The Loner (2 page)

“Who…are you?” she mumbled.

Dear God. She barely had the strength to move her tongue with her mouth so dry.

“Black Fox Vann,” he said.

Dear God.

She was as good as dead right now because everybody knew about this Lighthorseman who never gave up. He was relentless. He did what he had to do.

But wait! What was that he said about a hanging? Wasn't that a bit severe just for robbing Tassel Glass, who had a hundred times more possessions than she could ever carry away in a whole train of freight wagons?

Probably he was going to take her in to hang because she
intended
to kill Glass. But no. Her brain must be a little weak, too, from the loss of blood—even Black Fox Vann couldn't know her
planned
crimes.

Even Judge Parker couldn't hang a person
before
they committed murder.

Her mind spun out of control, like in a nightmare, and she tried to get it back so she could gather her strength and escape. Then he lifted her shoulder and the pain swept through her like a prairie fire burning everything else out of her brain.

She clamped her teeth together. He wasn't going to make her scream or cry. She hadn't cried since the day Tassel Glass killed her mother and she wasn't going to start now just because she was in the hands of the law.

No. She would watch for chances and she'd get free soon enough.

Black Fox left her for a minute and she hoped he'd gone away but he was back in a heartbeat with a clean shirt. He slipped it onto her good arm and covered her chest with it.

“Good thing you had this cloth wrapped around you,” he said, as he started washing her wound. “I'd have had to tear up my only other shirt for a bandage and you'd have been left naked.”

Would Black Fox Vann be the kind to take advantage of a woman? She'd never heard anything like that about him. She thought not, and her mind really was working better now that the pain was easing some.

“Don't even think about it,” she said, as fiercely as she could. “I can wear a bloody shirt.”

Her voice was so weak she could barely hear it. She must've used up all her strength as well as her air when she was trying not to scream.

“Don't worry,” he said, although his voice was still gruff. “Your virtue is safe with me.”

His fingers touched her gently, so gently, as he washed around her wound. But that made it hurt
like crazy again. And he didn't need to try to lower her defenses by saying something kind.

“But my life isn't, is it?”

When she said that, she forced her eyes open so she could see him. So she could challenge him with a look. He didn't need to think he had all the power. She might as well try to dent his confidence a little. What else could she fight with but words?

He looked right into her eyes but he said nothing and showed nothing in his face. He was a hard man. And she could not believe he was the one who'd finally caught her.

The thought was nearly more than she could bear. She wanted to scream then, not from pain but from fear. There was no one to help her. She'd been completely alone for nearly a year and there was no one to come to her aid.

And here she was, weak as a newborn kitten,
so
weak she was helpless.

That thought scared her worse than what he'd said about hanging.

She clamped her teeth together and stared out into the darkness. Her head was going around in circles. She should get up from here and make a dash for her horse. But she couldn't even sit up without help and she knew it.

“Leave me alone,” she said. “Go away.”

He gave no indication he heard her and contin
ued washing the wound. When he finished, he dried it with the tail of the shirt he'd halfway put on her. A thought skittered through her mind: what other man would think of drying her skin before he kept the air off it with a bandage? What man would even know that that might make it blister or petrify the wound?

For a breath or two, he left her alone and the pain went away.

Then he started winding the cloth around her shoulder and up over her collarbone on the other side of her neck and back under her arm, winding it very tightly, and the pain started up again with a devilish vengeance—it kept grabbing her lungs and squeezing every drop of air out of them.

Over and over again it did that until finally he was done and he laid her back down and let her be still. She forced words out of her mouth just to make him talk so she'd have something to think about besides the pain.

“I asked you a question,” she said through her clenched teeth. “Why is my virtue safe with you if my life isn't?”

He was standing up now, with his face far, far above her. He jerked his head around to look at her.

“I'm not that kind of man,” he snapped, his voice filled with scorn for the very thought.

He walked over to the fire, poured a cup of cof
fee into the tin cup he carried, and started back to her.

“Water,” she said, though her tongue was so thick and dry she hated to try to move it again. “Cold water.”

Oh, how it galled her to have to ask him for a drink! She could hardly bear it but she had to have water or she thought she would die right there and then.

“All right,” he said, “but then you'll have to take some of the coffee.”

The pain wasn't slowing down any at all that she could tell.

“You're not…the boss of me,” she said.

He was going for water, she could tell. She couldn't see him now but she could hear the creek. This place had been one of her favorite haunts.

Then she caught herself. It still
was
one of her favorites. She might be down but she wasn't beaten yet. She wasn't going to let him take her out of the beautiful country that she loved.

“Yes, I am,” he said, his voice low and sure. “I'm the boss of you until you walk into that jail.”

A moment later he was walking back up the little slope to her, a cup in each hand. He went down on one knee beside her, set one cup down and brought the other to her lips. To her consternation, she couldn't hold up her head, so he propped it up with his big hand.

It was so weird to be touched. No one had
touched her for months and months, not since she'd hugged her little half-brothers good-bye.

And no
man
had ever touched her. Except for Tassel Glass.

The water lapped cool and wet and wonderful onto her lips and she drank it with Black Fox Vann's long, strong fingers in her hair and burning into her scalp. She could still feel the shape of them after he'd laid her back down. Even through the pain she could feel them.

Black Fox Vann could be a very gentle man, along with being a hard one.

“I'll let you rest a minute,” he said, and somehow the tone of his rich voice soothed her, “then I'll give you the coffee.”

She had to fight that soothing. It could get to be too much. She had to keep her guard up.

“I don't want it.”

“I know,” he said, and now his tone was even more peaceful.

The cool water was in her stomach now and the pain was bad and the two things were making her chill inside. She clamped her jaws together and tried to hold her body still. She had to think about something else or she would start to shake on the outside, too. That would make her more helpless than ever.

“Has Judge Parker started hanging people for stealing?” she said, her teeth chattering in spite of her.

Black Fox Vann bent over her immediately, propped up her head the way he had before, and held a spoonful of hot, fragrant coffee to her lips.

“All judges—and juries—hang horsethieves,” he said.

Then he took the coffee away and blew on it, to cool it. Was it breath or saliva that the Cherokee believed held the essence of a person? She couldn't remember. It had better not be breath because she didn't want Black Fox Vann's essence in her.

The chill was making her tremble in earnest now, even her head shook in his hand. He held it a little more firmly. Somehow that made her feel more secure than anything else. More secure than caught.

“You've got to take this,” he said. “It's cool enough not to burn your mouth.”

She let him spoon the coffee into her and, on the fourth or fifth time, she felt its warmth begin to spread through her body. He must've dipped the spoon and held it to her lips a hundred times, at least it seemed that many, before the shivering lessened and finally stopped.

“Enough for now,” he said, and was gone.

She glimpsed him building the fire a little higher and then he was out of sight a while before coming back to her with a horse blanket in each hand.

“I'm going to put one of these under you,” he said, “and the other on top.”

He laid one out beside her, knelt down and picked her up, just picked her right up as easily as Mama had picked up the boys when they were babies. She landed on the blanket as lightly as a feather and the pain didn't kick up again at all.

“I
know
all judges hang horsethieves,” she said.

He chuckled as he covered her with the other blanket. He was so careful with it that her pain did not intensify.

“Good,” he said. “Outlaws need to know such things so maybe they'll keep their necks out of the noose.”

“If you're trying to scare me with all this talk of hanging and nooses and Judge Parker,” she said, “you can forget it. I've never stolen a horse.”

He squatted there on his haunches and looked straight at her in the light from the fire.

“All judges hang murderers, too,” he said.

She felt her heart slow down. Inside, she grew even warmer.

“Well, then, you can turn me loose,” she said, “because I never killed anybody, either.”

Yet. I haven't killed him yet. And when I do, it won't be murder.

“Except for Deputy U.S. Marshal Donald Turner,” he said, in a tone that was flat and oh, so sure. “You shot him in the back down by PawPaw a couple of weeks ago. Have you forgotten about that?”

She felt her eyes go wide with the shock of it.
He really believed that, she could tell by the way he spoke. And the way he looked at her.

“I was down by PawPaw a couple of weeks ago,” she said, and swallowed hard. She really did need another drink of water. “But all I did was rob Tassel Glass's whiskey-selling friend Johnny Burke of his ill-gotten gains.”

He looked right through her and into her soul. He had the darkest, most piercing stare she had ever seen in her life.

“Are you The Cat?” he said.

She didn't hesitate. He looked like St. Peter on the Great Judgment Day.

“Yes.”

“You use the sign of the track of the mountain lion?”

“Yes.”

“You left it on a blackjack tree above Donald Turner's body.”

That one wasn't a question. Which was the most fearsome thing of all.

“No!” she cried. “No! I didn't shoot him.”

“Did you put your mark on the tree?”

“Yes. That's where I waylaid Johnny McGill.”

“Did you shoot him?”

She smiled at the memory.

“No. I didn't have to shoot one round. He just threw me the money sack and rode off as fast as he could.”

She leaned up on one elbow and stared at him
narrow-eyed, fighting the panic that was trying to take her. She couldn't let him see it, she couldn't let him know that she was so scared.

Gentle or not, water and coffee or not, bandage or not, this man was her mortal enemy.

“I didn't even steal his horse,” she said.

He looked at her for a long, long time, searching her entire self very, very thoroughly.

Finally, he spoke. “I want to believe you,” he said quietly. “God help me, I want to.”

His jaw hardened.

“But I don't.”

B
lack Fox tried to make himself stand up and walk away. He needed to see to the fire. He needed to get some more water into her. But he couldn't stop looking at her—as if somehow that would help him absorb the truth.

Who would've thought that The Cat was a woman? No, a girl. She was very much a girl, probably no more than sixteen or seventeen years old.

He got up and went to pour some more water into the cup. Then he knelt beside her and held the drink to her lips with one hand as he supported her head with the other. She had a beautiful, full mouth. And her hair felt like silk between his fingers.

“Did you think you could go on forever and not get caught?” he said, when she'd stopped drinking. He laid her head down and folded his jacket to go under it. “What were you doing, anyhow?”

“Getting ready to call Tassel Glass out,” she said. “Just as soon as I got good enough with my handgun.”

Astonished, he stared at her. He lifted her head and slipped the makeshift pillow beneath it.

“I'm good with a rifle,” she said, in a matter-of-fact tone, “but I never had used a six-shooter very much.”

His mind raced, trying to understand.

“So you went to the store today for a shootout with him?”

Her eyes blazed.

“Maybe. Maybe not. I was testing him,” she said impatiently.

“That's usually what a shootout is,” he snapped, irritated by her tone. “A test to see who can draw faster.”

She narrowed her eyes at the sarcasm.

“This test was to see if he recognized me dressed as a boy. To see if he knows that The Cat is me. To see if he knows I'm back in the Nation and after revenge. That's why I use my sign—he knows my family nickname is Cat for Cathleen.”

“Revenge for what?”

“He trapped my stepfather by giving him a job,
supposedly to work off all the money we owed at the store. Instead, he shot him dead. He raped my mother and then killed her by setting fire to our house.”

Her jaw clenched, although it trembled along the line of the delicate bone.

“Why?”

“To try to bed me,” she said. “And I am going to kill him.”

Her tone was low and even. Every word came out fierce and sure.

Every word proved he'd been right not to believe that her lawlessness ended with thievery.

“Oh,” he said, “and will you steal his horse, too?”

She sagged back against the ground. She knew what he meant by that. It didn't make her waver one bit.

“No,” she said. “And I won't kill and I
didn't
kill anybody
else
, either. All I want is that son of a bitch out of business and off the face of the earth.”

Black Fox sat back on his heels and took a long, deep breath. He'd better quit thinking about her as a girl and think of her as a prisoner who would escape if he gave her half a chance.

Yet the thought of her being tormented by Glass's lecherous intentions, maybe even touched by his hands, made him want to kill the man, too.
To try to bed me
, she had said. At least old Tassel must not have succeeded, which was a miracle, given his known ruthlessness.

“Glass has a lot of enemies,” he said, “and you or one of Becker's bunch shot him today. He may be dead right now.”

“If he's not, he will be,” she said.

“But not at your hand,” he said, in the same un-giving tone she had just used.

It was for his sake and not for hers that he was arguing with her. It'd make it easier for him if she were convinced there was no reason to try to escape.

Which was a stupid way to be thinking when he'd already told her she was on her way to be hanged.

No, it wasn't. She cared more about Glass's death than her own life or she wouldn't be planning to call him out. And that was a sad comment on life in the Nation when a young person, much less a woman, felt she had to impose her own justice. It made him feel derelict in his duty.

He turned away from her and stood up. Then he looked down at her, hard and straight.

“The reason you took such a risk as to go openly into Glass's store,” he said harshly, “is that you're wishing all this mad wildness was over with. Well, now it is. You're on your way to the Fort Smith jail.”

Cat gave him her best defiant glare for as long as she could, then she closed her eyes and turned her face away. He might as well have stabbed her in the heart.

You're wishing all this mad wildness was over with.

He was right, and that chilled her mind worse than her body already was. How could he know that about her? He really could look into her soul with those dark eyes of his. When she got ready to escape, she'd have to be careful not to let him see her thoughts.

Because he'd said that, her weakness reached even deeper into her and called up her loneliness. It pulled at her until she wanted to turn loose and fall into it, to let it take away her will.

But if she did that, she would never get to her goal. What she needed to do was rest up and drink every bit of water he gave her and sleep. He wasn't going to take her anyplace tonight. He had already unsaddled the horses to get the blankets for her and now she could hear him over there in the dark somewhere, moving the tack around, judging from the small sounds of the bits and the cinch buckles clinking.

Yes, she would let herself sleep so her strength would come back. She took a deep breath and told herself that by relaxing, by sleeping, she was not giving in to the weakness. Instead, she was gathering strength.

However, many months of outlawry had ingrained the habits of survival deep in her. The minute she tried to give in to exhaustion, sleep escaped her. She listened to the faint sounds Black
Fox made walking around and she knew when he pounded a stake into the ground to tie the horses for the night.

They weren't going anywhere tonight. They were staying right here until morning and she had believed him when he said her virtue was safe. She needed rest. She would go to sleep, she would
will
herself to do it.

A rough hand clamped over her mouth and held her head against the ground. For one terrible instant she thought it wasn't Black Fox and she would go mad from being so helpless, so limp from pure fear. Then she caught his scent and his voice, low and quiet as breath in her ear.

“Somebody's out there,” he murmured. “I'm getting you away from the light.”

Then it scared her that she hadn't heard anything. She wouldn't last long like that.

He pulled the blanket she lay on far enough into the dark that he wouldn't be silhouetted by the fire when he stood up, and then he gathered her up into his arms and started moving fast up the incline of the hill. The pain stirred and spread through her whole body again but Black Fox clasped her tight against his chest and the warmth of his body spread through her, too.

It nearly made her forget the pain.

“There's a cave up here,” he whispered.

His mouth brushed her ear. She wouldn't have
believed her overwrought feelings could've let one more sensation in, but a thrill tingled her all over at the touch of his lips on her skin.

“You just stay quiet,” he said. “I'll take care of whoever it is.”

The sound of a branch snapping underfoot rang in the night like a shot. Then Cat heard the creak of saddles and the snuffling of horses.

“There's more than one of them,” she whispered, although, for some reason, she could hardly get breath to speak.

“I know,” he said.

Then she wondered why she warned him. If he got shot, she wouldn't be a prisoner anymore. She was crazy for feeling safe in his arms.

She had to do something to drive that feeling away.

Black Fox laid her down. “You're in the mouth of the cave,” he said, bending over her. “Don't move from here.”

“Hey! Hello the camp! Is that The Cat there? We're ridin' in. We want to join up with you!”

Chill bumps stood up on her skin and she tried to think who it was. She had spent so much time eavesdropping and spying on the bootleggers in this part of the Nation that she should recognize the voice. She finally did, just before he announced himself.

“This here's Hudson Becker,” he called, and she heard the slur of his tongue that told her he'd been
sampling some of his own wares. “I got a deal for you, Cat Boy, 'cause you been doin' so much harm to Tassel Glass.”

“I've been doing harm to him, too,” she muttered. “He probably wants to kill me.”

Terrible images flashed through Black Fox's head, images of The Cat, helpless and female, in Becker's hands. Thank God the bootlegger thought she was a boy, or he'd be even bolder.

“You've got the wrong camp, Becker,” Black Fox called back. “We're Lighthorsemen here.”

It galled him to say that, with every muscle in his body aching to stay silent and get out of there, to drift through the night in a big quarter-circle and get behind them, to surprise them and take them all prisoner before they had a clue he was there. The bootleggers did a lot of harm to the Nation, sometimes as much as the murderers, but it seemed he never had time to go after them.

He couldn't do it, though. Working alone, he'd never be able to keep them away from The Cat on the long journey to Fort Smith, or even to the Tahlequah jail.

A long silence reigned.

Then there was a rustling in the edge of the woods, and Becker yelled again, his voice sounding closer this time.

“I don't believe you. Which Lighthorsemen?”

“I'm Black Fox Vann,” he said. “Ride on in and we can meet face-to-face.”

More silence.

“Get him in here and turn me over to him,” The Cat murmured sarcastically, “and you won't have to go through all that upset of taking a girl in to hang.”

Hot fury stung him. Ungrateful little wench.

“Careful what you wish for,” he snapped. “I ought to be out there rounding them up instead of protecting you.”

“I can protect myself,” she said. “Go…ahead. Arresting them would stop a whole lot of meanness in the Nation and capturing me only stops good deeds. You…know that.”

She was nearly too weak to talk. Or else her pain was that bad.

It made him mad at himself that he even bothered to think about which it might be.

“Save your breath,” he said. “You're gonna need it.”

He set his jaw against his anger, went to the saddles he had piled to one side of the cave's entrance, and slid his rifle from the scabbard on his saddle.

“I'm climbing to higher ground,” he said. “If I have to drive them off I don't want them shooting toward you.”

“No, 'cause they might kill me and you want Judge Parker to do that,” she said.

“Don't move,” he said.

“I'm helpless,” she said bitterly. “Remember?”

“Don't feel sorry for yourself. You could already be dead.”

He left her.

“You're bluffin',” Hudson Becker yelled drunkenly. “You're just some longrider hiding out on your lonesome. You ain't no Lighthorseman.”

“Come on in and see for yourself,” Black Fox yelled back.

“I will. I need another horse. I've got a man here riding double because his mount took a bullet.”

“Stop auguring and try us,” Black Fox said. “We'll empty some more saddles for you and then you won't need our horses.”

He was glad his eyes were getting adjusted to the night. If they started shooting, he would have to move quickly and silently from one place to another to make it seem more than one man was shooting back at them. Damn his luck, anyhow! How could this happen at the only time in his life when he had a wounded woman as his sole responsibility?

Somebody in Becker's gang shot off his gun, apparently into the air. Black Fox held his fire. No sense letting them see where he was until he had no choice.

“We know you're on your own and by your lonesome. We tracked you.”

Black Fox laughed.

“Then you couldn't track a herd of cows across
a muddy barnyard,” he said. “Come on in here and count us. Then we'll take you up to Tahlequah to see the jail.”

“You oughtta take a long walk tomorrow so's you can think about all that lying you're doing tonight,” Becker said righteously.

He was slurring his words even more.

“Come ahead,” Black Fox called. “Stop flapping your jaws and try us.”

He moved the instant he said it, and it was a good thing he did. Two of Becker's men shot at him, sending one of the bullets whistling past his ear. Black Fox shot back, then scooted fast away from that spot along the rocky ledge. Somebody yelled in pain.

Nothing would be easy if they actually worked up the nerve to storm the camp. He didn't know how many of them there were, and one of them could get to Cat while the others were keeping him busy. Somehow, he had to make them want to go on their drunken way.

“I'll take you,” Becker said. “Even if you
are
Lighthorse. That'd be a feather in my cap. Yep, we might just kill us a Lighthorseman.”

Black Fox fired toward the sound of the rough voice. A second later, while he was moving to a new location, another rifle—not far from him—did the same.

He nearly jumped out of his skin. His mind raced crazily. Had one of them gotten around
him? But if so, why would the man be firing at his own gang?

The other rifle barked again and he caught a glimpse of its flash at the mouth of the cave. Quickly, Black Fox fired, too, so it'd be positively clear that there were two of them. How in the world had The Cat recovered enough to pick up a rifle, much less aim and fire it?

The moon was rising. It caught the glint of the rifle barrel and the gleam of red that was always in The Cat's hair. She was sitting or kneeling behind a rock and steadying her long gun across it.

Flame flashed at the muzzle. She sank down so her head would be behind the rock in case of return fire.