Authors: Elizabeth Lowell
The longhorn was quite dead. Two of the three bullets had gone through his heart.
Hunter looked up and saw Leopard not thirty feet away, approaching with mincing strides and rolling eyes. Elyssa was pale, but the barrel of the shotgun she was holding never moved from the fallen longhorn.
Hunter’s eyes went over her like quick hands, searching for injuries. He saw none. His breath came out in a rush of relief.
I wouldn’t have given a wooden nickel for her chances when that damned bull came charging at her
.
Never had Hunter drawn and fired his rifle so quickly. He hoped he would never have to do it again.
He might not be that lucky twice.
“I told you to run,” Hunter said harshly.
“I did.”
“Not far enough. If I had missed—”
“You didn’t,” Elyssa interrupted. “Thank you.”
Hunter let out another rough breath and looked back at the big longhorn.
“I was lucky,” he said flatly.
“You’re an excellent shot. If you hadn’t been so quick, the bull would have hooked Leopard.”
“Or you.”
“Yes,” she whispered. “Or me.”
Elyssa closed her eyes, then opened them quickly. When she closed her eyes she saw the bull charging all over again, felt again the certainty of her own injury or death.
“Thank you,” Elyssa said through trembling lips.
With a curt gesture, Hunter turned aside her thanks. He was angry with himself for feeling so protective of Elyssa and angry with her for making him notice how desirable she was with every breath she took.
The longer Hunter looked at her, the harder it was to keep his hands off of her.
Whatever happened to “once burned, twice shy
”? he asked himself bitterly.
Why is it so damned hard to remember that Elyssa is a wide-eyed little flirt who is hell-bent on seducing every man in sight
?
Remember Mickey. She’s supposed to be as good as engaged to him, and she walked by him like a dirty shirt to flirt with me
.
Why can’t I remember that when I look at her and want her until I can’t think for the wildfire in my blood
?
There was no answer to Hunter’s silent, savage questions.
Nor was there any relief from the fierce arousal that had come in the aftermath of his fear for Elyssa.
“Is this one of those high-country longhorns you were talking about?” Hunter asked.
The roughness of his voice was as much a warning to Elyssa as the bleak intensity of his eyes.
Hunter was furious.
She stared down at the dead longhorn. An old, blurred Ladder S brand was on the bull’s hip. An even older, unreadable brand was just below that of the Ladder S.
“It
is
Bedamned,” she said, surprised. “I wonder what brought him out of the high country.”
Hunter levered another round into the firing chamber of his rifle. He looked toward the willow- and brush-choked ravine that had concealed Bedamned until it was almost too late.
“Follow me,” Hunter said. “Stay behind me and keep real quiet so we can hear if something is sneaking around in the brush.”
Hunter turned and fixed Elyssa with a level stare.
“I mean it,” he said. “
Stay behind me
. Don’t go galloping off on your own no matter what happens.”
Numbly Elyssa nodded.
“Keep that shotgun handy,” Hunter added as he
turned away. “It’s better than a rifle in close quarters.”
Again Elyssa nodded. She was grateful that she had the shotgun to hang on to. Her hands had developed an annoying tendency to tremble.
She gripped the gun even tighter so that Hunter wouldn’t see how badly her fingers were shaking.
Elyssa needn’t have bothered. Hunter wasn’t looking at her. He was backtracking the bull at a trot, his rifle at the ready. The tracks weren’t difficult to follow. The bull’s hooves had dug deeply into the ground with the force of his charge.
Ears pricked, eyes nervous and wary, Leopard followed Bugle Boy toward the ravine.
Elyssa was as unsettled as Leopard. She watched the underbrush as though she expected it to explode at any moment with murderous longhorns.
After Hunter entered the ravine, the tracks were harder to read. The going was rough, often more stone than dirt, with occasional patches of slick moss where the sun rarely touched.
Yet there were enough tracks to puzzle Hunter.
Elyssa saw Hunter’s expression, started to ask what had caught his eye, and remembered that she was supposed to be quiet. With a muffled sigh, she sat motionless and tried to coax her nerves into settling down.
Hunter was as motionless as Elyssa, but not because he needed to settle down. He was focused entirely on the tracks he could see and thinking about the ones he couldn’t see.
Bedamned, either something was rousting you or you were one crazy son of a bitch
, Hunter thought.
Most livestock simply wandered from feed to water and back, leaving meandering tracks. Bedamned had moved purposefully. When the bull stopped, he didn’t graze. He simply pawed at the ground, digging out great clots of earth and leaving scars on stone surfaces.
Your tracks look like you were fighting something, but whatever got your dander up didn’t leave any tracks of its own
.
Were you crazed, or was something after you
?
If so, what was it?
And is it still around
?
Hunter sat without moving, letting the sounds of the land sink into him.
Wind rubbing and shaking willow branches.
A hawk’s high whistle.
Magpies talking.
The bit jingling softly.
Bugle Boy swatting flies with his tail.
Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing to tell Hunter why Bedamned had come helling out of the ravine right at Elyssa with murder on his mind.
It could have been bad luck
, Hunter told himself.
Christ knows I saw enough of that during the war
.
Good man in the wrong place
.
Good man dead
.
No evil plot or subtle planning or higher meaning. Just plain bad luck and someone dies
.
Hunter sat for a minute longer, listening to and sifting through the small sounds and immense silence of the Ruby Mountains.
Bad luck was one thing. It couldn’t be helped.
Carelessness was another. A lot of what was called bad luck was just lack of care.
Hunter wasn’t a careless man.
Finally he reined Bugle Boy around. Elyssa was watching him with clear blue-green eyes. Though her curiosity was as plain as the moonlight shine of her hair, she said not one word.
“Nothing to hang your hat on,” Hunter said.
“What does that mean?”
“Lots of tracks, but the bull made all of them. Guess
he just turned killer in his dotage. It happens that way sometimes, especially with bulls.”
Elyssa let out a relieved breath.
“I was afraid we’d find one of the dogs trampled,” she said. “If they had found Bedamned and tried to herd him toward us, the bull would have turned on them.”
Hunter’s eyes narrowed. He swung down off Bugle Boy and went to a patch of damp earth. He looked at the nearby tracks with great care.
And saw nothing he could hang his hat on.
The next few patches of ground he looked at were the same. Bull tracks were easy to read. No other tracks were to be found in the chopped and churned earth.
“Well?” Elyssa asked anxiously.
“Call in your dogs.”
Elyssa whistled shrilly through her teeth, three short blasts of sound.
Very quickly the dogs appeared. They stopped fifteen feet away and watched Elyssa alertly.
“Will they track?” he asked.
“Cattle, yes.”
“Put them on the bull’s back trail.”
A few minutes later the horses were pressing farther up the ravine, following the dogs. They moved at a brisk pace, for the trail was fresh.
Less than a quarter mile up the trail, horse tracks appeared along with the bull’s. Quickly the horse tracks veered off to one side. It was impossible to tell which tracks had come first, the horse’s or the bull’s, because the tracks never crossed.
“Call the dogs off the trail,” Hunter said.
Three quick whistles brought the dogs back on the run.
Hunter swung down and studied the horse tracks that came close to but never crossed those of the bull. The horse was shod. Its hooves had cut into the ground with
the weight of rider and saddle. It was a rather small horse.
“Recognize the hoofprints?” Hunter asked.
“No. I’m not that much of a tracker. I can tell horse from cow or deer or elk, but that’s about it.”
“Not much call for tracking skills in fancy foreign drawing rooms.”
“Just enough to find the door out,” Elyssa retorted.
Hunter’s smile was big enough to show a brief flash of teeth against his dark mustache. Though he had shaved that morning, beard stubble showed darkly beneath his tanned skin.
Silently Hunter sat on his heels and looked at the tracks. He noted and memorized each peculiarity—a notch where a shoe had been nicked by a rock, a blurring where the shoe had worn oddly, a mismatch in size among the hooves, a tendency to come down hard on the left foreleg.
When Hunter finally stood, he was sure he would recognize the tracks if he saw them again. He grabbed Bugle Boy’s saddle horn and swung aboard with a quick, catlike motion.
“Well?” Elyssa asked eagerly.
“He could have been here any time since the last rain.”
“Three days?”
“The tracks were probably made today,” Hunter said. “The edges aren’t dried out.”
Hunter settled his hat more firmly on his head.
“But it’s damp and shady in here,” he added. “Hard to say how long ago they were made, much less who made them. Probably some drifter looking for a seep to water his horse.”
“Then you think Bedamned just went loco?”
“Like I said, it happens.”
Elyssa looked relieved.
“I was afraid…” she began, then let her words trail off.
“So was I.”
Startled, she looked at Hunter.
“You were?” Elyssa asked. “You sure didn’t look it.”
“Neither did you. A miracle Leopard didn’t dump you, the way he twisted and jumped sideways.”
“If he hadn’t jumped, Bedamned would have hooked us.”
Hunter was silent. The thought had occurred to him with gut-chilling regularity ever since the longhorn had erupted from the underbrush.
“Well,” Elyssa said, sighing. “Bedamned was the only rogue bull longhorn we had, so we won’t have to worry about that happening again.”
Though Hunter nodded, he didn’t put his rifle back in the scabbard after he reloaded it.
Unease bloomed coolly within Elyssa once again. Obviously Hunter feared the same thing she did.
Bedamned could have been chased and chivvied down that ravine until he burst from it like a bullet from the barrel of a rifle.
And like a bullet, Bedamned could have killed her.
R
uddy beastly fly,” Elyssa muttered.
She swiped her shoulder over her cheek to discourage the insect, but kept milking Cream without a pause. The fly buzzed around again, then flew off to annoy one of the horses.
Milk squirted into the bucket and foamed high. The cow known as Cream munched hay with bovine thoroughness while she was being milked.
Cupid purred insistently and watched each stream of milk with covetous yellow eyes.
“You’ll get yours, cat,” she said, “but first I have to get enough for pudding and gravy and butter and cheese.”
Elyssa milked rhythmically, eyes closed, cheek against the cow’s warm flank. Slowly she began humming her favorite waltz. As she did, she dreamed of what it would be like to dance with Hunter.
Maybe I’ll get Penny to suggest a bit of waltzing. Hunter would turn himself inside out for her
.
That thought took the curve out of Elyssa’s mouth. In the eight days since Hunter had come to the Ladder S, she had spent many hours riding the land with him. Alone.
Not once had he been other than businesslike with her.
I must have dreamed the tenderness and hunger in his eyes the day Gaylord Culpepper came calling and Hunter almost kissed me
.
Almost
.
Lord, I didn’t know I could ache so much for something I never had
.
A dream, that’s all
.
Just a dream
.
But Elyssa knew she hadn’t dreamed the moment when she had looked up into Hunter’s eyes. She had seen splinters of blue and green scattered through the quicksilver, and all of it was burning with concern and desire.
For her.
The memory haunted Elyssa as much as the restless heat of her own body. More than once she had awakened from dreams that made her blush when she remembered them. Never had she lain naked with a man like that.
Except in her dreams of Hunter.
Why won’t he try to kiss me again? Surely he must know I wouldn’t refuse him. I’ve done everything but trip him to get his attention
.
Maybe I should try that next
.
Elyssa sighed and turned her other cheek against Cream’s warm flank, humming a waltz in counterpoint to her swirling thoughts. The violet silk of her dress shimmered and burned like purple flame with every motion of her body, every breath.
Hunter is brusque with me and sweetly teasing with Penny. But if I turn around quickly, it’s not Penny he’s watching
.
It’s me
.
Yet he makes no effort to court me. Quite the opposite. He’s a right bastard whenever I try to draw him into a bit of civilized conversation
.
Maybe he hasn’t gotten over losing his wife, even though it was more than two years ago
.
Silently Elyssa wondered how much time a man would need before he was ready to love again.
She was afraid it was more time than Hunter had left on the Ladder S. All too soon the army deadline would be upon them. If the Ladder S met the deadline, Hunter would leave.
Elyssa sensed it as certainly as she had sensed the brutality that lay just beneath Gaylord Culpepper’s slow talk and calculating eyes.
And if the Ladder S did not manage to meet the army deadline, Elyssa would have nothing left. Not even dreams.
Don’t think about it
, she told herself.
Thinking won’t help. Only working will
.
And praying
.
“Now, if you don’t look pretty as a picture,” Mickey said.
Elyssa started and glanced over her shoulder. A tendril of hair floated down over her nose. Impatiently she blew the hair aside and looked at the young ranch hand who appeared whenever she left the ranch house.
Mickey was leaning over the stall door. The look in his eyes might have pleased Elyssa if it had been Hunter doing the watching and hungering.
But it wasn’t.
With barely veiled impatience, Elyssa turned back to her milking.
“What is it?” she asked. “Have you lost the whetstone again? Or is it the barrel staves you can’t keep track of this time?”
“I’m through with those barrels. Done told him.”
Elyssa didn’t have to ask who “him” was. Mickey didn’t like Hunter, but he was very careful around the older man.
“Told him he could hire me at gunfighter wages or I’d leave you flat.”
Without breaking her silence, Elyssa turned and shot a squirt of milk at the cat. Cupid opened her mouth and caught the liquid with little fuss and less mess.
“What do you say to that?” Mickey challenged.
“What did Hunter say?”
“That he’d let me know before the week was out.”
“Then that’s what I say.”
“Huh.”
Ignoring Mickey, Elyssa kept working. When she thought she heard him move on down the aisle, she let out a silent breath of relief and went back to humming. Finally she stripped the last of the milk from Cream’s teats.
When Elyssa stood up, she put her fists in the small of her back and arched. Slowly she stretched her back, straightening out the kinks of a week’s hard riding over the Ladder S, hunting for cows.
“Damn, Sassy, but you make a man want to sit up and howl at the moon.”
Startled, Elyssa spun around.
Mickey was still there, hanging over the stall door. He was looking at her breasts as though he owned them.
Angrily Elyssa turned her back on Mickey and adjusted the scarf she had put in the dress’s low neckline. It had been pulled to one side during the milking, revealing the rising curves of her breasts.
“Aw, now, don’t go and cover them up,” Mickey complained. “If you hadn’t wanted me to see them, you wouldn’t have worn that dress, now would you?”
“You miserable—”
Hunter’s voice cut across Elyssa’s.
“Mickey, if you don’t have anything better to do than lean on stall doors, you can check the irrigation ditches in the kitchen garden.”
Mickey straightened so quickly he stumbled. Elyssa knew that he was as startled to find Hunter in the barn as she had been to find Mickey still hanging around.
“I’d hate to lose the garden harvest,” Hunter said, “just because you’re in a lather over a little flirt. Get going.”
“Well, ain’t you just a dog in the manger,” Mickey complained. “You ain’t getting any, so you don’t want no one else to get none neither!”
A single look at Hunter’s eyes made Elyssa feel chilled.
“Take care of the garden,” Hunter said softly. “Now.”
“What if I got on my horse instead?”
“Then I’d shoot you as a horse thief. Every head of stock around here is wearing a Ladder S brand.”
“Not every head,” Mickey said, smiling maliciously. “Lately I seen a lot wearing a Slash River brand. Ab Culpepper’s brand. Covers the Ladder S like a blanket, don’t it?”
“Are you going to work or get off the Ladder S?” Hunter asked.
Swearing like a sailor, Mickey walked out of the barn. On his way he grabbed a shovel.
“I told you about flirting with the men,” Hunter said.
The contempt in his voice froze Elyssa.
Then it infuriated her.
“I was milking the ruddy cow,” she snarled.
“Not when I saw you. You were arched up like a dancer or a lover, and your breasts—”
Abruptly Hunter changed the subject.
“Stop pushing me, Sassy. I guarantee you won’t like what happens.”
Hunter’s use of her hated nickname infuriated Elyssa.
“Then stop looking at me,” she said icily. “And you do look at me, Hunter. You know it as well as I do.”
“You look right back.”
“Yes. Why don’t you do something about it?”
“Weren’t you listening? You wouldn’t like it.”
“Try me.”
Out beyond the barnyard, one of the dogs began barking. Sharp, high-pitched, urgent, the sound sent adrenaline racing through Elyssa. She barely managed not to knock over the bucket of milk as she leaped for the gun she had propped in a corner of the stall.
Hunter’s hand shot out and wrapped around Elyssa’s arm.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he demanded.
“Seeing what set off the dog.”
“Stay here. I’ll take care of it.”
Elyssa started to argue, then reconsidered.
Hunter nodded curtly, took her shotgun, and stalked to the entrance to the barn. Before he stepped out into the sunlight and autumn wind, he gave a careful look around.
“Well, it’s about time,” he said.
With that, Hunter walked easily into the sunshine. A moment later Mickey came racing in from the garden, rifle in hand. Hunter waved him off and continued across the yard.
Three small groups of men sat on horseback close to the ranch house. Their clothes were trail-worn and dusty. Like Hunter, some of the men wore remnants of Confederate uniforms. Others wore the blue trousers of the Union.
The rest wore the buckskin of plainsmen or the fitted leather pants and broad-rimmed hats of Mexican cowhands. Men who had come from the Texas thornbush country wore leather chaps.
Remainders of dusty blue and gray uniforms were mixed equally throughout the three groups, as were checkered shirts and buckskin, leather chaps and flannel
and wool. No one lined up according to North or South or plains.
The former soldiers had left the war behind them in all but one way—they were well armed. Plainsmen, drifters, and soldiers alike wore their weapons as unselfconsciously as they wore their boots.
The horses the men rode came in many sizes and all colors except one. White. A white horse made a man a target against every landscape, whether desert or grassland, thornbush or mountain meadow.
Four black-and-white dogs circled the men at a distance, barking wildly.
From behind Hunter came a staccato whistle. The dogs stopped barking as though shot. As one they turned and loped off to whatever livestock they had been tending before the ranch yard filled up with strangers.
Hunter looked back over his shoulder. As he had expected, Elyssa was following him.
At least she has that scarf tucked back in place
, Hunter thought.
The memory of Elyssa’s half-bare breasts rising from violet silk went through Hunter like lightning through a storm, tightening every nerve in his body.
I’m going to have to come down on her like a hard rain about her clothes. The men out here aren’t used to seeing a woman like her running around loose
.
Hunter was having a hard time getting used to it himself.
“I thought I told you to stay in the barn,” Hunter said.
“Why? There’s no danger.”
“How do you know that?”
Elyssa shrugged. The motion loosened her scarf, revealing a kiss-sized patch of skin low on her neckline.
Hunter tried not to think what that soft skin would feel like beneath his lips, his tongue, his fingertips. He
tried not to think how eagerly her nipples had risen at his accidental touch eight days ago.
He failed.
With a silent, searing curse, Hunter forced himself to look away from the tempting bit of skin.
“I could tell it was safe the instant you left the barn,” Elyssa said.
“How?” he asked roughly.
“By the way you moved.”
The words stopped Hunter like a wall. He hadn’t realized that Elyssa had learned to read him so well.
Belinda was my wife for years, and she never figured out anything about me
.
The insight made Hunter uneasy. The longer he was around Elyssa, the more ways he was discovering that she was different from Belinda.
Unlike Belinda, Elyssa knew and understood the work that went into a ranch.
Unlike Belinda, Elyssa truly cared about the horses and cattle, dogs and cats, that roamed the Ladder S.
Unlike Belinda, Elyssa was aware of the land itself, of its beauty and its dangers. She saw the ranch as more than simply a way to pay for a fancy carriage or drapes for a drawing room that was as out of place in the wilderness as Belinda herself.
Broodingly Hunter looked at the vital young woman who had left the safety and shelter of the barn in order to stand close to him in the sunlight and dust of the ranch yard.
You better remember that Belinda and Sassy are alike in the only way that matters
, Hunter told himself harshly.
They’re flirts right down to the sweet marrow of their bones
.
Next to that, no other difference matters
.
“Cover yourself,” he said.
The contempt in Hunter’s voice was like a slap.
Elyssa’s eyes narrowed in anger and a pain whose sharpness surprised her. She looked down at her neckline and saw a bit of skin no bigger than the ball of her thumb. The injustice of Hunter’s reaction stung her.
“Good Lord above,” she said, exasperated.
“Keep your voice down!” Hunter said.
“From your tone of voice,” Elyssa said softly, “a body would think I was running around half-naked.”
“You are.”
“Rot. If you hadn’t been looking so hard, you wouldn’t have seen a ruddy thing!”
Hunter said something unpleasant beneath his breath.
Elyssa ignored it.
“Who are those rough-looking men?” she asked. “Friends of yours?”
“They’re riders looking to be hired at fighting wages.”
Worriedly Elyssa counted the men. There were eleven.
“You said only seven,” she protested.
“Some of them won’t get fighting wages. They’re not worth it.”
“How am I supposed to be able to tell the difference?”
“You aren’t. That’s my job.”
With that, Hunter turned on his heel and went up to the riders. They had been watching the byplay between Hunter and Elyssa with interest, amusement, boredom, or envy, depending on the man.
“Howdy, boys,” Hunter said. “Good to see you, Morgan. Heard you were somewhere in Nevada.”
“Thank you, suh. Good to see you again…on this side of the rifle barrel.”
Hunter’s smile was so quick that Elyssa almost missed it. She looked back at the rider who had spoken and saw that his hat, trousers, and gloves were all Union issue.
His smile was very white against the dark coffee color of his face.