Winter Fire (3 page)

Cricket sighed, nudged again, then leaned his head against her chest, as relaxed as a dog.

Case couldn't help wondering how it would feel to have such sweetly knowing hands in his hair, on his body, and to hear her pleased laughter at his response.

Damnation
, he swore silently.
What's wrong with me? I keep thinking like that and it's going to be a long, uncomfortable ride
.

“Need any help getting on?” he asked curtly.

“He's your horse. Do I?”

Case moved so quickly that Sarah never knew what happened. One moment she was petting Cricket. The next instant she was in the saddle with the memory of Case lifting her as though she weighed no more than moonlight.

Before she could adjust to the change, he made another lightning move. Suddenly he was behind her, surrounding her.

She went rigid as old terror exploded in her.

Cricket sensed her fear and shied wildly.

“Easy,” Case said in a soft voice. Then, less gently, “I thought you said you could ride.”

“I can,” she said through her teeth.

“Then take the ramrod out of your spine. You're making Cricket nervous.”

Sarah let out a long breath as she realized that he had been reaching for the reins, not for her.

“You're a sudden sort of man,” she muttered.

“So I'm told.”

He reined the stallion around and headed out of the ravine.

Slowly she relaxed. Cricket's walk was an easy, swinging sort of gait that covered a lot of ground without any fuss at all.

“Good horse,” she said after a time. “Really good.”

“He and Bugle Boy are the last of them.”

“Of what?”

“The horses my brother and I bred. War and raiders got the rest, including my brother's family.”

His voice was calm, emotionless, as though he were describing something that had happened to a stranger.

“At least you had something left,” Sarah said. “All I had was a ragged dress, a young brother, and enough hunger to eat grass.”

“War?”

“Hurricane. Six years ago.”

Subtly Case shifted position, trying to get more comfortable. The fragrance and warmth and closeness of Sarah Kennedy were giving his body pure hell.

“Louisiana?” he asked, forcing himself to speak normally.

“East Texas.”

He took a breath. The scent of female warmth and roses made him wish he hadn't.

“Six years?” he said. “You must have been a kid.”

“Thirteen going on fourteen. Old enough.”

“For what?”

“Marriage.”

The tone of her voice didn't encourage any more questions.

That was all right with Case. The faintly husky, wholly feminine sound of her voice was doing nothing to settle the heavy running of his blood.

Cricket's big strides ate up the few miles to Sarah's home. She never gave directions. Case never asked.

He knew exactly where to go.

The realization sank into her as slowly and completely as the scent of apples, horse, and leather. Yet instead of being frightened that a stranger knew the precise location of her isolated home, she was intrigued.

Wonder what he's doing here?
she asked herself.

She didn't voice her curiosity aloud. Even if she had been rude enough to ask Case what he was doing in the wilderness, she wasn't a fool. Only outlaws, Indians, prospectors, cowboys, and crazy artists came to the remote stone desert that was her home.

She doubted that he was a cowhand. Cricket certainly wasn't an ordinary cow pony. Nor was there any sign of prospecting gear tied on behind the saddle.

From what she could see of him, he didn't look Indian. That left outlaw or crazy artist.

Whatever else Case was, he wasn't crazy.

He reined in at the head of the steep trail that led down to Lost River Canyon's wide, cottonwood-lined valley. Because the moon shone brilliantly between the flying clouds, he was careful to stay in shadows.

A few hundred feet below the lip of the plateau, a lantern shone through the cracks of an awkwardly built cabin. A pole corral with a woven willow shelter at one end served as a barn. There was an orderly kitchen garden, fruit trees bare-branched in winter, and meadow hay stacked behind the willow shelter. A wickiup and a small, low hut stood well off to one side.

“Who's on guard?” Case asked.

“No one.”

His eyes narrowed. Instinct told him two things. The first was that she wasn't lying.

The second was that someone was on guard.

With a swift movement he dismounted, keeping the bulk of Cricket between himself and the small ranch.

“No point in alarming your menfolk,” he said. “I'll watch you to safety from here.”

Sarah wasn't surprised to find herself lifted off the big
stallion and lowered to the ground. What surprised her was that she was beginning to like the feel of Case's strength as much as she liked the scent of apples on his breath.

I wonder what he looks like beneath that wide-brimmed hat
, she thought.
His eyes seem light and his hair is dark, he hasn't shaved in a week or two, but he's clean otherwise
.

Would he taste like apples warmed by the sun?

The idle thought shocked her more than anything else that had happened that night.

Case heard the broken breath she drew and saw the sudden widening of her eyes. He knew with primitive certainty that the same fire burning in him had touched her as well.

“Don't go out alone again,” he said flatly. “Next time I might not be around to get you out of trouble.”

“I wasn't
in
trouble until you flattened me beneath you like a shirt for ironing,” she retorted.

“I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you.”

“You didn't. You're just…a lot of man.”

Again, the husky edge to her voice touched him like a whip of fire.

“Stop looking at me like that,” he said.

“Like what?”

“Like a girl with love on her mind. There's no love left in me. All I have is
this
.”

He bent and caught her mouth beneath his. He meant the kiss to be hard and swift, a warning not to spin dreams around him.

Yet as he bent down, he drew in the scent of roses.

He found he could no more ravage her mouth than he would have shredded a rosebud. The tip of his tongue glided over her lips in a tender, searing caress.

Then Case was gone, leaving Sarah alone in the night with the taste of a stranger on her lips and the wonder of her first kiss shivering through her body.

T
he next
morning Case was awake well before dawn. The desert night had been cold as a mountain creek, but that wasn't why he was up and about early.

He hadn't slept much. The taste of Sarah kept coming to him just as he drifted off to sleep. Then he would come awake in a rush that guaranteed he would stay awake until his blood cooled.

That was why he was up before the sun, sitting on his heels, talking to his horse.

“Well, Cricket. I was right. She tasted of roses and heat and just enough salt to tell a man that she's all woman.”

The big bay stallion flicked an ear in Case's direction, but didn't otherwise interrupt his grazing.

“And I'm a damned fool for finding out.”

Cricket snorted, swept his muzzle across his foreleg, and resumed grazing.

“No need to rub it in.”

The horse ignored him.

“What Sarah doesn't know is that Ab isn't a patient man. Along about the first real snow, he'll get tired of living in a brush wickiup. He'll start thinking about that crooked little cabin and the warm girl inside it.”

Cricket lifted his head, pricked his ears, and looked beyond Case.

Even as he spun around and came to his feet, a six-gun appeared in his left hand. Calmly he waited for whatever the horse had already discovered.

From the crest of the ravine, a coyote's yapping howl rose into a sky that was slowly being bleached of stars by a lemon-colored dawn.

After a moment Cricket returned to grazing.

“Just a lonely song dog, huh?”

He holstered his six-gun and went back to sitting on his heels. Since he wasn't planning on stalking anyone at the moment, he was wearing riding boots instead of moccasins.

There was no fire to give warmth and comfort to the cold dawn. His breakfast was as spare as his camp—jerky, hard biscuits, and water from the seep where he had found Sarah Kennedy hiding.

Ab knows about her
, Case thought uneasily.
He knows where she is. He knows all she has to defend her is an old outlaw, a whore, and a boy
.

“Maybe I should stop dogging Ab's trail and waiting for a chance to get the Culpeppers all at once,” he said to Cricket.

Grass ripped off by strong white teeth was Cricket's only comment.

“Maybe I should hang out in that rawhide little settlement over to the river. That's where the boys let off steam. What do you think, Cricket?”

Whatever the stallion thought, he kept on grazing.

“I could take cards in another poker game,” Case said. “Sooner or later one of the Culpeppers will call me out, just like their kin Jeremiah and Ichabod did down near the Spanish Bottoms.”

He didn't talk about the fact that Ichabod had been almost as fast on the draw as Case himself. He had come very close to dying that night.

It hadn't mattered too much then.

Now it bothered him a bit. Not the thought of dying.
The war had burned that emotion out of him along with the others.

But he couldn't help feeling responsible for Sarah.

He knew with gut-wrenching certainty just how cruel Ab could be to women. Case had seen the results of Ab's work, and that of his kin, scattered from Texas to Nevada. The more helpless the victim, the better the Culpeppers liked it.

Even children weren't safe.

Ted and little Em
, Case thought.
They would still be alive if I hadn't talked Hunter into going off to war to fight for honor and nobility and Rebel pride
.

At fifteen I was all hellfire and brimstone, ready to kill Yankees from dawn to sundown to dawn
.

At fifteen I was a real horse's butt
.

There was no heat in his thoughts, simply acceptance. He had taken Hunter away from family and off to war, leaving the little children in the hands of their mother, a woman who wasn't fit to raise a pup, much less a child.

No one had been there when the Culpeppers descended on Ted and little Emily.

Water under the bridge
, he told himself.
Or it will be when I shovel dirt on the last Culpepper grave
.

“Sooner I start, sooner I finish,” he said aloud. “Then I can stop burying garbage and get on with what's important—finding the right place for a ranch.”

He swallowed the last of the water from his tin cup, hooked it onto his belt, and stood.

Dawn spilled over the land in a silent golden wave. Pillars, buttes, pinnacles, mesas, and plateaus of solid stone condensed out of the dawn in every shade of red and darkness.

As though summoned by daybreak, a long wind stirred. Clean, cold air curled around Case like a lover, ruffling his black hair and caressing his face. The air was scented with time and distance, stone and ancient sunrises.

The song dog called again.

The wind answered.

“I'll build my ranch in a place like this,” he said softly. “These stone battlements were here long before Adam. They'll be here long after the last man is nothing but the taste of ashes in God's mouth.”

For a few moments longer he stood and watched the land being born from the womb of the night. Something close to peace softened the hard line of his mouth.

“The land abides,” he said. “No matter how foolish or evil men are, the land is born clean again each day.”

The coyote sang once more, then was silent.

“Amen, brother. Amen.”

His mind made up, he turned away from the haunting beauty of the dawn. With an economy of motion that spoke of long practice living out of saddlebags, he rolled his bedding in a tarpaulin, tied it, and set it aside.

The saddle was upside down over a rock so that the sheepskin lining could dry out. So was the saddle blanket, which doubled as extra bedding for Case when the weather was bitter.

As soon as he reached for the saddle, Cricket started grazing faster. The stallion knew they would be on the trail soon. Grass in the stone desert wasn't easy to come by.

The horse didn't pause in his eating while Case gave him a quick grooming, cleaned his hooves, and cinched the saddle up tight.

As always, Case checked his repeating rifle and shotgun before he mounted. As always, he found them in battle-ready condition. He slid them into their individual saddle sheaths.

He didn't need to check his six-gun. He had done that the instant he awakened.

Quickly he tied on the saddlebags and the bedroll, picked up Cricket's bridle, and looked around for anything that he might have forgotten.

The ground was bare of everything except tracks. Case wasn't a forgetting kind of man.

As he approached Cricket, bridle in hand, the stallion ripped grass, chewed, and swallowed with impressive speed.

“You just love slobbering up that bit with green stuff, don't you?”

The stallion lifted his head to receive the bit. Ropes of green drool hung down either side of his elegant muzzle.

Case made a disgusted sound. “I know you're laughing at me, you spoiled devil.”

Despite his words, he was gentle as he bridled Cricket. He had been raised to value good horseflesh in the same way a smart man valued a good weapon. Take care of them and they would take care of you in turn.

Too bad people aren't like horses and guns
, he thought.
Be fewer wars that way
.

And no Culpeppers at all
.

He swung into the saddle with a swift, easy movement. Cricket didn't flatten his ears or hump his back like many Western horses first thing in the morning. He accepted being ridden the same way he accepted dawn, just a normal part of life.

“C'mon, Cricket. Let's you and me check out that raggedy-ass wickiup saloon. We'll see if that one-eyed padre is marking the cards any smarter this time.”

 

It was late afternoon before Case reached the place that was mockingly referred to by one and all as Spanish Church.

The name partly came from the fact that the huge rock formation that was the rear wall of the building looked like a Spanish church if the man doing the looking was too drunk to focus very well. The rest of the name owed its origins to the original owner of the saloon, Pader Gunther. Pader was quickly corrupted into “padre.” Since then, whoever ran the bar was called the padre.

The nickname Spanish Church stuck to the place like a bad reputation. The bad reputation, at least, was earned.

The settlement was hardly more than a handful of rough shacks strewn along Cottonwood River. Most of the time the “river” was a creek small enough to spit across, but it ran year-round, which was rare in this part of the West. The creek's source was in a cluster of distant mountains, where spring runoff raced down from snowy peaks through dry slickrock country, and from there into a maze of stone canyons no white man had penetrated.

Spanish Church had no real street, no building worthy of the name, and no stable. The watering trough was the same muddy pool that supplied drinking water for the humans whose thirst wasn't quenched by the local rotgut.

From the top of the nearby rise, Case watched Spanish Church through his spyglass. He could see eight riding animals tied or hobbled along the creek.

Two of them were sorrel mules.

No matter how carefully he studied the mules, he couldn't tell which Culpepper was inside the brush and canvas structure that passed for a saloon.

“Good thing you spent most of the night filling your belly,” he said to Cricket. “It's mighty thin pickings down there for man and beast alike.”

Too many animals had been left along the creek to forage for themselves while their riders drank away the days and nights until their money or their stomachs gave out.

“Maybe Ab rode one of those mules,” Case said softly. “Maybe I'll just cut off the snake's head and let the rest of the body thrash around until it dies of its own accord.”

Maybe
…

His mouth flattened into a grim line beneath his black beard stubble.

But not damned likely
, he thought.
Ab might have been the one who personally savaged Ted and Em before he
sold them to the Comancheros, but the rest of his kith and kin didn't raise a finger to stop him
.

For a few minutes longer Case weighed the advantages and dangers of riding into the settlement.

If Ab was there, Case would be recognized, but not as one of the “Texicans” who was following the Culpeppers with a saddlebag full of “Wanted Dead or Alive” posters.

Ab would see him as a gunhand hired in Nevada's Ruby Mountains by the recently deceased Gaylord Culpepper. The Culpeppers had tried to get a good hideout the easy way—an outright grab of the B Bar and Ladder S ranches from their legal owners.

The grab had failed, but it had been touch and go for a while.

What Case didn't know was whether anyone had figured out that he had been working against the Culpeppers in Nevada.

If Ab knew, he would shoot Case on sight.

Only one way to find out
, he decided.

Absently he drew his six-gun, spun the cylinder to check the load once more, holstered the gun, and secured the revolver with a rawhide thong. He pulled a second cylinder from his jacket pocket, saw that it was fully loaded, and put it away once more.

It would be nice to have Hunter at my back when I ride down there
, he thought.

Then he thought of Elyssa, who loved Hunter as few men were ever privileged to be loved by a woman.

Better for Hunter to stay in the Rubys. If I don't come back, no woman will hang crêpe and no kids will go hungry
.

He mounted Cricket with the same economy of movement that he did everything. Until people saw Case standing next to other men, his size wasn't noticeable. He was just another quiet, easy-moving man who was thoroughly at home on a horse.

As always, he inspected the enemy territory close up in
addition to his earlier study at a distance. He chose a path down the long rise that would circle the settlement.

He wasn't particularly expecting guards or an ambush. On the other hand, it wouldn't have surprised him. Spanish Church was no place for choirboys.

The first man he saw was facedown near a huge clump of rabbit brush. He was either dead drunk or dead, period. It was hard to say from a hundred feet away, and that was as close as Case planned on coming.

Cricket cocked an ear in the man's direction, snorted, and chose a wide path around him.

“Don't blame you, boy,” Case said. “I've smelled sweeter skunks left out in the sun to dry.”

Before he went into the saloon, he reined Cricket in a circle around the other grazing animals, checking brands.

Circle A. Rocking M.

He recognized the brands instantly. Both were from ranches that were close to Sarah Kennedy's home. Not very close, however. Calling them neighbors would be stretching the truth thin enough to read newsprint through.

The owners of the Circle A and Rocking M had settled in the water-rich high country. It was a hard two days' ride from the stone desert where Hal Kennedy had staked his claim.

The remaining horses wore brands that were either botched too badly to read or had been deliberately doctored to change the original brand.

The mules' shiny sorrel hides weren't branded at all.

There were three more horses back up a shady draw, standing three-legged and swatting flies with their long tails. One horse was saddled. The others wore packs full of supplies. The packs were tied off with neat diamond hitches.

The horses were mustangs, but they had good clean legs, reasonably deep chests, and muscular rumps. Though obviously well cared for, the animals weren't shod. They didn't need to be. Any mustang that got sore feet from
running over stony ground didn't last long enough to grow up in the first place.

Pick of the litter
, Case thought, looking at the three mustangs.
Somebody around here knows horseflesh
.