The Touch of Fire Read online

  “P-please, can’t we stop for the night and build a f-fire?” she blurted, and was startled to hear her own voice. The words seemed to have come of their own volition.

  “No.” Just that one word, flat and implacable.

  “P-please,” she said again, and was aghast to realize she was begging. “I’m so c-c-cold.”

  He turned his head and looked at her. She couldn’t see his features under the brim of his hat, only the faint gleam of his eyes. “We can’t stop yet.”

  “Then w-when?”

  “When I say.”

  But he didn’t say, not during those endlessly long, increasingly cold hours. The horses’ breath rose in clouds of steam. The pace had necessarily slowed to a walk as the way became increasingly steep, and several times he had to unloop her reins and hold them in his hand, leading her horse directly behind him in single file. Annie tried to estimate the passage of time, but found that physical misery distorted all perception of it. She would force herself to wait until she had thought an hour had passed, then look at the moon, only to find that it had barely moved since the last time she had looked.

  Her feet were so cold that every movement of her toes was agony. Her legs quivered with exertion, for caution forced her to use them to stay in the saddle since her hands were largely useless. Her throat and lungs felt raw from the cold, and each breath rasped the delicate tissues. She turned up the collar of her coat and tried to draw her head down within its protection so the air she breathed would be warmer, but the coat kept gaping open and she didn’t dare turn loose of the saddle horn to hold it together.

  In silent desperation she fastened her eyes on the broad back in front of her. If he could keep going, sick and wounded as he was, then she could, too. But dogged pride, she found, helped for only so long before sheer physical misery overwhelmed it. Damn him, why didn’t he stop?

  * * *

  Rafe had divorced his mind from his physical discomfort, focusing all of his concentration on putting distance between himself and Trahern. The bounty hunter would be able to track him to Silver Mesa; Rafe had discovered a bent nail on the bay’s right front shoe that would have left marks like signposts to a good tracker, which Trahern was. The first thing he’d done in Silver Mesa was find the blacksmith and have the bay reshod. He didn’t care if Trahern discovered that, for it wouldn’t make any difference; there wouldn’t be any way to tell which of the myriad tracks around the smithy belonged to the bay, assuming any of the bay’s tracks were left by the time Trahern got to Silver Mesa, and that was highly unlikely. It was impossible to track someone through a busy town, because tracks were constantly being smeared and overlaid with new ones.

  At first Trahern would ride a wide circle around the town, looking for that telltale bent nail. When he didn’t find it, he’d go into Silver Mesa and start asking questions, but he’d hit a dead end at the smithy. Rafe had rode directly out of town after having the bay reshod, back in the direction from which he’d entered. Then he had left the bay tethered and reentered the town on foot, taking care not to bring attention to himself. During the war he’d learned that the easiest way to disguise yourself was by mingling with a crowd. In a boomtown like Silver Mesa, no one paid any mind to one more stranger, especially one who didn’t make eye contact or speak to anyone.

  He had intended only to get bandages and carbolic wash for disinfectant, and his purpose for doing so anonymously was to keep Trahern from knowing how sick he felt. An enemy could take any small scrap of information and use it to his advantage. But caution had made him check out the entire town first, looking for alternate ways of escape if it should become necessary, and he’d seen the roughly lettered sign of Dr. A. T. Parker.

  He had watched for a while, considering the risk. The doctor didn’t seem to be in; a few people had knocked on the door, then gone away when the knocks went unanswered.

  He had begun shivering while he watched from concealment, and this further evidence of his rising fever had decided the issue for him. He had gone back for the bay and put it in the shed with what had to have been the doctor’s horse, indicating that the sawbones was somewhere in town. The doctor’s office was set off by itself, a good hundred yards from the next building, and a stand of trees shielded the horse shed from view, so he felt safe in waiting there. From what he had observed, it was customary for folks to knock on the door rather than just go inside, which struck him as odd but suited his purposes. When he entered, he found that the sawbones evidently lived in the back room, which was explanation enough for the strange formality of knocking on the door of a doctor’s office. Maybe the doc was a tad fussy, but Rafe allowed folks their foibles.

  The neat little surgery and back room had enforced his impression of fastidiousness. There were no personal belongings left strewn around, other than a serviceable hairbrush and some books; the narrow cot was neatly made, the single dish and cup washed and dried. He hadn’t looked through the physician’s clothes—if he had he would have known that she was female, or at least that a female was living in the back room, maybe to take care of the doctor’s needs.

  There were orderly rows of small pots in all the windowsills, with a variety of plants growing in them. The air had smelled both fresh and spicy. An apothecary’s cabinet had been stocked with herbs either dried or powdered, and gauze bags filled with other plants had been hung in the coolest, darkest corner. Each bag and drawer had been clearly labeled in block printing.

  Waves of dizziness had kept rolling over him and at length he had had to sit down. He thought about just taking what he needed from the doctor’s supplies and leaving without anyone being the wiser, but it felt so damn good just to rest that he kept telling himself he’d sit there for just a few minutes longer.

  That unusual lassitude, more than anything, was what had finally convinced him to stay and see the doctor.

  Every time footsteps had sounded on the porch he had eased into a corner, but after the knock went unanswered the would-be patients had gone away. The last time, however, there hadn’t been a knock; the door had opened and a thin, tired-looking woman had entered, carrying a huge black bag.

  Now she was riding behind him, grimly hanging on to the saddle, her face white and pinched with cold. He knew she had to be frightened, but there was no way he could convince her he didn’t mean her any harm, so he didn’t try. In a few days, maybe a week, when he was well, he’d take her back to Silver Mesa. Trahern would already have left, having lost the trail with no way of picking it up again until he got news of Rafe’s whereabouts. Rafe intended to make certain that didn’t happen for a while. He’d change his name again, maybe get a different horse, though he hated to get rid of the bay.

  Forcing her to go with him wasn’t so great a risk; with her horse gone, folks would just think that she was out treating someone. Maybe they’d get curious when she didn’t show up in a day or so, but there was nothing in the cabin to give alarm, no sign of struggle or violence. Since she hadn’t left her black bag behind, people would logically assume that she was merely attending to some distant patient.

  In the meantime, he could do with a few days’ rest. He could feel the fever burning through him, feel the burning ache in his side, though the quality of that ache seemed to be changing as the burn became more of a drawing sensation. She had been right about his condition; only sheer determination had kept him going, was keeping him going now.

  There was an old trapper’s sod hut up here some-where; he’d seen it a few years back, before Silver Mesa had even existed. It was damn hard to find; he only hoped he remembered its location closely enough to pinpoint it. The old geezer had partially dug out a bank and buried the back half of the hut in it, and the foliage grew so thick around it that a man had to practically walk into it before he saw it.

  The hut was abandoned, or had been when he’d seen it. It wouldn’t be in good shape, but it would give him a place out of the weather. At least the damn thing had a fireplace, and the trees above it would disperse t