The Enchantment (16 page)

His answer was a good-natured laugh.

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Emma almost laughed with him. She felt surprisingly good. She was doing something important. It wasn't much, perhaps. Not something difficult, like trading stocks or financing companies, but it was something she'd thought she couldn't do.

She glanced over at Larence, who was now fiddling with something that looked like a leather figure eight.

"How long until you want to eat?"

"I don't know. I've got to figure out how to hobble Diablo."

"Just put it on the ground. Diablo the wonder horse'll probably step into the thing and snap it with his teeth."

Larence's bright, clear laughter floated into the air. "A joke, Emmaline? How bold."

She bit back a chuckle just in time. "Heavens, no. Merely an observation."

A surprising sense of satisfaction filled Emma as she repacked the pots and pans in the stove's wooden box. The beans hadn't been good—sort of lukewarm and chewy on the surface, and crispy and burnt-tasting from the bottom of the pan—but even so, she felt pleased that she'd actually cooked.

True, warming canned beans didn't take a philosopher's intellect. But at least she'd done something on this trip that mattered.

Thunk. Behind her, something heavy hit the ground. Laughter followed the sound.

Clicking the locker shut, she pressed slowly to her feet and glanced across the campsite. Her good humor vanished. About six feet away from the fire, Larence was struggling to erect their tent.

No, she amended, struggling was too kind a description. It looked more like active warfare—and the tent was winning. Emma snatched up her skirt and headed his way. ' 'What are you doing?"

Larence and the tent collapsed in a heap. He grinned up at her. Bright white teeth flashed through the shadow-cloaked planes of his face. "I have no idea. But I know what I'm not doing, and that's putting up a tent."

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Emma thrust her hand at him, palm up. "Instructions."

He handed her a scrap of paper. She grabbed it out of his hand and squatted down by the fire to read.

The Montgomery & Ward Company's Protean tent is undeniably the best all around tent for camping purposes. Frowning, she skimmed down the page. Compact, roomy, easy to put up . . . only one pole required . . . fits easily in mule-pack panier . . . She looked up. "These aren't instructions." "Exactly."

A headache banged to life behind Emma's eyes. She pressed two fingers to her temples and sighed. It struck her suddenly how achingly, bone-searingly tired she was.

"I always wanted to sleep under the stars." "What?"Her head snapped up. "Oh, no, you don't. Pick up that pole and try again."

"Nope, I'm too tired to concentrate. Tomorrow night I'll start putting it up earlier. We'll be okay for tonight; the snakes won't—"

"Snakes?" She flung her pointed finger toward the heap of white canvas. "Get the damn tent up!"

"Nope. If you want it up so badly, you do it. I'm happy to sleep outside." He started to brush past her on his way to the fire. "It's just another bit of adventure."

"Adventure?" She grabbed his cotton sleeve and spun him around to face her. "It's an engraved invitation to bugs and snakes."

He frowned at that for a moment, then shrugged, as if the matter were of no import. "Too bad we don't have a hair rope." She eyed him suspiciously. "What's that?"

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"Snakes won't cross a strand of hair."

She gave a disbelieving snort. "Oh, that sounds reasonable."

He nodded. "It's true—I read it in Diamond Dick's Deadly Deeds."

Balling her fists in frustration, she stomped to the sleeping bags Larence had laid side by side next to the fire, and started removing the hairpins from the sagging Roman knot at the base of her neck. She cast a longing glance at the pile of canvas.

If only she could erect it herself. Unfortunately, building things was substantially below cooking on her list of skills.

"You'll like sleeping outside, Emmaline. Honestly. It'll be fun—just like the time Diamond Dick—"

"Shut up."

She had yanked a half dozen pins from her hair before she realized Larence was staring at her. Turning, she glared at him.

Larence immediately dropped to his sleeping bag and pulled off his boots. Beneath her watchful eyes, he burrowed into the bag, twisted onto his side, and stared at the little gray rocks that rimmed the fire.

Emma quickly unbuttoned her wool jacket and laid it on the rock at her feet. One by one the despised garments were stripped away. When the corset plopped into the dirt, she took her first comfortable breath of the day. It felt absolutely heavenly to be clad in nothing but drawers and chemise.

She closed her eyes, reveling in the feeling of freedom. The night breeze slid across her bare arms. Goose bumps tiptoed across her flesh.

She felt his gaze on her body like a tangible presence. Almost a touch. Slowly she turned her head. He was

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propped up on his elbows, his long legs buried in the sleeping bag. He looked . . . hypnotized by the sight of her in her underclothes.

Their eyes met, held. The warmth in his look sent a shiver skittering along her exposed skin. The cotton of her underclothes seemed somehow thinner, the night colder. "Turnaround."

When he did, she gritted her teeth and yanked a strand of hair out of her head. "Ouch." The word slipped out involuntarily. She cast a quick glance down at Larence to see if he'd heard.

He had. The amused look on his face made her feel like an idiot. "Turn around," she ordered again.

' 'Why are you pulling your hair out?"

"If you must know, I'm making a hair rope."

He had the nerve to laugh.

She yanked again. "Laugh all you want, Larence. But if a rattlesnake bites you, you'd better hope Diamond Dick is rounding up dogies in the area. Because I'm not sucking one drop of poison out of you."

"I'd do it for-"

"Turn around!"

Ignoring Larence's quiet chuckle as he settled into his sleeping bag, she carefully laid her strands of hair in a big circle around both bags. When she was finished, a weary sigh escaped her lips.

Lord, she was tired. Her whole body ached.

She sank to her knees on the bag's harsh, waterproofed duck exterior, and with a herculean effort, crawled inside its sheepskin-lined warmth.

As she stretched out, every bone in her body seemed to dissolve. Her eyelids became as heavy as boulders and slid shut. Oh, God, sleep . . .

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"Hey, Em," came Larence's quiet voice from beside her, "look at the stars."

"No way. Night, Larence."

She heard the unmistakable rustling of his sleeping bag as he sat up. "But it's our first night out; I thought—"

"Don't think. Sleep."

"But the legend of Cibola is so perfectly suited to—"

"Good night, Larence."

He thumped back to the ground, his breath expelling in a disappointed sigh. "Night, Emmaline."

Emma sighed with relief. Thank you, God. The last thing she wanted to hear was pointless babble about the city. It was either there or it wasn't—who cared about some boring old legend?

Within seconds, she was sound asleep, and dreaming of gold.

Larence burrowed into the woolly warmth of his sleeping bag and stared up at the wondrous display of stars. It was so immense, this desert sky. He felt as if he'd fallen upward, and instead of staring into the exquisite sky, he was now a part of it.

He wished he had someone with whom to share this moment. If only Emmaline were the kind of woman who would lie beside him in the darkening margin of the day and gaze up at the stars and feel what he felt. The aching, almost religious sense of awe. There was nothing he would love more than to be able to reach out right now, and take her hand.

Another dream, he realized with a self-deprecating smile. Emmaline wasn't that kind of woman.

He told himself it didn't matter. He'd spent a lifetime dreaming alone. He was used to it.

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Wind crept into the campsite, brushing across his exposed cheeks in soft, cool waves. In its wake, the fire snapped and crackled, the leaves overhead rustled one against the other. And threaded through it all like a heartbeat was the lap, lap, lap of the river against its sandy bank.

The sound was hypnotizing. Larence felt its rhythm pulling on his senses, lulling him into a state of pure relaxation. Still smiling, already dreaming, he fell asleep.

He came awake with a start. Nothingness curled around him, coal black and suffocatingly thick. Tension vibrated in the night air. He lay stiff as a nail in the warmth of his sleeping bag, listening.

There was no wind. Above his head, the leaves were motionless and silent. Even the steady licking of the river against its bank was muffled, almost undetectable.

He felt surrounded, watched. Fear pressed like an iron fist against his chest. His heart sped up, thudded loudly in his ears. He glanced wildly around, searching for some pinprick of light—anything—to banish the darkness. But there was nothing. The fire had long since died away. A dense, charcoal-colored cloud had obliterated the pearl-bright moon and killed the starlight.

It was so dark. So terrifyingly—

Stop it. He tried to banish his rising fear beneath an avalanche of calm, rational thoughts. He seized on the soft, regular cadence of Emmaline's breathing. The sound was like a lifeline in the darkness, and he clung to it with the strength of a drowning man.

If only he could touch her. As a child, when the nightmares had come, he'd always believed that if he could touch someone, could feel the warmth of human contact, the terrors would scurry back into the lightless

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holes from which they'd sprung. All he needed to fight them was the security that came from not being alone.

But he'd never had that touch, never been able to test his theory. Until now.

He sent his hand scouting across the sleeping bags for the woman who lay so quietly beside him.

"Era-maline?"

His voice floated in the darkness, a disembodied echo of sound that went unanswered. Memories clawed their way to the surface of his mind. They were old memories; old but not forgotten.

Would they ever be? he wondered with a building sense of panic.

Images battered at the closed door of his mind, slipping through the cracks and keyholes, drawing strength from his fear. He weakened, and in that split second a memory flashed through his thoughts with blinding force.

A small, brown-haired boy lay curled on his hard, solitary bed. His small fingers were fisted tightly enough to leave half-moon-shaped indentations in his sweaty palms. He was trying desperately not to cry—not for the parents he'd lost, not for the gnawing pain in his leg, not for the aching void in his soul where laughter used to live.

Granny, it's so dark. . . . But she hadn't listened to the words or the whimpers that slipped beneath the crack of his locked door.

Granny . . .

Quit sniveling, Larry, and go to sleep.

It was then, in those endless, pain-ridden nights, that he'd begun to dream of a great adventure. He'd created the dream and clung to it with shaking fingers until its seductive promise had eased the ache in his soul. Then

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and only then, with the dream insulating him from the reality, had he learned to sleep alone.

But he'd never really gotten over his fear of the dark. It was always there, ready to rip him from a peaceful slumber or keep him from closing his eyes. Always there, always waiting.

You've done it. You're in New Mexico. Nothing can hurt you. . . . Slowly he felt himself calming down.

One by one his fingers unfurled, his breathing slowed.

The cloud in front of the moon let loose its anchor and moved on. Pale blue moonlight spilled across the flat desert landscape, backlit the jet black stand of cotton woods.

He let out his breath in a long, tired sigh. The battle had been waged and won again. This time.

His eyes slid shut, and he concentrated on the steady in-and-out of his breathing until the fear receded.

He hadn't been able to touch Emmaline this time, but perhaps next time he would be luckier. Perhaps next time he would take her hand in his and find the courage to keep the darkness at bay.

The thought brought a sense of peace, and within moments, he was asleep again, dreaming of the countless Indian children who would one day learn of their ancestors' greatness.

Not far away, a campfire burned low. Shadows and light leapt like spirits from the flames, twisting and dancing across the somber faces of the three Indian men who huddled around its warmth.

The eldest, a stoop-shouldered, gray-haired old man with a hawklike nose and narrowed eyes, jabbed a pointy stick into the fire. Sparks spiraled up into the pitch-dark THE ENCHANTMENT

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sky and floated away. "Falls with a Laugh will not find what he seeks."

Ka-Neek lurched to his feet. "You cannot be sure of that," he said in the clicking language of the Zuni.

His moccasined feet wore an angry groove on the loose-packed soil as he paced back and forth in front of the fire.

"Sit," commanded the eldest in a time-graveled voice. "You make us dizzy."

Ka-Neek stopped pacing instantly. Striding back to the group, he bent on one knee before the old man, his father's father. "It is our job to protect. If there is even a chance . . ." He let his words hang, thick with warning, in the dark, spark-gilded air.

The old man didn't answer. His stick fell to the ground. He watched it land in a puff of dust, then picked up his pipe. Drawing deeply on the ancient buffalo-bone pipe that had been his father's, and his father's before that, he stared into the fire. After a moment, his drawn, age-creased lips parted almost imperceptibly. Smoke climbed up the shadowy planes of his face and drifted toward the fire. The gray haze formed myriad magical, mystical shapes as it rose into the night sky.