“I wouldn’t harm any horse,” she defended.
“Your actions caused my horse to suffer. He’s near mad from the treatment. But we’ll get to that. Like I said at our last meeting, you’ve got some explaining to do. Now, I’m going to put you down. If you run, I’ll only catch you, so don’t waste the effort. Run and I’ll lasso you like I would a heifer.”
Trace slid her to the ground and swung out of his saddle, but his feet had scarcely hit dirt before she bolted. Quickly tying both horses to a dead cactus, Trace gave chase. His long-legged stride ate up the distance, and finally he grabbed her. They crashed to the ground with a hard thud, damn near knocking the air from his lungs as he bore the brunt of their fall. He rolled until he had her pinned under him. She still struggled, but the fight was almost out of her.
“Don’t you…get it, you hellcat…?” he panted. “You’re no match for me. Don’t make me hog-tie you. I will if I have to. I’m fed up to the gills with this nonsense.”
“Let me go!” she almost wailed.
“Where? Where will you go? There’s nothing for miles except the Outpost. You really want to go there? You sure as hell aren’t taking my horse again. You’re loco if you think you can go wandering around the territory on foot. You won’t last a day before something bites you or somebody catches you…or worse. So stop acting like a fool and actually think for a change.”
She seemed to crumble. She fought tears, but he saw several drop from her lashes, streaking down her dusty checks. “I won’t go back!” she snapped. “You can’t make me go back. I saw you out at the ranch. I saw you. You’re in league with them! I didn’t recognize you at first, without the beard, and your hair is shorter, but then I heard your voice and I knew. You were with that old cook. You may as well kill me here and now if you’re planning on taking me back to the Lazy C!”
Trace almost laughed, though he saw nothing funny in the situation. “Now she talks. I told you, I’m not going to hurt you, and Trace Ord never goes back on his word, even if some half-crazy, horse-thieving female drives him toward it. Now then, settle down. My camp is back up the trail in a grove. I’ll take you there, and then you can tell me what the Sam Hill’s going on.”
“Not near the Outpost!” she cried.
“No, nowhere near. But I’m not giving you a choice, Mae. I’ll let you up, and then we’re going back to the horses. Afterward, I will take you to my camp. You have a lot of explaining to do.”
He eased off her, stood, and took her hand to pull her to her feet. Mae offered no resistance. Slapping at the dust on her clothes, she walked beside Trace to where Diablo and Duchess stood tied. Mae quickly reached for the mustang’s bridle.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” Trace growled, grabbing her wrist. “My mother didn’t raise a foolish child. You’re going to ride before me on Duchess. The only place you’ll get your hands on that black devil stallion of mine again is your dreams.”
As promised, he rode them back to his campsite. He paused before stepping down from Duchess to draw a deep breath. With her practically sitting on his lap, the trip back had been torture. Each step the horse took shifted Mae, creating friction against his groin. He held her close, his hand on her belly. There was no other choice; give her an inch and she’d run again.
“Good thing my mama raised me to be a gentleman,” he said under his breath.
Mae turned. “Beg pardon?”
“I was commenting that you’re lucky my mama raised me to respect female folk. Now, here is how things go. I am going to step down off Duchess. Making my poor departed mama happy, I will offer you my hand in a genteel fashion. You, like a lady—no matter how hard that comes to you—will accept it, and you will climb down without trying to steal Duchess and run off. You try anything of the sort and I will run you down and truss you up. You can lie on the ground like a calf ready for branding while we have our discussion. Understand?”
She nodded.
“Despite your clear lack of concern about their condition, you are going to help me water these horses and rub them down. Then I will brew us some coffee and we will talk. So help me, Mae, don’t run. You really don’t want to push me that far again.”
She surprised him by obeying. They cared for the horses and she sat watching him with big eyes while he built up the fire and fixed the coffee. He wasn’t trying to delay the confrontation, but after he saw the condition of Diablo he figured he’d better get a good grip on his temper before dealing with her. He could barely stand to look at Diablo, tearing up whenever he saw the whip marks in the horse’s hide.
Pouring water into a cup, he added herbs for the ointment he would brew for the stallion. Stirring the mixture, he glanced at Mae. She sat on a fallen log, both hands wrapped around her tin cup as if she were holding on for her life. How pale she looked in the firelight—like a ghost, except for the golden sunset of her hair shimmering in the firelight. Wavy and long, it was tamed at the nape of her slender neck by a thin bow.
Damn her! Mae wasn’t going to get away this time, not until he’d gotten to the bottom of what the hell was going on.
“Are you warm enough?” he asked. “I don’t dare add to the fire or I risk us being seen. If you’re cold, take one of the blankets.”
She shook her head. “I’m not cold.”
“The old cook I rode in with?” Trace set the cup next to the fire to warm. “Is he still there?”
“Yes,” she said.
“He’s all right, then?”
She nodded. “I nearly died of fright that day,” she confessed. “When Jared rode up on your horse, I…Why didn’t you claim him?”
“He’s your husband,” Trace accused, ignoring her question.
“Yes, but that’s not…that’s not important.”
“What a fool thing to say. Maybe you don’t think so, but I’d say it’s mighty important.” Trace’s temper rose again. “He was one of the riders who caught up with you by the stream?”
Mae stared, her tin cup raised to drink. “How did you—?”
“I tracked you.” Trace reached into his pocket and produced the kerchief he’d fashioned into a sling for her, stained dark with her blood. “Four riders in all. One of them handled you pretty roughly by the look of this. You didn’t seem eager to go with them. You mind explaining?”
Mae stared at the bandana. Tears once more welled in her eyes, but they didn’t fall. She looked away, and Trace returned the bloodied kerchief to his pocket.
“You followed me to the Lazy C?” she asked.
“No. I followed your tracks ’til it got too dark to see. I was forced to return to camp. That’s where I met up with Preacher. Next morning, we set out to pick up your trail, but the sandstorm wiped it out. I was headed for the Lazy C in the first place, so Preacher came on to the Outpost and then the ranch. I had no idea that’s where you were, ’til I saw Comstock ride up.”
“On Diablo. And you didn’t even try to claim him,” she said again. “Why?”
“It would’ve been clear to a blind man that you were running from something. That being the case, I had no idea what you might have told Comstock to explain Diablo. I had to know how you figured into the goings-on at the Lazy C before I acted. I didn’t want to get you into trouble—if you were innocent.”
“Innocent of what?” Her eyes snapped up from the tin cup to pin him. “Don’t talk to me of innocence! What was your business at the Lazy C? According to what you just said, you were headed there before we ever met. There’s only one kind of man that looks for work at the Lazy C, and innocence is not one of that sort’s characteristics.”
“I think it best you answer my questions first. You level with me, and then, if I’m satisfied with what you’ve got to say, I’ll fess up to you. Start from the beginning. What were you doing out in that canyon, alone and on foot? Where did you think you were going?”
Mae set her empty cup aside and hugged her knees. Trace reached for a blanket and tossed it into her lap, not trusting himself to be a
ny closer. He needed to maintain a cool head around this hellcat, and that was damn hard to do.
She looked at him for a long moment, and then slid the blanket around her shoulders. “I was doing my best to head east until I picked up the railroad,” she began. “I had money for a ticket…home.”
“Where’s home?”
“My grandfather owns a horse farm—Foxtail Farms in Kentucky, outside of Versailles. Not big like Almhurst, but he gives them a good run for their money with quality horseflesh. The farm was hit hard during the war. Both sides kept coming through trying to take horses for their armies. My grandfather had the boys dig a huge cellar under the manor house. Outriders would send word that soldiers were in the area, and they’d drive the horses down into the cellar and then cover the entrance with sod and park wagons and buggies atop that. We had to leave a few out for them to take every time, of course. It wouldn’t look right, a horse farm with no horses. They were suspicious, but we held on, surviving when other farms collapsed.” Her face softened. “It was so pretty, that farm. With its whitewashed fences and barns.” Dropping her chin on her knees she added, “I wanna go home.”
“Well, that explains how come you can ride better than any Indian I ever met.” Trace swallowed hard the knot in his throat as he watched her staring into the fire. More than once over the years he had done the same thing, staring into the fire while wishing to go home. Only, for some, going home was only a dream. Home was long gone. All the people who mattered were long gone. Oh, the land was still there, but that was all.
“I could sit a horse before I could stand,” Mae remarked wistfully.
Trace was softening, empathizing with her desperation in wanting to go back to a place where she felt safe, so he reminded himself that poor Diablo had suffered because of her. “Don’t tell me you walked all the way from the Lazy C to that canyon?”
“N-no…” she replied.
“Well?” Trace reached for the ointment cup that was warming by the fire, and he stirred the herbs again.
“That cook friend of yours, Preacher. He replaced the cook that Jared told you ran off. The cook’s name was Bill Coulter. I got him to take me. I paid him, but he…he took it the wrong way. He thought…He wanted…” She grabbed a blanket and pulled it tight around herself.
“I get the picture,” Trace said, sparing her. “You ran off from him?”
She nodded. “I wasn’t thinking about anything, just getting away from him. He was drunk, and foul…” She shuddered. “I just ran. He couldn’t go back to the Lazy C—not after running off with me like that. I’m guessing he’s probably halfway to Texas by now, fearing Jared will catch up. I never looked back. I kept running and running ’til my sides ached and I could scarcely breathe. Then I saw your horse. He was like an answer to a prayer. I couldn’t run anymore, I couldn’t even walk, and then you…you…” Burying her face against her raised knees, she sobbed.
Trace grimaced. So much for keeping his distance. She was crying. She’d been alone and scared, had run just as his sister had run to escape the Yankees. Only, his sister hadn’t gotten away. He couldn’t go home and comfort her.
Going over, Trace laid a gentle hand on Mae’s arm. “Hush now. Why couldn’t you have told me all this back in the canyon? Do I look like the kind of man who would turn his back on a lady in distress?”
Her head snapped up, her wounded gaze accusatory. “You have no idea what I’d just come from. Any man was the devil to me! I didn’t know who you were, what kind of man…How could I? And you shot me! I had just nearly been raped by someone I thought I could trust. After that, how could I trust a perfect stranger? Then you reminded me that somebody would be coming after me. I knew you were right, and that’s why I stole your horse again. I almost made it away, too. I almost made it!”
“Yeah, I saw that you were close to outrunning them.” Trace wanted to hold her, to tell her it was all over, but after her confession about nearly being raped, he didn’t want to spook her with an offer of comfort. He reached for her cup, poured it half-full, and handed it back. “I understand wanting to go home, but why didn’t you just ask your husband to take you? Why put yourself in harm’s way again and again?”
“I was running from Jared Comstock,” she moaned. “And from that foreman of his, Will Morgan. He was no better than the cook. Of course, Will would never have taken me away. He would have used me right there, right under Jared’s nose!”
“And your husband would have allowed that? Why did you marry him if that’s the kind of man he is?”
“I didn’t have much say in it,” she said. “My mother and father—Allyce and Jack Ahern—lived on my grandfather’s farm in Kentucky. I was born there. My father practically ran the farm and Grandfather treated him like a son. He even deeded him half the farm to keep him in Kentucky. After the war, things were tough; it was hard to hold on to what we had. Then gold fever struck. Word came back about a strike in the Black Hills in South Dakota. My father was determined to make a quick fortune and help put Foxtail Hall back on the map. Mother stayed behind with me. He wanted a year to see if he could strike it rich. Only, he never came back. Oh, we got a letter now and then, from one place or another. Finally they stopped. We feared the worst. Mama died from a fever, but I really think it was a broken heart, and then it was just me and Grandfather. About six months ago I got a letter. Surprisingly, it was from my father. He said he’d hired on at the Lazy C doing odd jobs—mending fences, building corrals, and the like, but he was sick, and didn’t know how long he could last at cowpunching. Said he was too old to be a wrangler any longer. I wanted my father home, so I came west to find him and bring him back to Kentucky.”
“Did you find him?”
“Granddad didn’t want me to come, but he knew he couldn’t stop me. I finally found Dad, but he wasn’t the same man who left Kentucky when I was a child. He was friends, after a fashion, with Jared’s father, William. That’s how he landed at the Lazy C after he left the Black Hills. Enough people were striking it rich; I think Old Man Comstock believed there was a lot of gold. After his first claim panned out, William loaned my father money to continue looking. One claim after another was a bust, however, which left Dad owing a lot of money. Foolishly, he made a grand gesture of signing over his half of the farm in Kentucky as payment. Jared’s father, from what I learned, never intended to claim it—he wasn’t even sure my father still had the right to sign it away, since he’d been gone so long. He just kept the paper to save my father’s pride. But then William died and, well, Jared isn’t the man his father was…” Her voice trailed off, and she once more stared into the fire.
The anger Trace had felt toward Diablo’s treatment was eclipsed by a different fury. In his travels he’d heard many such stories as Mae’s, of families destroyed by the war, losing farms to carpetbaggers and taxes; there was no end to men like Jared Comstock, taking what ever they could and at what ever cost, honor be damned. That didn’t make such stories any easier to hear.
Mae looked worn down. Defeat twisted the corners of her small mouth.
“You don’t have to go on—” he started to suggest. Somehow he’d help her get back to Kentucky.
“No,” she murmured. “You wanted to hear this, and I’d best get it said while I’ve mustered the courage. The day I arrived at the Outpost, I was directed to the Lazy C, where I found my father reeling drunk, being abused, and held up to ridicule. There’s no law hereabouts. Everyone is beholden to Jared. He owns the Outpost and everyone in it. I walked straight into a trap. When I arrived, Jared told Father he’d cancel the debt and give him back the deed to the farm in exchange for me. When I refused, he said he’d put my father out of his misery right in front of me and take me anyway.”
“And so you married him?” Trace asked through stiff lips.
“At gunpoint, yes. Only, the gun wasn’t pointed at me; it was aimed at my father. Jared sent Morgan into town for a preacher. Once the marriage was performed, he tore up my father’s markers,
gave him the deed to the farm and his wages, and turned him loose. But he was found the next morning, shot to death behind the saloon. The deed to the farm was gone, along with all the money Jared had given him.”
“You think Jared Comstock killed him?” Trace asked.
“No, not Jared. He never left the ranch that night. But Will Morgan did.”
Trace shook his head. “When did all this happen, Mae?”
“A month, I think. I’ve lost track of time. It’s been one big nightmare for me. I just want to go home to Kentucky. At first I tried to find the deed. I didn’t want Jared to get his hands on Foxtail Hall. But then the situation became too dangerous. I had to get away.”
“I asked about the name Ahern in town. Nobody seemed to know it.”
She uttered a humorless laugh. “They know the name, all right. Everybody knew Jack Ahern. They just won’t admit to it. Those who still have a conscience at the Outpost are too afraid of Jared to risk getting involved.” Her poignant brown eyes fixed him. “Now you’ve heard my story. I think it’s time for you to tell me—how do you fit into all this, Trace Ord?”
Trace answered her question with one of his own. “Is Jared Comstock a horse rustler?”
She shrugged. “I wouldn’t put it past him. He does as he pleases. They’re driving horses in all the time, but I can’t say for certain from where. I’m not allowed near anything to do with his business. I’ve spent near a month locked in my room trying to avoid…” She bit her lip and flushed scarlet. “Why do you ask?”
Trace drew a ragged breath. For a moment he couldn’t speak. There was no doubt that she was sincere. His work, however, depended upon anonymity. He never disclosed his position, or his personal affairs, easily. He hadn’t with Preacher, and he hesitated now with Mae. He usually trusted his instincts, but they were clouded by what he was beginning to feel for this girl. He wrestled with that for a good length of time before he spoke.
“Can you trust me, Mae?” he asked.
She hurled back at him, “I can’t trust anybody out here!”
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