“You’re no gentleman.”
“And you’re obviously no lady or we wouldn’t be here, would we?” He tied the end of the rope to a tree.
“What if I have to run from another cougar?”
He shook his head. “No need. Not with me standing guard.”
She wanted to remind him that he hadn’t been quite so vigilant when she’d spied on him and taken his supplies. Morgan stood between her and freedom, and she couldn’t afford to antagonize him.
Instead, she lay down, her back to the fire. There would be little sleep for her that night. As weary and sore as she was, she couldn’t forget the mountain lion’s scream or those terrifying green eyes.
Sometime in the night, Dancer returned to camp. He sniffed Ash’s gelding, snorted a warning, and trotted over to lean his head against Fancy’s.
Overhead, glittering stars appeared one by one until the sky seemed strewn with diamonds. The temperature dropped and Tamsin curled tighter in her blanket. Every forest sound became ominous, and it took all of her willpower not to show how frightened she was.
Each time Tamsin opened her eyes, she saw Ash keeping watch. Occasionally, he stood and walked around the perimeter of the camp, then returned to his resting spot without making a sound.
The twittering of birds announced the day long before the darkness gave way to light. One after another, small creatures began to stir. First a squirrel scampered down the tree Ash was leaning on; then a mouse peered out of a heap of pine needles not three feet from where Tamsin lay.
She sat up and stretched. The insides of her eyelids were scratchy and her head ached. She had never done well without sleep, and the night that had just passed was no exception.
“Morning,” Ash said. She hadn’t heard him leave the camp, but the coffeepot he was propping on the coals was full of water. “I’d offer you bread and cheese,” he said, “but someone stole my provisions.” He reached down and unlocked her handcuff.
Rubbing her wrist, she got to her feet and tried to comb the twigs out of her hair with her fingers. “Is the cougar gone?”
He nodded. “Horses been quiet since about two o’clock.”
“How can you tell the time? Do you have a watch?”
“Not on me. I broke the crystal in a little tussle. I left it in Sweetwater to be repaired.”
“Then how do you know the time?”
“I swear, woman. You’re the talkingest prisoner I’ve ever had.” He grinned at her, and his smile was as bright as the sun breaking through a storm cloud. His teeth were white and even. Smiling made him look younger and not nearly so forbidding. “You can tell time by the stars if you spend enough time sleeping under them.”
“I don’t need constellations to tell me that I’m ready for breakfast,” she replied. “I’ve fishing line in my pack. If you let me go to the creek for an hour, I’ll catch us the main course.”
He studied her for a minute, then smiled. “Don’t suppose it will do any harm to let you try. I’ll just walk along with you, so you don’t get lost.”
“So I don’t run away, you mean.” She shrugged. “That’s fine, so long as you’re gentleman enough to allow me …” She felt a flush rise up her throat. “I have personal needs.”
“By rights I shouldn’t give you any privacy after you got an eyeful of my assets.”
“Oh, I …” Embarrassment made her speechless. How could he have known that she’d seen him in the altogether?
His obsidian eyes glittered with mischief. “Your tracks told the story, Tamsin. I was careless and let you sneak up on me. Had you been a rogue Cheyenne, my scalp would be waving from a tepee pole.” He dusted his hands on his coat. “Hope you enjoyed the sight.”
“It wasn’t what you think,” she protested.
“Hard to think anything but the worst,” he drawled. “A lady hiding in the bushes, watching a man Adam-naked in his bath.”
Tamsin was mortified. “I thought you were an Indian,” she explained. “I was only trying to see—”
“Ladies in Tennessee make a habit of such?”
“No, they do not.”
He cradled his rifle in the crook of his arm and stood. “Glad you did. If you’d have ridden past, I might have missed your tracks and not caught up with you for a week. As it was, a six-year-old Arapaho could have followed your trail here. You’re a hell of a horsewoman, but not much of a scout.”
“I’ll keep your observations in mind,” she said as she fumbled through her belongings for her fishing line.
Ash chuckled as he followed her downhill to the steep-banked stream. The watercourse wasn’t more than three yards wide, but it was fast-moving and waist deep. Likely there were fish there. If she had the gear to catch a few, so much the better.
Had he been alone, he would have found himself a likely spot, lain on his belly, and tickled a fat trout or two. Catching fish with his bare hands was a trick his daddy had taught him when he was a child. It worked, but it took time. And he didn’t trust Texas Jack Cannon’s woman enough to allow her to stand behind him with all these rocks strewn around.
Maybe he should think about another line of work after he brought Cannon to justice. Ash had never intended bounty hunting to be a permanent occupation. Those who made their living with a gun usually ended up in boot hill before their hair turned gray.
For a few brief seconds he let his mind flash back to the spread he and Becky had carved out of empty prairie near Colorado City. She’d begged him to give up the job, but he hadn’t listened. He worried about having enough money to see them through the winter, and he’d decided to go after one more road agent. The reward on Red Bucky’s head would be enough to pay their bill at the feed store and buy a good bull.
It had been the worst argument they’d ever had, and he’d rode out and left her crying on the front porch. He hadn’t even kissed her good-bye.
He’d been so sure that he knew what was right, but he hadn’t counted on Cannon’s committing a robbery in Colorado City or on his Becky being a witness to the crime.
He’d gotten his outlaw. He’d brought Red Bucky back, collected the bounty, and bought Becky a music box for her birthday. But when he got home and called her name, nobody answered.
In that one night, Ashton Jefferson Morgan had lost his wife, an unborn child, and everything he’d worked for. Something had died inside him. He’d given up caring about anything but the law and settling his score with Cannon, his brothers, and the rest of the gang.
Ahead of him, Tamsin was breaking off a tree branch to use as a fishing pole. She was a hand taller than his Becky, fox-haired instead of wheat-blond, and striking rather than pretty. Tamsin’s sensual mouth was too bold and her chin too sharp for conventional beauty. But this Tennessee enigma had a glow about her that drew a man’s eye.
He half suspected that Tamsin might be telling the truth about the horses belonging to her. But all the evidence pointed to her being the back shooter who’d killed Sam Steele. As he’d told her, deciding who was guilty and who was innocent wasn’t up to him. All he had to do was serve the warrants and bring the suspects to justice.
Sunlight filtering through the evergreen canopy lit sparks in Tamsin’s tangled locks and stirred something deep in Ash that had best remain sleeping. Losing Becky had hurt him worse than being orphaned at ten, but it hadn’t turned him off women.
Someday, when he’d finished what he’d started, when he’d rid himself of the itch to keep moving, he’d find a good woman and settle down. He wanted kids, and he wanted a piece of land he could call his own. He didn’t fool himself that he could ever feel about a second wife the way he had for Becky. But plenty of solid marriages were built on respect and friendship. He’d known real love, the kind you’d rush into fire for, and he didn’t look to see it again this side of the hereafter.
He damn sure wasn’t looking for it in a female like Tamsin MacGreggor. If she stirred his nether parts, it was pure lust and nothing more. He was a man with as strong a hunger as any other, but h
e prided himself on being able to control his physical needs. She was his prisoner. He’d shoot her if he had to, but he’d not take advantage of her.
He settled onto a flat boulder and waited for Tamsin to beg him to find her a worm and thread it on the hook. To his surprise, she turned over a few stones, found what she was looking for, and baited the hook herself.
Mosquitoes buzzed around Ash’s head, and he was glad for his coat despite the heat. He stretched out his long legs and massaged an old scar he’d received during the war.
The tip of Tamsin’s pole bobbed, then dived toward the surface of the water. She set the hook and pulled in a two-pound trout. “See,” she called to him. “My breakfast. I’ll see what you’re having next.”
She got another nibble and then nothing. Ash cleaned the first fish. Minutes passed.
“Do you want to try this while I …” She left the rest unfinished.
He nodded. “Long as you go downstream away from the camp. Not too far, around that bend. I doubt you’ll try to escape without those horses.”
“Right now I’m more interested in food than getting away,” she replied coolly. “I do have a change of clothing in my saddlebags. These are—”
“Quit while you’re ahead.” He took the fishing pole from her.
She looked unconvinced. “I have your word you won’t … won’t spy on me?”
“Lady, we just spent the night together. If I meant you harm, there wouldn’t have been a damn thing you could do about it. Go wash your unmentionables.”
Tamsin muttered under her breath as she picked her way through the bushes along the creekbank. Ash turned his attention to fishing. Immediately, something nibbled at the bait. He missed that one but soon caught another trout. He stayed where he was, but he couldn’t stop his thoughts from wandering down the creek. He wondered what Tamsin MacGreggor looked like without her clothes. She was slim, not nearly as well endowed as most of the ladies at Maudine’s, but he would have bet his saddle she was prime.
Thinking that way was enough to make a man overly warm. He ran a forefinger under his collar and called to her. “You still there?”
“Yes!”
He brought in two more fish before Tamsin rejoined him. Her cheeks were scrubbed rosy, and she’d braided her wet hair into a single plait that hung down her back. She smelled good, woman-clean without a hint of heavy perfume.
“About time,” he grumbled. “I’ve got two fish apiece. With the coffee, that should do us. Of course, we could use biscuits.”
“The bread you had in your pack could never be considered biscuits,” she replied. “Heavy, stale, nasty lumps of flour and grease.”
“You ate them, didn’t you?”
Ignoring him, she undid her fishing line from the pole and coiled it up and put it in her pocket. “I’m the prisoner,” she said. “You can cook the fish.”
“Intended to. That way I’ll know it’s cooked.”
They walked in silence back to the camp, and Ash forced himself to tear his gaze off the sway of Tamsin’s shapely hips in that riding skirt.
It was easy to see why Jack Cannon would be attracted to her, even if she was a cut above his usual choice in women. Ash wanted to ask her why the outlaw had let her ride off alone into these mountains and where she intended to meet up with him, but he didn’t. It had been Ash’s experience that a lady would lie to protect her man faster than a horse could trot. Just listening usually paid off in the end.
Back at the fire, Tamsin found more kindling and saddled her mare while he grilled the four trout. They drank the black, acrid coffee and devoured the hot fish with a minimum of chatter.
It was when he turned away to saddle his gelding, Shiloh, that she hit him in the back of the head. He saw stars and sagged to one knee, half turning to face her just as she brought the chunk of firewood down across his skull again.
Chapter 6
Ash knew he’d been hit a second time. He tried to react, but his muscles wouldn’t obey. “Son of a—” The remainder of his oath was muffled in the spruce needles as he slid face first onto the ground. Bright lights were exploding in his brain, and his vision was fading.
“I’m sorry,” Tamsin said. “But you wouldn’t listen to reason.”
Rage boiled in Ash’s chest as he tried to get up. His head seemed made of lead; his arms, quicksand. “Don’t …” he managed. Even his tongue felt odd, too thick for his mouth. The stars were fading, and in their place sprouted two distinct centers of pulsing pain. He tried to speak, but his words slurred. “Can’t … take horse … my horse.”
“I have to,” Tamsin replied.
Through the slits where his eyes had been he saw two blurry, red-haired women lift two rifles.
“Not my gun …” he rasped, and spat sand from his mouth. “No … not take …”
“I’m not stealing your weapons.”
He thought that’s what the witch was saying, but he also felt a tugging at his holster. Then his pistol passed before his eyes.
“I’ll leave them on the far side of the campfire,” she said. “That way, you won’t be tempted to shoot me while I’m riding away.”
“Shoot you … in the back …” Ash forced himself up on his hands and knees and reached for her. She stepped aside and the effort sent him plunging to earth again. “You’re the bushwhacker.” He gasped, trying to clear the confusion from his mind.
Shot in the back. Someone was murdered. Who? Ash knew that he should remember, but it seemed so long ago. There was a man lying on the ground beside him … a big man.
Moisture clouded Ash’s vision.
“I’m sorry,” Tamsin repeated. “You’ll be all right. I didn’t hit you hard enough to kill you.”
Ash heard the creak of saddle leather. His horse nickered. Hooves scraped on rock, then faded in the distance. “Tamsin!”
The only answer was the loud chatter of a hairy woodpecker from a bough overhead.
Ash’s fiery oath startled the bird, and he caught a glimpse of black-and-white feathers as it took flight through the aspen grove.
Ash closed his eyes and sank against the earth. Something warm trickled down the back of his neck, and he smelled the sweet scent of blood. The scent of blood had filled his head that day his father was murdered.
This blood wasn’t his daddy’s. It was his.
The MacGreggor woman’s killed me, he thought. I hope she’s killed me. If she hasn’t, she’ll soon wish she had.
There was nothing worse than a common back shooter. A renegade Comanchero had killed his daddy from ambush. If Ash closed his eyes, he could see his father sprawled in the red dirt.
“Daddy, get up. Get up, Daddy.”
Ash didn’t know if he was hearing an echo from the distant past or if the words were coming out of his mouth now. His father had taken him fishing. It was his tenth birthday and his daddy had given him a man-sized pocketknife.
Ash couldn’t recollect too much … didn’t want to. But it was impossible to forget the sickly sweet smell of blood or the puzzled look on his father’s face when he fell.
All night, he’d sat there beside the body, holding Daddy’s tin star. He hadn’t wept. His loss was too deep for tears. One minute he’d been Big Jim Morgan’s boy, and the next …
He was alone.
Until the Comancheros returned in the first gray light of dawn to steal the horses and weapons and scalp his father.
And the bad times started.
Ash cradled his head in his hands as dusty images of pain and fear washed over him. Vaguely, he knew what he was seeing in his mind was long past.
Reason told him that he had to get on his feet … had to go after his escaped prisoner. But his skull was splitting. It was easier to lie on the warm ground and think about nothing at all.
A branch whipped across Tamsin’s face, but she paid no heed to the sting and spurred Ash Morgan’s strawberry roan into a hard trot.
She hadn’t planned on bashing him over the head, but she’d
found herself standing there with the stick in her hand. She’d realized that she would probably never have a better chance of getting away. If she hadn’t taken his horse, he’d soon be on her trail again.
Ash would survive. He’d have a long walk back to Sweetwater, but she’d left him his rifle and handgun. What more could he ask?
She wondered if she was going to spend the rest of her life running. Horse stealing was a hanging offense. She’d been innocent of that charge when they’d written up a warrant for her arrest. Now she was as guilty as sin.
“Horse thief.” She tried out the phrase. It sounded ugly … despicable. She’d never stolen so much as a penny’s worth of candy in her life.
No wonder there were so many desperadoes in the West, she mused. One mistake, and an honest person could find themselves on a wanted poster.
For what it was worth, she intended to leave Ash’s roan gelding at the next town, but that probably wouldn’t count for much if she was captured and faced a jury.
A rabbit dashed out of the bushes, and the gelding leaped sideways. Tamsin kept her seat easily. Her two horses were following close behind. She’d thought it wiser to ride Ash’s mount. Leading an unwilling horse would have been a problem in these trees, especially since Dancer kept sneaking up to take nips out of his rump.
Tamsin hoped the mountain lion was far away. It had fled uphill, leaving her an escape route back down the way she had come the day before. She knew from her map that she needed to find a pass through these foothills, and she remembered the entrance to a promising valley she’d seen on the way in.
Ash would think the worst of her. She hated to leave him with the impression that she was a killer and a horse thief.
“Damn you, Atwood MacGreggor,” she swore. “I hope your coffin leaks.” It was all his fault. If he hadn’t been such a jackass’s behind, she’d be back in Tennessee sipping lemonade on her own front porch.… And maybe Granddad’s heart wouldn’t have given out so soon.
She’d realized that she’d made a mistake on her wedding night. Atwood had embarrassed her with crude remarks and selfishly taken his pleasure on her rigid body. Worse, he’d blamed her when his red-faced thrusting met no resistance.
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