Angel In The Rain (Western Historical Romance) (6 page)

Angel sighed once more and leaned forward, wrapping her arms around her bent knees. She wriggled her toes through the silt at the bottom of the pool and watched the rising swirls of mud cover her feet. Leggy insects skittered across the surface of the water. Idly, she wondered if they ever sank.

Gathering the stray hair dangling at each side of her face, she brushed it back, straightened...and froze in horror. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t force the scream she wanted to send howling between the walls of the gully.

A trio of Indians stood silently on the other side of the pool, and all three of them stared straight at her.

Chapter Four

Angel sat on the sand, her breath frozen. Her heart slammed against her ribs with telltale jerks.

Fear of the Comanche had been ingrained since her earliest memories. She’d heard all the horror stories, the accounts of gruesome tortures practiced on white captives.

The three half-naked men standing on the opposite side of the pool looked as wild and bloodthirsty as starving wolves. Greasy black paint streaked their dusky-skinned faces. Barechested, they wore only buckskin leggings draped with breechclouts and plain moccasins on their feet.

Angel tried to draw a normal breath, but it wouldn’t come. She kept her head ducked, not daring to make eye contact, and watched the savages from under her lashes.

While the other two knelt beside the pool and drank, the third man calmly studied her with his arms crossed over his broad chest. Was he imagining her long, pale hair strung for a trophy on the end of his lance? He seemed unusually tall for an Indian. And his eyes... Even across the distance, she felt his gaze bore into her like pale shards of ice.

Dread intensified with each passing second. Why didn’t they race around the pool and attack? Were they playing cat and mouse, letting her fear build? She’d heard they derived pleasure from their victim’s cries of terror and pain.

Oh, God!

Where was Mantorres with his lightning Colt?

She opened her mouth to scream for her abductor when the tall Indian uncrossed his arms and lifted his right hand.

It was an odd gesture, almost like a wave. Angel jerked her feet from the water and stood.

What kind of trick was this?

As if on signal, the other Indians stood and all three started around the pool.

Angel’s heart sped to a dead gallop, sparking bright pinpoints of light before her eyes. Prepared to run, she turned and slammed into a solid wall of male chest.

Rane’s arm slid across her back and anchored her closer, melding her with the front of his body. “Don’t be afraid,” he said.

Swamped with relief, she sagged against him. Never had a voice sounded so beautiful. Never had another’s touch filled her with such a sense of refuge as his did at that moment.

She realized she was trembling, her breath nearly sobbed against his strong shoulder. And her hands had twisted into the bunched fabric at his waist as she clung to him like a terrified child.

“Don’t be afraid,” he repeated. “Turn around and look.”

She felt his arm against her back loosen, felt it fall away. The sudden emptiness sent a cold chill streaking down her spine. She didn’t want to turn around, but having one of her worst horrors slipping up behind her was far worse.

She turned and found the Indians almost upon them. Yet Rane’s very calmness allayed her initial terror. He stepped past her and continued walking, until he stood face to face with the tall Indian at the side of the pool.

“Wolf.”

“
Hermano
,” the Indian replied.

Angel’s ears perked up. The Indian had just called her captor “brother” with easy familiarity.

“I brought a horse.”

Though clipped, the Indian’s words were not the guttural English spoken by the “blanket” Indians who crowded the train depots at every stop, selling their wares of blankets, pottery, and beaded jewelry to disembarking passengers.

“Good.” Rane nodded. “I was beginning to think I might have to ride double all the way to the border.”

Wolf’s gaze swept past Rane and raked her from top to bottom, lingering on the snug trousers molded to her legs. “Why would you complain?”

Heat poured into her cheeks. Then, for one brief instant, she found herself looking directly into the Indian’s strange blue eyes. And his name was Wolf. How fitting.

Blue eyes, even paler than hers. No wonder his stare had seemed so cold. The unusually tall Indian was a half-breed. The knowledge made him no less fearsome. Up close, she realized the two with him were barely more than youngsters, still in their teens.

“Where’s the horse?’ Rane asked.

Even to Angel, his voice sounded suddenly tense.

Slowly, Wolf returned his attention to Rane. A coy grin curved one side of his lips. “I left the horse tied with yours. If I had wanted to, I could have slipped in behind you and slit your throat. If I had been one of Lundy’s men, you would be dead now.”

“How much you willing to bet on that?”

Rane’s voice was so low, Angel barely heard him. A long pause followed the challenge, and she sensed undercurrents that chilled her blood. Something outside her understanding passed between the two men. And yet the smile never left Wolf’s face and neither of them appeared truly angry.

Wolf crossed his arms over his bare chest and tipped up his chin. “I saw you drop some rabbits back in the brush. You plan on asking us to stay for supper, or not?”

****

At dusk, the two young Indians led the horses near the newly established camp and secured them to a picket line strung through the willows. While Rane skinned the rabbits with a wicked looking knife he pulled from inside the haft of his boot, Wolf scooped a shallow pit into the sand and started a fire.

Angel sat huddled next to a boulder and tried to make herself as inconspicuous as possible. The fire’s warmth beckoned, but she dared not go nearer. She wondered how two scrawny jackrabbits would feed five people, until the two nameless youngsters appeared with an armload of blankets and knapsacks filled with provisions. She tried not to think about where they might have gotten them.

Seated on his haunches, Wolf pulled one of the knapsacks toward him and upended it on the sand. An assortment of cans rolled out, along with a cigar box and a cheesecloth bound parcel that contained three flattened loaves of bread.

Wolf took one of the loaves and pushed to his feet. When Angel realized he was headed toward her, she huddled lower and wrapped her arms around her drawn-up knees.

He stopped directly in front of her and extended the loaf.

Hesitant at first, Angel unclasped a hand and accepted his offering. The yeasty smell made her mouth water. “Thank you,” she said lowly.

A flash of white teeth appeared in the half-breed’s swarthy face. She glanced up and saw that the friendly expression reached all the way to his unusual eyes. Earlier, he and his companions had bathed in the pool and washed the hellish black streaks from their faces. Except for the dull raven’s wing hair reaching below his shoulders, he looked more like a normal human man now. Less threatening. Still, though manners dictated that she give the proper response to his kind gesture, she didn’t return his smile.

“You’re welcome,” he said. He turned and went back to the fire.

Rane spitted the rabbits and positioned them over the low flames. Just the smell of mesquite smoke had Angel’s stomach gnawing on itself. She pinched off a bite of bread and thrust it into her mouth. Refusing the beans he’d offered her last night had been a mistake. She was starving.

There was no telling what ordeals lay ahead. She had to keep her strength up. It would be hard to manage an escape with her head reeling from hunger.

She nibbled on the bread. Though the Indians fascinated her, Rane captured her attention more.

He hunkered near the fire and accepted the slender cigar Wolf offered. The leaping flames cast the right side of his sinfully handsome face into sharp relief, turning his chiseled features to gleaming bronze. Damp tendrils of hair as dusky as midnight clung to his skin. Angel realized he was younger than her first impression had led her to believe. Dark stubble nearly disguised the smooth, unlined face of a man doubtless still shy of thirty.

A couple of times he reached up and clawed at the blue-black shadow on his jaw as though it itched something fierce. How would he look clean-shaven?

As though he sensed her attention, he turned and looked directly at her.

For the space of several seconds, his fathomless gaze held her captive far more efficiently than any bindings or threats and triggered an unfurling sensation in the pit of her stomach.

Just as quickly, he turned his attention to the empty canvas knapsack lying on the ground and examined the flap, and the initials sewn into it. “Where did you get these supplies?”

Wolf picked up a burning twig and held it against the end of the cigar thrust between his teeth. He inhaled deeply, then blew a column of smoke skyward into the night. “A patent medicine drummer.”

Rane’s brows took a pronounced dip. “You stole them?”

His words were loaded with disapproval. Strange that a man, who had no qualms whatsoever about kidnapping a defenseless woman, would object to a few stolen canned goods.

Wolf shrugged. “That drummer had a wagon full and wouldn’t miss it if we had taken more. Desperate times,
hermano
.” He hooked a thumb toward the two youngsters, who reclined against the pile of blankets. “My cousins ran away to find me. On the reservation, they’re not allowed to be Comanche. They wanted to raid on the white eyes
tejanos
before they go back.”

“So that’s why you were wearing the paint. You were playing war party.”

A lopsided grin appeared on Wolf’s face. “No one got hurt. We waited until he drank a bottle of his opium remedy and fell asleep.”

Rane shook his head. “Still a bad idea.”

Wolf sat back once more. “Hey. I got a good horse for you.”

“They hang horse thieves. If that drummer picks up your sign, he’ll have the army on your trail.”

“He won’t.”

Rane pulled an ember from the fire and lit his cigar. The two men sat in silence for several moments.

Finally, Wolf said, “You’re not going to ask for my help, are you.” It was more statement than question.

“No,” Rane replied. “This is something I have to do alone.”

Wolf edged closer. “You’re loco. Lundy’s bounty boys are out there waiting. Most of them have paired off. They’re squatting on every waterhole between here and Clayton Station.”

Rane visibly unclenched the knot along his jaw and pulled a long drag from his cigar. “I expected no less.”

“Want me to go kill a few for you? Lower the odds? They’ll never see it coming.”

“No. No killing. Take your cousins back to the reservation before they end up getting into real trouble.”

Wolf lowered his head, then lifted it and stared into the darkness. “You’re mule-stubborn, Rane. It won’t go well if you get yourself killed.”

Rane huffed an incredulous laugh. “A little late for concern.”

“Maybe. But you’ve never tried to shoot your way through an entire army of hired guns before."

“And I don’t intend to now.”

The Indian’s expression brightened. “You have a plan?”

Rane’s lips curved in a bittersweet smile. “As you said. Desperate times.”

Maybe a little too desperate, the cost too high.

Rane had a plan all right. He planned to dangle Angel Clayton under Lundy’s nose and force the bastard to give in to his demands. The only problem was in getting to the destination. For that, he had no plan. But he wasn’t about to tell Wolf the truth about the hole he’d dug for himself. What he was attempting was probably nothing short of suicide, and he didn’t want to drag Wolf into the middle of it.

The moment he’d heard Lundy was spreading the word—reward money for the Clayton girl—he’d seen his chance and dashed off to get ahead of the pack. It was only a stroke of luck that his trail had crossed Wolf’s, who agreed to find a spare horse and deliver it at some point along the return route. Unfortunately, Jed Wiley and his skinny partner had blundered onto the woman before him. How, he didn’t know, but it never should have happened.

Rane looked beyond the fire to where Angel sat huddled against a boulder, nearly outside the circle of light. She refused to sit any closer. Wolf had made an effort to show her he intended no harm. Yet, she still looked as if she might bolt at any second. Rane knew she was hanging on their every word. Time to end the conversation, before she heard too much.

Tremors racked her shoulders at regular intervals. At least he could remedy that.

“Enough talk,” he said. He stubbed his cigar in the sand and stood. He circled the fire and snatched his bedroll from the ground. Taking the thin blanket, he approached the shivering woman.

She didn’t look at him, nor did she move when he draped the woolen cover across her upper back and hunkered down in front of her. He tugged the ends together over her drawn-up knees, forming a sheltering cocoon.