Scotsman Wore Spurs (29 page)

Honor suddenly barked and ran in a wide circle, then stood at attention, listening. He barked again, then started running to the left.

“Honor!”

The dog paused for a second, then dashed away.

Gabrielle cried out again. She couldn't lose him. Drew had placed him in her care. Terrified, she clung to the saddle horn and urged Billy into a gallop across the rough prairie after the dog, whose black and white tail fluttered like a flag in the tall grass. She prayed, incredulous when she realized that she wasn't bouncing as badly as before.

She nearly overran the dog, who was now sniffing something on the ground. She dismounted. A tiny whimper came from the grass. Gabrielle leaned down and saw Honor busily licking what seemed to be a wriggling blanket.

She moved closer, and her foot hit something soft. A cry caught in her throat as she saw a buckskin-clad woman lying still, a red stain darkening her clothing. Gabrielle leaned down and touched her. She was cold.

Gabrielle swallowed hard. The woman's black hair was shoulder length and in braids, her body slim to the point of being skeletal. The blanket beside her squirmed again, and Gabrielle leaned down to examine it. A child, surely not more than several months old, was swaddled in the wrap, a weak mewling escaping its lips.

A quick inspection showed the child to be a boy, and much too thin. But he seemed not to have any wounds.

The soldiers, she thought. The soldiers and their glorious victory. This woman must have escaped with her child, only to die from loss of blood.

Honor whined and tried to lick the child again.

Gabrielle's tender heart nearly broke at the orphan child's plight. An Indian baby. Few would want him even if he did live.

She picked up the child and crooned to it as Honor stood by expectantly, eyes bright and hopeful, awaiting praise for his find.

She gave it. “Good dog,” she whispered with feeling. And for the first time, Honor wagged his tail in feverish excitement.

Why, Gabrielle wondered, had a woman taken a child on a raiding party? Or had she? Both were terribly thin. Perhaps they had been starving on a reservation.

She would never know. But then, she did know that she needed to get back to camp. Sammy's mother could provide nourishment for the hungry baby. And she would need help to give the dead woman a proper burial.

But if Gabrielle had thought it difficult to mount a horse with both hands, she found it nigh on to impossible with one arm holding a baby. She looked up at the sky for inspiration. Fire seemed to consume the heavens as the sun dropped below the horizon. Urgently, she returned to the boy's mother. Sadness tore at her, but she had to be practical. What had the woman used to carry the child all this way?

Reluctantly, she placed the child on the ground and examined his mother. Though her face was gaunt, she was young, her still staring eyes dark, almost black, her face aquiline. Gabrielle wondered whether she was of Spanish descent, from below the border, and adopted into an Indian tribe. She said a brief prayer over the woman and vowed to convince a few drovers to come and bury her. But she found no cradleboard, no sling.

Gabrielle swallowed hard, then reached to close the woman's eyes. Finally, she tore the blanket into strips, then fashioned a sling for the baby. She looped it around the saddle horn until she mounted, then placed it around her own neck so she could hold the child securely with one hand while trying to keep aboard Billy by clutching the reins with the other. Praying that Billy wouldn't choose this particular time to display his friskiness, she pressed her knees against the horse's sides.

As she started back to camp, the sky melted into a soft twilight blue.

“Bury an Injun?”

“Keep an Indian brat?”

“You must be loco.”

Gabrielle pressed the child protectively to her breast as Damien and the other drovers battered her with disapproval. It didn't help that several of them had been out searching for her when she hadn't returned.

“Nits make lice,” Damien added balefully, echoing a sentiment she'd heard before.

In the East, where most of her life had been spent, people shared a fascination for the “noble savage.” But she'd been in Texas long enough to hear accounts of Indian atrocities. From campfire talk she also knew that many of the drovers had lost someone to Indian raids and that Texans—all Texans—seemed to hate Indians with unbridled passion.

But she'd never supposed that hatred would include a helpless infant or his dead mother. Even the adoring Hank had remained silent when she'd asked for someone to go out onto the prairie to bury the woman.

“Where is she?”

The Scotsman's low, melodic voice broke through the silence. Her own heart thumped at the soft sound that nonetheless dominated the clearing. She hadn't even noticed him ride in and join the group at its fringes, so intent had she been on protecting the baby in her arms.

As one man, the drovers surrounding her turned to stare at Drew Cameron.

He took a few steps closer, and Gabrielle felt the force of his personality as the other men stood back.

“Kirby won't like it,” Damien said. “He's got no more use for redskins than any of us have.”

“Kirby isn't here,” Drew pointed out.

“He's checking the watches,” Damien said. “But I'm next in command, and I say you stay here. We can't risk losing another man.”

Drew ignored him and looked back to Gabrielle. “Where is she?”

Gabrielle thought he could probably hear her heart pound with gratitude that
someone
understood why she couldn't let the mother of this child remain prey to every scavenger on the plains.

“Honor can take you,” she said. “He found them.”

“Cameron!” Damien's voice was a warning.

Drew raised an insolent eyebrow, almost daring Damien to interfere.

“There could be other redskins who escaped the soldiers,” Hank ventured.

He cast a quick look at Gabrielle, then lowered his eyes to the ground.

Legs shrugged. “Hell, I'll go with you.”

Gabrielle remembered that he was half-Indian himself. She wondered how he stood all the disparaging remarks about at least part of his heritage. She caught his eye, and he shrugged, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

“We don't want that kid here,” Damien said, retreating from one lost position.

“You want to shoot him, Damien?” Drew asked. “All by yourself?”

Gabrielle clung to the bundle.

“I didn't say that,” Damien said.

“Then what are you proposing to do with the wee bairn?” Drew asked, and Gabrielle didn't think anyone missed the threat wrapped in his velvet tone.

“She should have left it there, with its mother,” Damien blustered, looking to the others, but suddenly the men were looking away. Down at the ground. Up at the sky.

“Damn it,” Damien said, staring hard at each one of them.

Gabrielle gave Drew a tremulous smile, moved by that deep streak of decency he kept trying to deny.

A wistful ache settled in her heart. He was so close, yet so far away. His eyes studied her, gentling at the sight of the baby, but he was still withholding that part of him he'd given so briefly one summer afternoon.

Legs snorted. “If'n we're goin', we'd better be on our way,” he said. “Due west, you say?” he asked her.

Gabrielle nodded, her eyes still on the tall Scotsman. “Thank you. Thank you both.”

Drew shrugged. “Got some shovels?”

“In my wagon,” she said breathlessly as she stared at his golden eyes, a huge lump blocking her throat. Only the wriggling child in her arms forced her back to reality.

Drew's eyes followed hers to the bundle. “What are you going to do with him?”

“How did you know it was a him?”

His mouth turned up in that grin she'd missed. “He doesn't chatter.”

Indignation mixed with cautious hope at his teasing. “All females don't chatter,” she retorted. “
I
certainly don't.”

Legs grunted impatiently. “I'll go saddle the horses,” he said. “You'd best get the shovels, Scotty. Sometime before dawn,” he added dryly before starting toward the remuda.

Drew fell in next to Gabrielle as she headed for the wagon. “What
are
you going to do with the baby?”

“Feed him.”

“With what?”

“Sammy's mother,” she replied.

“Have you ever milked a half-wild longhorn?”

“No.”

“Ever milked
anything
?”

She hesitated, saw the tightening of his jaw, then admitted sheepishly, “No.”

“Don't start now,” he warned. “Get one of the men to do it. Most of them come from farms.”

“But they—”

“Just smile at them,” he said. “Hank's your best bet. He has the worst case of puppy love I've ever seen.”

“But—”

“And don't worry about the bairn. None of them will hurt the wee one.”

“Because of you,” she said.

“Nay. They were just talking. Most of them have reason to hate Indians, but none would hurt a bairn.”

She loved the way he said
bairn
, the way the sound rolled lazily off his tongue.

They reached the wagon, and she hesitated, then held out the baby for him to hold. Drew took him readily, his arms holding the child with ease, his mouth curving into a smile as he looked down at the tiny bundle without a trace of embarrassment or awkwardness. She watched a moment, transfixed by the image, then climbed into the wagon to find two shovels and the scrap of cloth she had taken from the Indian woman's dress.

When she emerged with them, Drew gave her a sad, world-weary gaze. “He'll have a hard life, no matter what you do.”

“He'll not,” she said fiercely. “I'll make sure of it.”

“And how will you be doing that, lass?”

“I'll raise him,” she said, realizing at that moment that she meant it.

“'Tis not like a calf you can give back to its mother,” he warned.

Gabrielle looked into his eyes, but knew there was no use protesting. He was as sure of her fickleness as he was of his own name. She would simply have to prove him wrong. Somehow. Some way.

Legs rode up, leading another saddled horse. He looked at the baby in Drew's arms, then at Gabrielle, then shook his head as if at two crazy folk. “You ready, Scotty?”

“Aye,” Drew replied. He looked back to Gabrielle. “You said the dog could lead us?”

Gabrielle reached down and petted Honor, then held out the piece of fabric for him to sniff it. “Go find her, boy,” she said.

The dog wagged his tail as if in understanding, then started out in an easy lope toward the west.

Drew smiled as he handed the baby back to Gabrielle. Their hands touched for a moment, but he jerked his away as if scorched. He took the two shovels and handed them to Legs, then mounted the second horse without stirrups, his body seeming to soar into the saddle in one graceful movement.

“Don't try to milk that cow,” he warned Gabrielle again. “Swear it.”

He knew her too well. She wished she knew him as well.

She nodded.

“Not good enough, lass. I want your word on it,” he persisted.

“I will not try to milk the cow,” she replied obediently.

His eyes, still filled with doubt, pierced her one last time before he and Legs rode off into the night.

Chapter Sixteen

Drew kept pace with Legs, both of them holding their mounts to an easy canter as they followed the dog, loping ahead of them.

It was a bloody smart dog, Drew mused. Gabrielle had unquestionably been right when she'd surmised that Honor had been a working dog. Drew had seen similar dogs in Scotland, herding sheep and cattle with astounding efficiency.

Drew tried his damnedest to keep his mind on the job ahead and not on the woman he'd left behind. Gabrielle might be a liar, but he couldn't doubt her tender heart—at least, when it came to four-legged creatures and infants. Still, he was suspicious of how long her commitment to the bairn would last. He had witnessed her determination, but taking in a child was far different from giving refuge to a calf or a horse or a dog.

The latter commitment was temporary. The former was for life.

His own mother had proved that. He had vague memories of receiving affection as a very young child. But later his mother had lost herself in wine and laudanum and had fled when her husband vented his wrath on her son. He'd been eighteen before he'd learned why. And while part of him had pitied his mother; the other, the wounded self, had despised her for not leaving the husband who had hated and abused them both.

By then, his childlike trust had been broken forever, and he'd never regained it. He doubted now whether he ever would—or indeed would want to. And his experience with Gabrielle made him think he'd be insane even to try.

Her trickery and deceit had proved to him once again that others were not to be trusted. Oh, he found much about her to admire, but that merely served to make him even more wary of her. His regard for her was a weakness he couldn't afford. She had already ripped open his protective armor, the aura of indifference and superficiality he'd presented to the world. He was frankly afraid of what she could do to him if he let her any closer. He didn't want to experience—wasn't entirely sure that he'd survive—that pain and bewilderment again, the devastation of abandonment by someone he thought loved him.

He glanced over at his companion.

Legs was smirking at him. “Thinking about Miss Gabrielle? Never would have expected such a pretty woman 'neath them filthy clothes.”

The dog increased his pace, forcing them to do the same, and eliminating the need for Drew to answer. Legs was right. She was a pretty woman. Too pretty. He hadn't missed all the male glances sent her way, nor the jealousy he felt when she returned a drover's smile.