A Wolf In The Desert

“If I let you go, will you not fight me?”

Patience didn’t answer. She looked at Blue Doggie lying in the dirt, at the others squabbling over her possessions. What choice did she have but to give a conditional agreement. “Let me go, I won’t fight you.”

He didn’t release her. “Tell me your name.”

“My name?” She looked once more into the handsome face. “What does it matter?”

“Tell me your name,” he insisted softly.

“Patience,” she snapped. “Patience O’Hara.”

“Give me your word you won’t fight me, Patience O’Hara.”

“What is this? Honor among scum?”

“Honor, yes, between you and me.” His gaze was a black laser, leaving no hint of expression undiscovered. “Your word, Patience?”

Her ribs hurt, she couldn’t catch a deep breath. In another minute she would be swooning in his arms. Even a stubborn O’Hara knew when she’d lost. Patience shrugged and agreed. “You have my word.”

Once again the dark eyes searched her face, seeking the lie. “Good,” he said, and released her. “I think you’re a woman who keeps her word.”

She stumbled away from him, folding her arms around her ribs as she sucked in hungry breaths. He made a concerned move toward her. When she jerked away he stepped back, murmuring, “I’m sorry I hurt you.”

“Think nothing of it,” she flared. “I knew there were snakes in the desert, until now I didn’t realize one was an anaconda.”

He didn’t smile. She hadn’t meant it as a joke. For a long moment he stared at her, his arms hanging at his sides. A trick of the moon painted his face in sadness. “I won’t hurt you again.”

Patience straightened, her breathing an even rhythm. Her head was back, her chin tilted at an angle. “Do you have a name?”

“I am called Indian.”

“What kind of name is that?”

“Mine.”

“Indian and what else?”

“Just Indian, no more.”

It wasn’t his real name, she realized, nor his only name. But, perhaps, it was enough. Certainly it was fitting, even too fitting among this cabal who found anonymity in flamboyant and garish aliases. Custer was no soldier, and Snake no reptile that crawled. Blue Doggie was an animal, but not blue until she’d battered his larynx. This man, who walked the desert as if it were his home, looked the part of his name. With silvery black hair clubbed at his nape and his chiseled features, he could have stepped out of the pages of history.

“All right,” she said when her study of him was done. “If that’s all there is, it will have to do.” Her eyes narrowed, her gaze locked with his. “Give me your word, Just Indian.”

He smiled then, a smile that did wonderful things to his striking features even in the garish shadows of the moon. Another time, another place, another person, Patience would have been astounded, but not now. Not here. “Give me your word.”

His smile vanished. “I think you will prove a formidable adversary.”

“Count on it.”

“In that case, you have my word.” He offered his hand, when she took it his fingers closed over hers in a strong clasp. A flash of anger crossed his face as he looked down at broken nails and bruises and the drying blood of cuts from splintering glass. But when he spoke again the anger was hidden. “Come, there is more we have to do.”

“What might that be?”

“You’ll see.” When she resisted, jerking away from him, in the same quiet voice he’d used to reason with his companions he said, “You have a choice. Indian, or the rest of them, which will it be?”

She hesitated, weighing choices that weren’t choices. When she put her battered hand in his again, it was her life, as well.

“No matter what I say, no matter what I do,” he said softly, “remember I will never hurt you.”

He led her then to the center of the road, waiting in silence for the revelers to attend him. Slowly, one by one, they turned, curious looks on their faces. When all was quiet he spoke. “Blue Doggie lies there in the gutter, felled by the woman. She would have escaped, I stopped her. By our law that makes her mine to do with as I wish.”

“Law! What law?” Patience whirled on him, her protest lost in the roar of complaint from the bikers.

Indian ignored them, he ignored her. Keeping her hand firmly in his, he addressed Custer, the leader, with the stilted formality of a declaration. “She is a woman befitting a warrior. From now and for as long as I wish, she will be my woman.”

Patience stared at him, for once she was speechless.

Turning to her, meeting her stunned gaze, into a hostile hush he declared, “Only mine.”

Two

“All right, Just Indian, what the devil was that all about?”

As they moved beyond the hearing of capering, beer-guzzling revelers, Patience ripped away from the grasp that guided her over a nearly hidden stretch of rough terrain that separated his bike from the others. A grasp, if she could believe her own muddled perceptions and trust this man called Indian, that was solicitous rather than restraining.

But she didn’t trust him. She wouldn’t trust anyone until she walked out of the desert, free and unharmed.

Spinning around in front of his bike she faced him, bootheels digging into crumbling soil, fisted hands at her hips. “What was that gibberish about laws?”

“Sticks in your craw, doesn’t it? Being called my woman,” he asked quietly. Before she could lash out again, he added just as quietly, “It isn’t gibberish.”

“It isn’t gibberish when a pack of lawless morons prattle about laws?” The moon was fully risen. A perfect leviathan ball hanging in the sky, half as bright as the sun, painting the desert in sharp silvered edges and inky pools. In an eerie moonscape he loomed over her, as somber as the land in the night shade of a saguaro. More than half a foot taller and an easy sixty pounds heavier, he was an intimidating figure, but she was too indignant to be intimidated. “Law,” she snarled. “From creatures who give themselves animal names and play at being human?”

His hands shot out of shadow, catching her shoulders in a firm hold. “I brought you out here to talk to you, not quarrel, you hotheaded little fool. So shut up and listen before you make matters worse than they are already.”

“Worse!” Patience flung back her head, her eyes blazing. “What could be worse? Stranded in the desert. Harassed, attacked. Pawed and fondled. Fought over by mad dogs. Parceled off like a...” She cast about her mind, searching for the ultimate insult.

“Like a squaw?” Indian supplied.

“Exactly.” Patience’s breath hissed through clenched teeth. “Why don’t you explain what could possibly be worse than being your squaw.”

“Hush! Now!” He shook her, just once, but it was enough to signal how near he’d come to the end of his tolerance. “Put a check on your Irish temper and shut that pretty little mouth or I’ll...”

“You’ll what? Hit me? Ravish me? Or do you plan to threaten me to death?” Her chin lifted a notch, her voice was laced with contempt. “So much for Indian’s word.”

“Damn you!” His fingers bit into her shoulders, driving closely trimmed nails into her flesh as he moved closer and into the light. His chest heaved in controlled anger, his body was as unrelenting as stone. “I’m not going to hit you, or ravish you. And anything I say will be fact or promise, never threat. Yes, I gave you my word on it before. I’ve kept my part of the bargain.”

“And I didn’t?”