The Loner (11 page)

Still, he stayed just as he was. Her thigh felt slim and succulent in his hand. So warm and sweet he couldn't bring himself to move at all. Cathleen didn't move, either.

The shape of her against him felt even better than he had remembered. She fit him as if she were meant to be exactly where she was at this instant.

Her skin smelled of her special chamomile soap and her hair smelled like a faraway, peaceful meadow full of clover—underneath its fresh scent of gunpowder, which filled his senses with the sharp memory of that other time, the time when she'd lain across his bed while he washed her hair. And kissed her.

Her bottom was sitting right against him, the side of her high, rounded breast rested against the
inside of his arm. His loins stirred. He could not let her go.

For a minute longer, headed into the falling dusk, she let herself be molded to him. Firm, warm flesh and delicate bones resting against his, fragrant hair tickling his nose, the curve of a flower-tinted cheek to tantalize his eye.

Suddenly she seemed to wake to the fact that they were traveling much slower. She stiffened and began to struggle again.

“That wasn't fair, what you did,” she said, jerking at his wrist to pull his hand off her thigh. “I've waited more than a year to call Glass out.”

“Be still,” he growled. “You'd better just be glad it's me that's got you.”

“Oh, sure,” she said sarcastically, leaning away so she could turn and glare at him with those huge green eyes of hers. “Since
you're
the only one who's trying to hang me.”

The truth of it hit him like a slap in the face. It made him sick to his stomach. What, on the face of Mother Earth, was the matter with him that he could forget?

He hadn't saved her. He had arrested her. Again.

He wasn't her lover, as he had pretended to Willie. He was her captor.

His life was dedicated to upholding the rule of law. She was an outlaw.

A
woman
outlaw who was playing hell with his
mind as well as his body. He had better get a handle on this situation and get this girl to Fort Smith before he completely forgot who he was.

 

The trembling that had seized Cathleen and turned her insides to jelly at the first glimpse of Tassel Glass was still with her. It wouldn't stop, not even now that Black Fox held her in his arms.

But yet…no, this was different. The scare she'd had wouldn't quite leave her, true, but this new weakness in her limbs came because of Black Fox's muscled arms around her waist making her feel as if she wore no clothes.

He clamped her against him as if he meant to never let her go and she couldn't sit up straight and away from him. She was trying, but not even the thought of hanging could make her do it.

She didn't have enough room between him and the saddle horn, for one thing.

For another, she didn't have the energy. Now that it was over, she could feel that confronting Tassel Glass had taken all the starch from her bones.

She had called him out but she hadn't finished the job. Because of Black Fox, she would never know whether she would've had the power to hold her gun steady enough to kill him.

The thought sent anger shooting through her, rousing her blood again. But she couldn't even lift her head. She let it sink against Black Fox's big
chest, managing to turn to speak so he'd be sure to hear.

“Damn it, Black Fox,” she said. “Now I'll have it all to do over again.”

He knew instantly what she was talking about.

“No,” he said, “I'll do it. I promise you that I'll bring him to justice.”

“Which is no promise at all,” she said bitterly. “There's no such thing.”

“There is,” he said. “It's not perfect, but it's there.”

“Hah.”

He didn't argue with her. He seemed to sense the sudden deep weariness that had taken her just now—maybe he could feel it through her clothes, just as she could feel the strength of the muscles in his arm.

Her whole body sagged against him and she had no way to stop it. His arms felt right and warm to her; she felt safe with him holding her inside the circle they made.

What in the world was the matter with her? With Black Fox Vann she was anything but safe.

Yet, stupidly, she wanted to feel his big, hard hand on her thigh again. She wanted to feel it stroking over her skin, with its calluses and its marvelous, restrained power that she well remembered from the time he washed her hair.

Damn it all, she wanted him to kiss her. Her bones had turned to jelly and she was scared and
she wanted to forget everything and be carried off into that hot, sweet world of his mouth.

“The law is the only way,” he said, speaking low and in no hurry at all, as if talking to himself and thinking about what he was saying as he went along. “Anything else and we'd have nothing but turmoil. Just like today—you didn't have a chance of taking Glass. And if he'd killed you, it'd have made people even more afraid of standing up to him.”

That put the fire back into her. She sat up straight and looked at him.

“Don't say that. You
can't
say that. Don't tell me I can't do it, because I have to, and I will.”

“Then you'd better wear two guns and look up at the roof once in a while,” he drawled.

He brought the horses down to a trot and headed them off into the woods, following a faint trail.

“I will,” she said, with a stoutness she didn't quite feel.

The trembling got worse again.

“But first,” he said, with a new, hard edge coming into his voice, “you'll have to get away from me, Cathleen.”

She wouldn't let him know how shaky she was on the inside.

“I'll get it done,” she said, imitating that sharpness of his tone.

“You'll play hell if you do,” he said, stung as if
she were being disloyal somehow. As if he hadn't been the one to bring up the subject.

“Why not?” she retorted. “After all, some say I run with the devil.”

He chuckled.

“You're not quite that tough, I'm thinking.”

“Ask Hudson Becker. He called me a little son of Satan.”

Black Fox actually laughed. It was a beautiful, low sound that wrapped them together all of a sudden.

Somehow it drew her back closer to him instead of her sitting up so straight holding onto the saddle horn.

“It takes one to know one,” he said. “Hudson Becker himself is the devil's spawn.”

“I didn't stop to tell him that,” she said, “but I have to agree with you.”

All of a sudden, he fell quiet.

After a little way, he spoke again. Harshly this time.

“What were you doing palavering with that lowdown piece of pond scum, anyhow?”

It just hit her wrong—that possessive, protective inflection in his voice when, not five minutes ago, he'd been telling her she couldn't get away from him. That she was his prisoner.

It also hit her wrong that she liked this business of being in his arms. Of sitting in his lap. She liked it far too much. Her body was trying to betray her.

She had to be thinking of escaping—just one more time—not of what he smelled of, which was cedar and pine and horse and leather. And sweat. A man's good sweat that carried the scent of his skin. The scent of Black Fox.

When she took a deep breath and drew in a long draught of that fragrance, it set up a new kind of quivering inside her. Something that was a whole different thing entirely.

Something that she didn't recognize but she knew, anyway, was an elemental part of living that was as old as time. A part of living that had to do only with a man and a woman.

And, in a way that she could not have said, she knew that Black Fox was feeling it, too.

That
was what she had to be scared of, not some old bag of trash like Tassel Glass.

“Oh,” she said airily, “Hudson and I visit from time to time. We outlaws have to hang together, you know.”

Black Fox snorted rudely and neck-reined his horse off the trail.

“Apt choice of words,” he said.

The image those words raised in his mind infuriated him. The fact that his arms instinctively tightened around her infuriated him even more.

Damn it. Why did you have to shoot those two men? Did you shoot them, Cathleen?

“You can stop now and let me get on my own horse,” she said.

“Not a chance,” he snapped. “You outlaws have to take your punishment. Once I get you to Fort Smith, I'll come back for your buddy Hudson to keep you company.”

That made her mad.

“Don't plan too far ahead,” she said. “You haven't got
me
there yet.”

Then she snapped her mouth closed as if she'd said too much and didn't say another word until he rode out of the woods and into the long, sweet valley tucked away between the hills his people called the Quannessee, after a Cherokee town that had once been important and much beloved back in the Old Nation in the east. This was a valley with only one way in and one way out.

He rode to the place where he had camped the last time he was riding this way and found the circle of rocks he'd used for his fire still there on the bank of the creek.

“Whoa,” he said softly, and stopped the horses beside it.

He tried not to think about the empty feeling in his arms when he lifted Cathleen down to the ground.

“You can rest now,” he said. “It's a steep-sided valley, so don't try to run. You'll only wear yourself out.”

The words were a waste of breath. She was clearly too tired to try anything.

He tried not to think about where they were go
ing or why as he spread her bedroll for her and, while she was gone into the bushes to wash up, built the fire and made the coffee and heated the biscuits and ham he'd brought from the hotel kitchen.

The efforts were a waste of energy. He didn't feel like eating and, as for Cathleen, she came back, stretched out to wait for the food and fell into a hard sleep.

When he had taken care of the horses and banked the fire and spread his bedroll beside hers, he tied her ankle to his. Tired out or not, she had fooled him before and he probably wouldn't be so lucky as to catch her a third time.

As soon as his head hit his saddle, she reached for him. She took his arm and hugged it to her, curled her little body around it, and threw one fine, slender leg over his.

C
at woke with the sun shining on her face. That was a rare thing, because she never slept past sunrise. She never had—except a week ago when she was at Black Fox's house and so weak from loss of blood. On the family farm, every scrap of daylight had to be used for working and surviving. Then when she went on the run, every daylight minute had to be used for scouting and surviving.

For that first, delicious moment when her mind was coming back up from unconsciousness, she luxuriated in the warmth of the day. It went all the way through her skin and bones into her heart and brought the satisfaction of being well rested
to every muscle in her body. Inexplicably, she felt lazy and safe and she even took her own sweet time to open her eyes.

Even after she did, though, it was the strangest thing. She lay right there and looked at Black Fox Vann grooming Little Dun and the coziness stayed with her.

Until she recalled the reason why he was there. Why
she
was
here
, sleeping in his camp instead of in one of her own secure, hidden places. Dear Lord, she was a prisoner on her way to being hanged!

She threw her arm over her eyes and fought the panic. Her comfort vanished and her brain started frantically working.

Worse, she had tried and failed to kill Tassel Glass. Black Fox had caught her at exactly the wrong time and place just as surely as he'd caught her at the right time and place the first time. It had to be right, since he'd saved her from bleeding to death.

But now she was a prisoner again and what was she going to do? Hot despair washed through her. She tried to fight it off. She would not give up, not after the rough living she'd done for the past year. That would not,
could
not, all go for naught.

She bolted upright, shading her eyes and squinting at Black Fox through the bright light. He appeared to be combing Dunny's tail. Still combing Dunny's
black
tail?

“Hey,” she yelled, scrambling out of the bedroll, “what are you doing to my horse?”

He barely glanced up as she ran toward him in her sock feet. She stepped on a rock, hopped a little way, and then plunged on. Black Fox dipped his rag into the jar—it looked like stove blacking—and rubbed some more into the pale yellow tail.

“You're making her tail
black?
” she cried despairingly. “
Why?
”

Right then she noticed the dun's mane, now almost all ink-dark against the shining gold of her neck.

Black Fox rubbed the blackening into poor Dunny's last few strands of hair that were still flaxen-colored.

“Disguising her,” he said.

“What are you
talking
about?”

“At a distance, she'll easily be taken for a buckskin,” Black Fox said. “You'll be a girl. Maybe at the sight of you, people won't immediately think about the boy called The Cat on the fast little yellow dun horse.”

Some giant hand just reached in and scooped out Cathleen's insides. It was like she was losing her horse and herself and her whole reason for being, all faster than she could wipe the sleep from her eyes.

“You're afraid we're so well thought of that one of our admirers might try to rescue us from you?”

“That's it,” he said, and went right on with his work.

She narrowed her eyes.

“You're the one who'll be needing rescue,” she said, from between clenched teeth. “You've got a lot of gall to take such liberties with my horse.”

“It's my job to get you to jail as fast as I can,” he said.

“Wouldn't it be faster to hit the trail at sunup instead of burning daylight
trying
to disguise my horse?” she said sarcastically. “Everybody in Sequoyah already knows I'm a girl and as soon as you rode up dragging my horse behind you and snatched me into custody, anybody who didn't already know it, like Willie did, figured out that I'm The Cat.”

He made no reply but to keep on with his work.

“They know,” she insisted, “because The Cat has picked on Tassel Glass from the beginning and now everybody knows why.”

Black Fox shrugged. “Most of them don't travel much,” he said. “We may be able to stay ahead of the word as it travels.”

Fury and fear stirred in her empty stomach. And loneliness. This morning, Black Fox seemed like a rank stranger.

“
I'll
tell somebody as soon as I get the chance,” she said. “It's
my
job not to go to jail at all.”

The threat didn't so much as make him look up.

“Well, for now, you'd better eat your breakfast,” he said. “Here pretty quick, we're going to ride.”

 

Ride they did, and fast, for the rest of the morning, traveling right out in the open on the road that led to Muldrow and PawPaw. Then it would carry them across the border, out of the Cherokee Nation, out of the Indian Territories, and take them into Fort Smith.

Black Fox spent his energies keeping his horse close enough to Little Dun to prevent any possible break for freedom and his emotions as far from Cathleen as he possibly could. He had to stop thinking about her, therefore, he had to stop those infernal conversations with her.

He had come to that conclusion sometime just before daylight, after he'd thought about her all night long, especially while she clung to him in her sleep. He stuck to it, speaking with her only as much as was necessary.

Until she provoked him, as only she could do.

“If you don't want to look at me or talk to me now that I'm on my way to jail, that's fine,” she said tartly. “But you don't have to kill the horses. Slow down.”

Anger stung him. She was right. He
had
been pushing them too hard.

And he
was
trying to pull back so it wouldn't be
so difficult to leave her behind bars. Did she know that? Or did she think he hated her because she was an outlaw?

He didn't want her to think that but he didn't want to talk about it, either.

He let the Ghost drop back into a slow trot. The dun horse followed suit.

“Dunny's famous across the whole countryside as a fast one,” he said. “I don't know what you're fussing about.”

“Yeah,” she said sarcastically, “but now that she's carrying all this stove-blacking in her hair, she tires out sooner.”

“Trying to delay in order to stay around this part of the country as long as possible isn't going to help you, Cat,” he said. “No matter who steps in or what happens, I've got to take you to Fort Smith.”

“To have me hanged for no reason,” she said bitterly. “I did
not
kill Donald Turner.”

“Of course you didn't,” he snapped, in a sarcastic tone. “And I'm sure you say the same about John Bushyhead.”

Her head jerked around and she stared at him in an innocent-seeming manner.

“Who is he?”

“A bootlegger up in the Flint District,” he said. “Don't try to tell me you didn't know that.”

“I do the best I can,” she said dryly, “but I
haven't made the acquaintance of every whiskey dealer in the Nation.”

She sounded honest. He had a practiced ear. He'd questioned many a culprit and usually he could tell when a person was lying.

“Bushyhead was shot a couple of days ago,” Black Fox said, searching her eyes for the truth, “in an ambush signed by the mark of The Cat.”

“I was not there,” she said, her tone so sincere that the old hope tried to come to life in him again.

“From what I heard,” he said, “his was an identical murder to Turner's.”

“Good,” she said. “That'll prove I didn't do it.”

“Some people would argue that it proves you
did
do it,” he said wryly, “since your mark was there both times.”

She held his gaze as they rode slowly along, staring straight into his eyes with her steady green ones. Those eyes talked to him without words. They willed him to look into her heart and believe her.

“If my horse is famous, my mark is famous,” she said. “Everyone knows it and anybody can use it.”

“In the last few days, that mark was also found on the porch posts of two other bootleggers between Stilwell and Sequoyah,” he said. “Both were missing large sums of money.”

“Leander Rabbit and Tophat Martin,” she said, nodding assent. “I robbed them both.”

“Word also reached Sequoyah town that several families up in the Flint District these last three or four days woke up to blankets and money and food on their doorsteps,” he said. “Under the paw print of The Cat drawn with charred wood.”

Cathleen didn't break the look between them. She nodded.

“I made those marks,” she said, blushing a little as if being caught doing the good deeds embarrassed her.

Then she shrugged.

“If only I'd thought of it, I could've used stove blacking,” she said.

But she didn't smile and neither did he.

“I can't prove I'm innocent of those killings, Black Fox,” she said.

The sound of his name in her sweetly husky voice thrilled him like a caress on his skin. He was losing his mind. This girl was an outlaw and a killer.

But he certainly could understand why, considering the things she'd said to Tassel Glass.

“Unless you give me a chance to find out who
did
do them,” she said.

Then she looked at him so hopefully he could hardly stand to meet her gaze.

“You wouldn't know how to begin,” he said.

He couldn't let himself think about that; it was foolish. Her mark had been there both times.

She hated whiskey dealers. She had reason to shoot lawmen. Maybe Donald Turner had been trying to arrest her.

He had to change the subject, had to let these horses blow and then set them loping again so she couldn't talk to him.

But there was one thing he had to know.

“It's my guess that Willie rode into Sequoyah just to back you yesterday,” he said. “How did he know where you were and what you were doing?”

He was happy to hear the professional tone in his voice. It held no trace of the strange jealousy he'd felt when Willie appeared.

“He hunted me down in the woods to warn me you were waiting for me in town. He figured out for himself that I was on my way to call Tassel out.” She looked at him straight. “I asked him to go on ahead and get you out of the way, but something must've delayed him.”

Black Fox felt a twisting in his gut.

“Great,” he muttered, “my own kin, conspiring against me.”

“That's because he's sweet on
me
,” she said, as if trying to comfort him.

His head twisted, too, and made him feel nearly dizzy. The whole world was upside down and sideways.

“And you're sweet on him?” he blurted.

Black Fox didn't even know where the question came from, much less how it popped out of his mouth.

“I feel obliged to him now,” she said. “He got shot for my sake.” She glanced at him defiantly. “Willie might show up to help me again.”

“He's a lovesick kid,” Black Fox snapped. “He could've got himself killed and you, too.”

“What he got was a flesh wound,” she said. “The man on the roof shot him in the arm—or else Tassel did. Whichever, it didn't look serious.”

Black Fox grunted.

“I wondered,” he said. “I didn't have time to look at him.”

“Who was that girl who was running to see about him?” she asked.

“How the hell should I know?” Black Fox said, anger getting into his voice in spite of all. “Maybe he's sweet on
her
, too.”

Cathleen flashed him a surprised look and he held it defiantly.

“So you never thought you might have a rival?” he asked.

He felt petty and childish as the question fell from his tongue but he couldn't seem to bite it back.

“No,” she said, with a chuckle in her voice, “but I hope it's true—for Willie's sake.”

“No need to laugh,” he said stiffly. “You're the one who brought the subject up. I don't know what difference it makes, anyhow.”

He didn't know what he meant or why he was even talking. He was losing his mind.

She held his gaze. Was that a twinkle in her eyes? Was she actually laughing at him?

Had he just made a fool of himself? He certainly felt like one.

The sound of approaching hoofbeats pounding toward them from behind made him turn in the saddle to look. Around the last bend in the road came two horsemen, riding fast, already guiding their mounts to the right to pass by.

Something about the big bay horse looked familiar. He knew that rider. Then he saw that he knew them both.

About the time he realized that, they recognized him, too, and started slowing.

“These won't be the ones to rescue you, Cathleen,” he said quickly. “They're deputies from Fort Smith.”

He looked away at his fellow lawmen again, his heart beating faster. Why, in the name of all good sense, had he said that?

Because he wanted to protect her from any other lawman knowing that she was an outlaw. It was that simple.

But
why
was he warning her? It shouldn't mat
ter to him if she told them she was The Cat. Telling them that wouldn't cause her to end up in Judge Parker's court any faster than she would anyhow.

Yet his heart was pounding like a war drum as they all stopped in the middle of the road. Both deputies looked at Cathleen with a great deal of interest.

The wild beating of Black Fox's heart slowed with dread. Had they come from Sequoyah? Had they heard about The Cat's identity? Would they see that her “buckskin” horse had a dyed mane and tail?

He should tell them who she was, but even as he had the thought, he knew he wouldn't. He'd wait until later to figure out
why
he wouldn't.