WARRIOR

by Elizabeth Lowell

  As Nevada released Eden, she reached up and put her palm on his forehead. He jerked back.

  "You were lucky, Eden. Very lucky. Don't push it."

  "You should take your own advice."

  Nevada gave her a narrow look. "Meaning?"

  "You're running a fever, but you plan on getting up at dawn and riding out of here."

  Nevada shrugged. "I'll see what it looks like in the morning."

  "White," Eden said succinctly.

  "What?"

  "It will look white. All of it. Even if it stops snowing, you won't be able to tell. The wind will strip off the new snow and blow it everywhere. White on white, sky and ground, everything and everywhere. If you don't believe me, listen to the wind. You would be a fool to go anywhere tomorrow, and survivors aren't fools."

  Nevada turned and looked at Eden with unfathomable eyes. "Get back in your own bed. Fever or no fever, there's nothing you can do for me."

  After a long, tight moment, Eden went back to her sleeping bag, crawled in and shivered until she was warm once more. "Nevada?"

  He grunted unencouragingly.

  "What were you dreaming about?"

  "Was I dreaming?"

  "Yes. That's what woke me up."

  Silence.

  "Do you dream like that often?" she persisted.

  "I don't know."

  "How can you not know?"

  "Survivors don't remember their dreams. That's how we stay sane."

  Nevada rolled over and was asleep within moments.

  Eden lay awake for a long time, thinking about survivors and listening to the wind rearrange layers of snow over the frozen land.

  *

  "Baby, give them to me," Eden coaxed.

  Baby moved just beyond her reaching fingers. Yellow eyes gleamed with unmistakable mischief. From either side of Baby's long muzzle dangled Nevada's socks. Plainly the wolf had no intention of giving up his prize.

  Eden made a sudden grab. Baby danced backward and then half crouched, his muzzle on his front paws, his hindquarters in the air, his tail waving with delight at having suckered his mistress into playing with him.

  Nevada looked up from stacking firewood next to the hearth, where the heat could dry out wood newly brought in from the snow.

  "Good thing I have extra socks," he said. "Look's like that pair is a goner."

  "Baby knows better, at least with my socks," Eden said, exasperated. "Guess he figured yours were fair game. Baby, drop."

  Yellow eyes met hazel ones for a long moment. With a startlingly human look of disappointment, Baby opened his mouth. Socks dropped to the floor, no worse for the time spent in a wolf's jaws. Eden picked up the socks, tossed them in Nevada's direction, and rubbed both hands through Baby's thick neck fur, praising him for giving up his prize. Baby burrowed into her touch in return, stropping himself against her like a huge cat, plainly enjoying the physical contact.

  Nevada watched through hooded eyes, oddly moved by the sight of the big, frankly savage-looking beast being petted by a woman who weighed less than the animal did and was considerably less well equipped to defend herself. As she buried her face in the wolf's fur, it didn't seem to occur to Eden that those long jaws and steel muscles could tear her apart.

  You're a fool, Eden Summers. A sweet fool, but a fool just the same. You trust too much.

  Baby made a sound that was a cross between a chesty growl and a throaty yap as he half crouched again, waving his tail, vibrating with a desire for energetic play after being penned up by the storm. Eden laughed and shoved against the wolf with both hands, sending him skidding across the smooth wooden floor. With a powerful scrambling of legs, Baby stopped his backward motion and romped toward Eden, who was braced on hands and knees, waiting for Baby's charge. Instead of running into Eden head-on, the wolf turned at the last instant, buffeting her with his shoulder.

  If Eden hadn't been prepared, she would have been bowled over, but this was an old game for the two of them. She gave as good as she got, throwing her weight behind her shoulder as Baby raced by, sending him scrambling for purchase on the slick wood floor. Eden barely had a chance to recover her own balance before Baby was back for more. She survived a few more glancing passes before the wolf's greater strength and coordination sent her rolling.

  Instantly Baby pivoted, scrambled for traction and started after his laughing mistress. Eden had just enough time to brace herself again before more than a hundred and thirty pounds of muscle and fur bounded into her. She shoved hard against Baby, knowing she was going to go spinning again but determined to give the wolf a good tussle.

  Before Baby's shoulder could connect with Eden, she was lifted and set down behind Nevada. The wolf hit the man instead. Two strong hands shoved hard against steel muscles and thick fur. Baby went spinning and sliding across the cabin floor. He recovered, gave Nevada a look of glittering delight, and came full tilt across the cabin floor toward the man.

  This time Nevada waited on all fours as Eden had. Muscular shoulder met muscular shoulder, Baby rebounded and went sliding and scrambling across the floor. When the wolf regained his balance, he gave Nevada a laughing, long-tongued grin and charged once more, holding back nothing of his strength as he had earlier in the game with Eden.

  "You're in for it now, Nevada," Eden crowed breathlessly. "Baby hasn't had a decent wrestling match since Mark broke his arm, so Baby's loaded for bear – and with that sleek beard, you're looking like bear to him."

  Just as Nevada turned to ask who Mark was, Baby sprang. Nevada went down in a tangle of arms, furry legs and waving black tail. Laughing hard at Nevada's comeuppance, trying to catch her breath at the same time, Eden sank onto her bed and applauded while wolf and warrior romped.

  And a romp it was. Nevada and Baby caromed off ice chest and walls, supply sacks and packsaddle, firewood and empty water bucket. The room became a shambles of its former neat condition. Yet no matter how fast or exciting the wrestling became, both wolf and warrior kept individual weapons very carefully sheathed. Fangs never sank into flesh, nor did steel fingers gouge. Claws might rake the floor, but nothing else. Unarmed combat tactics remained unused.

  Finally Nevada wrestled Baby to the floor and pinned him there, both of them breathing hard. The wolf relaxed, baring his throat and belly to the warrior, accepting the end of the game. Nevada shook Baby gently by the scruff, spoke to him calmly, and released him. Baby sprang up, shook himself thoroughly, and stood panting and grinning up at Nevada. The left side of Nevada's mouth kicked up slightly in return. He sat on his heels and took the wolf's big head in his hands, rubbing the base of the erect ears and smoothing the thick fur.

  "You're one hell of a fighter, old man," Nevada said quietly.

  Baby's head turned. Big jaws gently closed over Nevada's right hand, then released him.

  "That's meant to reassure you," Eden explained in a soft voice. "It's a wolf's kiss. Wolves aren't quite the same as dogs. They require different things from their friends, whether four-footed or two."

  "What should I do to reassure Baby in return?"

  "You already have."

  "How?"

  "You accepted his surrender, let him go with his dignity intact, and then praised him with your touch and your voice." Eden paused thoughtfully. "You read Baby very well, Nevada. Have you ever worked with undomesticated animals?"

  "All my life."

  "Really? What kind?"

  "Men."

  Eden started to laugh before she realized that there was more truth than humor in what Nevada said. Then she laughed anyway, a bittersweet and very human laughter, accepting what could not be changed in the nature of man and beast.

  "Maybe if men had their signals of dominance and submission as well worked out as wolves," Eden said, "there would be fewer wars."

  "I suspect we had our signals straight once. Then we got civilized and it all went to hell."

  Nevada stood and stretched. His glance fell on the upside-down water bucket, the packsaddle
standing on end, and other signs of the romp. The corners of his eyes crinkled slightly.

  "Looks like I have my work cut out for me before we go cat hunting," Nevada said.

  Eden's breath caught. She smiled brilliantly and said in a husky voice, "Thank you."

  He gave her a sideways glance. "For not leaving you to clean up the mess?"

  "No," she said, dismissing the room with a wave of her hand. "For staying here one more day. I know you think I'm silly for worrying about you, but I'm not. Spring, especially in a cold country, is the hardest season on animals. No matter how strong you are, the huge temperature swings stress your body. I've seen flu turn into pneumonia…"

  Eden's voice dipped, almost broke and then steadied. "Anyway, if you had ridden off today I would have worried. Now I'll know where you are and if your fever is really gone."

  "And if I've managed to stay on top of Target this time?" Nevada said dryly.

  Eden's laugh was as soft as the creamy skin of her throat. She started to speak but could think of nothing to say except the truth.

  "I'm glad you're staying, Nevada. Not just for my peace of mind, either. Even with fresh snow, no wind, and Baby's nose, finding cougars out there won't be easy. I suspect you're a good tracker."

  "I get by."

  The buried drawl in Nevada's voice told Eden that he was amused by something. She smiled slightly. "I'll just bet you do. You don't miss much, do you?"

  "No."

  Eden didn't need to be told any more. Nevada had lived on the razor edge of awareness for so long that he had forgotten there was any other way to live.

  "I'll put your skills to work every chance I get," Eden said. "There's so little time."

  "I heard you'd be here until June. At least, I heard the government cat expert would be here. That's you, isn't it?"

  "After a fashion, but probably there will be more than one cat expert coming and going. My grant money is private, administered through the university at Boulder, but I'm working in conjunction with a federal study of cougars. The whole study will cover a decade. My part will last only as long as the tracking snows do, unless I find a female that's denned up with cubs. Then I might be able to stretch things into May or June."

  Nevada bent over, righted the packsaddle with an easy motion and asked, "What is your part?"

  "A feasibility study."

  "Of what?"

  "Whether it's possible to monitor cougars without drugging them, putting on bulky radio collars, and then turning the cats loose to lead a supposedly normal life."

  "Yeah, I always wondered how many animals the scientists lost that way," Nevada said dryly. "Drugs are tricky things, especially with cats. As for the radio collars…" He shrugged, bent over a bedroll and began putting it back together with the smooth, efficient motions of a man who has done a task so often he no longer has to think about it. Eden worked alongside Nevada, watching him from the corners of her eyes, fascinated by his unconscious grace and his casual acceptance of his own physical strength.

  "What about the radio collars?" Eden asked, realizing belatedly that Nevada had stopped talking and was watching her watch him.

  "I'm no specialist," Nevada said, looking away from Eden, straightening a blanket with a casual snap of his wrist, "but I've noticed one thing about wild animals. If there's anything different about an animal, the others shun him. Or they attack him. Makes me wonder if anyone has thought about that when they wrap a few pounds of brightly packaged radio collar around a wild animal and turn it loose. Then the specialists come back every few days or weeks in a helicopter or a small plane and buzz the hell out of the local wildlife trying to track down the radio collar's signal."

  "Somebody around here must have thought about it," Eden said. She knelt and began stacking firewood that had been scattered when Nevada had rolled into it. "Dr. Martin said my particular part of the grant money came from one of the local ranchers." Suddenly she turned and looked at Nevada. "Was it you?"

  He hesitated fractionally in the act of righting the water bucket, then shrugged and said, "I'm a cowhand, not a rancher. Luke and Ten own the land."

  Eden waited, certain that she was right. Only someone who respected and understood wildlife would have given money for a study that didn't disrupt the animals' normal lives. It was obvious that Nevada felt an unusual affinity for wild animals. She had never seen Baby take to a person with such ease.

  "Both Luke and Ten admire the cougars, but they have their hands full raising kids and cattle," Nevada continued, "and at the same time they're protecting and excavating some of the Anasazi sites at September Canyon. On a ranch there's never enough money to do everything that should be done."

  "So you paid for part of the grant."

  Again, Nevada shrugged. "The cougars are staging a comeback around here. Now, I believe the cats live on wild food rather than on Rocking M beef, but I couldn't prove it even though I spent a lot of time chasing cats when I should have been chasing cattle. So I took some of the money from the gold mine Mariah found and told the university to find an expert who could study our cougars without drugging or harassing them."

  "I won't drug the cats," Eden said. "But having Baby on their trail might constitute harassment."

  Nevada's mouth shifted subtly beneath his beard. He reached down and ruffled the wolf's sleek fur. Baby leaned into the touch, enjoying it.

  "Dogs have been chasing cats at least as long as men have been chasing women," Nevada said, giving Eden a brief, sidelong look. "I think the cats might even get a kick out of a good race. Cougars will run like hell, but once they're up in a tree, they relax. Hell, I've seen more than one cougar curl up for a nap in some tall timber while a pack of hounds went crazy barking down below." Frowning thoughtfully, Nevada turned away from scratching Baby's ears. "That reminds me – does Baby ever bark?"

  "Rarely."

  Nevada's mouth flattened. "Then you've got the wrong hunting dog no matter how good Baby's nose is. A cougar will run from a barking dog, even if it's no bigger than a Scottish terrier. But a dog that doesn't bark will be attacked, no matter how big it is."

  "Don't worry. Cats are the exception to Baby's code of silence. When he's on a hot cat trail, Baby makes more noise than a pack of foxhounds."

  "Good." Nevada looked around the room, which was neat once more. "That leaves just one other thing to settle before we go hunting. Who's Mark?"

  Eden looked up, surprised by the sudden edge in Nevada's voice. "What?"

  "Baby's wrestling partner," Nevada said flatly. "The man who broke his arm."

  "Oh. That Mark. He's my brother."

  Nevada grunted. "How many Marks do you know?"

  "Just two."

  Nevada waited, watching Eden with pale green eyes as she stacked the last piece of firewood, stood up and dusted her hands on her pants.

  "The second Mark was my fiancé for a time," she continued. "Then he discovered that being lifelong friends wasn't the same thing as really wanting a woman. He took one look at Karen and knew something important had been missing from our relationship. They were married a month later."

  Nevada had had a lot of practice reading people. He saw no indications of distress in Eden as she talked about her broken engagement. Her voice was even, supple, almost amused. Not at all the way it had been when she had discussed flu turning into pneumonia.

  "You sound like you didn't mind losing Mark to another girl," Nevada said, walking slowly across the room toward Eden.

  "I didn't lose him. We're still friends."

  Skepticism showed in the arch of Nevada's black eyebrows. Eden watched with widening eyes as he came closer and then closer still, not stopping until he was so close that she could feel the heat from his big body.

  "It's true," she said, puzzled by Nevada's intensity. "Mark and I are still friends."

  "Then you were never lovers."

  Eden made a soft, startled sound deep in her throat. "How did you know?"

  "Easy. Once a man had you, he'
d want you again with every breath he took." Nevada shrugged, but the silver-green intensity of his eyes didn't diminish. "Which means Mark never had you, because he let you go."

  ~ 6 ~

  The elemental harmonics of a wolf's howl shivered over the land before dissipating on the wind. Nevada froze, listening with every fiber of his body. The sound came again, rising and falling, a song sung to the primal memories that existed in every human soul. The eerie ululation faded into the wind. Silence reigned once more.

  "A wolf's howl has to be one of the most beautiful sounds on earth," Nevada said in a hushed voice.

  Eden didn't disagree. She had heard only one thing more compelling – Nevada's deep voice when he looked at her and told her that any man who had her would never let her go. Even now she could hardly believe Nevada had said it, meant it, and then turned away, picked up his rifle and calmly asked her if she was ready to go hunting.

  The memories made Eden's fingers tremble as she cupped her hands around her mouth and answered Baby with a call that was more musical than a shout and less structured than a yodel. When she finished, Nevada looked at her expectantly.

  "Baby's just checking in," Eden explained. "Now we know where he is and he knows where we are. No cats, though."

  Nevada nodded. "He won't hit cougar sign on this side of the stream unless a new cat has moved in since I was here last. Once Baby gets to the other side of the stream, though, it shouldn't be long before he hits a trail. A young female staked out her territory there two years ago."

  "How young? Did she have cubs?"

  "The first year she didn't mate. But this year there was some real caterwauling around here for the two weeks she and her mate traveled together." The left corner of Nevada's mouth lifted a bit and he added blandly, "Seems like the young females always scream the loudest."

  "There's a reason they scream," Eden said before she could think better of it.