Arizona Renegades by Jon Sharpe Page A

shorter and shorter, showing how tired she was. He marveled that she never halted to catch some sleep, yet it was just as well she didn’t. The jaguar would seize the opportunity to seize her.
    Then both sets of tracks changed their pattern. The jaguar had stopped. So had Gwen, scuff marks revealing she had turned. Either she saw or heard the cat roar. She ran, and the jaguar fell into a lazy lope. She was at its mercy and the predator seemed to know it. It was in no rush to finish her off.
    Fargo raised his eyes from the prints, certain he would soon find Gwendolyn’s ravaged body. If so, he would kill the jaguar. Once one developed a taste for human flesh, it became a habit. Laziness was also a factor. Animals disliked hard toil as much as people. And compared to wary deer and fleet-footed antelope, humans were ridiculously easy for the big cats to kill.
    Spurring the stallion into a gallop, Fargo scanned the rugged terrain. Gwen might be lying behind any of the large boulders ahead, her body ripped to pieces. He shut the image from his mind. Then, faintly, a voice wavered. So faint, Fargo wasn’t sure he had heard it until it was repeated. Slowing, he cocked his head.
    “Skye! Here I am! Here!”
    Movement at the top of an isolated oak on an otherwise arid slope galvanized Fargo into a gallop. Gwen clung to the uppermost limb, a branch so thin it was a miracle it supported her weight. She waved and laughed for joy, her perch swaying precariously.
    “Thank God you’ve come! I thought I was a goner!”
    In a spray of dust Fargo reined up. The jaguar’s tracks ringed the base of the tree but the cat itself did not appear to be anywhere around. Vaulting off, he hollered, “Do you want me to come get you?”
    “No need! I’m not helpless!” Gwen slid to the next lower branch and from there clambered down with an agility Fargo admired. He saw that she had torn the lower half of her dress off. From the knees down, her legs were bare. Fine legs they were, too. Not as full or shapely as Melissa’s but enticing enough to turn the head of any man.
    Fargo stood back as she flipped onto the bottom limb, twisted, and alighted beside him as lightly as the beast that had stalked her. She was scraped, scratched, and bruised, her face smudged, her hair a worse mess than Melissa’s, but she was alive. “You had me worried,” he admitted, and was nearly bowled over when she threw herself into his arms and hugged him tight enough to crack his ribs.
    “You weren’t the only one,” Gwen said softly. “I don’t know how much longer I could have clung on up there.”
    “Where’s the jaguar?”
    Gwen pulled back and gasped. “How did you—?” She glanced at the ground. “Oh, the tracks. It was here a few minutes ago, then it ran off. I think it heard you coming.” Shuddering, she bent her ankle so he could see a bloody slash. “I lost count of how many times it tried to reach me.”
    Fargo brushed his fingers over a series of deep claw marks on the trunk. Jaguars were good climbers. But their weight restricted them to lower, thicker branches. It had been clever of Gwen to climb so high. He spied part of her dress lying on the other side of the tree, the fabric rent to ribbons.
    Gwen noticed and wearily smiled. “The jaguar did that when I flapped it in his face.” She brushed at a stray bang. “The pesky critter kept climbing higher and higher. I tried to break a branch to hit it, but couldn’t. So with my teeth and my nails, I ripped my dress and shook the piece at him when he climbed too close for comfort.”
    “You didn’t sleep a wink all night, did you?”
    “No. And if I don’t get some soon, I’ll pass out.” Gwen stifled a yawn. Her eyes were bloodshot, her features haggard.
    Fargo would rather take her to Melissa but an hour’s delay wouldn’t do any harm. “You can take a nap if you want.” Clasping her hand, he moved toward a shelf above the oak. “Not a long one, mind you. I’ll stand lookout