The Loner (20 page)

Yet he was also giving her the perfect opportunity to do what she had to do.

He was asking her to trust him that the law would punish Glass.

However, he was also giving her a way to mete out that punishment herself and not have to pay for it with her life.

It was her choice.

Black Fox
did
care about her.

A dozen feelings at once rioted in her heart. She had lived for this for months and months, and lived in a hard, desperate way so she could get this chance.

She set her jaw. Her conscience wasn't bothered one bit by the thought of killing Tassel Glass. This was her chance. She would kill him as mercilessly as he had killed her mother.

The sound of hoofbeats—still some little way off—floated into the gap and echoed dully off its limestone walls. Cathleen's hands tightened on the rifle. It was hard to tell which direction the
horses were coming from, but then she heard the high crack of a whip and the creak of a wagon. The whiskey was arriving from the south.

She looked back over her shoulder again, but all she could see was Becker's roadblock. The trees would keep her from seeing farther south past it, so she'd better look north at all times so as to get the best shot at Glass.

That was what she did, even though it was hard not to try to see what was happening, instead of just listening. There was a closer sound of hoofbeats and then a yell—from one of the outriders, probably—then more noises of the wagon. It rattled to a stop with more yelling and cursing and loud complaints about his broken harness from Becker's man in the road.

Cathleen watched the north end of the gap and prayed for Glass to come. She wanted—no, she
needed
—to get this over with.

The argument on the road was still going on when she heard hoofbeats from the north and a cold blade of realization sliced through her. Here came Glass. It wouldn't be long now.

Her whole body grew more and more tense and she took her finger off the trigger to prevent pulling it too soon. She went up on tiptoe to stretch her legs, being careful not to take her gaze from the peephole she had in the trees.

The noise of the hoofbeats grew louder and the
sounds of men's voices came with them. Then five horsemen galloped into the gap and the lead one threw up his hand, yelling out a warning about the wagon blocking the road.

A shiver ran through Cat. She was in luck. Glass was there, riding in the middle of the pack on a tall, stout horse, his big form filling the saddle and presenting her with a target the worst shot in the world could not miss.

She sighted in on his left chest, just above his right arm, still carried in its sling. She shifted her feet and Little Dunny's body to follow him with her muzzle as he and his men all bumbled down to a slow trot and began approaching Becker's wagon. If only he would stay right in that area when the action started!

It started right then. Becker's men on the walls fired a shot each and wounded one of Glass's. All of his men instantly started milling around, trying to turn back to get out of the trap, but what seemed to be a dozen of Becker's men rode out of the trees at the side of the road, some to surround the whiskey shipment and disarm its outriders, others to surround Glass and his crew.

Becker himself stood up in the bed of the fortified wagon, pointing a shotgun at Glass, who was struggling with his left hand to draw a gun. He was sideways to Cat, but she couldn't shoot anyway, until Black Fox made his shout.

“Give it up if you want to live, Tassel,” Becker yelled, in a voice that shook a little bit the same way his gun was shaking.

“Take your own advice, Becker,” Black Fox shouted, his voice solid as stone with an edge that cut. “You're surrounded. We're Cherokee Lighthorse and United States marshals. We have men on the walls and behind you. Throw down your guns.”

Now. Now. Now she would shoot.

Both Becker and Glass turned, astonished, to see Black Fox riding out into the open and she had the perfect opportunity.

A clear shot at Glass's broad chest was right there in front of her. Her sights were set on the left side of it. She let them drop a little to compensate for the fact that she was shooting from above, slid her finger onto the trigger and began her slow squeeze.

Little Dunny stood as still as if she had quit breathing, steadily supporting the long gun as if she did that every day of her life. Perfect. Perfect.

Glass sat frozen in his saddle, either by surprise or fear, turned toward Cathleen as if she had asked him to pose for her.

Perfect. She would never get another chance like this.

The squeeze was nearly there. One more tiny bit of pressure and her vengeance was done.

But the bitterness drained out of her while she
stood with her finger trembling against the trigger of her gun. She couldn't find any satisfaction in imagining his shirt blossoming with blood and his corpulent self falling from his horse to lie dead on the ground.

Killing him wouldn't make her happy.

Killing him wouldn't give her more peace with the unalterable fact that her mother was gone and with it, her home.

So the shooting started without her. Instantly, her heart had gone to ice; she tried to see Black Fox and if he was safe, her rifle at the ready to protect him if she saw a gun aimed his way.

It was too confusing, people were moving too fast, the narrow space was in turmoil and she saw his face once, then it was gone. She might shoot a lawman, even Black Fox himself by mistake. They would have to take care of themselves.

Cat collapsed against Dunny's warm side, drew her hand away from the trigger, and wiped her sweaty palm on her jeans. The sounds of the guns below them grew more sporadic, then stopped.

“Throw down,” Black Fox said, and the low, stern order carried through the gap like a shout, but it wasn't.

It was a command that he knew would be obeyed. There were no more sounds of shots.

He was all right. He was fine.

Sweat was pouring down her face, too, so she
lifted her shoulder and scrubbed it with her shirt. Then, her arms aching, she took down the rifle and walked around her mare to slide it into the sheath on the saddle.

She leaned against Little Dun's silky neck and buried her face in it. Then she couldn't even move anymore because her heart was standing still for Black Fox.

Somehow, Black Fox had done this to her. He had helped her to make the right choice. If she had killed Glass in that cowardly way, the agony would have kept driving her. Since she didn't, it was gone.

She heard Black Fox raise his voice to send someone back to camp for the prison wagon and someone else order the prisoners to sit down crosslegged on the ground, and finally she stood up and walked around Dunny again to climb into her saddle. It would be a satisfaction to see Tassel Glass's arrogant self sitting on the ground beneath a lawman's gun.

It would be great satisfaction to see him standing, shackled, in Judge Parker's court. He would have to go there instead of to the Cherokee court because this crime involved white men.

It would be an even greater vengeance to know he would be locked up for years with his pride subjugated to his jailers.

She kissed to Little Dun, rode her out of the trees and down the brushy hillside. They came
out into the gap not a stone's throw from where Black Fox was tying Tassel Glass's hands together behind his back.

Cat watched as he handed the rope to Rabbit Sanders, who then tied Glass to Hudson Becker.

“I know you boys have a lot to talk about,” Rabbit taunted them, “so I'm making sure you don't have nobody between you.”

Cathleen had thought she would relish taunting Tassel, too. She had expected to relish the look on his face when he saw her again.

Instead, she didn't even glance at him. The only face she wanted to look into was Black Fox's.

He gave her one, sharp, slanting glance that she couldn't read, but it lit her up inside, anyhow.

They didn't talk, not one word, all the while he was busy tying up prisoners and guarding them until the prison wagon, driven by the cook, came rattling down from their lake camp. They barely even looked at each other but that whole time they were aware of each other and communicating. Every minute, each one knew that the other one was there.

Finally, every prisoner was loaded and ready to start down the road toward Fort Smith, sitting in rows in the prison wagon with the chains attached to it replacing the ropes. The lawmen conferred; two of the deputies from Fort Smith tied their horses to the whiskey wagon and prepared to
drive it back to Arkansas, while two more took over Becker's wagon and team.

“Black Fox,” one of the federal deputy marshals called, “you want to ride on ahead of this little cavalcade?”

“I'm not going,” Black Fox said. “Rainwater's representing the Cherokees.”

The marshal who had asked the question turned to stare at Black Fox in astonishment.

“That's not like you, Vann,” he said. “How come you're not sticking with these reprobates 'til the doors clang behind 'em like you always do?”

Cathleen watched from where she sat Little Dun in the shade and listened for his answer with her heart standing still.

“Got business elsewhere,” Black Fox said, as he turned away from the wagon and walked toward his horse.

That was when he looked at Cat and smiled.

A
fter the wagons—filled, respectively, with prisoners and with whiskey—had rattled off to the south out of Limestone Gap to begin the two-day trek to Fort Smith, Black Fox swung Gray Ghost around and pointed his head to the north. Cathleen, on Little Dun, sat waiting in the middle of the road.

“I'm glad you stayed, Cat,” he said, riding toward her.

She thought he sounded a little bit shy. But not at all hesitant. His tone was very firm.

She laid the rein against Dunny's neck as a signal to fall in beside him. “I couldn't have just ridden away and left you. After all, I'm under arrest.”

He flashed her a quick, surprised glance, then grinned that grin that made her heart turn over every time.

“I wasn't sure,” she said, “whether or not you would pursue me to the ends of the earth.”

Her heart thudded like thunder in its yearning to know the answer to that.

He raised one eyebrow.

“I don't know,” he said lightly, “I've lost a lot of sleep lately and you're pretty darn hard to catch.”

The teasing tone of his voice sent a jolt of happiness through her. It made her feel silly and flirtatious and altogether foolish, somehow.

“Only when I don't want to be caught,” she said.

He kept looking at her as the horses kept pace with each other.

“Cathleen,” he said. “I should tell you now that you're free to go.”

She gave
him
a surprised look. “What are you talking about?”

She searched his eyes, which were twinkling with mischief. Or excitement. Or happiness.

“Every time I turn around,” she said, “you're telling me or somebody else that I have some kind of ridiculous charges against me.”

He cocked that brow again. “True,” he murmured.

She narrowed her eyes and tried her best to
look straight into his mind. “Remember, you're Black Fox Vann. You take being a lawman very, very seriously.”

He wasn't going to let her look away from him, either.

“I know,” he said, “and that means I have to go by the letter of the law. If there's no one to press charges against you, I have to set you free.”

“What if I don't want to be free?”

Suddenly, both their tones of voice had changed from playful to serious. Entirely serious.

And, suddenly, they were talking about something else besides the law.

“You're not even twenty years old,” he said, “and now you have your whole life before you as a free woman.”

Her heart clutched. Was he truly going to send her away? Was she not as important to him as he was to her?

In that one moment of fear, which was greater than any she'd ever known, she knew she loved him.

No, she
admitted
to herself that she loved him. She had
known
she loved him since her eyes fluttered open and she saw him bending over her, staunching the blood flowing out of her.

Her heart soared, then came crashing down. Of course, it would be too perfect to be real if he loved her, too.

Life was hard. Life wasn't like that.

“Well, if it's my life, I get to choose how I spend it,” she said.

“You're too inexperienced to make that choice right now,” he said. “You've never been anywhere but the Cherokee Nation.”

“I don't want to go anywhere else,” she said.

“Your contrariness is rising,” he said, grinning at her again.

She put her fists on her hips and Dunny looked back to see what that pull on the reins might mean.

“I'm proud of my contrariness,” she said. “It has carried me through many a rough patch.”

“And it's carried me
into
many of 'em,” he said.

They both laughed. They couldn't seem to stop looking into each other's eyes.

Then they sobered.

“I'm seriously trying to tell you something, Black Fox,” she said. “I am
not
leaving the Nation.”

“Why not?”

She gulped and grabbed her courage with both hands. She was nothing if not bold, her mother had always told her.

“Because I love you,” she said, and held his gaze with hers.

A shadow flashed in his eyes.

“I love you, too,” he said. “It wouldn't be fair not to tell you that.”

All breath left her. Her heart stopped beating. Could it be true? Could it be?

“But I'm a rigid old stick-in-the-mud lawman,” he said. “You'd be sick and tired of me in no time.”

“I don't see how that's a problem,” she said, smiling. “After all, I'm law-abiding now.”

He smiled back and his eyes burned into hers with a fire from deep inside him.

“I must say that I love you just as much now that you're law-abiding as I did when you were an outlaw,” he said.

She tilted her head and looked up at him with her meanest green-eyed stare.

“I never said the change was permanent,” she said.

“I never said that, either,” he replied. “But I'm thinking that if you're so set on staying in the Nation that you might want to take just one more step in the right direction.”

“Oh,” she said flirtatiously, “and what is it?”

“Marriage to a Cherokee so you won't be an Intruder anymore.”

She raised her eyebrows.

“It's a step I
might
take,” she said, “if a Cherokee man happened to propose to me.”

He stopped his horse in the middle of the road, stood in the stirrup, got off, and came to her side.

“Here,” he said, holding his arms up for her, “come here to me.”

She slid off her horse into his embrace.

“Here's a Cherokee man proposing to you, Cathleen O'Sullivan, outlaw Intruder woman,” he said. “Will you marry me?”

Then he held her tight against his hard body and, for a long moment, gazed down into her eyes. She knew they were giving him her answer, but he was waiting for the word.

“Yes!” she cried. “Yes, I will marry you, Black Fox. Now kiss me, quick!”

He held her even more tightly as his eyes twinkled.

“I always do whatever you tell me,” he drawled, teasing her unmercifully, “you know that. But don't you think we ought to talk about…”

She rose up on tiptoe in his arms, moving her body against his at the same slow pace as his words, offering her slightly parted lips, her eyes half-closed in invitation.

He made a helpless moan and he kissed her then, cupped her face in both his big, calloused hands and kissed her, long and hard and sweet as honey, until her head was dizzy and she had no breath left.

Except for just enough to say one thing. “Let's camp here, tonight.”

That made him throw back his head and laugh. He held her even closer and dropped a kiss onto the top of her head.

“I don't know,” he said, teasing her. “Some
body might run over us, right here in the middle of the road.”

She laughed, too. “I don't mean in the road and you know it,” she said. “Let's go to that glade right on the other side of those trees.”

He frowned and pretended to consider. “Oh, I don't know. It's a long time until sundown.”

She tilted her head and looked up at him, smiling, with her eyes full of invitation.

“On second thought,” he murmured, “let me show you what we can do to pass the time until then.”