High Mountain Drifter (17 page)

"That
is
romantic." Tears stung Verbena's eyes. "You are going to be so happy. I am personally going to make sure of it. If Tyler gets out of line, I'll take your snake stick to him."

"While I like the sentiment," Magnolia laughed. "He won't get out of line. There is no one steadier or more good hearted than my Tyler."

"What are you two doing?" Rose asked, sitting up in bed. "I'm trying to sleep here."

"Sorry." Verbena really felt bad. Poor Rose. "When Magnolia gets her own room, I'll have to sneak over to talk to her."

"Good, then I'll be spared the interruption." Even though it was dark, it wasn't hard to guess by her amused and slightly miffed tone that she was rolling her eyes. "Unlike you, Verbena, I'm not drop-dead gorgeous or you, Magnolia, who has a fiancé. I need my beauty sleep."

"I guess we'd better get back to bed." Still feeling unsettled, Verbena hopped off the cushion and onto her feet. "We don't want Rose to get ugly."

"Uglier," Magnolia jested playfully. A pillow sailed across the room and plopped into her.

Verbena lingered, taking one long last look at the closed curtain, thinking about Zane. She owed him so much. Surely that's why she felt like this. It was gratitude and admiration and appreciation all tied up together. She didn't want to feel this way. She told herself not to, but it didn't help. She couldn’t stop it.

"Come to bed," Rose said gently, stealing Magnolia's pillow for herself. "Verbena, it will all be over soon. Try to get some sleep."

"Okay." To appease her sister, she slipped off her housecoat, peeled off her slippers and climbed between the sheets.

Snow pummeled down in the high country, but it was his ally, hiding his approach. Zane eased one boot to the soft ground, pitching the weight on his foot to minimize any sound. The thousand
tap, tap, taps
of snowflakes falling everywhere filled the mountainside, loud in the hushed silence of nature. The thick cloud cover obscured any natural light to guide his way, but up in the high country, the snow shone at night with a faint iridescence that reflected scant light back up at the sky, creating a strange sort of dark glow that clearly outlined trees and boulder, slopes and outcroppings.

And Ernest trying to light a small fire with wet wood. City boy. Zane shook his head at the foolishness. No Montana man worth his salt would use wet moss and flint to start a fire. Well, at least Craddock was occupied, his muttered curses carrying on the wind. Those copious curses only worked to Zane's advantage, hiding any sound of his approach.

He came up on him from behind, silent as a ghost. Rifle ready, cuffs and leg irons hanging from his belt. "Hands behind your head, Craddock. Move and I'll shoot."

The sorry excuse for a man jumped, startled. As if panicked, as if thinking he could possibly fight and win, Craddock reached for his rifle.

Bad decision. Zane grabbed the back of the man's collar with his free hand.

"I said don't move." Shaking his head, Zane gave a good jerk, twisting the fabric tight, compromising the criminal's ability to breathe. Easier to cuff him this way. "Now hands behind your head."

"How the devil did you get here?" Craddock asked, eerily calm, as if defeated, like a man who had lost all fight.

Right. Zane wasn't fooled. He felt a slight movement, recognized the bunch of muscle and body before his quarry struck out, so he yanked hard on Craddock's collar and hefted him up off the ground and into the air. Hanging by his throat didn't discourage him apparently. Ernest's arm swung up, and the black gleam of a blade arced dangerously.

Like that was a threat. Annoyed, Zane easily blocked the knife with the nose of his rifle, heard the satisfying crack of the gun hitting bone. Craddock choked in pain and the knife went flying harmlessly into the dark.

"Now you've made me angry." Zane gave another jerk on the back of Craddock's collar and waited until the man's hanging body spasmed, lost consciousness and went limp.

Really easy to cuff and chain him then.

Efficiently, Zane removed a .45 and two hunting knives hidden on the unconscious man, grabbed him by the wrists and dragged him across the forest floor. Probably hit a few rocks along the way, but oh, well. He usually carried his quarry back to the horse, but why bother this time? He really didn't like Craddock. Any man who would threaten Verbena and her sisters deserved what he got.

When Zane reached the clearing, he whistled to his horse. Scout ambled close, into position, making it easy to haul Craddock over the saddle and tie him in.

There, Zane thought, satisfied. Job done.

Verbena couldn't get back to sleep. She listened to the ice ping against the window for what had to be hours. Occasionally she could hear faint, barely audible rumbles of men's voices outside, as the cowboys changed shifts or exchanged information. Magnolia and Rose slept, lost in dreams, but Verbena couldn't settle. She couldn't slip back into the safety of sleep.

Gradually the pitch black of the night faded. The ice stopped. Everything grew hushed and still. No men's voices came from outside. Gray light eased around the edges of the drapes, outlining them. Dawn wasn't far away. Her body ached strangely from laying there without sleeping, so she eased out of bed, tiptoed across the room to dress herself and slipped out into the hall.

From the window at the landing, she could see the quiet darkness of morning cast in shades of gray against a charcoal sky. Teeth chattering, she went straight to the cook stove and stirred the embers. A fistful of dry kindling and the fire caught, flames growing and snapping. She added more kindling and a couple small sticks of wood, leaving the door open for the fire to breathe.

A shadow on the porch caught her eye. Not one of the cowboys. No, he was too tall, too bear-like for that. A smile flashed to life, moving through her at the speed of light and she was across the kitchen without remembering taking a step. She turned the deadbolt and opened the door, the bitter cold couldn't begin to touch the elation she felt seeing him there, snow dusting his hat and his wide shoulders.

"I was just leaving a note." He crumpled up the square of paper in his hand. "I told your guards but I wanted to at least leave a note, tell you myself. I captured Craddock early this morning, around three."

"You did?" Relief left her dizzy. "Well, of course you did. I mean, that's what you do. I just, well, it's hard to believe it's over."

"Over and done with. He's locked up in Milo's jail. You're safe."

"My family is safe." Gratitude and something far more powerful surged through her, beating in her veins, filling her heart. Ernest was caught. In jail. He couldn’t hurt anyone else, not ever again and she was free of him.
Free!
She felt ready to burst with relief and elation, felt ready to jump to the moon and back all in one leap. She wanted to laugh, she wanted to dance a highland jig (and she wasn't even Scottish).

And all because of Zane. She wanted to throw her arms around him and hug him tight--Hold on there, she told herself. Hugging the man would be a grave mistake. She still hadn't forgotten the last time she'd touched him. Better to keep her hands firmly clasped together in front of her, fingers laced, so she wouldn't be tempted. She beamed up at him instead, unable to rein in her heart. "Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you."

"No problem." He glanced down at his toes, blushed a little. "It's my job."

"It's a great deal more than that. You sir, have my eternal gratitude." She pulled the door open wider. She really could hug him, kiss him, give him the deed to the house. He looked terribly cold standing there, frozen and snowy, exhaustion lining his handsome face. He had to be miserable, and her heart twisted in sympathy. "Come in and warm up. You look as though you could use a good thawing out."

"Nope, don't want to trouble you." He reeled back a step, becoming nothing but shadow. "I was about to head over to the bunkhouse and grab an hour or two of sleep until breakfast."

"That's ridiculous. You should eat first, then sleep. Honestly." Did the man always have to be so tough? "How can you sleep on an empty stomach? I've got the fire started. It won't take but a few minutes to fix you a meal. C'mon, you're letting in all the cold. Hurry up."

"I suppose I can stay." He glanced around, passed through the threshold. "There's just the two of us, right?"

He was shy, she realized, not knowing why that touched her.

"For now," she said, taking a few more precise steps back, determined to keep proper distance between them. Maybe that would help cool her feelings. "If we're quiet and don't wake them, my sisters will sleep until sunrise."

"We got a little time, then." Zane took off his hat, which looked frozen stiff. Peeled off his gloves and tried undoing his buttons, but they were too iced over. "Think I need to thaw some first."

"Here, the fire is putting out some heat." She tossed two small logs into the oven and gestured for him to take her place. "You look like you were snowed on."

"First rained on and then iced on, before the snow." Ruefully, he almost grinned again. That suggestion of a quirk in the corners of his mouth was quite dashing.

If only she could stop her heart from giving a pitter pat. Best to focus on the job at hand. Measuring out coffee, putting it on to boil, hunting down a fry pan, remembering how to make scrambled eggs (her mind was a little jittery). "I just can't believe you did it. In hardly any time at all. My aunt has had her hired hands combing the mountainside. The sheriff and his deputies were searching too."

"I know what to look for, I've been doing this so long. After a while, you learn how men on the run think. They need the basics. Shelter, food, water. You learn how they try to hide their tracks and their presence."

"How long have you been doing this?" She opened a crock and began counting out teaspoons of ground coffee.

"Too long." He held out his bare hands to the heat radiating out the open oven door. Orange flames danced and licked, the heat scorched his hands. Least he wasn't frostbitten. "I started when I was twenty-three. Been doing it for ten years now."

"That's a long time." She moved like grace, with the unconscious splendor of a dancer, settling the coffeepot onto the stove. "It must be something you like."

"I don't know about that." Like had nothing to do with it. "More of an aptitude."

"Did you do a lot of hunting when you were growing up?" Innocent, unaware of the kind of man she was alone with, she whirled away from him, her blue skirts swishing around her ankles. "I mean, when you weren't in the orphanage, but with your pa."

Pa. Funny that mention of him should come up. Zane grimaced. That was sign enough to remember his place, not to get caught up in her hospitality and think there was something more in it. He cleared his throat. "I did learn to hunt from him. How to handle a gun, how to read tracks, how to move through the woods without making a sound."

"Interesting." Her back was to him, measuring out ingredients. Maybe for pancakes. Her dark hair was down, shimmering in the light of the lamp she'd just lit, cascading down her slender back, drawing his gaze to the nip of her tiny waist, the span of her delicate shoulders. Everything about her was china doll dear, but she was unaware of it as she reached for a measuring cup and measured away. "The cowboys are good at tracking, really good from what I've heard, and they would lose the trail every time. Milo did too."

"Milo is a good sheriff, and I've talked with some of the men guarding you. They're good at what they do too. Hunting a criminal is a different kind of tracking, that's all." Warmer now, he knelt down to add more wood to the fire. The greedy flames gobbled up the cedar the instant he placed it into the stove's belly.

He considered saying more about his past. He wasn't one to lie, and withholding the truth was a sort of lie, but how would it make Verbena feel? He glanced over his shoulder, watched her zip across the kitchen, as sweetly as a songbird.

"Have you ever thought about doing something else?" she asked in that friendly way of hers, just making conversation. She reached for the brass ring in the floor and gave it a tug. "Maybe something where you didn't have to work all night on a mountain in the snow."

"I can't say that's the best part of my job." He stood up, spotted a pot holder on the counter and used it to close the stove door. "Working through the night without sleep isn't either."

"You could be a lawman like Milo." She disappeared into the cellar below. "It seems to me like he puts in some long days, but he only has to spend nights up on a mountain in the snow once every now and then."

"I've tried being a lawman." The reminder was like a knife in his chest. He pried the buttons loose on his newly thawed coat. "Didn't work."

"Why not?" She rose back into sight, her rich blue gaze latching onto his, luminous with that caring way she looked at everyone. He had to remind himself of that. That caring he saw in those sapphire depths wasn't about him.

Never had been, never would be. That was like a blade too, cutting deep. "Oh, I don't settle in one place well. I've got a wandering soul. I do better drifting from place to place."

He shrugged out of his coat, swallowed hard, trying to hide that particular pain. If he kept moving, his past couldn’t catch up to him. He wouldn't have to catch up with himself.

"Oh, you can't be tied down." She nodded as if it all made sense to her. "You're one of those free spirits."

"I don't know about free, maybe restless." He grabbed the brass ring before she could and lowered the trap door for her. She smelled good, like ripe strawberries, like sunshine streaming through newly budding trees. A beat began thumping in his chest, a combination of his pulse kicking up at being so near to her--kissing close--and a wild wish thrashing its way alive.

She sure was nice. The kind of sweet, kind, funny woman a man would give up anything to have. He'd give his life to protect hers. He was drawn to her, no doubt about that, and it was wrong. She was not for him. Never could be.