dropped open.

Fortune shifted nervously beneath him as he dug for his scope and honed in on the figures. Black hair streaming like banners behind them, one wore a yellow bordered cavalry coat and fringed trousers, while on the other wore a chest plate over bare skin and a calf-length breech cloth.

Brett's blood surged with disbelief, then fury. After all this time. . . .

A quick assessment of distance between the stallion and himself and the stallion and the charging Indians assured Brett that Fortune could easily beat the Indian ponies, but the same instinct that told him when to draw and when to fold now urged him to wait out of sight.

His patience paid off when the riders caught up to the stallion in mid-bolt.

One man jumped on the stallion's back in the same way Brett had seen Annie do, then flipped a rope around his nose while the second man threw a rope around his neck. The horse whinnied and reared; the Indian on his back held on with a grace that Brett envied. Once the forelegs made contact with the ground, the Indian quickly slid a gunnysack over the stallion's head.

Though the horse alternately dug his rear hooves into the dirt and whipped his head back and forth in frenzied objection, neither Indian seemed daunted. They both dismounted and approached the horse.

Brett couldn't hear, but he figured they were soothing the stallion.

His guess proved correct when, after long, pulsing minutes, the animal calmed. They mounted their ponies and led him blindly through the canyon floor.

Brett followed at a distance, his curiosity growing when they seemed in no hurry.

Only when they stopped at the remains of a familiar homestead, at the end of the day, did his curiosity turn to foreboding.

 

The plains stretched as far as the eye could see, the only difference between earth and sky a thin dark line.

She used to follow that line, hoping she'd reach it one day and just drop off the face of the earth. It had never happened, and now Annie realized she had nowhere to go anymore. Mexico no longer sounded appealing. Going west was certain death. East was a possibility, but she'd stick out like a sore thumb.

Maybe north. Granddad had talked about the beauty of the land, and she'd heard of men driving cattle and horses up to Montana Territory. Where there were ranches, there were horses needing to be tamed and ranchers to be conned. Since she'd never collected her fee from Brett, she'd have to make up the loss. . . .

She lowered herself against Chance's neck and closed her eyes. Who was she fooling? She didn't want to go to Montana. She didn't want to steal or lie or cheat.

She wanted to go home. Not just someplace to hang her hat, but a place to belong, and someone to belong to.

Heaven help her, she wanted to be back in Brett's arms.

She missed hearing his voice asking her in the middle of the night, “Annie, you awake?” And she missed the scent of his skin on a hot summer night, and his strength when she felt alone or scared.

Strange how new memories formed, replacing old ones. At one time it had been black hair and brown eyes that made her heart swell, now the colors had lightened to wheat brown and green.

“Stop it, Annie. You'll forget him soon enough.” She had to—for his own sake.

Yet as the days dragged on, the words lost their force. The sky seemed too vast, the nights too long, the days too lonely. The temptation to turn around grew harder to resist.

I'll show you again, just give us a chance.

What kind of life could they lead, with her always looking over her shoulder? Or waiting for the next bullet to fire? He'd never be safe with her. Like Sekoda, he'd want to keep her safe, and it would kill him.

A shrill whinny bounced off the canyon walls, jolting her. She whipped her upper body first in one direction, then the other, trying to trace the source. Prickles of anxiety broke out at the back of her neck.

She told herself there was nothing to be alarmed about. Maybe a wild dog had frightened a horse. Or a mare ran into a wall of vines.

But she couldn't erase the image of hundreds of mustangs being driven toward a cliff, or Emilio being towed on his belly by a panicked stallion. . . .

Annie wheeled Chance around and backtracked, knowing she'd not rest easy until she solved the mystery.

Trepidation mounted as Annie scanned the walls, unable to quell the sinking feeling that she was being driven toward a cliff of her own.

Then ahead, across the canyon, she spotted a pair of riders. Renegades from the looks of them, and in between them, the distinctive glossy blue black hide of Brett's stallion.

Oh, if Brett had any idea that they'd seized his horse, he would be fit to be tied. He wanted Blue Fire more than anything.

She hardened herself against the flare of pity for him. It was no longer her concern. Besides, she'd told him to let the stallion have his freedom and he hadn't listened. At least the Comanche would have sense enough to set him free if they couldn't tame him.

Annie's determination to remain indifferent vanished at the flash of a familiar gray Arabian and its broad-shouldered rider behind the tree line. A horrifying thought numbed her mind. If Brett was aware of the stallion's capture, he'd not stop until he claimed that horse. And she'd seen him in action: he knew little to nothing about controlling a mustang, much less stealing one from beneath the keen noses of the Comanche!

Without further compunction, Annie cut across the canyon, determined to catch the stallion once and for all. She couldn't give Brett herself, but she could give him something better. She could give him his dream.

 

Brett lay on his belly at the canyon's rim just above Annie's property, his attention trained on the only structure left standing—a slant-roofed stable with an open lean-to attached to one side. The Indians had hobbled the stallion within the crumbling corral, obviously not trusting the security of the fences, and with good reason. One man then went inside the stables, while the other paced in the shade of the overhang.

With only two guards, Brett could slip past them. He just needed to bide his time and wait for the right moment to slip down and get the stallion; he'd come too far now to leave without him.

What the Indians even wanted with the horse, he couldn't figure. Nor could he hedge a guess as to why they'd brought the steed to this particular section of the canyon. They gave the impression of waiting for something, and he hoped this wasn't to be a rendevous for renegades.

A jangle of reins drew his notice to the plains at his back at the same time he heard his name called. Flap Jack, Dogie, and Henry approached at a canter on horseback.

Brett climbed to his feet and walked toward them. “What are you fellas doing here?”

“Me and Flap Jack got worried when you didn't come back,” Henry answered, dismounting. “Didn't mean to bring the boy—he follered us and we didn't notice till we were halfway here.”

Brett tried not to stare at Dogie standing beside the pinto with his hands in his pockets and his chin tucked to his chest. “How's Emilio?”

“Lucky. Busted his arm in two places and broke three ribs, but a circuit doc got him fixed up.”

“I don't suppose you heard anything about the fillies yet?”

“Not yet, but I expect Tex got 'em back to the Triple Ace safe and sound by now.” Henry scanned the level area. “Where's Annie?”

“She left,” Brett replied in a flat tone.

Dogie perked up. “Left? Where'd she go?”

“I don't know.”

“Did y'all get the stallion?”

“No, they did.” He pointed to the camp below.

“Good glory, what are Comanche doin' with him?”

“I was just about to rope him when they managed to beat me to the punch.”

“But why? They revere that horse—think it has special powers or some such.”

“I've been trying to figure that out myself.”

Henry rubbed his bristled jaw. “I got an un easy feelin' about this, Ace. It ain't the Comanche way. Usually when they steal a horse, they do it and skedaddle. They don't pitch camp. It's too dangerous—especially with blue coats perching like vultures.”

“Unless they're waiting for something. Something valuable.”

“Like what?”

Brett paced the ground. “What do the Comanche want more than anything?” he thought out loud.

“Revenge,” Flap Jack suggested.

“Freedom,” Dogie offered.

“Their old way of life back,” Wade Henry said.

“That's right—and they'll fight to the death for it. How better to fight than with guns? We know someone is supplying them; what if that some-one is willing to exchange weapons for this horse?”

A troubled frown multiplied the wrinkles on Henry's brow. “Ace, it might not mean anything, but we ran into Rafe at the Silver Spur.”

“Sure did,” Flap Jack added. “He said he'd gone to work for Ike Savage. He was boasting about how he'd teach you who was boss.”

“You think he's trying to steal the horse out from under my nose for revenge?”

“No, I think he's stealin' it for Savage,” Wade Henry answered.

“But why would Ike want the stallion?”

The answer hit them both at the same time.

“Annie.”