Winter's Camp

New York Times bestselling author Jodi Thomas has captivated readers around the world with her sweeping, heartfelt family sagas. To introduce her brand-new series, Jodi tells the story behind the unforgiving Texas landscape and how one man claims Ransom Canyon—and a timid beauty—for his legacy...

A wanderer’s life was all James Randall Kirkland had known since he was an orphaned boy in San Antonio. And while years of adventure had satisfied his younger self, now he’s longing to put down roots of his own and is prepared to go it alone. But when he sees the Apache slave woman with the startling blue eyes, the course of his journey is changed forever.

Ever since the Comanche raided her village and took her for their own, Millie hasn’t known any kind of freedom. After years of being outcast, beaten and traded from tribe to tribe, she’s unprepared for James’s patient tone and gentle ways. Still, as her handsome savior slowly earns her trust, Millie struggles between desire and fear, sure it’s just a matter of time before James tires of her and her burgeoning feelings are nothing but another wasted memory.

Winter’s Camp

A Ransom Canyon Novella

Jodi Thomas

www.millsandboon.co.uk

New York Times bestselling author Jodi Thomas is a fifth-generation Texan who sets many of her stories in her home state, where her grandmother was born in a covered wagon. She is a certified marriage and family counselor, a Texas Tech graduate and writer in residence at West Texas A&M University. She lives with her husband in Amarillo, Texas.

Visit her website at jodithomas.com.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Title Page

About the Author

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

EPILOGUE

Extract

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

Ransom Canyon, Texas 1872

JAMES RANDALL KIRKLAND took one last look at the sun’s blinding light before heading into the canyon’s narrow entrance. Shadows danced along the jagged walls as if holding secrets and danger below. The beauty of the rocks ribboned in the colors of the earth almost calmed his fears. Almost.

The only way to get to Ransom Canyon from the south was along one path barely five feet wide and far too steep for a wagon. Midday seemed to pass into early evening in a flash as the walls grew higher above him and the temperature dropped. Winter already whispered through the fall air, warning him of how little time he had left to prepare.

The trades he’d make today would restore his staples even if the trip down into the canyon might be dangerous. James had lived with risk all his life and bore the scars to prove it.

Anyone in Ransom Canyon who didn’t want him showing up today would have a clear shot from above. But even among outlaws and Comancheros, there was a code. For a few weeks every year when nature turned from green to brown, any man could ride this trail and trade for what he wanted or needed. With the nearest trading post more than two hundred miles away, supplies were hard to come by in this part of Texas. Winter was coming on early; James knew he’d need blankets, food supplies and at least two more horses.

He had crossed the plains of this northernmost part of Texas before. Once in 1866, when the need to roam open country to clear the blood of war from his mind had grown too strong. It hadn’t worked. Dreams of drowning in blood still haunted him. He had ridden over the Llano Estacado again in 1869 as a scout for the army. Settlers were moving into Texas fast and the army knew the fort line would have to be extended to where Comanche and buffalo roamed.

James might not live to see his thirtieth birthday. A wanderer’s life was the only one he had known since running away from a mission in San Antonio at the age of twelve. All was adventure and freedom then. Now he longed for what he’d never had: roots. Deep roots so generations of Kirklands would live out their lives on the same land.

A priest had once told James he came from noble English blood. But all James knew was that his family blood must have been thin, for his father had been gunned down a few months after they’d arrived in Texas and his mother and little sister had been dead before their first winter in Texas had passed.

Now, as he and his companion, a buffalo-hunter-turned-guide, rode into Ransom Canyon, James kept his rifle over one arm and his Colt ready to slide from its holster at the slightest sound. He didn’t trust the men they were about to meet or the buckskin-clad man who rode beside him. It had taken a war and several gunfights to make James realize he couldn’t afford trust.

“I know you don’t like this, Kirkland.” Two Fingers broke the silence that had lasted all morning. “But you need horses and supplies to last the winter on the plains.” The old ex-slave, who’d lost his middle two fingers on a bet down in Fort Worth, scratched his neck with his thumb. “I can speak enough of any language we come up against in this place, but like I told you before, you’d be better off to ride south with me and not stay on this land. We could winter near a fort and both still have our scalps come spring.”

“I want to be alone out here for a while. I plan to scout this land and find the best spot for a ranch. Then, come spring, I’ll stake my claim.” James did not add that he had saved enough to buy a hundred head of cattle. The money, along with a small inheritance from his father that he had never touched, was waiting for him in a bank.

“If these traders know you’re squattin’ near here, they’ll come calling and think nothing of killing you and taking back their goods. You might have been the great Captain Kirkland in the war, but out here alone you’ll be nothing but dead if they find you.”

James nodded. It had been seven years since the war and he still couldn’t shake his past. Even Two Fingers, who hadn’t known him long, had picked up on how some of the men had treated him in Fort Worth. Halfway into the War Between the States, he’d gone mad and ignored danger. He had been lucky to have survived but in the years since, his legend had seemed to grow, not fade, as he wished it would.

When he’d hired Two Fingers, James’s plan had simply been to scout the land, but once he’d seen the beauty he’d known he would have to stay a while if this was the place he planned to live out the rest of his life. With his hunting skills and more supplies, he could survive the winter alone.

Now that Two Fingers had started talking, he couldn’t seem to stop. “A man without a horse in this country might as well whittle his own headstone.”

When James didn’t answer, Two Fingers continued. “Most of the men we’ll run across today are just traders. A few might even be rangers looking for captives taken in raids.” He shook his head. “Lots were kidnapped during the war years without menfolk around. The children and the women go wild or crazy after a while. Lawmen do them no good by taking them back.”

James had heard the stories. “I’m not interested in captives or the slave trade. I’m only here for horses.” The war against slavery might be over, but no one had told the outlaws and Comanche. Ransom for captives could pay well.

As they moved into the crossover shadows, James made out a dozen men camped at the bottom of the canyon along the riverbank. Goods were laid out on blankets and stacked in wagon beds. Movement in the cedars told him more traders with mule teams were in the shade. He noticed Comanche traders and what looked like outlaws from both sides of the Rio Grande. They were hard, weathered men who wore their supply of bullets crossed over their chests.

He spotted a makeshift corral with thirty or more horses. Most looked like half-wild mustangs, but they’d do. He needed horses or mules to pack supplies in and hides out come spring. If the hunting was good over the cold months, he would make enough to stock the new place for a year, maybe more.

As they walked their horses closer only a few people in the clearing seemed to notice them. A small group of Apache camped by the water, the women mostly doing the work while the men traded. The chief stood tall in the center of the camp even though he had to be over fifty. They were a ragged group, the leftovers of a tribe whose young braves had been killed in battle. The few ponies they had looked too young to break to saddle. One sported an army brand.

James was about to turn away when he caught sight of a woman standing at the edge of the Apache camp. She was wrapped in a dirty blanket as mud-covered as her face and hands. She simply stood staring at the ground; not moving, not interested in his passing.

One of the older women in the tribe walked near and struck her with a stick. The muddy woman, with hair so matted it might never comb out, finally looked up.

For a moment James could only stare. Her huge eyes, framed in dark circles, looked wild and mindless, but they were the crystal blue of a mountain lake.

“Best move along, Kirkland,” Two Fingers ordered.

They moved on toward the main camp. “Did you see the color of her eyes?” James whispered. “She has to be a captive.”

Two Fingers shook his head. “When I was a boy, I ran away thinking I’d be free, not a slave like my ma, but Apache found me. I was lucky. I was taken in by the tribe, treated as good as if I were a real son. I learned the language and had a grand time living the life, but now and then I’d see a woman who’d been traded from tribe to tribe as though she was nothing but a horse. No—a woman like that is lower than a horse. If they were lucky, if you want to call it that, they were taken in as a third or fourth wife. They’d do all the work the other wives didn’t want to do and only eat when there was plenty. The number-one wife usually had the right to beat the last wife and did regularly.”

Two Fingers swore in Spanish. “If they weren’t so lucky, they fought for scraps with the dogs. Once they started looking and acting like that woman we passed, there was no hope. If they didn’t kill themselves or get beaten to death, they were left to die. Her mind’s gone, Kirkland. Don’t look at her. Some say if you do, she’ll steal your soul and take it down to hell with her.”

James thought he was beyond caring about anyone but himself; that his heart and soul had hardened to rock. He’d lost every friend he’d had in the war. He had lived so long without a family he’d decided he never wanted one. Never wanted anyone to die on him. Never wanted someone grieving when he died. It didn’t matter that he felt sorry for the woman covered in mud. He could not save her or heal her.

“She’s mad,” Two Fingers said again as they climbed off the horses. “Forget her. I knew an Irish trapper once who bought a woman crazy like her. She stabbed him in his heart the first time he fell asleep. In some tribes when a woman covers up in mud like that the tribe calls her ‘no one.’ She’s nothing to anyone. She’s no more than part of the dirt.”

“Why don’t they just kill her?” The leather creaked when James leaned his long frame forward in the saddle.

Two Fingers shrugged. “You don’t kill nothing, Kirkland.”

They moved into the group of traders. James forced himself not to look back for a while. But when he did, the woman was just standing as before, wrapped in her ragged blanket, her eyes glazed over. The rest of the tribe moved around her as if she wasn’t there.

James traded for the supplies he’d need and paid five times what he would have at a fort, but he didn’t have the time to make the long trip back to a settlement or town.

As he packed the supplies on the two mustangs he’d bought, Two Fingers moved up to his side. “We’d better be getting out of the canyon. If we have to camp here tonight, one of us might wake up dead.” He pointed a thumb at James.

“What makes you think it would be me?”

“Same reason rattlers don’t usually strike each other.” He glared at James. “I’m one of them. I may have been born a slave, but I consider myself Apache. The reason you’re still alive, Captain Kirkland, is that I figure I might need you one day. Times are changing in this part of the country. Maybe not this year or the next, but they’re changing. I can feel it in my bones. When they do, men like me won’t be tolerated. Men like you will run this country. I do this for you, Kirkland, and you’ll return the favor one day.”

“What makes you so sure?” James asked.

“‘Cause you’re an honorable man. The only one in this canyon, I’m guessing. So whatever else you need, I’ll help with the bargaining. When we leave, we part ways, but you remember me and one day I’ll ask for that favor.”

“All right, Two Fingers, but I have a small request before we go. I want you to bargain for one more thing.”

“What’s that, Kirkland?”

“The woman.” James glanced toward the mud woman. All day, she had barely moved. Twice he’d seen the old woman hit her with a stick to move her further from the campfire. Both times the blow had almost knocked her down. Now, she was so far away from the fire, she could not have felt the heat, assuming she could feel anything at all.

Two Fingers shook his head. “You don’t want her. She’s mostly dead already.”

“You don’t understand. I don’t want her. I want to help her.”

Two Fingers waved his hands in the air with the two remaining fingers on his left hand pointing to the sky as he swore. Finally he turned to James, still cussing. “I knew I shouldn’t have gotten mixed up with an honorable man. If I even suggest trading for her, the old chief will think we’re both crazy.”

“Make whatever deal you can,” James ordered in a tone he hadn’t used in years. Pulling an old pocket watch from his pack, he added, “See if they’ll take this. I’ve nothing left to offer.”

Two Fingers looked at the watch. “Does it work?”

“No.”

Two Fingers grinned. “Then we might have a chance. Trading something worthless for something worthless might just work. They’ll see it as a joke. The Apache love a good joke.”

James watched as the old buffalo hunter walked over to talk to the Apache chief. He pointed at the woman, then pointed at James, and the whole tribe laughed.

Finally, Two Fingers pulled out the watch James had carried with him since the day his father had been killed.

He remembered the ranger who had stepped in after the gunfight that had caught James’s father unprepared. The lawman had collected his father’s belongings and made sure he and his mother were on the next stage to Houston. As the ranger had said farewell, he’d told James’s mother to put her money in a bank the minute she reached Houston and then he’d handed James the watch.

Two Fingers walked toward him carrying the stick the old woman had used to hit the mud woman. “Well, if I weren’t the best trader in the south, this wouldn’t have happened. They took the watch for her and threw in this stick. Apparently the only way to get her to move is to hit her.”

James took the branch and stared at the woman still looking with dead eyes at the dirt.

“We’d better ride,” Two Fingers said. “Trust me, you don’t want to be here much longer.”

Handing Two Fingers the reins to one of the packhorses, James approached the woman with his horse and the other mustang he’d bought.

She didn’t look up, not even when he stood two feet in front of her.

For the first time he noticed how small she was, barely over five feet. With the mud and the blanket she’d looked rounded, but up close he saw her hands and arms were so thin they were almost birdlike.

He lifted the stick.

She raised her head and waited for the blow.

He took the branch in both hands and broke it across his knee. For an instant he thought he saw a hint of surprise flash in her eyes.

“If you’ll come with me, I swear I’ll never raise a weapon or my hand against you. It seems you’ve been lost for a long time. I’ll do my best to get you back to your people. I’m not looking for a slave or a wife. I want to help you.”

She showed no sign of understanding a word he’d said.

He reached down and took her hand. For a moment all he did was brush off the dried mud. Even with the dusting of dirt over her skin he could see the bruises. “It’s time to go,” he said as he turned, tugging her hand gently.

To his surprise, she followed.

When he lifted her up onto the mustang, she pulled her hand from his and dug her fingers into the horse’s mane. He knew without asking that she wouldn’t fall off during the ride.

“You’re going to be all right, Little Dove,” he said, knowing she probably wouldn’t understand.

The gash on her wrist he had noticed earlier was still bleeding. He pulled off his bandanna and wrapped it around the wound wondering how many others were on her body.

When Two Fingers joined them, James whispered, “We ride out with her between us.”

“Why? You think she’ll bolt?”

“No,” James answered. “Because she’s the most precious cargo we carry.”

CHAPTER TWO

MILLIE WATCHED THE MAN carefully. He was tall and lean with a strength about him. His words sounded familiar, as if she had once understood them a lifetime ago.

Of late she paid little attention to what was going on around her but she knew all the people came to the canyon to trade, and she seemed to be one of the things traded. It did not matter. She had been traded before. Only, no one had ever put her on a horse.

She had been twelve when the Comanche had taken her from her home. She’d been too much of a woman to be adopted into the tribe and too much of a child for any brave to claim her. Three summers later they’d traded her to an Apache tribe and given her to the chief’s blind mother. The old woman had kept her tied to her camp by a long rope. When she’d needed her, she tugged on the rope. The old woman had been neither cruel nor kind. Millie had quickly learned that she was nothing.

When the old woman had died the next winter, she’d been traded again. These past two winters with the woman and the stick had been the worst. Millie knew she wouldn’t have lasted much longer. Stick Woman had grown tired of having her around and begun to hit harder every day.

Now, at eighteen, Millie faced another change. In her life change meant things usually got worse, never better. This man of the canyon looked strong enough to kill her with one blow.

Not that it mattered. Nothing mattered anymore. Days passed, seasons passed. That whole first year she’d thought her father would come for her, but he hadn’t. She remembered seeing her mother dead, facedown in the mud the day the Comanche rode onto their farm. Mother was dead and Father never found her. How could he? She moved from tribe to tribe like something worthless shuffled off. After a few years, she’d given up hope and tried to forget about her life before. It was too painful to remember.

The dark-skinned man with only two fingers on one of his hands frowned at her as they rode out of the clearing. The other man with hair the color of the yellow walls of the canyon, talked as if trying to tell her something. She did not care where they were going. Away could be no worse.

Her new owner smiled at her now and then when he said something, but she didn’t know how to answer. For as long as she could remember, any sound she’d made had caused someone in the tribe to hit her.

Slowly, the canyon man’s words settled her. He never yelled. He was not young. The sun had wrinkled the corners of his eyes. But he was not old, either, because he had all his teeth and rode with the skill of one who had been born to ride.

They were long onto the plain flatland when they stopped to camp. The tall man lifted her down from the horse carefully as if he thought he might hurt her. He looked worried, as though he feared she might try to bolt. He could not know that running had been beaten out of her years ago.

She stood still and silent in the dark as he built a fire. When he moved her close to the fire, he tried to pull off her blanket, but she held tight. To her surprise, he laughed and gently pushed her to the ground closer to the fire.

The men talked a language she had not heard in years. Words drifted around her, reminding her of another life. The canyon man gave her food. She watched him eat his and followed suit.

“Spoon,” he said, holding up the tool he ate with. “Cup.”

The dark-skinned man in buckskins shook his head at the canyon man, but he watched her as though considering roasting her on the fire. She did not like the way the man breathed through his mouth as he glared at her.

“Cup,” Canyon Man said again as he caught her attention.

She didn’t answer, but she stored the knowledge away.

“James,” he said as he patted his chest. “I’m James.”

She looked away. Inside her mind she’d remembered her other name before the Apache and Comanche called her names. Sometimes all that kept her sane was whispering Millie in her mind.

Millie, she thought as she patted her chest. I’m Millie. But she didn’t trust this man enough to say her secret word aloud.

The dark-skinned man never spoke to her. He curled up in the shadows to sleep, but James stayed by the fire, his hand resting on his weapon.

Millie watched him until he fell asleep, then she moved closer so that her blanket almost touched his. She didn’t sleep for a long while, waiting to be beaten and made to move away from the fire.

Finally he rolled over and looked at her, saying words she didn’t understand. His hand reached across the dried grass and patted her mud-covered fingers.

Millie closed her eyes. She would not be hurt tonight.

Maybe tomorrow, but not tonight.

CHAPTER THREE

JAMES WASN’T SURPRISED to find Two Fingers gone at dawn. He was surprised to find the woman still curled by the fire.

When she looked at him, he patted his chest and said, “James.” Maybe she’d get the hint and give him her name.

No answer. Just those huge blue eyes staring up at him. Fear sparked in her gaze this morning. James wasn’t sure it was an improvement over the dull, dead eyes he’d seen yesterday.

As he began to make coffee, she stood and moved silently toward the stream. Since the horses were in the other direction, he doubted she planned to run. If she did, he’d have no trouble catching up to her. In this part of Texas, he could see for miles in every direction.

He watched her by the water. She wasn’t washing. She was applying a new layer of mud. She disappeared from sight for a while, but he decided he’d give her some room. Even a mud woman needed her privacy.

It was full dawn when she came back. If possible she looked dirtier than when she’d left. Her muddy hands were cupped, carrying something.

She offered him a half dozen eggs.

He’d seen the prairie chickens last night, but had no idea where their nests might be.

“Breakfast.” He smiled and took the eggs. “Thank you.”

She moved away without looking at him. James almost asked how she’d like them cooked, but he knew she wouldn’t answer. He scrambled the eggs while the coffee boiled, then handed half to her on his one plate while he tackled his half from the skillet.

He talked while they ate, wondering if anything he said was getting through to her. As he loaded up the horses, he realized she was watching him, not simply glaring at nothing. Once he was ready, he walked over to her and took her hand. “We’d best be heading out. I’ve got a campsite picked out about twenty miles from here.” He brushed the dirt off her hand as he talked, then he tugged her to the horse and set her up bareback.