They could take easier trails and cover the same distance in one-third the time it would take Sun Hawk and Skylar.
Despite her skepticism, Rayna allowed herself to hope that Case was right, and by the time they reached the ranch, she had concocted a glorious fantasy about having arrived ahead of Sun Hawk. They would lay a simple trap to ensnare him, and once he was caught, he would lead them to Skylar, who was waiting for him a short but safe distance from the ranch.
It was a delightful fabrication, but nothing more. When they rode up to the ranch house, Hugh Littlefield was on the porch, shotgun in hand, to greet them. He didn’t lower his guard until he recognized Case, and even then he was in no mood to extend much in the way of hospitality. He had been robbed, it seemed. A huge band of marauding Apaches had raided his place the night before and taken all his horses.
His story might have been more credible had Rayna not known that one brave alone had raided the ranch and had she not seen the four horses in the corral beside the house. When she glanced curiously at the calm cow ponies, Littlefield recanted slightly, admitting that actually only three horses had been stolen. The others had just been run off, but he’d had a “devil of a time rounding them up!” he told them self-righteously.
As they rode away from the ranch, Case seemed neither surprised nor dis-mayed by the news. It was, in fact, what he had expected and hoped for. Now he had a fresh trail to follow and they were less than a day behind Skylar and Sun Hawk. An hour after they had left Littlefield, Case picked up Sun Hawk’s trail despite the effort the brave had made to conceal it. At dusk he led them to the remains of a recently vacated camp, and all Rayna’s doubts about Case’s prowess as a tracker evaporated like a drop of water on the desert.
That night, for the first time in months, she slept soundly because she knew she was about to be reunited with her sister.
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20
At first it was instinct alone that told Sun Hawk they were being followed. When the feeling refused to leave him, he stopped early and found a sheltered area in which to hide Skylar. Then he climbed to a bluff to look over the area they had just traversed, and waited. It had been two days since he took the horses, and he and Skylar made good time through the mountains despite the precautions he took to mask their trail. But his efforts hadn’t been good enough.
In the distance, too far away to be seen clearly, he finally spotted the movement of three, perhaps four, riders. They were less than half a day behind. There was a chance, of course, that they were merely travelers or a small hunting party of Apaches from the reservation to the west, but Sun Hawk knew better than to discount the threat they posed.
When he returned to Skylar, she knew at once that something was wrong.
“What did you see, husband?”
“You can make camp here, but we cannot have a fire tonight,” he told her.
“I am sorry.”
Skylar fought down a stab of fear. “Did someone follow us from the ranch where you got the horses?”
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“It is possible, or they could be a hunting party. I cannot swear that they are following us, but I must find out.”
“How many are there?”
“Three, four, maybe. They are still too far away for me to be sure. I must go back to look at them.”
He had left her before, and Skylar had always known he would return as surely as the sun would rise. Now, though, something had changed. She had a strange feeling in the pit of her stomach, and she couldn’t make it go away. “Be cautious,” she begged him, though she knew it was an unnecessary request.
“I will return when I can, beloved.” He looked at her for only a moment longer, touching her face in his mind, gathering her close to his heart, and then he left.
By the time night fell and Skylar finally drifted into a restless sleep, he still had not returned. It was not the first night he had been gone this long, but it was the first time since Sun Hawk had rescued her from the soldiers that Skylar had been truly frightened.
From a hilltop overlooking the narrow valley where the party was making camp, Sun Hawk studied the odd group below him. There were three of them, and he knew for certain now that they were following the scant trail he and Skylar had left earlier. He had seen them looking for sign, and despite the cold, they made no attempt to light a fire when they stopped. That could only mean they did not wish to betray their presence.
But Sun Hawk could not figure out who they were or why they would be searching for him and Skylar. Before he took the horses, he had studied the ranch and the people there carefully, and had seen only an aging rancher and his wife. None of the three men below him had been on the ranch he was certain, and their behavior was most strange.
One of the tall ones wore the hat and the heavy cape of a soldier, yet he did not seem to be in charge. The second man, smaller than the others, was bundled in a heavy cloth coat and wore a light-colored hat. Clearly he was not a soldier.
The third man was the one who troubled and puzzled Sun Hawk the most, for he was obviously an Apache. Yet for some reason he was the leader of the group. The others looked to him often, and appeared to do things as he directed them to be done.
Two white men—one of them a soldier—accepting orders from an Apache?
Sun Hawk could not fathom it, but he had to believe what his eyes told him.
He watched until it grew too dark to see them well enough to learn more about them, and he briefly considered working his way quietly down to their camp to study them closer. Had they been three white men, he would have done it, but 232
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the Apache made him change his mind. He was a skilled tracker or he would not have been able to follow Sun Hawk’s trail. Until it was proven otherwise, Sun Hawk had to believe that his enemy was skilled in other areas, too.
Knowing that the risk of discovery was too great, he returned to the horse he had left a considerable distance away and began the long ride back to Skylar. She was sleeping fitfully when he arrived, but he did not awaken her.
She would need all her strength for what was ahead of them.
Wrapping himself in blankets, he lay down next to her and forced himself to sleep. A few hours later, long before dawn, he awoke and roused Skylar. He held her in his arms as he told her what he had seen, and then they began what would be the longest day of the many they had spent on the run.
Leading the horses, they covered as much ground as they could before it became light, but at sunrise they mounted up and started traveling fast. Sun Hawk abandoned all attempts to hide their tracks and kept to the easiest routes available. Speed was all that mattered, and they stopped only when it was necessary to rest the horses.
But late that afternoon their three shadows were still there.
“We cannot stop tonight,” Sun Hawk told Skylar at sunset when they stopped to water the horses and let them forage. “The Apache who leads them is too clever, and he knows this land better than I. We will have to walk the horses much of the night, but we can escape them only if we travel while they sleep.”
“Then we will walk tonight,” Skylar said stoically as she knelt by the trickling brook to drink.
Sun Hawk knelt beside her. “Can you do so much? It will be hard, and you are already tired.”
She looked at him and her heart swelled with love as she took his face in her hands. Skylar had no concern for her own fate, but if something happened to this man, she would not want to live. “I love you,” she told him, a strange sense of urgency coloring her voice. “And your love for me has made us both strong. I will walk forever if you ask it of me.”