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She had saved his life. But what good would that do him if she’d sent for the law—or worse, if she were associated with the bastards who had murdered the two government agents? Either way, he would be a dead man.
Latigo’s gaze lingered for an instant on the woman’s wistful Madonna face. Maybe she hadn’t betrayed him after all, his instincts whispered. Who knows what he might have said or done in the midst of his pain and exhaustion. Maybe he had frightened her, and she had tied him up to protect herself.
Maybe, but that was a chance he could not afford to take. Somehow he would have to win her confidence and persuade her to untie him—that, or untie himself. Once he got loose, it would be easy enough to get his hands on the gun and make a fast getaway.
Knowing there was little time to lose, he closed his eyes, moved his head slightly, and feigned a semiconscious moan.
Rose had been drowsing, lulled by her own weariness and the soothing tug of the tiny mouth on her nipple. At the low sound from the man on the floor, her eyes shot open. She jerked bolt upright, her frayed nerves screaming.
The Apache, Latigo, was stirring beneath the blanket. His long legs strained at the thick wool yarn her shaking hands had wrapped around his ankles. His eyelids opened, then swiftly closed.
Only then did Rose realize her breast was exposed. Hot faced, she flung a corner of the baby’s blanket over her bare shoulder.
The stranger’s eyes opened again. This time his feral gaze swept her defiantly from head to foot. Feeling as vulnerable as a nesting dove, Rose gulped back her fear and forced herself to speak calmly.
“I’ve sent a man into Tucson for the sheriff,” she lied. “Until he gets here, I suggest you keep still unless, of course, you want to open up that bullet hole and risk bleeding to death. I won’t bind it for you a second time.”
His obsidian eyes glinted like a captive hawk’s. “Did anybody see to my horse?” he asked, as if his own condition were of no importance.
“Your horse is in the corral with the others. There’s plenty of hay and water there.” That much, at least, was true. She had unsaddled the poor, spent animal herself and turned it in with her spare cow ponies. She remembered fingering the long, coiled whip as she carried the saddle to a dark corner of the barn. She remembered the worn boot, still tangled in the stirrup leathers.
“You were lucky.” Rose spoke boldly, even though the mere act of touching an Apache had all but drained her of courage. His bleeding body, so close, so real, had rekindled her nightmare in all its horror. Even now, it was the most she could do to meet his fierce black eyes without cringing. “From the looks of your shoulder, the bullet passed through without hitting anything vital,” she said. “But you’ve lost a dangerous amount of blood. That’s why you must keep absolutely still.”
“Is that why you’ve trussed me up like a bald-faced calf at branding time?” His sharp-edged words challenged her in English that was as fluent as her own. This Latigo, whoever he might be, was clearly no ordinary reservation Apache.
“I don’t intend to hurt you,” he said, his gaze flickering toward the pistol on the bench. “Just cut me loose, give me some food and water and a fresh horse, and I’ll be on my way. That’s the least you owe me.”
“Owe you?” Rose clutched her son beneath the blanket, remembering, now, what he had said about collecting on an old debt. “Your business was with my husband, not with me,” she declared coldly. “I’d never set eyes on you before last night. What could I possibly owe you?”
His black eyes narrowed. “The last ten years of your husband’s life.”
His words struck her with the impact of a slap. Rose stared at the man, rifling her memories for some spark of recognition and finding none.
“John never mentioned his life being saved by anyone, let alone an Apache,” she retorted, flinging the words with a bravado she did not feel.
He flashed her a contemptuous look. “For whatever it’s worth to you, Mrs. Colby, only half of me has the honor of being Apache. My mother was a Chiricahua, my father a Spanish Basque. But I’m telling the truth about your husband. I saved his life ten years ago when I led his company out of an ambush in the Dragoon Mountains.”
“The Dragoons?” Rose’s sleep-fogged mind searched what she knew of the past. When Cochise’s bloody uprising had flared in the mid 1860s, John Colby had helped organize a volunteer militia out of Tucson. As its captain, he had bravely led more than a score of forays against the Apaches. On one excursion along the Gila, he’d come across a seventeen-year-old girl wandering the desert in a state of shock, her family murdered and their wagon burned. A widower nearing fifty, he had taken the dazed young Rose Thomas home to his ranch and, a few weeks later, made her his bride. Within days of their marriage, he was riding patrol again.
All this Rose remembered. But she had no recollection of John’s discussing the Dragoon Mountains. Apart from ranch matters, he had communicated little with her when he was home. He had never told her where he’d been or described the things he’d done. And he had surely never mentioned a man named Latigo.
The stranger waited, his eyes flinty with distrust. It would be dangerous to lie to such a man, Rose calculated, but then, hadn’t she lied to him already?
“Did you ride with John’s militia?” She asked, knowing a yes would trap him in his own deception. John Colby and his fellow volunteers had hated Indians and would never have tolerated Apache blood in their ranks.
Latigo’s thin mouth tightened in response to her question. “I was scouting for the army,” he said, gritting his teeth against the pain in his shoulder. “We didn’t much care for the local militia boys. The trigger-happy fools tended to stir up more trouble than they prevented—”
“Why, that’s not so!” Rose interrupted, flaring with sudden outrage. “My husband’s militia protected settlers all over this part of the territory! They were heroes!”
The look he gave her was so scathing that it shocked her into silence. “More than once we had to rescue them from disasters of their own making,” he continued in the same flat tone, as if she had not spoken. “That’s how I met your husband.”
He shifted sideways on the floor, straining upward as if he were struggling to sit.
“Lie still,” Rose spoke in a sharp whisper. “I told you, you’ll start the bleeding again.”
His eyes burned their desperation into hers, silently urging her to cut him loose and let him go. But her own fears shrilled the warning that she could not trust this man. Last night he had pointed John’s gun at her and threatened to shoot her with it. She had no choice except to keep him bound and helpless.
Beneath the blanket, the baby’s warm little body stirred, then settled into slumber. Rose felt the stranger’s wild, dark presence like an aura in the room. The skin at the back of her neck tingled as his gaze flickered over her, lingering on her face, probing the depths of her courage.
“What have you done?” she demanded in a low, tight voice. “Who are you running from?”
Hesitation flickered across his face. Then his expression hardened, and Rose realized that his distrust was as strong as her own. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” he said, wincing as he spoke. “But I give you my word, I’m not a criminal.”
“How can I be sure of that?”
“I’m not a liar, either.” His eyes locked Rose’s in a proud gaze that defied her to doubt him. Against her will, her thoughts flew back to last night. She remembered cradling his head between her knees to keep him still as she cleaned his wound. She remembered the smoky fragrance of his hair and the feel of his flesh beneath her fingers, cool and hard, like living bronze. On touching him for the first time, a freshet of disturbing heat had surged through her body. Rose felt it again now as his gaze gripped hers.
Every instinct told her the man was dangerous. But she had to be sure. If he had saved her husband’s life, she had no right to turn her back on him, not until she had some idea of what was in his heart.
“Tell me what happened,” she said. “I can’t promise to believe you, but I think I’m entitled to hear your story.”
Morning sunlight warmed the quiet air, melting the shadows in the corners of the kitchen. Latigo hesitated, then his eyes narrowed with the effort of collecting his thoughts. He was weak from pain and blood loss, she knew, but Rose resolved not to spare him until she had heard everything.
“Untie me,” he said. “I won’t harm you.”
“No.” She shook her head. “Not yet.”
His eyes flashed, as if he had sensed a weakening in her resolve. Rose’s arms tightened around her son. “Go on,” she said, lifting her chin. “You said you were a scout. Did your trouble have something to do with the army?”
“The army?” His bitter chuckle ended in a grunt of pain. “Believe me, there were no soldiers in sight Just two government inspectors, all the way from Washington. I’d been assigned to guide them on a tour of the San Carlos.” His eyes narrowed to slits, as if he were trying to shut out something he didn’t want to see again. “They’re dead—shot from ambush, both of them. The bullet that went through my shoulder was supposed to have killed me, too.”
“Apaches?” The word sprang without thought to Rose’s lips.
His glare cut her off like the flash of a blade. “Not Apaches. Not unless Apaches are sporting store-bought Stetsons, Springfield rifles and fifty-dollar saddles these days. They were as white as you are, Mrs. Colby, and I saw them murder two federal agents. That’s why they can’t afford to let me live.”
Rose stared at his sharp Apache features, struggling against the nightmare that lurked in the shadows of her mind. She smelled the smoke, heard the screams…
“That sounds like a wild tale if I ever heard one!” she heard her own voice saying. “What if I choose not to believe you?”
Latigo’s eyes hardened. “That’s your choice.”
“But it doesn’t make sense! One might expect it of Apaches, but why would white men do such a thing?”
The question caught in her throat as the clatter of galloping hoofbeats and the snort of a horse echoed across the front yard. Rose’s head swung toward the window as the long night’s strain crashed in on her. She was so tired, so scared, and now, at last, somebody was here.
“Turn around, Mrs. Colby—slow and easy, now. I don’t want to hurt you.”
Rose’s heart plummeted as she realized what had happened. All the while Latigo was talking, his hands had been busy beneath the blanket, stretching and loosening the yarn that held his wrists. She had glanced away for the barest instant, but he had struck with a rattler’s quickness to seize the pistol from beside her on the bench. Now the weapon was in his right hand, its muzzle thrusting up at her. Instinctively she shifted her body to shield her son.
“Who’s that outside?” he demanded in a low voice. “You said you sent for the sheriff.”
“No.” Rose blurted out the truth. “I had no one to send. I lied to you because I was afraid.”
“Then who’s outside?” He was struggling to sit up, his jaw clenched against the pain.
“I don’t know. But if you’re telling the truth about the murders, why are you holding a gun on me now? Why didn’t you go to the sheriff and report those men?”
Latigo’s free hand yanked the yarn from around his ankles. He gripped the edge of the table and hauled his way to his knees, then to his feet. The heavy Colt quivered unsteadily in his hand.
“What makes you think the sheriff would believe me?” His black eyes glittered with irony. “After all, you didn’t.”
Rose could only stare at him as a sharp rap sounded on the front door. The hour was far too early for a social call. Maybe it was one of the vaqueros. Maybe something had gone wrong in the mountains.
The rap on the door became an insistent pounding. Latigo’s eyes met Rose’s in terse confirmation that the visitor was not about to give up and go away.
“Go on,” he ordered. “Put your baby down. Then, whoever’s out there, get rid of him.”
Heart pounding, Rose fumbled swiftly beneath the blanket to tug her robe over her breast. With the gun following her every move, she crossed the kitchen to the flannel-lined basket that served as her son’s downstairs cradle. Half-asleep, Mason whimpered as Rose eased him away from her body and, with trembling hands, lowered him to the soft padding and tucked the blanket around him. He sucked one tiny rosebud fist, his helplessness tearing at her heart.
With imploring eyes, she turned on the tall stranger. “Don’t make me leave him here.”
Latigo’s expression hardened. Then he paused, torn by a conflict that Rose could read in his bloodless face. He was wounded and desperate. Keeping the baby in the kitchen would insure her cooperation and his own safety. Surely he realized that. Still, he hesitated, a muscle in his cheek twitching subtly as the pounding on the door grew louder and more urgent.
“Please,” Rose whispered, “let me take him. He’s all I have.”
Latigo’s sinewy body tensed, then his shoulders slackened as he exhaled. “I don’t hide behind children,” he growled. “Take him. But no tricks, Mrs. Colby. I’ve got the gun, and I’ll be watching every move you—”
His words ended in a groan as his knees buckled and he crashed unconscious to the floor.
Rose crouched beside him and pried his long, brown fingers from around the pistol grip. His eyes were closed, his breathing shallow but regular. Even in repose, there was a hawklike ferocity about the man, but surprisingly, she was no longer afraid of him.
“I don’t hide behind children.”
The words echoed in Rose’s mind as she gazed down at the dark face, with its straight, black brows and cleanchiseled features. An Apache’s face, to be sure, but what thoughts and motives lay behind it?
If Latigo had truly saved her husband, she owed the man a great debt—
“Rose! Blast it, Rose, are you in there?” The shout from outside was muffled by the walls of the house, but Rose had no trouble recognizing the voice. Scrambling to her feet, she seized the baby’s basket under one arm and fled from the kitchen, closing the door behind her.
She hurried across the dining room, and moved toward the small anteroom that had served as her husband’s office. There she placed the basket in the hollow beneath John’s massive walnut desk. If more trouble broke out, she wanted her son safely out of harm’s way.
“Rose!” The pounding from outside would have cracked a less substantial door. Rose hesitated again, then slipped the pistol into a desk drawer and hurried out of the room.
In the front hallway she paused to wrap her robe tightly about her body and knot the sash. Taking a deep breath, she slid back the heavy bolt, lifted the latch and opened the door.
“Rose! Thank heaven!”
The man on the threshold was tall and barrel-chested, with ruddy, handsome features and ginger hair that curled over the collar of his starched, white shirt. A longtime friend of John Colby’s, though twenty years his junior, Bayard Hudson had been a regular visitor to the ranch— even more regular, Rose had come to realize, since John’s death.
“Bayard?” She feigned a sleepy yawn, her gaze darting to his gun belt. “What on earth are you doing here? You must have ridden most of the night to arrive at this hour.”
“Are you all right?” His windburned eyes were laced with red. “I saw blood outside, a trail of it across the porch. And your robe, Rose, there’s blood on that, too!”
“Blood?” A picture flashed into Rose’s mind—Latigo, helpless on the kitchen floor. Bayard had no more love for Apaches than John had. He would likely shoot first and ask questions later.
“Oh—” She laughed nervously. “One of the vaqueros, he—uh—slipped and cut himself on his own knife last night. A silly accident. I patched him up and sent him back to the herd.” She was chattering, talking too fast. “It was nothing serious, but I couldn’t go back to sleep. I—I’m afraid I’m not very presentable this morning.”
“Nonsense, you always look beautiful.” His gaze wandered up and down her body, lingering where the neck of her robe had loosened to reveal a hint of shadow between her breasts. “But can’t you get someone else to doctor those Mexicans of yours? I can’t say I fancy the idea of you touching those swarthy little heathens.” His thick hand settled onto her shoulder, its weight too warm, too heavy. “You ought to send them packing and hire yourself a bunch of real American cowboys. That’s what I’d do if I was running this spread.”
“My vaqueros are good workers.” Rose squirmed away from his clasp and edged out of reach. “They know horses and cattle, and they send their pay home to their families instead of throwing it away on liquor and women in town.” She swung back to face him, arms folded across her chest. “And now, Bayard, suppose you tell me what you’re doing here. You didn’t ride thirty miles just to tell me how to manage the ranch.”
“I could use some breakfast,” he said. “We can talk while I eat.”
“Esperanza isn’t up yet,” she lied, praying her inhospitality would annoy him to the point of leaving. But Bayard Hudson only snorted his disgust.
“Well, go and wake the lazy old hen! You’re too easy on the hired help, Rose. You need a man around the place to see that things are properly run.”
“I’m raising a man for that very purpose. But until John’s son is old enough to take over, I’m the one in charge.” Rose arranged her features into a smiling mask. “Go and sit down in the dining room, Bayard. I’ll heat up some beans and fresh coffee and bring them in to you.”
“Bacon and eggs would be nice, too, while you’re at it. But you needn’t go so fancy for me, Rose. I’ll eat in the kitchen, and we can visit while you cook. I like watching a woman work.”
“No!” Rose scrambled for a way out. “The baby—he’s asleep, and you might wake him. Go on, sit down, this won’t take a minute.”
“Fine. I like my eggs sunny-side up.”
“Yes. I know.” Her knees went liquid as Bayard ambled into the dining room and slid one of the high-backed leather chairs away from the table. Only after he’d settled his broad frame onto its seat could she force herself to turn and walk back toward the kitchen. Heart pounding, she opened the door wide enough to slip through, then closed it carefully behind her.
Latigo had awakened. He was sitting up on the floor, his back propped against the whitewashed wall next to the door frame. His face was haggard with pain.
“What’s going on out there?” His mouth moved with effort.
“It’s an old friend of John’s, and he’s expecting breakfast.” Rose gathered some kindling sticks from the wood box and thrust them into the stove. As she blew her breath on last night’s embers they began to glow.
“He doesn’t know I’m here?”
Rose shook her head.
“Where’s the gun?”
“You actually think I’d tell you?”
A ghost of a smile flickered across his lips as he settled back against the wall, watching her cat-fashion through the half-closed slits between his eyelids as she filled the enameled coffeepot and set it over the fire. The beans Esperanza had cooked two days ago were in the pantry, cool in their thick earthenware jar, but the bacon, if she wanted it, would have to be brought from the smoke cellar, the eggs gathered from the backyard henhouse. She cared precious little about pleasing Bayard Hudson, but if she could turn such errands to her advantage…
No, Rose concluded swiftly, the peril was too great. If Bayard were to get restless and wander into the kitchen at the wrong moment, anything could happen. She had to be here to keep him out.
Rose ladled some beans into a shallow iron skillet and hurried back to place it on the stove. Latigo’s gaze followed her every move: His feverish black eyes seemed to burn through her flesh.
“Maybe you’d better hide in there.” She jerked her head toward the open pantry door.
