Douglas, Nelson - Midnight Louie 05-Cat in a Diamond Dazzle

Each hoof struck stage with the muffled thump of a drumbeat. Though the rider looked naked, Temple soon spotted the thongs over each hip that supported a buckskin loincloth. The brave's long dark hair was braided in front, and no smile fractured his chiseled features. A small deerskin pouch on a leather string lay on his bare breastbone. The leather strap slashing diagonally across his well-developed chest led the eye to a beaded quiver and three feather-tipped arrows peeking over his right shoulder. He carried a pale bow of antler or bone, with a two-foot-long arrow notched on the string, though his arms were slowly lowering the weapon as the horse moved toward the audience.

Very sensible, Temple approved. Safety before sensation.

The horse paused at center stage. It wore no bridle, Temple realized, no reins, no saddle, but was trained to respond to rider signals only. What a magnificent creature! she thought, although most (less romantically burned-out) women would apply that praise to the rider rather than the ridden.

The horse held its noble position for long seconds, then turned its head over its shoulder and whinnied inquiringly. Temple didn't know much about horses and whinnies, but she knew a lot about greenhorn performers wondering 'what next,' whether in plain English or plaintive horse.

The rider did nothing. Did not so much as move.

Good call; his stoic bearing added to the mystery and the moment. Cheyenne--for Cheyenne it was--had created a show-stopper. Even Danny Dove sat immobile and rapt, captivated by a true stage suspense as everyone present was, by a breathless wondering What will he -- they -- do next?

"Bravo," Temple whispered under her breath. "But don't milk it too long--"

Even as she spoke the rider moved. The warrior's lean torso shifted left, as if to dismount, the bare left leg slid sideways along the horse's gray belly, the bow and arrow pointed downward, to the floor. Every motion was as elegant as ballet, blessed with a lingering; sure sensuality that only intensified the effect. The onlooker didn't want the slow-motion poetry of man and horse to end, but knew that--at any instant--the moccasined feet would spring lightly to the stage, for the horse couldn't walk on the temporary runway.

But the anticipated dismount didn't happen. Instead, the man's body kept tipping sideways, like a tin figure struck by a lucky shot at a shooting gallery. Temple expected such a figure to flip upright and move on. It didn't.

Cheyenne's feet touched the stage floor only an instant before his entire length did, collapsing like a straw man. Bow and arrow fell to one side.

Everyone watched, motionless, waiting for the drama's next act. Surely something not yet seen would explain this turn of events.

Temple saw the unthinkable reason first.

"No!" she shouted at someone, spurred to action, wanting to roll the film backwards. She sprinted down the long aisle and up the five or six steps to the runway.

Every eye wrenched to her. She could sense annoyance on the accusing faces of watching stage crew members in the wings. But she had her glasses on, all the better to see the heroes on parade strut their stuff. She had spotted something else in the spotlit glare ... something other than naked horse and nearly naked man.

Blood dappling the snow of an Apaloosa's hindquarters.

No one--nothing--was moving but her and the gently sidestepping horse, except time. The horse whinnied again, this time in obvious distress. It minced away, as magnificently bare as its fallen rider, turning to display a thin crimson stream that meandered down the sleek, swelling belly.

Now everyone was running for the same spot, but Temple was already there. She paused at the foot of Cheyenne's figure, studying his open, unseeing eye, his slack mouth. Then she saw the feathered haft of an arrow bracing his back, keeping it from sinking flat to the floor.

Or was he sinking to the floor, driving the shaft in deeper?

Temple knelt to seize his ebbing shoulder with both hands.

"Help me! We've got to keep him from falling on it--"

Someone crouched beside her. "Hang on, dear heart!" Danny Dove.

Even greater force checked the body's fall. A Fontana brother knelt at Cheyenne's head, his bent knee helping prop up the torso.

Temple sensed legs crowding around them.

"Lay him forward," someone suggested.

"Has he got a pulse?" Another voice.

"I've done some nursing--" A man knelt beside them, then pressed two fingers to Cheyenne's carotid artery.

After a second, his fingers moved to another site. And another. Temple sensed rather than saw the headshake that accompanied his spoken verdict. "Nothing. No pulse."

A nondescript costume woman brought rolled-up towels daubed with suntan-shade makeup anyway, pushing them under Cheyenne's back to keep ... the body ... from rolling onto the arrow.

An arrow. A stage prop gone awry? Or a murder weapon, first and last? Temple stared into Cheyenne's dead face, remembered its charming yet oddly diffident animation the previous night, when he'd invited her to today's rehearsal... for death.

No! He had first asked her to go somewhere else last night. With him. For a drink. To talk. She had considered the invitation frivolous and insincere; he was just another ambitious hunk winning women's favor and influencing votes. Kit and Electra wanted to assume that he was attracted to her, thought that she should accept any flattering invitations. She had brushed off both assumptions. She had said no. She had no time for games.

But maybe Cheyenne was interested in her, for reasons other than the eternal he/she. Maybe he had a problem and knew about her role in uncovering the Stripper Strangler.

She had said no.

Nobody would ever say no to him again.

People were edging away from tragedy, stepping back from death. There was nothing they could do.

Nothing she could do.

"Come on," someone above her urged, a hand on her shoulder, as she had laid hands on Cheyenne's shoulder only moments before.

Temple remained crouched beside the body, dumb as a dog. Danny caught her elbow in his wiry grip and pushed her upright despite herself. She teetered on her high heels like someone on a cliff.

The sudden change in position made her senses swim. Beside her, the horse minced nearer, a great gray wall of muscle and hide.

"Someone get the bleedin' 'orse outta 'ere!" a disconcertingly Cockney voice ordered.

"No," Temple said. "The police will want it kept as close to the scene of the crime as possible. It's evidence."

"Some blighter's supposed to stand 'ere and 'old the big bugger by his nose hairs?"

Temple glanced at the speaker. He was almost as tall as the horse, a chestnut-maned hunk with an artistically broken nose and piercing hazel eyes. He was obviously not volunteering for groom duty.

"I'll .. . hold it," she said. "And we should keep people away from here until the police come."

Temple had never held a horse in her life, much less one bare of bridle and rein. So she stepped near its huge head and caught a fistful of mane, stroking its long nose.

Everyone but Danny Dove and the anonymous Fontana had backed away. Violent death did that to people: first attracted and then repelled them.

"The police have been called?" she asked.

"I sincerely hope so, Miss Annie," Danny said, his face ashen.

"Annie?"

Danny grinned from under his angelic coil of grizzled blond hair. "Annie Oakley, that is. Don't worry, I'll keep an eye on our friend Flicka there with you."

The offer was welcome.

Temple didn't know which she would have more difficulty handling in the long run: the live horse she didn't know how to hold, or the dead man she hadn't known how to help.

Chapter 13