Forgetting was impossible. Flashes of memory and sensation splintered through Willow at odd moments, making her shiver with pleasure and yearning.
Rain began to fall while the last scarlet flush of evening still stained the western sky. Willow retreated to the shelter the western sky. Willow retreated to the shelter and changed into her trail clothes. She sat in the doorway and watched for a figure striding through the twilight rain. No one came. Finally she curried up across the entrance and fell asleep.
When Willow woke up, she was between the blankets and Caleb was sharpening his knife while chunks of meat roasted over the fire. The sky was iridescent with a pink, rain-scrubbed dawn. Though she made neither sound nor motion to tell Caleb that she was awake, somehow he knew. He turned and looked toward the shelter.
«Coffee’s hot,» he said, looking back at the whetstone in his hands. The big blade of his hunting knife flashed as he stroked it over the stone. «You’ve got fifteen minutes until we ride. Hear me?»
Willow’s heart sank at the cold distance in his voice. «Yes, I hear you.»
When she returned from the forest, Caleb handed her a stick with a chunk of roasted meat skewered on it. Saying nothing, he went back to honing his knife. Automatically, she bit into the meat.
«Fresh venison,» Willow said, surprised.
Caleb grunted.
«But I didn’t hear a shot,» she pressed, wondering how far Caleb had walked to hunt deer. Gunfire carried for miles between the stone peaks.
«I didn’t use a gun.»
«Then how…?» She glared at him. «Caleb Black, you aren’t going to tell me you caught a deer the same way you caught those silly trout!»
«Not quite, southern lady.» Steel sang huskily against stone. «I used the knife.»
«You threw it?»
«That would be a damn fool thing to do, and despite the evidence yesterday, I’m not a damn fool.»
Willow flushed and tried to apologize. «Caleb, I didn’t mean —»
«I stalked the buck until I was close enough to cut its throat,» Caleb continued, ignoring her attempt to speak.
Her eyes widened in shock. «You what?»
«You heard me.»
«But that’s impossible.»
«You keep telling yourself that while you eat your venison. But don’t take too long over it. We’ve got a high pass to cross before it rains again.»
Calmly, Caleb tested the knife’s edge against the hair on his forearm. The blade was sharp enough to shave with. Satisfied, he returned the knife to its sheath, reached for the shotgun, and began methodically taking it apart an cleaning it.
Willow ate breakfast while she watched Caleb clean the shotgun, rifle, and six-gun. Clearly he was a man at home with the weapons. He worked quickly yet thoroughly, with an economy of motion that was fascinating to her. The skill, precision, and delicacy of his big hands made memories splinter inside her, showering her with sensations.
«Caleb,» she began huskily.
«Southern lady, do you suppose you could be bothered to get off your rump and groom your own horse? The kisses were nice enough, but I’m still not standing in line to be your maid.»
Caleb’s voice stung like a whip, making Willow angry at herself and at him. «That’s good, because I’m not standing in line for your kisses, either?»
She dropped her half-eaten venison in the fire and stalked out to the meadow.
Willow made no attempt to speak to Caleb again. They left the meadow in a silence broken only by the creak of saddles and the rhythmic beating of hooves. An hour into the ride, he reined in at the top of a long rise and let the horses blow while he carefully searched the area ahead with his spyglass. Then he took out his journal and filled in more of the blank spaces on the map he had been keeping of their route since Canyon City. When he finished, Willow still hadn’t come alongside. Impatiently he turned Trey and rode back to her.
«Come up where you can see,» he said.
Willow urged Dove to the top of the ridge. The view from there was breathtaking. Willow sat in rapt silence, looking out over the land.
Before her, a clearing in the forest stretched for miles between widely separated ranges of mountains. Aspen and evergreens defined the creases of the land and the flanks of the mountains, but most of the open area was covered in grass and wild flowers. A cobalt blue river coiled lazily through the park. Beaver ponds shimmered in shades of emerald and blue. Towering above it all, dominating even the untouched magnificence of the sky, were dark, ice-shattered peaks. Snow frosted the higher altitudes, gradually thickening into the glittering white of year-roundicefields.
«See over to the left, where those two peaks look like a dog with one chewed ear?» Caleb asked.
«Yes.»
«I want you to ride along the left side of the park, heading for the peak that looks chewed. If you see anything you don’t like, run for the forest. If anyone comes after you, use the shotgun on whatever is within range.»
Willow looked from the mountains to the man who was sitting on his horse only few feet away from her, yet even the remote peaks seemed closer.
«Where…» her voice tore. She cleared her throat and tried again, forcing herself to be clam when the thought of being abandoned made her shake. «After the peak, where do I go?»
The fear in Willow’s voice was too raw to hide completely. Caleb heard it and knew what she was thinking.
«I’m not cutting and running,» he said coldly. «Maybe that’s how the men you’re used to act, but I’m not one of your fancy men, am I? When I give my word I keep it.»
Looking everywhere but at Caleb’s savage yellow eyes, Willow nodded.
«When I was out hunting, I saw signs of a deer kill,» Caleb continued in a clipped voice. «Maybe a day old, maybe more. Wolves had been at it, but I could tell it was killed by a man.»
«Indians?»
«Renegades,» Caleb said flatly. «Some horses were shod and some were barefoot. Only bunch I know like that areComanchero ‘traders’. Raiders is more like it. They have a lot of Taos lightning with them.»
«What’s that?»
«Tangle-leg, tarantula juice, booze,» he explained impatiently.
«Oh, whiskey.»
Caleb grunted. «Call it what you will, they had so much of it they left a half-inch in one of the bottles.»
Willow frowned. She had heard ofComancheros, and none of what she had heard was good. They were indeed renegades of the worst sort — a mixture of white and Mexican outlaws, tribeless Indians, andhalfbreeds who bowed to neither white nor Indian law.
«Don’tComancheros usually stay farther south?» she asked hopefully.
«Only when the Army chases them there. There’s damn all worth stealing in the Mexican desert, and a lot ofComancheros looking to steal it. The Army has been too busy fighting rebels to waste any time on Indians and raiders, but now that the War Between the States is over, the Army is back. Things will get real lively before theUtes are herded onto some reservation. While the Army is busy, theComancheros will scavenge around the edges like the coyotes they are.»
Uneasily, Willow looked at the open space stretching before her, mile upon mile of beautiful grassland that must certainly be a natural gathering point for people riding through the rugged mountains, looking for easy passage.
«Pretty, isn’t?» Caleb asked, watching the land with a faint possessiveness. «You can’t see it from here, but there’s a year-round stream coming down off that rocky ridge. A man could put a house in over there and have a clear field of fire on three sides and country only a mountain goat could cross on the fourth. The water is sweet and plentiful.»
The mixture of emotions in Caleb’s voice made Willow turn from the land to him. He loved the land. Even as he described its dangers, his voice caressed its possibilities.
«If a man built his house in the right place, he wouldn’t have to get shot to fill a bucket.» Caleb continued. «Cattle could graze the high country in summer and hay could be cut from the lowlands for the winter. After a few years of hard work, a man would have himself as fine a spread as any Virginia gentleman ever did.»
Willow looked at the country again, but this time through Caleb’s eyes, seeing places to be ambushed or to hide, places that could be defended and others that would be easily overrun.
«Do you always think like that?» she asked.
«I’ve wanted to raise cattle for ten years. It’s just a matter of finding the right place and getting the money to begin.»
«No, I meant do you always think about fighting?»
Caleb gave Willow a sideways look that was part amusement and mostly disbelief. «Southern lady, anyone who wants to survive out here thinks like that. It’s second nature, like remembering landmarks infrontand in back of you, because everything looks different going than it did coming. But coming or going, this is as pretty a land as God ever made, and wild enough to be home to the devil himself. If a man doesn’t keep his eyes peeled and his ears pricked out here, he’ll end up stone cold dead.»
«Then why do you want to ranch here?»
Caleb’s smile offered neither comfort nor real humor. «Back East and in California, other men already own the good land. Not here. Here a man can have as much good land as he’s willing to fight for. I’m not a bad fighter, Willow, and not a bad hand with cattle, either.»
«Is that what you want — to homestead land here and be a rancher?»
Caleb nodded absently, again watching the country rather than the woman who was watching him.
«You can find some mountains and parks like these a few days south of the San Juan country,» he said. «The grazing is fine, but you’d be combing Apaches andComanches out of your hair every sunrise, and your cattle would have more arrows than a porcupine has quills. Not much pleasure in that, or profit.»
For the space of several breaths Willow looked at the land, then back at the hard-faced man who was watching every shift of breeze through forest and grass, his clear gaze sifting each motion to find one made by man. Or rather, men.
Comancheros.
Uneasiness prickled through Willow. She hadn’t expected the West to be civilized, but she hadn’t really understood what such a total lack of civilization meant, either. In some ways it was rather like being at war. Constant vigilance was needed, for inattention could be fatal. That didn’t bother Willow greatly, for she had become used to living on edge during the war. She had become good at listening for sounds, at sleeping lightly, at sliding away into the forest with her mother at the first hint of danger.
But this wide, wild, extraordinary land wasn’t like her farm. Here she was dependent on Caleb’s strength, fighting skills, and knowledge in a way that frightened her.
He warned me it would be like this, Willow toldherself. Hetold me in plain English.
She shivered as the echoes of a past conversation whispered through her mind oncemore. WhereI’m taking you there’s no law at all. Out in those mountains a man takes care of himself because no one else will do it for him.
And a woman? What does she do?
A woman finds a man tough enough to protect her and the kids she’ll bear him.
It seemed far more than a handful of days since Willow had heard and disregarded Caleb’s warning, thinking that whatever lay ahead couldn’t be more dangerous than the war she had already survived. It seemed a lifetime since she had ridden out of Denver’s rude comforts into a land that grew more wild with each westward step.
Yet, even knowing that, she wouldn’t have traded one of those steps for the safety of the East she had left. Despite the danger, there was something in the wild horizons of the Rockies that lifted her heart and made her soul sing.
Willow closed her eyes and absorbed the small sounds of the land around her. One of the horses snorted and stamped. A saddle creaked as Caleb shifted his weight. A bird called off in the meadow. There was no smell of smoke, of sawn lumber, of turned earth. The breeze carried scents untainted by man, becoming a river of life rushing softly around her, caressing her.
«Damn it, Willow, I said I would be back. Don’t you believe me?»
Startled, she opened her eyes. «Of course I believe you.»
«Then what’s wrong?»
«Nothing,» she said, smiling almost sadly. «Not the way you mean. It’s just that…» Her voice faded. «Suddenly I realized that I love this clean, wild land, even if it isn’t very safe.» She smiled with lips that wanted to tremble. «The idea takes a little getting used to.»
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