Colorado Dawn (16 page)

Later—she didn’t know how long—Agnes awoke her when she jumped off her lap and ran, barking, toward the brush by the creek. Drowsy and disoriented, Maddie lurched to her feet, almost tripping over the blanket. “Agnes,” she called, grabbing the scattergun. “Agnes, come away from there!”

Agnes continued on, her yips growing more distant as she moved along the creek. With shaking hands, Maddie made sure both barrels of the scattergun were loaded, and worked the lever. Then remembering the repeating rifle Mr. Satterwhite had kept beneath the driver’s box, she raced toward the wagon. After retrieving the gun and a box of bullets, she climbed back down just as Agnes came squealing out of the brush.

And she wasn’t alone. Behind her raced a lean, snarling form.

A wolf.

With a cry, Maddie dropped the rifle and lifted the loaded scattergun to her shoulder. “Agnes!”

The little dog veered, changing direction faster than her larger pursuer could. Yelping in terror, she tore toward Maddie, nails clawing up wet earth, her tail tucked tight against her belly.

At the sound of Maddie’s voice, the wolf stopped. Then head low, it began to circle, its nostrils flaring as it assessed this new threat.

Maddie tracked it with the gun, her hands gripping the stock so tightly her arms shook. She could hear it panting. Could see the glitter of firelight reflected red in its eyes.

“Go away!” she shouted, her voice shrill with terror, the scattergun wobbling against her cheek.

The wolf dropped to a crouch. Those unblinking eyes studied her for a moment, then shifted to Agnes, cowering by Maddie’s skirts.

A low snarl. Lips pulling back from long, yellow teeth.

Then it lunged.

Maddie squeezed both triggers. The impact threw her back against the side of the wagon. Acrid smoke stung her nose and eyes. Ears ringing, she frantically dug in her pocket for more cartridges, then saw the wolf was down, biting at a dark, wet crater in its chest, its legs thrashing in the dirt.

The twitching slowed, then stopped.

She slumped against the wagon, trembling and lightheaded, a whimper rising in her throat. She had never before shot at anything but targets, and seeing the dead creature sprawled at her feet gave her a feeling of both triumph and revulsion.

Agnes’s whine brought her out of her frozen state. She whipped around, looking for other figures lurking in the shadows, but saw none. Yet wolves rarely traveled alone. More could be coming and she had to be ready. In sudden and unreasoning flight, she tossed the guns back into the driver’s box, grabbed Agnes, and tossed her up, too. “You silly fool,” she scolded, climbing up beside her. “Next time you run off, I’ll let them have you. See if I don’t.”

With shaking hands, she reloaded the scattergun, muttering
against the darkness and her blistered hands. “We can’t sit up here all night,” she told the dog shivering at her side. “It’s cold and I left the blankets by the fire.”

Besides, she needed the light to figure out how the rifle worked. She knew the bullets—didn’t Mr. Satterwhite say it held fifteen rounds?—went into a tube beneath the barrel, but she couldn’t see well enough to open it. She assumed the lever was like the one on the scattergun, and when worked out and back, would send a bullet into firing position. If she could get it loaded, the repeater would be much better protection than a two-shot scattergun. As would the fire.

She listened and looked around but heard only the sound of the rushing water in the creek. Nothing moved in the shadows. Knowing Agnes would be safer and less troublesome in the wagon, Maddie scooped her up, collected the guns, and hopped to the ground. Half expecting to be leaped on from behind, she ran to the back of the wagon. When she made it safely, she seriously considered staying inside.

But Mr. Satterwhite was out there. Alone.

“You can do this,” she chanted as she gathered her guns and more blankets. Then locking Agnes inside, she went back to her chair by the fire.

“I hope you see what I’m doing for you, Mr. Satterwhite,” she muttered, once she was settled and both guns were loaded and ready at her side. “I might not have told you as often as I should how much I appreciated you, but surely sitting out here in the cold all night while keeping the wolves at bay will partially make up for that lack.”

He didn’t respond, but an owl somewhere in the trees did. Maddie studied the bushes where the wolf had chased out Agnes, but saw nothing.

The darkness pressed closer, stripping the night of all but cold, still air and the sound of the creek. She looked up, seeking reassurance from the stars overhead, and almost wept with gratitude when she realized a late-rising quarter moon had arrived to push back the dark.

The heavens rotated and the temperature dropped. She tossed more wood onto the fire and pulled the blanket tighter around her head.

Weariness tugged at her, and more than once she found herself jerking awake in the chair to find the fire low and her body shivering with cold. As the hours passed, her thoughts grew sluggish, her will weaker. Then she would remind herself how well Mr. Satterwhite had looked after her, and resolved she would do no less for him.

“Don’t worry, Mr. Satterwhite,” she said, trying to rub warmth back into her chilled arms. “I shan’t leave you.” She knew it was insane to be talking to someone hours gone. But she had never felt so alone or lonely, sitting here in the cold, in the middle of the night, with a dead companion for company and only a dim circle of firelight to hold the terrors at bay. It was unreal. Otherworldly. And hearing the sound of her own voice helped dispel the shadows crowding all around and reminded her that despite the presence of death, she was still among the living.

A wiser woman would have retreated into the safety of the wagon. After all, Mr. Satterwhite was dead. But he was her friend, too. And while she hadn’t the chance to sit with her parents after they had died, she could at least do so for the man who had watched over her like a father.

“You were wrong about Ash,” she said after a while. “He’s not a dependable man—his absence tonight is proof of that. He could charm a bird out of the sky, yet was never there when I needed him. But you always were, weren’t you, Mr. Satterwhite? I thank you for that.”

The fire hissed and snapped and whistled like a living thing. Far away, coyotes howled, calling the pack to hunt. Picking up the rifle, she rested it across her lap and stared into the darkness.

“We were so taken with each other at first. I was only eighteen, you see. Defenseless against such a fine-looking officer in his dashing blue uniform. And that smile…” She shook her head, remembering. “How could a gullible country maid not fall in love with a face like that?”

She sighed and plucked at her tattered glove where the leather had stuck to a ruptured blister. “Why are men so inconstant, Mr. Satterwhite? Oh, not you, of course. You have been as steadfast as any friend could be. But other men. Handsome men like Ash. Is it due to
some innate fickleness of heart, do you suppose? Or is the fault with we women who expect too much and are thus so easily disappointed?”

Feeling a warm trickle on her cheek, she reached up to brush a tear away. “How tiresome you must think me, Mr. Satterwhite, to weep over a man who scarcely remembered my name. But he was dear to me once. In truth, I fancied myself in love with the man, naïve creature that I was.”

More tears, hot on her cold cheeks. They infuriated her, evidence of a weakness she couldn’t put aside, and with a slash of her hand, she wiped them away. Steadying the rifle in her lap, she hiked her chin. “But you mustn’t worry about me, Mr. Satterwhite. I shall be fine. I have my friends, and my work, and my pride—tattered though it is—and they will see me through. So rest easy, dear friend. I survived the rogue once, did I not? I shall certainly do so this time.”

A noise caught her attention, and she looked over to see the low branches of a spruce flutter violently. Quickly shifting the rifle to ready position, she watched down the long barrel, breath caught in her throat.

A limb cracked as something ran through the brush. Something big, moving fast. Then suddenly, the branches parted, and a huge form burst into the clearing. Maddie almost fired, then recognized Buttercup, with Maisy crowded behind her. They ran past Maddie, then whirled and stared back the way they had come, heads high, nostrils flaring.

Maddie scanned the brush but saw nothing amiss. Releasing an explosive breath, she lowered the rifle from her shoulder but kept it ready in her lap. “You silly chits! Where have you been?”

They continued to stare at the shadows, ears pricked. But after a moment, even though Buttercup remained alert, Maisy lowered her head and began grazing on the frosted grass.

“I should shoot you both for frightening me that way!” Pressing a shaking hand over her thudding heart, Maddie slumped back in the chair. As she did, she saw that the trees were more distinct now, rising in sharp silhouettes against the eastern sky. She laughed out loud, the sound hoarse and wobbly and carrying a hint of hysteria.
More tears threatened, but this time they were tears of relief. “Look, Mr. Satterwhite,” she said, pointing toward the heavens. “We made it. The new day has come.”

A sudden prickling sensation alerted her. A sense of being watched.

She froze, eyes straining against the dim light. Movement. A low growl. Shadows shifting, drawing closer.

The wolves had come, too.

Ash was on his way just after daybreak, the wheel strapped across his back. It was slow going at first, since the rim stuck out past his shoulders and above his head and kept getting hung up on low-hanging branches. But once the narrow track joined the wider road that led past the creek and meadow where he’d left the wagon, he was able to put Lurch into a ground-eating lope.

An hour later, as they started across the creek, the smell hit him. Not the putrid stench of a battlefield after the smoke has cleared and the burial parties are loading their carts. But the faint, yet unmistakable, reek of blood and the beginnings of decay. It was an odor familiar to every soldier, and smelling it now sent a jolt of panic through Ash.

He reined in on the other bank, struggled out of the rope harness, and heaved the wheel into the brush, startling Lurch into a hopping sidestep.

“Find!” he ordered Tricks as he leaped to the ground. But the wolfhound was already disappearing into the brush, hackles up, head low.

With shaking hands, Ash retrieved his pistol from his saddlebag and checked the load. Not wanting to take time to load the Enfield, he pulled the short double-edged bayonet from its sheath inside his boot, and armed with both blade and gun, ran after Tricks. Dreading what he might find, he stopped just inside the trees and quickly scanned the clearing.

Other than a pile of rocks and canvas beside the fire ring, the camp looked no different from when he’d left. No sign of the mules or Satterwhite. Maddie sat slumped in her chair beside the cold fire,
Satterwhite’s repeater in her slack hands. No blood. Asleep? He saw no movement except for Tricks and Agnes at the edge of the brush on the other side of the clearing.

He returned the blade to his boot and ran toward his wife.

At the sound of his approach, she jerked awake, the rifle coming up.

Ash grabbed the barrel as it swung toward him, but when he tried to pull it from her grip, she fought him, a whimper rising in her throat.

“Maddie, ’tis me. ’Tis Ash. Let go of the gun.”

“Have they come back?” She looked frantically around, her eyes wild. “Are they here?”

He shifted to follow her gaze, and saw Tricks nosing a crumpled form by the edge of the woods. Not human. Dark, smaller than a bear. A wolf? Another lay near the wagon. Definitely a wolf.
Bluidy hell.
And where was Satterwhite?

As he swung back to Maddie, his gaze fell on the pile of rocks and canvas on the other side of the fire pit. Not a pile. A canvas-wrapped form and a half-dug grave. He realized then what had happened—Satterwhite had died—the wolves had been drawn to the scent of death—Maddie had held them off to protect her dead friend. Had he not done the same thing during that grisly winter at Sevastopol when the wolves had poured nightly out of the hills to feast on the day’s dead?

Setting the pistol nearby on a rock, he went down on one knee beside the chair, his hand still on the barrel of the rifle. “It’s over, love. You and Satterwhite are safe now. I’m here.”

“Ash?”

“Aye. ’Tis me.” This time she dinna resist when he took the gun from her hands and set it aside. “Are you hurt, lass?”

“You didn’t come back.”

“I did. I’m right beside you, so I am. Are you hurt?”

“My h-hands.” That wild look was starting to fade from her eyes, but he could tell she was still confused by the way she looked at her shaking hands as if seeing them for the first time. She was
wearing gloves, torn in places and showing dark stains on the worn leather. “I have bl-blisters.”

“Let me see, love.” He tried to be gentle, but the leather had dried to her crusted skin, so he had to pull to loosen it. When he finally got the gloves off and saw the ruin of her hands, he had to work hard to keep his voice calm. “Tell me what happened, Maddie.”

“Mr. Satterwhite died.” Her voice wobbled on the words. “His heart, I think. It happened so fast. He just fell. I tried to bury him, bu-but I couldn’t. I didn’t even have a chance to say good-bye.”

As she spoke, he pulled out his handkerchief, ripped it in two and carefully wrapped the pieces around her hands to keep out dirt until he could clean them properly. “You got these blisters from digging?”

“There were so many rocks. I tried. I did. But I-I couldn’t. So I waited for you.” She looked up at him, her brown eyes glittering and wet. “But you never came. Why?”

Not trusting his voice, he said nothing and continued binding her hands. He felt a tremor move through her. Then another. Her breathing changed, and after he tied off the wrapping, he looked up to see the bleakness in her eyes had been replaced by such fury it was like a slap in the face.

“What took you so long?” she accused. “You said it would only be a day and a night. Why didn’t you come back?” With each word, her voice had risen and the shaking had grown worse.