A Warrior's Vow

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 matter of simple mathematics. The boy already has a twelve-hour head start on us. Add another eight or nine hours and the kid’s been out in the open for almost twenty-four hours already. We have to catch up with him soon, and we won’t be able to if I’m busy picking you up off the ground.”

Though Leeza watched him warily, Daggert didn’t look at her as he bent over his own plate and resumed his careful eating. She dipped up a forkful of the pasta and tasted it. She was surprised at how delicious it was. If Daggert dared smile, she’d give the plate of pasta to his dog rather than continue to eat it herself, but he didn’t. He merely finished his dinner in a silence that almost felt easy.

And she was hungrier than she’d thought, for within seconds, her plate was empty, too.

“Thank you,” she said finally, relinquishing it into his hands. “You were right, I was hungry.”

He nodded and moved away from the fire, but not before Leeza had caught a sober look of something that might have been sympathy in his gaze. Sympathy or an almost reluctant compassion. For some odd reason, the notion of his possessing any compassion unnerved her. It was far easier to think of him as rude and bullying and harder than nails than to see him as a human being with human emotions.

After she’d warily used the meager facilities he’d set up behind a low scrub oak, and availed herself of some of the remaining hot water, she turned her back on him and carefully, stiffly, removed her coat, blouse and boots.

Never one for voyeurism, Daggert tried turning his gaze to the fire, but failed miserably when he heard the rasp of her jeans zipper. Her legs went on forever.

“Goddamn,” he said.

She stiffened but didn’t turn around. “What?”

“I burned myself,” he lied. Or was he telling the abject truth?

Amazing him, she pulled on a pair of red satin pajamas. She might as well have been at some fancy motel instead of camping out in the desert on a mission to find a runaway kid. What had possessed her housekeeper to pack such a ridiculous item?

“Good night,” she said, slipping into her sleeping bag.