The Loner (3 page)

“Hey,” he called, keeping his voice low, “get into the cave.
Now
!”

“Keep firing,” she said, her voice shaking. “I can't do this much longer.”

They each took two more shots at Becker and his men. On the last round, they scored another scream of pain. Several coarse shouts rang out, somebody's horse started thrashing around in the woods, and Becker called to his men to head home.

“Hey! We'll be back before daylight,” he yelled. “Then we'll see who you really are.”

The sound of glass breaking, probably a thrown bottle, shattering against the rock wall of the bluff completed the threat and farewell. The Becker
gang tore off through the woods then, making enough noise for a hundred men.

Despite that, Black Fox stayed in the shadows as he ran to Cat.

She sat slumped against the rock as if trying to hug it, her rifle hanging crazily across her lap. Black Fox laid his long gun down, took hers, breached it open and reloaded it. Then he picked her up.

Instantly, she sank back against him as if his arms were a refuge. A fierce protectiveness surged through him and his grip on her tightened before he could stop himself.

Quickly, he laid her onto the blanket where he'd left her to begin with and put the rifle beside her.

“How d'you…know…I won't shoot you?” she said.

“You'd have done it already if you were going to do it tonight,” he said.

“I should…have,” she said, drawing in deep breaths of exhaustion.

“I'm glad you didn't,” he said grimly.

He needed to remember this, now that she
hadn't
shot him dead and he would live to transport other prisoners. It was something he'd already known well, and he had foolishly let the fact that she was a woman make him forget: a lawman should never, ever assume a prisoner was too weak to drag himself—or herself—to a weapon and use it.

“I'm glad…I had the strength…to shoot,” she said. “I'm not…hurt as bad…as I thought.”

“Stop talking,” he said, as he slid the makeshift pillow under her head. “You barely have the strength to get your breath.”

“I could've…saved myself…from hanging if I'd shot you,” she said. “Instead, I saved you 'cause you were outnumbered.”

He covered her with the other blanket and then stood over her, shaking his head. This girl had sand in her craw and nobody could deny it. She never quit fighting, whether it was with guns or with words.

“Don't try to make me feel obliged to you,” he said. “You helped me out because you were too weak to escape and you knew that you'd be safer with me than with them.”

“Not…true,” she said.

She had the faintest trace of teasing in her voice.

“You're the stubbornest woman I've ever known,” he said, and heard the same light tone in his own voice. He stiffened. What was happening here?

He wasn't going to let her make him put his guard down.

“You could've ridden off and left me to them,” she said. “I told you. It would've saved you from worrying over taking a woman in to hang.”

“The Cat's an even bigger catch for me than Hudson Becker would be,” he snapped. “Besides,
I'd have had to find some help if I tried to haul you
and
that whole bunch to Fort Smith.”

The moonlight fell across her face. She looked up at him, looked at him straight as a man would do, with the power of absolute resolve in her eyes.

“You're just trying to make yourself more famous by taking me in,” she said. “But you'll never do it, Lighthorseman. I'll get away from you before we ever see Fort Smith.”

Her eyes closed and her head fell to one side. She had passed out.

Panic struck him. Had she lost more blood or simply overdone her strength? She must've started bleeding again—how could she not, from the recoil of the rifle?

He fell to his knees and looked at her shoulder. She'd bled through the shirt since he'd bandaged her, but the stain didn't seem to be spreading. If it wasn't, it was best not disturbed.

And it was best he not disturb himself by glimpsing the proof of her womanhood again. He was going to treat her like a man from now on or else he'd wind up wounded or dead.

While he kept watch for more blood, he found his bedroll and spread it out for her—nearer the fire but in the shadows—then moved her onto it. All night long, he sat beside her, trying not to think.

He put on his other jacket and leaned back against the wall of the bluff, keeping watch, listen
ing to the birds and the rustlings of small animals in the woods, feeling the night all around them, looking at the moon. And trying not to think.

Especially about this girl who swore he wouldn't take her to jail. All he had to do was his job and he knew how to do that. He'd been doing it for seven years.

His job, those of the other Lighthorsemen, and those of the Cherokee sheriffs and their deputies were the only way to save the Nation, the only way to keep it sovereign for the Cherokee and not let it fall under the control of the United States. The Americans would take over and impose their own government if lawless men from everywhere continued using the Indian lands for a refuge.

Lawless women were another matter.

No, they weren't. A killer who would shoot someone in the back was still a killer, woman or man.

When the chill of the early morning came down into the hills, he added the second saddle blanket to The Cat's covers and punched up the fire. She was just like any other prisoner to him. He'd been a little taken aback, that was all, because she was the first woman among all the wrong-doers he'd ever caught.

If she'd shot Tassel Glass in the back he might be able to understand—she certainly had reason enough to want revenge on the man. But she had done it to Donald Turner instead—ironically,
when he carried a warrant in his pocket for Glass's arrest.

Black Fox got up, poured himself a cup of coffee, and went back to hunker down in his spot against the bluff where he could see in three directions when the sun came up. The Cat had shot Donald Turner in the back, yet she was waiting to get good enough with a handgun so she could call Tassel Glass out in an honorable fashion. Did that make sense?

Thoughtfully, he sipped at the hot, strong brew. Could she be telling the truth about drawing her sign on the trunk of the tree
before
Turner was killed at its foot?

He considered that while he drank his coffee but he found no answer.

She seemed not to be a liar, considering that she had told him straight out and honestly what she planned to do to Tassel Glass, but her sign had been on the tree above Turner. No other evidence had been found.

On the other hand, she
must
be a liar, by the very fact that she was an outlaw. That breed was all alike—untrustworthy to the core.

Except for Charley Burntgrass, who'd been one of the most dangerous men in the Nation when Black Fox had first been sworn in as a Lighthorseman. Charley had picked up Black Fox's wallet, fallen unnoticed out of his pocket in a skirmish
when the young lawman was posing as the newest member of the Hickory Mountain Gang in order to gather evidence against them.

He could still see the wry grin curving Burnt-grass's thin lips as he handed the flat leather packet back to Black Fox.

“I may be the meanest son of a bitch north of the Red,” Charley had said proudly, “but I ain't no snake-bellied thief.”

That honesty had saved Black Fox's life, for in that wallet was the folded paper that was his authorization as a Cherokee Lighthorseman. And now, here, tonight, The Cat had been honorable enough to shoot that rifle she could barely hold level and make a show of force that may have saved his life again.

But that didn't mean she wasn't a liar.

Black Fox leaned back against the rock wall and looked toward her. She was breathing slow and steady, as if she were completely, soundly asleep. Unlike Charley, she
was
a thief, and she'd admitted it. But she claimed not to be a killer.

His pulsebeat stuttered a little, with hope. Maybe she was as honest as old Charley had been, all those years ago.

He set his cup down on the ground and shook his head. That thought was as naïve as any he'd had as a greenhorn beginner of a Lighthorseman and now he was a seven-year veteran and a cap
tain. He was forgetting everything he'd learned in those long years—all because his prisoner tonight was a beautiful red-haired girl.

“Better get a handle on it, Vann,” he muttered to himself, “you're acting as foolish as an old man.”

Restless, he shifted his position to sit crosslegged, what the whites called Indian-style, and look down to the moonlit creek chattering over the rocks below. It had been a wild ride, these last ten years, and if he could live them over, he wouldn't spend them any other way.

His fate had been irrevocably decided that long-ago day when the drunken band of outlaw Intruders had invaded his parents' farm and killed his parents before his eyes. All he'd wanted from that day forward was to rid the Nation of dangerous scum like them.

It still chilled his blood to remember watching from the persimmon thicket as his mother and then his father had been shot dead as they worked in the garden. And then from the ground, running, as he raced to help his parents.

The lead man, who was turning his horse toward the screaming little boy, deliberately aimed at him and shot him, too. After that, he'd watched them through slitted eyes as he played dead.

Black Fox turned his head and looked out into the night, seeing it all again against the black sky: the raucous riders shouting that they were taking
the place, that the Indians had to give up their lands to white men, while they rode, charging, at his astonished, unarmed father. They mercilessly shot him three times so that he finally fell into the rows of corn while still struggling to get to his wife, whom they shot in the next instant.

He could still feel it all, too. The stinging pain as the bullet slammed into his shoulder and the rage and terror that fought inside him with the sorrow that was already welling up into his throat. He'd known his parents were dead the minute they fell.

Well, he wasn't that horrified, helpless boy anymore. He was known throughout the Nation, and over the United States border in Arkansas, too, as a fearless, ruthless bringer of justice, the most famous Cherokee Lighthorseman of them all.

Black Fox's fame came from several jobs he'd done that people still talked about. He had trailed William Emmit, who never robbed a man he didn't kill, all the way to Klo Kotcha in the Creek Nation, and had brought him in alive. He had tracked James Morley, a notorious horsethief, for thirty days, long after the posse and the federal marshal from Fort Smith had given up, and he had caught him alive, too. He had faced down Mose Fourkiller as he openly boasted of his treachery in killing his neighbor and had shot the man dead.

But the exploit that had sealed his reputation and made him the most prominent Lighthorse-
man of all had happened when he'd stopped the jailbreak at the old Tahlequah jail. He had rushed Buckskin Adair knowing the murderer held a smuggled gun and had already freed two other prisoners to overpower the guard. All three of them had been giving him the turkey-gobble death threat and coming at him, Adair shooting, when Black Fox had hit two of them with his first two shots and the third had thrown up his hands in surrender.

He shook his head in wonder as he remembered. God had been with him, and Adair had been a lousy shot or he would not be here tonight.

Black Fox got to his feet and stretched, walked to the edge of the woods where he could stand in the shadows and look out across the vague outlines of the wooded hills. All that was past and he must think about the present.

Now he had captured his first woman outlaw and she was wounded. What was he going to do with her?

She was not able to ride and she would not be able until that wound had healed sufficiently. She'd lost so much blood that she'd be weak for quite a while before he could start on the long trail to Fort Smith without killing her.

He wasn't carrying enough supplies to stay here for the days it would take before she was near normal strength again. He couldn't leave her long enough to hunt for food, not so much be
cause she might try to escape—in her weakened state, she wouldn't be up to hiding her tracks and he'd be able to track her—but because she might overdo herself and start the bleeding again. She'd already done that once.

Black Fox felt his mouth curve at the memory of her and the long gun she'd fired at Becker. She had enough spunk for two people her size.

There was no place else to take her but to his home, where Aunt Sally and Uncle Muskrat would be on hand to help if he needed it. Though he really didn't want to get them involved if he could help it, it would be good to be close to them in case The Cat's condition should worsen, because Aunt Sally was an herb doctor who had treated many a gunshot wound and many a fever.

But Aunt Sally was also very admiring of The Cat, and for that reason Black Fox didn't want her to know that he had the Cherokee Robin Hood in custody. He grinned at the thought of the brisk, bossy woman who had raised him. It was amazing, come to think of it, that he had become a Lighthorseman wanting to enforce the law, because Sally had her own very definite opinions about right and wrong, justice and punishment. She didn't see one thing wrong with The Cat's stealing from the rich to give to the poor.

Yes, he would take her home with him. It'd be a fairly long ride, but he had no choice. Cathleen had too much courage to let herself die on the
trail.

And she had the same sorrow he did, having seen her people murdered before her eyes.

B
lack Fox still hadn't closed his eyes when the first streaks of pink tinged the sky. And he still hadn't figured out what to believe about the guilt or innocence of this woman/child he had in his care. It wasn't his job to figure it out, he must remember that. It had to be left to a jury to decide.

Yet, he always wanted to believe that the prisoners he took to jail were guilty. It was a crime on his part to rob a person of even one day of freedom if he or she was innocent.

Finally, he tossed the remains of his dozenth cup of coffee away and stood up. Time to get going.

His movement disturbed The Cat's sleep.

“Wa-ter,” she mumbled.

He got her a drink of cold water and held up her head so he could pour some of it down her throat. He tried to talk to her but she only moaned in response.

Black Fox laid her back down and walked to the edge of the camp. Nothing as big as a man or a horse was moving among the trees. The sun was bringing a stronger light each minute.

Becker could very well make good on his threat to return come sunrise, so they needed to get out of here now.

He went back to The Cat and stood over her. She was shifting restlessly in her sleep and muttering. He touched her forehead and his heart sank. She was hot, and running a fever.

Black Fox tried to get her awake and get some coffee into her but she clamped her beautiful lips together and refused to take even a sip. She wouldn't open her eyes, either.

For several minutes, Black Fox knelt beside her, trying to prepare her to ride. He could see through her shirt that the bleeding had not completely stopped and he bound the bandage tighter. Then he tried again to get some liquid into her but she wouldn't take it.

Finally, he realized he would have to carry her because she couldn't hold her eyes open for more than a heartbeat at a time, and there was no way,
short of being tied in the saddle, that she would be able to stay on a horse. He couldn't do that to her.

His heart twisted inside him. He wanted her gone and off his hands and he wished for her to be somebody else's responsibility more than he had wanted anything for a long, long time. But he had to take her home with him. There was nowhere else to go and get there with her still alive.

He brought the horses up and saddled them, put his gear back into his packs, then ran the little dun horse's reins through his own saddle ring and knotted them. Only then did he kick dirt over the fire, hoping The Cat could stay warm as long as possible. Fever made a person feel cold and soon she might be chilling. He had to get her to shelter and into a real bed.

His bed.

Black Fox gathered The Cat up into his arms, bedroll and all. That would keep her warmer.

And it would keep her curved, soft body from resting right next to his.

That thought shocked him. She was young. It was unworthy of him even to let such a sensual consideration as that cross his mind.

Dear God, and she was sick into the bargain. But she settled into the curve of his arm with a natural ease that said she trusted him.

“No,” she mumbled, starting to thrash around a little, “leave me alone.”

She kept her eyes closed.

“I know it hurts,” he murmured soothingly, “but I have to hold you tighter while I'm mounting my horse so as not to drop you.”

He stuck the toe of his boot into the stirrup, managed to get a grip on the horn with one hand, and stepped up with her in his arms. It would be the perfect moment for Becker to shoot at them.

The thought must have leapt from his brain to hers.

“What…about Becker…?” she muttered.

He swung into the saddle and found the other stirrup without jostling her too much.

“Becker's sleeping it off,” he said, hoping it was true. “Didn't you hear the firewater in his voice last night?”

“Um,” she said and went even more limp in his arms.

She leaned her head against his shoulder as if he'd asked her to lay it there. He glanced down at her pale, pale face as he turned the horses.

The Cat was looking at him with her eyes wide open. They were as green as still water in the early morning light and they seemed to look straight into his soul.

“Are we going to Fort Smith?” she said.

Her voice faltered on the last word and that small sound was like a knife to his heart. God in Heaven, she was only a kid.

A kid who had good reason for the things she did.

He set his jaw and wished he had never set out to hunt The Cat.

“Not right now,” he said. “In the shape you're in, the trip would kill you.”

She gave a sharp little laugh that made his skin crawl.

“Oh, yeah,” she said. “I keep forgetting you want the hangman to do that.”

He looked away, to guide his horse. There was no way he could think about that hanging now. She was only another prisoner. He must forget that she was a woman.

She made a noise so that he met her eyes again and she held his gaze with her strong, green one as if for reassurance that he was telling the truth.

“We're going in the opposite direction of Fort Smith now,” he said.

She closed her eyes and let her head go into the curve of his shoulder, let her whole weight rest in his arm as if she believed him. As if she knew she was safe.

And last night, he had laid a loaded gun by her side. As if he'd known she wouldn't shoot him.

A seed of trust had been born between them. Now it was his job to rip it out by the roots.

 

Black Fox stayed off the worn trails and made his own path through the woods, riding with every sense and every nerve alert for a warning of
danger. He held both the reins and The Cat with his left arm—she had passed out again, as far as he could tell—so his right one would be free to draw his gun from the hip holster. Their two horses seemed to be making enough noise for twenty.

But a few squirrels, a red-tailed hawk sitting on a stump and a startled yearling deer were all that saw their passing and before noon he pulled up on the edge of the yard that surrounded his homeplace—cabin, barn, and outbuildings. For a minute, he held the horses in the shelter of the trees, so he could see whether Uncle Muskrat or Cousin Willie, who farmed the place, were anywhere around.

At the edge of the bedroll, where The Cat's face lay against his arm, the heat of her skin burned through to his, even though he wore a jacket. The fever had gone higher than ever, despite the fact that he'd washed her face several times with the bandana wet in cool water from his canteen.

A team of Uncle Muskrat's work horses munched grass in the back pasture and cattle grazed there, but no people showed themselves. Nothing indicated that someone might be in the barn, either.

Black Fox squeezed the Ghost with his knees, so the gray and the little dun started toward the house at a walk while he kept on scanning the place with his searching gaze. It'd be for the best if
no one knew The Cat was there. His family could be trusted to keep a secret, yes, but Sally was a talker and if word accidentally got out, folks would ride for miles to see the heroic Robin Hood who'd been helping the poor people all over Sequoyah district, and sometimes in Flint and Goingsnake, too.

At the front door, he stopped the horses, dropped the reins and carried The Cat into the house and straight to his bed. She moaned when he laid her down, and when he touched her face, it burned his fingertips. He needed to do something about that fever, and do it now.

But first, the horses had to be tended, and it would only take a minute to get them out of sight.

He left the room with one glance back at her still face, pale as death. At least this was one time he knew she couldn't escape. The thought made his jaw harden. Why had she put herself in the middle of a firefight, anyhow? A young, pretty girl like her should be at home with her mother learning to cook or wandering the spring woods looking for poke salad and picking the first wild-flowers.

Guilt stabbed him. She was in this mess because the lawmen of the Nation had done nothing about the evil deeds of Tassel Glass. It made him feel guilty as a representation of them all, even though he'd been busy chasing killers and hadn't known that Tassel Glass fit into that category. The
man was widely reputed to be a bootlegger and a merchant hard on collecting debts owed him, but this was the first Black Fox had ever heard of his being a murderer, too.

It was a sad state of affairs when little orphan girls had to seek their own justice.

Moving swiftly, he led their mounts to the barn, stalled and unsaddled them, filled the water buckets and threw them some hay. At night, he would turn them out to graze and he'd keep them up during the day, so as not to attract attention.

That thought seized him with a stark dread. How long would they be here, with him responsible for her—nursing her back to health before he took her to her doom?

He picked up his saddlebags and The Cat's, threw one over each shoulder, and ran for the house. Then he wished he could turn around and run back out again. She was really sick, and she might have to stay here with him for several days. It bothered him more than he was willing to admit that, after only a few hours, he was thinking about her far too much.

She was tossing restlessly, muttering and groaning, her eyes moving back and forth beneath her closed lids. For a long, paralyzing moment, he watched her. Maybe he should get his Aunt Sally to come and take care of her.

Maybe he should put that thought right out of
his head. This was his responsibility and he would deal with it.

Black Fox turned, went to the kitchen, and started building a fire in the kitchen stove. As soon as the kindling caught, he added a couple of sticks of wood and blew on the small flames, willing them to grow. Then he went out onto the back porch and pumped some cool water into a pan.

Yes, he would take care of this girl himself. Not only was it his job, but Aunt Sally would be so upset that he was holding The Cat prisoner she would probably demand that he set her free. Sally and lot more people, too, held the view that The Cat was a hero and should never be punished for doing good for poor people and especially not for harassing Tassel Glass.

The last time he saw her, Sally had remarked that Tassel Glass deserved to be robbed since he always robbed everyone else with his high prices. Sally hated all bootleggers, too, since her son Willie was one of their best customers.

The fact that The Cat was a girl, and a very brave one, would cinch the deal and Sally would try to talk him into letting her go. His aunt judged everyone by the heart and she would deem The Cat's heart in the right place. Why, when The Cat healed, Sally would probably ride into town with her to help give old Tassel his just due.

That image made him smile as he set a pot of
water on one of the stovelids to boil for the sumac tea. Aunt Sally and The Cat would make a team that could terrorize bad men all over the Nation. Maybe he should go ahead and introduce them, then deputize them both.

Black Fox carried the pan of cool water to the bedside and went to the corner cupboard for washcloths and towels. The Cat didn't look tough and strong enough to be a deputy, though, especially not without her shirt. She looked delicate and temptingly feminine and she felt fragile beneath his hands.

He didn't want to know that and he didn't want to see the fragile wings of her collarbone beneath her smooth skin or the hollow in one beautiful shoulder and the bloody wound in the other one. He didn't want to touch her again, or open her shirt, or let his hand brush against her hair. All because he didn't want to think of her as a woman.

How could a woman be his prisoner? It just wasn't right. Nothing about this was right and the whole situation unbalanced him somehow.

Small, beautiful girls weren't supposed to have big, ugly wounds or be headed for jail. They certainly weren't supposed to be on the way to be hanged. It wasn't natural.

He began by bathing her face, then slipped a towel beneath her and began unbuttoning his shirt that she was wearing. Her hot skin felt like melted
satin every time he grazed it with his fingertips. That water had better be boiling soon because she needed medicine, and she needed it now.

Her eyes fluttered open and Black Fox saw that she had to make an effort to keep them open. But the look she gave him was lucid.

“
Stop it
,” she said, her voice raspy in her throat, her hands weakly pushing at his.

“I'm cooling you off,” he said. “Your fever's way too high, and I'm going to wash you with this cold well water to try to bring it down.”

“No,” she said, snatching the cloth out of his hand. “I'll do it.”

Her gaze darted away from his as embarrassment stained her pale cheekbones—pink streaks appeared above the flush of fever in her cheeks. She scooted back to prop herself up on the pillows in spite of the fact that she was trembling.

A streak of fear shot through him.

“Your fever's getting higher by the minute,” he said carefully. “I need to help you out of your clothes, at least.”

“No. I'll do it.”

Quickly, she held the cloth to her forehead, then began moving it over her face with one hand while the other held the front of the shirt together.

Touched by her maidenly wariness, he turned away to give her some privacy, yet he could hardly let her bathe so slowly while her temperature rose. He tried to think what to say because
she didn't have a lot of strength to waste on being upset. Or on washing herself, either.

“You let me take care of you last night,” he said calmly. “Why not now?”

“Now I'm able to do it myself.”

To prove it, Cathleen forced her shaky arms and hands to work, to move the cool cloth over her upper body beneath the loose shirt. He had touched her so gently when he'd bandaged her out there by the cave that she had liked it. She had liked it a lot. Even the awful pain hadn't been enough to distract her from liking the feel of his hands taking care of her. That was what scared her.