The Mavericks (30 page)

Josie held her breath. Her nails dug into the palms of her hands as she waited for Hawk to say what he wanted them to do.

“We can't take the wagon through the mountains.” Suzette was asking whether Hawk would take her with him. Josie could tell from the deadness of Suzette's voice that she believed Hawk was going to send them away.

“We'll leave the wagon here,” Zeke said to Suzette. “We can leave the rancher a note, telling him we'll come back for it. You and Josie can ride our horses. Hawk and I will ride the mules.”

“But you don't have any saddles.” Josie didn't know why she was pointing out the obvious unless she was so overcome with relief for Suzette that her brain wasn't working.

“Comanches never use saddles,” Hawk said.

“And slaves weren't allowed to ride anything but mules,” Zeke added.

“All of our costumes are in this wagon,” Suzette said. “Everything we own.”

It was clear to Josie that Suzette wasn't stating this as an objection. Leaving her costumes behind meant something very specific and important. She wanted Hawk to tell her what it meant to him, but Josie wasn't sure she wanted Hawk to do that yet. Whatever happened, she wanted both of them to have more time to think about it. She liked Hawk, but she loved Suzette. She didn't want to see her ruin her life.

“We can come back for the wagon once they give up trying to take the mares.” Josie turned from Suzette to Zeke. “How long do you think that'll take?”

“I can't say. We're going to try to make the sheriff think we disappeared. We don't want to get in a fight with a lawman. Since people pay him to uphold the law, it would be hard to convince them he's in the wrong.”

Josie knew he meant that nobody would believe a black man and a half-breed they didn't know instead of the sheriff they did know. Once more she felt guilty for having caused them trouble.

“We're ready,” she said. “Tell us what to do.”

It took only a few minutes to put the wagon under a shed behind the ranch house. Zeke woke up the owner to tell them what they were doing, while Hawk unhitched the mules and led them back to the clearing where Suzette and Josie waited. There was some awkwardness about the women mounting up. Their long skirts made it virtually impossible to mount without displaying an indecent amount of leg. Suzette didn't seem to care, but Josie made Zeke turn his back while she climbed into the saddle and adjusted her skirts.
Just one more reason why no sane woman would have anything to do with a ranch.

“Where are we going?” Josie asked once they were under way. As usual, Hawk and Suzette were in the front while Josie and Zeke brought up the rear.

“Up into those trees,” Zeke said, pointing at the tree-covered slopes to the south.

The mountain appeared to rise straight up out of the surrounding desert. This route would make it harder for the sheriff to find them, but she had never ridden a horse into the mountains. The slopes ahead looked too steep to climb.

For the next two hours the land rose so gradually, Josie wouldn't have been aware of the rise if it hadn't been for the appearance of juniper and pinyon pine among the cactus, mesquite, and ironwood. The ground became more uneven, and loose rocks made it harder for the horses to find secure footing. Josie worried that the noise of so many shod hooves on the rocks could be heard for miles.

“The rocks will make it harder for anyone to follow our trail,” Zeke said, apparently understanding her worry. “Once we reach the pine and fir forest, the needles will muffle the sounds.”

Josie looked up at the tall trees that clung to the seemingly vertical sides of the mountain. “How can we get up there?”

“Game trails.”

“Can't the sheriff find the same trails?”

“Maybe, but that would bring him directly into our line of fire.”

“What do you think he'll do?”

“I don't know. I never expected he would try to take
our horses. I'm sure Gardner's behind that. Since I don't know his relationship with the sheriff, I don't know how much influence he has over him. When he finds us gone, I'm hoping he'll think we're too far from Benson for him to follow.”

Josie was unprepared for the change in temperature when they reached the slopes of the mountains and started to climb. The drafts of cool, moist air that flowed down the slopes raised goose bumps on her arms. She was relieved to see the first shafts of sunlight begin to peep over the Dragoon Mountains on the far side of the San Pedro River Valley. Her mind told her it was easier to hide in the deep shadows of the night, but the rest of her preferred the warmth of sunlight. Somehow things never seemed quite so terrible in the daylight.

They reached the first of the ponderosa pines just before the sunlight could have spotlighted them against the mountainside. It took Josie's eyes a few moments to adjust to the dark under the canopy, which grew thicker and more lush as they climbed. Before long, she felt like she was back in the forest of Colorado. In front the mares bunched up.

“What's wrong?” she asked Zeke.

“The trail is so steep Hawk has to take the mares up one at a time.”

Josie watched with increasing uneasiness as each mare struggled to climb the loose shale on the slope.

“It's easy for a hundred-and-fifty-pound deer to climb the trail, but it's not the same for a thousand-pound horse,” Zeke explained when it came time for her to climb the slope. “I'm going to lead you up.”

“Can you stand up on that stuff?”

“We'll see.”

“Isn't there another way up?”

“Probably, but that would mean going back down again.”

“Why can't we do that?”

“Because the sheriff is down below.”

“Can they see us?” Hiding from the sheriff and Gardner brought back memories of the way Josie had felt years ago when she was hiding from her father. She'd hated the feeling then and she hated it now. And she hated Gardner for making her feel this way.

“We'll be better concealed once we get up this slope.” Zeke took hold of Josie's mount's bridle. “Let go of the reins and hold on to the pommel. Grip with your knees as tight as you can, but take your feet out of the stirrups.”

“Why?”

“If the horse falls, you'll be able to throw yourself clear.”

The horse didn't want to climb the shale-covered slope. He snorted and tried to back up, but Zeke didn't release his hold on the bridle even when the horse shook his head.

“Maybe I ought to walk up.”

“He'll be okay in a minute. He just has to convince himself it's all right to try.”

Josie had come to have considerable faith in Zeke, but this time the horse agreed with her. Still, she wasn't going to let Zeke see her fear. From the beginning, she'd insisted she didn't need his help. Shaking in fear because she had to climb a steep slope covered with loose rocks wasn't the way to convince him she was right. She gripped the saddle horn, tightened her knees, and waited.

The horse placed a foot on the bottom of the slope. When it held, he placed a second. Moments later he was slowly climbing, despite sliding back at least one foot for every eighteen inches forward. Josie told herself she ought to look at Zeke, the sky, even the mountain above, but she couldn't take her gaze off the loose rocks under the horse's hooves. She held her breath each time he took a tentative step until he found his footing. Glancing ahead at the distance to go and the few feet they'd come, she figured it would be noon before they reached Suzette and Hawk.

“You okay?” Zeke asked.

“Yes.”

She wasn't, but she couldn't say so when she was safely in the saddle and he was stumbling and sliding alongside the horse. Thinking of that brought the guilt back with a rush. If he and Hawk hadn't insisted upon helping her and Suzette, they'd be safely on their ranch by now with no threat from Gardner or the sheriff.

“I'm sorry.”

A look of confusion crossed Zeke's face before his
foot went out from under him and he turned his attention back to climbing the slope. “About what?”

She'd never told anybody she was sorry and hadn't intended to start now, but the words just popped out of her mouth. Once said, they couldn't be retracted. She realized she didn't want to. “Helping us got you in a lot of trouble.”

Zeke's broad smile was a complete surprise. “You call this trouble? I remember a time we were cornered against a sheer cliff by nearly a dozen men. We ran out of food the third day and water on the fifth. It was two more days before we drove them off. We only had one round of ammunition left at the end. We had to stay awake the whole week to keep from being buried by snow.”

“What were you trying to do?”

“Catch a gang of smugglers.”

“How did you escape?”

He looked offended that she would ask such a question. “We didn't. We captured what was left of the gang.”

“How?”

“We knew we couldn't hold out any longer, so the last night we built a huge fire. It was snowing so hard, we knew they'd be more concerned about keeping warm than watching us. We built the fire up until it was so high it blinded them to everything else. Using the snow as a cover, we managed to work our way off the cliff. Once we did that, getting behind the smugglers was easy. We had to shoot a couple to convince them it was time to give up, but we managed to deliver them to the marshal two days later.”

Josie was surprised to find she'd been so enthralled
by Zeke's story, they'd climbed halfway up the slope without her noticing. She wondered if he'd made up the story to distract her, but decided it was probably true. Zeke told it like he thought it wasn't anything out of the ordinary.

“Have you and Hawk always done things like that?”

The horse stumbled badly, and Josie pitched forward over his withers. If she hadn't been holding on to the saddle horn, she'd probably have been thrown over his neck. Zeke steadied the horse with one hand and helped Josie regain her balance with the other.

“We've pretty much hired out for anyone who needed some kind of protection.” He started forward again, helping the horse to its feet and at the same time keeping Josie from falling. “Nobody really trusts us, so they pay us well to do the job and then disappear. That's how we got the money for the ranch and these mares.”

“Why did you decide to take up ranching?”

“We got tired of dodging other people's bullets.”

Zeke hadn't answered until he'd gotten them over a treacherous part of the slope, but Josie had the feeling something else had been responsible for his delay. She'd sensed that her question had caused Zeke to withdraw. There was something more to the answer, something he wasn't willing to share with her.

She hadn't expected his reluctance to bother her, but it did. She had to remind herself she knew only a few important facts about him, some of the events that had shaped his life, but she didn't really know anything about his ideals, his hopes, his frustrations, the things that made him happy or angry. Except for the ranch, she didn't know what he wanted out of life. What could have driven a man who had been adopted and
loved by a large, wealthy family to hire himself out as a gunman for twenty years? What was he trying to prove, and to whom?

“There's a bad spot coming up.” Zeke pointed to a place where the trail turned sharply to the right. “Be ready to throw yourself free if the horse falls. If he falls on your leg, it'll probably break.”

That would be the end of her career as a dancer. “Can't I walk?”

“You'd never make it on foot.”

It looked like none of them would make it. The passage of the other animals had churned up the rocks until they were like quicksand, constantly shifting and giving way under the horse's hooves and Zeke's boots. For each foot forward they advanced, they slipped back a foot. Without warning, the horse gathered himself and jumped forward. Zeke scrambled to keep up, and Josie struggled to keep from falling. The horse was frantic now, leaping and falling to his knees and getting up and trying again.

“Hold on!” Zeke yelled.

Josie's hands were already frozen to the saddle horn, but her body was being whipped around so hard she was afraid her shoulders would be ripped out of their sockets. The horse righted himself and gathered his muscles for another leap. Instead, his hind legs went out from under him and he fell. Josie threw herself from the saddle and landed on Zeke. Both of them went down.

The horse scrambled to his feet and raced to the top of the slope, leaping and bucking like a mustang. Hawk caught him before he could run away.

“Are you hurt?” Zeke asked Josie.

“Only my pride. How about you?”

“Pretty much the same. Are you ready?”

She was more than ready, but she didn't know how they were going to make it without a horse.

“I'm going to stand up,” Zeke said. “Once my feet are securely under me, I'll help you up. Then we'll make our way to the top holding on to each other. We'll go as slowly as you want.”

She didn't want to go slowly. She wanted to be at the top immediately. She watched as Zeke got to his feet, then held out his hand to her. When she reached up and took it, she felt the strength to make it to the top of the slope. She couldn't understand what it was about his hand that made her feel so strong, but she was renewed and refueled physically and emotionally. The climb didn't intimidate her. The fear of stumbling on the rocks and hurting herself faded away. Against all reason and the evidence of the last few minutes, she felt able to accomplish anything.

When the ground gave way under her as she got to her feet, her confidence was shaken but not destroyed. She held on to Zeke and forced her legs to support her. Then, taking measured steps, she started to climb.