Only 06 - Winter Fire

The yellow beak gaped wide as the hawk gave a high, wild cry.
    Cricket snorted and shied.
    â€œEasy, you puddinghead,” his rider said soothingly. “You’re too big to be a hawk’s supper.”
    Sarah looked up at the tall stallion. Doubt was clear on her face.
    Case dismounted. Other than a brief hesitation when he took weight on his injured leg, he showed little sign that he had been fighting for his life three weeks before.
    â€œYou ride up front,” he said. “Ready?”
    â€œFor what?”
    â€œA hand up. Two hands, actually. Put your left hand on the saddle horn and your left foot in my hands.”
    â€œBut what about your wound?” she objected, even as she followed his directions.
    â€œUp you go.”
    He boosted Sarah into the saddle so smoothly that the hawk didn’t even flare its wings.
    â€œKeep your foot out of the stirrup for now,” he said, his voice low and mellow as candlelight. “I’m going to reach around you and get up behind the saddle. Ready?”
    By the time she realized that the crooning, velvet voice belonged to Case, he was settling onto Cricket behind her.
    â€œCan you ride without stirrups?” he asked, still using the soothing voice.
    â€œI usually ride without the whole saddle.”
    â€œGood,” he murmured. “Stirrups make it easier on my leg.”
    â€œWhere did you learn to talk like that?”
    â€œLike what?”
    â€œButter and honey and lamplight.”
    â€œTraining horses,” he said. “Seemed to soothe them.”
    â€œSoothes birds, too.”
    â€œHow about people?”
    â€œI’m still awake,” she retorted in a deliberately velvety voice, “but only barely.”
    The corners of his eyes shifted slightly upward.
    When he breathed in, the scent of roses and sunshine and fresh air lifted from her in a perfume more subtle and fascinating than anything that he had ever smelled from a fancy crystal bottle.
    She wants a big brother, not a lover , he reminded himself. That’s what I want to be to her, too .
    Then, irritably, Wish to hell I could convince my dumb handle of that. I haven’t been this randy since I first discovered I could do more than piss with it .
    He rearranged his weight behind the saddle to accommodate his increasing arousal. As he shifted, he tried toforget just how yielding and yet resilient Sarah’s flesh had felt beneath his hands when he lifted her past him in the cabin doorway.
    She’s just the right size , he thought again. Not so little that a man would lose her in the bedding, and not the size of a barn door, like Lola .
    Lola would make two of Ute .
    Must make for some interesting nights in the old wickiup .
    â€œSee that notch in the rim off to the right?” Sarah asked.
    â€œYes.”
    â€œHead for it. There’s a trail up and over the rim.”
    He reined Cricket toward the notch.
    The land began to slant upward slowly. The farther the horse got from the river, the drier the underlying ground became. Instead of the musical murmurings of the creek and songbirds hidden in the willows, there was only the occasional rasp of the stirrups against underbrush.
    Massive cottonwoods quickly gave way to ragged, narrow-leafed bushes. Prickly pear and other cactus appeared from time to time where the land was too dry or poor for grass. In the deeply slanting rays of the sun, cactus spines outlined their plants in shimmering gold.
    Colder air from the mesa top sighed past the riders on the way down to the valley. The breeze brought with it the scent of the coming night, cool and crisp and mysterious.
    The creak of leather and the steady breathing of the stallion became the only sounds in the stillness of the late afternoon.
    As always, Case’s eyes roved the landscape, probing for danger. This time he saw nothing but the stark, impossible beauty of a landscape where stones took on the color of earthbound rainbows and the shape of man’s wildest fancies.
    Beyond the rim the path became more level, but onlyfor a mile or so. Then the land pitched up again into a wall of rusty cliffs and dizzying red spires. Dry watercourses showed as lighter bands against the ground and darker bands on the cliffs.
    â€œHow much farther?” Case asked.
    â€œSee that rocky knoll off to the left? The wind gives a nice lift at the top.”
    Cricket wound among boulders and scrambled across sheets of rubble-strewn bedrock.