A Warrior's Vow. Marilyn Tracy

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СКАЧАТЬ she might not give up on him flashed through Daggert’s mind. He shook his head. That was crazy thinking.

      Still, he found some grim satisfaction in knowing he wasn’t dead to sensation, that his body, if no other part of him, could still be swamped with restless need, however painful. He smiled wryly, suspecting he’d be hurting plenty by the conclusion of this particular mission.

      He thought about her sad little litany of surface facts about Enrique Dominguez, the way she’d repeated them like a talisman against her exhaustion. He’d done the same with Donny. Not reciting all the little things he knew about the boy—those were carved in his heart—but details about his death.

      The fact that no one had seen anyone unusual that day was significant all by itself. A little boy on his way home from a friend’s house didn’t wind up some forty miles away, mangled beyond recognition. Daggert knew that people had seen someone, all right—someone they knew. But because they knew him, they’d forgotten they’d seen him. Because he belonged there. Like fences, like flowerbeds, like grass.

      Someone Donny knew. Someone Daggert knew.

      Everyone became suspect. Everyone became potential child killers. And his litany became, “Who is it? Who do I know who’s capable of murder? Who did everyone see that day and not even notice? The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker?”

      He understood the need to focus. He understood litanies. They drove fear away and kept despair at bay.

      After he laid the fire and lit it, he pulled out his collapsible water buckets, filled them and set them down in front of the horses. He doled two scoops each of molasses oats into canvas feed bags, and after the horses had drunk their fill, slipped a makeshift chuck-wagon on to each horse’s head.

      He hoped he and the woman would find the boy the next day, not just for the child’s sake. He hadn’t planned on feeding two horses, and had brought enough oats for one, for only five days. At this rate, they would last only three full days without supplemental supplies, and it took nearly that long to reach the upper mountains.

      The only sounds that could be heard were the distant cry of a nighthawk, horses munching oats and the fire crackling in the chilly desert night. Into that companionable quiet, he heard Leeza ask, “What do you want me to do?”

      “Sit,” he said, pulling two dinner packets from one of his saddlebags. “Watch out for goat heads.”

      “What?”

      “Stickers. Shaped like goat heads.”

      “Oh. Thanks.”

      Daggert set a pot of water on the broad, flat rocks he’d placed in the middle of their fire circle. At some three thousand feet on the high desert plain, water wouldn’t take long to boil.

      He added the already cooked meals in their little plastic bags to the churning water. When they were heated through, he plucked them from the pot with his pocketknife and, slicing them open, dumped the contents on to the aluminum plates he’d set out earlier.

      As he worked, Leeza didn’t say a single word, not even muttering snide comments when she thought he couldn’t hear her, as she had much of the day. He turned to look at her and found her staring at the flames, silent tears coursing down her beautiful face.

      He briefly closed his eyes. Even if he were the most talkative man in the world, he wouldn’t have known what to say now. He said nothing, pretending he hadn’t seen her anguish, and dug in one of the packs again, withdrawing a container of salt and pepper and a couple of napkins.

      The race for space travel had vastly improved simple pleasures on earth. Even the sorriest excuse for a cook could rustle up a decent meal with freeze-dried ingredients or precooked entrées, a pot of hot water and a few spices carefully packed in a plastic bag. Within minutes, he set a plate of beef stew out for Sancho and two more of pasta primavera for Leeza and himself.

      With a wary glance at her, he held out her plate. Most signs of tears were gone, but she didn’t respond.

      “You’ll feel better if you eat something,” he said.

      She reached for the plate then, and he let out a pent-up breath as he handed her a fork. She stirred the pasta around but didn’t make any move to eat. “Enrique’s only nine,” she said.

      He waited. Donny had been seven. He would be seven forever. “He’s growing up, Alma. Let him walk home alone.”

      “And he’s afraid of thunder.”

      Daggert forked in a mouthful of pasta and chewed silently. “Daddy? You won’t let the lightning hurt me, right?”

      “He plays practical jokes.” She gave a watery chuckle. “He put a paper sack filled with dry leaves in the back of a dresser drawer so I’d think there was a rattlesnake in it when I opened the drawer. It worked.”

      She was silent as Daggert took several bites, then said, “Everyone thinks Enrique dislikes me.”

      Daggert stirred the fire, and the coals in his memory. “You’re too hard on him, James. He’s just a little boy.”

      “Do you want to know why?”

      He set his knife aside.

      “They—everyone from my best friends to the housekeeper—thought I was too hard on the children. All the children. But mostly Enrique.”

      “Why?”

      “Do you mean why does everyone think I’m too hard, why was I too hard or why Enrique in particular?” she asked.

      “You choose,” Daggert answered, amazed at her ability to split meanings.

      “You sound like a psychiatrist.”

      He didn’t say anything, thinking she couldn’t know how ironic that sounded, due to the fact that a host of psychiatrists hadn’t been able to put him together again. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men… One of Donny’s favorite nursery rhymes.

      “Okay, I don’t believe anything can be accomplished without hard work. And it’s my experience that children need strict rules and guidelines. It’s how I was raised, and I’m fully aware of the benefits of such a firm hand at the helm. And why Enrique in particular? Because he’s smart, because he’s lazy. Because he’s vulnerable, and vulnerability only makes victims.”

      “Being vulnerable is a liability, then?”

      “I’m tired,” she said suddenly, and handed him the plate of uneaten food. “I think I’ll pass on the rest of this session.”

      He handed her plate back. “It was a hard ride and a long day. You’d better eat something.”

      “Really, I couldn’t.”

      “But you will.”

      She gave him a cold look that let him understand he’d have to wrestle her down and force-feed her before she’d concede.

      He sighed. “Lady, I won’t have time tomorrow to take you back to the ranch when you faint from hunger. You don’t have enough meat on your bones to go a day without food. It’s a СКАЧАТЬ