The boy started to argue, but Carly pressed a finger to his lips and shook her head. “Where is your shirt?”
“Those men tore it off.” He scowled. “It was a very fine shirt.”
Carly almost smiled. “Well, this certainly won’t be the first time you’ve gone without one. Don Ramon will see you get another once you get home.”
“He sent me with some of your things, but I think he only wanted me to know that you were not angry with me.”
Carly reached over and took his hand. “Is that what you thought? That I was angry with you?”
He nodded. “Because of what happened in the village… what I did to the white man.”
It was all she could do not to clamp a hand over his mouth. Good Lord, if her uncle knew he had killed one of the men who had slaughtered his people, the boy wouldn’t live another day.
“You did what you had to. I’m only just beginning to understand how difficult life out here really is.” She forced herself to smile. “Now, tell me where the things are you have brought me so that I can go and get them.”
He started to rise, but she gently pushed him back down. “I’ll get them. You just stay here.”
“I am all right now, senora. I will get your things.”
She wanted to argue, but he was young and strong and she didn’t want to insult him. Standing in the doorway, she waited while he fetched the bundle Ramon had sent, along with the swaybacked horse he had ridden to the ranch.
“I want you to wait for me here,” Carly told him. “I’m going to go in and change, then we’ll ride back to Las Almas together… at least part of the way.”
He merely nodded. A few minutes later, she returned in her rust-colored riding habit, led him out to the barn, and ordered one of the men to saddle her a horse. They spoke little on the ride back to the rancho. She knew his back must be hurting from the stiff way he sat in the saddle, and because the welt on her own back still stung.
At the top of the ridge leading into the valley where the hacienda stood, she drew rein on her small sorrel horse.
“Tell Don Ramon what happened at del Robles. Show him your back and he’ll see it’s properly tended. Tell him… tell him I said I was sorry for the way my uncle and his men behaved.”
Two Hawks nodded. “I will tell him. I will also tell him he is not the only one who is no longer happy.”
“No! Two Hawks, you can’t—” but already the boy had whirled his horse and begun to gallop away. Carly dragged in a breath, surprised to find her hands were shaking and tears burned the back of her eyes. What did it matter if Ramon knew how she felt?
He hadn’t cared about her feelings when he believed her guilty of lying with his cousin, when he’d accused her of being a whore. Still her pride stung to think of it almost as much as the thin line of fire that burned down her back.
Turning the sorrel horse back toward Rancho del Robles, Carly vowed anew to forget Ramon, to put that episode of her life behind her. But living with her uncle didn’t seem to be theanswer either. Not when each day proved even more clearly how ruthless Fletcher Austin really was.
And with each passing day, she had begun to suspect more strongly that somehow her uncle truly had stolen the de la Guerra lands.
***
Ramon brought the axe down hard, splitting the two-foot length of oak neatly down the center. He tossed it into the growing pile and mopped the sweat from his brow with the back of a hand.
Three days had passed since Two Hawks’s return with his back on fire and his incredible tale of the stolen chicken—and the fact that Caralee had taken a stinging blow herself in order to protect him. She had faced her uncle’s wrath and braved the tempers of the men.
“Wah-suh-wi is very brave,” the boy said. “You will not find another wife as brave as your Sunflower.”
Just thinking about it made his mouth go dry. He wanted to wrap his hands around Fletcher Austin’s thick neck and squeeze till the life slipped out of him. He hated to think what might have happened to the boy if Carly hadn’t stood up to him. He didn’t doubt the boy’s story or his wife’s courage. But in the weeks since he had lost Caralee, he had begun to doubt something else.
Ramon brought the axe down hard, his naked torso straining, his sweat-slick muscles rippling with the effort. He needed the exertion, needed to relieve the tension that had gripped his body since Two Hawks’s return from del Robles.
He couldn’t allow the anger he felt at Fletcher Austin to govern his next moves. Nor succumb to the soft ache the boy’s words stirred in his heart for Caralee.
What if you are wrong?He had never allowed himself to think it. Not for a single solitary moment. He couldn’t afford the chance that he might forgive her.
If he did and she duped him again, he wasn’t sure he could survive it.
That was how much he loved her—so much he ached with it every time he took a breath. How had she done it? How had she stolen his heart so completely?Por Dios,he had fought it every inch of the way, and still she had become the most important thing in his world.
