It did not take them long to track her. She was hiding behind some brush, at the mouth of a canyon. Movement of the brush gave her away.
“Girl,” Preacher said, “you come on out, now. You ’mong friends.”
Weeping was the only reply from behind the brush. Smoke could see one high-top button shoe. A dainty shoe.
“We’re not going to hurt you,” he said.
More weeping.
“They’s a snake crawlin’ in there with you,” Preacher lied.
A young woman bolted from behind the brush as if propelled from a cannon barrel, straight into the arms of Smoke. With all her softness pressing against him, she lifted her head and looked at him through eyes of light blue, a heart-shaped face framed with hair the color of wheat. They stood for several long heartbeats, gazing at each other, neither of them speaking.
Preacher snorted. “This ain’t no place for romance. Come on. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
Preacher griped and groused, but the young woman insisted upon returning to where the members of her family were buried. She stood for a few moments, looking down at the long, narrow grave.
“My aunt?” she questioned.
“Looks like the savages took her,” Preacher said.
“What will they do to her?”
“Depends a lot on her. Was she a looker?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Was she a handsome woman?”
“She was beautiful.”
Preacher shrugged. “Then they’ll probably keep her.” He did not tell the young woman her aunt might have been — by now — raped repeatedly and then tortured to death. “They’ll work her hard, beat her some, but she’ll most probably be all right. Some buck with no squaw will bed her down. Then agin, they might trade her off for a horse or rifle.”
“Or they might kill her?” she said.
“Yep.”
“You don’t believe I’ll ever see her again, do you?”
“No, Missy, I don’t. It just ain’t likely. Down in Arizony Territory, back ’bout ’51 or ’52, I think it was, the Oatman family tried to cross the desert alone. The Yavapais kilt the parents and took the kids. A boy and two gals. The boy run off, one of the gals died. But Olive Oatman lived as a slave with the Injuns for years. They tattooed her chin ’fore she was finally traded off for goods. It’s bes’ to put your aunty out of your mind. I seen lots of white wimmin lived with Injuns for years; too ashamed to come back to they own kind even ifn they could.”
The young woman was silent.
“What’s your name?” Smoke asked.
“Nicole,” she said, then put her face in her small hands and began to weep. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t have any family to go back to. I don’t have anyone.”
Smoke put his arms around her. “Yes, you do, Nicole. You have us.”
“Just call me Uncle Preacher,” the mountain man said. “Plumb disgustin’.”
Smoke rummaged around the still smoldering wagon, looking for any of Nicole’s clothing that might have escaped the flames. He found a few garments, including a lace-up corset, which she quickly snatched, red-faced, from him. He also found a saddle that had suffered only minor damage. Everything else was lost.
“Now, how you figure she’s a-gonna sit that there saddle?” Preacher demanded. “What with all them skirts and petti-things underneath?”
“She’s not. She found a pair of men’s trousers that belonged to her uncle. She can ride a straddle.”
“That ain’t fittin’ for no decent woman. Ain’t nobody ‘ceptin’ a whoore’d do that!”
“What the hell d’you wanna do? Build a travois and drag her?”
Preacher walked away, muttering to himself.
Nicole came to Smoke’s side. “I can sit a saddle. I rode as a child in Illinois.”
“Is that where you’re from?”
“No. I’m from Boston. After my parents died, when I was just a little girl, I came to Illinois to live with my uncle and aunt. What’s your name?”
“Smoke. That’s Preacher.” He jerked his thumb.
She smiled. She was beautiful. “Just Smoke?”
“That’s what I’m called.”
“At a trading post, we heard talk of a gunfighter called Smoke. Is that you?”
“I guess so.”
“They said you’d killed fifty men.” There was no fear in her eyes as she said it.
Smoke laughed. “Hardly. A half dozen white men, maybe. But they were fair fights.”
“You don’t look like a gunfighter.”
“What does a gunfighter look like?”
She smiled, white even teeth flashing against the tan of her face.
“Carryin’ on like children at a box social,” Preacher muttered.
Nicole went behind a boulder to change out of her tattered and dusty dress. Preacher walked up to his young protégé.
“What are you aimin’ to do with her?”
“Take her with us. We sure can’t leave her out here.”
“Well, hell! I know all that. I mean in the long run. Nearest town’s more’un a hundred miles off.”
“Well, I … don’t know.”
The mountain man’s eyes sparkled. “Ah,” he said. “Now I get it. Got your juices up and runnin’, eh?”
Smoke stiffened. “I have not given that any thought.”
Preacher laughed. “You can go to hell for tellin’ lies, boy.” He walked off, chuckling, talking to himself. “Yes, siree,” he called, “young Smoke’s got hisself a gal. Right purty little thing, too. Whoa, boy!” He did a little jig and slapped his buckskin-clad knee. “Them blankets gonna be hotter than a buffalo hunter’s rifle after a shoot.” He cackled as he danced off, spry as a youngster.
Smoke’s face reddened. What the young man knew about females could be placed in a shot glass and still have room for a good drink of whiskey.
“What is Preacher so happy about?” Nicole asked, walking up behind him.
Smoke turned and swallowed hard. Luckily, he did not have a chew of tobacco in his mouth. The men’s trousers fitted the woman snugly — very snugly. The plaid man’s shirt she now wore was unbuttoned two buttons past the throat, and that was about all the young man could stand.
Smoke lifted his eyes to stare at her face. She was beautiful, her features almost delicate, but with a stubborn set to her chin.
She had freshened up at the little creek and her face wore a scrubbed look.
“Uh …” he said.
“Never mind,” Nicole said. “I’m sure I know what he was laughing about.”
“Ah … I’ve saddled a little mare for you. She’s broke, but hasn’t been ridden lately. She may kick up her heels a bit.”
“Mares do that every now and then,” Nicole said coyly, smiling at him.
“Uh … yeah! Right.”
“Smoke?” She touched his thick forearm, tight with muscle. “I’m not trying to be callous or unfeeling about … what happened today. I’m just … trying to put it — the bad things — behind me. Out of my mind. Do you understand?”
“Yes.” He touched her hand. Soft. “Come on. We’d better get moving.”
When Nicole swung into the saddle, the trousers stretched tight across her derriere. Smoke stared — and stared. Then his boot missed the stirrup when he tried to mount and he fell flat on his back in the dust.
“I knowed it!” Preacher said. “Knowed it when I seen ’em a-lookin’ at one ’nother. Gawd help us all. He’ll be pickin’ flowers next. Ifn he can git up off the ground, that is.”
The trio pushed the horses and followed the Delores down to its junction with Disappointment Creek. There, they cut slightly west for a few miles, then bore south, toward a huge valley. They would be among the first whites to settle in the valley. Long after Smoke had become a legend, the town of Cortez would spring up, to the south of the SJ Ranch. Midway in the valley, by a stream that rolled gently past a gradually rising knoll, Smoke pulled up.