Renegade Bride (23 page)

By the time his spinning surroundings ground to a halt, he heard another horse bearing down on him. LaRousse's demon-like figure was silhouetted by the firelight, the shadows making the excitement on his face more grotesque.

There was nowhere to go. He could only watch the horse come as he braced for the inevitable impact. But another gunshot erupted out of the darkness. A startled LaRousse jerked, then bobbled in the saddle with a groan. The sudden tug on the reins diverted the horse so that instead of being trampled, Creed felt the stir of air churned up by the hooves.

Clinging to his horse's neck, the half-breed pounded out of the clearing and was instantly swallowed up by the inky night.

Creed's racing blood demanded that he follow the bastard, chase him down like a wounded badger and finish him off. But common sense prevailed. He'd left Mariah once tonight and look what had happened. Yet, like the fading hoofbeats of LaRousse's horse, the buzz in his ears still hummed like a distant memory.

Merde.

Breathing hard, Creed ran a shaking hand through his hair and sat up. His searching gaze started with the carnage around him and ended on the smoking gun dangling from Mariah's hand.

Chapter 12

She looked pale—too pale even in the color-robbing moonlight. Creed watched the gun slip from Mariah's fingers and drop with a dull thud to the ground. She sat down hard before he could get to her. Incredibly, she didn't faint but sat staring into the darkness.

"Mariah—" Creed sank down beside her, wrapped his arms around her trembling body, and held her close.
"Mon Dieu,
are you all right?" Comfortingly, his hand stroked the silken hair at the nape of her neck. Her arms went around him, too, searching for something solid to hang onto. He noticed, with no surprise, that her trembling echoed the shaking of his own body.

She opened her mouth and closed it several times before she could speak. "I sh-shot him. I... I shot a man."

"Ah,
oui.
You did well,
ma petite.
He would have killed me."

Without thinking, Mariah tightened her arms around his broad shoulders and buried her face against his chest, unable to get close enough. He smelled of wood smoke, leather, and sweat and she filled her lungs with his reassuring scent. With a sobbing laugh, she said, "I d-didn't think I could hit him. But I wanted to. God help me, Creed. I tried to kill him."

"Shh-h. It's all right. You did what you had to. It was too dark to see where you hit him exactly, but you did some damage."

"I think I... hit him in the shoulder, but the... the gun jerked when I fired it. It almost knocked me over." She shuddered again. "Oh, Creed, he was a horrible man." She pressed a fist to her mouth trying to keep from being sick.

"Oui"
Creed murmured through gritted teeth, stroking her hair. "Perhaps, if we're lucky, you've killed him."

"He wanted
you,
Creed. He came here to find you."

"I know. I'm sorry. Sorry you were caught in this."

"Caught in what? Why did he want to hurt you?"

"I killed his brother."

"The man at the fort? What did he do? Was there a bounty on his head? Is that why you killed him?"

Creed swallowed. "They're outlaws, Mariah. Both of them. Pierre is the worst of the lot."

There was more to it than what he was telling her. Something personal.
You're harder to kill than I thought,
LaRousse had said, and something about Creed being
the son of a wife-stealer.

What did that mean?

Mariah wanted to ask him, but it was clearly none of her business. It hurt that he didn't trust her enough by now to tell her but it was plain that he didn't. She wasn't about to degrade herself by begging him for answers.

A low moan brought both their heads around toward the fire. Batting away the entreating tongue of the wolf who lay hunched beside his master, Jesse groaned and had rolled to a half-sitting position by the time they'd reached him.

One hand cradled the bloody side of his face and the other hand was sunk into the wolfs thick fur. His left eye was swollen shut and his cheek was swollen like a small lemon.

"Oh, Jesse..." Mariah murmured, laying a hand on his arm. "Look at you. I'll go wet a cloth in the river. The cold water should help some with the swelling."

"Oh, hell," he muttered almost unintelligibly as Mariah hurried off to search through the saddlebags for a cloth. He glanced up at Creed through his good eye. "I'm still alive. That's a surprise." He grimaced and fingered his bloody cheek gingerly. "Glad to see you made it to our little tea party, Creed." He moaned again and rolled painfully to his knees, hanging his head down between his splayed arms. "Ohh-h, I don't think I can... get up."

"Just stay where you are for a few minutes," Creed ordered, pushing him back down to a sitting position. Tipping Jesse's head back, Creed examined it in the flickering light of the fire.
"Pardieu,
Jesse, I think he broke your cheek."

Jesse swallowed hard, looking a little green around the edges. "I've had worse. Frankly," he admitted, pressing a fist low on his abdomen, "at the moment... I'm more concerned with... another... part of my anatomy. That bastard's got a mean knee."

Creed tried to hide his grin. "Maybe we should have Mariah bring a wet cloth for that, too."

Jesse met his grin and winced at the pain in his cheek. "At this point, I'd take it and to hell with propriety." For the first time, Jesse's gaze took in the bodies sprawled around him. "Good God. Are they all dead?"

"LaRousse and one of his other men got away, but Mariah managed to put a slug into Pierre on the way out."

Jesse's blue eyes darkened. "Bloody hell. That breed walked in here cool as a skunk in the moonlight singin' some French love song to the trees." He cradled his forehead in his palm. "I should have listened to that little voice warning me. I never should have let him get off the damn horse. I mean, the man has eyes that would make an icicle feel feverish. But he came in with a woman, for God's sake. Hey, what happened to her anyway?"

Creed glanced around to find the Indian woman lying unconscious a few yards away and he walked over to her.

"Is she... dead?" Mariah asked, approaching with the dripping cloths.

"Unconscious," he answered, scooping the limp woman into his arms. He brought her over close to the fire and laid her carefully on the ground. She had a nasty bruise on her chin and the bones in her shoulder didn't feel too stable. Creed frowned down at her, wondering what they'd do with the outlaw's woman.

"She shot that... that man, Bennett, and saved Mahkwi," Mariah said, breaking into his thoughts. "Probably the rest of us, too."

That surprised him. Creed hadn't seen it. He'd had his hands full with the Indian at the time. Creed patted the squaw down, searching for concealed weapons and finally pulled a knife from a thong tied around her thigh. He tucked it into his belt. "Don't turn your back on her. We don't know anything about her yet. When she wakes up, we'll decide what to do with her."

Mariah nodded and turned to Jesse. "You're a sight," she said, shaking her head. "I thought... I was afraid he'd killed you."

He made a grumbling sound deep in his chest. "To be honest, so did I."

"God forgive me, I—I wish I'd killed him." She felt the blood drain from her face at the bitterness of her words. "I'm sorry. I was so scared for you, for all of us."

Jesse nodded. "Pierre LaRousse isn't the kind to make idle threats. He meant to kill us as sure as we're sittin' here. If Creed hadn't come along, he would have found my packs of pelts excuse enough to do it. Don't feel guilty for defending yourself. You should be proud."

She couldn't bring herself to reply. How could she be proud of almost killing a man, despite everything that had happened. It went against everything she'd been taught, everything she believed. Yet, she'd been ready to kill to save Creed's life. And the most frightening thing was she knew she'd do it again.

Gently she cleaned the blood off Jesse's face, dabbing at the jagged split next to his eye. The whole area was coming up a purplish blue. Her hand was still shaking noticeably when she produced the bottle of bacanora and soaked one corner of her cloth. She hesitated next to his face. "This is going to sting a bit."

"Ouch!" Jesse pulled away from her touch, then grinned contritely. "Sorry. That hurts."

"I'm sorry, too, because I think you'll need some stitches in that. Are you up to it?"

Jesse took the flask from her, tipped it upside down and took a long pull. "I have some trade-needles in my pack, wrapped in a piece of deerskin... between the, uh, bolts of blue cloth and..."—he winced, touching a fingertip to his cheek—"the cooking pans. I'm out of thread, but you can pluck a hair from my mule's tail. It'll do."

"All right." Mariah met Creed's gaze when she looked up. He was looking at her strangely, the way he had so many times in the past few days, in a way that made her insides go warm and her heart thud faster. Then, her gaze dropped of its own accord to his throat.

Her eyes widened at the sight of the scar on his neck. Free from the choker that had been torn from him by the Indian, she saw at last why he chose to keep his throat hidden. It was, without question, a scar made by a rope, a rope that had evidently failed to do its job well. He was alive, though someone had certainly meant to kill him.

Shock settled into her at the thought of Creed dangling from a rope, but she forced the thought away. He was staring at the ground, not wanting to look her in the eye. It struck her that he was embarrassed by the scar. She wanted to reach up and touch it to prove to him it was nothing, but she sensed he would never let her that close. And Jesse was watching.

Carefully keeping her expression blank, she took the bone and bead choker out of her pocket and handed it to him. "The leather thong is broken, but I can fix it if you want."

He stared at the necklace, turning it over in his hand, then looked up at her.
"Merci
. Where'd you find it?"

"Near the Indian. I'll be right back with the needles." Mariah felt his gaze as she gathered what she needed, including the strand of mule hair, and set to work on Jesse's eye. As she worked, she pondered the scar on Creed's throat and wondered if LaRousse had had anything to do with it. A chill went up her spine at the thought.

The bacanora muted Jesse's pain and he sat patiently waiting for her to finish. He would have a scar to remember this day by, she mused grimly, but she'd done the best she could under the circumstances. She got up and walked back to where the packs were stacked under a stand of lodgepole.

From the corner of her eye, she saw the woman by the fire move. She'd rolled onto her hands and knees and was crawling toward the ferns.

"Raven, stop—" Mariah cried out.

"Nayeyah! Nayeyah!"
She got to her feet and crouched with one arm in front of her face. Her other arm, she held close to her waist.

"No, please wait, I won't hurt you!" Motioning to Creed, who had gotten to his feet, she walked slowly over to her.

"Be careful, Mariah."

"Shh-h," Mariah soothed. "No one's going to hurt you anymore."

Raven slumped back to the ground clutching her shoulder. Her head rocked back and forth against the ground. "
Aski-kiwa... aski-kiwa,"
she whispered over and over in a half-chant.
"Aski-kiwa."

Bewildered, Mariah looked at Jesse. "What's she saying?"

Jesse swallowed hard and met Mariah's eyes. "It's a Blackfoot Defiance Song. It means...'I care for nothing'. She intends to die."

"Die—" Mariah echoed incredulously, glancing down at the terrible bloody bruise on the woman's chin and the shoulder she clutched. "But... do you think she's mortally wounded?"

"I doubt it, unless you mean her spirit. She's given up. I expect that's why she sacrificed herself tonight for our sakes. Life with Pierre LaRousse..." Jesse hesitated, "from what I saw tonight, was... unpleasant at best."

"No doubt she was with him unwillingly," Creed observed. "LaRousse is half-Sioux. I doubt any self-respecting Blackfoot maiden would go with him except under duress... or desperation." He glanced up at Jesse. "I speak Blackfoot, but it's been a while. Can you make yourself understood by her?"