even the remote peaks seemed closer.
«Where…» her voice tore. She cleared her throat and tried again, forcing herself to be clam when the thought of being abandoned made her shake. «After the peak, where do I go?»
The fear in Willow’s voice was too raw to hide completely. Caleb heard it and knew what she was thinking.
«I’m not cutting and running,» he said coldly. «Maybe that’s how the men you’re used to act, but I’m not one of your fancy men, am I? When I give my word I keep it.»
Looking everywhere but at Caleb’s savage yellow eyes, Willow nodded.
«When I was out hunting, I saw signs of a deer kill,» Caleb continued in a clipped voice. «Maybe a day old, maybe more. Wolves had been at it, but I could tell it was killed by a man.»
«Indians?»
«Renegades,» Caleb said flatly. «Some horses were shod and some were barefoot. Only bunch I know like that areComanchero ‘traders’. Raiders is more like it. They have a lot of Taos lightning with them.»
«What’s that?»
«Tangle-leg, tarantula juice, booze,» he explained impatiently.
«Oh, whiskey.»
Caleb grunted. «Call it what you will, they had so much of it they left a half-inch in one of the bottles.»
Willow frowned. She had heard ofComancheros, and none of what she had heard was good. They were indeed renegades of the worst sort — a mixture of white and Mexican outlaws, tribeless Indians, andhalfbreeds who bowed to neither white nor Indian law.
«Don’tComancheros usually stay farther south?» she asked hopefully.
«Only when the Army chases them there. There’s damn all worth stealing in the Mexican desert, and a lot ofComancheros looking to steal it. The Army has been too busy fighting rebels to waste any time on Indians and raiders, but now that the War Between the States is over, the Army is back. Things will get real lively before theUtes are herded onto some reservation. While the Army is busy, theComancheros will scavenge around the edges like the coyotes they are.»
Uneasily, Willow looked at the open space stretching before her, mile upon mile of beautiful grassland that must certainly be a natural gathering point for people riding through the rugged mountains, looking for easy passage.
«Pretty, isn’t?» Caleb asked, watching the land with a faint possessiveness. «You can’t see it from here, but there’s a year-round stream coming down off that rocky ridge. A man could put a house in over there and have a clear field of fire on three sides and country only a mountain goat could cross on the fourth. The water is sweet and plentiful.»
The mixture of emotions in Caleb’s voice made Willow turn from the land to him. He loved the land. Even as he described its dangers, his voice caressed its possibilities.
«If a man built his house in the right place, he wouldn’t have to get shot to fill a bucket.» Caleb continued. «Cattle could graze the high country in summer and hay could be cut from the lowlands for the winter. After a few years of hard work, a man would have himself as fine a spread as any Virginia gentleman ever did.»
Willow looked at the country again, but this time through Caleb’s eyes, seeing places to be ambushed or to hide, places that could be defended and others that would be easily overrun.
«Do you always think like that?» she asked.
«I’ve wanted to raise cattle for ten years. It’s just a matter of finding the right place and getting the money to begin.»
«No, I meant do you always think about fighting?»
Caleb gave Willow a sideways look that was part amusement and mostly disbelief. «Southern lady, anyone who wants to survive out here thinks like that. It’s second nature, like remembering landmarks infrontand in back of you, because everything looks different going than it did coming. But coming or going, this is as pretty a land as God ever made, and wild enough to be home to the devil himself. If a man doesn’t keep his eyes peeled and his ears pricked out here, he’ll end up stone cold dead.»
«Then why do you want to ranch here?»
Caleb’s smile offered neither comfort nor real humor. «Back East and in California, other men already own the good land. Not here. Here a man can have as much good land as he’s willing to fight for. I’m not a bad fighter, Willow, and not a bad hand with cattle, either.»
«Is that what you want — to homestead land here and be a rancher?»
Caleb nodded absently, again watching the country rather than the woman who was watching him.
«You can find some mountains and parks like these a few days south of the San Juan country,» he said. «The grazing is fine, but you’d be combing Apaches andComanches out of your hair every sunrise, and your cattle would have more arrows than a porcupine has quills. Not much pleasure in that, or profit.»
For the space of several breaths Willow looked at the land, then back at the hard-faced man who was watching every shift of breeze through forest and grass, his clear gaze sifting each motion to find one made by man. Or rather, men.
Comancheros.
Uneasiness prickled through Willow. She hadn’t expected the West to be civilized, but she hadn’t really understood what such a total lack of civilization meant, either. In some ways it was rather like being at war. Constant vigilance was needed, for inattention could be fatal. That didn’t bother Willow greatly, for she had become used to living on edge during the war. She had become good at listening for sounds, at sleeping lightly, at sliding away into the forest with her mother at the first hint of danger.
But this wide, wild, extraordinary land wasn’t like her farm. Here she was dependent on Caleb’s strength, fighting skills, and knowledge in a way that frightened her.
He warned me it would be like this, Willow toldherself. Hetold me in plain English.
She shivered as the echoes of a past conversation whispered through her mind oncemore. WhereI’m taking you there’s no law at all. Out in those mountains a man takes care of himself because no one else will do it for him.
And a woman? What does she do?
A woman finds a man tough enough to protect her and the kids she’ll bear him.
It seemed far more than a handful of days since Willow had heard and disregarded Caleb’s warning, thinking that whatever lay ahead couldn’t be more dangerous than the war she had already survived. It seemed a lifetime since she had ridden out of Denver’s rude comforts into a land that grew more wild with each westward step.
Yet, even knowing that, she wouldn’t have traded one of those steps for the safety of the East she had left. Despite the danger, there was something in the wild horizons of the Rockies that lifted her heart and made her soul sing.
Willow closed her eyes and absorbed the small sounds of the land around her. One of the horses snorted and stamped. A saddle creaked as Caleb shifted his weight. A bird called off in the meadow. There was no smell of smoke, of sawn lumber, of turned earth. The breeze carried scents untainted by man, becoming a river of life rushing softly around her, caressing her.
«Damn it, Willow, I said I would be back. Don’t you believe me?»
Startled, she opened her eyes. «Of course I believe you.»
«Then what’s wrong?»
«Nothing,» she said, smiling almost sadly. «Not the way you mean. It’s just that…» Her voice faded. «Suddenly I realized that I love this clean, wild land, even if it isn’t very safe.» She smiled with lips that wanted to tremble. «The idea takes a little getting used to.»
Caleb studied Willow with a sudden, fierce intensity, but said only, «If you wanted to be safe, you should have stayed home.»
«Yes,» she whispered. «I know. Don’t worry, Caleb. Whatever happens is on my head, not yours. I might not have known what I was coming to, but I knew what I was leaving behind.»
Caleb waited.
Willow said nothing more. She simply looked out over the land and measured the bittersweet pleasure of having realized part of her dream of finding a new home, only to discover that the land might not be possible for a
