The Mavericks (24 page)

“I'll go with you.” She knew there was more to his story. He wasn't ready to talk about it yet, but he needed to get it all out now. “What about the horses?”

“Dusky Lady is better than any watchdog. She'll let me know if anything is around.”

Josie followed in his wake until they reached a narrow sandy patch of riverbank. Zeke worked in silence with quick efficiency. She'd hardly knelt down beside him before he handed her the pot and bowl, both scrubbed clean with sand and rinsed with water that sparkled beneath the shafts of moonlight filtering through the trees.

“You should go back,” he said.

“Not yet.”

He paused. Was he testing her, questioning in his mind whether she was strong enough to hear the rest of what had happened to him? She had known for most of her life that she had to be strong for herself, but this was the first time she wanted to be strong for anyone since her mother. It was a mystery to her how a man could be so strong he could overcome anything that happened to him, yet could still need the strength of a woman.

They walked back side by side.

When they cleared the trees, Zeke walked over to a pinto mare. She raised her head when he approached and moved away. He stood still and held out his hand. She hesitated, her large brown eyes watching him closely before she took slow steps toward him. She pushed her head against his chest, and he wrapped his arm around her neck and buried his face in her mane. It shocked Josie to realize she was jealous of the mare, that she wished she were the one giving Zeke comfort, the one offering him the consolation of her warmth, her presence. She tried to tell herself she was a fool,
but it didn't work this time. Here was a man who'd taken on the burden of making sure she got to Tombstone even though it endangered his goal of getting his mares safely to his ranch. In addition, he'd risked his life to rescue her from Gardner. Of course, she wanted to give him something in return. But how did you offer comfort to a man who wouldn't accept it?

“Are you going to tell me what happened after that?”

He didn't move from the mare, who kept nuzzling him. “I don't want to.”

“You need to.”

Why did she think she knew enough about any man to know what he needed? She'd done her best to avoid having anything to do with men. Their wants and needs didn't concern her. She didn't care. But that wasn't true with Zeke. It might not concern her, but she did care.

“She was delighted with my physical growth.” Zeke spoke into the mare's mane. “She even kept a chart of how much I grew each year, how much weight I gained, the size of my chest. She did the same thing with the horses she raised. I started to feel like a prized piece of livestock. The other slaves said she was raising me to sell, that planters on the Mississippi delta would pay up to two thousand dollars for a healthy adult male slave.”

He straightened up, patted the mare's neck, then walked toward a sorrel. The mare trotted away from him and started to graze again after she'd gone about thirty yards. When Zeke approached her a second time, she didn't run, just kept grazing while his hand rested on her withers.

“Things got worse when my voice dropped and I started to grow a beard. She made me go to bed without any clothes. Even when it got so cold I shivered, she'd run her hands all over me. If I begged her to stop, she'd get angry and beat me. She wouldn't stop until I'd made a mess of myself. Then she'd pretend to be angry, tell me I was a wicked boy, and order me to wash myself under the pump behind the house. I don't know what she'd have done if the war hadn't started. When Union soldiers landed in Texas, she sold me to some farmers. I never saw her again.”

Zeke turned to face Josie for the first time since he'd started his recital. She supposed it was too difficult for him to look at her when telling of things that must have scarred his young soul, but she would never look down on him, never blame him for what had happened, because she knew it wasn't his fault any more than what had happened to her had been her fault. But it had been worse for him, because he'd been a child. She'd been old enough to defend herself. She stepped forward and took his hand. “Tell me about the farmers.”

He hesitated briefly before his fingers closed around her hand. She could feel some of the tension leave him, heard him exhale. Had he been holding that breath, waiting to see how she would react to what he'd said?

“They didn't care about anything but getting as much work out of me as possible. They adopted boys without families, then treated them like slaves. They worked us until we were too exhausted to move, fed us little better than their pigs, and chained us up at night. After one boy died, another boy, Buck, ran away. If he
hadn't come back for me after Isabelle found him, I'd probably be dead.”

“I'd like to meet Isabelle someday,” Josie said.

Zeke chuckled, and Josie felt herself begin to relax. “Everybody loves Isabelle, but if you don't watch out, she'll run right over you.”

“Then why do you love her so much?”

“Because her love is so fierce, you can't help loving her, even when she's trying to talk you into doing something you don't want to do.”

“Does she do that a lot?”

“Sure. Isabelle thinks she knows what's best for everybody.”

“Does she?”

“Not everybody has the courage to reach for the best. Sometimes, second best is all a person can handle.”

That was one of the most enigmatic statements Josie had ever heard, but she couldn't escape the suspicion that Isabelle would have said that she—Josie—had settled for second best. She didn't like the feeling, but her conscience wouldn't let her ignore it.

“It's time for you to go to bed,” Zeke said. “You have four extra mouths to feed tomorrow.”

“If it wasn't too much trouble, I'd make them cook their own breakfast.”

“It's only three more days. We should reach Benson by then.”

She should have been pleased as well as relieved, but a vague sense of dissatisfaction wouldn't go away. As much as she'd complained about Zeke, she'd found she enjoyed being treated as a person rather than a body and a face. She had become accustomed to men's adulation, had managed to convince herself she
wanted it because it meant she would be successful, but she had stepped out of the role with unexpected ease. Still more unanticipated was her reluctance to take it up again. Even cooking breakfast didn't seem too high a price for the freedom from being stared at, grabbed at, hollered at, even having money waved at her. She liked what she did, but she nearly always came off stage with a bad taste in her mouth.

“You should check on jobs in Benson,” Zeke said. “Tombstone won't last much longer. Everything is moving south to Bisbee.”

“How can you think about a job for me after what you've just told me?”

“Those people can't hurt me. As for the rest, my adopted family has made me believe I'm as worthy of love and respect as anybody else. As long as I have them, I don't need anything else.”

Josie wasn't so sure about that.

Suzette lay next to Hawk, listening to the soft sound of his breathing as he slept. She resisted a strong impulse to wrap her arms around him and hold him close. Their time together was coming to an end. Tomorrow they'd reach Benson. Both Hawk and Zeke agreed she and Josie ought to look for jobs there before going on to Tombstone. If they didn't find anything in Benson, they could always go to Tombstone or even Bisbee. It was a very sensible plan, but Suzette was feeling rebellious. And angry.

In a few short days she'd become convinced that the only man she could ever love, the only man she would consider spending her life with, slept beside her. And he was the one man with whom such a life was impossible.
He didn't have the money she needed to finish her sister's education and support her properly until she married. He was not the kind of husband she could take back to Canada. One look at him, and Quebec society would close its doors against her and her sister forever.

She was afraid her will was failing. It had wavered a few times in the past, but reminding herself of what happened when her mother died, when her husband died and left her stranded in the gold fields, renewed her determination that nothing like that would ever happen to her sister. She planned to return to Quebec as a wealthy widow with enough money to see her sister properly married. After that, she would disappear. She didn't know what she'd do, but she wouldn't come back to the Arizona Territory.

Hawk wouldn't be waiting for her.

She'd been staring at his face for the last hour as if that would somehow prolong their time together. She wanted to memorize his face, touch him, caress his cheek, brush her fingertips across his lips, but she knew the slightest movement would cause him to wake up. It was torture to have him so close yet to know he'd always be out of reach. She was a fool to have slept with him in the first place, but she wouldn't give up this time in his arms despite all the pain she knew it would cause her in the future. This was something she'd done for herself, even though she knew it was unwise. Falling in love with Hawk was a completely unexpected complication.

She'd probably fallen in love with him the day he let her go with him to take care of the horses, but she'd only figured it out tonight as she lay next to him with
nothing to do but think about a future without him. The realization seeped into her gradually, like the cold from the ground seeped into her bones during the night, until she felt it with her whole being. It filled her with the warmth of passion and the chill of knowing it was the biggest mistake she'd ever made, but it was impossible to deny that she loved him.

Hawk lay on his side facing her, one arm curled under him and the other resting on his side. His shoulders were so wide, his chest so broad, she felt he was shielding her from the dangers of the night. He slept just as he was when they finished making love. The stars above looked down on the swell of his buttocks, the power of his thighs, the bulge of his muscled calves. In the milky-white light of the moon, his eyebrows looked like inky smudges, his lashes ebony lines, drawn on the pale mahogany of his skin. His wonderful lips that did such incredible things to her body were ever so slightly parted. Unable to stand it any longer, she reached out.

He spoke even before she touched him. “Can't you sleep?”

Her hand came to rest on the inside of the arm curled under him. “I just wanted to look at you.”

He looked at her through half-open eyelids. “Not much to see.”

He couldn't have been more wrong. There was so much to see, she didn't know where to begin. There was a whole universe of undiscovered riches inside him, riches that would remain unexplored once he isolated himself on his ranch. She wanted to tell him that, to make him believe in himself, but she was leaving. Only a woman who meant to stay had a right to do that. “There's a lot more than you think.”

“Not enough to keep you awake. You'd better get some sleep. Tomorrow could be an important day.”

The most important of her life—the day she walked away from everything she'd ever wanted.

“That's Benson,” Zeke said to Josie when the outlying buildings of the town came into view. “In a few hours we'll be rid of the thieves and we can see about finding you a job.”

Not wanting to attract the attention of strangers, he and Hawk had decided to leave the horses outside of town. They'd found a rancher more than willing to accept a gold coin in exchange for holding the mares overnight.

Hawk and Suzette rode in front of the prisoners. Josie followed behind with the wagon, Zeke riding alongside.

Several times during the last two days Zeke had started to ask Hawk to change places with him. It was odd that, now Josie was being nice to him, he felt uncomfortable around her. Considering how much he was attracted to her, his reaction didn't make sense, but there was no use denying the fact. He'd wracked his brain trying to figure out why he'd told her about having been a slave. He hadn't talked about that in twenty years. Only Hawk knew all that had happened to him.

And now Josie.

He'd never been tempted to mention his owner or the farmers to any woman before, so why should he go and spill his guts to Josie? He wasn't feeling sorry for himself. He'd stopped doing that years ago. What had happened was terrible, but it had toughened him up,
taught him he could survive anything. It had made it possible for him to live the life he and Hawk had lived for the past twenty years—ranch hand, hired escort, guard for shipments of valuable properties, from women and children to gold and silver. They'd transported prisoners and hunted down criminals, scouted for the army and carried messages through battle lines. He'd worn his accomplishments like a shield, like an accolade, but telling Josie about his past had stripped him of all that, leaving him feeling naked and exposed.

“How long are you and Hawk going to stay in Benson?” Josie asked.

“I'm not sure. It's less than twenty miles to our ranch.”

“Do you come to town often?”

“No more than we have to. Once we get ahead enough to hire someone to work for us, we probably won't come in at all.”

That was the whole point of buying a ranch in a part of the country so sparsely settled it was still a Territory. He and Hawk had decided they were tired of putting up with the insults and slights they encountered every time they entered a town. And if Josie got a job in Benson, that would be still another reason to stay away. He hadn't liked it when Josie couldn't stand to be around him, and he didn't like it any better now that he could see sympathy in her eyes every time she looked at him. He didn't need sympathy, and he didn't want it. Knowing that was the way she now felt about him angered him. He couldn't explain it, but he felt diminished by her sympathy.

Up front, Hawk brought his horse to a stop.