Only 06 - Winter Fire

spilled over mesas and buttes, making them glow with crimson fire. Tongues of midnight licked out from the deep canyons and creases. Darkness pooled and rose in a silent, unstoppable tide. Pinnacles of stone became columns of fire burning against the coming night.
    No sign of man showed in all the land. No roads. No fixed trails. No lantern glow. Not even smoke rising into the flawless sky.
    A man could live here , Case thought. Really live .
    No crowding from neighbors. No townspeople reachinginto your pockets with both hands and a false smile on their lips .
    No memories .
    No other place like this, anywhere .
    Let other men take the rolling green hills and wide green valleys. This is for me. Clean and wild and free of the past .
    An unfamiliar feeling of belonging stole over him. He took a deep, slow breath, then another, then another, filling himself with the stark, unflinching beauty of the land.
    Down below, along the bottom of the biggest canyon, there were two curving, haphazard lines where cottonwood and willows stood out against the darker land.
    Lost River , he thought. Lost River Canyon .
    Water .
    He reached into the pocket of what had started as a Confederate overcoat but had long since been stripped of all bright buttons and braid. The spyglass was a familiar, cool weight in his hand. He put the viewing end to his left eye and began quartering the land below.
    No matter how carefully he looked, he found few signs of water. There were solitary cottonwoods in some rocky creases, but there was only one winding ribbon of trees and brush to mark the presence of a reliable river.
    Lost River ranch is the only good water for a long, long way in all directions , he realized.
    Without water, a ranch just isn’t possible .
    And the reliable water was already taken.
    Yet Case knew he belonged to this land. He was more certain of it than he had been of anything in his life.
    There is something waiting for me after I’m finished with the Culpeppers , he thought. This land .
    Land that can’t be maimed or murdered by men .
    Land where there’s room to breathe, to stretch, to build a ranch. New land, clean of memories .
    Land, but not water.
    Only Lost River ranch has any water worth mentioning .
    And Sarah Kennedy owned Lost River ranch.
    Absently he collapsed the spyglass and stored it once more in the pocket of his overcoat.
    I suppose I could marry her for it .
    No sooner did the idea come than an icy blackness burst through his soul, freezing the fragile tendril of hope for the future he had just felt.
    Marriage meant children.
    Children meant a nightmare of helpless, maimed bodies.
    No , he thought savagely. Never again .
    Never!
    There had to be another way to win Lost River ranch.
    A safe way.
    A way without any feeling at all.
    Case was silent all the way back to the ranch. Not even the tilted, silvery smile of the moon penetrated the night that filled his soul.

9
    T he next day Case awakened long before dawn. As always, he lay motionless, orienting himself.
    What woke me up?
    The answer came in a butterfly-soft brush of fabric against his shoulders as someone tucked the covers around him.
    Sarah , he thought.
    Still watching over me .
    A warmth that was only partly sexual radiated through him. Even as he slid back toward sleep, he decided that he would move on in the morning.
    He had to.
    Otherwise his relentless male hunger would overcome his common sense.
    Wouldn’t be the first time a man got led down the wrong road by his dumb handle , he thought sleepily. It happened to Hunter the first time around. His blood got so hot he married the wrong girl .
    Soft, sweet breath flowed over Case.
    He tried to ignore the rose-scented heat of Sarah.
    He couldn’t, any more than he could ignore his insistent, pulsing hunger for her.
    A hunger she didn’t share.
    She wants me as a big brother , he reminded himself,amused and nettled and relieved all at once.
    He hadn’t thought of a gentle way to tell Sarah that he didn’t want any kinship with her. Not brother, not cousin, not uncle.
    Especially not uncle.
    What the war hadn’t destroyed in Case, finding the bodies of his nephew and niece did.
    After that, he had been a long time learning how to sleep again, how to eat, how to live without feeling anything at all.
    Even rage.
    Sarah was more dangerous to his hard-won lack of emotion than a loaded, cocked gun pointed right at his face.
    Air shifted and stirred lightly,