McCrory's Lady (12 page)

      
“Do you think—if you'd gone home your father would've forgiven you?” Eden asked.

      
Although she knew Cain Worthington would never have done so, Maggie prayed that Colin McCrory was as different a father as she believed him to be. “He might have,” she replied carefully, “but I never gave him a chance. He had always been so distant and stern—and that was Boston, remember? He was nothing like your father, Eden.”

      
Eden pondered, knowing now that she must confess the truth about Judd Lazlo to Maggie and ultimately even to her father. Then, a thought struck her as she looked over at Beau Price, who had been assigned to ride point, watching for Apaches. “Is that why you seemed to dislike Mr. Price? Could he be related to Whalen?”

      
Maggie studied the beefy profile of the rider. “I doubt it. There's no physical resemblance and the name's common enough. I suppose it's the accent—and I don't like his leering attitude.”

      
“He has been rather...forward,” Eden said with a blush. “I like Mr. Rosa ever so much better.”

      
“Fulhensio is a good man. He's lived in San Luís off and on for the past forty years. You can trust him.”

      
“What about Mr. Blake?” The question just seemed to ask itself, and Eden found herself blushing down to the roots of her hair.

      
Maggie smiled. “What about him? Personally, I like him. He rescued you from Brodie, who always was a mean devil.”

      
“But Blake's a common gunman,” Eden replied stiffly.

      
“So is Fulhensio Rosa, just older. Or do you object to Wolf's Apache blood?” Maggie asked, knowing that the long-standing fight between white settlers and Apaches had made most Arizonans hate Indians with unreasoning intensity.

      
“Of course not! My father is one of the few men in the territory to make peace with the Apaches. They've never raided us and always kept their word. Of course, so does my father. He's been fighting in Prescott, even gone to Washington to protest the way the Apaches are being cheated by government contractors and thieving Indian agents. He wants to be appointed agent for the White Mountain Reservation, but first he has to prove that Caleb Lamp is really in cahoots with Winslow Barker and his crowd.”

      
“Somehow, I have a difficult time imagining your father as a crusader,” Maggie said dryly, looking at Colin's erect carriage on his big buckskin horse as he rode ahead of them.

      
“He has a lot of fine qualities you should learn about,” Eden said earnestly. Before they reached Tucson she had to find a way to get her father and Maggie to agree to their original bargain.

      
Taking a deep breath, Eden said, “I'm going to need your help, Maggie—when we get home more than ever. There's something I haven't told you...about Judd Lazlo...” Her voice faltered as she looked around. None of the men were within earshot.

      
“You mean that he didn't kidnap you?” Maggie supplied gently.

      
Eden's mouth rounded in an O of surprise. “How did you know?”

      
“I suspected, but I couldn't be sure. Some things just didn't add up. You obviously grew up adoring your father, yet you've scarcely let him near you after he rescued you. You feel guilty because you've lied to him, don't you?”

      
“It's worse than that,” Eden whispered brokenly. “Lazlo and his men talked about their plans to kill my father. I was the bait for their trap! They were hired by those men in Tucson, my father's enemies.”

      
“I see,” Maggie said. This was certainly getting more complicated than she had ever imagined. “Eden, you were deceived by Lazlo. He set out to trick you—in an even more despicable, underhanded way than Whalen Price did me. You're a victim, child, and you would have been killed, too—if your father hadn't loved you enough to risk everything to save you.”

      
“When we get back to Prescott, it's all going to come out. Louise Simpson lied for me all those times I slipped out to meet Lazlo. I told Eileen I was going for a visit at Louise's place when I ran off with him. Mrs. Simpson will wring the truth out of Louise now, then tell Father when we get home.”

      
“Then, you’ll just have to tell him first,” Maggie said, praying that her gut instinct about Colin's love for his daughter was right.

      
Eden bit her lip. “I know, but I just don't know how. It’ll hurt him so much—”

      
“It would've hurt him a lot more to see you dead.”

      
“There were times after I found out what Lazlo was—I prayed for death. When I put the centipede in his boot, I hoped he'd shoot me before he died.”

      
“Enough! That's all behind you now and you're back with your family who love you. You'll have lots to live for, Eden, believe me. I know.”

      
“You never gave up hope?”

      
“Almost, when my daughter died...but, no. I kept on fighting—just like you will.”

      
“Maggie... Do you think I could...that is, would you mind if—if I sort of become your daughter?” Before Maggie could reply, Eden rushed on, “I'm the age she would have been if she'd lived, and I never knew my own mother.”

      
Maggie's eyes glowed with unshed tears as she reached out her hand and took Eden's in a fierce grip. “Like I said, Eden, you're with your family now—and we love you. I love you and I consider myself very lucky to be given this second chance to have a daughter.”

* * * *

      
By the time they stopped for the night, everyone was exhausted, hot and irritable; but Colin had insisted they push hard through the day. The border country between Arizona and Mexico was where the renegade Apache Victorio raided. The sooner they were safely in Tucson, the better.

      
As she slid stiffly from her horse, Maggie rubbed her posterior and groaned. “Now I remember why I always detested horses. Their backbones are hard as granite and their gait bumpy as a washboard.”

      
Overhearing her, Colin quirked one eyebrow. “Maybe it's not the horse's fault but the person atop it.”

      
“I never claimed to be an expert horsewoman. The only reason I learned to ride at all was because the roads in Sonora are too rough for a decently sprung carriage.”

      
“Who told you that you
had
learned to ride?”

      
“Maybe the same fellow who taught you Scot’s poetry,” she replied crossly.

      
Colin sighed and pulled the saddle off Sand. “I suppose that fellow who didn't teach me the right poetry or you the right way to sit a horse also didn't teach you anything about cooking?”

      
She smiled guilelessly. “What do you think?”

      
“I think I'd better make supper,” he snapped. “You can help.”

      
Maggie looked at him with surprise since he had kept his distance from her after their tense truce two days earlier. “Just tell me what you want me to do.”

      
After the men saw to the horses, Colin sent Eden off with Fulhensio to gather firewood while he and Maggie unpacked the simple trail fare—dried beans, slab bacon and hardtack. Wolf and Price rode out to look for Indian sign and select the best sentry sites in the rough rocky terrain.

      
“Do you think we'll encounter Victorio?” she asked as she brought a pot of water from the trickling stream that surfaced a few yards from their campsite.

      
Colin threw several generous handfuls of dried beans into the pot to soak. “I don't know. We didn't riding south, but Wolf and I moved a lot faster. Traveling with white women is always dangerous in this country. You know that. If we should have trouble with any Apache—”

      
“Eden told me you were their champion. You're supposed to have some sort of agreement with them.”

      
“That's with the peaceful ones at White Mountain. Victorio's a renegade. Not that I fault him his reasons for jumping the reservation, but if he comes on us, there'll be no parlays.”

      
Suddenly, Maggie intuited where the conversation was leading. An icy white rage swept over her and she threw down the sack of hard biscuits and stood up. “If you think—”

      
“If we were surrounded, cut off with no hope of escape, I want you to stay close to Eden. You know what to do...for both of you.” His voice was hard and ice cold.

      
“Death before dishonor,” she said bitterly. “Aren't you asking the wrong person?”

      
“Don’t be stupid—”

      
“Don’t
you
be stupid! We could die fighting, but I damn sure won't die if there's any chance for life—even the life of a squaw—and faced with the real choice, most women would agree. I think Eden would.”

      
He stood very close to her now, the food on the ground forgotten as he took another step nearer, his hands itching to shake her hard. “Don't think just because of what happened to Eden that you're some sort of sisters under the skin now, because you're not! You're nothing alike. Nothing!”

      
Maggie acted out of pure reflex before she could stop herself. She slapped him, hard. “You arrogant self-righteous prig! I'm surprised you didn't shoot her to end her shame back in that canyon!”

      
Flames leaped in his eyes, scorching and smoldering as he struggled to lessen his fury. “For someone who's lived here all these years, you haven't the sense of a halfwit! I'm not talking about death or dishonor—I'm talking about torture! Have you ever seen a man staked out over an ant hill until the insects eat his eyeballs away while he's still screaming? Or a woman impaled with a war lance thrust up between her legs?”

      
“I've learned a hell of a lot living here!” she shouted back. “Raiders like Victorio don't have time for those kinds of atrocities. They kill and steal—sometimes they rape women, but I've never heard of his band mutilating a female captive.”

      
“Well, you've heard wrong—and I've seen firsthand evidence of it.” He swore savagely and turned away, running his hands through his hair. “It's unlikely we'll run afoul of a raiding party large enough to challenge our guns. Just forget I ever said anything to you.”

      
“If you hurt her, Colin McCrory, I swear I'll kill you!” She turned and walked quickly away before they said even more terrible things to each other. She had hoped, had believed that Colin would not be like her own father, that he would love Eden enough to forgive her youthful indiscretion. Now she was no longer certain.

* * * *

      
Dinner that evening was quiet, but no one noticed the crackling hostility between Maggie and Colin. Everyone was simply too exhausted by the long ride to care. The two women were given a place to sleep near the fire while the men took turns at sentry duty in pairs while the others slept in three-hour shifts. They were on the trail the next morning before the sun crested the eastern mountains.

      
Several hours later, Colin studied the western horizon with troubled eyes. Although it was nearly noon, the sky was dark with swirling iron gray clouds massing low and moving toward them.

      
“Looks like the granddaddy of all sand storms blowing up. There may be some rain in it,” Wolf said.

      
“I doubt it, but just in case, we'd better head for that high ground.” Colin pointed to a series of jagged hills spotted with greasewood and catclaw.

      
“We’ll tear hell out of our gear and the horses,” Wolf said, but knew that the alternative of being on low ground, caught out in the open when the southwestern skies opened up could mean sudden death by lightning or drowning in a flash flood.

      
Colin issued orders and everyone turned their horses to the high ground; but before they had reached the shelter of the rocks, the winds came billowing across the desert like dragon's breath. Sand stung humans and livestock, enveloping everyone in blinding, suffocating gray. Horses whinnied and jumped, sidestepping in fear and pain as the men attempted to calm their terror. Price had the pack animals firmly in hand, and Rosa was controlling the stolen Crown Verde racers.

      
When Eden's mare shied and tried to bolt, Wolf quickly grabbed her reins, but Maggie had been riding next to Eden and was in far more trouble. Colin saw her gelding rear up, almost throwing her as the winds whipped her hat off and tore the pins from her hair which wrapped around her face, blinding her. The gelding bolted, racing out onto the open plain, away from their small caravan. Colin spurred Sand into a swift gallop, pursuing Maggie before she vanished into the clouds of dust, her cries for help blown away by the howling roar of the wind.

      
Maggie struggled to control her terrified mount, but she was no match for the big horse. Never a good rider, all she could do was hold on for dear life and pray the stupid beast didn't break both their necks. If she fell beneath the pounding hooves onto the hard rocky earth, Maggie knew she would perish in the desert.

      
Then, over the scream of the wind, she heard a man's voice, Colin's voice, yelling as a strong right arm reached out and steadied her.

      
“Hang onto me!” The wind blew away his words, but she seemed to understand. She wrapped her arms around his neck, plastering her body to his as he pulled her from her horse. Lifting her across the saddle, he guided his big stallion toward the higher ground while sand continued to scour his face and sting his eyes. Maggie buried her head against his chest as her hair whipped wildly around her shoulders.