To Hell and Back (9 page)

“There’s some salt pork in the sack. Go easy on it though, it’s all we’ve got for a spell.”

She wrinkled her nose. What would he want salt pork for?

“It’s for the grease in the pan,” Jake called back over his shoulder as if he could read her mind.

She cut a few chunks of the pork into the pan, then threw some coffee into the pot setting it optimistically beside the pan before she turned her hand to starting the fire Jake had laid. There was tinder, kindling and heavier sticks laying in a pile nearby. She struck the flint and was rewarded by a good-sized spark jumping from it. Then she settled down to start the fire. Directing the flint toward the tinder, she struck it firmly. A spark jumped, caught for an instant, then smoldered and died. She tried again. This time the spark didn’t even catch for a moment.

Amanda frowned. The sun was drifting quickly toward the western horizon. Her stomach growled. The past several days, living on hardly more than water, jerky and hard tack, had meant little, but now it was different. In another lifetime such frustration might have reduced her to tears of frustration, but no longer.
 

Again and again she struck the flint, rearranged the tinder, re-stacked the kindling. Finally another spark caught. It burned, tentative, precarious, vulnerable to the slightest breeze. She cupped her hands around it and softly blew on the tiny fire then delicately fed it a few more bits shredded bark, some dried grass. It swelled and the smallest hint of warmth emanated from the fire. She coddled it and it grew until a strong flame burned at the center of the circle of rocks.
 

Back aching from the stooped over effort, Amanda straightened and fed the flames even more until the heat of it caressed her face, oblivious to the fact that darkness had fallen while she had worked.
 

When Jake returned he was laden with freshly washed greenery, seed pods and roots.

“You got the fire started. Good. I’ll show you what to do with the rest of this stuff in a few minutes. Every critter in these parts needing water will be coming down to those pools tonight. Can’t afford to lose one of the horses.”

He turned to go again, but Amanda pulled him up short.
 

“Why don’t you just carry sulfur matches?”

Jake grinned. “I do, but they’re for emergencies. Didn’t figure this was one of them.”

Hollander turned on his heel, disappearing into the night shadows.

Amanda had the flour, salt and bit of powder he’d given her, but nowhere to mix the dumplings. She rummaged through his supplies again. Nothing. For a moment she puzzled over it, then got to work.
 

Hollander walked as quietly as an Indian, listening to the soft rustlings and cracklings as night creatures skittered across the rock face to the pools. From somewhere to the north an uncanny shriek told him a big cat was on the prowl.
 

When he approached the horses, his own nickered to him in greeting and extended his head, nostrils flaring, ears pricked forward. It was a good thing he had come to get the horses. That cat might have caused both of them to pull their picket pins and bolt. He had enough just trying to keep track of Amanda Cleary and what was on her mind without being forced to take off on foot after their horses.
 

At least that was his gut reaction, but was it really true? Amanda, for all her headstrong, irritating ways, was still one to admire for her spirit. She was gutsy, she didn’t back down and when she set her claws, she didn’t let go. There were few women, green as she was, who would have taken to the trail as she had, not complaining, just riding it out. The trouble was she was ignorant, and there was plenty she’d have to learn before she could even say she still had a lot to learn. To make matters worse, felt she had to take it all in at once. All or nothing, do or die.

“Whoa, son,” Jake murmured to his appaloosa, pulled the picket pins and started back to camp.

He was torn between anger and wonderment when he gave thought to Amanda. Gun strapped to her rather shapely hip, she’d quite simply announced she intended to learn to use it—with or without his help. She managed to price him at every turn. Though he had not said as much to Amanda, he would teach her to handle the weapon properly, if for no other reason than he wanted to be behind her when she was practicing.

The smell of coffee and bacon frying, filled his nostrils and knotted his stomach with hunger as he strode back into camp. Amanda had dumplings sizzling in the pan, coffee boiling and the snake meat neatly sliced along with the assorted greens he’d brought back. He grinned at her.

“Good start.”

The dumplings looked plenty brown to him, so he wrapped his neckerchief around the handle of the pan, slid the dumplings onto a warmed, flat rock, and tossed everything else into the heated pan.

“Son-of-a-bitch stew,” he announced. “Let’s see what we get.”

What they got proved to be damned good as far as Amanda was concerned, a feast in fact. The meat sizzled and popped along with the greens, roots and wild onions and squash Hollander had provided.

“My god, this is wonderful,” Amanda enthused.
 

“You were hungry.”

“No—well yes, but this is still wonderful. You have to teach me where to find these things, how to cook them.”

“Don’t you ever
ask
for anything? Is it always something close to a command with you?”

Amanda, plainly nervous, jerked at almost every night sound, or twig snapping.

“I’m sorry. I just don’t want to be a burden.”

The cat screamed again in the distance, a bit nearer now. Hollander nodded curtly at Amanda’s apology.

“We’ll be having plenty of company here all night,” he said, “water draws the animals. Don’t worry. I’m a light sleeper.”

Amanda shrugged it off, then said apologetically, “there wasn’t much flour.”
 

She didn’t know how to talk to Hollander when there was only one thing on her mind.

“That’s all right,” he replied. “flour is one thing I know where to get more of tomorrow. It won’t be what you’re used to, but it’s filling.”

“I’ve been thinking,” Amanda said as she poured coffee for both of them. “About our situation.” She handed him the steaming cup. “It really stinks.” She sat back with her own tin cup of steaming coffee.

Hollander chuckled at her observation.

“Something has got to be done about it.”

“We don’t have much room to turn around in. That town has already convicted us both of murder and bank robbery and sentenced us to hang. Our jailbreak only proved to them that we were guilty in the first place which is really stupid since an innocent man is sure gonna run before he lets himself get hung for something he didn’t do. But that doesn’t change anything. Add to that the banker had a hand in it and is lying his fool head off, and I don’t figure we have much choice.”

“We don’t?”

“No, we don’t. I’m going after those fellas, see if I can get any of Eli’s money back. Then I’ll light a shuck out of this territory, change my name and settle somewhere else. That’s after I get you to some town where there’s a stage stop where you can head on back where you came from.”

“No.”

“No?”

“No, I won’t have control of my life taken from me again.” Amanda’s features were frozen into the kind of fury Hollander had seen only in times of battle. “I came out here to get a fresh start and suddenly, one day, John Berglund is trying to get me to . . .” she blushed, unable to meet Hollander’s eyes, then finished the sentence, “be his mistress, and the next he’s trying to get me hung for robbing his bank.”

Jake’s eyes narrowed. “You didn’t accept his proposition.”

“Of course not! He’s a married man!”

Jake raised an eyebrow and frowned. Now he knew why they were in the fix they were in. She had spurned the banker. Berglund would have been watching from the back office when he had come in late with the money from the drive. For John Berglund it had been so easy, and things could not have worked out better. Their word would mean nothing against his and the only other witness was conveniently dead. He’d gotten revenge and covered his tracks at the same time.

“We’ve got to prove we’re innocent,” Amanda broke angrily into Hollander’s thoughts. “I don’t intend to leave here until I do.”

“Lady,” Hollander’s tone was irritable, “the best thing for both of us to do is head in any direction that’s away from here.”

“But we’re both innocent!” Amanda protested. “You’ve already said you’re going after them to try to get at least some of the money back. And I won’t run.”

“You already did,” he reminded her, “and, it’s the only sensible thing to do. So you go on back East where you came from.”

Amanda’s chin came up stubbornly. Her dusky green eyes flashed golden sparks, and for a moment an uneasy silence fell between them.

“I will not go back,” her tone was even, matter-of-fact. “And,” she added, her voice rising slightly, “I will not leave here until this injustice has been set right; until I prove both of us innocent and show up John Berglund for what he is.”

She paused, then, swallowing hard, her eyes squarely met those of Jake Hollander.

“I’d be grateful for anything you can teach me while you’re still here. When you leave, I’ll manage by myself.”

Hollander gave a snort and set his empty cup aside.

“You’re in a helluva hurry to write me off. Not wise since you couldn’t find your way out of these mountains without me to show you the way.”

He was angry and blunt.

“Even if you did manage to find your way that desert rat hole, you can bet they’d be waiting for you with a real welcoming committee. The only way to prove we’re innocent now, is to prove somebody else is guilty.

“There’s got to be a way.” Amanda wouldn’t back down or give up. “And I’ll find it.”

Jake intently studied her profile silhouetted in the glow of the firelight. Her hair, knotted and unkempt, shimmered in the light of the flickering flames, the sable color blacker than the night, her fair skin glowing. He liked the firm line of her jaw and the set of her chin that spoke of determination and worried him about his chances of dissuading her from following the course she had planned. Amanda Cleary possessed a lot of courage, but she lacked the experience needed to draw a line between courage and foolhardiness. In spite of himself Jake Hollander half smiled. He had to admit that if she were not along, he would be the first to be plotting a return and a suitable revenge against John Berglund. He was a man who usually got what he went after, and with three outlaws to choose from, he would have turned up with at least one of them.

But there was Amanda. He could stall her now. Maybe later, when she had learned a little, she would be more open to reason. He’d done his share of tracking, had ridden on a posse a time or two, but he had never done it with a greenhorn, and a woman to boot, in tow. He wasn’t going to start now.

“We’ll talk about it later,” Jake told her off-handedly. “We aren’t going anywhere for quite a spell anyway.”

Chapter 8

The next morning dawned bold and brassy as those before it, promising to be just as hot. Amanda rolled out of her bedroll. Every bone, muscle and sinew in her body ached. She had overslept, and Jake, damn him, had allowed it. She climbed stiffly to her feet and frowned. What in blazes would it take to convince him that she did not want special treatment? She was determined to tell him just that,
again
, when she realized he was nowhere in sight.

Hollander wouldn’t have gone far, but the pulse of panic that beat at the base of Amanda’s throat could not be denied. She stooped and snatched up the gun she had commandeered, then strapped it about her hips as her eyes drifted slowly around camp. It was, it seemed to Amanda, unnaturally quiet. She froze rigid where she was. Bright, sunlit shadows played along the ground beneath the trees gently tossed by desert air flowing down off the higher peaks.
 

A knot, tight as a spring, coiled in Amanda’s stomach, but she saw nothing. He would not have gone far, she reasoned with herself, but the tight dryness remained in her throat when she glanced anxiously about and realized for the first time that the horses were gone as well. Her hand rested unconsciously on the butt of her holstered gun? She slipped the leather loop from the gun’s hammer.

Amanda turned to the remains of the last night’s fire. What if she had misjudged him? Her eyes fell on the low burning fire almost the same instant her nose picked up the fragrant scent of hot coffee. The pot, propped on a rock beside glowing coals, was properly hot.

“Morning, gunslick,” a rough voice,
his
voice spoke from behind her.

Amanda’s heart leapt into a racing beat and she spun on Hollander, her features a mixture of anger and relief.
 

“When are you going to stop doing that to me?” she demanded. “Or do you enjoy scaring me out of my wits?”

“You wanted to learn.”

Jake dropped down beside the fire and poured himself a cup of coffee.

“I’m teaching you. Soon as you learn that seeing out here means more than looking, I won’t be able to do that to you anymore. If you hadn’t been looking so hard, you would have felt me beside you before I spoke. And you shouldn’t jump to conclusions,” Hollander added. “The way you were fidgeting around, you were sure I’d run out on you,” he deduced shrewdly. “Man’d have to be crazy to run out on a woman who looks like you.” He threw in the compliment, heading off Amanda’s furious denials.