Code of the Wolf

“Do you want me to come?” Zora asked behind her.

Serenity shook off the desire to lean on Zora’s quiet, seemingly unshakable strength. “At least you should get some food and rest. Helene has a pot of beans on the stove.”

Zora obeyed without protest. Serenity went on alone, her feet as heavy as Victoria’s anvil. The barn door was open, spilling light from the lantern hung just inside, and she smelled the comforting scent of fresh straw, the warm bovine bodies of their two milk cows, and the newly sawn planks where Victoria and Judith had made repairs to the back wall. A horse nickered from the stable on the other side of the far door.

Ordinarily it was a place of peace, but not tonight. Changying, Nettie and Michaela had settled the stranger in one of the unoccupied stalls where they kept ailing cattle, or calves needing special care. From the look of him, he hadn’t improved. Caridad stood with hands on hips, staring down at him with a ferocious scowl.

“Don’t waste your time, Changying,” she was saying as Serenity approached.

The Chinese woman looked up. “He has taken a bit of water,” she said. “I believe he will be well.”

Serenity closed her eyes. Changying was too good at her craft to speak up if she didn’t believe it.

“Has he been awake?” she asked, joining Caridad.

“Only for a moment,” Changying said. “But he is already better than he was.”

“He is an evil-looking man,” Caridad said. “Un hombre malo.”

It was exactly what Serenity had been thinking, yet the words seemed far more harsh than her private thoughts. Now that the man was out of the glare of sunlight and in such quiet surroundings, he didn’t seem nearly so terrible. Still potentially dangerous, to be sure, and never to be trusted. Hard as the New Mexico desert. Yet his face wasn’t quite so much like a villainous mask, and there was an easing around his mouth as if he knew, even in his sleep, that he was safe.

The inexplicable impulse to defend him against Caridad’s harsh judgment frightened her. She couldn’t afford to let down her guard. Not ever.

“If he is all right for now,” she said to Changying, “you should go and get your supper. I’ll watch him.”

“And I,” Caridad said.

“You just rode in,” Michaela said. “Let us do it.”

Serenity shook her head. “He’s my responsibility. Cari, get a little sleep. I’ll need you and Zora to do some scouting in the morning.”

Caridad heaved a great sigh. “If you insist, jefa.” Adjusting the twin bandoliers crossing her chest, she strode out of the barn. Nettie and Michaela followed reluctantly.

“If he wakes, try to give him a little water,” Changying said as she got to her feet. “I have treated his wounds as best I can, but he must take proper nourishment if he is to heal.”

“I’ll see to it,” Serenity said. She couldn’t do less than Changying, even though she loathed the idea of touching him again.

Moving almost as quietly as Zora, Changying left. Serenity leaned against the partition between the stalls, refusing to look at the man’s face again, unwilling to see anything in it she hadn’t already judged to be there.

But when she looked down and away, she saw other parts of him that disturbed her just as much. Changying had stripped him of his clothes—a fact Serenity had been trying to ignore—and covered his lower body with a blanket. And though Serenity was able to avoid thinking about what the blanket covered, she couldn’t fail to notice the strength of his arms, the muscular breadth of his chest, the slim, lean contours of his waist.

She didn’t want to notice them. The last time she’d seen a man undressed…

Covering her face with her hands, Serenity turned her back on Changying’s patient. She should have felt utter loathing. She’d deliberately cut off even the remotest physical reaction to any man since her escape six years ago. She had believed herself incapable of experiencing such attraction again.

And she wasn’t experiencing it now. It was only the poison this man had brought with him that had infected her brain like a fever. That made her view his body with admiration instead of disgust.

Slowly she turned around again and deliberately examined him with the cool detachment Changying had displayed. It was only a body. A magnificent example, but only a body nonetheless. It had no power to frighten or attract her.

Slumping back against the partition, she closed her eyes. She didn’t realize how exhausted she was until she woke suddenly from a standing doze. Instantly she looked down. The man was staring back at her with cool gray eyes.

“Ma’am,” he croaked. “Would you mind telling me…where am I?”

CHAPTER TWO

THE WOMAN DIDN’T answer at first, and that was just as well. Jacob was far from ready to get up, and talking at all was difficult. He was naked under the blanket someone had thrown over him, his gun and knives were gone, and he had no idea where he was.

But his wounds hurt less, his mouth had a little moisture in it, and he was finally able to get a good look at his savior. What he saw surprised him.

At first glance she didn’t look like the kind of woman who could face down a band of outlaws and outshoot them with exquisite precision. She was petite and fine-boned, with almost delicate features and dark blond hair pulled severely away from her face.

And she was pretty. By no means a great beauty, but then, a woman who carried a gun on her hip wasn’t likely to be overly concerned with her appearance. Her face was tanned and unpainted, her figure completely concealed by baggy boy’s trousers and a shirt, with only a telltale dip at the waist where her belt held her clothing closer to her body. He was willing to bet she wasn’t wearing a corset, either. Most men would have judged her appearance beyond the pale of anything proper for a female.

Once Jacob might have done the same. He wondered about her male kinfolk; few men worth their salt would let a wife or daughter or sister dress that way, or ride into the desert with only a couple of other females as an escort. It was a man’s place to protect his women, and there was no excuse for such a lapse. No excuse at all.

Yet for all her small size, nothing in the lady’s appearance or in her steady glare suggested weakness or dependence on anyone.

He remembered her name. Serenity. The woman who was anything but serene.

Without a word, she retrieved a pitcher standing on a stool against the wall to his left and sloshed water into a glass. Jacob remembered someone giving him water before, but he didn’t think it had been this woman. The hands had been gentle, the face—what he had been able to see of it in his delirium—entirely different.

Stiffly the woman bent over him, as if she hoped to put the glass to his lips without coming anywhere near him. After a moment she knelt, still keeping her distance, and put the glass down just long enough to push the sack of grain that served as his pillow higher under his shoulders.

“Drink,” she said, and set the rim of the glass to his lips. The water tasted like ambrosia as it coated his mouth and trickled down his throat. The moment he had had enough, the woman put the glass down, stood and resumed her place against the wall.

Jacob half closed his eyes. It was difficult to keep them open, but he had to know more about this woman and why she, though so obviously hostile, had helped him.

“Ma’am,” he tried again, “I’d be obliged if you would tell me where I am.”

She crossed her arms over her chest and stared at some point behind his head as if she could burn a hole in the wall with her stare. “You’re at Avalon,” she said.

Avalon. He’d heard her speak the word before, but it also echoed in other memories. Somewhere, sometime long past, when he’d been only a boy, he’d heard the name. It meant nothing to him now.

“A ranch?” he asked.

“Yes.”

Her voice was no longer distorted by distance or his delirium, but it still didn’t match the delicacy of her face. It should have been soft and soothing, not harsh, as it was when she spoke to him. It should have been like Ruth’s.

But Ruth would never have put on a man’s clothes or carried a gun. The thought would never have entered her mind.

Whatever was in this woman’s mind, she wasn’t going to offer him any more information without real encouragement. He braced himself on his elbows and tried to sit up. She flinched, controlling the involuntary movement so quickly that he doubted an ordinary man would have noticed.

“I’m…obliged, ma’am,” he said. “For what you did out there.”

Her jaw tightened, and she finally met his gaze. “It’s strange,” she said, “how quickly you’ve come from nearly dying to acting as if you weren’t hurt at all.”

No pleasantries with this lady. Not that he was inclined to them himself. But there was considerable suspicion in her words, as if she believed he’d feigned his condition.