Whitehorse

Again they rode in silence. As they sped past the driveway entrance to his house, he looked at her.

"I can hardly take you back there considering your condition. The last thing you need is to get into another brawl tonight. Besides, that cut on your cheek needs seeing to. If you"re worried about Leah, you needn"t be. She already knows about their hauling you in. She was still up when Officer Parker called."

"Great." He slouched into the seat.

The house glowed from every window. Leah stood in the open front doorway, fingers tucked into her jeans pockets as she watched the car pull up to the porch and stop. Jane got out. Johnny took his time, watching Jane bound up the steps and speak to Leah before disappearing into the house.

He closed the car door and leaned against it.

Leah moved down the steps, shoulders slightly hunched as she stopped at the edge of the light, bare toes with their polished nails slightly hanging over the lip of the stair. Flamingo Fruit Pa.s.sion, he thought. Had it only been that morning when she"d shown up at the barn looking like a bouquet of fresh-cut flowers? And smelling just as sweet? Making him hate his life more than he ever thought possible?

"I made sandwiches," she said softly. "Sometimes it helps to put something in your stomach."

"How would you know?"

"My mom has a little too much sometimes. I fix her peanut b.u.t.ter on crackers. But you don"t look like the peanut-b.u.t.ter-and-crackers sort, so I made ham and cheese." She rubbed her arms and curled her toes under. "It"s really chilly. Let"s go in, okay?" She turned and bounded up the steps, her hair dancing around her shoulders.

Taking a resigned breath, Johnny followed as far as the door, then paused, allowing his eyes to adjust to the bright lights flooding down from the ma.s.sive chandelier over the foyer. There were fresh-cut flowers on every table, and portraits on the walls.

"Are you coming?" Leah shouted from a hallway leading off the foyer.

He walked carefully over the black-and-white marble-tiled floor, his gaze fixed on Leah where she stood in the shadows, her smile encouraging him onward; then she slipped through another illuminated doorway that turned out to be the kitchen, nearly as big as his father"s entire house. There were pots and pans hanging on hooks from the ceiling. Glistening countertops and sparkling gla.s.s cupboard doors. A stone fireplace on one wall, bookcases on another, loaded with cookbooks that looked as though they had never been opened.

Leah opened the refrigerator and reached for two sodas, along with an apple and orange and a bowl of grapes. "Sit." She pointed with her foot toward a three-legged stool next to a counter bar.

Johnny glanced around. "Where"s your father?"

"Washington. Where else?" Grinning, she laid out the food next to his plate. "You can relax. He isn"t going to come roaring through the door like the cavalry or something."

"I don"t think he"d like me here."

"Like I said. He isn"t here. When he isn"t here I do what I want and see who I want."

"And when he is?" He picked up a grape and rolled it in his fingers. "Are you Daddy"s good little girl when he"s home? See who Daddy wants you to see? Go where Daddy wants you to go?"

Leah slid onto a stool and reached for her soda. "I pretty much do what I want to do. How"s your face? When we"re done here I"ll clean it for you."

He shrugged. "I"ve had worse."

"Do you you like like your your father?" Leah asked. father?" Leah asked.

Tossing down the grape, he reached for the sandwich, not sure he wanted it, thinking he probably should eat it, feeling very strange standing in such a grandiose kitchen and talking so nonchalantly with the girl he"d had a crush on for months-who, until this morning, had not even acknowledged his existence.

"I like him sometimes. When he"s sober."

"Then you acknowledge that he"s stupid when he drinks."

Johnny removed the lettuce from the sandwich and set it aside. "Your point?" He flashed her a look, suspecting already what her point was going to be.

"Just that you see what drinking does to your father. What he becomes. Why do you want to be that way?"

"I don"t."

"Johnny, stealing a car and a woman isn"t exactly smart. And I don"t think you would have done it if you hadn"t been drinking. You"re very lucky that the lady took pity on you."

"Is that what she took on me?" He shook his head, remembering Janice"s head in his lap. "Let"s just say we hit it off and leave it at that."

Leah frowned and stared at him hard. There was a tiny crumb of bread on her lip, and he wondered with an odd sort of spitefulness what she would do if he leaned over and licked it off.

"Well." She cleared her throat. "Have you given any thought to what you"re going to do with your life?"

"What are you? A social worker?"

"No. Just someone who sees a tragedy in the making when I look at you. To say you"re good-looking is an understatement. But I think you know that already. I asked Mr. Dilbert, the princ.i.p.al at school, about you last week. He told me you"re a straight B student but your att.i.tude sucks. You fight too much. You"re consistently late for cla.s.s and you enjoy getting in the teacher"s face. He said you drove Mr. Dubach so far over the edge last year that the two of you wound up in a fistfight."

"He called me a stinking Indian."

"I know Mr. Dubach. He"s a good guy. For him to get nasty he must have been pushed to the edge. Why do you get so angry at being called an Indian? It"s what you are."

"It"s the stinking stinking that p.i.s.sed me off. I happen to be proud that I"m Apache." that p.i.s.sed me off. I happen to be proud that I"m Apache."

"Great. Then if Apache is something to be proud of, why don"t you act it? Represent your heritage in a shining example. Educate us. Teach us what it means to be a Native American."

"I think I"ve done a good job of that tonight," he said angrily, throwing down the sandwich. "You want to know what being Native American is, Pindah-Lickoyee? Pindah-Lickoyee? It is living in poverty. It is existing like animals in a zoo, where people stick their cameras in our face and take pictures of us like we"re oddities. It is dealing with a government that goes back on its promises to us. We listen to the horror of Hitler and the Holocaust, of a government that wiped out millions of innocent men, women, and children, and the world weeps for them, Leah. But who weeps for us? Who remembers that the white man swept over our country and slaughtered us, left our children"s corpses to feed the coyotes, and those who remained were gathered like cattle onto parcels of s.h.i.tty land and left there to die of starvation and white man"s diseases, and the loss of our dignity?" It is living in poverty. It is existing like animals in a zoo, where people stick their cameras in our face and take pictures of us like we"re oddities. It is dealing with a government that goes back on its promises to us. We listen to the horror of Hitler and the Holocaust, of a government that wiped out millions of innocent men, women, and children, and the world weeps for them, Leah. But who weeps for us? Who remembers that the white man swept over our country and slaughtered us, left our children"s corpses to feed the coyotes, and those who remained were gathered like cattle onto parcels of s.h.i.tty land and left there to die of starvation and white man"s diseases, and the loss of our dignity?"

Leah reached over and laid her hand on Johnny"s, and she smiled. "Then you should know by now that it will do you no good whatsoever to fight with your fists. Anger only begets anger. Use your brain, Johnny. Show us all what it could could mean to be Johnny Whitehorse." mean to be Johnny Whitehorse."

Her hand squeezed his, then drew away, yet her gaze remained on his, the blueness of it a tranquility that made him feel weightless. "So," she said, her lips still smiling, "ever played football? You look like you would make a great tight end."

FOURTEEN.

Leah opened her eyes. The inside of Roy"s truck felt like an oven. She couldn"t breathe. "I must have dozed." She cleared her throat and sat up, looking beyond Roy to the porch where Johnny"s grandfather had been sitting. He was gone.

"The old man has agreed to let you see Johnny," Roy said. "But you must swear to tell no one of his location. He only does this because he knows what you mean to Johnny." Roy opened the door and stepped back. "It"s a long journey. You"d better start now if you want to get there by dark."

She followed Roy toward the corral at the back of the old man"s property. Ben Whitehorse, whose face looked as aged as the dilapidated barn, stood by a swaybacked paint horse with one brown eye and one blue. Ben had bridled the horse, if one could call the rope braid wrapped over the horse"s muzzle and looped around its withers a bridle. There was no saddle.

Roy helped Leah to mount, then smiled up at her. "Let the horse take you. He knows the way." He pointed to the low mountain that seemed to Leah in that moment as tall as the Sierra Blanca. "The mountain spirit rides with you. Yalan." Yalan."

Stepping back, Roy slapped the horse on the rump and the animal moved down the path toward the trees. Leah looked back as Ben Whitehorse lifted his arms toward the sky and began chanting softly in Apache. Roy raised his hand briefly, then turned and walked toward his truck.

The path climbed sharply up the hillside, forcing Leah to lean slightly over the horse"s withers and grasp its mane with both hands to steady herself. Occasionally fir and pinon and cedar trees formed a low canopy overhead, so she had to lie low or risk getting sc.r.a.ped from the animal"s back.

The rocky thread of ground curved like a snake"s back through crevices of boulders that rose up to form cathedral-like pitches over her head. More and more the path inclined until the horse was forced to scramble for footing, lunging itself upward while Leah closed her eyes and gripped her legs tightly as possible, remembering what Johnny had told her once about riding bareback. Hold his heart between your knees. Become one with the animal and he with you. Trust him and he will take care of you. Hold his heart between your knees. Become one with the animal and he with you. Trust him and he will take care of you.

The earth to her right disappeared, dropping sharply out of sight so it seemed to her that the horse balanced on thin air. Crows and eagles soared level with her and the trees below blurred into a green, indistinct cloud, interrupted only by the diminutive gray lines of highways and the cl.u.s.ters of buildings that represented Mescalero and Ruidoso. But even that disappeared as they wound around the far side of the mountain.

The horse"s flesh turned hot and sweaty, soaking her jeans so they rubbed the insides of her thighs raw. The sun burned down on her and the reflection of it off the rocks made her eyes sting. The horse stumbled, going down on both front knees. She clutched its neck and looked over the lip of the ledge as stones bounced like rubber b.a.l.l.s down the side.

They climbed for another hour. Then another. Until the sun disappeared over the western mountains and shadows of rocks painted strange shapes on the trail. Her legs cramped, as did her shoulders. Having clutched the reins and mane so fiercely for so long, her hands ached with a numbness that shot hot pain up her arms.

A moment pa.s.sed before she realized they had stopped climbing. Its head down, the horse made a grunting sound and blew through its nostrils.

The mountaintop formed a mesa of sand and rocks and scrubby wind-twisted trees. Before her burned a campfire, and just beyond that stood a small inipi covered with heavy colorful blankets to allow no light and air inside the brush structure.

Leah slid off the horse, wincing as her feet hit the ground. Carefully as possible she straightened, ma.s.saged the small of her back and took a couple of unsteady steps before being certain her legs would hold her.

The wind whipped over the mesa edge, scattering brown gra.s.s and kicking dirt around her ankles as she moved toward the primitive structure. "Johnny?" she called softly, glancing toward the campfire, where glowing coals were mounded around rocks the size of tennis b.a.l.l.s.

The opening of the inipi had been covered with a blanket. Going down on her knees, Leah drew the flap aside and did her best to peer into the dark room. Steam rushed over her face, robbing her of breath.

"Johnny?" she whispered, crawling through the opening and into the dark, wet heat.

Naked, his skin beaded with water and sweat, Johnny sat near the glowing, steaming stones in the center of the sweat lodge, his back to her, his head fallen forward so his hair partially covered his face. He did not acknowledge Leah"s presence. His eyes closed, he rocked back and forth, silently chanting.

Leah moved around the confined s.p.a.ce until she was sitting across from him. The steam rose up from the stones so thickly that she felt suffocated. Her eyes stung and her clothes clung to her skin as she did her best to see Johnny"s face in the fog.

"Johnny?"

He continued to sway. His lips moved.

"Johnny?" Leah touched his sc.r.a.ped and bruised cheek and his swaying stopped. Slowly, his head came up and his eyes opened. He stared at her, emotionless, as if his soul were someplace else. A niggling of uneasiness centered in her chest, causing her voice to tremble. "Are you okay? G.o.d, Johnny, I"ve been worried out of my mind."

He said nothing. Did nothing. Not so much as a blink of his dark eyes to acknowledge her.

Leah moved closer, around the pit of stones, sank into the sand beside him so his wet gritty skin pressed against her own. She took his face between her hands and forced him to look at her. "Have you taken something?" she asked. "Johnny, are you on drugs? Please, answer me."

"Dolores is dead," he whispered.

"I know. I"m sorry. But hiding away here won"t change the fact that she"s gone."

At last some life came to his eyes and he focused hard on her face as sweat beaded on the tips of his lashes, then ran down his cheeks. His jaw became rock solid. His expression became fierce and savage as he wrapped his hand around her nape and roughly pulled her closer. "Johnny Whitehorse runs from nothing, Sons-ee-ah-ray. Sons-ee-ah-ray. I"m more than ready to face the consequences of Dolores"s death, and to tell all that I know. I came here because of you. To sweat I"m more than ready to face the consequences of Dolores"s death, and to tell all that I know. I came here because of you. To sweat you you from my soul, and my heart. To sweat away the pain that I feel every time I think of you. To sweat away the love that has eaten away at my heart since the first moment I saw you those years ago riding your father"s stallion, the wind in your hair and the sun dancing on your face. Foolish, isn"t it, to think I could suddenly stop loving and needing you now when I couldn"t do it the last twelve years." from my soul, and my heart. To sweat away the pain that I feel every time I think of you. To sweat away the love that has eaten away at my heart since the first moment I saw you those years ago riding your father"s stallion, the wind in your hair and the sun dancing on your face. Foolish, isn"t it, to think I could suddenly stop loving and needing you now when I couldn"t do it the last twelve years."

Twisting his fingers in her hair, he drew her face up to his. "Now here you are, breathing life again into my spirit, and a hunger as hot as the desert wind. I want you. I don"t don"t want you. I need you. I want you. I need you. I don"t don"t need you. You are more complication than I need in my life. You"re a ghost that haunts me, and if I could I would exorcise you back to your sky world and make you take your memory with you." need you. You are more complication than I need in my life. You"re a ghost that haunts me, and if I could I would exorcise you back to your sky world and make you take your memory with you."

"I never stopped loving you," she said, and began unb.u.t.toning her blouse. "There hasn"t been a day that I haven"t regretted what I did. The decision I made. I felt your pain every night that I lay in my bed and thought of you, and the life we might have had together. But I had no choice, Johnny. When my father learned of our relationship, he vowed to destroy your father if I continued to see you. I broke up with you to protect you-"

"You murdered me, Leah."

He cupped his hand over her breast, slidding his fingertips along the edge of her bra before flipping the strap off her shoulder. The masculine, musky scent of his sweating body roused a hunger in her that, over the last many years, had inspired vast fantasies, yet none had felt as overwhelming as this moment. How many nights had she nestled in her husband"s arms thinking of Johnny Whitehorse, and what she would do if ever she lay with him again.

"For a very long time I wanted to destroy you, but in hating you so I destroyed myself."

"I"m sorry," she whispered, her voice sounding rough and low as she allowed the blouse to slide down her arms. The steam slid over her skin like hot velvet as she watched Johnny unhook the bra closure between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and peel away the filmy material. Her head falling back and her eyes drifting closed, Leah caught her breath as Johnny lowered his head and took a taut, throbbing nipple between his teeth, gently at first, then almost painfully, sucking it hard, cruelly, causing her to gasp and whimper in her throat, at the same time acknowledging the sensation of heat igniting between her legs and mounting as he lay her back on the ground and stretched his big body out on hers.

He pressed kisses against her heated flesh, swirled his tongue upon the ridge of her ribs, grazed her skin with his teeth and breathed hotly against it until she writhed in both pleasure and pain and made soft keening sounds in her throat, until she lifted her hips and invited him to unsnap her jeans.

For a moment they clung insistently to her, until he tore them down her legs and tossed them aside. Wearing only the briefest panties, she lay sprawled before him, sweat and steam turning her pale skin as red as the embers heating the stones outside. On his knees between her legs, his black hair falling over his shoulders, he allowed her to look at his body, to acknowledge his ma.s.sive erection that she had once been much too shy to openly admire.

Johnny Whitehorse was no longer a boy. The memory of his younger body did not do him justice-that body had not been honed of long bone and defined muscle that came from hours of working out-and though she once had felt the cravings of adolescent desire while in his arms, the hunger that streaked through her in that moment was beyond anything she had ever experienced.

"What are you waiting for?" she asked.

His black eyes narrowed and his lips curved sensually. He ran one hand down the length of his erection and she watched with caught breath as it swelled even more, causing Johnny"s face to tense, his teeth to clench, and a low groan to rattle in his throat.

"Twelve years," he murmured, sliding the tips of his fingers up her thigh, to the elastic edge of her panties, dipping beneath to search out the sensitive place between her legs that had turned as hot and liquid as the steam pressing down on her. "For twelve years I thought of other men holding you, of touching you, of teaching you things I wanted to teach you. Of smelling you. And tasting you, and making your body desperate to be f.u.c.ked. I"ve been with a lot of women, Leah. Some of them nice. Most of them not so nice. I"m not the same boy who got drunk on sangria and took your virginity with clumsy recklessness. But then, you"re no longer a virgin."

Twisting his fingers in the crotch of her panties, he ripped them in two and shoved the silk remnant up around her waist, exposing the fading scar of her Caesarian surgery across her abdomen. He traced it with one finger before bending and kissing it, following the slightly puckered skin with the tip of his tongue.

Closing her eyes, feeling the slight tickle of his tongue and the ends of his hair over her sensitive skin, she reached to bury her hands in his hair. He caught her wrists in his hard fingers, and as he rose up once again to cover her body with his, he stretched her arms out to her side and pinned them to the ground.

"Don"t touch me," he told her, sliding his knees between her thighs and shoving them apart. "I"m going to give you exactly what you deserve, Leah. What I"ve wanted to do since the night I showed up at your door with my heart in my hand and my idiotic dreams of happily ever after branded in my brain. Remember what you said to me that night, Leah?"

"I don"t love you," she said, turning her face away as he slid his body into hers, stretching it painfully, causing her to gasp at the shocking pressure that lifted her hips briefly from the ground and wrung a short startled cry from her. "Oh G.o.d, Johnny. I didn"t mean it."

"What else, Leah?" He looked down her body, to the place where his own disappeared into hers. "Do you recall what else you said that night?" He moved deeper, opened her legs further to better accommodate him while his fingers tightened on her wrists and ground them harder into the dirt.

"That I had never loved you. It was all a mistake. Foolishness. I must have been crazy to even think I could have been attracted to you."

"And?"

"You didn"t and never would fit into my life, not being what you are." She shook her head as her chest tightened and the tears began to stream. "I didn"t mean it. I didn"t mean it. Please believe that I didn"t mean it. I only said those things because my father was there. I couldn"t allow him to hurt you."

"Hurt me?" He grinned. "The son-of-a-b.i.t.c.h has destroyed everything I have ever loved. I won"t allow it to continue, Leah. I can"t. d.a.m.n you for coming here. For reminding me that no matter how I try I can"t get you out of my system."

His hips pumped hard, grinding her b.u.t.tocks into the dirt, yet she refused to take her eyes from his, just gave her body in supplication like one happily sacrificing her soul.

She awoke, shivering, despite the shirt Johnny had laid across her, her knees drawn up to her chest and her head resting on her rolled-up jeans. Where was she? And why in G.o.d"s name did she feel as if she"d been stampeded over by a herd of horses?

The stones in the center of the inipi had grown cold and the brisk air bit at her skin as Leah sat up, her eyes heavy, body aching and shivering as she carefully slid her arms into Johnny"s shirt sleeves and wrapped the garment around her. The darkness inside the inipi felt suffocating, and the throbbing between her legs made even breathing an effort. Then she remembered...

There had been nothing remotely resembling love in what Johnny had done to her. He had treated her like a wh.o.r.e-worse, she suspected, than he treated the women who, over the last several years, had so eagerly spread their legs for no other reason than to be screwed by the famous, and infamous, Johnny Whitehorse. He had f.u.c.ked her with all the pent-up hurt and anger that had eaten at him over the years. All the fear and sorrow that must have incapacitated him in the days since Dolores"s death. Did he blame her for that as well? Was that why he had come here, as he said, to sweat her out of his system? To be done with her emotionally once and for all?

Leah laughed to herself. What irony that at long last she had acknowledged her feelings to him and now he wanted no part of her.

As she reached for her jeans the sound of chanting came to her. Tossing back the flap over the opening, Leah looked out through the predawn gray haze, to the yellow light cast up by the campfire flames.

Dressed only in his jeans and a mantle of brown and gray eagle feathers that had been attached to his arms, all the way to his wrists, Johnny moved in carefully ch.o.r.eographed steps around the halo of flickering light, his head fallen forward and his hands stretched toward the sky. He had painted white dots on his cheeks and zigzag lines resembling lightning bolts down the backs of his hands, and segments of his long hair had been plaited and decorated with colorful beads. He took her breath away. This was the part of Johnny Whitehorse that she had never experienced. Frightening. Mystical. Savage. Yes, savage. Wild. Free. Dangerous. And arousing despite what he had done to her in the last few hours.