Touch the Wind (29 page)

As she and Arriba raced past the invisible line that gave them victory, Sheila saw Ráfaga rein in his horse, admitting defeat. She glimpsed the bay’s plunging and rearing movements as it slid to a stop. Then she looked quickly away. She remained low in the saddle, crouched over the mare’s neck, but her hands were no longer urging the mare to top speed. Still, the roan didn’t slacken its stride.

Simultaneously, an explosion ripped through the air and the mare staggered, breaking its stride. The horse tried to recover, laboring to get its balance. Stunned, Sheila tried to help, tugging at the reins to bring the mare’s head up and get its legs beneath it.

But it was too late. The mare was tumbling to the ground. Sheila barely had time to kick her feet free of the stirrups and push out of the saddle. She went flying through the air. Then everything went black.

When she opened her eyes, Ráfaga’s face glowered above hers. For a dazed moment, Sheila didn’t know where she was or what had happened. She tried to move and pain shot through her head.

“You were a fool to try to escape,” he snarled, his mouth thinning.

Sheila closed her eyes. “I know,” she agreed with a tiny sob.

There was the sting of tears in her eyes. She didn’t know if she wanted to cry because she had failed in caught up with her. She was a fool for many reasons. her attempt to get away or because she was glad he had “Do you have pain?” he demanded roughly. “Yes,” Sheila moaned, her lungs burning with the effort.

“Where?” There was still no compassion in his tone, only anger.

“My head.” She tried to raise a shaking hand to
touch the place and found a million other places that hurt. “Everywhere,” she gasped.

“Lie still,” Ráfaga ordered.

Despite his anger, his touch was amazingly gentle as his hands explored for specific injuries. Sheila took comfort from that. The numbness was beginning to wear off. Except for the ache in her head, she didn’t think she was seriously hurt anywhere else, just one big bruise from the fall.

Ráfaga reached the same conclusion. “There is nothing broken.”

“Arriba—” Sheila started to ask the condition of her valiant mare, but Ráfaga was slipping an arm beneath her shoulders to help her to her feet.

Her bruised body protested and Sheila had to concentrate on making her muscles obey. His arm stayed around her in support as she wavered unsteadily. Her gaze was caught by a large, roan-colored object lying motionless on the ground. It was Arriba, stripped of saddle and bridle, inert in death.

With a stifled cry, Sheila staggered to the mare, falling to her knees beside the dead horse. Her disbelieving hand touched the long neck, the dampness of sweat clinging to the horse’s hair. The body was still warm, but no longer pulsing with life. She didn’t know exactly when she saw the hole and recognized its cause.

Sheila glared accusingly at Ráfaga, mindless of the pain spinning through her head. “You killed her! You shot her!” Sheila’s voice broke as Ráfaga loomed above her.

He reached down and hauled Sheila to her feet. “Did you think I would let you get away?”

“But you didn’t have to kill her!” Sheila tried to pull free.

His grip tightened to yank her against him. The force of the sudden contact nearly knocked the breath from her lungs. Her arms could not wedge any space between them as he crushed her against his chest, her head tipped back to let him see the hurt, angry tears in her eyes.

“If there had been any other way to stop you, do you think I would not have used it?” Ráfaga growled. “Do you think when I held the rifle in my hands I was not aware I was risking your life or serious injury to you? Do you think I did not wish to call the bullet back when it had left the gun?” The line of his mouth was grimly drawn. “It is not important to me that the horse is dead.” He left unsaid that it was important she was alive and unharmed.

“But it wasn’t Arriba’s fault,” Sheila protested, the shock too fresh to find any consolation in what he left unspoken.

“No, it was my fault for letting you ride the mare in the first place.” His low voice was raw and tight with barely controlled anger. “If I had not liked the picture of two long-legged beauties—” His jaw snapped shut on the rest as he glared icily beyond Sheila. “What is it?”

“There’s a patrol headed this way,” Sheila heard Laredo answer. “They must have heard the shot.”

Sheila was turned around and pushed toward Ráfaga’s bay as he clipped out an order. “Tell the men to separate. We will meet back at the canyon.”

Before she could attempt to mount, Sheila was lifted into the saddle, with Ráfaga swinging up behind her. His feet hadn’t found the stirrups yet as he spun the bay around, spurring the horse into a gallop. Sheila had only a fleeting glimpse of riders approaching from the south, a considerable distance away. She couldn’t help thinking how very close she had come to escaping.

Ráfaga turned his horse to the northeast as the small band of riders scattered to the wind. Carrying double, the bay couldn’t outrace the patrol, so Ráfaga guided the animal up the steep slope of a mountain where the bay’s mountain-bred agility compensated for the lack of speed.

Once when they paused in a gap of trees, Sheila felt Ráfaga turn in the saddle to look behind them. “Are they following us?” she asked.

“We have lost them,” he stated unemotionally. But there was no mistaking the slashing bitterness as he added, “That is not the answer you wished to hear, is it?”

His anger with her had not lessened. Sheila fell silent. There wasn’t any way to deny his accusation, even thought it wasn’t the truth. Neither spoke again as the bay horse worked its way northward, along the leeward side of the mountain ridge.

It was dark by the time they reached the canyon pass. Moonlight silvered the corridor as they rode through, the bay trotting eagerly to its home ground. Sheila felt a slight tug at her heart, as if she, too, were coming home.

Laredo was inside the house, waiting. He glanced up, unsmiling in welcome. “I see you made it,” he said. “Consuelo made coffee and there’s food on the table.”

Sheila opened her mouth to say that she wanted only to go to bed, but Ráfaga spoke before she had a chance. “We will have coffee.”

He used the tone of voice that Sheila was very familiar with. It was the one that said he would pour it down her throat if she tried to refuse it. So she said nothing and walked to a chair at the table.

Ráfaga poured two cups, adding a liberal amount of sugar to the one he set before Sheila. She sipped the strong, black liquid, unable to look at him as he sat down beside her. There was an oppresive, brooding silence in the atmosphere. She glanced at Laredo, sitting opposite her. He looked quickly away, a troubled darkness in his blue eyes.

Almost immediately he rose from the table. “I’d better go,” he said curtly and walked out without waiting for anyone to say good night.

Sheila was uncomfortably aware of Ráfaga’s dark gaze piercing her.

“Why did you run away, Sheila?”

Her head jerked to him, the welling tears hiding the love that gleamed in her gold-flecked eyes. “I had to try to escape. I had to try,” she repeated.

He took the coffee from her trembling hands and looked at her for a long moment. His shuttered gaze told her nothing of what he was thinking, but she waited for him to pull her from the chair and into his arms, the only place she felt she belonged anymore.

Instead, he turned his head to stare into his coffee mug. “You need sleep. Go to bed.”

Sheila rose numbly from the table and made her way to the bedroom to undress and crawl beneath the blanket. She lay awake for a long time waiting for Ráfaga to join her, but eventually her tired and aching body insisted she sleep.

Ráfaga was not in bed when Sheila awakened, although she had a vague recollection of having felt his arm around her in sleep. There were the sounds of someone moving around in the kitchen. The bump on her head was tender, but her head no longer throbbed from the pain.

There was a cursory glance from Ráfaga when she entered the kitchen. The morning greeting on the end of her tongue stayed there. His brooding anger hung like a dark cloud over the room. It charged the air like a violent electrical storm about to break.

Sheila tried to ignore it with a quiet greeting to Consuelo. “
Buenos días
, Consuelo.”

The woman’s dark eyes simply flickered briefly in her direction. A smile hovered nervously on her lips as she nodded and hurriedly resumed her tasks.

A low, growled order from Ráfaga in Spanish brought a bobbing nod from Consuelo and a breathy, “
Sí, Señor
” And the woman hurried out the door almost with relief.

Gold fires snapped in Sheila’s eyes, her irritation mounting. Last night it had been Laredo who was uncomfortable in her presence. This morning it was Consuelo who had been afraid to look at her.

Above all, there was Ráfaga. His anger Sheila could understand, only it wasn’t the right kind of anger. It was somehow inverted with another quality that Sheila couldn’t fathom.

Pouring a cup of coffee, Sheila carried it to the table, where Ráfaga sat, ignoring the food Consuelo had prepared. Her appetite had faded as her irritated confusion had risen.

“There is food,” Ráfaga pointed out.

“I’m not hungry.” Sheila shook her head in refusal.

He offered no argument, nor did he remind her that she hadn’t eaten since yesterday noon. Although he didn’t move, Sheila felt his impatience as surely as if his fingers were drumming the table. It was his stillness and silence that disturbed her and the sensation that inside him a violent war was going on.

She had tried to escape before—that time in the storm. He had been angry, but not like this. She studied him over the rim of her coffee mug. His saturnine features seemed to be carved out of granite. The black, tightly shuttered look of his eyes kept Sheila from seeing what he was thinking.

Sheila clenched her teeth, the continuing silence becoming unbearable. “Why don’t you say something?” she insisted. “All right, so I ran away and you caught me. It isn’t the first time I tried.”

“But it is the first time you made it out of the canyon,” Ráfaga answered curtly.

A thought occurred to her. “You aren’t blaming Juan for that?” She remembered what had happened to Juan Ortega when he had disobeyed one of Ráfaga’s orders. “It wasn’t his fault. His horse went lame. There wasn’t any way he could stop me.”

“I do not blame Juan.” Again Sheila heard the steel running through his voice like the sharp edge of a knife blade. “As you say, his horse was lamed in an accident.”

“Then what is it?” Sheila frowned, a surge of impatience tightening her mouth. “What’s wrong?”

“You left the canyon without my permission.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she retorted with sarcastic mockery. “Maybe I should have ridden to find you so you would know I was escaping. That would really have been the smart thing to do, wouldn’t it?”

A muscle twitched in his jaw. “You broke a rule.”

“One of
your
rules!” Sheila flashed. “I am not bound by
your
rules! They mean absolutely nothing to me!”

“You do not understand!” he exploded, an explosion that was doubly ominous because he did not raise his voice. “When I made you my woman, I made you subject to those rules.”

“That’s just too damned bad!” She was openly defiant, refusing to be intimidated by his anger.

“Yes, it is,” Ráfaga snapped the agreement, “because if you are subject to the rules, you are also subject to the punishment for breaking them!”

“Really? I—” The sarcastically taunting words were stolen from her throat as the full implication of his statement suddenly hit her.

Punishment for breaking rules and disobeying orders was meted out at the hollow beyond the corral. Sheila paled. A vision of shredded flesh made her stomach churn.

“You can’t mean that I—” She rose from the table. Her head moved from side to side, trying to shake away the thought, as if it were a bad dream, but the reality persisted. “You wouldn’t do that to me!”

Ráfaga was standing in front of her. His fingers were digging into the soft flesh of her upper arms. She was aware of the pain they were causing, but she was insensitive to it.

“If I could reverse the rule for you, I would.” Were her glazed eyes imagining it, or was she really seeing the tortured look in his dark eyes? “All I can do is lessen the punishment because you are a woman and
because you are new to our ways.” His voice was flat and hard.

“No, you can’t condemn me to that!” She tried to pull away from his hold.

He shook her hard, once. “It is the one law that is sacrosanct to us. It guards our freedom and the risk of discovery. I cannot change it.”

“But I am your woman. Surely—” Sheila tried to argue.

“A rule cannot be for one and not another.” Ráfaga cut her off. “It either stands or it falls.”

His arms went around her, gathering her to his chest. The hand at the back of her hair pressed her head against his chest. She trembled violently from the cold fear that consumed her. She felt the strong line of his jaw against her hair as he bent his dark head to rest his chin along the side of her head.

“I cannot stand in the way of your punishment,
querida,”
he said tightly. “I can argue for leniency and take measures to see that the harm to you is not severe. That is all I can do.”

As she shuddered uncontrollably, his arms tightened around her, as if trying to absorb some of her fear. Sheila closed her eyes, feeling the coldness of dread freezing the blood in her veins.

“When?” she whispered.

Ráfaga didn’t need to ask what she meant. “This morning. Now,” he answered grimly. Sheila turned her face into his shirt, her nerves constricting. “It is better this way. There is no time for the mind to dwell on it.”

“You knew, didn’t you?” A terrible bitterness coated the words. “You knew last night. So did Laredo. And Consuelo knew this morning. You all knew.”

“Yes, we knew.”

“And you didn’t tell me until now,” Sheila accused.

“Everyone knew the penalty for what you had done. You did not. I found no reason to replace your ignorance with fear.”