Trilby (13 page)

“Yes, I remember,” Sissy murmured, but her mind wasn’t really on it.

“We’d better go back.”

“But we just got here!”

“Sissy!”

“Now, Trilby. I just want to poke around a bit. This isn’t a dry wash, after all. Why don’t you pick up Richard at the corral?” she added, with a sly grin. “I can’t be
bothered to move right now.” She sighed theatrically. “You shall have to go alone.” She peered up at Trilby and grinned. “I’m sure you’ll be heartbroken about having to pick me up on your way back.”

Trilby’s heart leaped. It was an opportunity to be alone with Richard, who’d ridden with them as far as the corrals to watch the men brand cattle. The girls had left him there with a promise to be back in a few minutes to pick him up. Sissy was playing Cupid, and Trilby blessed her for it. Except that she’d have to drive the buggy alone. She studied the quiet horse nervously; he was tethered by having his reins trail on the ground, a miracle of training, she sometimes thought.

“I’m still a bit nervous about that horse,” Trilby said worriedly.

“He likes you. Just snap the reins to make him go and pull back on them to make him stop. He’ll follow the road, and Richard will drive on the way back.”

“Well…all right. But I shouldn’t leave you alone out here—” Trilby began.

“Don’t be silly. I’m perfectly safe. I even have this ugly thing your father insisted we carry.” She picked up the pistol gingerly by the handle as if it were a snake. “Ugh!”

“I’ll only be a minute or so,” Trilby promised, her eyes brightening with delight at the thought of being alone with Richard. “You are such a lovely person!”

“I know it.” Sissy chuckled. “Go on. Give Julie something to worry about.”

“She could have come with us,” Trilby muttered.

“And ruined her complexion in the sun? Horrors!”

Trilby laughed. She climbed into the buggy. “I won’t be long.”

“It’s all right if you are,” Sissy murmured, lost already in her pottery hunting.

Trilby made it to the corral in one piece, but she gratefully gave the reins to Richard on the way back. She and Richard bumped along the road with a lengthy silence between them. He was hot and half out of humor from the heat and the smell of branding. He’d gotten sick, actually sick, at the corrals, and some of the cowboys had laughed at him. His pride was stinging.

“I detest this place,” he said irritably. “I’m sorry I came.”

Trilby shifted uneasily. “I’d hoped you might enjoy your visit, Richard,” she said. “It’s not so bad once you get used to it.”

“I can’t agree.” His eyes scanned the horizon. “It’s like hell, pardon the expression. It really is a wasteland.”

Trilby lowered her eyes to the floorboard as he touched the reins gently to the horse’s rump, forcing him to go faster. “Are you going to marry Julie, Richard?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “She’s pretty and sweet and her people have money. She certainly isn’t content to live in the middle of the damned desert!”

Trilby’s eyes brightened and overflowed with tears.

“Oh, damn! Here, Trilby, I didn’t mean that.” Richard pulled back on the reins and stopped the horse. His hand touched her pitiful face. “I’m sorry, little one. Really, really sorry. Trilby…”

He tilted her chin up and looked at her soft, trembling mouth. He’d only kissed it once, long ago, but it looked very tempting with her gray eyes full of tears. Smiling ruefully, he bent and brushed his mouth slowly over her
lips before he settled it between them and pulled her close.

Trilby had expected stars to shatter if Richard kissed her like this. She was surprised to find that it was nothing like the explosive pleasure Thorn had kindled in her body. That wounded her, and she reached up to kiss him back, trying to force herself to feel what she must feel. She loved him! Of course she did!

The man on horseback close by was certain of it when he saw them kissing. He was bristling with fury, feeling betrayed and murderous.

“Stop,” Naki said quietly, reaching out a firm, strong hand. “That isn’t the way.”

“You’re one to talk about restraint,” Thorn said brutally, jerking his arm away.

“Oh, but restraint and the courts make a good combination for my people,” he told Thorn. “One day we’ll throw you white eyes out on your ears, just as the Mexicans are determined to do with their Spanish overlords in this revolution they’ve started. Except that we’ll do it legally—and beat you at your own game.”

“Good luck to you.”

“Women are fickle,” he added, watching as the woman disengaged herself from the man. “That one is out of place here.”

“She wouldn’t be if she tried to fit,” Thorn said through his teeth. With his broad-brimmed hat pulled low over his lean face, he looked menacing. “Damn that Eastern dandy! Why did he have to come out here now? He isn’t even a man! My God, he was vomiting at the sight of cattle being branded!”

Naki chuckled softly. “I noticed.”

“So did everyone else. What does she see in him?”

“The past,” Naki said wisely. “Memories that live in him.” He looked at his friend. “If you want her, take her.”

“That’s your philosophy, is it?”

Naki shrugged. “Women among my people are strong and independent and fiery, much like Mexican women. They laugh at weakness in a man. That one might be the same. You might show her the blond man’s weaknesses and your strengths.”

“Sometimes you amaze me with your insight,” Thorn said thoughtfully. “Let’s go down and break up that touching tryst.”

Naki’s eyes turned skyward. “Rain’s coming. Wasn’t that skinny woman in glasses with her when they came out?”

Thorn frowned, wondering how Naki knew that. Thorn had seen them go bumping by in the buggy, but Naki hadn’t been around. “So she was. They were going to look for pottery, her younger brother said.”

“I’d better find her. The ruins are near a dry wash.”

“She seemed pretty frightened of you when we were introduced. I’d better go.”

“No. I will,” Naki replied, smiling mischievously. “I’ll take her back to the ranch for you.”

“Don’t enjoy it too much.”

Naki raised his eyebrows. “Would I enjoy the terror of a naive young woman?”

“You sure as hell would! Just remember that they’re Jack Lang’s guests, and I want his water.”

“You want his daughter just as much, unless I miss my guess.”

“Get out of here,” Thorn muttered.

Naki chuckled. He wheeled his pinto and rode away toward the ruins.

Trilby had pulled away from Richard when she spotted the riders in the distance. Angrily she realized at once who they were.

“What is it?” Richard asked, smiling. He thought she was shy and it touched him. She wasn’t as exciting as Julie, but her soft mouth was sweet and he liked kissing her. Having Trilby under his spell was too flattering to miss.

“It’s Thorn Vance and one of his men—the Apache, I think,” Trilby said nervously.

Richard turned his eyes toward the rise where they were sitting. As he watched, the Indian turned his pony and rode away. Vance moved toward them, as at home in the saddle as any of the cowboys. Richard was irritated by the way he looked, so damned arrogant and confident, when he rode up beside the buggy.

“Good day,” he said, touching his fingers to his hat. “Having trouble with the horse, or are you lost?”

Trilby flushed. “Neither. We only stopped to talk,” she choked. The way Thorn was looking at her made her uncomfortable. He brought back vivid memories of the fiesta and the feel of his long, powerful body against her own while his mouth made magic against hers. Kissing him had been as explosive as touching fire, while the same caress with Richard was oddly unsatisfying.

“Surely you must have something better to do?” Richard seconded, with angry eyes.

Thorn pushed back his hat. “Oh, I do,” he agreed, with amusement. “But there’s a flash flood looming. I think you’d better get home while you can.”

Trilby suddenly remembered her friend. “Sissy! I left her at the ruins!”

“Naki’s gone to fetch her,” Thorn said. “She’ll be all right.”

“The Apache?” Trilby was horrified. “She’ll faint dead away! She’s afraid of him!”

“She’d better get used to him,” Thorn said. “He’s going camping with us. You do still want to go?” he asked Richard.

The young man brightened. “I say, of course I do. It’s been dead boring, just sitting around the house.”

“You’re certain you like to hunt?” Thorn asked, with a veiled reference to the man’s unsettled stomach at the branding.

Richard’s cheekbones flushed. “There is a substantial difference between hunting and tormenting cattle.”

“Rustling is a real threat out here, son,” Thorn said condescendingly. “Cattle we don’t brand, we don’t keep.”

“I’m certain that Richard knows that, Mr. Vance,” Trilby said pointedly.

He met her eyes levelly, leaning over the pommel of his saddle. His dark eyes twinkled with humor and traces of desire. They dropped to her soft mouth and lingered there so long that her pulse began to race. She fingered the reins nervously, afraid that Richard might notice Thorn’s interest.

He did. It amused him that the older man found Trilby attractive when Trilby obviously didn’t share that interest. He slid a possessive arm over her shoulders and drew her close, feeling her go soft.

“This hunting trip, when will we go?” Richard asked Thorn.

He straightened in the saddle, his fascination with Trilby’s mouth turning to frank dislike of the dandy sitting so close beside her.

“In two or three days,” he said. “I’ll make arrangements with Jack Lang and lay in some supplies. You have your own rifles with you?”

“Yes, indeed,” Richard replied. “I never travel without my hunting and camping gear.”

“Naturally not.”

“I’m sorry that you’re in such a hurry, Mr. Vance,” Trilby said meaningfully, “because of the rain.”

“Is that why I’m in such a hurry?” he asked. “Very well. I must be, I suppose. Be careful and don’t linger in any dips in the road. It could be fatal. I could escort you, if you like.”

“We can get home all by ourselves,” she muttered. “You’re sure your Indian cowboy will see about Sissy?”

“I’m sure,” he assured her.

Richard frowned. “You’ll see about Sissy yourself, I hope,” he told Thorn. “I don’t like the idea of my sister alone with an Indian.”

“Your sister will be perfectly safe, I assure you.”

Richard took that to mean that Thorn would go along after her and he relaxed.

“Very well then. Good day.” Richard twitched the reins and urged the horse into a trot, leaving a smug, amused Thorn behind.

“He does have a way of making one bristle, doesn’t he?” Richard said as he removed his arm and stretched lazily. “Still, it will be pleasant to do a spot of hunting. Here you go—” he handed her the reins “—you drive for a while. I’m simply exhausted. Try not to hit too many bumps, won’t you, lovely?”

He leaned back, crossed his arms, and closed his eyes—and Trilby could have screamed. She realized only then that Richard had been paying her attention to get at Thorn. It hadn’t even been real, only pretended. She wanted to cry.

As they wound down the road toward the ranch, the clouds moved closer. She hoped Sissy would forgive her.

S
ISSY WAS GETTING
more nervous by the minute.

There was thunder in the distance and Trilby still hadn’t come back. She remembered the terrifying story Trilby had told her about the floods that had killed several people a few months back. She wrapped her arms tight around herself, clutching her precious pieces of pottery in the handkerchief where she’d tied them. She hoped her passion for the past wasn’t going to be her downfall.

The sound of a horse’s hooves diverted her. Odd, she thought, there wasn’t the usual metallic noise that accompanied the approach of Mr. Lang’s horses. Her heart began to race. Unshod ponies were usually ridden by Apaches, she seemed to recall.

Even as the thought occurred to her, the tall Apache Mr. Vance had called Naki came into view over the ridge. She could hardly believe it! Her eyes widened and her heart leaped. He did look so majestic against the clouds. But she didn’t dare let him see her interest.

He rode straight down to her and reined in, sitting high in his saddle to look down his arrogant nose at her. He didn’t smile menacingly this time. He simply stared. His dark eyes gave away nothing as they registered her poise and composure. This was a far cry from her most recent behavior when they’d met.

She really was thin, he thought, and much too pale. But even if she was afraid of him and hiding it, she wasn’t running. That intrigued him.

“Rain,” he said, pointing toward the horizon and then to the dry wash nearby. “White woman drown in wash when rain come,” he said stoically.

She stared up at him with a mischievous gleam in her green eyes. She was sure there was much more to this man than what he showed. He was very handsome, she thought, the kind of man who’d never give a plain-Jane like her a second thought. She sighed as she realized that her lack of looks was just as much a handicap out here as it had been back home. Nothing changed except the location in which you were miserable, she thought.

“You don’t have to look as if you find the prospect of my imminent demise so delightful,” she said, with droll humor.

Both his eyebrows arched. “Perhaps you sink like rock in that rig.” He nodded toward her long, thick skirt.

His sarcasm unseated her temper. “Perhaps you fall off that high horse and break your arrogant neck.” She mimicked his accent.

He chuckled and crossed his wrists over the pommel of his saddle, leaning over it to study her. He liked her. He couldn’t remember feeling such warm thoughts about a woman since Conchita. Conchita had been beautiful. This woman wasn’t. Yet there was something about her that touched him. “Heap plenty rattlesnakes out here.”

“Sorry to bash your hopes, but I don’t mind rattly snakes. We have them back East, and bigger than the ones I’ve seen in Arizona so far.” She looked past him.
“I’d just love to stand and talk to you, dear man, but I don’t relish drowning out here. My friend should be along soon to pick me up.”

“Not soon.” He shook his head. “Too busy kissing white man in buggy.”

“Oh, bother!” she said worriedly. “She’ll forget me and I’ll drown!”

“Injun save white woman. I carry you away from here.”

She eyed him warily. This didn’t sound real. Apaches lived in a modern age, but she knew for a fact that some of them still lived free in the Sierra Madre and raided Mexican villages even now. If he was having a silent laugh at her expense, and she thought he was, it was time to make him show his true colors.

“In a pig’s eye,” she said smartly. “I’m not going to be carried off to your tepee and made to chew your moccasins. I haven’t forgotten that you asked Mr. Vance how many horses my brother wanted for me. I wouldn’t go to the nearest rock with you!”

His dark eyes twinkled. “Chili pepper,” he murmured.

“Red-hot chili pepper,” she agreed. “Watch out I don’t burn you, red man.”

So much for subterfuge. He wouldn’t mind giving himself away to this spicy Easterner. “You’re an interesting proposition, Miss Bates,” he replied in perfect English. “But we can discuss your appalling metaphors later. I don’t like the look of that cloud. Climb up, before we both drown here.”

Both eyebrows arched as she realized that her hunch about him was right. She laughed and pursed her lips.
“It’s the sun,” she said. “I’ve been out here too long. You make big joke, huh?”

“I speak English rather well, as it happens, and drowning is nothing to joke about,” he replied easily, moving the horse closer. He reached down a big, lean hand. “Come on. We haven’t much time. Distance is deceptive out here, and floods can be upon you before you realize it. Two of Vance’s acquaintances drowned in the summer flood, and they knew the land.”

“You really do speak English quite well,” she said shyly.

“I speak English, Spanish, and Latin. Even some Greek. But English is adequate for the time being.”

The sound of rain prompted her to action. She reached up and found herself jerked into the saddle in front of him. His strength fascinated her. She was used to rather academic men, not men of action. He controlled the nervous pinto expertly with only the pressure of his knees while he settled her against him and turned the horse back toward the Lang ranch. He smelled of wind and piñon pine and desert. He wasn’t at all dirty, although a bit of the yellow dust feathered his clothing. It feathered her own as well.

“Why?” she asked, staring at the handsome bronze face that was much too close for comfort.

“Why the deception?” He smiled with faint arrogance. “I enjoy living down to the opinion most of you whites have of the poor ignorant savage.”

She flushed. “Ouch.”

“I suppose it never occurs to any of you that there were great civilizations in this country when your European ancestors were knocking one another over the head with sticks.”

“The Hohokam were very civilized,” she had to agree. “Their society was structured around peaceful cohabitation and sharing, and their purification rites for killing an enemy lasted so long that they were hardly ever able to go to war,” she added.

“You’re educated,” he said, smiling with pleased surprise. He glanced down at her as the horse eased its way over the rutted dirt road. “Yes. The Hohokam lived here perhaps thousands of years ago. They irrigated the land and cultivated it, planted crops, built cities. They were intelligent and peaceful.”

“Not
your
ancestors…?”

He burst out laughing.

“No,” she exclaimed, thinking she’d insulted him, “I didn’t mean it like that. I meant they weren’t the fore-bears of the Apache, were they?”

“No one knows. Archaeologists believe they may be the ancestors of the Pima and Papago,” he said. “Do you even know what the word
Apache
means?”

“No.”

“It’s a Zuñi word. It means
enemy.
”

“What do the Apache call themselves?”

“The People.”

“I knew a Cherokee girl just briefly back home,” Sissy said excitedly. “She said the Cherokee word for themselves means
Principal People.
”

“Sioux also means
people.
Most Indians call themselves that. How did you manage to learn so much about us through all that fear?”

“It wasn’t fear. I was living down to your image of white women,” she teased. “Apaches carry off women captives….”

He looked down at her and pursed his lips. “So we
do,” he said, amused. His eyes fell to her bodice. “And just imagine what we do to them. My, my.”

She colored a little and glared at him. “Mr. Naki—”

“I’m called Two Fists in my own language,” he said, correcting her. “Doesn’t that sound properly Indian, as names go?”

“If you could stop looking at me like that…”

His dark eyes looked directly into hers. “You do blush beautifully,” he remarked. “I don’t rape white women, Miss Bates. In fact, I prefer darker skin and more of it. We won’t mention that what you’re thinking is impossible on horseback.”

She went scarlet then. “I wasn’t thinking a single thing!”

“I suppose I should apologize for making an indecent remark like that, but you know how we savages are.”

“Of all the audacious, outrageous—”

“They even call us that in books,” he added, ignoring her adjectives. “Noble savages. As if we don’t have brains at all.”

She laughed finally. He was outrageous, all right. “How did you learn all those languages you said you speak?” she asked, diverted.

“The priests hid me when the U.S. Government moved Geronimo’s whole Apache tribe out to Florida after Geronimo surrendered. Eventually they got as far back as Fort Sill, Oklahoma, but I was keen to stay in my mountains here. The priests discovered that I could be taught. So they taught me.”

“Your parents?”

“My mother died when I was born. My father was killed trying to escape the cavalry when they rounded us up,” he said bitterly.

“I’m sorry….”

“Your people always are, aren’t they?” he asked as the past came searing through him. He looked at her without seeing her. “They took everything we had and killed and enslaved us in the process. They virtually destroyed the Chiricahua Apache. I have more in common with the Mexican peasants than I have with the whites, Miss Bates. I know what it is to be an oppressed race without the means to rebel.”

“Your people did fight,” she argued, “just as the Mexicans are fighting now.”

“Perhaps the Mexicans will win. There are enough of them—and God knows, their cause is a just one,” he said, with fervor. “But my people were few and scattered. And do you know what separates us from the whites, Miss Bates? Do you know the difference between your people and mine? It’s greed. The white man wants to own or control everything around him. The Apache wants only to live at peace with the world and his people. Greed is as alien to most of us as honor is to most whites.”

She was shocked. It had been a morning for revelations, but this was an especially unexpected one. He was more learned than she, and probably more intelligent. How terrible to have such a mind and be treated like a monkey.

“It must be very painful to have people misjudge you so badly,” she said after a minute.

He searched her quiet, soft eyes. “Thorn said that I frightened you. He didn’t want me to come and fetch you.”

“I’m not afraid of you at all,” she said ruefully. “You aren’t the only one who can act. I don’t suppose you
might be willing to teach me about your culture?” she asked.

He chuckled dryly as they approached the Lang ranch. “I might be persuaded.”

“Why are you called Two Fists?” she wondered out loud.

He reined in the pony and shifted her, his eyes level and steady on hers. “When the cavalry came for us, I went for one of the soldiers with both fists.”

“Oh.”

“I was five years old,” he murmured, smiling. “The priests begged me away from the officer I attacked, and he let me go with them. I’ve never forgotten. He was a doctor. He’s stationed at Fort Huachuca and he visits me from time to time.”

“He must be a kind man.”

“In his case, it was a great kindness. Apaches had killed his wife and young son the month before.”

“He must be a very special man.”

“Yes. There’s been enough killing on both sides to make for uneasy acquaintanceship between my people and yours.”

“I suppose so.” She moved her hand and it encountered his long, thick black hair. She started to remove her fingers, but then she impulsively touched the sleek thickness of the long black strands. “I’ve never seen a man with long hair before.”

The touch of her fingers in his hair was starkly disturbing. He caught them and pushed them away, his eyes suddenly cold and unapproachable.

“Excuse—excuse me,” she stammered, averting her eyes.

He felt guilty for his brutal rejection, but he had no
place in his life for her. White and red never mixed. They could become each other’s worst liability.

“Hopeless situations are best avoided,” he said icily.

When she realized what he was admitting, her heart raced like a wild thing. Slowly, so slowly, she lifted her eyes to his and found something in them that she’d been searching for all her life.

“No,” she whispered in protest as the sensation of being snared formed in her body.

“No,” he agreed. But the hand at her back moved up into the thick bun that held it at her nape. He arched her upward so that her body touched his, so that her face was close enough to let his eyes fill the world. She trembled with a surge of sudden, shocking pleasure.

His fingers contracted and something purely male and conquering filled his face and eyes as he read her submission and reacted to it.

“Confine your relic hunts to the land around the house as long as you stay here,” he said huskily. “Because this,” he emphasized, his hand reinforcing his mastery, “is a high wind with no shelter. Do you understand?”

“I think so.” She shivered with something approaching pleasure. It was a sensation she’d never experienced.

He nodded and his hand slowly released its grasp. His eyes searched hers. “I had a woman,” he said huskily. “She was young and Mexican and very, very pretty. We lived just over the border in Mexico. Her brother was a dissident who hated the government and was friends with a man named Blanco, who is becoming well known today as a revolutionary. One day an officer in the Mexican government came by our house with his company and Conchita’s brother, Luis, was
there. They had been hunting him. They shot Luis and accused us of being revolutionaries.” His eyes darkened with pain. “The officer grabbed Conchita and I went for him. Two of his men helped knock me out. I won’t tell you what was done to Conchita. Fortunately, somewhere in the middle of it, she died.” His face hardened. “I want no more of what I felt for her. I work for Thorn Vance and I live alone. I will live alone for the rest of my life.”

Tears stung her eyes hotly and overflowed, fogging her lenses. She wept for him and the woman he’d loved. She wept for herself for having the misfortune to feel something so suddenly for a man who didn’t want anyone’s affection. She wept for the world.

“I abhor tears,” he said through his teeth.

She took off her glasses and wiped her eyes with the back of her dust-sprinkled hand. “Oh, so do I,” she whispered brokenly. “So please don’t ever cry in front of me. I’ll just go to pieces if you do.”