Autumn Lover

by Elizabeth Lowell

  Bill stumbled and fell into Elyssa. She found herself propelled away from the stranger.

  “Run,” Bill whispered fiercely.

  This time Elyssa didn’t argue. She turned and ran.

  Within three steps she was brought up short by the iron band of a man’s fingers wrapped around her upper arm. She gasped in pain as she was spun roughly toward Ab Culpepper. He was tall, rawboned, and had pale eyes that glittered in the gloomy light. The look in those eyes made Elyssa’s stomach turn over.

  “Really prime,” Ab said.

  Elyssa jerked her arm. “Let go of me!”

  “Not so fast, gal. Just because ol’ Bill here is too gone with drink to entertain a lady don’t mean you have to leave all disappointed like.”

  “Let me go,” Elyssa said between her teeth.

  “No gal never said Ab Culpepper can’t rise to the occasion,” Ab drawled.

  Instinctively Elyssa looked at Bill, knowing that she couldn’t defeat Ab alone.

  Bill’s hands were nowhere near the six-gun he wore on his hip.

  Cold seeped into Elyssa’s soul. Bill wasn’t going to help her now any more than he had helped her in the past two months.

  Then Elyssa realized that Bill was looking past her, as though she were no longer important. The bleak, helpless rage on Bill’s face told her more than words could have.

  She turned to follow Bill’s glance.

  Culpeppers materialized out of the dawn as Elyssa looked. First one. Then another. Then Gaylord. They were no more than ten feet away from Bill. Tall, rawhide-lean, pale blue eyes; the Culpeppers were alike as peas in a pod.

  Or devils in hell.

  “Say howdy to the boys,” Ab urged Elyssa.

  “Release me,” she said distinctly.

  Ab smiled.

  Elyssa’s stomach lurched again. The cruelty in Ab was frighteningly clear.

  Gaylord Culpepper might have been missing a piece of his humanity, but Ab was missing his entire soul.

  “Just ignore ol’ Bill,” Ab advised. “He’s been right testy for a time. Comes of not having a gal to poke.”

  Not a word passed Elyssa’s bloodless lips. Her eyes had told her that words would do no good. The Culpeppers had Bill dead where he stood.

  All they had to do was pull the trigger.

  Ab saw the direction of Elyssa’s glance and smiled. The pressure of his fingers on her arm eased a bit.

  There was nowhere for Elyssa to run. Even if there had been, the fog was vanishing as she watched. The last pale wisps were barely knee-high.

  No cover.

  No place to hide.

  Ab pulled off Elyssa’s hat with a fast swipe of his hand. Flaxen hair glowed in the light.

  “Thought so,” Ab said with satisfaction. “You be that Sassy bitch.”

  “My name is Elyssa.”

  The look on Ab’s face said he didn’t care what her name was.

  “Let’s go to the cabin,” Ab said, smiling. “We got business to take care of.”

  Bill gave Ab a quick, savage glance.

  Ab didn’t even notice. All he cared about at the mo-ment was the girl with the flaxen hair and stubborn blue-green eyes.

  “We have no business together,” Elyssa said distinctly.

  “Now, don’t be so hasty, gal. You might like my business,” Ab said slyly.

  “I’m late. I’m expected back at my ranch.”

  “That’s what we’ll be talkin’ about.”

  “What?”

  “You gettin’ shuck of the Ladder S,” Ab said impatiently. “All nice and legal like. Nothin’ for them blue-bellied Yankees to cry over.”

  “No.”

  “Thirty Yankee dollars,” Ab said. “That’s my first and last offer.”

  Elyssa looked at him as though he was mad. Thirty dollars couldn’t buy a Ladder S corral, much less the whole ranch.

  Just as quickly as Elyssa had glanced at Ab, she looked away. Looking into Ab’s eyes was terrifying.

  “No,” she said hoarsely.

  A fourth man materialized out of the rising dawn, rifle in one hand and six-gun in the other. He was standing well away from the Culpeppers. Gun drawn, he waited.

  There was no eagerness in his stance. Nor was there any of the feral lust that possessed the Culpeppers. The calm readiness of the man’s body was more dangerous than the weapons he held.

  With great clarity Elyssa sensed that the fourth man was more deadly than the rest of the Culpeppers put together. She was as certain of it as she was of her own too rapid heartbeat.

  My God, what have I done? she asked herself in dismay. Bill is little better than a prisoner of these raiders.

  And now I am, too.

  The thought of being at the mercy of the likes of Ab Culpepper made Elyssa’s stomach twist. Without stopping to think, she jerked her arm and stepped back out of his reach.

  The motion was so swift it caught Ab by surprise. He grabbed for Elyssa, but a word from Gaylord stopped him cold.

  Ab glanced over his shoulder. He said something vicious. Then his hand fell to his side once more.

  Elyssa turned to Bill even as she retreated toward Leopard.

  “Come back with me,” she coaxed. “Penny is worried about you. We need you.”

  Bill shook his head curtly.

  “Leave and don’t come back,” he said. “Go.”

  Elyssa didn’t argue. She scrambled on Leopard, reined him around, and kicked him into a canter.

  Just as she was congratulating herself on having brazened out her escape, Elyssa noticed what the Culpeppers obviously had already seen.

  A bit ahead and to her right, there was a rifle poking out from the cover of boulders and brush.

  As Elyssa galloped by, the barrel didn’t waver from tracking each breath Ab took. Clearly whoever was on the other end of the weapon wasn’t a friend of the Culpeppers.

  Hunter, Elyssa thought. He heard me going down the stairs after all.

  Part of her was very grateful.

  Another part of her wanted nothing more than to get beyond the reach of the scorching lecture she was certain to get from Hunter. She leaned low over Leopard’s neck, urging him into a faster gait.

  Despite Elyssa’s desire to flee, she kept the big stallion well below the pace she wanted. She might have been reckless, as Bill had accused, but she was far from suicidal.

  The same couldn’t have been said of Hunter at the moment. He caught up with Elyssa before she crossed onto Ladder S land.

  The bleak fury in Hunter’s eyes made Elyssa want to hide.

  The fact that he didn’t say a word until they were within sight of the ranch building only made it worse.

  Abruptly he urged Bugle Boy across Leopard’s trail, forcing the spotted stud to stop.

  “Pull up,” Hunter said coldly to her.

  With visible reluctance, Elyssa reined in.

  “I thought if I talked to Bill—” she began.

  “Talk? Is that what girls like you call it?” Hunter interrupted sarcastically. “Well, that puts my mind considerably at ease.”

  “—he would realize how desperate it was on the Ladder S,” Elyssa continued in a rush, “and then he would help or at least not hurt. I didn’t know that—”

  “You didn’t know one damned thing but that you had an itch and he was the man to scratch it,” Hunter interrupted.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Hell,” Hunter said in disgust. “I’m talking about a young girl and a neighbor man who’s old enough to know better.”

  “It’s not Bill’s fault he can’t take on the Culpeppers single-handed,” she retorted. “My God, you won’t even take them on with seven hands!”

  Elyssa’s defense of Bill infuriated Hunter. It reminded him too much of Belinda’s tirades whenever things didn’t go her way. He could still hear his dead wife blaming her husband, blaming the war, blaming Texas, blaming the kids, blaming everything on earth but herself for whatever made her unha
ppy.

  “You’re just like Belinda,” Hunter snarled. “You don’t give a damn about the people who depend on you. You don’t give a damn about your responsibilities. All you care about is a female itch that has to be scratched and to hell with what’s right.”

  Elyssa blinked, startled by the unexpected turn in the conversation.

  “So you go running off to the neighbor,” Hunter continued, “risking everything, including your own foolish life. But will you listen to common sense?”

  “I—”

  “Hell, no,” Hunter said savagely. “You’ll go sneaking off to meet the neighbor halfway, and while you’re rolling around in the grass, your kids are being defiled by Culpeppers and then sold into slavery with the Comancheros.”

  When Elyssa realized what Hunter was saying, a wave of sickness went through her.

  “Hunter—” she said hoarsely.

  He didn’t even hear. He was living in the hell of the past, a hell that haunted him every waking day of his life.

  “The Culpeppers got around to Belinda, finally,” Hunter said. “Before they were finished, I imagine she was glad enough to die. Ted and little Em probably would have been glad to die, too. They weren’t as lucky as their mother. It took days. When I think of how those Culpeppers dragged little Em—”

  “Hunter. Stop.”

  Hunter closed his eyes. Silently he struggled to control the rage inside his soul.

  When he opened his eyes, he found himself in the present rather than the ruined past. He looked down at Elyssa’s fingers. They were wrapped around his wrist in a painful grip.

  “Torturing yourself won’t help,” Elyssa said urgently. “It’s over, Hunter. They’re dead and you’re alive. Tormenting yourself won’t help them one bit.”

  Slowly Hunter’s eyes focused on Elyssa.

  “I wasn’t there when they needed me,” Hunter said in a raw voice. “My kids died and I wasn’t even there.”

  “I’m sorry,” Elyssa whispered. “Oh, Hunter, I’m so sorry.”

  And she was. For his children. For his dead wife. For Hunter.

  For herself.

  Elyssa finally understood why Hunter refused to let himself love her. It wasn’t that he had loved his first wife so much.

  It was that he had been betrayed by her.

  Hunter jerked his wrist from Elyssa’s grasp, as though her touch was distasteful to him.

  “Stop sneaking off to see Bill,” Hunter said harshly. “After I bury those damned Culpeppers, you can move in with Bill for all I care. But not until.”

  “I’m not like Belinda. I love Bill, but not in that way.”

  Hunter’s upper lip curled in silent disbelief.

  “I saw four Culpeppers,” he said. “Were there any more?”

  Elyssa wanted to argue about the differences between herself and Belinda, but a look at Hunter’s eyes convinced her that now was the wrong time.

  Maybe tomorrow.

  Or the day after.

  Maybe by then Hunter would be more reasonable.

  Maybe by then his eyes wouldn’t look like clear black slices of hell.

  “I didn’t see any other Culpeppers,” Elyssa said. “There was another man, though.”

  Hunter watched her with unnerving intensity.

  “I think he was the most dangerous of all,” she said.

  “You recognized him?”

  “No. Not by name.”

  “Then how do you know he’s dangerous?”

  Elyssa blew out a soft breath. Some of the deadly chill was leaving Hunter’s voice.

  “By the way he didn’t move,” she said simply.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Most men fidget or shift their weight or fiddle with their mustache or their cartridge belt or something.”

  Hunter waited, motionless. His very stillness reminded Elyssa of the other man.

  “This man didn’t move except to breathe,” Elyssa said. “He wasn’t keyed up or frightened or bloodthirsty or anything at all. He was just…ready.”

  “For what?”

  “Whatever came. He would take it, whatever it was, without flinching. As though nothing could touch him but death, and death held no terrors for him. Like you were when you first came to the ranch.”

  Bugle Boy snorted and pulled against the bit.

  Hunter ignored the horse. The realization that he had missed one of the men surrounding Elyssa made him deeply uneasy.

  “I didn’t see him,” Hunter said.

  “He was standing apart from the Culpeppers.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “He was…”

  Elyssa’s voice faded. She looked at Hunter.

  “He was rather like you in height and build,” she said finally. “Or maybe it was just that he was wearing bits of an old Confederate uniform that made me think of you.”

  “Left-or right-handed?”

  “Six-gun in one hand and a repeating rifle in the other.”

  Hunter smiled thinly. “No wonder he wasn’t worried.”

  “And moccasins,” Elyssa said.

  “Moccasins?” Hunter asked, his voice sharp.

  “Yes. He was wearing knee-high moccasins. Fringed. Like Apache moccasins.”

  Elyssa tilted her head to one side as a thought occurred to her.

  “I don’t think,” she said, “that anyone else saw him. He just sort of appeared at the edge of a willow thicket when the mist cleared.”

  “Fringed moccasins,” Hunter repeated softly. “Be damned.”

  Elyssa stared. There was a blending of emotions in Hunter’s voice that intrigued her. Affection was one emotion. Respect was another. Anticipation was a third.

  But it was compassion that gave Hunter’s voice a gentleness that was startling.

  “Do you know him?” she asked.

  “Maybe. A lot of men wear moccasins.”

  “Not all that many, surely.”

  Hunter smiled. “I’ve been known to myself, when I was on the stalk.”

  “Who is he?”

  “If he’s who I think he is, you’re right. That boy wasn’t the least bit worried about what would happen next.”

  16

  That night, long after everyone was asleep, a stair creaked softly under Hunter’s weight.

  Damnation, he thought fiercely.

  He waited, breath held, for sounds that would tell him Elyssa was awake and moving around in her room.

  Nothing came to Hunter’s ears but the rhythm of his own heart and the gusting of the cold autumn wind around the eaves.

  Carefully Hunter resumed sneaking down the stairs. Making no noise, he went out the kitchen door and walked quickly across the ground to the barn.

  Though clouds were piled heavily over the mountains, bright moonlight poured over him every step of the way.

  I could read brands at thirty feet by this light.

  Hell.

  Wish that storm would stop grumbling and get on with covering the sky.

  But there was no time to wait for the storm to consume the moonlight. After what Elyssa had said about the man in knee-high moccasins who had appeared at Bill’s ranch today, Hunter had decided to try for a meeting tonight, whether moonlight or storm accompanied him.

  Cautiously, swiftly, Hunter went on foot into the night. His moccasins made no noise on the earth. He took the first ghost trail he found.

  And as he did, he wondered how many times Elyssa’s soft little feet had trod on the same path. The thought didn’t make him feel more kindly toward Bill Moreland.

  Hunter was still on Ladder S land when a low voice spoke behind him.

  “Hell of a night for a walk.”

  Hunter froze. Then he spun around, smiling.

  “Hello, Case,” Hunter said. “I was beginning to wonder if you got lost.”

  “That will be the day.”

  Hunter smiled, thumped Case on the shoulder, and got thumped in turn. Case didn’t smile in return, but Hunter knew there was
no lack of welcome in his younger brother.

  Hunter hadn’t seen Case smile since the war.

  “Follow me,” Case said in a low voice. “You keep running around in the moonlight like some damned fairy and you’ll get yourself killed.”

  With a soft laugh, Hunter followed his brother.

  A few minutes later Hunter and Case were in a shallow, dry watercourse. It was edged by willows and arched over by big cottonwood trees. Moonlight gave way to dense shadows.

  Over the mountains, lightning ripped through the sky. Thunder grumbled raggedly. Wind swirled in the cottonwoods, stripping off frost-killed leaves and whirling them into the night.

  “When did you get here?” Hunter asked in a low voice.

  “Three days ago. Morgan’s message caught me down toward the Spanish Bottoms.”

  “Did you find Culpeppers there?”

  “What’s down there will keep. Ab’s up here.”

  Hunter heard all that Case didn’t say. It was Ab Culpepper who had led the bloody, cruel raid on Hunter’s ranch in Texas.

  It was Ab Culpepper the brothers had sworn would be brought to justice, no matter what.

  “So I saw,” Hunter said. “Twice.”

  “I wondered about that. I’m surprised you didn’t just drop him.”

  There was no question in Case’s voice, but Hunter answered anyhow.

  “The first time I saw him, Elyssa was along. I was getting ready to drop him anyway, but he met up with four other men.”

  Case’s eyebrows rose. “So?”

  “So I didn’t want to put her in danger. The second time was this morning. Ab was standing too close to her. If I missed…” Hunter shrugged.

  “Not much chance that you would miss a man-sized target at that range.”

  “I didn’t want to risk it, no matter how small the chance.”

  Case’s hazel eyes gave Hunter a considering look. Though Case said nothing, he was still surprised that Hunter hadn’t just dropped Ab where he stood.

  There were enough Wanted, Dead or Alive, posters out on Ab to make it perfectly legal. Besides, Ab had earned whatever death came his way, however it came. So had his kin, whether they were cousins, brothers, or half brothers.

  Or, in some cases, two of the three. Pappy Culpepper hadn’t much worried about blood relation when he felt randy.

  “How many men does Ab have?” Hunter asked.