Free Desperate Hearts by Alexis Harrington Page B

the fire
going.
    Despite Kyla’s determination, privately she
feared that she was not doing very well. The pain in her arm was
unrelenting, enough to bring tears to her eyes. She felt hot and
cold and more tired than she had ever been in her life. Dizziness
rolled over her in sickening waves. Of all the rotten luck, she
railed to herself. At a time when she needed her wits and her
strength, this had to happen.
    Across the campfire Jace chewed on a roasted
rabbit leg. Her own appetite had diminished to almost nothing.
Beyond that small circle of light, darkness crowded in around them,
concealing everything, making her feel as if they were the last two
people on earth. Feeling his gaze on her, she found it to be a
frightening thought.
    She took just one bite from the piece of
rabbit on her plate. It was all she could choke down.
    “ You’d better eat,” Jace
said, breaking the silence. “If you don’t you’ll wear out faster
than shoes with cardboard soles.”
    She shook her head, the tin plate forgotten
on her lap. “I’m not hungry.”
    He regarded her, then rose and walked over
to her. When he stretched out a hand toward her injured arm, she
flinched and pulled back. “What are you doin’?” she demanded.
    “ Damn it, don’t be so
jumpy,” he said. “I’m just going to check your bandage.”
    She scooted back. “It’s fine. I don’t need
your—” Just then, the call of a bird sounded from the blackness
around them. It came from everywhere and nowhere. Jace put up a
hand to silence her as he listened intently to the repeated call.
She reached for her gun, but he stopped her hand and frowned. His
hand on hers was warm and firm. And frightening. But she didn’t
move.
    Then in a perfect echo, he mimicked the
sound back to the prairie. A big grin lighted his expression when
the sound was repeated. It was the first time Kyla had really seen
him smile—it transformed his youthful face and she stared in
amazement. It caught her notice in a way that his dark frown did
not.
    “ I may come to your fire,
Jace Rankin?" a low voice now asked. It filled the darkness as the
bird call had.
    “ Yes, come on, Many Braids.
There’s rabbit and coffee for you.”
    Kyla drew a startled breath when a very
tall, slender Indian swept quietly through the sagebrush directly
in front of her. He seemed to materialize out of the night. She
didn’t know if he had a horse or if he had simply walked in from
the prairie, but he was a giant of a man, the biggest she’d ever
seen.
    Under a battered old J. B. Stetson, he wore
his ebony hair in four neat braids that hung down his chest, two on
each side. His clothes were a combination of buckskin pants,
knee-high fringed moccasins, and what looked like an army officer’s
coat without the gold buttons or epaulets. Beneath the jacket he
wore a calico shirt, the kind distributed on the reservations.
    She didn’t mean to stare, but he was a
formidable, imposing man, straight as a yew tree, and with
blade-sharp mahogany features that made it impossible for her to
determine his age. He could have been thirty, he could have been
sixty.
    Kyla hadn’t seen many Indians since the army
forced them onto reservations years earlier. She watched him with
fascination, but mostly with fear.
    Jace and the Indian shook hands solemnly.
The contrast between their heights was striking, but the man would
have dwarfed anyone who stood next to him. “It’s been a long time,
Many Braids. What are you doing out here, especially in this
weather?”
    The man shrugged. "This land no longer
belongs to the People, but sometimes I yearn to rest my eyes upon
it.”
    Jace turned to Kyla. “This is Many Braids.
He’s a Nez Perce medicine man, and an old friend of mine.”
    Hiding behind Kyle’s bravado, she nodded at
him and wiped her mouth on her sleeve. “My name’s Kyle
Springer.”
    With limber dignity he dropped to sit
cross-legged next to the fire. He studied her with black,
unwavering eyes. Light from