Only His

14

«How is he?» Willow asked.

«Good as new. All Deuce needed was some time doing nothing except eating his fool head off.»

Caleb slapped Deuce on his haunch, sending the big horse trotting into the meadow’s evening silence once more. The bullet wound had healed cleanly. The strained foreleg had taken longer, but now there was no hesitation in the horse’s stride.

«He’s moving well,» she said. «Not a bit of a limp anymore.»

The unhappiness in Willow’s voice was at odds with her words, but Caleb understood what she meant. He felt the same way. The eighteen days he had spent with her in the hidden valley was as close to heaven as he ever expected to come. Now that Deuce was sound again and the Arabians were better accustomed to high altitude, there was no excuse to linger.

«We can stay longer,» Caleb said abruptly, speaking aloud the thought that had haunted him more and more frequently since he had discovered Willow’s innocence. «We don’t have to go haring off after your damned brother. If we were meant to find him, we’ll find him no matter where we are. And if we weren’t meant to find him, so be it.»

Willow flinched at the hard edge to Caleb’s voice. She had grown accustomed to his laughter, his gentleness, and his unbridled sensuality. Not once in the past eighteen days had she seen the bleak archangel that was also part of him. She had almost forgotten it was there.

«If it were just me, I’d never leave this valley,» Willow said unhappily. «But Matt must need help or he wouldn’t have written to his brothers. It was just his bad luck that no one was left at home except me.» She smiled at Caleb and added in a soft voice, «But it was my good luck, because it led me to you.»

Caleb closed his eyes and tried to control the unreasonable anger snaking through his veins — anger at Willow, at himself, and most of all at the simple fact that once Reno was found, Willow was irretrievably lost.

«I’d rather stay in Eden,» Caleb said roughly.

«So would I, my love,» she said, going to him. «So would I.»

Willow slid her arms around Caleb and held him, savoring the familiar warmth and strength of him. His arms closed around her a little fiercely, lifting her off her feet. He kissed her hard and deep before he set her firmly on the ground once more and pinned her with a glance so savage she made a sound of protest.

«Remember,» Caleb said harshly, «you were the one who wanted to go looking for him. I was willing to leave it to God.»

«What do you mean?»

Caleb’s smile was as thin and fierce as the blade of the big knife he always wore, but he said nothing more.

«Caleb?» she asked fearfully.

«Dig out your map, southern lady.»

She flinched at the tone of his voice and at the nickname he hadn’t used since they had come to the valley. «My map?»

«The one you have hidden somewhere in that big carpetbag,» Caleb said, turning away from Willow, walking back toward camp.

«How did you know?» she asked, dazed.

«Easy. Gold-hunting fools always draw maps for other fools to follow.»

The savagery in Caleb’s voice startled Willow. She stared after him uncertainly before she followed.

When she arrived in camp, Caleb was stirring the ashes of their breakfast fire. He didn’t even look up as she went to the unwieldy carpetbag that was her only luggage and began rummaging through its contents. He didn’t look at her when she ripped apart a section of lining and withdrew a folded piece of paper. He didn’t look at her at all until she walked slowly up to the fire, map in hand.

«I would have showed you sooner,» Willow said quietly, «but the map really isn’t much help.»

Caleb gave her a sideways glance that could have peeled bark from a living tree. «You didn’t trust me and we both know it.»

Color flared on her cheekbones. «It wasn’t my secret to tell. It was Matt’s, and he said not to show the map to anyone. But I’m showing it to you now.» She thrust the paper into his hands. «Here. Look at it. You won’t find much I didn’t already tell you. Matt never was a trusting kind of person. He made it so no one could steal the map and get any use of it. Unfortunately, I can’t get much use of it either.»

Saying nothing, Caleb took the map, opened it, and glanced quickly over the paper. The major landmarks were easy enough to recognize, the rivers and the clustered mountains of the San Juan country. Various passes into the heart of the country were marked, but no one pass was preferred over another. Whether someone started in California, Mexico, Canada, or east of the Mississippi, routes into the SanJuans had been laid out to follow.

Caleb looked at Willow questioningly.

«Matt didn’t know for sure where anyone was,» she explained. «The letter came to our biggest farm with instructions to forward it wherever the Moran brothers were. I copied the letter and sent it to the last address I had for each of my brothers.»

«Where was that?»

«Australia, California, the Sandwich Isles, and China. But that information was years old. They could be anywhere now, even back in America.»

Caleb raised his eyebrows and looked again at the map. He grunted. «Your brother is a good hand at drawing maps.» Caleb frowned. «But he left off one detail. Where the hell is his base camp?»

«It isn’t marked as far as I could see.» Willow took a deep breath. «I think Matt was so cautious because he found gold.»

«I expect so. Some damn fool usually does.»

Willow stared, unable to believe the indifference in Caleb’s voice. «Do you have something against finding gold?»

He shrugged. «I’d rather raise cattle. When the going gets rough, you can eat them. You can’t eat gold.»

«You can use it to buy food,» Willow pointed out rather tartly.

«Sure. Unless you get yourself shot in the back by somegunnie who figures it’s easier to jump your claim than to stake his own.» Cold topaz eyes pinned Willow. «I’ve seen gold camps. They have the stink of Hell about them. Nothing but greed and killing and whores.»

«Matthew isn’t like that. He’s every bit as decent as you are.»

Caleb said nothing, but his mouth thinned at being compared to the man who had seduced and abandoned Rebecca. He stared broodingly at the map. At one point, deep in the heart of the SanJuans, five meticulously drawn triangles had been placed to indicate various mountain peaks. Despite the fact that there were many more mountains in the area, no more triangles appeared.

Across the map waswritten, Makea fire and I’ll come. Beneath it was a line of Spanish. Caleb translated itsilently. Threepoints, two halves, one gathering.

Willow stepped close and saw that he was looking at the writing.

«That was another thing I couldn’t figure out,» Willow said. «Why would Matt write the line in Spanish?»

«Do you know Spanish?»

«No.»

«Maybe that’s why,» Caleb said flatly.

He looked at the triangles again. Willow followed his intent, tawny glance.

«Where are we supposed to build the fire?» she asked after a minute. «Any one of those triangles could be his camp.»

«One is as useless as another. Those are mountain peaks, not camps. We could look for five years and never find anything but rough country.»

«You needn’t sound so happy about it,» Willow grumbled. «Why don’t you want to find Matt?»

Caleb looked at her almost fiercely before he spoke. «That’s rough country. Let me take you back to WolfeLonetree. He’ll protect you and the Arabians while I look for your brother.»

«If I’m not along, you’ll never get close to Matt. If he doesn’t want to be found, you have a better chance of catching moonlight on water than catching him.»

Caleb bit back a curse. That was exactly what it had been like chasing Reno — trying to catch moonlight on water.

But then I didn’t know where the son of a bitch was. Now I do.

Willow frowned over the map. «I can’t understand why Matt didn’t leave better clues. He isn’t a careless kind of person. He was the one who taught me how to navigate by the stars, taking reading and drawing lines and making angles of intersection.» She bit her lower lip. «All I can figure is if we light a fire at any one of those five peaks, he’ll be able to see us. You know the country. You can find a place that can be seen for a long way and we’ll light a fire and —»

«Get our fool heads shot off,» Caleb said flatly, interrupting Willow. «Nobody lights a signal fire in that country unless he’s looking to get his scalp lifted. Your brother knows it, too, or he would have been dead long ago.»

«But then why did he say it?»

«It’s a trap.»

«That doesn’t make sense. Matt wouldn’t want to hurt his brothers.»

«Are your brothers fools?»

Willow laughed. «Hardly. Matt is the youngest. He learned a lot of what he knows from his older brothers.»

«Then none of your brothers would be damn fool enough to light a fire in Indian country and wait like a staked goat for whatever came.»

Willow wanted to argue, but knew it would do no good. Caleb was right. None of the Moran brothers would be that foolish.

«A trap,» she said unhappily.

«Like you said, your brother is a careful man.»

«Then we’ll just have to climb each peak until we find his camp,» Willow said, taking the map from Caleb.

He heard the determination in her voice and knew she wouldn’t stop seeking her brother until she found him or died trying. Reno had written for help and Willow had answered in the only way she could.

«You’re going to find your brother come Hell or high water, is that it?»

«If you were me, would you do any less?» she asked, wondering at the tangible hostility in Caleb every time her brother was mentioned.

Caleb closed his eyes and tasted the pain that the future would bring, Willow’s screams echoing as she watched her beloved brother and the man she loved face each other over drawn weapons, gunfire echoing and death coming down like thunder.

Be sure you’ve got a good reason to draw on Reno, because a second after you do, both of you are likely to be dead.

«So be it,» Caleb said bleakly.

Fear went through Willow like black lightning. «Caleb?» she asked shakily. «What is it? What’s wrong?»

He didn’t answer. He went to his saddlebags, pulled out his journal, a pencil, and a ruler, and came back to where Willow waited, map in hand and fear in her heart. Saying nothing, he took the map, spread it on his journal, and began drawing lines.

«What are you doing?» she asked finally.

«Finding your goddamned brother.»

Willow winced. «But how?»

«He’s a careful kind of man. He was real careful how he drew these triangles, even though he stood them every which way on the paper.»

«I don’t understand.»

«The triangles are all the same kind, with one angle of ninety degrees and two angles of forty-five degrees.»

Willow stared at the triangles and saw that Caleb was right.

«If you cut the ninety degree angle in two and drop a line down through the base, you get two equal triangles,» Caleb said, working swiftly as he talked.

«So?»

«So if you lay a ruler along that dividing line and draw it out to the edges of the map, and you do it for each triangle, all the lines should intersect somewhere. ‘Three points, two halves, one gathering. ’ It should be about —»

«There!» Willow interrupted, pointing to the map where line after line had crossed. «Caleb, you’ve done it! That’s where Matt is!»

Caleb said nothing. He simply noted the area of intersection in relation to landmarks both in his mind and on the map, and then threw the paper into the fire. Willow made a startled sound as flames bit ravenously into the map. Before she could move to prevent it, the paper writhed and curled and turned to ash.

«Good thing your Arabians are in good shape,» Caleb said tightly. «We’ve got Hell’s own ride ahead.»

He looked from the fire to Willow. In the twilight her eyes were mysterious, the color of autumn rain. The thought of losing her was a knife turning in him. Silently, he held out his hand to her. She took it without hesitation, not understanding the darkness she saw in him, but knowing that he needed her. When he drew her closer, she came willingly, needing him in the same way. For long minutes, they held each other, neither moving except to cling more tightly, as though they expected to be torn apart in the next instant.

«Love,» Willow whispered finally, looking up at Caleb. «What’s wrong?»

His only answer was a kiss that didn’t end until he was deep inside her and she was shivering with the fulfillment that grew more consuming each time he came to her. After he sipped the ecstatic tears from her lashes, he began all over again, taking and giving and sharing until there was no yesterday, no tomorrow, nothing but the timeless instant when two became one.

When Willow fell asleep, she was still joined with Caleb. For a long time he listened to her slow breaths, felt her small stirrings, watched moonlight glow on her cheeks. When he could bear it no longer, he closed his eyes and fell asleep, praying that Reno was already dead.

WILLOW stood in the stirrups and looked over Ishmael’s pricked ears. The land fell away before her in so many shades of green she couldn’t find names to describe all of them. The countryside was neither flat nor truly mountainous. Although distant clusters of high peaks jutted sporadically from the horizon, the land between the clusters was mile upon mile of rumpled forest and grassland, as though a huge patchwork quilt had been thrown over an uneven floor. The wrinkles were long, high ridges where pine and aspen and scrub oak grew. The troughs between wrinkles were equally long, wide parks where rivers ran.

Taking a deep breath, Willow tasted the freshness of the air, grateful that she had finally adapted to the altitude. Caleb had told her that even at its lowest point, the land was nearly seven thousand feet high. Many of the peaks were twice that height. It was like riding on the green roof of the world with stone chimneys rising in the distance. The sense of openness was exhilarating.

Nowhere could be seen smoke, buildings, rutted roads, fences, or any permanent sign of man. Yet men were out there, somewhere. Caleb had seen tracks in places where mountains pinched the grassland into divides that were natural funnels for travelers. Some of the tracks had been headed north or east. Most of them hadn’t. Most of them were headed toward the SanJuans.

«That’s where we’re going,» Caleb said, pointing. «The farthest peaks you can see.»

From where Willow was, the cluster of mountains looked rather like a low, spiky, purple crown set with fractured pearls. The country between her and the SanJuans was as wild as it was beautiful.

«How long will it take us to get there?» she asked, having learned that travel time rather than distance was the only measure that counted in the West.

«Two days if we could ride directly. As it is, we’ll be lucky to do it in four.»

«Why?»

«Indians,» Caleb said. «TheUtes are damn tired of tripping over white men every time they turn around. Then there’s always Slater and his bunch.»

«Don’t you think we lost them?»

«It’s hard to lose someone who knows where you’re going,» Caleb said sardonically.

«Won’t they give up after not finding any of our tracks for almost three weeks?»

«Would you give up?» he asked.

Willow looked away from the bleak clarity ofCalleb’s eyes. Although he hadn’t mentioned abandoning the hunt again, she knew he wanted to. Yet when she asked why, he changed the subject with an abruptness that stung.

«Jed Slater is riding a grudge,» Caleb said, looking away from Willow. «He’s the kind of man who will ride it until he dies or I do.»

«Is that why you don’t want to find Matt?» Willow asked, remembering the older Slater brother’s reputation as a gunman. «Because you know Slater will be looking for you in the same place?»

Caleb gave Willow a hooded glance. «Only a fool hunts trouble. Enough of it comes without looking for more.»

He kicked Deuce lightly, sending the horse trotting down into the long, winding park that eventually would descend to a grassy valley thousands of feet below their present elevation. Unhappily, Willow looked at Caleb’s broad back vanishing down the trail and wished she had phrased her question more tactfully. No man liked admitting that he was looking for ways to avoid a fight.

Frowning, Willow urged Ishmael forward, thinking about the man she loved rather than the route ahead. Caleb had been withdrawn since they had left the little valley yesterday. He had kept to a hard pace, his whole manner that of a man getting through a distasteful task as quickly as possible. And never once, either in the valley or after it, had he spoken of what would happen between the two of them after they found her brother. Never once had Caleb said that he loved her, that he wanted to marry her, that he even wanted to be with her after his promise to guide her to her brother had been kept.

Yet Willow had awakened this morning to find Caleb looking at her with a yearning that was so great it had made her heart turn over. Then he had gotten up without a word, leaving her with tears standing in her eyes and fear coiling coldly in her stomach.

The memory haunted Willow throughout the long day, prickling her skin like an icy rash, making the beauty of the land bittersweet.

The long descent from the high country ended as many others had, in a wide valley that wound between ranges of mountains. Their route took them along a river that was rarely more than a hundred feet across. The water was clear, clean, and swift. Aspen and a tree that looked like a poplar grew along the river’s edge, spreading masses of shiveringsilvergreen leaves across the sky. Flowers of every hue winked and flirted among the grasses, telling of a spring that was not yet spent.

As always, the sun was hot. Willow was wearing only Levis and the buckskin shirt with most of its laces undone. The flannel underwear that had felt so good in the higher country was now folded and rolled into a blanket behind her saddle, along with the heavy wool jacket. The silver murmuring of the river had become a siren song promising cool, pure water to ease her growing thirst.

Just when Willow was certain Caleb was going to go past supper without stopping, he reined in, dismounted, and walked back to her.

«We’ll rest here for a bit.»

Willow began to dismount, only to be plucked from Ishmael’s back. Caleb lowered her slowly to the ground, letting her slide down his front. The look in his eyes and the frank arousal of his body made her heartbeat double. The uneasiness that had haunted her all day was replaced by a giddy sense of relief and a glittering rush of anticipation. Heat rippled through her, transforming her. In the space of a few breaths her body changed, preparing itself for the joining to come.

«Rest?» Willow asked, smiling, wanting so much to take the darkness from Caleb’s eyes. One of her hands drifted down his body. «Are you sure that’s all you had in mind?»

His breath came in swiftly. «I thought I might catch some trout for supper.»

«You might,» she agreed. Her hand moved slowly, measuring and pleasuring him in the same motion, glorying in the answering blaze of his eyes, all darkness gone. «Depends on the bait. Or is it the pole?»

«You,» he said huskily, «are one sassy little trout.»

«But I rise to your bait every time.»

«No, honey. I rise to yours.»

Willow’s soft laugh was as sensual as the slow movement of her hand. «Shall we argue about it?»

His answering smile was lazy and hungry at the same time. «Yes, I think we shall.» Long fingers worked over the fastening of her Levis. «Two falls out of three?»

«You’re bigger than I am,» she pointed out.

«Harder, too.» Caleb’s hand slid between layers of cloth. «But it’s too late to get cold feet now.»

The only answer Willow could make was a throaty sound of pleasure as his long fingers touched her. He knelt quickly, stripping away her boots and Levis. He had no patience for his own clothes. He simply unfastened his pants and pulled her to the ground astride him, wild with a need he couldn’t control.

«God,» he groaned when he teased and tested her, «you’re softer every time. Hotter. Sweeter.»

Willow tried to answer, but the feel of Caleb thrusting deeply into her body took away her breath. The hunger in him was almost violent, as though he must have all of her, know all of her, touch all of her in some elemental way. The first shattering wave of pleasure hit her as soon as they were fully joined, but it was the desperate need in him that stripped away the world, leaving only Caleb and the ecstasy that destroyed and created her in the same endless instant. Small cries rippled from her as she surrendered body and soul to the man she loved.

The depth and quickness of Willow’s response was as exciting to Caleb as the heat of her body melting around him, telling him that she was his woman, only his. It was what he needed, what he had sought through the long hours in which he had circled and circled the dilemma of Reno Moran and found no solution, no reprieve except this, the joining that was unlike anything Caleb had ever known. The passion in Willow was as hot as the sun and as deep as time, an intensity of feeling that reached down into his soul.

And soon she would hate him with a passion as deep as her love.

Willow’s name came from Caleb’s lips as a broken cry, for the passion he had called from her had claimed him as well, giving him more completely to her with each raking pulse of ecstasy, an elemental surrender of self that was not unlike her own.

He held her, praying that Reno would never be found…and knowing he would.

«MORE tracks?» Willow asked.

Caleb nodded. He hadn’t shaved since they left the hidden valley, but even six days of beard stubble couldn’t hide his grim expression.

«Shod?»

He nodded again.

«How many horses?»

Though Willow’s voice was no more than a thread of sound, Caleb heard. Sometimes he thought he could hear her in the silence of his mind, a woman crying passion, crying love, crying grief, crying hate.

«No less than twelve horses,» Caleb said roughly, preferring the unhappy truth of enemies to the thoughts that stalked him no matter how ruthlessly he shoved them aside. «No more than sixteen. Hard to tell. They weren’t picketed separately.»

Willow frowned and looked around. The days of cautious, relentless travel had brought them among the splendor of the San Juan mountains. At present, she and Caleb were in the midst of a high, grassy basin that was perhaps two miles across and circled by snowy peaks of breathtaking size and ruggedness. Slender aspen grew in the rolling folds of the basin, providing cover for deer and for people such as Willow and Caleb, who had no desire to be spotted from nearby peaks or ridges.

But the basin would soon be transformed as all other parks and meadows had been transformed by the rising of the land. Rugged peaks would close in, the meadows would shrink, and the creeks would race between dark walls of stone until a higher meadow was reached, a smaller meadow, and the cycle would be repeated again and again until they came to the headwaters of a tiny brook at the apex of yet another pass. Then the route would begin to descend, repeating the cycle in reverse, creeks becoming rivers and meadows becoming huge parks once more.

«Is there another pass we could take?» Willow asked.

«There’s always another pass somewhere.»

She bit her lower lip. «But not nearby, is that it?»

«That’s it. We’d have to backtrack a few hours to where the creek forked. Then we’d have to go three days out of our way to come in from the other side of that mountain.» Caleb jerked his thumb over his shoulder, looked at Willow, and waited.

«Are we close to Matt?» she asked finally.

«If he drew the map right and we read it right, yes.»

«While you were scouting ahead, I thought I heard gunfire,» she said.

«You’ve got good ears,» Caleb said. Nothing in his tone revealed that he had been hoping she hadn’t heard the shots.

«Was it you?» she asked.

«No.»

«Matt?»

«Doubt it. More likely someone from Slater’s bunch saw a deer. A bunch of armed men don’t need to worry overmuch about attractingUtes by shooting fresh meat.»

«Matt is alone.»

«He’s used to it.»

«I heard five shots. How many does it take to kill one deer?»

Caleb said nothing. He knew that more than one or two shots usually meant a fight, not a hunt.

«Matt might be hurt,» Willow said urgently. «Caleb, we have to find him!»

«More likely we’ll find Slater’s bunch if we head up that draw,» Caleb said, his voice flat. But even as he spoke, he was reining his horse around, heading into the canyon that rose on either side of the river. «I’ll ride ahead. You keep that shotgun handy. Unless we have Satan’s own luck, we’re going to need it.»

Despite Caleb’s grim warning, they found nothing that afternoon but tracks. The land began rising slowly beneath their feet. The river became faster, more narrow, more rocky, and mountains crowded in on both sides. Willow could tell from the horses’ breathing that the altitude was higher than the little valley had been, and they were climbing higher with each step.

The water course they had been following forked as the land rose once more. The tracks of shod horses followed the right fork. Caleb took the left, for it led toward the place where five lines had intersected on the map that he had burned to ash, wishing that he could burn the past with it.

But burning all the bitter yesterdays wasn’t possible.

So be it.

The words were like rifle fire in Caleb’s mind. Their echo came back as Wolfe’s warning.

You hear me, amigo? You and Reno are too well matched.

And Caleb’s own answer, the only one there could be, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, life for life, the past echoing into the present, the savage circle complete.

So be it.

Except that it could not be. Caleb could not leave Willow alone in the mountains, no one to protect her, a woman abandoned unwillingly by her man, but abandoned just the same….

Will she die the way Rebecca did, in agony and exhaustion, bearing her lover’s dying child?

Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, life for life.

Bile rose behind Caleb’s clenched teeth as he rebelled against the very idea of hurting Willow. He could not do that to the girl whose only sin was to love too much. She had done nothing to earn such betrayal.

Nor had Rebecca. Yet betrayal had come, and agony, and death. The man who had brought disaster to her walked free, able to seduce another innocent, abandon her, and create another savage circle of betrayal and vengeance.

In an anguish that grew greater with each step forward, Caleb searched for a way out of the trap of duty and desire and death. He found none except to let the seducer live, and in so doing condemn some unknown girl to a seduction and abandonment she had done nothing to earn, and then another girl, and then another; for a man’s desire rose with the sun and set only in the dark warmth of a woman’s body.

As Caleb rode into the dark canyon, he wondered how he could let Reno live and still call himself a man.