Only in My Arms (11 page)

He expelled a long sigh and saw a glimmer of a smile touch Mary's lips. She knew he was done keeping his thoughts to himself. "I don't suppose there's a husband in your future," he said.

She shook her head slowly.

"Are you answering my question?" he asked, trying to read the bemused response. "Or telling me you can't believe I asked it."

Mary's smile became more fulsome, and she dried the last of her tears. "A little of both, I suppose. I'm not out of my habit yet and you're thinking husbands."

"It's a reasonable question."

She leaned forward and tapped her father on the knee. "Only you would think so, Jay Mac." Mary picked up her cup again. The tea was cool now but she didn't mind. It soothed the back of her throat where the uncomfortable, aching lump had been. "Don't bother presenting me with a list of prospective husbands, and don't consider for a moment that I'd let you do any sort of matchmaking."

"Humph," he grunted softly, trying to look offended. "I don't make matches. I make deals."

Mary nearly choked on her mouthful of tea. "Oh, God," she said feelingly. "Truer words have never been spoken." She pointed a finger at him meaningfully. "And don't try to negotiate a husband for me.
If
someone is of a mind to ask me, I'll work out the terms with him."

"Then it's not out of the question?" he asked hopefully.

Mary realized she might as well have saved her breath. "Everything's a possibility, Jay Mac. I just don't imagine I'll be meeting many prospects in a Southwest mission."

That reminder sobered Jay Mac. "You're not still serious about going to Arizona, are you?"

She simply stared back at her father, letting him read what was in her eyes.

"Your mother's not going to like this."

That made Mary catch her breath. Sometimes Jay Mac didn't play fair. "She doesn't like the decision I've made anyway," she said after a moment. "I may as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb."

"I don't like it either," he said.

"Rennie's there."

"She's with her husband, so she has someone to protect her. Don't forget, a little while ago you were the one wondering about the danger. Now you're talking about throwing yourself into the midst of it."

"I'm talking about going to teach at a mission," she said patiently. "Not about laying rails down in the middle of Indian land."

Jay Mac's dark green eyes narrowed. "Was that a criticism?" he demanded.

Now Mary was genuinely bewildered. "What do you mean?"

"If we lay down tracks it will be because Northeast owns the property. It's not Apache land."

"Oh, Papa," Mary said, sighing. "Do you really want to argue about whose land it is?"

"No," he said after a moment. He repeated it again, more heavily this time, and came to his feet. "We're done arguing. My mind's made up. You're not going to Arizona—at least not alone."

Before Mary could recover her wits to ask what he meant by that, her father was gone.

* * *

Fort Union, Arizona Territory

Like most forts built after 1876, Fort Union was not enclosed by a fence along its perimeter. It was the prevailing thinking of the times that a fort was better guarded by alert soldiers than by a barrier that gave a false sense of security and encouraged sloth instead of vigilance. Fort Union consisted of nine separate adobe buildings all a stone's throw from one another. There were quarters for the officers and their wives, quarters for the bachelor officers, three garrisons for the soldiers, a mess hall, offices for the staff, an infirmary, and a stockade for prisoners.

Ryder McKay sat on the dirt floor of his cell, his back against the wall, his knees bent, and idly manipulated a silver dollar between his fingers, passing it back and forth across his hand with such easy dexterity that it seemed to have the quickness of a bead of mercury.

Second Lieutenant Davis Rivers had had Ryder placed in the stockade immediately upon returning to the fort. Except for his brief interrogation by General Gardner in the general's office, Ryder hadn't been outside the eight-by-eight room in thirty-six hours. Except for his brief responses to the general's questions, Ryder hadn't spoken in all that time.

In the beginning he believed his confinement would end after the general heard him out. It wasn't until he listened to the tone and tenor of the questions put to him, that Ryder realized he wasn't going to get an objective hearing. The evidence against him was already overwhelming.

Outside the stockade the moon was rising. Ryder raised his eyes to catch the light and saw the moon's face was bisected by the black iron bars that divided his window. A moment's fantasy had him believing the moon was the prisoner behind the bars and he was the one who was free. It lasted only until the moon continued its upward path and slipped out of his line of vision. Ryder went back to studying the silver dollar in his hand, threading the coin from one finger to the next as if his life depended upon doing just this task.

The commotion in the office area of the stockade made no impression on Ryder. He didn't hear the argument or the outcome or have any idea it was all about him. When the door to the cell area opened he wasn't anticipating company.

"Get me a chair," Florence Gardner snapped at the hapless guard. "If you won't let me in his cell, then the least you can do is provide a chair here in the corridor."

In spite of Florence's tone the guard still hesitated. "Are you certain the general said it was all right?" he asked. "I have or—"

Florence drew herself up to her full height of exactly five feet and brought the tip of her cane down hard on the guard's instep to emphasize her point. "Don't talk to me about your orders," she warned him. "The general is
my
son, and he and I are quite clear about orders."

The guard swallowed hard. "Very well, ma'am." He felt the cane being removed from his boot and offered a relieved smile. Turning quickly before she could get him again with it, he went to retrieve a chair.

Florence now applied her cane to the bars of Ryder's cell, running it back and forth to get his attention. "You could say you're happy to see me," she said with some asperity.

Ryder came to his feet in a fluid motion, pocketing the dollar that had provided him with his sole amusement until now. "Here comes your chair, Flo." He pointed to the guard who was trying to bring it in quietly.

Florence turned on the fellow again. "There's no need to sneak up on me, young man. Give me an attack of angina and my son will see you on kitchen duty for the rest of your Army career."

"She means it, Harry," Ryder told the guard.

"Don't I know it," Harry muttered before he shuffled off.

Florence and Ryder exchanged glances as Harry made a point of closing the door between the cell area and the guardroom.

"Does the general know you're here?" Ryder asked.

"What do you think?"

"That he believes you retired early."

She gave Ryder a prim smile. "Know-it-all." She arranged the chair so it was close to the bars and sat down. "There's no need for you to stand," she told him. When he didn't respond immediately, she added brusquely, "Go on with you, you'll give me a crick in my neck."

Ryder slowly sat down on the edge of the cot, stunned by the fact that she was fighting tears. "What are you doing here, Florence?"

"I had to see you for myself," she said, "though it pains me terribly that you are here. Are you being treated well?"

"Well enough."

She studied his face. The single lantern in the corridor shed enough light on him that she could see shades of bruising on his cheek and temple. One of his eyelids was slightly swollen. If these were the marks she
could
see, Florence wondered about the ones she couldn't. "My son didn't give orders for you to be beaten," she said. "Joshua isn't like that."

"I know." He shrugged. "It doesn't matter."

"Of course it matters. I'm going to tell—" She stopped, realizing that she wasn't going to tell her son anything. It would only go worse for Ryder if the men guarding him were reprimanded, and then she would be forbidden from entering the stockade again. "Can I bring you anything next time? Witch hazel? Bandages?"

"You shouldn't come again."

She dismissed that with an unladylike snort. "You're in no position to tell me what I should and shouldn't do."

"Point taken." He paused and absently rubbed the back of his head. "Witch hazel, then."

"What happened to you there?" Florence asked.

Ryder's hand dropped away. "It's not important. I've got a gash and a lump, nothing I haven't had before."

Florence's mouth thinned. She hated the thought of Ryder being mistreated under her very nose.

"No," he said. "It's not what you think. It didn't happen here. When I came around en route back to the fort I already had it."

"It happened in the fighting?"

Ryder didn't say anything for a time, wondering what he could or should say. "You must have heard that I wasn't part of the fighting," he said.

Florence Gardner's shoulders sagged a bit, and in spite of the fact that she was sitting down, her hand rested more heavily on her cane. "So it's true," she said with a certain unhappy finality. "You were with her when the attack came."

"I was."

"Why?"

The only indication of Ryder's surprise was the fractional narrowing of his pale gray eyes. He didn't answer her question directly. "Haven't you heard the answer to that as well?"

The subtle accusation in his tone got Florence's attention. She pounded her cane once against the floor where it made only a dull thud in the packed earth. "Don't lump me with the rest of the idiots around here—my son included. I'll draw my own conclusions, thank you. Now tell me why you were with that baggage."

"Lieutenant Matheson and I agreed she needed to be away from the company." He added carelessly, "I lost the toss."

"Why did she need to be separated?"

"Her safety. I suspected there was some danger."

"You knew the attack was coming?"

He shook his head. It was no easier to explain now than it had been then. "No," he said. "I knew there was danger but not the form it would take. There were no signs of Chiricahua anywhere in the area."

"Yet they attacked."

"So I've heard," he said without inflection.

"You didn't see any of the attack?"

"None." Or the scene afterward. Ryder only knew what he had been told. The company had literally been cut in half, men slaughtered where they stood. According to Rivers's account to the general, the enemy seemed to come out of the stones themselves.

Florence tried to make sense of it. "How can that be?" she asked. "You were only a few miles past the canyon rim. I know you, Ryder. You would have gone back at the first sound of gunfire."

Ryder only had a fleeting recollection of the sound of a single shot. He remembered wanting to move, trying to move, and not being able to lift his head. "Miss Hamilton was complaining about her canteen water," he told Florence. "I drank a few mouthfuls to show her there was nothing wrong with it." His brief smile was humorless and self-mocking. "That's just about the last thing I remember."

"The water was bad?"

"I know my horse and I didn't cover much ground before I keeled over in the saddle. Miss Hamilton managed to get me to a shallow cave of rocks and let me fall. The next thing I recall is being yanked awake by Rivers and ordered to lead the way back to the canyon floor. I was in and out of consciousness most of the way back to the fort."

Florence was interrupted by the guard poking his head into the corridor. "You can only have a few more minutes," Harry said. "I have to take the lantern for lights out." He withdrew before he encountered Florence's verbal expression of wrath or her cane tip.

"I've a good mind to change the duty roster myself," she said under her breath. "That boy should mind his manners."

"Don't be too hard on Harry, Flo. He's all right. Just doing his job."

Florence's mouth pursed to one side sourly. "You're not taking this seriously, Ryder. You're in a lot of trouble. The only reason you haven't been summarily hanged is because you know a few people in high places who think your scalp may be worth something more than it would as a trophy." No one had ever accused Florence Gardner of not speaking her mind. "Now suppose you tell me why Anna Leigh Hamilton wants everyone to know you tried to rape her if it isn't so?"

"Revenge?"

"Is that a question or your answer?" she asked with little patience.

"I don't pretend to know what Miss Hamilton hopes to gain by telling her tale," Ryder said. "But I assure you, it's a tale."

Florence nodded her head once, an emphatic gesture that indicated her satisfaction. "I
knew
it," she said. "Why didn't you tell Joshua that she's lying?"

"I did tell the general."

"I see," she said slowly, unhappily. "He didn't believe you."

"It's not difficult to understand why," Ryder said. "Miss Hamilton looked pathetically ill used, and she had Rivers and Private Carr to corroborate her story—at least as far as to how they had found her wandering on the flats." He rubbed the lump on his head again. "She says she hit me with a rock to get away."