be sleeping in the straw. He’d slept in the great out-of-doors for years and was accustomed to it. On rare occasions, while on his forays to track down criminals, he rented a hotel room.
“Tell Tara that I’ll be trading places with her,” John requested.
“Can’t do that,” Flora replied as she wiped her mouth, smearing jelly on her chin. “Tara says she wants you somewhere that’s clean and dry so you can mend properly. She also says the boys are gonna take you to the spring to bathe tomorrow. She says the mineral spring we found near one of the rock ledges will be good for you.”
“Hmm, Tara sure has lots to say, doesn’t she?”
“Certainly does,” Flora agreed. “But most of all, and she says this is very, very, very important, we’re a family and we’ll be together forever. She says no one will break our family apart ’cause we belong to each other.”
John wondered why that was the first commandment in the gospel according to Tara. Who wanted to break up this unusual family? And why did Tara instill that sense of unity and belonging in these children? It sounded a mite overprotective to him, but what the hell did he know? He hadn’t been a part of a clan for over five years.
“Where did you meet Tara, half-pint?” he asked.
Suspicion filled those wide, soulful eyes. “Tara says we’re not supposed to say anything to anybody about where we came from or how we got here. It’s a secret.”
Interesting, he mused. Maybe Tara had something to hide. If she thought he’d sit in judgment she was mistaken, because John Wolfe wasn’t who folks thought he was, either. After all, he’d slipped away from the reservation under cover of darkness, without permission.
According to the Indian roll call conducted the morning after Chief Gray Eagle bade him to escape and return to white society, White Wolf didn’t exist and his name wasn’t to be uttered again. In the Apache culture, the name of a deceased person was rarely mentioned. As far as the tribe was concerned, White Wolf was dead and gone.
Maybe he needed to have a private talk with Tara and assure her that whatever concerns his presence provoked were unnecessary…unless there were criminal charges involved and she felt threatened by his profession as a law officer. Damn, this could get ugly, thought John. Maybe he didn’t want to unlock those guarded secrets he saw flashes of in Tara’s eyes, after all.
“I have to leave now.” Flora popped to her feet. “Tara says I have to walk the lambs around the canyon to make ’em stronger.”
John suspected these compulsory walks were designed to build little Flora’s own stamina. The child was entirely too frail and thin.
“Calvin has to go with me,” Flora added as she scooped up the jar of jelly and leftover bread, “just in case I have trouble managing the sheep.”
Calvin, the seven-year-old with the noticeable limp, he mused. No doubt Tara ensured Calvin was getting his daily requirement of therapeutical exercise, too.
To John’s complete surprise, Flora abruptly reversed direction, dropped to her knees in front of him, then flung her bony arms around his neck to hug him tightly. “I love you, Zohn Whoof,” she whispered in his ear. “Maybe when you feel better you can walk the lambs with Calvin and me.”
John battled to draw breath after Flora scurried off. He couldn’t afford to become attached to these endearing children, damn it. Gray Eagle had given him a lifetime assignment of protecting the Apache from the whites. Plus Raven was running loose, aligning himself with a merciless outlaw gang, giving the Apache a bad name—as if the whites’ publicity hadn’t given the tribe a bad reputation already.
John had witnessed firsthand the atrocities committed against Indians. They’d been slaughtered like buffalo—women, children, elders and warriors alike. They’d been poisoned with strychnine, herded onto reservations and forced to sign treaties that gave white men their valuable and productive lands. In fact, Gray Eagle had been ordered, under penalty of death, to sign over several strips of land where silver and copper deposits had been discovered so the prospectors could mine the ores without sharing with the Indians.
John had done his damnedest to prevent the whites from stealing the Apache blind, but to no avail. He’d reclaimed his white heritage hoping to make a difference—and he’d failed, time and time again. It was enough to make a grown man weep, especially when he cursed himself countless times for being born white and growing up Apache. Half the time John didn’t know who the hell he was or where he rightfully belonged. And now this sweet little child, with her hollow eyes, pasty skin and delicate bones, was gushing with affection for him and looking up to him as if he were her beloved father. The kid was killing him, while he was trying to maintain an emotional distance from her and the rest of this extraordinary family.
John sighed heavily. This child and her entire family were definitely getting to him, hour by hour, day by day. He couldn’t afford to become attached, because it would make leaving this valley more difficult. He’d locked away all sentimental emotions the day the Apache captured him as a child and started training him to be one of them. If he allowed all these conflicts that roiled inside him to surface he wouldn’t know how to deal with them. He wasn’t sure he could face a single one without his thoughts getting all tangled up with the other feelings he’d buried in order to survive all the trials he’d faced in his life.
Besides, this family really didn’t have a place in his world, he reminded himself for the umpteenth time. He went about his grisly business of tracking down and apprehending vicious criminals that were overrunning the territory. No feelings allowed, John told himself sensibly, and he’d better not forget it. Life was a test of survival—that was the gospel according to John Wolfe.
Tara wasn’t prepared for the shock of seeing her patient fresh from his bath at the mineral springs where the boys had taken him. When she returned from doing chores in the barn, he was sitting on the wooden bench on the front porch. She missed a step when her gaze landed on his face, now devoid of the week’s growth of dark beard. To say that John was ruggedly handsome, with his bronzed skin, athletic physique, electrifying eyes and sensuous lips, had to be the understatement of the decade. The entire package of lean, powerful masculinity was enough to increase her heart rate and leave her feminine body aquiver.
Lord, listen to her, Tara scolded herself. She sounded as bad as Flora and Maureen, who sang John’s praises the whole livelong day. Of course, Tara had asked around Rambler Springs to see if anyone had heard of Marshal Wolfe. What she’d discovered was impressive and unnerving at once. This man who braved death on a daily basis was the stuff legends were made of, according to Wilma and Henry Prague, who ran the general store, as well as Corrine and Thomas Denton, who owned the restaurant. It was true that Wilma Prague was long-winded and tended to get caught up in the tales she liked to spin, but the hearsay she’d conveyed had kept Tara on the edge of her seat. John Wolfe’s feats of capturing the worst criminals in the territory were nothing short of phenomenal.
“Good morning, Irish,” John greeted her, breaking into her thoughts.
“Morning,” Tara murmured as she sank down on the bench beside him. “How are you feeling after your bath?”
“Revived and not the least bit anxious to spend another day indoors.”
“Not accustomed to it, I suppose, considering your line of work.”
He inclined his shiny raven head. “Exactly, which is why we’ll be switching sleeping quarters this evening,” he asserted.
That
