Bonds, Parris Afton (10 page)

For how long they rode that night, Anne was not
sure. She only knew of the acute ache in her buttocks, shooting up her spine,
and even jarring her teeth from the interminable hours astride the horse. And
she remembered trying to keep awake and her head falling forward, jerking her
awake again.

Brant kept the horse to the stony beds of washed-out
gulleys and rocky barrancas. When a riverbed forked, he would take one fork,
backtrack, then take the other fork. All this seemed to be taking precious
time, but Anne kept her complaints to herself, determined not to let him see
her frustration.

Once, when she shivered from the night cold, Brant stopped
and wrapped his saddle blanket about her. If he noticed the way her deerskin
dress hiked up over her bare thighs, he said nothing. "Can't we stop now
and rest?" she asked.

"Not as long as it's dark. When the sunrises
and it gets hot―maybe then."

Sinister fingers of scarlet streaked the cold dawn
sky, and the desert sands yielded to cedar and mesquite thickets. And still
Brant rode for an hour more before reining in at a grove of twisted mesquite
and chaparral that afforded some shade. In the near east could be seen the
purple shadows of the Guadalupe foothills.

Brant swung down off the horse, and Anne did not
demur but gratefully slid into the arms that rose to take her. Her head fell
against his chest, her cheek absorbing its warmth.

She was vaguely aware of the heavy-lidded eyes that
studied her, scorching her. Then he lowered her to the ground. When he drew the
blanket from her, spreading it out, she protested drowsily. "I'm
cold!"

"So am I, sweetheart. Move over."

Her body went rigid as he pulled her against him.
"I'm not going to hurt you," he said. When the minutes passed, and
there came only the steady cadence of his breathing, she relaxed, letting the
warmth from his body seep into hers.

"Why did you take his scalp?" she asked
suddenly realizing it was no longer at Brant's waistband. "Did you have to
behave like one of them would?"

From over her shoulder his voice came in a chuckle,
stirring the stray wisps of her hair. "You keep forgetting. I am one of
them. A blood brother." Then, "If I hadn't taken Pa-ha-yu-quosh's
scalp, it would've been a sign of weakness. And they would've killed us thereon
the spot. The other way―we at least have a chance."

"Oh―yes," she replied, half asleep
now. It was hard to remember, when she couldn't see him, couldn't see the
tattoo that branded the jutting jaw, could only hear the huskiness of his
voice, that Brant was not just another Texian. But then, what was he? A scout
for Sam Houston, as she had at first thought? A pirate, as Johanna had
mysteriously claimed? A half-breed? Or a mercenary―as Brant himself had
demonstrated by hiring out for Colin's money? Maybe all of those.

Too soon, it seemed, Brant was shaking her shoulder.
When she sat up, sleepily pushing the hair from her eyes, he handed her a
stringy piece of dried meat. "Pemmican―jerky," he told her.

Anne tore into it hungrily. "It's
delicious," she said, and noted Brant's surprise. But then, she thought,
there were a lot of things she was capable of doing and had not been before
that were surprising.

When Brant finished, he hunkered down at her side
and took a handful of her hair. "What are you doing?" she asked,
tossing her head.

Brant jerked her head about again by the tangled
mass of hair. "What you should have done, sweet. Braiding your hair. I'm
tired of it whipping in my face when we ride."

She eyed him from the corner of her eyes, her lower
lip thrust out. "I can do it."

"Oh, but I like to. After all, you are my wife:
aren't you?"

"You know that's not so! I had to go through
that ridiculous―"

Brant yanked at her hair, and tears sprang to Anne's
eyes at the pain. "Be still while I finish."

"You're the most despicable―"

"I know, I know. But if you expect to be taken back
you'll have to put up with my quirks of nature." He slanted a dark brow.
"Seems to me you still owe me for the first trip."

Anne's head swung about. The smoky eyes took fire.
"Don't hold your breath, Brant! I'd sooner share Pa-ha-yu-quosh's bed than
yours. At least he acted like what he was―a Comanche. He didn't try to fit
in the white world―and you shouldn't either. You're nothing but a savage!
You don't know what it's like to behave decently!"

She saw the flicker of the muscles that played
beneath the high cheekbones, the eyes that narrowed into dangerous slits, and
she wondered fearfully if she had said too much. He was quite capable of
leaving her out there in the middle of a treeless wilderness. But all he said
was, "Strange you should talk of decency, Anne Maren. Married to one man
and wanting another."

He broke off, and Anne knew the eyes, as hot and
brown as the desert sands, were studying her, watching her reaction when next
he spoke. She waited, stifling the nagging fear that rose in her throat.

"Of course," he said at last, "now
that you are a widow, you're free of guilt, aren't you ...and free to go to
Donovan in Houston?"

At first she did not understand. Then her eyes
opened wide. Her voice rasped out the question. "Otto? He's dead?"

Brant rose, standing over her. "Funny thing―only
the people from your cabin were attacked. You're carried off, and the child and
Delila are killed. And your husband."

Like veils of Spanish moss the gray eyes shadowed
over with pain. "How did he die?" she asked tonelessly.

Brant's voice turned harsh. ''There's no grave for
you to weep over, Widow Maren. Peter Giles said your husband went wild―tried
to follow the Kwahadis along the riverbank when a tomahawk caught him. Giles
helped search the river for two days before riding to Houston with the news of
the uprising."

"And the others?"

"Like I said―only your cabin."

Anne's straight dark brows knitted in puzzlement,
but Brant said, "Get up. We're leaving."

He swung up over the sorrel and held down his hand.
Reluctantly Anne took it, letting him pull her up before him. The journey resumed
in silence; only it was worse with the afternoon sun beating down on them. All
about was a stillness. Dust from the horse's hoofs seemed to hang motionlessly
in the arid air.  The cloudless sky was a brassy reflector of the heat on the
sun-baked earth.

Yet for the first few hours Anne scarcely was aware
of the perspiration that rivered the valley between her breasts and soaked the
inside of her thighs where they rubbed against the sorrel's steamy flanks.
Thoughts whirled about her brain like wind-whipped tumbleweed. She was free ...
and Colin had paid to find her. In a matter of days she would be with him
again. There was nothing to hold her here any longer. Together they could leave
this land she detested so much―the extremes in weather, the Indians, the
starvation, and the poverty.

Colin wanted her. Her heart beat rapidly at the
thought of him, and time after time she wished Brant would push the horse faster,
shortening the time until she would be in Colin's arms.

But even these treasured thoughts died away under
the glaring sun that seemed to Anne to dry out every ounce of moisture, drying up
even her life blood, so that it was an effort to keep her head from falling
forward. Once Brant stopped and handed her his canteen. Greedily she removed
the cork and drank the water in spite of his warning. His lips flattened in a
thin line. "If you fall sick on me, I'm leaving you here for them."

Anne followed the direction of his nod and a second
later caught the metallic flash of light against the cobalt sky.
"Mirrors?" she asked.

"They're still with us."

Brant did not stop to rest that night. Only the
dismal hoo-hooing of the prairie owl and the mournful wailing of the coyote
told Anne that there was a realm out there beyond herself and Brant. For those
infinite hours the two of them were one, molded by exhaustion and danger. Yet
Anne's determination to prove she could endure as much as Brant collapsed
toward dawn when she found that, in her nearly unconscious state, she had wet
herself like a child. And like a child she began to cry, mortified.

"Hush," Brant told her gently as he lifted
her from the horse and deposited her in the lee of a draw. He flashed a boyish
grin that startled her because it was totally out of place in the cynically rugged
face. "Did you believe I thought you were a China doll?"

Her own smile was rueful. "I had hoped to prove
to you that I could survive out here as well as―the next woman." She
had almost said the name Dorothy.

It was Brant's turn to look surprised."Why should
you care what I think?"

"I don't know. Maybe it's because you seem
always to be judging me."

He frowned. "Maybe it's you who's doing the
judging."

She sensed he was getting too close to something she
did not want to know, not then. "Is there any water left?"

"No. We're detouring the few waterholes in case
Iron Eyes is following us still."

Anne slumped back against the rocky wall. "I've
never been so thirsty." Her voice was like a croak.

"Nature provides for everything," Brant
said, and left her to scramble up the gully's near-perpendicular wall toward
the shrubby mesquites that lined its rim.  Through dust-encrusted eyes Anne
watched as he jerked at the thorny branches. "They're mesquite
beans," he said, returning to her and holding out several of them in the
palm of his hand. "Suck on them, and they'll bring the moisture back to
your throat."

Tentatively Anne tried one and found the saliva
filling her mouth, washing away the parchedness. "Don't swallow
them," he cautioned, squatting on his haunches next to her. "They'll bloat
up in your stomach."

Anne nodded and closed her eyes with a sigh. When
Brant left to tend the horse, she hungrily put the rest of the beans in her
mouth, chewing them until they were pulpy, savoring the bitter flavor on her tongue.
In spite of herself, her stomach demanded the solids, and she swallowed.

When Brant returned, he lay down beside her, pulling
her against him, imparting his warmth against dawn's chill. Anne was mildly
surprised that, unlike the nights with Otto or Pa-ha-yu-quosh, she did not
shrink away with distaste at the man's embrace. But then she had been through a
lot since that first day she came to Velasco as the fastidious, elegant Anne
Maren. At the moment she was Ma-be-quo-si-tu-ma, wife of the half-breed,
Firebrand.

Anne wanted to cry out of sheer despair when Brant
awoke her less than an hour later. "We've got to move on," he said.

She was tired, and her stomach churned.
"Why?" she demanded peevishly.

"We've riders in the area―maybe as close
as five miles."

Anne closed her eyes and bit her lip against the
nagging pain in her stomach. "All right," she said, wearily pushing
herself erect.

By the time the sun was a fiery sphere directly
overhead, Anne's stomach writhed in snakelike knots, coiling and uncoiling. She
doubled forward, her arms wrapped about her sides, and moaned.

She had expected an "I told you so" from
Brant when she confessed she had swallowed the mesquite beans, but he surprised
her, as always. "It'll be all right," he said, gently catching her to
him. "Just hold on. We'll rest just beyond that bluff."

"But―Iron Eyes," she gasped.
"Is it safe to stop?"

"No―but then it never has been."

The bluff Brant spoke of seemed to keep receding.
When he finally urged his sorrel behind an enormous, eroded boulder, the eastern
sky was already sheathed in black velvet. The narrow path they followed plunged
suddenly into an impressive though not large steep-walled, limestone canyon.

Anne was only vaguely aware of a clear, green spring
flowing over the boulder-strewn gorge and spilling into a wide, deep pool that
was rimmed by luxuriant hackberries and bald cypresses. Here, beneath the moist
shelter of the trees, he stopped and, drawing her down from the horse, laid her
on the sweet, soft grass.

As another seizure of cramps claimed her, Anne
curled up, jamming her knees against her chest. When it passed, the sweat stood
out on her temples in spite of the cool breeze which had arisen at sunset.

Brant brushed the tendrils of hair from her eyes.
"I'll be back soon. Lie still―and try not to cry out. The sound
carries a long way out here."

As quietly as an Indian he was gone. The minutes
crept by on spider legs, and still Brant did not return. Frantically Anne
wondered if he had been killed by a silent arrow―or had he left her to
perish there alone? Once, when a sagebrush came tumbling down off the canyon
wall, a small cry escaped Anne's lips.

Suddenly Brant was there, his hand over her mouth,
silencing her. "I thought you'd left me," she whispered hoarsely.

"Not yet." She sensed more than saw the
wicked grin. "Here―eat this."

"What is―"