Apache Fire. Elizabeth Lane

in the desert, and he was as much at home here as the sharp-nosed coyotes that ranged along the lonely arroyos. But tonight he was no coyote. He was wounded prey, and in the danger of darkness even the wind’s familiar voice was an alien moan.

      With excruciating effort, he focused his eyes on the notched peak that was his beacon point. He could feel his life oozing through the makeshift bandage that covered the bullet wound in his shoulder. In the seven hours since the ambush, he had lost a dizzying amount of blood. If John Colby refused him shelter…

      But how could Colby refuse, when his very honor was at stake? Ten years ago, during the bloody Apache wars, Latigo had saved Colby’s life, and the rancher—more out of pride, to be sure, than gratitude—had vowed to repay him one day. Now it was time to call in the old debt.

      Under any other circumstances, Latigo would just as soon have let the matter go. He was a man who asked little of others, especially where whites were concerned. But now he had no choice. Not if he wanted to live.

      As he clung to the horse, he fueled his strength with his own anger at what had happened. Hours earlier, on the San Carlos Reservation, he had been guiding two U.S. government agents on an inspection tour. As their mounts passed through a narrow ravine, a hail of rifle fire had erupted from the rocks above and behind them. The two federal men had died at once, but the bullet meant for Latigo’s heart had struck a handbreadth too high and to the left. Reeling with shock, he had managed to spur his horse and gain some distance before the four attackers had time to mount up and come after him. He had barely glimpsed their faces, but he had seen enough to know they were not Apaches.

      Twisting painfully in the saddle, he peered into the darkness behind him. He had not sighted his pursuers since yesterday afternoon when he’d holed up in a rocky crevice to wait for nightfall. Surely he had lost them. Whites weren’t worth spit as trackers, and they’d had no scout along. Surely he could afford to roll into the brush and rest for the space of a few precious breaths.

      But he could not even think of stopping. The ebbing strength in every part of his body told him that if he were to lie down he would never get up again.

      A snort from the mustang jolted Latigo to sudden alertness. He felt the horse shudder beneath him and caught the eager prick of its ears. Instinctively his hand groped for the empty holster where his U.S. Army issue Colt would have been, had he not dropped it when the bullet slammed into his body. He was weaponless except for the braided rawhide whip that lay coiled like a rattlesnake along the flank skirt of his saddle. Latigo’s prowess with the whip had earned him the Spanish name by which he’d been known for half of his thirty-three years. But little good that would do him now, when he could scarcely raise his arm without a stab of nauseating pain.

      Latigo’s thoughts scattered as his ears picked up a distant shrillness on the wind. Horses. A dozen perhaps, maybe more, about a mile ahead. They sounded close together, as they might be in a corral.

      The Colby Ranch.

      Had he found it, or was he riding into a trap?

      The half-wild mustang bugled eagerly, trotting hard in its urgency to be with its own kind. Latigo was too weak to stop the animal. He clenched his teeth as the pain jolted through him. Hold on, he ordered his shock-numbed arms. Just hold…on…

       Fire…smoke from the blazing wagon blinding her eyes, searing her throat…her mother’s scream, and the cold twang of arrows striking flesh…her gentle father pitching facedown next to the mules, his fingers clawing lines in the powdery red dust…savage Apache faces streaked like bloodied hatchets with vermilion war paint, eyes glittering, as they moved in for the kill…no!…please, God, no!

      Rose Colby awoke in a frenzy of silent screams.

      Her fingers clutched the patchwork quilt as she battled her way back to reality. Her heartbeats echoed like gunfire against the wall of her ribs.

      It’s all right. Beneath the long muslin nightgown, her body was drenched in sweat. It’s all right. You were only dreaming.

      She lay rigid while the nightmare faded, quivering in the warm darkness of the bed she had shared with John Colby for more than a third of her twenty-six years. Yes, it was all right, she reassured herself. The Apaches had long since been beaten by the army and herded onto reservations. The adobe walls of the big house were as thick as a fortress, every window barred with wrought-iron grillwork. John’s Colt .45 Peacemaker lay loaded on the nightstand. The vaqueros had taught her how to use it, and she could hit a playing card dead center at fifty paces.

       You’re safe, Rose. Perfectly safe.

      But Rose knew she would never feel safe from the terrors that lurked in her own mind. No walls, however strong, could shut out the nightmare visions that had haunted her for nine long years.

      Brushing back her tawny mane of hair, she sat up, slid her bare feet to the floor and pattered across the cool Mexican tiles. The hand-carved mahogany cradle sat against the near wall, sheltered by the inward slope of the roof. Bathed by moonlight, her two-month-old son lay deep in slumber, his eyelids closed, his upflung fists curled like tiny pink chrysanthemum buds. His breath whispered sweetly in the darkness.

      Mason, she called him—John Mason Colby, after her husband and her own father. She would raise her boy well, Rose vowed, aching with love. He would grow up to be a fine man, and he would carry on the names he bore with pride, honor and courage.

      Pride…Honor…Courage…Duty. Moonlight gleamed softly on the words etched around the border of the silver medal that hung on the wall above the crib. The medal had been John’s, awarded to him by the territorial governor for valor during the Apache wars. John had treasured it. So would his son.

      Rose’s throat hardened with emotion as she bent low to feather a caress across the downy silk of her baby’s hair— dark, as John’s hair must have been in his youth, although she had never known it to be other than gray. What a tragedy John had not lived to see this baby, the heir he had wanted—demanded—for so long. He would surely have forgiven her, then, for the long, barren years and the heartbreaking miscarriages. The two of them might have even known some happiness, drawn together at last by their love for this beautiful child.

      Closing her eyes, Rose inhaled the sweet, milky, baby aura that cloaked the tiny body. Let him sleep, her practical side argued. But her motherly instincts cried out for her son’s warmth in her arms. She reached into the cradle only to freeze in midmotion, her heart convulsing in sudden alarm.

      Outside, just below the window, the sound of a horse.

      Rose darted to the nightstand and caught up the loaded Peacemaker. Maybe it was nothing—one of the vaqueros returning early from the mountains, where they’d moved the herds for spring grazing, or some visitor from Tucson, or—

      But what was she thinking? The grandfather clock in the downstairs hallway chimed two in the morning. No one would be so foolhardy as to travel at this hour. No one, at least, with any good intent.

      Gripping the heavy pistol, Rose crept along the wall and peered around the edge of the window. Except for the baby, she was alone in the house. The vaqueros were out with the herd. Esperanza, the cook, and her husband, Miguel, who tended to things around the place, had left that morning to visit their newborn grandchild in Fronteras. Rose herself had insisted they go—foolishly, she realized now. Whatever trouble lurked outside, she would have no choice but to deal with it alone.

      An artery pulsed along the curve of her throat as she scanned the moonlit landscape, the barren front yard where John had never allowed so much as a paloverde or creosote bush to sprout because it might provide cover for marauding Apaches; the open-sided ramadas and the adobe bunkhouse; the corrals where those horses not taken on the cattle drive milled and stamped.

      Yes, something was out there.

      Rose pressed closer to the glass, the pistol leaden in her shaking hand. She had fired the big gun at tins and bottles, but never at any living target, let alone a human being. Her Quaker parents had raised her to detest violence. All the same she knew,