Elyssa looked at Morgan, who was slowly shaking his head. She started to ask what he meant, but Morgan was already talking.
“What’s your name?” Morgan asked the kid.
“Sonny.”
“Well, Sonny, you’re buying a pig in a poke.”
The kid stared at Morgan.
“What does that mean?” Sonny demanded.
Morgan shook his head.
“I’ll take the shotgun, Colonel,” Morgan said. “Hate to get such a pretty piece all dirty.”
Without looking away from the kid, Hunter handed the shotgun back to Morgan.
If it hadn’t been for the profound weariness in the boy’s eyes, Hunter simply would have told him to ride on. But Hunter had seen too many like Sonny in the war, good boys who had been pushed too hard by life.
Some of the boys shattered like glass. Others pushed back savagely until they were too tired to care any longer. Then they either found relief or died.
“You’re not gun-handy enough for fighting wages,” Hunter said calmly to Sonny. “But we need cowhands. If you want a job, take it and welcome.”
“No woman’s fancy man is going to lord it over me,” Sonny snarled, reaching for his gun.
Hunter moved so fast his hands were a blur. Before the kid knew what had happened, he was facedown in the dirt, gasping for the breath that had been driven from his lungs by Hunter’s fist.
A long sigh of relief hissed out of Morgan. He knew what every other man there was just figuring out—Sonny had never been closer to dying than when he drew on the man called Hunter.
Hunter sat on his heels near the gasping boy and waited until Sonny’s eyes focused on him.
“As I mentioned before,” Hunter said, “you’re not as gun-handy as you think you are.”
Slowly understanding dawned on the boy. He had been laid out like a fish for filleting by a man whose hands moved so fast Sonny hadn’t even seen them strike. If Hunter had chosen to use his six-gun rather than his fists, Sonny would be dead.
The boy went white and began to sweat.
“Well, at least he didn’t eat second helpings of stupid,” Morgan said.
Hunter’s black mustache shifted to reveal a slow, thin smile.
“Guess not,” Hunter said.
With deceptive ease he stood up, hauling Sonny with him. Then Hunter stepped back two paces.
“Kid, you’ve got two choices,” Hunter said. “You can apologize to Miss Sutton or you can go for your gun again.”
After a shaky breath, Sonny turned to Elyssa. Red climbed up his unbearded cheeks.
“I’m plumb sorry, ma’am. I was in the wrong. I had no call to speak about you like that.”
Elyssa let out a shaky breath of her own. She was still stunned by Hunter’s speed.
And by his restraint.
“It’s all right,” she said, smiling gently. “I know it won’t happen again.”
“No, ma’am. It sure won’t.”
The men who were within range of Elyssa’s smile stared, entranced by the promise of feminine warmth and tenderness.
Elyssa didn’t notice the men’s reaction, for she was concerned only with defusing the situation.
But Hunter noticed the other men’s response to the feminine promise in Elyssa’s smile. His hand drifted down to the butt of his six-gun.
The motion drew every eye.
“Any man,” Hunter said, “who passes remarks about Miss Sutton will answer to me or Nueces Morgan.”
“Nueces?” the kid asked, shocked again. “From down Texas way?”
Morgan nodded.
“Suffering Jesus,” the kid said in a low voice. Then, instantly, “Excuse me, ma’am. I was just plumb surprised to find myself standing this close to a famous gunfighter.”
“Of course,” she said absently.
In truth, Elyssa hardly noticed Sonny’s apology. She was too busy registering the looks of surprise and calculation that were passing among the other men.
Though Morgan said not a word, his black eyes were alive with silent laughter.
“The boy’s got promise,” Morgan said to no one in particular.
For a moment Hunter didn’t speak. He simply looked at the kid. Then he looked at Morgan.
“You want to take him on?” Hunter asked.
“Someone’s got to. Enough boys already died dumb. Be nice to teach one how to live smart.”
“You listening, Sonny?” Hunter asked.
The kid nodded.
“Morgan just offered to show you the ropes,” Hunter said. “You interested?”
“Suffering Je—er, yessir!”
“You’ll never find a man with more cow savvy than Morgan. Listen to him and you’ll be a top hand.”
“Cows?” Sonny asked unhappily.
“Cows.”
“Cows,” Sonny agreed, sighing. He turned to Morgan. “Well, I’ll be pleased to learn whatever you want to teach me. It beats all heck out of being dead.”
Elyssa laughed. It was a sound as contagious and feminine as her smile had been.
The men looked at her, then looked away quickly. None of them wanted the kind of trouble Hunter could deliver.
“The rest of you men can hire on here as cow punchers,” Hunter said, “or try your luck with the Culpepper bunch, or ride on out of the Ruby Valley altogether.”
The men nodded.
They understood what Hunter didn’t say. If the men weren’t working for the Ladder S and he saw them again, he would assume they had joined the Culpepper gang.
Enemies, in a word.
“If it comes to shooting, I’ll see you get a bonus,” Hunter said, “but it won’t be the same as fighting wages.”
One of the three Mexicans spoke up in a soft, Spanish-accented voice.
“We are the Herrera brothers, señor. We hear what happen to your family in Texas. It is the same with our own. We do not need gunfighter pay to kill los diablos.”
For a moment Hunter was very still. Then he nodded.
“From the look of your rigs,” Hunter said, “you’re top hands. The Ladder S can use you.”
“Gracias, señor.”
“Pick out a bunk and feed your horses. We’ll begin rounding up cattle and mustangs after lunch. You can draw straws to see who has the night watch.”
As the men rode off to the corral, Hunter turned to Morgan and held out his hand. Morgan shook it and then thumped Hunter on the shoulder with the familiarity of an old friend.
“Sure glad Case got you out of that prison camp,” Morgan said. “It was no place for man nor beast.”
“Amen.”
Hoping that the men would forget her presence and continue to talk about the past, Elyssa stood very quietly. She was intensely curious about what Hunter had done before he fought on the wrong side of the Civil War.
“Heard you were set up to trail one of the first herds from Texas to the Kansas railhead,” Hunter said to Morgan.
“Yessuh. Good pay, but tiresome. Some of those boys are dumber than cows.”
“You’d rather fight than ride drag, is that it?”
“That’s a fact, Colonel.”
“Just call me Hunter. Everyone else does…to my face. Only the devil knows what they’ll call me in the bunkhouse.”
Laughing, shaking his head, Morgan turned to Elyssa and tipped his hat.
“You’re a fortunate girl to have Hunter Maxwell as your ramrod. He’ll take care of that Culpepper trash, mark my words.”
Elyssa watched as Morgan went to his horse, glided into the saddle, and trotted off to the corral. She turned to Hunter with a considering look.
“Hunter Maxwell,” she said. “Of Texas.”
He nodded curtly.
“Thank you, Hunter Maxwell.”
“For what?”
“Defending my honor.”
“I wasn’t defending a flirt’s honor,” Hunter said bluntly. “I was defending discipline. Lack of respect like that can undermine an outfit faste
r than bad food.”
Anger curled through Elyssa.
“Didn’t like being called my fancy man, huh?” she asked with false sympathy.
The flat line of Hunter’s mouth was all the answer a bright girl needed.
Elyssa ignored the warning.
“Ah, well,” she said. “You’ll get used to it, fancy man, just like I got used to being called Sassy.”
9
With a sigh and a discreet knuckling of her tired back, Elyssa straightened from the kitchen sink. Baking for eleven extra men was hard work, especially after a day riding the rumpled, tawny grasslands and rugged piñon forests of the Ladder S.
The first day after the men arrived, Hunter ordered Gimp to take over the bunkhouse cooking. Wisely, Hunter continued to eat in the ranch house. Gimp was a decent camp cook, but the old man’s skills didn’t stretch to baking edible bread. That job fell to Penny and Elyssa.
Because Penny hadn’t shaken off the lingering summer ague, the work of mixing and kneading the endless loaves had been taken over by Elyssa. She also had tried to do all the laundry and cleaning, but Penny refused, saying she had to be good for something.
“How are you feeling tonight?” Elyssa asked Penny as they finished cleaning up the kitchen.
“Better, thanks. That herb tonic you fixed for me seemed to help.”
“Such a face you made when you drank it,” Elyssa teased.
Penny smiled despite the queasiness that had plagued her for several weeks. She smoothed her hands over the faded calico of her dress and looked at her work-scuffed boots.
“That tonic tasted like boot blacking,” Penny said.
“Truly? Since when have you been sampling Hunter’s army boots?”
Penny giggled and shook her head.
“Honestly, Sassy, you’re as unsquelchable as a puppy.”
“If Ah had been the squelching kind of child,” Elyssa drawled, imitating the slow rhythms of Morgan’s speech, “my sainted cousins would have squelched me so thin you could read newsprint through me.”
“Watch out, or Hunter will do it for them,” Penny said absently.
Elyssa shot the other woman a quick glance, but Penny didn’t notice. The lines of strain around her mouth and eyes became more pronounced each day.
Waiting to be driven from your home by bankruptcy or raiders wore away at a person’s soul.
“Oh, Hunter is more bark than bite,” Elyssa said.
“Don’t you believe it. That’s one hard man.”
“Maybe. Yet he smiles more now than when he first came here. Have you noticed?”
“No.”
“Well, I have,” Elyssa said.
Penny’s hands smoothed over her skirt and apron again.
Frowning, Elyssa watched the haunted, grieving expression settle onto Penny’s face once more.
“It’s not the ague wearing you down,” Elyssa said softly. “It’s waiting for the Culpeppers to attack, isn’t it?”
A shake of Penny’s head was her only answer.
“Then it must be Bill,” Elyssa said.
A sheen of tears appeared in Penny’s soft brown eyes.
“He hasn’t been here but once since you came home,” Penny said. “He took one look at you, saw Gloria, and could hardly bear to sit down and visit for more than two minutes.”
“He wasn’t seeing my mother,” Elyssa said dryly. “He was seeing red. He was furious that I wouldn’t sell him the Ladder S.”
Penny said nothing.
“Hasn’t Bill come here when I was out on the range?” Elyssa asked.
“No.”
“Odd.”
“Is it? There’s nothing for him here.”
The bitterness in Penny’s voice scraped Elyssa’s already too taut nerves.
“Bill had no right to expect me to sell my home, even to him,” Elyssa said flatly.
A shake of Penny’s head was her only answer. It wasn’t so much disagreement with Elyssa’s words as it was a gesture of hopelessness.
“Are you sure Bill hasn’t been here while I’m gone?” Elyssa said.
Penny’s hands clenched in her apron for the space of two heartbeats, then relaxed.
“I’m sure,” Penny said tonelessly. “Why?”
“Nearly every time I go past Wind Gap, I see fresh tracks heading between Ladder S and B Bar land.”
“You must be mistaken.”
The tightness of Penny’s voice and the slight trembling of her hands told Elyssa that the subject was painful for the older woman. Elyssa started to pursue it anyway, then sighed. No good would come of causing Penny more pain.
“Ah, well, it hardly matters,” Elyssa said gently. “The kitchen is clean, the lamps are full of golden light, and I feel like dancing.”
Elyssa held out her hands and smiled.
“Come on,” she coaxed. “Dancing makes the world lighter, didn’t you know?”
After a moment of hesitation, Penny smiled in return and took Elyssa’s hands.
Elyssa curtsied amid a sigh of pale green silk and golden petticoats. Then she began singing a sprightly waltz. Soon both women were swirling around the kitchen, laughing, until Elyssa’s pure contralto became husky and breathless. Penny became breathless, period.
“Enough,” Penny gasped, laughing. “It’s all I can do to stand upright!”
“Are you certain? Dancing alone isn’t as much fun.”
“I’m certain.”
Shaking her head, laughing, Penny lowered herself into one of the wooden chairs that ran along the kitchen table where they ate every day. Then she looked beyond Elyssa and saw Hunter standing in the doorway, watching with no expression on his face and quicksilver eyes that burned.
“You might try Hunter,” Penny said. “I doubt that he would get breathless after a few turns around the kitchen.”
Elyssa spun around so quickly that her skirt lifted and fluttered like an exotic butterfly. Then she whirled completely around once, twice, and waltzed up to Hunter. She curtsied deeply, rose as gracefully as a dancer, and held out her hands to Hunter.
“No,” he said.
“Why not?” she challenged. “Surely a man as co-ordinated as you are can’t be intimidated by mere music.”
“I lost the habit of dancing during the war.”
Hunter looked past Elyssa to Penny.
“However, ma’am,” he said to Penny, “if a waltz makes you smile like that, I’d be glad to attempt a turn or two around the kitchen with you.”
The words went over Elyssa like ice water. Hunter’s refusal cut her as the haughtiness of aristocrats never had.
In England she had become accustomed to being snubbed by men because her fortune was lacking. Or worse, she had been pursued because titled men thought the funny little Colonial would be an easy conquest.
Elyssa had hoped it would be different in America.
It wasn’t.
“By all means dance with Hunter,” Elyssa said softly to Penny. “I wouldn’t want to interfere with your pleasure.”
Before Penny could answer, Elyssa turned and went out through the back door into the autumn night. Cool air swirled as she shut the door behind her.
Penny gave Hunter a speculative look.
“Since you no more want to dance with me than with the milk cow,” she said crisply, “why turn Elyssa against me?”
The surprise on Hunter’s face told Penny that he hadn’t thought of his actions in that way.
Hunter said something impatient under his breath and raked his fingers through his clean, collar-length hair.
“I’m trying to break Sassy of flirting,” Hunter said after a moment.
“Why?”
Again, Hunter was surprised.
“You could do a lot worse than Elyssa,” Penny said calmly. “She is the sole owner of the Ladder S, young, healthy, pretty, and obviously smitten with you.”
Hunter’s mouth turned down in a grim line.
“She’s smitten with anything in pants,?
?? he said curtly.
“No. Men are smitten with her. It’s hardly unexpected. She has her mother’s looks.”
“I married one pretty little flirt. It’s a mistake I’ll never make again.”
Sighing, Penny closed her eyes. For a few moments she looked much older than her thirty years.
“Men,” she said. “Why did God make them in the first place?”
“I could say the same about women.”
“Yes, I suppose a man would.”
Penny’s eyes opened. There was a sorrow and disillusionment in them that made Hunter wince.
“What about Bill Moreland?” Hunter asked, changing the subject.
The shock on Penny’s face was as clear as her wide, dark eyes.
“What do you mean?” she demanded.
“I heard you two talking about Bill. How he used to come here but doesn’t anymore. How he wanted the Ladder S and Elyssa.”
“He wanted Gloria.”
“Maybe he did, once. From what you say, he’s got Elyssa on his mind now.”
Penny’s fingers clenched in her skirt. Hearing Hunter speak her worst fear aloud was like having a knife turning in her soul.
“I know how it can be when a neighbor gets an itch for a girl,” Hunter said flatly. “If she’s a little flirt in the bargain, you can be damn certain that itch will get scratched no matter what it costs everyone else.”
The dismay on Penny’s face told Hunter that she was afraid he was right.
Well, Hunter told himself sardonically, that explains the web of ghost paths between the Ladder S and the B Bar.
Just like the paths between my ranch and my neighbor’s back in Texas, paths made by two people meeting in secret.
The explanation for the web of trails through Wind Gap didn’t make Hunter feel any better. The thought of Elyssa sneaking away to shiver and cry out with passion in another man’s arms nettled Hunter in ways he didn’t want even to think about.
Someone really ought to teach that little flirt a lesson. From the looks of those footpaths, she already has one lover—why the hell do some women have to seduce every man in sight?
There never had been an answer, no matter how many times Hunter had asked. To this day he didn’t understand why Belinda had pursued men as relentlessly after marriage as she had pursued Hunter before.