The Touch of Fire

  There was still that feminine fastidiousness about her that made her always look neat and fresh, but she was infinitely more relaxed, and even seemed happy. He wondered about that, because he had thought the loss of her medical practice would constantly chafe at her. But all of this was still new; the fascination of it would wear off, and that was when she would miss the career for which she had trained her entire life.

  “What do you like most about it?” he asked lazily.

  “The freedom.” She smiled at him.

  “We’re on the run. Does that feel free to you?”

  “All of this feels free to me.” She waved her hand at the enormous landscape surrounding them. “Everything is bigger than life. And there are no rules; we can do whatever we want.”

  “There are always rules. It’s just that they’re a different set of rules. Back in Philadelphia you couldn’t go without your petticoat; here, you don’t go without your weapons.”

  “In Philadelphia, I would have to bathe behind a locked door.” She pointed to where the small stream they had camped beside widened into a pool just big enough for bathing. “Here, there are no doors to lock.”

  The expression in his pale eyes changed at the mention of bathing. The past several days, since her menses had started, had been increasingly frustrating. If she stripped off naked, as he suspected she intended, he would be reduced to beating his head against a rock somewhere to take his mind off his clamoring needs. A man on the trail got used to long periods without a woman, but damn if having one wasn’t the easiest thing in the world to get accustomed to again. The tyrant in his pants had come to expect frequent loving attention, and had been making Rafe miserable.

  She smiled at him, slowly and sweetly. “Why don’t you take a bath with me.” It wasn’t a question. She began unbuttoning her blouse as she walked down to the curve in the stream where it deepened and widened.

  Rafe found himself on his feet, his heart beating hard. “Are you all right now?” he asked in a hoarse voice. “Because if you take off your clothes in front of me I’m going to be inside you, honey, whether you are or not.”

  She smiled over her shoulder. Her dark eyes looked soft and sleepy. The seductiveness of it slammed into his gut. Damn, how had a woman who had been so innocent such a short time ago learned how to do that?

  “I’m fine,” she said.

  The answer, of course, was that he had made damn certain she lost that innocence. He had made love to her so many times and so many ways over the past weeks that sometimes he had felt drugged with sex. And women were natural seductresses, even when they didn’t know what they were doing. Just being female made them seductive, nature’s lodestone that drew men like flies to honey.

  Not even his surging lust could make him forget the need for caution. He doused the fire so it couldn’t be spotted in the deepening shadows, even though he hadn’t seen any signs of their being followed, and carried both rifle and pistol with him down to the stream, where he placed them within easy reach. He didn’t take his eyes off Annie as he began stripping.

  She had removed her blouse, then paused to work her hair free from the braid. Her raised arms lifted and exposed her breasts, barely covered as they were by the thin shift. Her nipples, already erect, pressed against the cloth. Rafe felt dizzy from the rush of blood through his body.

  He forced himself to look away, and inhaled deeply to steady himself. He took a slow, careful look around to make certain no danger was threatening, and returned to the task of undressing just as Annie was wading naked into the pool, carrying her clothes. Her round, dimpled buttocks made him dizzy all over again.

  The little pool at its deepest was only knee high, and it felt freezing after the spring heat of the sun. Annie bit back a squeal and with her foot found a smooth area in which to sit. She caught her breath and did so. It was a good thing she had taken a deep breath, because the coldness of the water temporarily deprived her of the ability.

  Cold or not, she couldn’t pass up the opportunity to bathe and wash her clothes. She lathered up the bar of soap in her hand and began the laundry.

  She looked up as Rafe waded into the pool. He didn’t seem to even notice the temperature of the water. His eyes were intent, and he was fully aroused. Annie’s breath caught again at the power of his muscled body. She began to have doubts about finishing the chore first.

  “Bring your clothes,” she said. “They need washing.”

  “Later.” His voice was guttural.

  “Clothes first.”

  “Why?” He sat down in the water and reached for her. Then suddenly the temperature of the water got through to him and his eyes widened as he said, “Shit!” explosively.

  She tried to control her shivers by scrubbing harder. “It’ll probably take that long to get used to the water, for one thing. For another, if I don’t wash the clothes first, they won’t get done. Do you honestly expect me to have the energy to wash clothes afterward?”

  “I don’t think I can get that used to the water,” he muttered. “Hell, we might as well do laundry.”

  She hid her smile as he stood up and reached for his clothes, dragging them into the water. He was shivering, too. He was scowling as he took the soap and began scrubbing his own garments.

  After a few minutes, though, the water didn’t seem as cold, and the warmth of the setting sun on her bare shoulders was a delicious contrast. As she finished rinsing each garment she wrung it out and tossed it onto a bush growing alongside the stream. Rafe did the same, and soon the bush was almost flattened beneath the weight of wet clothing. She began soaping herself, and the friction of her hands sliding over her skin added to the warmth.

  She wasn’t surprised when Rafe’s hands joined hers, or at the places he elected to wash. She turned into his arms and his mouth came down hard on hers. The familiar taste of him was like heaven. The restrictions of the past few days had been frustrating for her, too. Without preliminaries he pulled her astride his thighs and onto his thrusting erection.

  It had been only a few days, but she was shocked anew at the almost unbearable fullness. How had she forgotten? She couldn’t move; she felt as if he stretched her to the limit, that any motion would result in pain. But his hands were on her buttocks, moving her, and there was no pain, only the overwhelming sense of being penetrated and filled. She collapsed weakly against him, her face buried in the warm flesh of his throat.

  “I thought the water was too cold,” she managed to murmur.

  His reply was deep and rough. “What water?”

  Afterward she walked on trembling legs back to the camp, shivering again as the cooling air washed over her wet flesh. She wished she had thought to carry a blanket to the stream so she wouldn’t have had to make the short trip while naked. She dried off and hurried into clean clothing.

  It was later than when Rafe normally insisted they move camp after having eaten, but she didn’t suggest remaining where they were. He’d taught her the value of always being cautious. Without protest she began gathering up their wet clothing and various other articles while he resaddled the horses. Twilight was rapidly fading into true darkness as he led them to a secure place to bed down for the night.

  Before she got between the blankets that night, she reached under her skirt and untied her drawers, then stepped daintily out of them. Rafe joined her under the blankets and twice during the night demonstrated his appreciation of the convenience.

  He had hoped, since there were only two of them, that they would be able to slip through the Apache lands without seeing or being seen by anyone. It would have been much more difficult for a larger party to travel undetected, but entirely possible for one or two people to do so. It required caution, but Rafe was a cautious man.

  The Apache were nomads, wandering wherever the food supply led them. The bands were never large, seldom over two hundred people, since that many would have made fast movement impossible. But the Apache didn’t have to be a large band to be dangerous to white people.
Cochise, chief of the Chiricahua, had been fighting for his land against the white man for as long as Rafe could remember hearing about it. Before Cochise, it had been Mangas Coloradas, his father-in-law. Geronimo led his own band. Anyone with a brain in their heads would go out of their way to avoid the Apache.

  With that in mind, he had developed the habit of going ahead to check out the water sources before he allowed Annie anywhere near. The roaming bands of Apache also had to have water, so the most logical place for them to set up their temporary camps was near a stream. The next day, he was glad of his caution when, lying flat on his belly just at the rise of a hill, he eased his head around a rock just enough to see and found himself looking down at an Apache camp. For a moment sheer terror held him paralyzed, for it was almost impossible for a man to get this close, and slip away again, without being detected. The dogs would bark, the horses would shy, the ever-alert warriors would see him. He began swearing silently as he eased back behind the rock.

  There were no shouts of alarm, though, and he forced himself to lie completely still until the tremors in his legs had calmed. If he managed to get back to Annie, he’d take her and ride as hard and fast in the opposite direction as the horses would go. If he got back to Annie . . . God, what would happen to her if he were captured? She was alone out there, well hidden and protected for the moment, but she would never be able to find her way back to civilization.

  The camp was one of the smaller ones. He tried to fix in his mind how many wickiups there had been, but panic had blotted out everything but the overall impression. And come to think of it, there hadn’t been many people around; did that mean that the warriors were out hunting, or perhaps on a war party?

  Taking even more care this time, he took another look. He counted nineteen wickiups, a small band even if he figured five people for each dwelling. There was almost no activity, in itself unusual because the women always had work to do even if the warriors were gone. There should be children playing, but he saw only two small boys and they seemed to be doing nothing more than quietly sitting. Behind the camp, in a bend where the grasses grew sweeter, were the band’s horses. Rafe estimated the number of the remuda and a frown drew his brows together. Unless this band was unusually rich in horses, the warriors were in camp. It didn’t make sense.

  An old woman, bent and gray, hobbled to a wickiup carrying a wooden bowl. Now Rafe noticed a black spot where a wickiup had been burned. There had been a death in the camp. Then he saw another black spot. And another one.

  There were likely to be more. There was sickness in that camp.

  He felt a cold knot in the pit of his stomach as he thought of the possible diseases. Smallpox was what came to mind first, for it had decimated every Indian band it had touched. Plague, cholera . . . it could be anything.

  He bellied down from the rise and carefully worked his way back to where he had left his horse. He and Annie would give the camp a wide berth.

  She was waiting exactly where he had left her, concealed from the sun by rocks and trees. She was half-dozing in the noon heat, languidly fanning herself with her hat, but she sat up as he approached.

  “There’s a band of Apache about five miles east. We’ll head due south for about ten, fifteen miles, then cut east.”

  “Apache.” Her cheeks paled a little. Like everyone out West, she had heard tales of how the Apache tortured their captives.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, wanting to reassure her. “I saw their camp. I think most of them are sick with something. There were only a couple of kids and one old woman moving around, and there were several burned wickiups. That’s what the Apache do when there’s been a death; everyone else in the family moves out of the wickiup and they burn it to the ground.”

  “Sickness?” Annie felt herself go even whiter as she felt a horrible decision yawning at her feet like an abyss. She was a physician. The oath she had taken hadn’t made any distinction between white, black, yellow, or red. Her duty was to help the sick and injured in any way she could, but she had never imagined that that duty would take her into an Apache camp knowing that she might never leave it.

  “Forget it,” Rafe said sharply as he read her mind. “You’re not going in there. There’s nothing you can do anyway; disease seems to go through Indians like a hot knife through butter. And you don’t know what it is. What if it’s cholera, or the plague?”

  “What if it isn’t?”

  “Then it’s most likely smallpox.”

  She gave him a wry little smile. “I’m the daughter of a physician, remember; I’ve been vaccinated against smallpox. My father was a firm believer in Dr. Jenner’s methods.”

  Rafe didn’t know if he trusted Dr. Jenner’s vaccination theories, especially where Annie’s life was concerned. “We aren’t going in there, Annie.”

  ‘We weren’t going anyway. I don’t see any need for you to be exposed to whatever illness it is.”

  “No,” he said firmly. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “I’m a doctor. Do you think I haven’t done this before?”

  “Not with Apache, you haven’t.”

  “True, but they’re sick. You said so yourself. And there are children in that camp, children who might die if I don’t do what I can.”

  “If it’s cholera or plague, there isn’t anything to be done.”

  “But it might not be that. And I’m very healthy; I never get sick, I haven’t even had a cold since . . . why, I don’t remember the last time.”

  “I’m not talking about a cold, damn it.” He caught her chin and turned her face up to his. “This is serious. I won’t let you risk your life.”

  His eyes had gone so cold that she almost shivered, but she couldn’t back down. “I have to,” she replied softly. “I can’t pick and choose those I’ll aid; that would make a mockery of my training, my oath. I’m either a doctor or I’m . . . nothing.”

  His mental rejection of her intention was so violent that he had to clench his fists to keep from grabbing her. By God, he wouldn’t let her enter that camp if he had to tie her on that horse and not let her loose until they reached Juarez.

  “I have to go,” she repeated. Her dark eyes were bottomless, drawing him down into her soul.

  He didn’t know how it happened. Knowing that it was stupid, knowing that he shouldn’t let her get within a mile of that camp, he gave in.

  “Then we’ll both go.”

  She touched his face. “There’s no need.”

  “I’ll decide what the need is. If you ride into that camp, I’ll be riding right beside you. The only way to keep me out is if you stay out too.”

  “But what if it is smallpox?”

  “I had it when I was five; a very mild case. No scars. I’m a lot safer from it than you are with your pin scratches.”

  Knowing that he had had smallpox was a relief, if he insisted in going into the camp with her as she knew he would. “You can stay back while I go in and see what it is.”

  He shook his head. “You aren’t riding in alone.”

  They stared at each other, equally stubborn. Because he had given in on the first issue, Annie gave in on the second.

  The dogs did come running, barking furiously, when they rode into the camp. The two little boys looked terrified and ran. The old woman Rafe had seen earlier came out of a wickiup, a different one from the one he had seen her enter before, and she too ran as fast as she could.

  No one else came out of the wickiups.

  Annie was terrified of what they would find when they entered the dwellings. Visions of bloated bodies lying in black vomit floated in her mind, and she knew that sometimes it wasn’t a good thing to know so much, for her imagination could conjure up all the hideous symptoms.

  The first wickiup they came to was as good a place as any to start. Rafe reined in and she followed suit, sliding out of the saddle. She started for the flap of hide that covered the entrance and he reached out, halting her with a firm grip. He tucked her behind him, then opened
the flap himself and looked inside. Two people lay on the blankets. They were covered with spots.

  “It looks like smallpox,” he reported grimly. If it was, they were wasting their time and Annie was wasting her energy. Unlike the white man, who had built up a certain resistance to the disease after thousands of years of exposure, the Indian hadn’t come into contact with it until the white man brought it, and he had no resistance at all.

  Annie ducked under his arm and into the wickiup before he could grab her. She knelt beside one of the still figures, a woman, and carefully examined the spots that dotted her skin. She sniffed the air. “It isn’t smallpox,” she said absently. Smallpox had a distinctive odor that was missing.

  “Then what is it?”

  The spots on the woman’s skin had turned black, indicating hemorrhaging. Annie put her hand to the woman’s forehead and felt the fever burning there. Black eyes slowly opened and stared at her, but they were dull and uncomprehending.

  “Black measles,” she said. “They have measles.”

  It wasn’t as deadly as smallpox, but it was serious enough. The complications from measles killed a lot of people. She wheeled on Rafe. “Have you had measles too?”

  “Yeah. Have you?”

  “Yes, I’ll be fine.” She stepped out of that wickiup and began going from one to another, lifting the flaps and looking inside all of them. There were two, three, four people inside each of them, most of them in various stages of the disease. The old woman they had seen earlier cowered in one. A few people were tending the sick, but with a hopelessness that prevented them from even showing alarm at the sudden appearance of two of the white devils, or perhaps those still on their feet were in the first stages and felt ill too. The two little boys they had seen seemed to be all right, and there were two toddlers and a baby who didn’t have the telltale spots. The baby was wailing, an unusual thing in an Apache camp. She stepped inside and lifted the infant, who immediately stopped squalling and stared up at her with innocent, solemn eyes. The baby’s mother was so listless with fever that she could barely lift her eyelids.