River Song (2 page)

Satisfied she was
alone,
Sunny hurried to where her mother lay and sank to her knees beside her.
So much blood,
she thought, reaching a tentative hand toward her.
Too much blood.

"Mother?" she choked out in a feeble voice. "Oh, please, please be alive."

But Sunny knew she couldn't be. Not with all that blood. Grief swelled in her breast, crowding her heart, and fingers of pain seized her windpipe as she gathered her mother into her arms. "Oh,
kw'ailee
,
my mother,
quoann
kn'aait
,"
she cried, pressing Moonstar's brown face to her breast. "Oh, God and please allow the Seven Saints of Ireland to accompany her on her journey into heaven."

Later—it might have been hours or minutes, but in her aggrieved state Sunny couldn't be sure—she finally stopped rocking her mother's bruised body and ceased wailing bits of Quechan chants mingled with Irish prayers. Her features, painted with tears, were wooden and filled with hatred.

Rising from the plank floor, Sunny surveyed the scene with cold calculation. The Irish twinkle in her midnight-blue eyes dimmed, fading like the last sparks of a campfire as she put the pieces together. Although she was unfamiliar with the mating act, the raised skirt, grotesque angle of her mother's legs, and pool of blood beneath her exposed buttocks, told Sunny the intruder had violated her mother in the worst possible way.

Another crimson stain spread beneath Moonstar's shoulders from the bullet that had pierced her loving heart. Sunny prayed it had entered her mother before the man,
then
spotted another trail of blood. But this life's fluid did not connect in any way with her mother's.

Then Sunny saw the reason why. Near Moonstar's body lay her favorite carving knife. The shiny blade was mottled with drying reddish-brown flakes. For the first time since she'd ridden away from her secret spot, a tiny smile flickered at the corners of Sunflower's rosy mouth. Her mother had managed to gain some measure of revenge against her attackers before she'd been given up to the heavens.

Sunny followed the trail toward the doorway, and by the time she reached the porch, the stains had become clear enough to identify. Her mother's killer wore a bloody boot on his right foot, which left a perfect outline of the heel with each step he took. He was bleeding badly, she surmised— probably from a large gash in his calf muscle, or even across his thigh. She crossed the steps and examined the dusty ground, confirming her first suspicions. Her mother's visitors were white men. And there were two of them.

The murderer's mounts wore horseshoes, something of a rarity among the inhabitants along the Colorado River. Indians didn't shoe their horses, and neither did most farmers in this region. The intruders were probably miners, ranchers, or maybe outlaws. She shaded her blue eyes from the afternoon sun and followed the impressions as far as she could. The men had ridden south toward Yuma, and hard.

How could this have happened? Sunny's heart cried out. Where had her oldest brother been during the vicious attack on their mother? In town selling Moonstar's carefully woven blankets? On the reservation visiting the comely daughter of the tribe's shaman? The sudden rustle of the turkey buzzards' great flapping wings and screeching provided Sunny with a clue.

"Mike?" she called with a sliver of hope. But when she turned her gaze on the young crop of corn and spotted the depression amongst the budding green stalks and a glimpse of blue plaid, Sunny gasped. Heartsick, she hurried through the flooded field and collapsed in the mud at her brother's side. Robbed of life's shining luster, Michael Callahan's ebony eyes stared towards the heavens as hard lumps of charcoal.

"No," Sunflower cried, throwing her arms and head across Mike's rigid chest. "It can not be. This
can not
be true."

But it was.

She slumped in despair. After the final bitter tear burned its way across her dusky cheek, when hatred's acid began to eat away at the hurt, Sunny lifted her head and turned eyes as cold as death on the landscape.

Her father and remaining brother, Sean, were busy navigating the upstream waters of the Colorado to the northwest. The animals who'd murdered half her family had ridden southeast.

In which direction should she travel? North, fighting the current, fending off the lonely miners she was bound to encounter as she searched for what was left of her family? Or south, tracking and identifying the killers? Sunny glanced down at Mike, then towards the farmhouse. Her first priority had to be the building of a funeral pyre.

Maybe then, as she stared into the flames and smoke that would carry her fallen family's souls to their reward, she would finally have that elusive dream. A vision would tell her in which direction to travel.

Several miles to the northeast, near the Gila River, Cole Fremont leaned back against his saddle and positioned his bedroll in the hollow at the back of his neck. With a grimace that spread his mustache beyond the width of his jaws, he raised his injured leg and propped his boot heel on the stump of a dead mesquite tree.

After carefully rolling a cigarette, Cole lit it in the campfire and regarded the rabbit roasting on the makeshift spit. He glanced at the dimming sky, drawing a deep breath of tobacco.

"Dammit all, anyway," he complained. His injured leg would have him eating in the dark and had rendered him nearly incapable of hunting for his own supper this evening. Maybe by tomorrow the pain would ease enough for him to get around in his usual fashion.

He sat listening to the cry of a lone coyote and pondered his future, Arizona's future, and the many reasons for his long trek to Yuma. He had finally sold his last herd of cattle on behalf of the family ranch. From now on, Cole would center his thoughts and actions on
his
ideas for the future, not on his father's. Grinning broadly through his thick mustache, he reflected on the new direction he'd taken, and the order he'd placed for his unusual livestock. He laughed thinking about the bizarre creatures, and as he did, several other coyotes joined the first, creating a musical celebration of the night's kill. Then he heard something else.

Cole sat straight up and pulled his rifle from the nearby gun boot, listening. Somewhere, off to the left behind a stand of mesquite and
palo
verde
trees, something or someone crept in the darkness. Ignoring a fresh stab of pain in his right calf, Cole quietly got to his feet and circled down further into the arroyo. Then he began the return journey.

Halfway back to his camp, Cole's hunting instincts were rewarded with a glimpse of a shadowy figure just ahead. As he watched, the figure moved toward his fire with great stealth, stole through the night like an Indian. One of Geronimo's small
band
of dissidents?

Adept as any savage in moving through thorny bushes and cactus without a sound, Cole advanced on the intruder and caught up with him as he squatted at the edge of the empty campsite.

Pointing the barrel of his Winchester at the back of the wide-brimmed hat, Cole cocked the lever.

"Hands up, mister, and be quick about it."

With a gasp, Sunny instinctively leapt forward and slithered across the sand like a sidewinder.

"Stop, you little bastard."

But startled and frightened Sunny continued to snake her way across the sand.

"Dammit all anyway," Cole muttered as he tossed his rifle aside and launched his six-foot frame across the back of the smaller man. Although the intruder struggled valiantly, he was no match for Cole's superior strength. The angry rancher buried the man's face in the sand with one hand as the other hand, well-trained by his years of bulldogging, quickly bound the tiring renegade's wrists behind his back with the short length of rope he wore tied to his belt.

When the struggling ceased, Cole released his grip on the man's neck and slid down across his rounded buttocks to his feet where he secured the slender ankles with his belt.

Panting, Cole got to his feet and waited as his captive spit and coughed the sand from his mouth. When the intruder's breathing eased, Cole slowly circled his prisoner, rolling another cigarette as he regarded the man. Even in the dim light of the fire, he could see the man's skin was a shade darker than his own. Pulling a match from his pocket, Cole struck it with his blunt thumbnail and lit the cigarette.

Trying to keep his tone casual, even though his dislike of Indians ran deep, he said, "Are you Apache? Did Geronimo or
Mangus
send you on some kind of mission?"

Knowing silence was her only real
option,
Sunny pressed her sand-painted lips together, and squeezed her eyes shut.

"Talk or I'll kick the answers out of you."

Still, she remained mute.

"Come on now, speak up." Impatient, his leg throbbing, Cole dug the toe of his boot into the Indian's ribs. "What evil are you up to, disguised as a white man? I want some answers, Apache."

She gave him one. Sunny turned her head to the side and spit on his boots.

"So that's how it's going to be, is it?"

Cole lashed out with his injured leg and kicked the Indian in the shinbone, drawing a groan from both himself and his prisoner. Hobbling, he backed away.

Sunny peered out from under the brim of her hat, her eyes following the movement of her captor's boots as he crossed back and forth, circling her body. There was no mistaking the awkward gait. He limped badly on his right foot. Had she found her quarry so soon?

In no mood to keep up the one-sided conversation, much less stand on his leg any longer, he threatened, "Fine. Have it your way. I'm tired and hungry. If you get thirsty, all you have to do is talk."

He stalked over to his saddle and removed a coil of rope. Then he returned to his prisoner, fastened one end of the rope to the ankle bindings, looped it through the coils joining the Indian's wrists, and wrapped a length around the man's neck before tying it off on the sturdy trunk of a mesquite tree. This renegade might try to slither off during the night, but if he did, he would find it difficult—if not damn near impossible—to breathe.

Her eyes dark, the
color of a thunderstorm at midnight, Sunny watched the killer return to his fire and pull
the rabbit from the dying flames. Hatred for the man nearly drove all thoughts of her hunger and thirst from her mind as she plotted her revenge.

Nearly two days ago she'd lost the tracks of the horses she followed, and allowed instinct to lead her on a more northerly route toward Phoenix. She'd been preparing camp for the night a few yards down the side of this rocky slope, when the aroma of roasting meat guided her to the clearing.

Directed by the customs of her ancestors, she'd survived during the past few days by eating only a few sweet beans plucked from the branches of mesquite trees along the way and an occasional bite of her mother's corn flour cakes. No meat, fish, or salt were allowed in the first few days following the death of a family member. And only a few cupfuls of warm water, just enough to sustain life, were permitted.

Sunny stifled an ironic laugh as she thought about how the ravenous appetite brought on by her mother's death had led her to the very man who'd caused it. Lifting her chin,
then
settling it in a pillow of soft sand, she cocked her head for a better look at her captor. She would commit his features to memory in case he slipped away from her, and hunt him down again if it took the rest of her life.

Trying to ignore the hunks of tender white meat he consumed, Sunny examined the profile he offered. A straight aristocratic nose rested above a drooping mustache the color of pale mustard, but his thick wavy hair beckoned her gaze to return again and again. Illuminated by the glow of the dying fire, its blond strands glistened like the shafts of new wheat on her father's farm, she was reminded her of her mission.