Deep Purple Read Free Page B

gaze now appraised her, swiftly and, she was sure, accurately. Once again color flooded her face, for she knew he had stripped her bare with those eyes that did not seem to miss a thing just as surely as if he had actually removed her clothing piece by piece. And he had no doubt found her lacking—certainly in comparison to the voluptuous woman whose charms he had most likely sampled the night before.
    “ You’ll find it different out here, all right, ma’am. Can’t say as how adventuresome you might call it. Lucy, my sister-in-law, finds the territory . . . ‘crude and boring,’ I think she puts it.”
    Was he challenging her? “ I’m quite flexible, Mr. Davalos. I assure you I will adjust.”
    He only nodded his head, and she had the suspicion he doubted her. When he returned his attention to the mules, she felt like a pinned butterfly suddenly released —or moth, to be more appropriate, she thought dryly.
    She tried to c oncentrate on the route they were taking, but there seemed to be no clearly defined road. The first and only landmark she noted after leaving Tucson was the abandoned Butterfield Overland Stage station at a place Lorenzo Davalos called Cienega Springs. The station’s adobe walls were in ruins and the exposed ceiling timbers had been charred and scorched by flaming arrows.
    They stopped long enough at the springs to water the mules. Her escort knelt before the brackish-looking water and dipped his sombrero int o it. Rising, he came to stand over her. “Want some?”
    She saw the sparkle in the brown eyes and knew once again he was testing her mettle. She took the proffered dirt-stained sombrero. "Most certainly, Mr. Davalos.”
    “Law,” he said, smiling wickedly. “Call me Law. Lawrence or Lorenzo is too much of a mouthful.”
    “ Law,” she said, trying the name of her lips. "I can’t say that I have ever heard of a more inappropriate name.”
    A full, genuine laugh tumbled out of the raffish-looking young man. She felt him studyi ng her as she sipped the water, which was surprisingly cool and sweet, from the sombrero’s crown. “You know, Miss Howard, you’re not so bad for a bluestocking,” he said in what was almost a compliment.
    The respite over, she once again joined Law at the wag on, avoiding his proffered hand to help her mount.  “As you will,” he chuckled.
    He turned due south then, following the Cienega Wash through the lava-chopped Empire foothills. It was difficult for Catherine to imagine that somewhere in the craggy, barren b lack hills beyond lay the lush pastoral valley of Cristo Rey. But then she had learned that beneath the clear bright-white sky distances could be deceptive.
    Just as deceptive as the tranquility of the late afternoon, for she had heard too many tales from O gilvee of the fierce warriors, the Chiricahua Apaches, who terrorized the area. She found it inconceivable that citizens actually did walk around armed twenty- hour hours a day against the Indians. Yet slung low on Law’s hips were a brace of Navy Colts, and balanced against the wooden seat was a lethal-looking carbine rifle.
    After a while she discovered that the quiet of the landscape was deceptive also. For with the man obviously disinclined to conversation, she began to pick up sounds peculiar to the area — the sighing of the heated breeze through the eroded bajadas and the rustle of the horse-high chaparral as a black chuckwalla lizard scampered beneath its thorny branches for shelter. And once there came the deadly rattle of the diamondback when the wagon’s mules passed too closely.
    Then, almost abruptly it seemed, there was a dramatic shift in scenery, from bone-dry cholla wasteland to a sea of knee-high sacaton grass, brown and withered from the shortened winter days. Gradually, as the wash deepened, thi ckly wooded forests of willow and cottonwoods rose to border it. Mountains, the Whetstones on the left and the Santa Ritas on the right, marched closer now.
    When the road