A Warrior's Vow

“Have you ever heard of a place called Cima La Luz?”

“In the mountains,” he said.

“Light Peak, right?”

He grunted an assent.

“I’m beginning to suspect you’re not a morning person.” When he didn’t answer, she continued, “I believe Enrique might be heading there.”

Daggert stared at her coldly. “You didn’t think it important to tell me that yesterday?” he asked finally.

Her smile faltered but she didn’t flinch. “You didn’t exactly give me a chance,” she said. Her eyes dared him to deny this.

“Lady, if you don’t kill yourself riding like that, I might just do it for you. Good thing we’re heading toward Cima La Luz or I’d flay you right now just for the sheer hell of it. But just out of curiosity, why didn’t you tell me this yesterday?”

The flush that stained her cheeks gave him all the answer he needed. She’d been testing him.

He spurred his horse forward while giving Sancho a go-ahead whistle.

“I’m sorry,” she called from behind him.

Daggert ground his teeth.

By the time the sun was directly overhead, the last thought on Leeza’s mind was cheerful needling. Her fears for Enrique were escalating with each passing hour. Her guilt was on the rise, as well. And her irritation with one noncommunicative tracker was boiling like mercury in a burning thermometer.

She’d tried giving him the same silent treatment he’d accorded her. Unfortunately, that seemed to work perfectly for him. She’d babbled at him and he’d ridden ahead. She’d hidden her exhausted tears from him the night before, and blinked them back now, but doubted he’d care even if he did see them.

He didn’t seem the slightest bit affected by the elements, the cruel sun, the cold morning or the fact that Enrique had been missing for at least thirty-nine hours now. In fact, Daggert seemed so indifferent to his surroundings he might as well have been made from bedrock, as she’d first imagined him to be.

And why she found herself attracted to him, she couldn’t even begin to fathom. It must be a by-product of the worry she felt for Enrique, and the unfamiliarity of searching for a child who didn’t want to be found.

It was the hostage syndrome, she thought, where a captive transferred feelings of faith to her abductor. Patty Hearst had done it; so had countless others.

Except Leeza wasn’t a hostage, she’d come on this mission against the tracker’s express wishes. She’d demanded to be included.

She was forced to admit he would have made better time without her. Any discomfort she felt was her own fault entirely.

Given her nature, this did not make her feel remotely better.

“He can use that chip on his shoulder to light a forest fire,” she told Belle. She grinned, feeling a little giddy. “Okay, wait, I have another one. There once was a man named Daggert…that’s too hard. There once was a man named James, who never would talk to the dames.”

“Enjoying yourself?”

She blushed as she never had before. It wasn’t a gentle rise of color; it was a raging conflagration of embarrassment. She hadn’t seen him halt his horse, and had caught up with him, literally unaware. But she lifted her chin, met his eyes directly and said, “Immensely.”

“We’ll stop here for lunch,” he said, and dismounted.

“Fine. Good.” Her stomach growled at the mere thought of food. She’d been foolish to give her eggs to Sancho. But she wasn’t about to admit it. “Belle could use a break.”

“Right,” he said. “Want a hand down?”

“No, thank you. I’m perfectly capable.”

“Just keep hold of the saddle horn.”

It took her about five minutes to dismount and another five before she could let go of the saddle horn. “I’d kill him,” she murmured to Belle, “but then how would we find Enrique? And I’m not sure I could find my way back alone.”

She gratefully accepted the moist towelettes he handed her, and leaned against the large boulder he’d selected as a shady picnic spot. She’d been too tired—and too busy making up nasty Daggert limericks—to notice the terrain while riding. It had changed considerably since dawn.

Low foothills, sparsely covered with scrub pine and liberally dotted with cholla cactus and chamisa, gave way to taller mountains in the distance. She’d read somewhere, probably in the material that came when they were first considering buying Rancho Milagro, that the Guadalupe Mountains weren’t technically part of the Rocky Mountains proper. They belonged to an older range, from the Devonian Period, and were more similar in nature to the Appalachians than to the Rockies, filled with caves, such as the Carlsbad Caverns, and pocketed with numerous sinkholes. Beneath the Guadalupes, oil awaited recovery, and within them somewhere, a little nine-year-old boy needed rescue.

Daggert whistled for Sancho and set out a bowl of water for him.

Leeza waited for a cup this time and accepted the warmish liquid with as much gratitude as she had the towelettes. She remained standing as she drank this time; however, her bottom being so sore she’d have cried out at contact with the solid ground.

Apparently unfazed by the long ride, Daggert sat down Indian-style and used a long, curved knife to pry apart something in a deep pouch. A moment later he pulled out a long strip of beef jerky. Using the blade of the knife, he handed the piece up to her.

While she was a personal fan of beef, believing recent medical findings declaring red meat to be rich in iron and calcium, she couldn’t say she was remotely fond of it salted, dried and rendered into strips of peppered leather. Add jalapeños to it and it was pure torture.

She spat her bite into her used towelette.

Daggert used his knife to tear off another piece of jerky and tossed it to an eager Sancho.

Sancho caught the bit of beef with alacrity and gulped it down after slashing it only a couple of times with his white teeth. He sat on the pebbled sand and whined.

Daggert tossed him another piece, which the dog caught but set down. He whined again.

“What is it, boy?” Daggert asked.

The dog lifted his right paw as if wanting to shake hands, or as if he’d acquired a thorn.

Daggert checked the raised paw, apparently found nothing amiss and ruffled the dog’s neck. “Go ahead,” he said.

The dog looked from the beef to his master and whined as he again lifted his paw.

“What are you telling me, Sancho-dog?” Daggert asked.

Sancho barked in answer before finally eating the piece of jerky he’d set aside.

Daggert watched him, frowning, then tore another piece free and passed it up to Leeza.

She held up her hand. “Please. No.”

“Too hot?” he asked. “So you’re as tender mouthed as you are a tenderfoot.”

“I think I have this figured out,” she said. “In your mind, I’m the ‘disliked one,’ the one who caused Enrique to run away.”

Daggert looked at the dog nearby. He gave Sancho a nod and the setter answered with a swift bark before tearing away from the picnic site.