Apache Fire
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Elizabeth Lane
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Chapter One
Arizona Territory
April 7, 1876
Latigo’s vision was a red blaze of pain. He sagged over the neck of his spent mustang, teeth clenched as he battled to stay conscious. He had been riding most of the night, every lurch of the horse like a lance thrust into his bleeding shoulder. The Colby Ranch couldn’t be much farther unless, in this cursed stupor, he had somehow become lost.
The ghost face of the waning moon hung low in the western sky. Startled by hoofbeats, a miniature owl exploded out of its burrow and flapped screeching into the darkness.
Latigo cursed, fighting pain as he struggled to calm his spooked mount. He had lived all his life in the desert, and he was as much at home here as the sharp-nosed coyotes that ranged along the lonely arroyos. But tonight he was no coyote. He was wounded prey, and in the danger of darkness even the wind’s familiar voice was an alien moan.
With excruciating effort, he focused his eyes on the notched peak that was his beacon point. He could feel his life oozing through the makeshift bandage that covered the bullet wound in his shoulder. In the seven hours since the ambush, he had lost a dizzying amount of blood. If John Colby refused him shelter…
But how could Colby refuse, when his very honor was at stake? Ten years ago, during the bloody Apache wars, Latigo had saved Colby’s life, and the rancher—more out of pride, to be sure, than gratitude—had vowed to repay him one day. Now it was time to call in the old debt.
Under any other circumstances, Latigo would just as soon have let the matter go. He was a man who asked little of others, especially where whites were concerned. But now he had no choice. Not if he wanted to live.
As he clung to the horse, he fueled his strength with his own anger at what had happened. Hours earlier, on the San Carlos Reservation, he had been guiding two U.S. government agents on an inspection tour. As their mounts passed through a narrow ravine, a hail of rifle fire had erupted from the rocks above and behind them. The two federal men had died at once, but the bullet meant for Latigo’s heart had struck a handbreadth too high and to the left. Reeling with shock, he had managed to spur his horse and gain some distance before the four attackers had time to mount up and come after him. He had barely glimpsed their faces, but he had seen enough to know they were not Apaches.
Twisting painfully in the saddle, he peered into the darkness behind him. He had not sighted his pursuers since yesterday afternoon when he’d holed up in a rocky crevice to wait for nightfall. Surely he had lost them. Whites weren’t worth spit as trackers, and they’d had no scout along. Surely he could afford to roll into the brush and rest for the space of a few precious breaths.
But he could not even think of stopping. The ebbing strength in every part of his body told him that if he were to lie down he would never get up again.
A snort from the mustang jolted Latigo to sudden alertness. He felt the horse shudder beneath him and caught the eager prick of its ears. Instinctively his hand groped for the empty holster where his U.S. Army issue Colt would have been, had he not dropped it when the bullet slammed into his body. He was weaponless except for the braided rawhide whip that lay coiled like a rattlesnake along the flank skirt of his saddle. Latigo’s prowess with the whip had earned him the Spanish name by which he’d been known for half of his thirty-three years. But little good that would do him now, when he could scarcely raise his arm without a stab of nauseating pain.
Latigo’s thoughts scattered as his ears picked up a distant shrillness on the wind. Horses. A dozen perhaps, maybe more, about a mile ahead. They sounded close together, as they might be in a corral.
The Colby Ranch.
Had he found it, or was he riding into a trap?
The half-wild mustang bugled eagerly, trotting hard in its urgency to be with its own kind. Latigo was too weak to stop the animal. He clenched his teeth as the pain jolted through him. Hold on, he ordered his shock-numbed arms. Just hold…on…
Fire…smoke from the blazing wagon blinding her eyes, searing her throat…her mother’s scream, and the cold twang of arrows striking flesh…her gentle father pitching facedown next to the mules, his fingers clawing lines in the powdery red dust…savage Apache faces streaked like bloodied hatchets with vermilion war paint, eyes glittering, as they moved in for the kill…no!…please, God, no!
Rose Colby awoke in a frenzy of silent screams.
Her fingers clutched the patchwork quilt as she battled her way back to reality. Her heartbeats echoed like gunfire against the wall of her ribs.
It’s all right. Beneath the long muslin nightgown, her body was drenched in sweat. It’s all right. You were only dreaming.
She lay rigid while the nightmare faded, quivering in the warm darkness of the bed she had shared with John Colby for more than a third of her twenty-six years. Yes, it was all right, she reassured herself. The Apaches had long since been beaten by the army and herded onto reservations. The adobe walls of the big house were as thick as a fortress, every window barred with wrought-iron grillwork. John’s Colt .45 Peacemaker lay loaded on the nightstand. The vaqueros had taught her how to use it, and she could hit a playing card dead center at fifty paces.
You’re safe, Rose. Perfectly safe.
But Rose knew she would never feel safe from the terrors that lurked in her own mind. No walls, however strong, could shut out the nightmare visions that had haunted her for nine long years.
Brushing back her tawny mane of hair, she sat up, slid her bare feet to the floor and pattered across the cool Mexican tiles. The hand-carved mahogany cradle sat against the near wall, sheltered by the inward slope of the roof. Bathed by moonlight, her two-month-old son lay deep in slumber, his eyelids closed, his upflung fists curled like tiny pink chrysanthemum buds. His breath whispered sweetly in the darkness.
Mason, she called him—John Mason Colby, after her husband and her own father. She would raise her boy well, Rose vowed, aching with love. He would grow up to be a fine man, and he would carry on the names he bore with pride, honor and courage.
Pride…Honor…Courage…Duty. Moonlight gleamed softly on the words etched around the border of the silver medal that hung on the wall above the crib. The medal had been John’s, awarded to him by the territorial governor for valor during the Apache wars. John had treasured it. So would his son.
Rose’s throat hardened with emotion as she bent low to feather a caress across the downy silk of her baby’s hair— dark, as John’s hair must have been in his youth, although she had never known it to be other than gray. What a tragedy John had not lived to see this baby, the heir he had wanted—demanded—for so long. He would surely have forgiven her, then, for the long, barren years and the heartbreaking miscarriages. The two of them might have even known some happiness, drawn together at last by their love for this beautiful child.
Closing her eyes, Rose inhaled the sweet, milky, baby aura that cloaked the tiny body. Let him sleep, her practical side argued. But her motherly instincts cried out for her son’s warmth in her arms. She reached into the cradle only to freeze in midmotion, her heart convulsing in sudden alarm.
Outside, just below the window, the sound of a horse.
Rose darted to the nightstand and caught up the loaded Peacemaker. Maybe it was nothing—one of the vaqueros returning early from the mountains, where they’d moved the herds for spring grazing, or some visitor from Tucson, or—
But what was she thinking? The grandfather clock in the downstairs hallway chimed two in the morning. No one would be so foolhardy as to travel at this hour. No one, at least, with any good intent.
Gripping the heavy pistol, Rose crept along the wall and peered around the edge of the window. Except for the baby, she was alone in the house. The vaqueros were out with the herd. Esperanza, the cook, and her husband, Miguel, who tended to things around the place, had left that morning to visit their newborn grandchild in Fronteras. Rose herself had insisted they go—foolishly, she realized now. Whatever trouble lurked outside, she would have no choice but to deal with it alone.
An artery pulsed along the curve of her throat as she scanned the moonlit landscape, the barren front yard where John had never allowed so much as a paloverde or creosote bush to sprout because it might provide cover for marauding Apaches; the open-sided ramadas and the adobe bunkhouse; the corrals where those horses not taken on the cattle drive milled and stamped.
Yes, something was out there.
Rose pressed closer to the glass, the pistol leaden in her shaking hand. She had fired the big gun at tins and bottles, but never at any living target, let alone a human being. Her Quaker parents had raised her to detest violence. All the same she knew, with a ferocious maternal certainty, that if threatened, she would kill to protect her child.
At first she saw nothing. Then, directly below her, almost hidden by the overhanging shadow of the roof, the dark shape of a solitary horse emerged, its head drooping, its saddle empty.
A gasp of relief escaped Rose’s taut lips as she sagged against the wall. A riderless horse was a matter for concern, but it posed no immediate danger, unless—
Nerves screaming, she pressed toward the window again. The horse could be a ruse, she reminded herself, a trick to lure her outside. She would be a fool to drop her guard now, when an army of intruders could be waiting in the shadows.
Rose’s breath stopped as the horse shifted its stance to reveal, dragging from a stirrup by one entangled boot, the dark, limp form of a man.
She pressed close to the glass, forgetting to hide herself. Judging from what she could see, the rider appeared to be a stranger. He was tall. Rose could calculate that much from the length of his trapped leg and the lean sprawl of his body. His clothes were plain, dark and trail worn. But beyond that, she could not tell how badly he was hurt, or even whether he was still alive.
She gripped the gun in an agony of indecision. To go downstairs and open the door would jeopardize her own safety and, infinitely worse, that of her baby. But how could she leave a man—a good man, for all she knew, maybe with a wife and children waiting at home—to die on her very doorstep?
As Rose hesitated, torn to the point of anguish, she saw the man’s arm move, saw his hand stir and lift. His fingers strained, quivering toward the stirrup, only to fall back, clenched in pain and frustration.
A moan of pity broke in Rose’s throat Whatever the peril, no decent soul could turn away from this human being.
Laying the gun on the bed, she flung on her flannel wrapper and knotted the sash tightly around her waist. Then she picked up the weapon again, paused to thumb back the hammer and, with a last glance at Mason’s small, sleeping form, hurried down the dark hallway toward the stairs.
Her steps faltered as she neared the massive front door. For the space of a heartbeat she clung to the heavy crossbar, gathering her courage. The entry way was pitch-black, the house eerily silent. If only she’d thought to bring a lantern…
But the stranger was in pain and need, and there was no more time to be lost. The moon was shining outside, Rose noted as she shoved back the bar. She would be able to see well enough.
Her knuckles whitened on the pistol grip as the door creaked open. For a moment she held her breath, gulping back old terrors as she waited for a rush from the shadows. But this time, except for the solitary horse drooping next to the hitching rail, there was nothing.
“Steady, boy.” Rose approached the animal cautiously, fearful that it might bolt and drag its injured rider back into the scrub. “That’s it…easy…” She caught the reins that were dangling loose over its neck and looped them around the rail.
The rider had neither spoken nor moved. He lay as still as death in the moonlight, while Rose labored to free his worn boot from the stirrup.
The leathers, she swiftly discovered, had become twisted around his ankle as the horse dragged him along the ground. So stubbornly were they tangled around his high-topped boot that she could not tug it loose. Rose hesitated, then laid the pistol on the ground. The man was surely too far gone to pose any danger.
Panting with effort, she tugged and twisted, but the stranger’s boot was caught fast. To free him, she would need to slide the boot off his foot, worsening any possible bone fractures in the process.
Praying she wouldn’t hurt him too badly, Rose cradled his leg against the curve of her waist and began, slowly and carefully, to work away the boot, which was so old and worn that the leather had molded like a second skin to the lean, bony contours of his foot. She was so intent on her task that she forgot her peril until the stranger spoke.
“No tricks, lady.”
The hoarse whisper struck Rose like a bullet. She turned to find herself staring down the barrel of her own discarded gun. The stranger’s face lay in shadow, but there was no mistaking the raw desperation in his voice.
“You heard me, lady. I don’t want to hurt you, but try anything cute, and you won’t live to be sorry!”
Rose knew she should be frightened, and she was. But bubbling hotly over her fear was a tide of anger. Her trembling hands balled into fists as they dropped to her sides.
“You crazy fool!” she snapped. “Can’t you see I’m trying to help you? I could’ve left you out here to die, and maybe I should have!”
Her words echoed on the silent wind. For the space of a long breath the stranger did not respond. Then Rose heard the sound of sharp-edged laughter in the darkness. Laughter that ended in a grunt of pain.
“You’re hurt,” she said.
“Hell, yes, I’m hurt,” he snarled. “Get me loose from this horse, and then you can do something about it.”
“That’s exactly what I was trying to do when you interrupted me,” Rose said coldly. “May I go ahead now?”
“Go on.” His hand held the pistol steady as she turned back to working the boot off his foot.
“You could have broken bones,” she said. “Tell me if I hurt you.”
“Won’t make much difference if you do.” His breath sucked in, then rasped painfully out of his lungs. “I’m looking for John Colby. Is this his place?”
“It is. But he’s…not here.” It would not be wise to tell the stranger John was dead, she reasoned, at least not until she knew who he was and what he wanted.
“Are you Colby’s daughter?” The man winced as she repositioned his leg to support it against her hip.
“No, I’m John Colby’s…wife.” Rose felt his heel loosen from inside the boot. Holding her breath, she began easing the leather from around the threadbare stocking. When she glanced around, she saw that his gun hand had fallen to the ground. He was watching her cautiously, his jaw clenched against the pain.
“So, when will your husband be back—uh—Mrs. Colby?”
“What is it you want with him?”
“I—blast it, woman—” He muttered a string of curses as his foot slipped free of the boot, allowing the leg to drop. His hand, however, kept its grip on the pistol.
“You can let go of my gun,” Rose said coldly. “I don’t intend to harm you.”
“I’ll think about that after I’ve seen John Colby.” His voice grated with determination. “When did you say your husband would be back?”
“I didn’t.” Swallowing her fear, she forced herself to crouch beside him. He had propped himself on one elbow, the pistol clutched in his free hand. A chill knifed through Rose, stabbing to the marrow of her bones.
“What are you doing here?” she whispered, her throat dry and tight. “What do you want with John?”
A muscle twitched below his sharp cheekbone. “Let’s just say I’ve shown up to collect on an old debt,” he muttered.
“You mean to kill him, don’t you?” The words burst out of Rose with an audacity she might not have possessed if her husband had been alive.
“No, I only need his help…his word.” The stranger coughed, doubling over in sudden agony. “Get me in the house,” he said. “Now!”
Rose’s eyes swiftly measured his length and bulk. He was at least six feet tall, with broad, heavy shoulders and a deep chest. Too big a man for her to drag up the steps, let alone lift. “Can you walk?” she asked cautiously.
“My legs are fine. Just damned sore.” He struggled to rise, then sank back in obvious pain. As his arm shifted, the moonlight revealed an ugly, dark blotch still oozing crimson down the left side of his shirt.
Drops of sweat glistened on his skin as he strained to get up. “Give me your hand.”
Rose knew she had to take control now, while she could. “Give me the gun first,” she said quietly.
His black eyes flashed with sudden wariness. “Who’s in the house?”
“Nobody who could do you any harm. Give me the gun.”
He hesitated, then shook his head groggily. “Can’t trust you,” he mumbled. “Can’t trust anybody till your husband gives his word. Let’s go inside, Mrs. Colby.”
Rose thought of her son, asleep in his cradle upstairs. Anxiety made her bold. “No,” she said.
“No?” He glared at her, as if questioning her sanity.
“Not until you give me the gun.”
“From here, lady, I’d say you were in no position to argue.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Rose retorted, masking her fear with ice. “You’re badly wounded, and I’m the only one who can help you. Shoot me, and you won’t last till morning.”
He blinked, as if trying to clear some unseen darkness from his vision. His gun hand quivered. “Your husband—”
“John died four months ago.” Rose thrust the truth hard into him like the point of a lance. She saw him slump, saw the resistance ebbing out of him. “Give me the pistol,” she said more gently. “Believe me, I’m all you’ve got.”
His eyelids drooped, then, with effort, jerked upward again. The stranger had lost a great deal of blood, Rose surmised. It was all he could do to stay conscious. He did not even resist as she reached out, grasped the Peacemaker by its long barrel, lifted it from his hand and carefully released the hammer.
“Come on,” she said, shoving the weapon into the knotted sash of her robe. “Let’s get you up those steps before you pass out.”
Crouching close, she managed to work her shoulder under his right arm. His body was rank with sweat and blood, his clothes saturated with wood smoke. The blending odors ignited memories of death and terror in Rose’s mind, but she forced them aside. This man was too weak to fear, she reassured herself, even though every instinct whispered that she was wrong.
“Help me,” she ordered, gathering her strength. “Now!”
A grunt of agony exploded through his teeth as they lurched upward together. Rose staggered under his weight, fighting for balance as he struggled to get his footing. His body was as hard as ironwood, all bone and sinew through his clothes.
“Can you make it up the steps?” She strained against him, her flesh hurting where his hand gripped her shoulder.
“I’ll make it.” He gained the first step, then the second, biting back curses. She could feel his trembling heat along her side; she could feel the labored pounding of his heart.
Something flashed through Rose’s memory—the image of a wounded coyote whelp she had once found in the brush, half-dead, its eyes still glinting with a desperate defiance. Hungering for something to nurture, Rose had begged John to let her take the wretched creature home and care for it, but he had drawn his pistol and shot it before her horrified eyes. “You’ve got no sense at all, woman,” he’d said. “A coyote’s a wild animal. First chance a varmint like that gets, it’ll turn on you for sure.”
A wild animal
The man at her side had that same hunted air about him, and no matter how he might be suffering or what he might tell her, Rose knew she could not afford to trust him.
They had gained the porch. The stranger was reeling like a drunkard. It was all Rose could do to keep him upright. All the same, she forced herself to stop short of the door.
“I’m not taking you under my roof until I know,” she declared, bracing her weight against his ribs. “Who are you? What did you want with my husband?”
“Latigo.” He spoke with excruciating effort. “I knew your husband from the Apache wars. He said if I ever needed help…”
The words trailed off as his knees buckled, then his body collapsed in Rose’s arms. She tried to hold him, but his weight was too much for her. His blood left a streak of crimson down the skirt of her dark blue wrapper as he slid to the porch, shuddered and lay still.
Panic shrilled alarms in Rose’s head as she groped for his pulse. Reason argued that she and the baby would be safer if he died, but when her fingertips, searching along his jugular, found a weak but steady flutter, she broke into a sweat of relief. He was alive, but his life was trickling away with every heartbeat. There was no time to lose.
Urgency, now, drove her to fling open the door and seize the stranger’s feet, one booted, one covered only in a half-disintegrated dark woolen sock. As she dragged him along the tiles toward the kitchen, Rose prayed silently that she would know what to do. She had nursed the cuts and sprains of the vaqueros and cared for John during those last terrible months when he lay barely aware of her, but she was no doctor.
He groaned as she turned his body to slide it across the threshold into the kitchen where she kept water and medical supplies. “I know it hurts,” she muttered, “but I have to get you in here where I can work on you.” Rose shoved back the table to clear more space, then maneuvered him into position. She would have to dress his wound on the floor. Unless he could get up by himself, there was no way for her to lift him onto anything higher.
Water. Yes, he would need all the fluids she could force down him. Rose darted to the counter and filled a pottery cup from the tall pewter pitcher. Moonlight etched ghostly windowpane squares across the tile as she crossed the kitchen and dropped to her knees beside him.
The stranger—Latigo—moaned as she lifted his head and cradled it in her lap. His face was in shadow, so obscuring his features that she had to grope for his mouth. His skin was as smooth as new leather beneath her fingertips. An unexpected tenderness surged through her as she tipped the cup and pressed it to his cracked lips. “Drink,” she murmured. “Please—you’ve lost so much blood.”
At first he did not respond. The water filled his mouth until Rose feared she would drown him. It trickled out of one corner to run down her sleeve as she tilted his head to keep him from choking. Please, she begged silently. Please.
He sputtered weakly. Then she felt the ripple of his throat as he began to swallow. “Yes,” she whispered, tipping the cup higher to give him the last drops. “Yes, that’s it, drink it all.”
She withdrew the cup, then hesitated, wondering whether she should get him more water. No, she swiftly concluded, too much at one time might make him sick, and she could wait no longer to stop the bleeding.
“Latigo, can you hear me?”
He made no sound.
“Latigo!” Sick with dread, she seized his shoulder and shook it. Relief swept through her as he moaned incoherently.
“I’ve got to clean out your wound. It’s going to hurt Do you want some whiskey?”
Again he did not answer, and Rose realized she was wasting precious time. Leaving him where he lay, she scrambled to her feet and strode to the cupboard, where she rummaged for matches to light the lamp that Esperanza kept on the counter. By its flaring yellow light she filled a basin with water, then retrieved her medical kit, some clean rags and a bottle of John’s rye whiskey from the pantry. These she placed on the shadowed floor next to Latigo’s unconscious body. Then she rushed back to fetch the lamp from the counter.
Light danced eerily off the open-beamed ceiling as she picked up the lamp. It glistened on hanging copper pots and flickered on strings of garlic and dark red chilies as she hurried across the kitchen. The tiles were smooth and cold beneath her bare feet.
Latigo had not moved. He lay where she had left him, the agonized hiss of his breathing his only sign of life. Light pooled around his lanky frame as Rose bent down to set the lamp on the floor. It flooded his face, casting his features into stark relief—the tawny skin, the straight nose and sharp, high cheekbones, the long, square jaw, the broad forehead, crowned by hair as black as the wing of a raven.
Rose’s flesh had gone cold. Panic surged through her body, propelled by memories so vivid and terrible that she could not fight them back. The smoke. The blood. The savage, painted faces.
She closed her eyes, battling instincts that threatened to send her bolting out of the kitchen. The man was helpless, she reminded herself. He would die without her aid. Maybe he would die anyway, but she had no moral choice except to try to help him.
Rose willed her eyes to open, willed herself to look down at him as she reached for the basin and a clean cloth. She would perform her Christian duty, she resolved. But no charity on her part could wipe out the horror of the past.
And nothing could alter the fact that this dark stranger, this man who called himself Latigo, wore the face of an Apache.
