“It was only a dance—and he’s half white.”
“You two were alone for days on the desert,” Judge said vehemently, abruptly. “And then youchoseto be with him again. I think you like his company, Candice.”
Candice was pale.
Judge stood. “I think some of those rumors are true. Are they?”
She got to her feet. “No—no.”
“We don’t have anything to say to each other.”
Candice trembled. “I thought we were friends—more than friends.”
Judge laughed bitterly. “So did I. Then you eloped with that gambler—and showed up back here with a breed. I thought you were a lady.”
It hurt. “Judge …”
“I think you had better leave,” Judge Reinhart said.
Candice looked at him, feeling a burn starting. “It’s not right or fair for you to condemn me for something you know nothing about.”
Judge stepped to the doorway.
Candice sucked in her breath and managed to exit with her head held high. But once outside, she stumbled from the house, devastated. He had called her a loose woman without saying the word his daughter had used:whore. God—she and Savage had only danced! No—they had done more, much more, and maybe he was right—maybe she was no lady, not in truth. It was a terrible, horrible, wrenching realization, and she was barely aware of the rolling scenery as she and Pedro left the ranch. But about an hour out from Judge’s, they both noticed a dark, ominous cloud rising out of the south, from behind them. “Rain,” Pedro said.
Candice was about to agree, but suddenly her heart constricted, “No,” she said, grabbing Pedro’s arm. “It’s smoke.”
She could feel the cowboy tense beside her. The rising cloud was so obviously smoke that they thought they could smell burning wood and brush. “That must be the V Bar,” Candice said, hearing the worry in her voice. The fire had to be huge—to be seen from so far away.
“Do not worry, señora,” Pedro said, but there was no assurance in his tone. “Fire—may be all right, this time of the year, no?”
Candice knew he was trying to tell her that a brushfire could happen for any reason at all. She didn’t speak the one word she was trying not to think: Apache.
But after another fifteen or twenty minutes passed without incident, both she and Pedro began to breathe freely again, as the smoke was left almost directly behind them. Candice pulled off her bonnet to redo her hair. Unruly tresses had been teasing the back of her neck, sticking damply. She pulled out a pin and stabbed it back in. Suddenly Pedro gave a scream, slumping over the side of the wagon.
Candice grabbed the reins, about to pull up the team, when the arrow sticking out of the middle of his back registered. She slapped the reins, screaming at the team, urging them into a gallop. Suddenly she heard hoofbeats, dozens of them pounding from behind, getting closer, and frantically, her heart thudding in her throat, she looked over her shoulder. Ten or fifteen Apache were closing in from both sides, red and white warpaint streaking their faces, feathers poking out of their unbound hair. It took just a glance to see they were carrying not only rifles and bows but clubs and lances. A war party! Candice slapped the reins harder, crying out to the horses, fear overwhelming her, taking away all thoughts, her only desire being to escape.
Sweat poured down her face and blinded her. The terrain rose and fell in front of her maddeningly. The Apaches had let loose with their wild, strange war cries, and they echoed sickeningly around her. A rider drew abreast of her, grinning. Candice screamed at the team. The rider was moving past. Another warrior was in his wake. Candice whipped her horses. The first Apache was leaping onto the back of one of the team and already slowing it. The second warrior was at her knee, and then he was in the buckboard, shoving her aside, grabbing the reins. Candice fell on top of Pedro as the team began to slow down. She threw herself off the wagon.
She rolled and rolled, her skirts twisting around her legs. Gasping, she stumbled to her feet, running blindly. A whoop sounded in her ear. Just as the horse drew alongside her, she screamed. The Indian swept her up into his embrace at a gallop, as if she were a sack of flour.
His body was hard and sweat-streaked, and his torso was greased. He smelled like horse, buckskin, bear fat, and sweat. She struggled in vain, but his grip was iron. He let out a wild, triumphant cry, trotting his pony into a circle of curious, painted faces. Candice closed her eyes and prayed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The news spread like wildfire.
Tucson was in an uproar. The Henderson ranch had been attacked by an Apache war party, half of it burned to the ground, two men killed and one captured. And—Candice Carter was missing.
Jack was drinking whiskey in the one-room saloon when he heard the first, and he knew that Shozkay had retaliated—obviously tracking the man he had marked to Henderson’s. Then he heard the second bit of information and his guts froze up inside. “What do you mean,” he demanded of the Mexican sitting at the other table sharing the news with two friends, “Candice Carter is missing?”
The man looked at him and then turned his back, dismissing him.
Jack was on his feet and flinging him against the wall, his hands on the man’s throat. “I asked you a question,amigo. What do you mean—Candice Carter is missing?”
Frantically the man told the story. Candice had gone to visit Judge Reinhart in a buckboard with one of the High C hands. That was yesterday. They hadn’t returned, and the Carters had found the wagon, Pedro dead, Candice gone. They had clearly run into the war party that had attacked the Hendersons, and the Carters were now out scouring the countryside, looking for Candice.
Jack felt his insides cramp.
