likely pillaged and murdered and done heaven knows what. She had to put a stop to what was happening. But the exquisite pressure of his touch held her captive. She was powerless to move. Heat and color crept upward to flood her face. She struggled to breathe. A moment more, and—
“Say, looks like we got ourselves a welcomin’ party!” The corporal leaned to one side and spat over the side of the wagon. “Good thing we didn’t git you here any later, Miss Howell, or we woulda’ been strung up by our hocks like a passel o’ spring hams.”
Straining upward, Miranda peered past him over the seat of the buckboard. Her searching eyes caught the glint of moonlight on metal a quarter mile ahead, and then, as it materialized out of the night, a solid, moving black shape that she judged to be a close-riding troop of cavalry. As they came into full view she recognized the unmistakable tall-in-the-saddle frame and outsize Stetson of her father, Major Iron Bill Howell. He was riding at the head of the column, pushing his rangy buckskin mount to a gallop.
Miranda’s arms had frozen around Ahkeah’s inert body. As the outriders hailed the column, her first impulse was to roll the Navajo discreetly away from her, onto the planks. But the buckboard was bouncing crazily and the man was injured, she reminded herself. She could not risk his coming to further harm for the sake of appearances.
Carefully she eased his dark face away from her breast. Then, still supporting him in her arms, she steeled herself against the coming onslaught.
“What the hell took you so long?” Bill Howell’s voice boomed above the swirl of dust, wind and horses as the two groups mingled. “You were supposed to be back before nightfall! And where the devil is my daughter?”
“I’m here!” Miranda called out from the back of the wagon. “There’s nothing to be concerned about, Father. Everything is perfectly…fine.”
The all-too-familiar knot in Miranda’s stomach tightened as she saw him pushing his mount through the swarm of men and animals. As a child she had always been a little afraid of her father. He was so large and forceful, always looming above her like the giant in “Jack and the Beanstalk.” Not once in her memory had he ever bent down to her eye level or lifted her up to his. He had been—and was—a tower of authority, gruff and unbending. Maybe that was part of the reason Miranda’s gentle mother had remained in the East, refusing to follow him to his remote postings as many officers’ wives did.
Someone had lit a torch. In its blazing yellow light she saw him looming above her once more—older now, by nearly four years, than when she’d last set eyes on him. The leathery creases around his eyes had deepened and the bristling sideburns that failed to hide his outsize ears were streaked with gray. But his penetrating granite eyes were exactly as Miranda remembered them.
Now those eyes were staring down at the man Miranda held in her arms—a man he undoubtedly knew and probably hated.
“What in blazes is going on here, Miranda?” he growled without so much as a nod of greeting. “What are you doing with this Indian?”
“He’s hurt.” Miranda forced herself to meet her father’s angry gaze. “If we’d left him by the road with a storm blowing in, he could have died of exposure.”
“Not the worst thing that could happen, by a long shot!” Iron Bill snapped. “If you ask me, the whole damned reservation, even the Navajos, would be better off without the troublemaking bastard!” Before Miranda could respond, he turned abruptly to the sergeant. “What happened, soldier? And who allowed my daughter to get involved with this vermin?”
The sergeant’s Adam’s apple quivered as he swallowed and spoke. “Ahkeah, here, insulted your daughter and refused to apologize, sir. Things were getting out of hand, and—”
“And just as your men were about to shoot him, someone crashed a rifle butt into his head!” Miranda interrupted. “The entire episode was completely uncalled-for, Father. If your soldiers had left well enough alone, Ahkeah would simply have ridden away without—”
“I can speak for myself.” The Navajo’s sharp voice sliced into the flow of her own words. Startled, Miranda glanced down into the jet-black pits of Ahkeah’s eyes.
“The sergeant was right,” he said, twisting away from her and pushing himself, with effort, to a sitting position in the wagon bed. “I did insult your daughter. She was meddling where she had no business. I told her as much, and when I was ordered a second time, I did refuse to apologize. Now, since the matter of blame is settled, I’ll be taking my leave.”
Miranda watched the pain ripple across his face as he flung the cloak aside and staggered to his feet, then turned to catch the reins of his horse, which had been tied to the back of the buckboard. A vehement protest sprang to her lips. The man was in no condition to ride. If he passed out again he could lie unconscious all night, exposed to the coming storm. But one glance at his stubbornly set face confirmed that arguing would do no good. Not with a man like Ahkeah.
Grimacing with effort, he brought the rack-ribbed animal alongside the wagon. No one made a move, either to assist him or to hinder him, as he eased one leg over its back and slid awkwardly into place. The wind whipped his raven hair as he swung away from the wagon and turned, for the space of a heartbeat, to lock his gaze with Miranda’s. His contemptuous eyes ignited sparks of black fire through a glaze of pain. Then, as lightning forked across the sky with an earsplitting crack, he wheeled his mount and galloped into the darkness.
The silence that hung over the small company lasted for the space of a long breath. Then another bolt of lightning ripped the gathering clouds, and the full fury of the storm burst out of the sky. Lashing sleet, driven almost sideways by the wind, pelted them like buckshot. Mules brayed. A horse screamed and reared. Galvanized to action, the cavalry and wagon formed a column and headed like an arrow for Fort Sumner.
Teeth chattering, Miranda gathered her dusty cloak from the wagon bed, flung its sheltering warmth around her head and shoulders and clambered onto the jouncing seat beside the driver. The thick, soft wool still carried the pungent wood smoke scent of Ahkeah’s body. As she closed her eyes against the stinging sleet, the aroma stole into her senses, evoking the memory of his obsidian eyes piercing her defenses, his sharp-boned features molding the shape of her breast.
She pictured him now, galloping his half-starved mount through the icy storm, his water-soaked clothes freezing to his skin. She imagined the horse stumbling, startled, perhaps, by a fleeing animal or a sudden clap of thunder. She saw the reins slip from the frozen bronze fingers…
Stop it! Miranda admonished herself. You can’t allow yourself to fret over the man! You’re not responsible for what happens to him! And yet she knew in her heart she was responsible. If she had not stopped to help a pathetic old woman, none of this ongoing debacle would have taken place. If Ahkeah came to further harm tonight, the blame would be squarely on her own shoulders. That awareness weighed on her, darkening her thoughts as the buckboard and its escort thundered through the flying sleet toward the shelter of the fort.
Miranda awoke the next morning to the cold, gray silence of the spare room in her father’s quarters. For a long moment she lay quietly beneath the flannel sheet and thick woolen army blankets, watching the play of light beams through a crack in the shuttered window. Her gaze wandered to the rough-timbered ceiling and down the plain adobe walls, bare, even, of whitewash. She inspected the peeling wardrobe, standing askew as if it had been hauled in from some dusty storage room for the purpose of her visit.
As her mind roused to full wakefulness, she remembered last night’s arrival—the flaring torchlight, the steaming breath of the mules as she dismounted stiffly from the buckboard.
