Pale Moon Stalker (The Nymph Trilogy) (22 page)

As if he had orchestrated the whole bizarre event, True Dreamer said, "She is an English, yes." But he never looked at the horizon.

Max did, taking the glass from his wife and peering through it. "This I have to see." The woman had been joined by two small brown men who could have been southwestern Indians but for their goatees. As the trio stood on the ridgeline, the woman removed her pith helmet, revealing close-cropped pale blonde hair almost the color of his own. She raised a large revolver and fired three more shots into the air, waving them to come forward.

Max looked at True Dreamer. "Should we trust her?"

"If she wanted us dead, we would be feeding the beaked ones circling above even now."

"Then let us accept her invitation...with all due caution," he replied, holding his rifle across his saddle as he mounted.

"We should thank her. She may have saved our lives—mine for the second time," Sky said, already swinging onto her horse.

Both she and her husband noted that the old man had never even readied his rifle.

They rode slowly toward the bluff, Max in the lead, using brush and rocks for cover as they climbed a twisting trail to the place where the Englishwoman and her men had stood. When they crested the hill, they saw a sight that caused even Max to turn pale. "Bloody hell!"

Sky fought her rising gorge as she looked down.

True Dreamer only made a grunting sound of approval.

Chapter Eleven

"Don't look at them!" Max said tightly to Sky, but she could not stop staring at the two men sprawled on the rocky soil. Their throats had been slashed so completely that they had been decapitated, the heads lying several feet from the bodies. Blood soaked into the already red earth, darkening it in ever widening circles.

"There's a note pinned to the back of that one," she said, pointing to the corpse on the left.

Max quickly dismounted and pulled it free, then read aloud, "Lord and Lady Ruxton, you are being hunted. Please have a care. I have an interest in your continued good health. It's signed with a single initial, 'R.' Looks like a woman's flowing handwriting."

"I never saw her before that day in St. Louis," Sky said, looking questioningly at Max. "She knew our title. She is English." Then she shifted her attention to the serene Cheyenne who sat on his horse, as unconcerned as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

Sensing her unasked question, the old man said, "The Powers do not reveal everything to me, child. I only know the woman means you no harm."

Max knelt, examining the weapons the men had been preparing to use. "These chaps were professional marksmen. This is a Ballard rifle, the Pacific model, I would say. Either .44-100 or .45-100 caliber. The range is about a thousand yards. And both rifles have telescopic sights on them."

"They were going to shoot us any moment," Sky said in a choked voice.

"No, it was not fated to be so," True Dreamer replied.

Now Max stood and examined a tripod with a small instrument on it standing near the edge of the bluff. "This is a wind gauge. Very expensive. Whoever employed the dead men has decided to spend considerably more since those pathetic thugs in New York and St. Louis failed."

"Or, it could be McKerrish," she said, turning her head when a swarm of flies began to feast on the open cavities of the dead men's necks.

"I doubt it. We didn't run afoul of him until we were leaving Colorado, but this mysterious Englishwoman and her deadly companions rescued you in St. Louis."

"Who were those little men?" she asked. "If not for the mustaches, I would've guessed Apaches."

"Better than Apaches," True Dreamer said. "They move like spirits. Leave no sign. Very powerful medicine." Again, he grunted in approval.

"Think of them as Apaches from hell," Max replied to both of them. "They're Gurkhas, the world's most lethal blades men. From Nepal. They've served the British Crown as mercenaries for generations. This gory mess was done by their favorite weapon, the khukuri, a large curved knife capable of separating a man's head from his neck with a single slash. It's said once a Gurkha withdraws his khukuri, it must drink blood—if not the enemy's, then the owner must slash himself to feed it before he sheathes it again."

"That's barbaric," Sky whispered in horrified wonder. "But I'm glad they're on our side."

"So far," Max replied cynically. "Let's ride."

True Dreamer had already turned his horse away from the carnage and headed back down the trail.

* * * *

They reached the Red River the next afternoon. Surveying the wide, fast-running water, Max eyed his wife and the old man. "Crossing could be rather chancy."

"Why is the water so high? It's been dry all the way here," Sky said.

"One good cloudburst to the northwest would serve," Max replied. "I imagine the water's no more than four or five feet deep in most places, but the current's swift enough to knock a rider from a horse. We'll need to take some precautions. Tie a line from saddle to saddle so if one of our horses stumbles, the rider will have something to hold on to."

He dismounted and dug a length of rope from one of the packs on their spare horse, wishing desperately that there were a few sturdy large trees nearby to which he could secure a line, but the vegetation was brushy and low growing. In the far distance across the vast river, he could see a lone oak standing, a good hundred yards from shore.
A fine lot of good that'll do us.

Ever since Edmund had drowned, he'd had an intense dislike of lakes and rivers—especially ones swollen by recent rain. "I'll lead. Sky, you come next, True Dreamer, if you'd be so kind as to take our packhorse and follow?"

The old man nodded calmly, as if he crossed treacherous rivers on a daily basis. He accepted the rope that Max handed him, twisting it about his wrist and securing the end of it to the gear on the packhorse.

They set out, the horses kicking up the soft mud and rocks in the shallows as Max led the way, slowly. "At least it's too shallow to have sawyers or huge clumps of driftwood and debris like the Missouri," Sky said.

"Keep trying to assure yourself, love, but hold tight to that rope," Max replied grimly. They'd made it just past the middle of the river when his horse suddenly stumbled, almost pitching him headfirst into the water.

"Max!" Sky cried out, releasing her grip on the safety rope to urge her horse closer to him.

He kept his seat and tried to calm the frightened animal as it thrashed. "Stay back," he ordered his wife, but just as he uttered the words, her horse went down in the same trough, tossing her into the swift current. Hearing her scream almost froze him, but he yanked fiercely on his horse's reins, letting go of the rope as he turned downriver. His big buckskin lumbered after Sky's bobbing head, but she was moving far faster.

The old man held the rope and reins to their pack animal. He began chanting a prayer as he watched Max throw himself in frustration from his horse and swim furiously. Releasing the packhorse so that it headed toward the Texas shore, True Dreamer kicked his mount and turned it downriver after his friends.

Sky struggled to stay above water. Normally she was a strong swimmer, but the current was so powerful as they approached a narrowing bend in the river that she could do little more than thrash helplessly. When she saw Max behind her, she renewed her attempt to reach the shore, fearful he would drown trying to save her. She made little headway, but he closed the distance between them with agonizingly exhausting strokes.

Finally, she was pushed against a large boulder jutting from the riverbed and she held fast to it until he reached her. He flung his body over hers, holding them both against the rock. His hair was plastered to his skull and his breathing was labored. She could feel his heart pound as he shielded her from the fury of the current.

"We...have to...make it...to shore," he gasped out.

Sky nodded her understanding. "I'm ready when you catch your breath," she said, finding her earlier panic subsiding. Her own death held far less terror for her than the idea of watching her husband drown trying to save her when she'd foolishly endangered them both.

At length, he said in a far stronger voice, "Hold tightly to my belt. I think I can walk from here if the current doesn't knock me down...or there aren't any more sudden drop-offs. Whatever you do, don't let go!"

They pushed off the boulder with Max leading while Sky held fast to him, trying to keep her own footing on the rocky, uneven river bottom. The water was well above Max's waist and came up to her breasts. His greater body weight served them well until he stepped into a trough and lost his balance, knocking them both into the current once more. He seized her arm and raised it, saying, "Lock your hands around my neck," as he started to swim.

If only the river were not so muddy and the bottom so obscured, they might have found shallows, but it was a deep murky rust brown filled with whirlpools and eddies. In their struggling, neither of them saw the old Cheyenne on his gruella, plodding carefully toward them—until the end of the safety rope struck Max across his shoulder. Sky grabbed a hold of it, crying out, "Max, hold on to the rope!"

Seeing True Dreamer reining in his horse twenty feet from them, holding the line taut, Max twisted the rope around his arm and held Sky tightly. Ever so slowly, the old man pulled them toward the shore until they reached knee-deep shallows. Holding on to each other, they stumbled through the water with soaked boots and moccasins impeding their progress each step of the way.

As soon as they reached the shore and a dry, grassy piece of ground, Max pulled her down. "Sit and catch your breath," he said, coughing, as he dropped to his knees.

True Dreamer dismounted a dozen yards away and his gruella ambled over to where the packhorse was grazing. When he drew near them, he nodded his approval. "We should camp here this night, I think," was all he said, then bent down, starting to gather dry brush for a fire.

"We owe you our lives, my friend," Max said.

The old man merely nodded.

Sky smiled and said, "He would only tell you that the Powers intended this to happen." She reached up and caressed his jaw. "You risked your life to save me."

"I'm your husband, Sky. What else would I do?" he asked simply, suddenly overwhelmed by the intensity of his love for her. Would it frighten her if he told her how he felt? Was she still in love with her priest—or at least, haunted by him? They remained on the road to revenge, he reminded himself. Killing men was something at which he excelled. Loving a woman...that was another matter, entirely new to him.

Sky saw his eyes darken, not with the hard, dangerous glitter of the past, but with another emotion that was more difficult to read. Impulsively, she raised her face to his and kissed him softly. "Thank you, husband," she said softly.

His face broke into a smile as he lifted her shiny plait of soaking-wet black hair. "You'd best loosen it and brush the Red River out. We'll need to change into dry clothes, too." He planted a swift kiss on the tip of her nose, then stood up and walked over to the packhorse to unload their gear from the waterproof canvas.

Sky sat, dreamily unplaiting her hair and then pulling off her moccasins as she watched Max. He was the most splendidly handsome man she'd ever seen...and he was hers—at least until Johnny Deuce was dead. What then? He said he wanted theirs to be a true marriage. Could they make it work? She didn't know, but was certain of one thing. She desired him with a desperation that went far beyond gratitude.

The flames of the campfire died down low and a brilliant tapestry of stars filled the vastness of the sky above them. They feasted ravenously on a brace of rabbits True Dreamer had shot while they made camp. After the meal, as she washed up the tinware, the old man announced that he had need of time alone for the Powers to speak to him. He took his sleeping gear and rifle and vanished in the brushy grass and shrubs lining the riverbank, leaving them alone.

Max made up their bedrolls side by side a distance from the fire, all the while watching her at her simple chore. Then he looked down at his hands and realized he was trembling. This went far beyond mere lust. He wanted her so badly he ached with it.
Bloody lovesick schoolboy!
Yet he could not feel angry with himself for what he felt.

Sky could sense that he was watching her. When she turned and looked over her shoulder at him, their gazes met across the flickering firelight. Gone was the harsh, dangerous gunman. This was her lover, her love. She put down the last plate, letting the tinware dry on the riverbank. Then she stood up and walked slowly toward him.

He knew his heart must be clearly visible in his expression. At least, he hoped that it was as he waited for her to round the campfire. Her hair, loose around her shoulders, gleamed like polished onyx and the soft buckskin tunic she wore molded to her lush curves. He knew she wore nothing beneath it. His breathing accelerated when she knelt in front of him, hands outstretched.

He took her small hands in his much larger ones and drew her into his embrace, burying his face in her hair as he murmured soft, indistinct love words against her throat. Her head tipped back, allowing him full access to the pounding pulse at her collarbone. His tongue dipped there, laving it while her fingers dug into the soft cotton of his shirt, feeling the hard muscles of his upper arms and shoulders. Then she slid her hands between them and began unfastening the shirt, splaying one palm against his thundering heart.