She forced herself to remain calm.
“Here’s a bird footprint,” Roman muttered, his eyes following the prints until they stopped at a patch of grass. “Sand,” he said, bending over the grass. “There’s sand stuck to this grass.” Rising, he looked out over the distance. “He went that way.”
“How do you—”
“If you start feeling the least bit bad, you have to tell me, Theodosia. Promise me you will, or I won’t make the first move to find your bird.”
She knew he’d keep his vow. “I promise.”
Satisfied, Roman took hold of the mustang’s bridle and began to walk, his gaze never lifting from the ground.
“What is it you see?” Theodosia held the wagon’s sides while watching Roman in action.
“There was a heavy dew last night. When John the Baptist walked through this grass this morning, he had sand on his feet, and it came off on the wet grass. We’re lucky that the grass grows in patches surrounded by sand. Every time your parrot left grass, he got into more sand, and then into more wet grass. The dew is dried now, but sand is still stuck to the grass. We have a trail to follow.”
Though fear for her parrot and pain from her head wound continued to plague her, Roman’s explanation amazed her. While living in Boston, she’d spent thousands of hours in the company of brilliant people, but she’d never once come across anyone who possessed the marvelous skills Roman demonstrated now.
She knew then that if it was at-all possible for someone to find John the Baptist, that someone was Roman Montana.
An hour later, he proved her right. Theodosia spotted John the Baptist. Although he resembled little more than a gray blob in the far distance, she knew it was he. His red tail feathers acted like a beacon.
The bird sat perched on the horn of a steer skeleton, calmly preening his feathers. “Roman, there he is! Oh, please, let’s go collect him before he meanders away again!”
Roman didn’t move. Something wasn’t right. He saw nothing alarming, but his every instinct warned that danger lurked just ahead. Still as steel, he watched and waited for evidence of the peril.
It came in the form of a man. Hidden in an oak thicket and blending in with his rustic surroundings, a Comanche warrior pointed a lance straight at John the Baptist.
Chapter Eleven
Roman reacted instantly and retrievedhis rifle from the sling on Secret’s saddle. In the next moment he fitted the weapon to his shoulder, narrowed his eyes, and sighted along the rifle barrel.
Theodosia watched him point the gun at John the Baptist. “Roman! Dear God, what are you doing?” Pulling herself to her knees, she tried to grab his shoulder.
She caught thin air and toppled out of the wagon.
Deaf to her horrified screams, Roman curled his finger around the trigger and fired just as the lance left the warrior’s hand.
Frightened into speechlessness by the sharp crack of gunfire, Theodosia raised her head from the ground and watched something long and slender fly out of the oak forest. She couldn’t determine what it was but knew only that it sped directly toward John the Baptist.
Before she could scream again, the sailing object came apart in the air, splintering into two pieces that fell harmlessly to the ground.
Roman lowered his rifle, and keeping his gaze directed straight at the warrior, he assisted Theodosia back into the wagon bed. “Why’d you throw yourself out of the buckboard?”
“I did not throw myself out, Roman. I fell out while trying to keep you from shooting John the Baptist. You—”
“I spent a whole damned hour following bits of sand to find him for you! Why would I have gone through all that and then killed him?” God, would he ever get used to her complete lack of common sense?
She nodded and swept her hair out of her eyes. “Yes. Yes, of course you’re right. You wouldn’t have shot John the Baptist, but I—I panicked, Roman. I wasn’t rationalizing. It all happened so quickly, and I couldn’t understand what you—” She looked into his eyes. “Whatwasthat thing you shot?”
Roman watched the Indian vanish into the woods, but the man’s disappearance in no way settled his apprehension. The warrior was without a mount, which was highly unusual for a Comanche brave. And from what Roman had been able to see, the warrior’s lance had been his sole weapon.
With no horse or arms, the warrior would surely attempt to get those necessities somehow.
Dammit! Roman raged. This morning he’d battled a pack of wolves, and he suspected that he would soon be forced to fight a Comanche warrior. “Roman?”
“I shot a Comanche lance. The warrior was going to kill John the Baptist, probably out of fear. I doubt seriously that he’d ever seen an African parrot before today, and Indians are—well, they’re suspicious of things they don’t recognize.”
“A Comanche warrior?” Theodosia scanned the entire area but saw no sign of the Indian. “How did you see him? Where—”
