Apache Fire. Elizabeth Lane

shaking hands had wrapped around his ankles. His eyelids opened, then swiftly closed.

      Only then did Rose realize her breast was exposed. Hot faced, she flung a corner of the baby’s blanket over her bare shoulder.

      The stranger’s eyes opened again. This time his feral gaze swept her defiantly from head to foot. Feeling as vulnerable as a nesting dove, Rose gulped back her fear and forced herself to speak calmly.

      “I’ve sent a man into Tucson for the sheriff,” she lied. “Until he gets here, I suggest you keep still unless, of course, you want to open up that bullet hole and risk bleeding to death. I won’t bind it for you a second time.”

      His obsidian eyes glinted like a captive hawk’s. “Did anybody see to my horse?” he asked, as if his own condition were of no importance.

      “Your horse is in the corral with the others. There’s plenty of hay and water there.” That much, at least, was true. She had unsaddled the poor, spent animal herself and turned it in with her spare cow ponies. She remembered fingering the long, coiled whip as she carried the saddle to a dark corner of the barn. She remembered the worn boot, still tangled in the stirrup leathers.

      “You were lucky.” Rose spoke boldly, even though the mere act of touching an Apache had all but drained her of courage. His bleeding body, so close, so real, had rekindled her nightmare in all its horror. Even now, it was the most she could do to meet his fierce black eyes without cringing. “From the looks of your shoulder, the bullet passed through without hitting anything vital,” she said. “But you’ve lost a dangerous amount of blood. That’s why you must keep absolutely still.”

      “Is that why you’ve trussed me up like a bald-faced calf at branding time?” His sharp-edged words challenged her in English that was as fluent as her own. This Latigo, whoever he might be, was clearly no ordinary reservation Apache.

      “I don’t intend to hurt you,” he said, his gaze flickering toward the pistol on the bench. “Just cut me loose, give me some food and water and a fresh horse, and I’ll be on my way. That’s the least you owe me.”

      “Owe you?” Rose clutched her son beneath the blanket, remembering, now, what he had said about collecting on an old debt. “Your business was with my husband, not with me,” she declared coldly. “I’d never set eyes on you before last night. What could I possibly owe you?”

      His black eyes narrowed. “The last ten years of your husband’s life.”

      His words struck her with the impact of a slap. Rose stared at the man, rifling her memories for some spark of recognition and finding none.

      “John never mentioned his life being saved by anyone, let alone an Apache,” she retorted, flinging the words with a bravado she did not feel.

      He flashed her a contemptuous look. “For whatever it’s worth to you, Mrs. Colby, only half of me has the honor of being Apache. My mother was a Chiricahua, my father a Spanish Basque. But I’m telling the truth about your husband. I saved his life ten years ago when I led his company out of an ambush in the Dragoon Mountains.”

      “The Dragoons?” Rose’s sleep-fogged mind searched what she knew of the past. When Cochise’s bloody uprising had flared in the mid 1860s, John Colby had helped organize a volunteer militia out of Tucson. As its captain, he had bravely led more than a score of forays against the Apaches. On one excursion along the Gila, he’d come across a seventeen-year-old girl wandering the desert in a state of shock, her family murdered and their wagon burned. A widower nearing fifty, he had taken the dazed young Rose Thomas home to his ranch and, a few weeks later, made her his bride. Within days of their marriage, he was riding patrol again.

      All this Rose remembered. But she had no recollection of John’s discussing the Dragoon Mountains. Apart from ranch matters, he had communicated little with her when he was home. He had never told her where he’d been or described the things he’d done. And he had surely never mentioned a man named Latigo.

      The stranger waited, his eyes flinty with distrust. It would be dangerous to lie to such a man, Rose calculated, but then, hadn’t she lied to him already?

      “Did you ride with John’s militia?” She asked, knowing a yes would trap him in his own deception. John Colby and his fellow volunteers had hated Indians and would never have tolerated Apache blood in their ranks.

      Latigo’s thin mouth tightened in response to her question. “I was scouting for the army,” he said, gritting his teeth against the pain in his shoulder. “We didn’t much care for the local militia boys. The trigger-happy fools tended to stir up more trouble than they prevented—”

      “Why, that’s not so!” Rose interrupted, flaring with sudden outrage. “My husband’s militia protected settlers all over this part of the territory! They were heroes!”

      The look he gave her was so scathing that it shocked her into silence. “More than once we had to rescue them from disasters of their own making,” he continued in the same flat tone, as if she had not spoken. “That’s how I met your husband.”

      He shifted sideways on the floor, straining upward as if he were struggling to sit.

      “Lie still,” Rose spoke in a sharp whisper. “I told you, you’ll start the bleeding again.”

      His eyes burned their desperation into hers, silently urging her to cut him loose and let him go. But her own fears shrilled the warning that she could not trust this man. Last night he had pointed John’s gun at her and threatened to shoot her with it. She had no choice except to keep him bound and helpless.

      Beneath the blanket, the baby’s warm little body stirred, then settled into slumber. Rose felt the stranger’s wild, dark presence like an aura in the room. The skin at the back of her neck tingled as his gaze flickered over her, lingering on her face, probing the depths of her courage.

      “What have you done?” she demanded in a low, tight voice. “Who are you running from?”

      Hesitation flickered across his face. Then his expression hardened, and Rose realized that his distrust was as strong as her own. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” he said, wincing as he spoke. “But I give you my word, I’m not a criminal.”

      “How can I be sure of that?”

      “I’m not a liar, either.” His eyes locked Rose’s in a proud gaze that defied her to doubt him. Against her will, her thoughts flew back to last night. She remembered cradling his head between her knees to keep him still as she cleaned his wound. She remembered the smoky fragrance of his hair and the feel of his flesh beneath her fingers, cool and hard, like living bronze. On touching him for the first time, a freshet of disturbing heat had surged through her body. Rose felt it again now as his gaze gripped hers.

      Every instinct told her the man was dangerous. But she had to be sure. If he had saved her husband’s life, she had no right to turn her back on him, not until she had some idea of what was in his heart.

      “Tell me what happened,” she said. “I can’t promise to believe you, but I think I’m entitled to hear your story.”

      Morning sunlight warmed the quiet air, melting the shadows in the corners of the kitchen. Latigo hesitated, then his eyes narrowed with the effort of collecting his thoughts. He was weak from pain and blood loss, she knew, but Rose resolved not to spare him until she had heard everything.

      “Untie me,” he said. “I won’t harm you.”

      “No.” She shook her head. “Not yet.”

      His eyes flashed, as if he had sensed a weakening in her resolve. Rose’s arms tightened around her son. “Go on,” she said, lifting her chin. “You said you were a scout. Did your trouble have something to do with the army?”

      “The army?” His bitter chuckle ended in a grunt of pain. “Believe me, there were no soldiers in sight Just two government inspectors, all the way from Washington. I’d been assigned to guide them on a tour of the San Carlos.” His eyes narrowed