His ice blue eyes held hers and searched deep. For an awful moment, Laura feared he didn't believe she had the necessary mettle to carry through, that he would see it finished himself rather than risk Gonzales's getting his hands on her and Jonathan.

Tears filled her eyes. She spread a hand on her chest and leaned toward him. "Damn you, Deke! For a month you've been teaching me how to use these guns! Preaching at me day and night to stand up for myself. Telling me I could do it! Now you want me to take the coward's way out?"

For a heartbeat longer, he held her gaze. Then he slapped the Henry into her hands, grabbed the freshly reloaded Colt, spun to take up his firing stance, and said, "Reload!"

Laura gave a sob that was equal parts relief and hysterical laughter. One word. Reload! But it meant everything to her. More than his whispering how much he loved her. More than his saying she was beautiful. It meant Laura bent over the Henry, her hands moving feverishly. Tears nearly blinded her. Deke believed in her. But what really meant the world to Laura was that he had taught her to believe in herself.

She was no longer Sterling Van Hauessen's daughter, an elegantly trimmed ornament who spoke French and glided along stairwells, elated because she could balance a thick tome on her head. She was no longer Tristan Cheney's wife, a spiritless servant to his every whim, afraid of his shadow and her own as well.

She was Laura Sheridan. Not just Deke's wife, which was something to be proud of, but his partner. They were fighting for their lives. And her contribution could mean the difference between winning or losing. She didn't kid herself. The odds were stacked against them. But if she had to die today, she would take something with her that had been denied her in life. Her pride. It was Deke's gift to her, and no one, not Francisco Gonzales or anyone else, was going to cheat her out of it.

"Reload!"

In response, Laura slapped the reloaded rifle into Deke's hand. As he handed her the empty Colt, their gazes locked. Only for an instant. Just long enough for him to flash her a quick grin. She knew it was absolute madness, insane beyond comprehension, but she smiled back.

Perhaps it was nothing more than a rush of false courage, some sort of numbness peculiar to shock, but Laura no longer quivered with terror. She suddenly felt invincible, and it seemed to her in those next few moments that there were worse fates than dying.

"Pick up the pace, Boston," he yelled at her. "You gotta start guardin' my back. We'll have company comin' in from the rear any second."

Laura wasn't sure she could work any faster than she already was. But she gave it her best, laid the reloaded Colt near Deke's leg, and drew hers from the holster to train it on the hillside.

"Think you can kill a man?" he asked in a lull between shots. "Wingin' him ain't good enough. You gotta make one shot count, and it's gotta keep him down."

Laura brushed hair from her eyes, her gaze still pinned on the hillside. Movement. She dropped to her butt, tucked a foot under her thigh, and braced her extended arms over an upraised knee to steady her aim. Seventy yards. It was a long shot, the kind only an expert marksman could take with any success. Sunlight glinted off the comanchero's rifle, a rifle she knew had four to five times the accurate reach of her weapon. Everything Deke had ever said to her went whispering through her mind. Windage and elevation. Not a man, a target. Total concentration. Don't shoot until you got a steady head. She clenched her teeth. Took a deep breath and exhaled, blocking out the sounds of gunfire. When her lungs were totally emptied, when absolute stillness settled within her body, she locked her muscles and smoothly pulled the trigger. The blast of the weapon imploded against her eardrums, seeming far louder and more deadly than it ever had.

Deke had the answer to his question. Her stomach lurched as her target rolled down the hillside, suddenly looking very like a human being.

"Don't think about it. You got him before he got one of us. Real simple, Boston." He cracked off another shot. Then his hand curled warmly over her shoulder to give it a quick squeeze. "You got a job to do, Laura, and I'm countin' on you. Reload!"

He laid the Henry next to her and picked up the Colt.

Chapter 27.

*Laura had never looked Death in the eye before, and when the moment finally arrived, she felt chilled and emptied. The ironic thing was, she and Deke might have held the comancheros off indefinitely if not for running low on ammunition. She had just loaded the Henry with the last of the rimfire cartridges, and Deke was firing those now. They had only one spare cylinder left for the Colt revolvers. Six cartridges, four of which had to be saved, one for each of them, counting Chief.

Hollow-eyed, Laura looked first at her baby, then at Deke. To take her child's life? Laura wasn't at all sure she could do something so monstrous. Yet she couldn't bear the thought of those horrible men getting their hands on him. There would be no trade made to the Indians this time. Laura knew Deke was right about that. Gonzales would be so enraged, he would take out his anger on anything that breathed when this battle was finished.

Laura curled her hand around the Colt revolver's smooth stock. Her baby. Oh, God, if there were only a way she might die first so she wouldn't have to live through this nightmare.

Deke's hand covered hers. She looked up and saw that the Henry lay empty beside him. Because of the comanchero gunfire all around them, she hadn't noticed the sudden cessation of shooting from behind the boulder. Deke. His eyes held hers, and Laura knew what he was about to do. How insane that she should feel relieved. But she did. Relieved and grateful because he had the strength to do what she feared she couldn't.

The ache in his gaze made her want to scream, to rail at God. He loved her and Jonathan so much. If ever she had doubted that, his selfless actions this morning, shielding them with his own body, had dispelled the notion. It wasn't fair that he should be forced to do something so utterly against nature. Not this man. Oh, how she wished she had the courage to put the Colt to her temple and pull the trigger herself. If she weren't such a coward, she would spare him that much, at least. It was enough that he had Jonathan and Chief to think about before himself.

"Deke. You don't have toI can do it if you'll just Jonathan, I can't"

He wrested the gun from her numb fingers and hooked an arm around her waist. How odd that she found sanctuary there in his embrace, just as she had so many other times. How insane that she should feel safe and loved and protected when she knew what he was about to do. He pressed his lips to her foreheadwarm, wonderful lips. Laura closed her eyes and concentrated on the heat of him, the solidness of him. Something cold pressed against her temple. She blocked the sensation out, shoved away the flash of terror that tried to clutch her. She wouldn't make this harder for him. She wouldn't.

"I love you, Deke," she managed to say, praying the sound of gunfire all around them hadn't drowned out her words.

She felt his chest jerk and knew he had heard, that he was sobbing. Making fists in his shirt, she clung to him, praying for courage, not for herself but for him. If he couldn't do this thing, then she would have to, and she wasn't at all sure she could. She felt him tense, heard the hammer click back, and she braced herself for the explosion of sound. It never came.

Suddenly Deke released her. Laura fell back and fastened questioning eyes on his dark face. A look of sheer incredulity swept across his features. The next instant, he brandished the Colt in the air and let loose with a high-pitched cry that turned her skin icy. That cry seemed to echo and reecho in the rolling hills around them. Laura blinked and cocked her bead, not trusting her ears. But the sound kept repeating itself.

Cheyenne war cries.

"Black Stone!" he cried. Then he drew her back into his arms for a hug that nearly crushed her ribs. "Laura, we're safe! It's Black Stone! He must've heard the shooting!"

Laura remembered Deke telling her how a single shot in these mountains could echo for miles, but even so, she could scarcely comprehend their reprieve. So close. Oh, God, they had come so close. She had heard Deke draw back the hammer of the Colt. In another second, he might have She shoved the thought away.

They scrambled to peer over the rock. Cheyenne warriors. Laura had never seen such a beautiful sight. They rode low along the backs of their ponies, shooting their rifles one-handed with terrifying accuracy. Panicked comancheros wriggled out from under brush and overhanging rocks. Laura realized she was screaming, with relief or terror, she didn't know, and clamped a hand over her mouth.

Seconds, minutes, hours. Time became meaningless, death the only measure. The comancheros, caught off guard and away from their horses, had no chance to flee. Black Stone and his horse soldiers cut them down, one after another, until their war cries drifted away to silence and the rifle fire became a memory in her stunned mind. When the warriors sprang from their horses to count coup, Laura turned away, feeling as though she might retch. She was acutely conscious that Deke sprang out from behind the rock to run down and greet his friends.

Friends who were peeling scalps from human heads as casually as she might the skin from an apple.

She heard her husband's voice, his words incomprehensible, his tone unmistakably jubilant. A moment later, she heard him give a victory yell and wondered if he had joined in the butchery. No, not Deke. Yet even as she assured herself of that, she knew she was kidding herself. As wonderful a man as Deke was, he was also very much a Cheyenne in his thinking, and to him, counting coup might be as much a part of battle as the actual fighting.

Frantically Laura tried to push away her revulsion and recall the village. Star and Sugar Girl. Medicine Woman and Muskrat. The cheerful fires that warmed the mountain night air. Good people, wonderful people. Their customs were simply different from her own.

In her attempt to block out the sickening pictures that formed in her mind every time she heard a victory cry ringing from the draw, Laura straightened her shoulders and took deep, cleansing breaths. As she did so, her gaze fell on the hillside behind the boulder, on the comanchero she had killed. Not a target, but a man. She stared at his outstretched arm, then at his hand. Blood stained his fingers.

Laura didn't have time to seek privacy in the bushes. Her stomach turned inside out with no warning, and she emptied its contents right there, kneeling beside her child. Her living child. A child who had nearly died. She should be elated. Thanking God. Thanking Black Stone. As Deke had said, he must have heard the shooting, and at great risk to himself and his men, he had come to their aid. She should be out there with them right now, expressing her gratitude, rejoicing with them.

Instead, she retched and retched until there was nothing more to come up. Death. It seemed to be all around her. When she finally lifted her head, she saw the man she had killed again and was stricken with dry heaves.

This wasn't real. None of it could be real because human beings didn't do things like this to one another. Only animals did, and she wasn't an animal. Yet she had taken another's life with scarcely a pause, her only thought at the time to place her bullet in a fatal spot. And, oh, God forgive her, she had done so.

After her nausea passed, Laura braced her hands on her knees and straightened, feeling oddly separate from reality. Shock? There was no other explanation for the numbness, for the feeling that nothing around her had substance. She braced her back against the boulder and drew the cradleboard across her lap.

Her baby was alive. That was all she must think about. A bad dream. That was all this was, and if she sat here long enough, the ugliness would slip away, just as it did when she awoke from nightmares.

The instant Deke returned to the boulder, he recognized Laura's symptoms and gently took the baby from her. Her fixed gaze was blank. Her face was deathly pale. A short distance away, he saw evidence that she had been violently ill. He wanted to kick himself for not staying here with her. He of all people knew how a person felt after that first battle, that there was little glory in it and a whole lot of regret. For someone of Laura's refined sensibilities, Deke guessed the horror would be doubled. To know she had taken a life. To see a number of other human beings killed. It was little wonder she stared at nothing now, apart from him and the ugliness that surrounded her.

Shrugging his shoulders into the cradleboard straps, Deke went to his horse and wrested his other saddlebag from under the dead animal. The instant he dived his hand into the pack, he felt dampness and knew his jug of liquor had been shattered. Christ. Laura needed a belt of whiskey to snap her out of it. Black Stone and his men had already made short work of a burial detail and were fleeing back into the foothills to put as much distance between themselves and Denver as they could before darkness fell.

The baby began to cry. Deke took him to Laura and was more relieved than he could say when she responded, albeit haltingly, to the child's wails. He left her to feed the baby while he stripped his dead horse and hid the riding gear under some brush. Next he caught Laura's gelding and made ready to ride. It wasn't far to Denver now. Not far at all.

Deke paused a moment to gaze eastward and remembered a time when he, like Laura, had emptied his belly after a battle. Nowadays he only got cold sweats, and he wasn't entirely sure that was a good thing. The years had turned him hard. The kill-or-be-killed existence here had somehow separated him from his own humanity, teaching him to rationalize and justify.

He took a deep breath and wiped his moist palms on his jeans. Cold sweats. Icy trickles running down his spine. It made him feel empty to remember the boy he had once been, because he bore no resemblance to him now.

Before dark, he would have Laura and the baby settled into a Denver hotel room for the night. She would feel safe there, embraced by a world that was familiar to her, a world where Deke had never been welcomed. Laura's world, not his.

The ache within him intensified. For as long as he lived, he would never forget that awful moment when he had pressed the barrel of the Colt to Laura's temple and drawn the hammer back. If Black Stone had arrived one second later, just one miserable second, Deke might have pulled that trigger. Every time he thought about it, his legs felt as if they turned to water.

Was this the kind of life he wanted for Laura? Recalling the blank look in her eyes, he knew the answer to that question. Loving a woman and possessing her, that was the easy part. Loving her enough to let her go. That took a little more doing.

Riding through miles of cotton. Entering Denver. People reeling to a stop on the boardwalks to stare at her Indian clothing. Laura was aware of it all, yet not. Deke, so patient and gentle, helping her off the horse, holding her close to his side as he entered the hotel and rented a room. Deke, carrying her up a long flight of stairs, peeling back the bedclothes, laying her on a wonderfully soft mattress covered with crisp sheets, drawing a blanket over her, stroking her hair. Deke, filling her mouth with whiskey, ordering her to swallow. Deke, gently putting the sleeping baby in her arms and whispering that he had errands to run.

He would be back soon, he said. Laura drifted to sleep, clutching her child and his promise close to her heart, too numb and exhausted to ask questions. All she wanted was to be unaware for a while, to let the awfulness of the day move away from her so she could awaken refreshed and begin to put it in perspective.

She would, she assured herself as she drifted into blessed slumber. Tomorrow she would be strong. Tomorrow she would look back on today and be able to make sense of it all. Tomorrow. But not right now.

Carrying a bundle of warm sandwiches under one arm and clothing for Laura and the baby under his other, Deke strode quickly along the boardwalk, anxious to get back to the hotel. When the dangling clapboard sign came into view, he quickened his pace. He knew Laura was probably sleeping peacefully, just as she had been when he left her, and that she would awaken if Jonathan began to cry. If anyone tried to disturb her, Deke had left Chief in the room to stand guard. But even so, he couldn't shake the feeling that he should hurry back to her. Because of that, he had bypassed the telegraph office. He would check to see if there had been any dispatches received from her father in the morning.

As he stepped into the dimly lit hotel lobby, Deke saw two well-dressed, gray-haired gentlemen rise from the horsehair sofa at the opposite side of the room, but he didn't pay much attention until the more slender of the two stepped into his path, blocking his way to the stairs.

"Pardon me. Are you Deke Sheridan, by any chance?"

Deke focused on the man's face. After taking a long, hard look into a pair of amber-colored eyes that were uncannily familiar, he swallowed hard and said, "Yep, that's my name. What can I do for you?"

Deke knew. Oh, yes, he knew. And he felt as if his heart were lying on the floor at his feet. The man was dressed in an expensive charcoal suit with a matching silk vest that boasted a gold watch chain held just so by a diamond stickpin. A diamond, for Christ's sake.

"I understand that you were hired as a tracker by a woman named Laura Cheney?"

"That's right."

"I'm her father, Sterling Van Hauessen."

Laura's father, here in Denver. It was a sign, surely. Not just money in response to her wire, which she could have accepted or sent back, but her father, in the flesh. He had obviously come all this way for only one reason, to take his daughter and grandson back with him to Boston. Good old Boston, where the chairs were covered in finest velvet, where the ladies wore silk dresses and fluttered perfumed lace handkerchiefs in front of their noses when men like Deke walked past them on the street.

Still so Indian in his thinking, Deke was a believer in signs, lightning to herald the birth of a great warrior, the daytime sightings of owls to portend death. His head was chock-full of superstitions. Laura's father, answering her wire in person. It was a sign Deke couldn't ignore, a portent of death for him, but of life for Laura and Jonathan.

For two days he had tortured himself with the question. Should I send her back home? Sterling Van Hauessen's appearance in Denver answered that question.

Loving someone as deeply as he loved Laura wasn't always enough, Deke realized. Sometimes things weren't meant to be, no matter how right they seemed.

In a split second that seemed to Deke an eternity, all his hopes and dreams turned to dust, and he accepted that this was the end. Laura ... being with her. He likened their time together to a flower in springtime, glorious while in bloom, but destined to wither. None of the truly beautiful things in his life seemed to last long.

"Mr. Van Hauessen," he replied solemnly. Looking into those amber eyes, Deke noted a marked difference from Laura's. Van Hauessen's eyes were cold. Cold and calculating. The eyes of a man who had lost his heart. Deke knew he couldn't allow himself to think about that. For Laura's sake, he had to accept this with whatever grace he could muster. She would never leave him, otherwise. No matter how cold a man Van Hauessen was, he could give Laura things Deke couldn't.

Shifting his packages, Deke extended his hand in greeting. "Pleased to meet ya." He turned an expectant gaze to the other gentleman who approached from his right, a short, round man with a crescent of gray hair that extended from ear to ear around an otherwise bald head.

"Sheldon Becker," the man introduced himself coolly. "An old friend of the family, and soon to be Mrs. Cheney's intended, I hope."

Sheldon Becker. Deke's guts clenched, and he resisted the impulse to say, "Old is right. Old enough to be her father." He ran his gaze over the man's elegant black frock coat and cutaway suit. Money. Both men reeked of it. In Boston, Laura and Jonathan would have luxuries Deke could never even dream of giving them. He wouldn't allow himself to picture Laura suffering Becker's touch. His beautiful Laura, buried under all that fat. The thought made Deke feel physically sick. But if that ended up being Laura's choice, it was not Deke's place to stand in her way.

Keeping his voice carefully friendly, Deke gestured toward the adjoining bar. "I think we need to talk, Mr. Van Hauessen. There's some things you need to know before you see your daughter."

And so it was that Deke led the way into the watering hole, familiar territory to him, yet oddly strange, possibly because the two men accompanying him made him feel like a dirty sock. He wanted to hide his scarred hands. En route to a table, he found himself wishing that he had stopped someplace for a wash and shave, maybe even for a haircut and respectable clothes. But he had done none of those things, and even if he had, he doubted it would make a difference. He was who he was, and fancy trimming would never change that.

As they approached an empty table, Deke yelled for a jug and three glasses. Taking one of the four chairs for himself, Deke placed his packages on another, then motioned for each of his companions to grab a seat. After the barkeep served them, Deke uncorked the bottle with his teeth and sloshed a measure of whiskey into each tumbler. With his every movement, he was aware that Van Hauessen and Becker watched him with appalled expressions on their faces.

Deke slid them each a glass and lifted his own. "Here's lookin' at ya." He tossed the whiskey down in one gulp, said "ahhhh," and bared his clenched teeth as the burn spread to his guts. "Not bad stuff," he said with a whistle.

The two Bostonians regarded him with their eyebrows raised and took precise little sips of their liquor, pinkies extended, diamonds flashing on their fingers, Van Hauessen's slender, Becker's pudgy. Deke decided he didn't feel quite so out of place as he had at the three-fork supper party, but close.

How to tell Sterling Van Hauessen that he had married his daughter, that was the question. And it didn't seem to Deke there was an easy answer. No matter how gently he tried to put it, Laura's father was not going to react calmly to the news. Deke knew that just by looking into the man's eyes. He was already about to choke just at the thought of Laura being in Deke's company for five weeks. When he learned she had also shared Deke's bed, things were bound to get ugly.

In the end, Deke chose to be direct and to the point. "Mr. Van Hauessen, you ain't gonna like this none too good, but I can't think of a easy way to say it. While Laura and me was in the foothills with the Cheyenne, we got married."

Silence. Van Hauessen simply stared. Becker frowned, as if he had heard but couldn't quite credit his ears.

"I beg your pardon?" Van Hauessen finally said.

"We got married," Deke repeated.

Becker flung himself back in his chair and barked with laughter. "You? You and Laura?" He pressed a hand over his jiggling belly. "Oh, Lord, that is rich." Glancing at Van Hauessen, he said, "He's lying through his teeth. Whom could they have found to witness the vows? They were out in the middle of nowhere!"

Deke didn't appreciate being called a liar. But he struggled to stay calm. For Laura. Because she would be the only one hurt if this turned ugly. "We was married the Cheyenne way," he explained.

Again Becker laughed. "The Cheyenne way? Please, do enlighten us. Did you jump over a rope together? Or cut your thumbs and mix your blood?" His fat face suddenly went hard and contorted. "Or do Cheyenne warriors just drag a girl off somewhere and rape her, then call it a marriage?"

Deke looked at Van Hauessen. In a low-pitched, expressionless voice, he said, "I think you'd best invite your friend to leave."

Becker didn't take the hint. His jowls aquiver with outrage, he leaned forward and planted a fist on the table. "You dare to sit there and tell us that Laura agreed to marry you? You? My God. I've never heard anything quite so absurd."

Deke felt his guts tightening and knew he couldn't take much more of this without losing his temper. "That's what I'm tellin' you."

Becker snorted. "And did you remove that monstrous hat during the ceremony? Where did you get that feather? From the ass of a molting eagle?"

That cut it. For Laura's sake, Deke had tried to be civil, but men like these would keep pushing until he pushed back. He fixed Becker with a hard, flat gaze. With slow, deliberate movements, he removed his Stetson and placed it on the table. "I only take off my hat when I'm fixin' to stomp somebody's ass," he said with biting clarity.

Becker immediately sobered. Van Hauessen sniffed and gave his glass a slow turn. When he lifted his gaze to Deke again, he said, "There is no need for this conversation to become unpleasant."

"I agree," Deke replied. "Like I suggested a second ago, maybe you and me oughta finish talkin' alone. It don't seem to me that Mr. Becker's got any business hearin' what's gonna be said anyhow."

Van Hauessen's gray mustache twitched. "As Mr. Becker said, he has every hope of becoming Laura's intended. That gives him a certain interest in matters."

Deke bit down hard on his back teeth. Laura was right; her father was unbearably pompous. "Yeah, well, Mr. Becker here is liable to change his mind about wantin' to be her intended if he finds out later that she's got a loaf of my bread bakin' in her oven."