Autumn Lover

by Elizabeth Lowell

His gloved hand waved in the direction of the Rubies looming up to the left of the riders.

  “Do you cut meadow hay for the winter?” Hunter asked.

  “Usually. The Scots and English cows Mac favored aren’t nearly as good at digging their food out of snow as the longhorns.”

  Elyssa flapped the divided skirt of her habit in the hope of getting some air against her legs. The cloth clung like a hot compress.

  “But the tame cows carry much more meat,” she continued. “The longhorns are skinny as deer and twice as wild.”

  Hunter smiled slightly and made an encouraging noise that said he was listening. While she talked, his eyes searched the surrounding land.

  Elyssa described the merits of the few Herefords the Ladder S owned. Then she talked about the more common holsteins, the edgy, aggressive longhorns, and the bulky oxen.

  All of them were part of the Ladder S herd. The ragtag assortment of livestock had come west along immigrant trails until the places where grass or water or both ran out. There the livestock was abandoned. Some were eaten by Indians, some by vultures, some survived to go feral, and some were rounded up by the Ladder S.

  The extent of Elyssa’s knowledge about the good and bad points of each type of cattle surprised Hunter.

  Even more surprising to him was her careful plan to upgrade the quality of the Ladder S herd. She wanted to introduce more of the meaty white-faced cattle while gradually culling the milk cows, oxen, and unruly longhorns from the herds. She even talked of fencing some of the land to keep out mustangs and feral cows.

  Bemused and intrigued by turns, Hunter listened to Elyssa’s dreams. At a time when few westerners even bothered to cut wild hay for winter feed, Elyssa wanted to introduce and raise a European hay known as alfalfa, which was much more nutritious than meadow grass. She also had ideas for irrigating more than the kitchen garden and small orchard that the Ladder S already had.

  Horses were high on Elyssa’s list of dreams for the future. She wanted to raise spotted cow horses that had the savvy, strength, and speed of Leopard. When the mustangs were rounded up to deliver to the army, she was going to look over the mares very carefully. The best she would keep and breed to Leopard.

  “What about a stud like Bugle Boy?” Hunter asked.

  “He has Thoroughbred in him, doesn’t he? And Irish hunter?”

  Hunter nodded.

  “Clean limbs, deep chest, powerful, yet elegant in his movements,” Elyssa said, looking at Hunter’s horse.

  And at Hunter himself.

  “Steady eyes and enough room between them for a brain, if he ever uses it,” Elyssa continued. “Gentle, too, underneath all that muscle and stubborn—”

  Her teasing words ended in a cry of surprise. A huge longhorn was bursting like a brindle avalanche from a ravine a hundred feet away.

  Horns lowered, hooves digging out chunks of dirt and grass with every running step, the longhorn charged at Leopard.

  “Run!” Hunter shouted.

  Elyssa reined Leopard hard to the left and dug her heels into his barrel even as she grabbed for the shotgun that lay in its saddle scabbard. The longhorn was so close that she could see the whites of its wildly rolling eyes and hear its sawing breath.

  Too close, she thought in terror. No time to lift the shotgun. God, that bull is quick!

  Frantically Elyssa spun Leopard on his hocks and yanked the shotgun free of the scabbard. Even as she tried to raise the gun, she knew it would be too late.

  The bull had already turned to hook her. Horns gleamed wickedly.

  Three rifle shots rang out, so closely spaced that they sounded like brief thunder.

  The brindle longhorn lurched, took one more stride, slammed against Leopard, and fell. The big horse staggered before he gathered himself and started to run again.

  Elyssa barely managed to hang on.

  Rifle trained on the longhorn, using his knees to guide Bugle Boy, Hunter closed in on the fallen bull. Trained for the surprise and noise and blood of battle, Bugle Boy obeyed despite the nervous flicker of his ears and his edgy, stiff-legged strides.

  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 diffi
cult 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.

  8

  Ruddy 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 ag
ainst 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.